Italy and the papacy.

In the states of the Italian peninsula, as in the rest of central and western Europe, the news of the activities and doctrines of Luther, followed by those of Zwingli and later by those of the Anabaptists, the Anti-Trinitarians and Calvin, fell on ground ready to receive it. Among the numerous ecclesiastics, memories of Savonarola's preaching were not always propitious; thus the best-known Italian translator of Holy Scripture along Lutheran lines, the Florentine Antonio Brucioli, was violently hostile to Savonarola. But there were the hopes raised by the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) especially in certain Florentine and allied circles in contact with the Venetian patrician and Camaldolese hermit, Blessed Paolo Giustiniani (1476–1528); there was a desire for greater morality and austerity of life in the laity, the hierarchy and the curia; people were fully aware of the ‘abuses’ originally devised to meet the needs (in money and staff) of the financial administration and the centralised policy of the church, not just the needs of the Holy See as an Italian state in matters of politics and war. There was also a strong desire for a more spiritual conception of Catholic religious life: for men like Giustiniani (and his friends included Gasparo Contarini, a Venetian nobleman, later to become famous as a cardinal) the consequence of such an infusion of the spirit occupied pride of place. These leanings were not in any way meant to affect the spheres of dogma, liturgy, discipline, traditions, the fundamental structure of the church, or the papal authority, but would, it was hoped, be capable of supplying these with energy enough to purify the church ‘in capite et in membris’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]