CHAPTER XVIII
TASSO
The year 1564 is memorable in the intellectual history of the world. It marks the beginning of the long ascent of the North, and of the slow depression of the South. In it Shakespeare was born; in it Michael Angelo died; in it the decrees of the Council of Trent were promulgated by one of the most liberal and enlightened of the Popes, even as the Society of Jesus had been established twenty-four years before by another entitled to the same commendation. Neither Paul nor Pius was free to gratify his personal inclinations at the expense of the institution over which he presided; and in fact the Society and the Council were less important in themselves than as indicative of the new spirit which was to prevail in Roman Catholic countries, destructive, so far as its influence extended, of science, and deadly to learning, literature, and art. The time was at hand when the policy of great states was to be controlled by confessors; when the clergy, under the influence of a training in special seminaries, were to be converted from an order into a caste; when the entire influence of State and Church was to be devoted to the repression of free thought, with the inevitable result of intellectual degeneracy, and mortifying inferiority to the nations which,
