Kinda... doubtfull. Looking at the cliché scandinavian and arguably british 'the tall poppies' syndroma... it sounds a bit, ya know..
For Italy, you had printers and a growing bourgeois proto capitalistic class, to use Marxist parlance - Italy of the Renaissance is a proof that Catholics can be as capitalistic as Protestants.
AND poltiical atomisation and Italy, well..
They also dealed with non catholics or even christians gladly. Who traded with the Byzantines and Ottomans over time much, you wonder?
Italy was rich.
The books you read may have had a certain Protestant bias, carefully. 'Milking cows' of the Papcy? sounds kinda...
This is not about protestant caricature. I don't live nor was raised in a protestant or majority-protestant country. I know Italy was rich. But Italy had some kind of development quite different from Germany or England or the Netherlands. it was much less bottom-up.
And this is a fact : Italy, thanks to the papacy, profited from a big net influx of capital from other european countries : most of all the HRE. If you have visited Italy, you know what I am referin to. Much has gone into stone and art.