So little inclined were they to bring their faith to the people that they preferred to translate the Bible into better Greek or classical Latin rather than into the vulgar Tuscan.

And just at the moment when it seemed as if a popular movement of some sort might result from the efforts of the Reformers, or in spite of them, came the Roman Inquisition and nipped the budding plant.
[Sidenote: Christian Renaissance] But between the levels of the greatest intellectual leaders and that of the illiterate masses, there was a surprising number of groups of men and women more or less tinctured with the doctrines of the north.

And yet, even here, one must add that their religion was seldom pure Lutheranism or Calvinism; it was Christianized humanism.

There was the brilliant woman Vittoria Colonna, who read with rapture the doctrine of justification by faith, but who remained a conforming Catholic all her life.

There was Ochino, the general of the Capuchins, whose defection caused a panic at Rome but who remained, nevertheless, an independent rather than an orthodox Protestant.