r of your Lord."

"Inter bella, tubas, caedes, canis ipse, lyramque
Percutis. Hoc sapere est ingenium Domini."[7]

But the character of most of those pasquinades which belong to the
pontificate of Leo is so coarse as to render them unfit for
reproduction. A general licentiousness pervaded Rome, and the vices of
the Pope and the higher clergy, veiled, but not hidden, under the
displays of sensual magnificence and the pretended refinements of
degraded art, were readily imitated by a people taught to follow and
obey the teachings of their ecclesiastical rulers. Corruption of every
sort was common. Virtue and vice, profane and sacred things, were
alike for sale. The Pope made money by the sale of cardinalates and
traffic in indulgences. "Give me gifts, ye spectators," begged
Pasquin; "bring me not verses: divine Money alone rules the ethereal
gods."

"Dona date, astantes; versus ne reddite: sola
Imperat aethereis alma Moneta deis."

Leo's fondness for buffoons, with whom he mercilessly amused himself
by tormenting them and exciting them to make themselves ridiculous, is
recorded in a question put to Pasquin on one of his changes of figure.
"Why have you not asked, O Pasquil, to be made a buffoon? for at Rome
everything is now permitted to the buffoons."

"Cur non te fingi scurram, Pasquille, rogasti?
Cum Romae scurris omnia jam liceant."

Leo died in 1521. His death was sudden, and not without suspicion of
poison. It was said that the last offices of the Church were not
performed for the dying man, and an epigram sharply embodied the
report. "Do you ask why at his last hour Leo could not take the sacred
things? He had sold them."

"Sacra sub extrema, si forte requiritis, hora
Cur Leo non potuit sumere: Vendiderat."

The spirit of Luther had penetrated through the walls of Rome; and
though all tongues but those of statues might be silenced, eyes were
not blinded, nor could ears be made deaf. Nowhere was the need of
reform so felt as at Rome, but nowhere was there so little hope for
it; for the people stood in equal need of it with the Church, whose
ministers had corrupted them, and whose rulers tyrannized over them.
"Farewell, Rome!" said Pasquin.

"Roma, vale! Satis est vidisse. Revertar
Quum leno, meretrix, scurra, cinaedus ero."

When Leo's short-lived successor, the gloomy Fleming, Adrian VI., who
was the author of the proposal to destroy Pasquin, despatched his
nuncio to the diet of Nu