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 by no means so numerous as formerly, were still to be found in the valleys of Piedmont and Calabria. The movements of the sixteenth century in Italy were however entirely unconnected with these, and the impulse as a whole came from without. There is indeed one notable exception. Pietro Speziale of Cittadella finished his great work De Gratia Dei in 1542; but he tells us, with obvious sincerity, that he had formulated his theory of Justification and Grace thirty years earlier, before Luther had begun to preach. In the main he agrees with that of Luther, but he resolutely asserts the freedom of the will, and repudiates the Lutheran teaching on this subject; and although he speaks strongly against particular abuses, he does not undervalue the Church system of his day. The old man was thrown into prison in 1543, escaped six years afterwards by the help of two Anabaptists and joined their party, and subsequently made a formal recantation in prison. But Speziale stands alone; and it is clear that the doctrinal revolt as a whole came from the north.

The intercourse between Italy and Germany was very close; and a continual stream of traders and students flowed in both directions. At Venice there was a large Teutonic colony, having its centre in the Fondaco de' Tedeschi. The imperial army which invaded Italy in 1526 contained a large number of Lutherans; and with Georg von Frundsberg's Landsknechte there came the scholar Jakob Ziegler, later known in Venice as Luther's lieutenant. The commonwealth of letters ignored national boundaries; and there was a brisk correspondence between Luther and Zwingli and their admirers in Italy. So early as 1519 Luther's works were being sold in Lombardy by Francesco Calvi or Minicio, a bookseller of Pavia, who had procured a stock from Froben at Basel. In the following year, as we learn from a letter of Burchard von Schenk, they were eagerly purchased at Venice; and Marino Sanuto notes in his Diary that a seizure of them had been made at the instance of the patriarch, though not until part of the stock had been disposed of. Writings of Luther, Melanchthon, and others were presently translated into Italian; and being issued anonymously or under fictitious names, they circulated widely. Thus Luther's sermons on the Lord's Prayer appeared anonymously before 1525, and Melanchthon's Lad Communes about 1534 under the title / Prindpii della Teologia by " Ippofilo da Terra Nigra"; while other tracts of Luther's were subsequently tacked on to the posthumously issued works of Cardinal Federigo Fregoso.

In ways such as these the opinions of Luther spread, and in a less degree those of Zwingli. There were many who were ready to adopt them, in whole or in part. A hermit who inveighed against " priests and friars " at Venice in 1516 can hardly be called a Lutheran; but Fra Andrea of Ferrara, who preached at Christmas, 1520, at San Marco and in the open air, is expressly said to have "followed the doctrine of Martin Luther." So did a Carmelite friar, Giambattista Pallavicino, who