INTRODUCTION XXXIX

influence than Trent. For some time the delegates had com—
plained of the unhealthiness of that city, and about the beginning
of March, 1547, it was said that 'spotted fever! (exanthematic
typhus) had broken out at Trent. On March 6th, the Bishop
of Capaccio died, presumably of this malady, and on March
9th, "^After receiving a medical! certificate of the infectious
character of the disease from Balduini . . . and from Girolamo
Fracastoro, physicians to the Council, the matter was brought
before the general congregation^.' 'Twelve prelates had already
left, and others declared that they would leave, on account of
the danger of infection. 'There was some opposition to the
proposal to transfer the meetings to Bologna, on the ground that,
in the opinion of the local physicians, the danger was not nearly
so great as the medical advisers had stated. It was then that
Fracastorius, always regarded as of greater weight in this affair
than Balduini, appeared before the Council,? and told them that
he had come there, hired by the Synod, in order that he might
treat cases of fever, but not to treat the plague, or lenticular
diseases. He therefore demanded permission to leave Trent,
and departed to Verona.

The action of Fracastorius and the question of his good faith
are very differently treated by historians of the Council, accord—
ing as those historians are Catholic or Protestant. Symonds,3
a Protestant, says that the Legates ^received orders from the
Pope to invent some decent excuse for a step which would cer—
tainly be resisted....The Legates, by the connivance of the
physicians in Trent, managed to create a panic of contagious
epidemic'^. Obviously this statement is not entirely accurate.
On the other hand, Pastor, the German Catholic, always defend—
ing the Pope, takes for granted that the epidemic of mal d:
petecchie existed, and was dangerous, and a later writer, Car—
cereri? collects the evidence that the danger from typhus was

:Pastor, History of ihe Popes (Translation), 2nd ed., London,
1923, Vol. XII.

 Marini, Vol. I. p. 389: Se accessisse huc a Synodo corductus
ut febres medicaret, non autem ut pestem aut lenticulares morbos
curaret, quapropter sibi discedendi licentiam dari postulabat.

sJ. A. Symonds, Ienaissance in Ital/, The Catholic Reaction,
London, 1886, Part I. p. 108. He follows the historian Sarpi,
Storia, del Concilio Tridentino.

4 L. Carcereri, II Concilio di Tremto, Bologna, 1910. 'The state—
ment in the Cambridge Modern History, 1903, Vol. II. p. 260, that