Note 18 — Chapter XI · THE REFORMATION, POLITICALLY CONSIDERED

Id. pp. 89, 98, 215. McCrie thinks it useful to suggest (p. 95) that anti-trinitarianism seems to have begun at Siena, “whose inhabitants were proverbial among their countrymen for levity and inconstancy of mind”—citing Dante, Inferno, canto xxix, 121–23. Thus does theology illumine sociology. In a note on the same page the historian cites the testimony of Melanchthon (Epist. coll. 852, 941) as to the commonness of “Platonic and skeptical theories” among his Italian correspondents in general; and quotes further the words of Calvin, who for once rises above invective to explain as to heresy (Opera, viii, 510) that “In Italis, propter rarum acumen, magis eminet.” The historian omits, further, to trace German Unitarianism to the levity of a particular community in Germany. ↑