Note 410 — Chapter V · RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE

M. Gebhardt has well characterised this spirit of Italy: “The astonishing intellectual freedom with which Italy treated dogma and discipline; the serenity she was able to preserve in face of the great mystery of life and death; the art she devoted to the reconciliation of faith with rationalism; her dallyings with formal heresy, and the audacities of her mystic imagination: the enthusiasm of love which often carried her up to the loftiest Christian ideal—such was the original religion of Italy”—that of the Renaissance as of the Middle Ages. Alexander II. and Julius II. scandalised everybody beyond the borders of Italy: in Italy, no one.