of the poets of her day, and we doubt not that her life after her husband's death was spent, with her fortune, in spreading the Gospel among her Italian countrymen.

In the year 1534 the fame of her beauty had reached Solyman II., the Turkish sovereign. He sent Barbarossa, his admiral, to carry her off, and bring her forcibly to his dominions. The admiral arrived in the night at her residence, took the place by assault, and failed by a single moment of his prey. Julia, hearing the noise, fled to the mountains, and remained there until she could safely return.

Isabella Manricha, at Besegna, lived and embraced the Reformed doctrine at Naples. With great zeal she labored in the cause of Christ. Nothing could abate her ardor in spreading to others a knowledge of the peace which she had found. Persecutions and trials speedily surrounded her on all sides. Being of a noble family, her friends thought it a disgrace that their blood should be tainted by heresy, and she was at last obliged to renounce her home, her rank, her fortune, and her country, and live an exile in poverty and solitude.

Renée, the duchess of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII., king of France, was born in the year 1510. Notwithstanding her high rank and great accomplishments, she became interested in the questions which were so deeply agitating the whole of Christendom. Who can describe the many hours which she spent in earnest prayer? Who can tell the mental struggles which it cost to lay her titles, her wealth, even her reputation, and at last her children, on the altar of Christ. But she did so. She gave up all for him. And when she beheld her suffering brethren exposed to all those trials which the malice of the Italian priests contrived against them, she could not conceal her sympathy for them. And then she was

marked as their confederate. But this did not prevent her from protecting and saving many who fled to her palace for safety. Driven from their own humble cottages by the relentless familiars of the Inquisition, men, women, and little children found an asylum with her. The gates of her castle at Ferrara the pursuers dared not pass.

High authority was at last invoked against her. The pope was appealed to, who, instead of addressing her, wrote to Hercules II., her husband. He told him that the minds of his children and servants were corrupted, and the most pernicious example held out to his subjects; that his house, which had been so long renowned for the purity of its faith, and its fealty to the holy see, was in danger of contracting the indelible stain of heresy; and that if he did not speedily abate the nuisance he would expose himself to the censures of the Church, and lose the favor of all Catholic princes.

Thereupon the duke urged Renée to avert the displeasure of his holiness by renouncing her opinions, and conforming to the ceremonies of Romanism. The duchess had gone too far thus to sacrifice her conscience, and as well as we can judge from the accounts which have come down to us, her husband was unwilling to proceed to extremities.

The pope then addressed himself to Henry II., king of France, her nephew. Henry sent Oritz, an inquisitor, to the court of Ferrara. His instructions were "that he was to acquaint himself accurately with the extent to which the mind of the duchess was infected with error; he was then to request a personal interview with her, at which he should inform her of the great grief which his most Christian majesty felt at hearing that 'his only aunt,' whom he had always

loved and esteemed so highly, had involved herself in the labyrinth of those detestable and condemned opinions. If, after all his remonstrances and arguments, he could not recover her by gentle means, he was next, with the concurrence of the duke, to endeavor to bring her to reason by rigor and severity : he was to preach a course of sermons on the principal points on which she had been led astray, at which she and all her family should be obliged to attend, whatever refusal or objection she might think proper to make.' If this proved unsuccessful in reclaiming her, he was next, in her presence, to entreat the duke, in his majesty's name, to 'sequester her from all society and conversation,' that she might not have it in her power to taint the minds of others; to remove her children from her, and not to allow any of the family, of whatever nation they might be, who were accused or strongly suspected of heretical sentiments, to approach her; in fine, he was to bring them to trial, and to pronounce a sentence of exemplary punishment on such as were found guilty, only leaving it to the duke to give such directions as to the mode of process and the infliction of punishment, as that the affair might terminate, as far as justice permitted, without causing scandal, or bringing any public stigma on the duchess and her dependents."*

The daughter of Louis XII. was justly indignant at such demands, and boldly and promptly refused to violate her conscience. The pope's cruel orders were carried into effect. She was confined a prisoner in her palace, was forced to listen to her husband's upbraidings, who would hear no defense from her. Her

* M'Crie's Ref. in Italy, p. 208; also Le Laboureur, Additions and Mémoirs de Michal de Castelnau, tom. i, p. 717.

confidential servants were proceeded against as heretics, whose sufferings eternity alone will reveal; and then, as a last resort, she was deprived of her four children, who, as if to aggravate the cruelty of the act, were taken from her, one by one, to be educated in the Roman Catholic faith.

Renée survived her husband, and came afterward to France, where she resided in the castle of Montargis, and again protected the fugitive Protestants. The Duke of Guise, her son-in-law, one day appeared with an armed force before her walls, and commanded her to dismiss the rebels whom she harbored, saying if she did not that he would batter down the walls with his cannon.

"Tell your master," said she, "that I shall myself mount the battlements, and see if he dare kill a king's daughter."

She was however obliged to send away four hundred and sixty persons, to whom she had af forded refuge. She parted with them in many tears, and provided out of her own funds for the expenses of their journey. She lived until the year 1575.

Had we the space we might mention other faithful women. These are sufficient, however, as examples. That such examples were not rare may be inferred from what is said by a writer in the following century.

"In Campania, where I now write, the most learned preacher may become more learned and holy by a single conversation with some women. In my native country of Mantua, too, I found the same thing, and were it not that it would lead me into a digression, I could dilate with pleasure on the many proofs which I received, to my no small edification,

of an unction of spirit, and fervor of devotion in the sisterhood, such as I have rarely met with in the most learned men of my profession.*

CHAPTER IX.

PALEARIO.

AONIO PALEARIO, a native of Veroli, in Campagna di Roma, born about the year 1500, was one of the great writers of the sixteenth century. Uniting a wonderful eloquence of style with great force and pathos, he became distinguished among all classes. Roman Catholic writers, while condemning his religious opinions, hand his name down to us with unlimited praises of his literary abilities. Some idea may be formed of how much he contributed to the progress of the Reformation in Italy, when we state that of a work he wrote on the benefit of the death of Christ forty thousand copies were sold in six years, and this in an age when the circulation of books was extremely small compared with what it is at present.

He had been suspected of heresy before this work came out. One day he was observed to laugh at a rich priest who was seen every morning kneeling at the shrine of a saint, but who refused to pay his debts. He was asked at another time:

"What is the first ground on which men should rest their salvation?"

He replied: "Christ.”

* Folengius, in Psalmos; Apud. Gerdesii, Ital. Ref., p. 261.

+ Shelhorn, Ergoet Zlichkeiten, vol. i, p. 27.