the
clergy in men's lives, and give them families of their own. The hope
that a stricter discipline would be enforced by authority from within
died away. When Eugenius IV directed Cesarini to dissolve the Council
of Basle, the Cardinal replied that if he obeyed they would be thought
to be mocking God and men, and to have abandoned the notion of reform,
and the laity would have some reason to believe that it was a good
deed to destroy, or at least to plunder, the clergy.

The religious influence of the Church was brought low by its record of
failure. The scheme for governing the world by the hierarchy, pursued
for three centuries, had terminated in disaster. For a whole
generation no man knew whether the Papacy was in Italy or in France.
The attempt to effect improvement through the Councils had been
abandoned after many experiments, and the failure to reconcile the
Greeks had established the Ottoman Empire in Europe. With the decline
of the Church the State rose in power and prerogative, and exercised
rights which for centuries had been claimed by the hierarchy. All
this did not suggest Lutheranism to Luther, but it prepared the world
for it.

Amidst the abuses and excesses of that epoch of lax discipline and
indistinct theology, the point of breaking was supplied by a practice
of very recent growth. Indulgences had long existed, and after a time
they were applied to souls in purgatory. When, at last, plenary
indulgences, that is, total remissions of penalty, were transferred to
the dead, it meant that they were straightway released from purgatory
and received into heaven. Five churches in Rome enjoyed the privilege
that a soul was released as often as mass was said at one of the
altars, technically known as privileged altars, or as often as certain
prayers were said by persons visiting them. There were privileged
altars at St. Peter's, at St. Prassede, at Santa Pudentiana, at the
Scala Santa. At one, five masses were required; at another, thirty.
In the crypt of St. Sebastian one visit was enough. A particular
prayer repeated during forty days remitted one-seventh of the
punishment, and on the fortieth day the dead man would appear to his
benefactor, to thank him. All the benefits available to a pilgrim
visiting Rome could be enjoyed at a distance by the purchase of an
indulgence from the friars sent round to sell them. Such an
indulgence, published by Julius II for the construction of St.
Peter's, was