creed. He was too much one of the olden time
for that. But times are changing, you see!
There is the council, which cannot by any
possibility be staved off any longer. And really those
troublesome Germans are making such a pother!
And Charles the Fifth is talking disagreeable
things about Church reform. It really is
absolutely necessary to do a little respectability. So
Paul the Third made cardinals of a whole bunch
of the—- really—- most blameless and most earnest
men he could find in the Church. The Romans
rubbed their eyes, and began to think that the
Church must truly be in danger when such
strong measures were deemed necessary.

But in 1540 we find Carnesecchi getting into
very dangerous company at Naples. He became
intimate there, with the notorious Giovanni
Valdez, a Spaniard, who did more, perhaps, than
any other one man to infect Italy with heresies
of the most " insinuating" and pernicious kind.
He was a layman, too. As if a layman had any
business to be troubling his head about how he
was to be saved! Your easy-going, live-and-
Iet-live infidel, who had no objection to a fat
bishopric in commendam for himself or his
sou, who was content with a merry wink
exchanged now and then with his good friends of
the cloth, and a fie-fie joke under the rose—-
he was a good fellow enough in his way, and
quiet old Mother Church was quite content to
give wink for wink, and let him go to perdition
as he would. But this pestilent fellow Valdez
was always boring about his "justification!"
He was the viceroy's secretary, too, which made
the matter more annoying. And, moreover, he
was an exceedingly pleasant and gentlemanlike
man, an elegant scholar, by no means averse
either in principle or practice to the rational
enjoyment of life and its blessings, exceedingly
popular among the cultivated nobles of that
brilliant court—- at that time the most intellectual
in Italy, and, above all, especially, a favourite
among the ladies, confound him! A pretty
state of things, when high-born dames,
instead of amusing their leisure with Boccacio
and smilingly accepting from their smiling father
confessor a penance of six Ave Marias, to be
repeated in expiation of that naughty pastime,
began to ask him questions about justification
by faith! Your Gallio-like heretics the Church
could, or thought she could, in those days
afford to disregard; but your pious heretic
was intolerable! Then his social position and
talents made this Valdez an influential man;
and he had gathered about him in the gay
and brilliant but not unlettered court of Naples,
a little school of more or less gifted men,
all infected with the same " abominable leprosy."
A friend of his it was, who wrote that celebrated
treatise " On the benefits of the death of Christ:"
which of them, the most persevering researches
of modern times have failed to discover. It
was an exposition of the doctrine of
"justification by faith," adapted to popular use.
Its success was immense. It is known that
many thousands of copies of it were circulated
in all parts of Italy. And, of all the indications
of the successful vigour with which the terrible
Fra Michele, first as inquisitor and then as
pope, cleared Italy of heresy, perhaps the most
striking and extraordinary is the fact that no
single copy of this once popular book is known
to exist. We are apt to imagine that any
writing once committed to the safe-keeping of
type, and disseminated in large quantities, must
be secure against the chances of destruction.
But, in so flattering ourselves, we reckon without
taking into account the energies and perseverance
of a Fra Michele. The little book was
burned in vast piles in the market-places of the
cities by thousands at a time.

The Church-in-danger tocsin, which was soon
to put a new class of popes on the throne,
had not yet rung out. And Carnesecchi, all
canon and papal secretary as he was, could
indulge in a little speculative heresy in good
company, without serious inconvenience. But
the malady seems to have grown upon him. The
new thoughts seem to have occupied his mind
more and more to the exclusion of other
interests; and the fact reflects the general
advance which the new ideas were making in the
best minds of Italy. In 1541 we find him
residing at Viterbo, again in the midst of a select
little society all of his way of thinking.

A singular feature of that day in Italy was
the existence of a very notable band of ladies
of the highest birth and rank, all gifted, all
celebrated for their beauty, all more or less
remarkable for literary culture, and all suspected
of heretical tendencies: all, as a contemporary
writer phrases it, lame of the same foot. There
was Vittoria Colonna. There was the lovely and
fascinating Giulia Gonzaga. There were
Lavinia della Rovere Orsini, and Teodora Sauli.
And last, and not least in importance, there was
Renée Duchess of Ferrara; though poor Renée
must be excepted as to the personal beauty
which characterised others of this blooming
baud of heretics. With all these ladies, our
unorthodox canon was in more or less
constant correspondence. The thing began to be
unpleasantly talked about. It was "making
himself too particular" to be thus the centre of
a circle of heretics wherever he went. And we
cannot but agree with the Church writers who
complain that it was very provoking to see a
man living in Rome—- for he returned thither, it
seems, from Viterbo, under the very noses of
the Sacred College—- and spending the revenues
of very abundant Church preferment in
furnishing means to declared enemies to the
Church to enable them to betake themselves to
that hotbed of perdition, Geneva, there to hear,
as they audaciously said, the Gospel preached;
which they could not hear at Rome. Was it to
be expected that Mother Church could endure
to see her children thus forwarded on their road to
certain eternal perdition, and that, too, with her
own money.

At last Canon Pietro Carnesecchi was cited
by that fine old Roman nobleman, Pope Paul the
Third, to give an account of his opinions, and
purge himself of the suspicion of heresy. He