These lectures were delivered in Cambridge in November 1971. 1 must express my thanks to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, first for honouring me with the invitation, and second for accepting postponement when illness prevented me from coming at the appointed time. I received much kindness from many people during my stay in Cambridge. I cannot thank them all individually, but I should like to mention the names of two fellows of Trinity, the late Dr Kitson Clark and Professor Walter Ullmann.

That I have been able to turn the lectures into a book is due to my University allowing me several months of study leave, and to the British Academy granting me generous aid for work in Italian libraries. I must also express my gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation's Research Centre at the Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio.

Slight though this book is, it has taken a long time to write. My original intention was to survey the reactions of the Italian clergy (assuming that they must have been a large literate group) to the new ideas and disturbing challenge of the Renaissance in Italy. I did, I confess, at first assume that among recent Italian scholarship I should find surveys of the clergy comparable to those available for England (for instance) in the works of Hamilton Thompson and Dom David Knowles. Such was not the case and I found I was obliged to attempt some sort of picture myself.