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 their exhortations with a hopelessness which was the more terrible because it was so calm, though broken occasionally by paroxysms of frenzy. From the investigation made by the Inquisition after his death it seems likely that some rays of hope dawned upon him towards the end; but this was unknown to the many who came to see him, and awe and consternation prevailed amongst them. To Vergerio, who watched often at his bedside, the warning seemed to be one which he dared not neglect; he resolved to secede at once, and on December 13, 1548, he sent his resolve, with an account of the dying Spiera, to Rota, the Bishop Suffragan of Padua. His deposition and excommunication followed on July 3, 1549. He fled to the Grisons, and for a time worked at Poschiavo; in 1553 he passed to Württemberg, where he remained till his death. He translated parts of the Bible into Slavonic, and wrote fiery tracts against the Papacy; but to all he appeared a schemer and a disappointed man: Calvin speaks of him as a "restless busybody," and Jewel calls him a "crafty knave."

We return now to those who sympathised more or less with the new views but did not separate from the Church. They were of very different types. Some, like Michelangelo Buonarotti, were simply men of that evangelical spirit which easily comes under suspicion when undue stress is being laid on externals; others, like Falloppio, were bold thinkers who overstepped the limits of medievalism; others, like Giangiorgio Trissino, a fugitive for seventeen years who died in the prisons of the Inquisition, directed their satire against the Papacy only; others really adopted the Reformed views, like the satiric poet Francesco Berni, whose Orlando Innamorato appears to have been manipulated after his death to disguise the Lutheran flavour. A better representative of these last is Aonio Paleario of Veroli, a- man of querulous temper but devoutly Christian life, at once a humanist and a doctrinal Reformer. So early as 1542 he was accused of heresy at Siena, partly owing to a dispute with a preacher at Colle, partly on account of his book Delia pienezza, sofficenza, e satisfazione delta passione di Cristo. But he had friends, and the trial was stopped without his having to read an oration which he had prepared in his own defence. He continued to write boldly, and to correspond with the German and Swiss Reformers. In 1542 or 1543 he unfolded to them an extraordinary plan for a Council to settle the religious disputes of the day: all the princes of Europe were to choose holy men, "entirely free from the suspicion of papal corruption," to the number of six or seven from each country; and these men, having been consecrated for the purpose by twelve Bishops, chosen out of their whole number by the Pope and the hierarchy on account of their holiness of life, were to act as arbiters and umpires, after hearing the matters in dispute fully discussed in a perfectly free assembly. Paleario became professor of belles-lettres at Lucca in 1546, on the nomination of Sadoleto and Bembo,