devoted to the cause of Reform. After studying at Venice and Padua and teaching for ten years at the University of Modena, he came to Ferrara in 1546 to take the place of Kilian Sinapius. The complaints of the Pope led to his expulsion in 1551. He was again with Renée, as her reader, in 1553, but then retired to Venice and ultimately to Geneva.
Hither also at various times came students and others whose lives were in danger elsewhere. Among these was the Piedmontese Celio Secondo Curione, a latitudinarian and a student of the Reformed doctrines from his youth. After several remarkable escapes from capture he fled to Padua, thence (after three years as professor in the University) to Venice, and thence to Ferrara. Through Renée's influence he received a chair at Lucca while Ochino was there, but after a short and troublous stay had to take refuge beyond the Alps. But Ferrara gave shelter to a greater fugitive than any of Italian birth. Early in 1536 Renée was visited by Calvin, who had come to Italy under the assumed name of Espeville. We have no trustworthy account of the visit, but it evidently made the deepest impression upon Renée and her Court. Apparently he celebrated the communion for them in private; certainly he incited them to protest against the accustomed services. In fact, on Holy Saturday (April 14), when the officiating priest in one of the chief churches of Ferrara presented the cross for the veneration of the faithful, one of Renée's choristers, a youth of twenty known as Jehannot or Zanetto, broke out in open blasphemies against what he regarded as idolatry. The incident was probably prearranged in order to cause a popular outbreak; but it is clear that the people were scandalised. Under pressure from Rome Ercole took steps to punish the offenders. But he found that the whole suite of his wife were involved; while Renée invoked the French power to protect her servants. The matter dragged on for some months; but at length, as the principal person implicated (probably Calvin himself) escaped from his guards on the road to Bologna, not without suspicion of their connivance, it was allowed to drop.
Henceforward Calvin was Renée's spiritual adviser, and she was in frequent correspondence with him. Under his influence she refused in 1540 to make her confession or to hear mass any longer. This does not seem to have involved an open breach with the Church; there were many more who were equally remiss in their religious duties. Ercole tried to avoid taking action, and winked at her opinions so long as she and her associates avoided giving open scandal. Moreover, when Paul III paid a visit to Ferrara Renée met him on friendly terms, and obtained from him a brief, dated July 5, 1543, by which she was exempted from every jurisdiction but that of the Holy Office. But she disguised her Calvinism less and less, while the activity of the Inquisition was daily increasing; and at length the pressure of the Holy See compelled the Duke to act. In 1554 he applied to the French King for an "able and
