ROME — The Italian Parliament has long been a three-ring circus, but analysts here say that the events of the past few days have plunged the country into its worst institutional crisis in decades.

Several outbursts have revived the prospect of early elections weeks after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, facing trial on charges of paying a minor for sex and of abuse of power, managed to grab the steering wheel and put his government back on the road.

In heated parliamentary debate on Wednesday, the defense minister told the speaker of the lower house to go do something to himself that cannot be printed in this newspaper. When the defense minister and the environment minister left Parliament, protesters hurled coins at them, calling them thieves.

The next day a member of the center-right governing coalition called an opposition politician who uses a wheelchair a “stupid cripple,” and the normally calm justice minister threw his electronic voting card out into the opposition, angry that he had been too late to vote.