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    4 fts such , that popes and cardinals laughed at th £ vices of friars , and denounced both them and their miracles ; but these men were many of them politicians , and ( he greater part of those even , who were honest , shrunk fron * violence and from many of the opinions and proceedings of the root-and

    branch reformers . Many of the Italians began to join the Court of Rome at the Council of Constance , and did so altogether at that of Trent , not from religious , but political reasons ; to prevent the destruction of a power which they considered necessary to the political importance of their country . The literati , equally with the politicians , betrayed the cause of reform , or left both sides to the management of the rude and violent . " Sadoleto , Bembo , and the

    rest of the Italian scholars , " as Mr . Roscoe observes , "kept aloof from the contest , unwilling to betray the interest oi literature by defending the dogmas of religion , and left the vindication of the most important interests of the church to scholastic disputants , exasperated bigots , and illiterate monks , whose writings for the most part injured the cause they were intended to defend . " This same Sadoleto , we learn from Dr . M'Crie , "in

    the name of his friends , set before Paleario the danger of giving way to innovations , and advised him , in consideration of the times , to confine himself to the safer t&sk of clothing the peripatetic ideas in elegant language . " Sadoleto , like Erasmus , had not the courage of a martyr . Dr . M'Crie mi g ht very well have bestowed a little more pains in analysing the causes which led ( more directly than the " disturbance" of the free inquirers ) to so complete a desertion and overthrow of those bodies of

    reformers , who ( though no doubt on various principles and views ) were working , it might have been supposed somewhat surely , towards much the same end in Italy . The effects of the ferment upon political and religious opinion in Italy , are equally susceptible of much interesting inquiry . Whatever was the reason why the cause , though triumphant elsewhere , so totally miscarried

    in Italy , the injury resulting to that country from the collision- was fatal and permanent . That measure of liberty and practical toleration which had existed , perhaps , to a greater degree there than in any country of Europe , was totally destroyed . Thankful for the blessings of the Reformation , however disfigured , it is hardly for us to speculate what might have been the result if the Italians had not been so crushed . Some of their descendants

    are fond of thinking that those principles which had found their way into the minds of so many of all classes of society , and even of the dignitaries of the church , would have produced a less violent and dogmatic , but perhaps a more effective , reformation , commencing in the country which was best prepared for it by its civilization and by the authority which its example would

    have enforced . As it was , if some part of Europe gained , Italy lost irretrievably all she had both in possession and prospect . After the Council of Trent , the power of the Inquisition was amazingly increased . Even the bishops were deprived of their canonical power , the monastic orders were rendered independent of them , the pope became a despot , and the whole nation was prostrated both in a civil and religious sense .

    Dr . M * Crie ' s religious views obviously govern his p lan , and furnish the reason wh y some of the most remarkable seceders trowi the Roman faith among the Italians fire very briefly disposed of . Even the names of several of them are not mentioned , as is the case , for instance , with Gribaldi ; of others it is only incidentally done . Alciati and Blandrata are only men * tiered , as ** noted Anti-trinitarians . " Gentili is spoken of but once * to :

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    Review *~ -M' Crie ' s Italian Reformation , ^ 107

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 107, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/35/