Effect of the religious reformation on Italy between 1520 and 1550

Abstract

Professor Whitney reminded us sours years ago that " it is needful for the sake of understanding the Reformation to study its origins in the Middle Ages and to study its characters not where they diverged most widely, but at moments when they approached most closely." This. opinion is also held by the Warden of Keble; "- origins are common ground. Developments mark the points of divergence."

These opinions appear to justify us in going back to far beyond í52L into the earlier history of the Italian Church. Why the religious Reformation ultimately failed in Italy, and is probably more important, how its effect was permanent, are questions to which no satisfactory answer can be given if pre -Reformation Italy with its particular characteristics receives no consideration, The parable of the sower refers to the ground just as much as to the seed.

And therefore we have spoken of the Italian tradition, artificially dividing it into three sides for greater ease of treatment. Then comes the zenith of ecclesiastical abuses with the Italian reply to them. As could only be expected, first Savonarola, then the Lateran failed, although both had awakened a greater desire for reform. Could an external Reformation help to fulfil that desire? - a direct effect, or a radical change could not and did not, but its indirect effect certainly could and did.

The Italian tradition was almost quite antagonistic to an external Reformation, and when certain Italians escaped that tradition they became not Protestants but "Protesters"- seeking a faith as different from Luther's as it was from Rome's, exalting the individual above the Church and owing their chief debt to Scotism. This movement wax was ,of course, that of the Sozzini, whose occasion only was the external Reformation: together with the first chapter the last which treats of this reveals something of Italian character and its behaviour in pre-Reformation times, as well as in our period.