Part I. The Problem of periodization -- 1. A Working Hypothesis : The Crisis of Italy in the Cinquecento and the Bond Between the Renaissance and the Risorgimento -- 2. A Case in Point : The End of the Renaissance in Florence -- Part II. Continuation and Change in the Humanistic Disciplines -- 3. Jurisprudence : The Methodology of Andrea Alciato -- 4. Historiography : The Art of History in the Italian Counter Reformation -- 5. Literature : Torquato Tasso : An Introduction -- 6. Political Philosophy : Renaissance Utopianism -- 7. Aristotelian Philosophy and the Popularization of Learning : Benedetto Varchi and Renaissance Aristotelanism -- Part III. Reformation and Counter Reformation -- 8. The Problem of Heresy : The History of the Reformation and of the Italian Heresies and the History of Religious Life in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century - the Relation Between Two Kinds of Research -- 9. The Application of the Tridentine Decrees : The Organization of the Diocese of Bologna During the Episcopate of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti -- 10. Submission and Conformity : "Nicodemism" and the Expectations of a Conciliar Solution to the Religious Question -- 11. The Flowering and Withering of Speculative Philosophy - Italian Philosophy and the Counter Reformation : The Condemnation of Francesco Patrizi -- Part IV. Political Vitality and economic Recovery : Rome : Political and Administrative Centralization in the Papal State in the Sixteenth Century -- 13. Naples : The Insurrection in Naples of 1585 -- 14. Venice : The Rise and Fall of the Venetian Wool Industry -- Part V. Toward a New Age -- 15. Venice, Spain, and the Papacy : Paolo Sarpi and the Renaissance Tradition -- 16. Baroque Poetry : New Tasks for the Criticism of Marino and of "Marinism" -- 17. Music - How Opera Began : An Introduction to Jacopo Peri's Euridice (1600).