Changes

==Conclusion==

The Italian Reformation was a failure. Despite widespread contempt for, and disillusionment with the Papacy and the Church the Reformation was only able to secure the allegiance of a few scattered number of intellectuals and upper-class Italians. This was because the various states of Italy were bitterly anti-Protestant and refused to give any support to those who were sympathetic to the ideas and teachings of Calvin and Luther. Any Protestant who in Italy in the sixteenth century ran the risk of persecution and even death. The Catholic Church was violently opposed to the Reformation and it permitted the inquisition to imprison and torture those who were even suspected of ‘heresy’. An unknown number of Italian Protestants were executed on the orders of the Inquisition. Then Protestantism was genuinely unpopular among many members of the elite and the ordinary people as it was seen as a foreign creed. The Sack of Rome in 1527 shocked Italy and in the minds of much of the population that Lutheranism was something barbaric and violent. Another important reason for the failure of the Reformation in Italy was that by and large the common people was happy with the form of Catholicism as practiced in their local community, which was often a mixture of paganism and Christianity and saw no reason to convert to a ‘foreign’ religion.