This is the story of a story. It all began in May 1548, when an Italian Protestant named Francesco Spiera recanted. He had been denounced to the Inquisition the previous November, and, fearful that he would lose his wealth and beggar his family, he renounced Protestantism publicly both at St. Mark's in Venice and in his hometown of Citadella, near Padua. It was a painful decision. Even before his second recantation, he began to hear a voice warning him not to apostatize, and soon after it the voice returned, admonishing him for denying God and sentencing him to eternal damnation. Convinced that he had been forsaken by the Lord, Spiera fell into despair. He removed with his family to Padua, where his woeful condition quickly came to the attention of prominent theologians, including Pier Paolo Vergerio, the bishop of Capodistra, and Matteo Gribaldi, like Spiera, a civil lawyer and a professor at the University of Padua.As Spiera's despair deepened, he was consoled by these eminent scholars and by as many as thirty other men. He suffered terribly, refusing food and rejecting their attempts to persuade him that he was not damned. The days and weeks passed; he maintained his conviction that God had forsaken him. He argued brilliantly with his learned visitors, displaying a remarkable grasp of Scripture and theology, which he deployed to prove his own damnation. He declared that he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, the single fault that places one beyond the Lord's mercy.
