The Papacy and the Empire; the relations and the limits of the spiritual power with reference to the temporal and feudal power; the universal monarchy, and the freedom of the cities--such were the weighty problems to which Italy devoted her intellect. Jurisprudence controlled all her mental activities just as absolutely as scholasticism did those of France. The juristprudents Accorso and his sons, Jacopo of Arena, Cino da Pistoja, Bartolo and Baldo, were the men who lent lustre to the Italian universities of the thirteenth century. Law was the basis of a liberal education. Petrarch had studied it. His contempt for the scholasticism of “the disputatious city of Paris” is well known. One of his favourite sayings was: “The object of education is to teach men to think, and not merely to teach them to argue.” Logic he regarded simply as a useful tool. The freedom the Italians displayed in their intellectual life was manifest also in their religious conscience--and this is one of the most striking characteristics of their genius. During the Middle Ages they resembled none of the other members of the great family of Christian nations. Subtle metaphysics, refined theology, strict regime, dogmatism, elaborate ritual, restless casuistry, all were repellent to the Italian genius. The Italian regarded the Church of Italy as the Universal Church and as largely his handiwork. In St. Peter’s chair, in the Sacred College, in the great monastical institutions he sees himself; he knows human passions prevail there as well as elsewhere--consequently he does not hesitate to enter the Church. This is why they never found the national religion a too heavy burden, why they seldom seceded and founded sects. Italy never originated any great national heresy or beheld any general religious uprisings like the popular movements initiated by Peter Waldo, Wyclif, Huss, and Luther, although later numerous heresies from other parts of Europe entered the peninsula. When other countries were burning witches and heretics at the stake Italy put Dolcino di Novara and Francesco da Pistoja to death for advocating the abolition of private property. In 1327 the poet Cecco d’Ascoli was burned at the stake for practising astrology and necromancy, but in 1452 the priest Niccolò da Verona, condemned in Bologna for sorcery, was taken from the stake by the populace and saved. Savonarola suffered martyrdom, not for his religious theories, but for his political dreams.[4] The Italians never spared the Papacy. Dante placed Pope Anastasius in the red-hot sepulchre of the heresiarchs, and Boniface VIII. in the circle of the simoniacs with Nicholas III., and to St. Peter in Paradise he ascribes these ghibelline words: “He who on earth now usurps my seat before the Son of God, has made of my tomb a sink of blood and filth.” And Petrarch describes the papal city of Avignon as “a sewer in which is collected all the filth of the universe.”