While Italy proved fertile ground for a Renaissance, the Reformation found rocky soil on Rome’s home turf. Where Michelangelo and da Vinci bore their greatest fruit, Luther and Calvin’s otherwise explosive thought was quickly expunged, after brief initial growth, in the face of an intense Inquisition and a failure to bear fruit among the masses. Collected here are several classic works analyzing two of the most powerful movements in Western history, and their disparate ends on the Italian Peninsula.