The aim of both Sperone Speroni's unfinished Dialogo della vita attiva e contemplativa and of Book I of Alessandro Piccolomini's Institutione Morale is to determine whether man's real happiness lies in action or in contemplation. In both works the issue is settled in favor of action. The authors were contemporaries and friends, and they happened to live in Padua in the period immediately preceding 1541, the year of the crucial Diet of Ratisbon. At that time there developed all over Europe an eager interest in the problem of justification by faith and by works. This trend is apparent in both works, since allusions to the religious question occur in the course of the discussion dealing with the advantages and disadvantages of the two types of life.