The different orders competed with each other for the fame and wealth to be obtained out of the public credulity.

A fraud attempted by the Dominicans at Bern, in 1506, _with the concurrence of the heads of the order throughout Germany_, was one of the main causes of that city adopting the Reformation.
In addition to the increasing burdens of investitures, annates, and other Papal dues, the brunt of which the German people had directly or indirectly to bear, special offence was given at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the excessive exploitation of the practice of indulgences by Leo X for the purpose of completing the cathedral of St.Peter's at Rome.

It was this, coming on the top of the exactions already rendered necessary by the increasing luxury and debauchery of the Papal Court and those of the other ecclesiastical dignitaries, that directly led to the dramatic incidents with which the Lutheran Reformation opened.
The remarkable personality with which the religious side of the Reformation is pre-eminently associated was a child of his time, who had passed through a variety of mental struggles, and had already broken through the bonds of the old ecclesiasticism before that turning-point in his career which is usually reckoned the opening of the Reformation, to wit--the nailing of the theses on to the door of the Schloss-Kirche in Wittenberg on the 31st of October, 1517.

Martin Luther, we must always bear in mind, however, was no Protestant in the English Puritan sense of the word.

It was not merely that he retained much of what would be deemed by the old-fashioned English Protestant "Romish error" in his doctrine, but his practical view of life showed a reaction from the ascetic pretensions which he had seen bred nothing but hypocrisy and the worst forms of sensual excess.