difference between Italian and Teutonic thinkers on such subjects at
this epoch seems to have been this: Italians could not cease to be
Catholics without at the same time ceasing to be Christians. They could
not accommodate their faith to any of the compromises suggested by the
Reformation. Even when they left their country in a spirit of rebellion,
they felt ill at ease both with Lutherans and Calvinists. Like
Bernardino Ochino and the Anti-Trinitarians of the Socinian sect, they
wandered restlessly through Europe, incapable of settling down in
communion with any one of the established forms of Protestantism. Calvin
at Geneva instituted a real crusade against Italian thinkers, who
differed from his views. He drove Valentino Gentile to death on the
scaffold; and expelled Gribaldi, Simone, Biandrata, Alciati, Negro. Most
of these men found refuge in Poland, Transylvania, even Turkey.[10]

There were bold speculators in Italy enough, who had practically
abandoned the Catholic faith. But the majority of these did not think it
worth their while to make an open rupture with the Church. Theological
hair-splitting reminded them only of the mediaeval scholasticism from
which they had been emancipated by classical culture. They were less
interested in questions touching the salvation of the individual or the
exact nature of the sacraments, than in metaphysical problems suggested
by the study of antique philosophers, or new theories of the material
universe.

[Footnote 10: See Berti's _Vita di G. Bruno_, pp. 105-108.]

The indifference of these men in religion rendered it easy for them to
conform in all external points to custom. Their fundamental axiom was
that a scientific thinker could hold one set of opinions as a
philosopher, and another set as a Christian. Their motto was the