Claiming to be the centre of the religious life of Europe, it steadfastly refused to recognize any religious existence outside of itself, yet both in a political and theological sense it was rotten to the core.

Erasmus and Luther heard with amazement the blasphemies and witnessed with a shudder the atheism of the city.
The historian Ranke, to whom I am indebted for many of these facts, has depicted in a very graphic manner the demoralization of the great metropolis.

The popes were, for the most part, at their election, aged men.

Power was, therefore, incessantly passing into new hands.

Every election was a revolution in prospects and expectations.