¹ The edition used here is in Le Vite dei Santi. Santa Caterina Vergine, San Tommaso d’Aquino 1540–1543, ed. Santin, F. (Rome, 1977)Google Scholar [hereafter: ‘Vita’].

² Larivaille, P., Pietro Aretino fra Rinascimento e Manierismo (Rome, 1980), 19.Google Scholar

³ For details of Aretino’s career before his arrival in Venice, see Larivaille, , Pietro Aretino, 18–74.Google Scholar

⁴ Passione (6 editions); Salmi (9 editions); Umanità di Cristo (9 editions); Genesi (7 editions); Vita di Maria (5 editions); Vita di Caterina (5 editions); Vita di Tomaso (1 edition). In addition, in 1551, Genesi, Umanità and Salmi were published together in one volume; and in 1552 Vita di Maria, Vita di Caterina and Vita di Tomaso were also published together in one volume.

⁵ See ‘Vita’, 9, for the details.

⁶ ‘Vita’, 237–9. The seventh of the rules that precede the Roman Index of 1564 explic itly condemns obscenity in books [Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Lyons, 1564), 22). The senti ment against everything that could conceivably titillate can be seen in the very adverse reaction in 1541 to the nude figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. See Maio, R. de, Michel angelo e la Controriforma (Bari, 1978), 22.Google Scholar

⁷ ‘Vita’, 268–9. Other similarly knotty problems that occur in the ‘Vita’ are, ‘Why were Adam and Eve told to go forth and multiply before the Fall’ (254–5), and ‘Why was God perfectly perfect?’ (255–7).

⁸ See, for instance, ‘Vita’, 308, where four lines after ‘the faith of the faithfully faithful’ occurs ‘humility most humbly humble’.

⁹ ‘Vita’, 227.

¹⁰ See Larivaille, , Pietro Aretino, 9.Google Scholar

¹¹ See above, n. 4.

¹² For an elucidation of this term, see Grendler, P. F., Critics of the Italian World 1530–1560. Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolo Franco e Ortensio Lando (Madison, WI, 1969), 10–14, 65–9.Google Scholar

¹³ Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Christo crocifisso, verso i Christiani (Venice, 1543) [here after: Beneficio di Cristo]. I have used the English translation of this work by Prelowski, Ruth in Tedeschi, J. A., Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus (Florence, 1965).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid., 95.

¹⁵ The details were divulged by Pietro Carnesecchi at a hearing before the Inquisition Tribunal. See Caponetto, S., La Riforma Protestante nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Turin, 1992), 89.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ibid., 91.

¹⁷ Mayer, T., Reginald Pole, Prince and Prophet (Cambridge, 2000), 121.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid., 120–1.

¹⁹ Flaminio refused the office, and it was thereupon offered to Angelo Massarelli, who accepted it.

²⁰ Caponetto, , Riforma Protestante, 95.Google Scholar

²¹ Menchi, S. Seidel, ‘Italy’, in Scribner, B. et al., eds, The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge, 1994), 189–92.Google Scholar

²² The sinner, not the Church, is the Bride of Christ. Two sacraments are however mentioned: Eucharist and Baptism.

²³ Contro la Dottrina e le profezie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola (Venice, 1548).Google Scholar

²⁴ Politus, Ambrosius Catharinus, Speculum Haereticorum (Cracow, 1540)Google Scholar, 15r (as this edition is not paginated, the reference has been given counting the title page as 1r).

²⁵ Politus, Ambrosius Catharinus, ‘Quaestio an expediat scripturas in maternas linguas transferri’, in Enarrationes in quinque priora capita libri Geneseos (Rome, 1551–2).Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., col. 336.

²⁷ Ibid., col. 337.

²⁸ Politus, Ambrosius Catharinus, Claves Duae ad aperiendas intelligendasve scripturas sacras (Lyons, 1543), 136.Google Scholar

²⁹ Catharinus, Dottrina e profetie, 18r.

³⁰ Catarino was well aware of the tendency of some members of the Dominican Order to suppose that on some issues the Church could be wrong, since it was one of the issues that cropped up in the controversy over the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in Siena 1527–30. See Bosco, P. Giacinto, ‘Intorno a un carteggio inedito di Ambrogio Caterino’, Memorie Domenicane 67 (1950), 157.Google Scholar

³¹ See Polizzotto, L., The Elect Nation. The Savonarolan Movement in Florence 1494–1345 (Oxford, 1994), 344–5, 437.Google Scholar

³² See Weinstein, D., Savonarola and Florence. Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ, 1970)Google Scholar, especially ch. 1, 27–66, which stresses the contribution of the Fraticelli and the Ciompi to the evolution of this myth.

³³ How dangerous it was can be seen from the reaction of Paul IV, when the Jesuit Laynez censured some extracts from the works of Savonarola in full consistory. The pope reacted in anger. Almost shouting, he said, ‘This is Martin Luther, this is pestiferous doctrine. What are you doing, Monsignori, what are you waiting for… This must be stopped. Get rid of it. Do you not see how this man is fighting against the Holy See?’ In his vexation, the pope then stood up in great indignation and stamped his feet on the floor. ‘Even if he is dead, he and all the other heretics must be subjected to this See, because Christ wished all the world to obey it’. In fact the Jesuit attack on Savonarola’s teaching had been prompted by Catarino’s Discorso. See Simoncelli, P., ‘Momenti e figure del savonarolismo romano’, Critica Storica 11, n.s. 1 (1974), 57.Google Scholar

³⁴ Austin, J. L., Philosophical Papers (2nd edn, Oxford, 1970), 252.Google Scholar