There Has Always Been A Contrary Tendency At Work:
The Ionic spirit,
heritage of the past.
Monkish ideals of chastity and poverty have never
appealed to the hearts of people, priests or prelates of the south; they
will endure much fondness in their religion, but not those phenomena of
cruelty and pruriency which are inseparably connected with asceticism;
their notions have ever been akin to those of the sage Xenocrates, who
held that "happiness consists not only in the possession of human
virtues, but in the accomplishment of natural acts." Among the latter
they include the acquisition of wealth and the satisfaction of carnal
needs. At this time, too, the old Hellenic curiosity was not wholly
dimmed; they took an intelligent interest in imported creeds like that
of Luther, which, if not convincing, at least satisfied their desire for
novelty. Theirs was exactly the attitude of the Athenians towards Paul's
"New God"; and Protestantism might have spread far in the south, had it
not been ferociously repressed.
But after the brilliant humanistic period of the Aragons there followed
the third and fiercest reaction - that of the Spanish viceroys, whose
misrule struck at every one of the roots of national prosperity. It is
that "seicentismo" which a modern writer (A. Niceforo, "L'Italia
barbara," 1898) has recognized as the blight, the evil genius, of south
Italy. The Ionic spirit did not help the people much at this time. The
greatest of these viceroys, Don Pietro di Toledo, hanged 18,000 of them
in eight years, and then confessed, with a sigh, that "he did not know
what more he could do." What more could he do?
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