In this general decline, the ideas of Fieschi did not utterly die. Some generous souls continued to protest. Let it suffice to cite Tassoni and Campanella, the last of whom in his conspiracy against Spain was supported not only by many barons but also by the Visir Cicala, a Calabrian renegade (though of Ligurian descent) who promised to land Turks in the kingdom. Nor would we forget that some of our nobles in Genoa tried to tear up the poisonous plant which had taken root in the Republic; as, for example, Agostino and Francesco, Pallavicini, Nicolò Doria, who married a sister of Gianluigi Fieschi, and Agostino Vignolo who during the Piedmontese wars intrigued with lord bishop Brissac to aid the French arms. But the Spanish government, which was destroying letters and arts, struck its roots more deeply every day and we reached such depths of degradation, we tremble in writing it, that the Senate issued a decree in the Spanish language and consented that it should be used in lectures and sermons. The plebeians, groaning under a double slavery, sometimes appealed to Spain against the arrogant despotism of the patricians; but the appeal reacted against the petitioners and Doctor Ligalupo, a man of much learning and great virtue, was imprisoned for life. In the reports of the Venitian ambassadors to the Senate, the condition of Genoa is described in a few fit words; Badoero writes:--“They hate the Spanish nation as strongly as possible and matters stand thus:--the people see only France; those in power see only Spain, and none seem to think of the common weal.” With the loss of liberty our manners became dissolute. Courtesans were held in honour. Imperia in Rome. Tullia in Venice were courted by men of genius. Catarina da S. Celso, Vanozza, Borgia and Bianca Capello married into illustrious houses. To speak of Liguria alone, a brief of Pope Clement VII. to the archbishop of Genoa and the prior of S. Teodoro, exhorts these prelates to unite with the government in reforming the cloisters, because the nuns have become utterly dissolute from contact with every sort of persons. The Genoese nuns had infamous repute throughout Italy. Bandello says:--They go where they please and when they return to the cloister say to the abbess “Mother, by your permission, we have been to divert ourselves.” It seems that subterranean passages were opened between the cloisters of nuns and friars. In our times, when the convent of S. Brigida was torn down, in the open walls were found skeletons of children who had been buried there as soon as born. Cardinal Bembo justly said that “all human vices and crimes were perpetrated in the cloisters under cover of a diabolical hypocrisy.”