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    the Guelphs of Spoleto were couching their lances against the GhibelHnes of Foligno , they cried out , —Death to those Patareni Ghibellines . * Certainly , however , the Ghibellines were , generally speaking , any thing but Patareni , who suffered equally from the policy and bigotry of both parties . One of the most important branches of the history of theological inquiry and opinion in Italy , during the middle ages , would be found to consist in tracing the effect of Platonic , Scholastic , and Aristotelian speculations . Platonism , especially , was always in vogue , and led io many speculations of

    different sorts . At the sera of the Reformation , the minds of the Italian theologians are well known to have been so accustomed to freedom of inquiry and speculation on these topics , that Melancthon , as quoted by Dr . M'Crie , seems ( very correctly , as the event proved ) to have contemplated no very easy reception for the doctrinal system which his school of theologians wished to make as despotic and unbending as the ecclesiastical tyranny they were shaking off . There are traces in every period of the operation of the acute spirit of the philosophizing divines , which sometimes misled , at other times encouraged , an active inquirer in the path of truth .

    It might be remarked even , that the opinions of the Turin heretics , questioned by Haribert , are quite in unison with the tone of Calcedius , a Christian writer of the philosophic school , who dedicated his comments on the Timaeus of Plato to Osius , one of the presidents of the Council of Nice . The scholastic divinity , and the freedom to which it led , were seen by the early defenders of the church in their true position of danger to its interests . Abelard and his followers were even led by it into heterodoxy on the

    doctrine of the Trinity ; and St . Bernard was perfectly wise in his generation , in endeavouring to put down so dangerous a line of inquiry altogether . The system of Aristotle came next , and was judiciously opposed , and its books burned by the Council of Paris . But the appetite was too powerful to be restrained , and the new system of divinity received by the Dominicans and Franciscans into the service of the church , gave the fairest cover for many of its enemies to pursue their work undiscovered , and at once opened a field for the active collision of intellect , instead of the leaden repose in which the church had hitherto kept its adherents .

    The license which these disputations gave was embraced by many for the purpose of liberal and enlightened inquiry in matters of religion , and the habits of mind which such pursuits encouraged are to be examined as some of the leading causes of the difference in the results produced in Italy by the attempts of the reformers , from what had occurred in Germany and elsewhere . But there was a large ~ party of those who made their philosophy and

    sophistry a cover to conceal a contempt for all religion , and these were the bitterest enemies of the conscientious heretics . Among these freethinkers , Frederic and his peculiar friends ( such , for instance , as his Chancellor , Petrus de Vineis ) have always been reckoned , and they wem no friends to honest and conscientious separation from the doctrines or discipline of the church .

    Aristotle ' s opinions lead easily to Materialism . That Frederic II . and his courtiers were open to the charge of Materialism and Atheism , is a fact imputed to them by many , and supported by strong indications . That he or his Chancellor was the author of the famous book De Tribus Impostoribus , is an assertion which at least goes far to shew what was thought of them . t m , _ .. - ¦ hi . ¦ | I I * , . * Moriantur Patareni Ghibellini—Bonav . Benvenuti Fragm . Histor . Fulginat . apud Taktini . Rev . Hal . Scrip t , post Murator . Vol . I . col . 856 .

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    Review . —M'Crie's Italian Reformation . 33

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    VOL . II . D

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1828, page 33, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2556/page/33/