Egidio of Viterbo, general of the Augustinians, summed up Pope Alexander’s Rome in nine words: “No law, no divinity; Gold, force and Venus rule.” Guicciardini wrote: “Reverence for the Papacy has been utterly lost in the hearts of men.” In 1513 Machiavelli charged that there could be no greater proof of papal “decadence than the fact that the nearer people are to the Roman Church, the head of their religion, the less religious they are. And whoever examines the principles on which that religion is founded, and sees how widely different from those principles its present practice and application
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