ce suddenly, and gesticulate like madmen.

Luther saw Pope Julius from a distance several times. He thought it
queer that a healthy and strong man like the Pope should have himself
carried to church in a litter instead of walking thither, and that such
show should be made of his going there and a procession should be formed
to accompany him. He saw the Pope sit at the altar and hold out his foot
to be kissed by people. He saw the Pope take communion. He did not
kneel like other communicants, but sat on his magnificent throne; a
cardinal priest handed him the chalice, and he sipped the wine through a
silver tube.

However, these and other things did not at the time shake Luther's
belief in the Catholic Church. He came to Rome and left Rome a devout
Catholic. Staupitz, the vicar of his order, had really gratified him in
permitting him to go to Rome as the traveling companion of another monk.
Luther had expressed the wish to make a general confession at Rome. With
this thought on his mind he started out, and he treated the whole
journey as a pilgrimage. After the manner of pious monks the two
companions walked one behind the other, reciting prayers and litanies.
Whether his general confession and his first mass at Rome, probably at
Santa Maria del Popolo, gave him that sense of spiritual satisfaction
which he craved, he has not told us. When he had come in sight of the
city, he had fallen on his face like the crusaders in sight of
Jerusalem, and had fervently blessed that moment. Now he ran through the
seven stations of Rome, read masses wherever he could, gathered an
abundance of indulgences by going through prescribed forms of worship at
many shrines, listened to miracle-tales, knelt before the veil of St.
Veronica near the Golden Gate at San Giovanni and before the bronze
statue of St. Peter in the chapel of St. Martin, where a crucifix had of
its own accord raised itself up and become transfixed in the dome, saw
the rope with which Judas hanged himself fastened to the altar of the
Apostles Simon and Judas at St. Peter's, the stone in the chapel of St.
Petronella on which the penitential tears of Peter had fallen, cutting a
groove in it two fingers wide, had the guide show him the Pope's crown,
the tiara, which, he thought, cost more money than all the princes of
Germany possessed, was perplexed at finding the heads and bodies of
Peter and Paul assigned to different places, at the Lateran Church and
at San Paolo Fuori,