ITALY, THE REFORMATION IN.
Two Periods (§ 1). In South and Central Italy
Venice (§ 2). (§ 5).
Naples (§ 3). The Later Period in Venice
The Inquisition in Naples (§ 6).
(§ 4). Italian Reformation Wri-
tings (§7).
This article is concerned with the Reformation in Italy only in its general features. Its more important characters are treated in sepi. Two arate articles (see Cahaccioli, Gal- Periods. eazzo; Cueione, Celio Secondo; Moeata, Olimpia; Ochino, Bernardino; Paleario, Aonio; Renee of France; Spiera, Francesco; Valdes; Vergerio, Pietro Paolo; Vermigli, Pietro Martire). The first noteworthy traces of the Reformation in Italy appear in the north, at Venice, but the culmination was reached in the south, at Naples. The first and rising period lies between 1520, when writings of the German Reformation are first known to have crossed the Alps, and 1540 or 1541, the year marking the death of Valdes, who wrought in an elect circle at Naples, as the most strongly intellectual and original of the Italian Reformers. Almost simultaneously with the breaking-up of the Evangelical circle at Naples, there set in (1542) the deliberate and systematic reaction instigated from Rome; the bull of Paul III., Licet ab initio (see Inquisition, II., § 1), by the terms of which the Inquisition was organized after the Spanish model, and extended over all Italy (Naples excepted), is L
Italy, the Reformation in
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the storm signal. With unremitting activity until about 1570, this tribunal, personally directed by the popes, utilizing the entire political influence of the Curia, accomplished its work by driving a number of the chief advocates of reform to flight, by dungeon and fire and water, and smothered the movement. What still remained in the way of Evangelical tendencies during the later years of this second period had become divested of all efforts at internal church reform and stands in deliberate, most trenchant, opposition to Rome, falling in with certain radical tendencies which manifested themselves in Germany, but particularly in the Netherlands, where the leaders of a conservative Evangelical reformation steadily resisted them with force.
In Venice down to 1.527 there is no evidence of repressive measures beyond repeated burning of
reformatory writings of German origin; 2. Venice, but toward the close of 1530 the papal
nuncio, Caraffa (later Paul IV.), interposed against the " heretics " with greater strictness, and even sentenced a Franciscan, Girolamo Galateo (b. in Venic", 1490), to death without obtaining confirmation for the act from the Senate. They kept him in prison seven years, then set him free, but in 1540 arrested him again, and, broken by his earlier sufferings, he died in the year following. His " Apology," dedicated to the Senate, printed at Bologna in 1541, outlines a noteworthy plan of internal church reform, which betrays the influence of German doctrines, and on the question of free will, the sacraments, the veneration of saints, and other points is truly Biblical. In a report which Caraffa prepared for the Curia (printed in Rivista Crist iana, Florence, 1878), two other leading heretics are mentioned. Bartolomeo Fonzio was a Venetian, incurred suspension from the priestly office in 1529, escaped to Germany, and was present at Augsburg in 1530. He was in correspondence with Butzer in 1531. It was probably Fonzio, despite his subsequent denial, who translated Luther's tract An den christlichen Adel into Italian (cf. ZKG, iv., 1880, pp. 467 sqq.). Later he was again active in Italy, and in 1558 was arrested in Cittadella, not far from Venice; he was sentenced to death and drowned, for forty-four " erroneous doctrines," extracted from his writings. When Caraffa prepared his report, mentioned above, in 1532, there lived also at Venice the Florentine fugitive, Antonio Bruccioli, who rendered the movement of the Reformation great service by elucidating and printing Biblical writings in the Italian language. He was under suspicion, and so continued; and notwithstanding occasional retraction, he was repeatedly brought to trial. He died in prison in 1566. As in his case, so with others, such as Fra Baldo Lupetino of Albona in Istria, and Baldassare Altieri, of Aquila in Neapolitan territory, their religious development and its sequel belong both to the first and the second period of Italian Reformation history.
Meanwhile the reforming doctrine had found its real and vital center in Italy, in the circle of Juan de Valdes at Naples. The. biographer of Caraffa (Caraccioli, Vita di Papa Paolo IV , MS. in British
Museum) with good reason declares that Naples was the " nest of heresy "; but the tradition is false
that would have it that the Lutheran 3. Naples, belief was carried thither by German
soldiers after the sack of Rome in 1527. From about 1536 onward a company is found there — scholars of Valdes, himself devoted to the fundamental doctrines of the German Reformation and influenced by mysticism — which includes the most important vehicles of the Italian Reformation: Bernardino Ochino, Pietro Martire Vermigli, Pietro Carnesacchi, Benedetto di Mantua (reviser of the little book " Of the Benefit of Christ's Death," probably by A. Palerio (q.v.); Eng. transl., London, reprint, 1855, also in W M. Blackburn, Aonio Palerio, Philadelphia, 1866), Mario Galeata, Francesco d'Alvise of Caserta, Giovanni Bugio, Galeazzo Caraccioli, Marcantonio Flaminio, and others, who partly, it is true, never went beyond the attempt at a reform from within the Church. The central article about which all converge in the matter of doctrine is the tenet of justification by faith. Furthermore, it was immaterial to a Valdes what the external structure of the Church might be, provided it did not abridge this religious condition. He was far from intending to raise the standard of revolt against church institutions, and he was no organizer; his teachings found their way beyond the circumference whose center was marked by his ideal — pure character, illumined with profound piety — only by the accident that his writings were preserved as dear legacies by his friends. The chief service in this regard was rendered by the noblest of his pupils, Giulia Gonzaga, duchess of Traetto (see Valdes).
Among the pupils of Valdes who did not exceed the boundary of a reform attempted from within
the Church was Marcantonio Flaminio
4. The of Imola, highly endowed as a poet;
Inquisition it was he who gave to the book " Of
in Naples, the Benefit of Christ's Death " the form
under which, according to the testimony of Vergerio, it became circulated through the land in more than forty thousand copies, though today not a single library of Italy has one impression from that period. The first blows of the reaction, when it was introduced in 1542 through the reorganization of the Inquisition at Rome (see Inquisition), struck the two most eminent members of the circle surrounding Valdes, Ochino and Vermigli. Ochino was suspended from the preaching office; and he escaped, by flight, a summons to appear at Rome to give an account of himself. At the same time, Vermigli, who had risen to high rank in the order of the Augustinian canons, took to flight, whence he despatched to his doctrinal associates a testimonial of evangelistic faith in the guise of his Semplice dichiaragione sopra x dodici articoh della fede cristiana. Presently the reaction directed its attention to a third member of the Neapolitan circle; viz., Pietro Carnesecchi (b. in Florence 1508), who had held high stations under the Curia. After he had avoided the Inquisition during a sojourn of many years abroad and in Venice, he was brought to trial by Pope Paul IV., and escaped for the time, after having been summoned twice, through the