Petrarch needed to be purged. There was widespread agreement on this opinion during the Counter-Reformation. One famous anonymous letter submitted to the Congregation of the Index during the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) described Petrarch as dux et magister spurcarum libidinum—“guide and teacher of filthy lust.” Concern was not limited to the censors. The religious poet Gabriele Fiamma (c. 1533–1585) announced in the prefatory letter to his influential Rime spirituali (1570) his plan to cleanse poetry of its impurities, stating that “although [Petrarch’s] words are not shameful, they are however amorous, and like tinder to a fire,” one that might engulf young readers in flame. But curing the fever and fire of Petrarchism turned out not to be so simple. Such poetry was simply too popular. And so carnal lyric appetites were not eradicated in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries so much as redirected: they were channeled into religious verse. The role of the lyric beloved came increasingly to be filled not by Laura lookalikes, but by Christ, Mary, and the saints. The present chapter explores how Petrarchism—and the fluid perception of gendering for both poet and beloved—evolved as amorous and spiritual lyric melded.