However bold a man might be, he dread of heretic; the term _paterino_, originally applied to religious innovators, had become synonymous in common phraseology with rogue.

It was a point of good society and refined taste to support the Church.

Again, the mental faculties of Italy had for three centuries been taxed to the utmost in studies wide apart from the field of religious faith.

Art, scholarship, philosophy, and meditation upon politics had given a definite direction 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.