152 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
subjects need to be searched to investigate further the atti-
tude of the lawyers toward the ecclesiastical establishment.
On the basis of the indications before us a few tentative
generalizations on this subject may be suggested.
In the first place it is clear that the lawyers not only re-
flected but also positively contributed to the growth of a
secular attitude in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy.
When Guicciardini, for example, states his low opinion of the
church which he nevertheless served so well, may we not
trace one element in that attitude to his experience under
Decio on the benches of the University of Pisa?
Secondly, among the lawyers the long discussion in the
fifteenth century of the correct method of studying the law
led at least some to be more receptive initially to the reform-
ers. After all, the latter proposed to teach the Christian texts
in the same way in which the lawyers were expounding the
corpus iuris. A difficult passage in St. Paul was to be under-
stood by the application of the same techniques of historical
and philological explanation as had been applied to a difficult
text in Justinian’s Digest. Was not the attack on Trebonian
by the humanist lawyers parallel to the attack on the scho-
lastic theologians by the followers of the new learning? Not
only in Italy but also in the rest of Europe the early years of
the Reform show a significant number of adherents to the
new doctrines recruited from the legal profession. The Pied-
montese Nevizzano was one of the earliest in Italy to express
sympathy for the doctrines of Luther. Later Matteo Gribaldi
Mofa was among the significant figures who repudiated the
church of Rome. Both these men were distinguished lawyers
and the Sozzini family of Siena which represented one of the
great legal dynasties in Italy gave to the world the famous
heretics identified by their name. In the north the constella-