A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)
CHAPTER VII.
Oratory of Divine Love.—Italian reformers.—Their tenets.—Consequence of the doctrine of justification by faith.—Fear of schism in Italy.—Orthodoxy of Vittoria questioned.—Proofs of her Protestantism from her writings.—Calvinism of her sonnets.—Remarkable passage against auricular confession.—Controversial and religious sonnets.—Absence from the sonnets of moral topics.—Specimen of her poetical power.—Romanist ideas.—Absence from the sonnets of all patriotic feeling 356