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 energetic" teacher for his wife, and the Inquisitor Mathieu (Dry was sent. As his exhortations made no impression, she was put on her trial for heresy, and condemned to imprisonment, twenty-four of her servants being likewise sentenced. But a week afterwards, on September 13, it was announced that she had "abjured and received pardon.1" The documents are lost, so that it is hard to say precisely what occurred. It is certain that Renée made her confession and received the Eucharist, equally so that she was at heart a Calvinist, and went on in her old courses until, after Ercole's death, she retired in 1560 to Montargis and became a protector of the French Huguenots.

Ercole's other capital, MODENA, was equally famous as a centre of learning. Many of the scholars of the Modenese Academy had long been suspected of heterodoxy, among them being Lodovico Castelvetro, Gabriele Falloppio, the anatomist, and the brothers Grillenzone, who were its founders. In Advent, 1537, an Austin friar, Serafino of Ferrara, denounced an anonymous book, the Sommario della Santa Scrittura, which was being sold in Modena by the bookseller Antonio Gaboldino; but his action only called forth protests. In 1540 arrived the learned Paolo Ricci, a conventual Franciscan, who had left the cloister, and now, under the assumed name of Lisio Fileno, publicly expounded the Scriptures and denounced the Papacy. Thus the new opinions gained ground. The annalist Tassoni (il Vecchio) declares that both men and women disputed everywhere, in the squares, in the shops, in the churches, concerning the faith and the law of Christ, quoting and misquoting the Scriptures and doctors whom they had never read.

Attempts were soon made to put a stop to this. The Sommario was refuted by Ambrogio Catarino and burned at Rome in 1539. Two years afterwards Ricci was arrested, taken to Ferrara, and made to recant. Other measures were for a time averted by the intercession of Sadoleto, himself a Modenese; he urged that the academicians were loyal to the Roman Church, and should not be molested because they claimed for the learned the right of free enquiry. The Pope however was still suspicious; and Giovanni de Morone, the Bishop of Modena, then absent on a legation in Germany and himself a friend of Contarini and to the doctrines of Grace, was sent for to reduce this " second Geneva" to order. It was proposed that suspected persons should sign a formulary of faith, drawn up by Contarini in the plainest possible terms. After strenuous resistance the signatures were secured, and the matter seemed at an end. But a strong feeling of resentment had sprung up; the Academy was still a hot-bed of disaffection, and preachers of doubtful orthodoxy, such as Bartolommeo della Pergola, were eagerly listened to.

At length Ercole was goaded into taking action throughout his dominions. A ducal edict of May 24, 1546, was so severe in its provisions that the Modenese Academy promptly dispersed; and in 1548