In France, the revolt from feudalism had found
some of its boldest leaders in the very class that had most to lose by
the change; but in Italy fewer causes were at work to set such
disinterested passions in motion. South of the Alps liberalism was
merely one of the new fashions from France: the men ran after the
pamphlets from Paris as the women ran after the cosmetics; and the
politics went no deeper than the powder. Even among the freest
intellects liberalism resulted in a new way of thinking rather in a new
way of living. Nowhere among the better classes was there any desire to
attack existing institutions. The Church had never troubled the Latin
consciousness. The Renaissance had taught cultivated Italians how to
live at peace with a creed in which they no longer believed; and their
easy-going scepticism was combined with a traditional conviction that
the priest knew better than any one how to deal with the poor, and that
the clergy were of distinct use in relieving the individual conscience
of its obligation to its fellows.
It was against such deep-seated habits of thought that Odo had to
struggle. Centuries of fierce individualism, or of sullen apathy under a
foreign rule, had left the Italians incapable of any concerted political
action; but suspicion, avarice and vanity, combined with a lurking fear
of the Church, united all parties in a kind of passive opposition to
reform. Thus the Duke's resolve to put the University under lay
direction had excited the enmity of the Barnabites, who had been at its
head since the suppression of the Society of Jesus; his efforts to
partition among the peasantry the Caccia del Vescovo, that great waste
domain of the see of Pianura, had roused a storm of fear among all who
laid claim to feudal rights; and his own personal attempts at
retrenchment, which necessitated the suppression of numerous court
offices, had done more than anything else to increase his unpopularity.
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