the sixteenth centuries were marked by a renewed study of St Augustine in many quarters, and by a consequent revival of the Pauline ideas of Justification in different forms. As Reginald Pole said in one of his letters, the jewel which the Church had so long kept half concealed was again brought to light. This trend of thought found expression in the writings of Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, and for some time was looked on with favour in the highest quarters of the Church. That section of the Oratory of Divine Love which wished to spiritualise theology and to deepen the bases of the Christian life found ample support in the accepted theology of the day.
Venice was the home from which came many of the thinkers of this type in the Oratory of Divine Love. After the Sack of Rome in 1527 its members were scattered; but in a short time many of them met again at Venice, where they found new recruits. The Senator Gasparo Contarini and Gregorio Cortese, Abbot of San Georgio Maggiore, were the most influential of the new members. Giberti had become Bishop of Verona in 1524, and his household became a new centre for the reforming movement. His administration of his diocese set an example to other prelates; and his reform of his clergy served in many ways as a model to the Fathers at Trent, though he himself did not live to take any active part in that assembly. At Padua Reginald Pole spent many years, and though he was only a layman his manner of life and conduct of his household were not unworthy to be compared with those of Giberti. The University of Padua numbered then among its teachers some of the most eminent scholars of the day, and it was one of the centres of the Christian Renaissance. Modena also was one of the strongholds of the Catholic reformers; Giovanni Morone, who afterwards with difficulty escaped the charge of heresy, was its Bishop. Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras, Gregorio Cortese, and other leaders of the movement either were Modenese or had been connected with Modena. The union of scholarship and holiness of life with zeal for practical reform, as exemplified in these men, is rare in the history of the Church.
The movement for reform from within thus inaugurated in Italy did not become a power in official circles in Rome until the pontificate of Paul III. The paper reforms of the Fifth Lateran remained a dead letter, while the good intentions of Adrian VI came to nothing. His reign, nevertheless, will ever be memorable from his confession that the source of the poison which was corrupting the whole Church was in the papal Court, nay even in the Pontiffs themselves. Ignorant of the world, ignorant of the forces at work in Rome itself, Adrian was helpless. If he had had any measure of success, his reforms would have been of a moral and practical kind alone. Having lived most of his life in cloisters, he knew little of the change that had come over human thought St Thomas was his master, and he did not wish to go beyond the work of the greatest of medieval thinkers. Adrian was a precursor of Caraffa
