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 likely to help those who sided with Luther against them. In the end, their associations were broken up. Many were punished, many more gave way; those who were left seem to have gravitated towards anabaptist and speculative views of a very pronounced kind.

It is hard to form a precise idea of the number of the Reformed in Venice, but they were evidently very numerous. Processes for heresy were very common, especially after Giovanni délia Casa became Nuncio in 1547, with orders to expedite the work. Of the records which survive many are at Udine; but at Venice alone-there still remain over eight hundred processes for Lutheranism between 1547 and 1600, and more than a hundred more for Anabaptism, Calvinism, and other heresies. The greater number are from Venice itself; but Vicenza, Brescia and Cittadella are represented, with a number of smaller places.

FERRARA, long famous for learning and the fine arts, was a centre of hardly less importance, though in quite a different way. Ercole, the son of the reigning Duke Alfonso, had married Renée the daughter of Louis XII of France in 1528, and succeeded his father six years later. Renée had already imbibed the new ideas from her cousin Margaret of Navarre and from her governess Madame de Soubise, poetess and translator of the Psalms. The latter, with the whole of her distinguished family, followed her to Ferrara; and as most of Renée's suite, which included Clément Marot, the poet, were of the same way of thinking, her Court became a rallying-point for the Reformed. From France came the statesman Hubert Languet and the poet Léon Jamet; from Germany the Court physician Johann Sinapius and his brother Kilian, who acted as a tutor to Renée's children. There were also Alberto Lollio and the canon Celio Calagnani, joint founders of the Academy of the Elevati; the physician Angelo Manzioli, whose famous Zodiacus Vltae, published by him under the pseudonym Marcello Palingenio Stellato, poured ridicule on the monks and clergy; and Fulvio Peregrino Morato, who had preceded Kilian Sinapius in his office but had been banished in 1539, perhaps for Lutheran opinions. He returned to the University in 1539, bringing with him his more famous daughter Olympia Morata, "an infant prodigy who became a distinguished woman." She became an intimate member of Renée's household, corresponded on equal terms with the most learned men of the day, passed through a sceptical phase to devout Lutheranism, and finally, having incurred her patron's anger, married a German physician named Grunthler and accompanied him to his own land. Nor were Renée and Olympia the only well-known women who adopted Reformed views there. Amongst others who did so were Lavinia della Rovere, grand-niece of Pope Julius II, and the Countess Giulia Rangone, a daughter of the House of Bentivoglio. One other resident at the Court must be mentioned-the learned Cretan who took the name of Francesco Porto. He was a man of great caution and reticence, but