rection
to the minds of thinking men, so that little energy was left for those
instinctive movements of the spirit which produced the German
Reformation. The great work of Italy had been the genesis of the
Renaissance, the development of modern culture. And the tendencies of
the Renaissance were worldly: its ideal of human life left no room for a
pure, and ardent intuition into spiritual truth. Scholars occupied with
the interpretation of classic authors, artists bent upon investing
current notions with the form of beauty, could hardly be expected to
exclaim: 'The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil,
that is understanding.'[1] Materialism ruled the speculations no less
than the conduct of the age. Pamponazzo preached an atheistic doctrine,
with the plausible reservation of _Salva Fide_, which then covered all.
The more delicate thinkers, Pico and Ficino, sought to reconcile
irreconcilables by fusing philosophy and theology, while they
distinguished truths of science from truths of revelation. It seems
meanwhile to have occurred to no one in Italy that the liberation of the
reason necessitated an abrupt departure from Catholicism. They did not
perceive that a power antagonistic to mediaeval orthodoxy had been
generated. This was in great measure due to indifference; for the Church
herself had taught her children by example to regard her dogmas and her
discipline as a convenient convention. It required all the scourges of
the Inquisition to flog the nation back, not to lively faith, but to
hypocrisy. Furthermore, the political conditions of Italy were highly
unfavorable to a profound religious revolution. The thirst for national
liberty which inspired England in the sixteenth century, impelling the
despotic Tudors to cast off the yoke of Rome, arming Howard the Catholic
against the holy fleet of Philip, and joining prince and people in one
aspiration after freedom, was impossible in Italy. The tone of
Machiavelli's _Principe_, the whole tenor of Castiglione's _Cortigiano_,
prove this without the need of further demonstration.

[1] It is well known that Savonarola's objection to classical
culture was based upon his perception of its worldliness. It is
very remarkable to note the feeling on this point of some of
the greatest northern scholars. Erasmus, for example, writes:
'unus adhuc scrupulus habet animum meum, ne sub obtentu priscae
literaturae renascentis caput erigere conet