It was due again in a great measure to their demand for imaginative excitement in all matters of the sense, to their desire for the extravagant and extraordinary as a seasoning of pleasure, that the Italians came to deserve so terrible a name among the nations for unnatural passions.[1] This is a subject which can hardly be touched in passing: yet the opinion may be recorded that it belongs rather to the science of psychopathy than to the chronicle of vulgar lusts. English poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament, on this as on so many other points. Shelley in his portrait of Francesco Cenci has drawn a man in whom cruelty and incest have become appetites of the distempered soul; the love of Giovanni and Annabella in Ford's tragedy is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual. It is no excuse for the Italians to say that they had spiritualized abominable vices. What this really means is that their immorality was nearer that of devils than of beasts. But in seeking to distinguish its true character, we must take notice of the highly wrought fantasy which seasoned both their luxury and their jealousy, their vengeance and their lust.
[1] Italian literature is loud-voiced on this topic. The concluding stanzas of Poliziano's _Orfeo_, recited before the Cardinal of Mantua, the Capitoli of Berni, Bronzino, La Casa, and some of the _Canti Carnasialeschi_, might be cited. We might add Varchi's express testimony as to the morals of Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici, Pier Luigi Farnese, and Clement VII. What Segni (lib. x. p. 409) tells us about the brave Giovanni Bandini is also very significant. In the Life of San Bernardino of Siena, Vespasiano (_Vite di Illustri Uomini_, p. 186) writes: 'L'Italia, ch' era piena di queste tenebre, e aveva lasciata ogni norma di buoni costumi, e non era più chi conoscesse Iddio. Tanto erano sommersi e sepulti ne' maladetti e abbominevoli vizi nefandi! Gli avevano in modo messi in uso, che non temevano nè Iddio nè l'onore del mondo. Maladetta cecità! In tanto eccesso era venuto ogni cosa, che gli scellerati ed enormi vizi non era più chi gli stimasse, per lo maladetto uso che n'avevano fatto ... massime il maladetto e abominando e detestando peccato della sodomia. Erano in modo stracorsi in questa cecità, che bisognava che l'onnipotente Iddio facesse un' altra volta piovere dal cielo zolfo e fuoco come egli fece a Sodoma e Gomorra.' Compare Savonarola passim, the inductions to the Sacre Rappresentazioni, the familiar letters of Machiavelli, and the statute of Cosimo against this vice (year 1542, Sabellii Summa. Venice, 1715; vol. v. p. 287).