A World Lit Only by Fire

by William Manchester

Once more, however, he leveled his heaviest artillery on the Vatican. His contempt for Julius’s wars was venomous—“as if the Church had any enemies as pestilential as impious pontiffs who by their silence allow Christ to be forgotten, enchain [him] by their mercenary rules… and crucify him afresh by their scandalous life!” Depravity and corruption still outraged him: “As to these Supreme Pontiffs, who take the place of Christ,” he wrote, “were wisdom to descend upon them, it would inconvenience them!… It would lose them all that wealth and honor, all those possessions, triumphal progresses, offices, dispensations, tributes and indulgences,” requiring instead vigils, prayer, meditation, “and a thousand troublesome tasks of that sort.” In a private letter he wrote, “The monarchy of Rome, as it is now, is a pestilence to Christendom.”