Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/251

 TRANSITION 239 The prophet of Puritanism as we may call this latter effort was the Florentine monk Savonarola; the greatest of the ' Humanists ' was Erasmus of Rotterdam. Neither Savonarola g av0 naroia nor Erasmus intended to attack the Church. Erasmus, Neither of them advocated those views of Wycliffe Lutner - and Huss which had been condemned as heretical, but both taught multitudes of men to perceive that the existing system was rotten. It remained for another monk, Martin Luther, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, the capital of the Elector of Saxony, to take up the position which forced him to challenge the authority of the pope, root and branch. At the moment when Martin Luther came forward, the papacy had passed through its worst days, but it had not attempted to resume a spiritual character. The successor of Julius II., Alexander vi. was Julius 11., a militant pope, whose Leo *• great desire was to strengthen the papacy as a temporal princi- pality. He was a vigorous politician and soldier, but a pope who rode in armour on the battle-field was not the man to redeem the Church from the charge of seeking the things of this world more than the glory of God. After Julius came Leo x., one of the great Florentine house of the Medici j brilliant and cultured, who, as a secular prince, was deserving of applause; but for religion he cared nothing. Leo was in want of money, and to raise it he resorted to a familiar device, the sale of Indulgences. The pope claimed the power of absolving men. a. - ,.• 1 j. • r ^ Indulgences, from their sins, always on condition of their repent- ance; the power of remitting the penalties which their souls should endure in purgatory. Absolution however was normally accompanied by the imposition of penances, penalties to be voluntarily endured by the repentant sinner. The theory of the Indulgences was, that instead of imposing penances the pope would be satisfied by the payment of a small sum into the coffers of the Church. In theory it was not a pardon that was sold, but only freedom from penance ; the pardon was valid only if the sinner repented. But this was not the popular view, which amounted to a simple conviction that a pardon was bought and paid for. Pope Leo proposed to sell the Indulgences on a huge scale at a very 'small price. Martin Luther had come to the