How did the Catholic Revival affect Italian Society?--Difficulty of Answering this Question--Frequency of Private Crimes of Violence--Homicides and Bandits--Savage Criminal Justice--Paid Assassins--Toleration of Outlaws--Honorable Murder--Example of the Lucchese Army--State of the Convents--The History of Virginia de Leyva--Lucrezia Buonvisi--The True Tale of the Cenci--The Brothers of the House of Massimo--Vittoria Accoramboni--The Duchess of Palliano--Wife-Murders--The Family of Medici. We are naturally led to inquire what discernible effect the Catholic Revival and the Counter-Reformation had upon the manners and morals of the Italians as a nation. Much has been said about the contrast between intellectual refinement and almost savage license which marked the Renaissance. Yet it can with justice be maintained that, while ferocity and brutal sensuality survived from the Middle Ages, humanism, by means of the new ideal it introduced, tended to civilize and educate the race. Now, however, the Church was stifling culture and attempting to restore that ecclesiastical conception of human life which the Renaissance had superseded. Did then her resuscitated Catholicism succeed in permeating the Italians with the spirit of Christ and of the Gospel? Were the nobles more quiet in their demeanor, less quarrelsome and haughty, more law-abiding and less given to acts of violence, than they had been in the previous period? Were the people more contented and less torn by factions, happier in their homes, less abandoned to the insanities of baleful superstitions?