But there is yet another Italian speciality contemporary with Cromwell’s public career: Nicodemism, that quiet decision to hide one’s religious views and practice amid some degree of conformity to the surrounding official religion (as John Calvin pointed out sarcastically in coining the label, Nicodemus had dared come to see the Saviour only by night).77 The Nicodemites of the Italian Reform demonstrate many features of Thomas Cromwell’s mature religious creed: much that was
