The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

308
HISTORY OF THE POPES.
the religious innovators.^ The year 1542 saw him summoned
before the Inquisition at Siena, the principal matter of accu-
sation being a small work in Italian on the Passion of Christ.
Paleario replied to the questions that v/ere put to him, mainly
concerning the power of the Pope, to the satisfaction of the
judge, so that he was released without condemnation.^ Undoubtedly
in order to remove the bad impression caused by
his summons, Paleario then published a letter to a friend, and
more especially an apologia to his judges, in which, however,
the true facts are quite differently stated.^ The clever human-
ist later on himself confessed that his discourse had never
been delivered, and that he had made use therein of statements
that were quite fictitious.^ By the advice of Sadoleto Paleario
^ For the time of his apostasy from the Church ( 1535) cf.
Stahelin, Briefe aus der Reformationzeit (Schriften der Univer-
sitat Basel, 1887), 33 seq., where other sources concerning Paleario
are given.
^ ' Later confused with the treatise De beneficio Christi " ;
cf. Vol. XII of this work, 496.
^ " Ad singula respondit recte, quamvis in aliquibus capitibus
not satis clare." Fontana, 164.
* Bonnet-Merschmann, 128-150.
^ " Haec oratio non fuit habita, sed scripta, et multa sunt
efificta, imo vero pene omnia in peroratione, neque enim concursus
ille tot civium senensium verus fuit ulla ex parte, etc." Thus
Paleario himself at his trial in Rome, Fontana, 175.
It is strange
therefore that Benrath, loc. cit. IX.*, 603, acquits the humanist
on the strength of that very speech ! With all its pathetic statements
and its obvious evasions of the matter in question. Bonnet
takes it as true gold. The conscientious historian on the other
hand can only attach importance to the stern coldness of the acta
of the Roman trial. It is true that Paleario in his discourse
declares that he could not attain a happier lot than martyrdom,
and that " in times like ours I believe that no Christian ought to
die in his bed," etc. (Bonnet-Merschmann, 141), but Paleario's
actual behaviour before his judges makes it quite impossible to
attach the full meaning to these and other such high-sounding
phrases. For the trial at Siena cf. Grottanelli de' Santi in
MisceU. stor. Senesi, II., (iSQ'i),