It is well known that the revival of letters paved the way for religious reform. It is known, too, that Italy, seeing herself deprived of political liberty, turned her attention to religious freedom as the foundation of free institutions. In fact, the reformers among us sought mainly to restore democracy to the church. The first accents of religious liberty were heard on the banks of the Verbano and the teachers were Bernardino Ochino da Siena and Pietro Martire. Lucca, Pisa, Vicenza and Modena embraced the new doctrines, and Ferrara received as a guest in 1535, Calvin, the friend of Renata. In the court of this duchess, were found the most distinguished of the reformers, among whom were Celio Secondo Curione and the beautiful Olimpia Morato, a miracle of virtue and wisdom. The religious community of Naples contained no less illustrious disciples all of whom belonged to the highest families of the land. Some maintain that Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, was of the number; Giulia Gonzaga and Isabella Manriquez certainly were; the latter found an asylum among the Lutherans. It is believed that Princess Lavinia della Rovere, of the house of Urbino, and Margaret of Savoy, wife of Emanuel Filiberto, embraced the new doctrines. In those days the most cultivated Italians professed the boldest doctrines. Vasari tells us that Leonardo da Vinci had formed such heretical opinions that he accepted no religion whatever. Castelvetro, accused of heresy, with great difficulty escaped the grasp of the inquisition. Bishop Pietro Paolo Vergerio and his brother Giovanni Battista, whose condemnation was written by the same pen which drew the fatal capitulation of Forno; Guglielmo Grattarolo, Gerolamo Zanchi a canon of the Lateran, Giovanni Montalcino, the Sozzini of Siena, the brothers Scipio and Alberico Gentile and many other distinguished literary men held the views of the reformers. Paul III., appalled by the rapid progress of the new ideas, with his bull of April 1543, established the tribunal of the Inquisition in every city, Venice did not wish to suffer it; but Rome strangled Giulio Ghirlanda and Francesco di Rovigo, and all the reformers (among them are mentioned Trissino, Flaminio, Soranzo and Bembo) were forced to flee into exile. Many noble men fell in Rome; Fannio Aonio Paleario and the Venitian Algieri. The church was saved by sword and fire; and the ecclesiastical writers agree with us in this:--It was the Inquisition that extirpated the new doctrines in Italy; without this intervention of force, the intellectual character of the Italians, the well-known licentiousness of the Popes, the habit of our poets to sport at friars and nuns, and the denial by our republics of infallibility to the Apostolic See, must have combined to promote the complete triumph of the religious reform.