Fra Girolamo Papino of Lodi was installed as Inquisitor at Ferrara. A poor youth of Faenza, by name Fannio (or Fanino), was soon brought before him, who had fallen into heresy through his perverse interpretation of the Bible. He recanted once through fear, but relapsed, and began preaching throughout Romagna with great success. At length he was arrested at Bagnacavallo, and conveyed to Ferrara. Here his imprisonment was a succession of triumphs. His friends were allowed access to him, and his visitors included Olympia Morata, Lavinia délia Rovere, and others, upon whom his cheerfulness and earnestness and his bold predictions made a great impression. After long negotiations between Ferrara and the Holy See, in which Renée herself took part, the order arrived for his execution as a relapsed heretic. It was confirmed by Ercole, and on August 22, 1550, he was strangled and his body cast into the river. His was the second recorded death for religion in Italy, the first being that of Jâime de Enzinas, a Spanish Lutheran and, according to Bucer, an eager disseminator of Lutheranism, who was burned at Rome on March 16, 1547. Another execution followed in 1551, that of a Sicilian priest, Domenico Giorgio, who is described as a "Lutheran and heretic." Minor punishments followed in great numbers; so that Renée was forced to send her Huguenot followers to Mirandola, where under the Count Galeotto Pico they found a place of refuge.
Some years afterwards attention was again called to Modena,—vhere the Reform still prospered. On October 1, 1555, a brief of Paul IV demanded that four of the leaders, Bonifacio and Filippo Valentine (the former of whom was provost of the Cathedral), Lodovico Castelvetro (who had translated the writings of Melanchthon into Italian), and the bookseller Gaboldino, should be arrested and handed over to the Holy Office. Filippo Valentino and Castelvetro, warned in time, made their escape. The others were taken and conveyed to Rome, where Bonifacio recanted; but Gaboldino, on refusing to do so, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Four years later Castelvetro, already condemned for contumacy, was persuaded to go to Rome with his brother Giammaria, and stand his trial; but he fled before it was over, was again condemned, and was burned in effigy as a contumacious heretic. The two brothers escaped to Chiavenna, where Lodovico died in 1571, having in 1561 appealed in vain for a hearing before the Council of Trent.
Even this was not the end of heresy in the duchy. The registers of the Inquisition contain long lists of suspects, and not a few condemnations, both at Ferrara and Modena; at Modena indeed, in 1568 alone, thirteen men and one woman perished at the stake.
Very different again was the movement at NAPLES, at any rate in its earlier stages. It centres round one great man, Juan de Valdés, whose position is thus described by Niccolo Balbini, minister of the congregation of Italian refugees at Geneva, in his life of Galeazzo Caracciolo: "
