Even in the darkest period of the middle ages, God had not left Himself without witnesses of the Truth among the Alps. It was in the year 1370 that these pure-minded people, finding themselves straitened for room, sent emissaries into Italy in quest of a convenient settlement. These deputies travelled as far south as Calabria, where they treated with the proprietors of the soil for a waste, uncultivated district. Thither emigrated a chosen body of the Vaudois, under whose industrious hands the desert soon blossomed as the rose, the thorn and the thistle gave place to clustering vines and waving corn; and the blessing of God evidently rested on a praying people, who fed on His unadulterated word, and addressed Him without superstition. This little light in a dark place could not shine unobserved. The prosperity of the new settlers excited the envy of the neighbouring villagers, who, seeing that they neither came to their churches nor observed their ceremonies, got up the cry of heresy against them. The land-proprietors, however, protected their valuable tenants; and the priests, finding the increasing amount of their regularly paid tithes, winked at their non-conformity. Thus, the little band continued to flourish and increase till the dawn of the short-lived Italian reformation. From a Calabrian monk of this district, Petrarch acquired a knowledge of the then totally neglected Greek language; and Boccaccio learnt it of this monk's disciple. These two distinguished Italians, of whom it is poor praise to say that they would still have been great men, though the one had never written sonnets, nor the other novels, gave an impulse to the benighted minds of their countrymen which eventually led to the glorious restoration of learning. The light went on shining more and more unto the perfect day, till Greek became the one thing needful; and Greek was the casket which enshrined the New Testament. It is sorrowful to know, however, that a love of letters does not imply a love of religion, and too often accompanies a total disrelish of it. Lorenzo the Magnificent lavished all his patronage on the disciples of pagan Greece, and Leo the Tenth reserved preferment for the exponents of a refined heathenism. Erasmus heard a sermon preached before Julius the Second, in which the Saviour was likened to Phocion and Epaminondas. Of Cardinal Bembo, the apostolical secretary, it was thought the highest praise to say that he rivalled Cicero and Virgil. A doubtful convert from Judaism, detesting the brethren who now regarded him as a renegade, obtained a decree from the Imperial chamber that all Hebrew books but the Old Testament should be destroyed. Reuchlin, the restorer of Hebrew literature among Christians, rose up to prevent the execution of this barbarous decree, which would, indeed, have got rid of the Mishna and Gemara,[11] but at the expense (perhaps not too great) of annihilating many a profound and valuable work.