In the complaint made to Adrian VI., in 1523, by the Diet of Nürnberg, it is asserted that three generals of the mendicant orders at Rome had purchased the cardinalate with gold wrung from Germany.—Gravam. Nationis German, cap. lxxiii.—ap. Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. II. 203.
The general popular opinion of the Roman court is manifested in the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, when speaking of the quarrel between Reuchlin and the theologians, which had been carried before the papal tribunal—“Si Papa est pro theologi, tunc non timeo; etiam audivi ab uno notabili viro, qui est officialis curiæ, qui dixit. Quid nobis hic cum literis? Si Reuchlin habet pecuniam, mittat huc: quia in curia oportet habere pecunias, alias nihil potest expedire.”
That this estimate of the papal curia was shared by the orthodox is shown in the story told of Pierre Danes, Bishop of Vaur, who in 1545 was sent as ambassador by Francis I. to the Council of Trent. In debate a French theologian was inveighing against the corruptions of the Rota, when an Italian ecclesiastic sneeringly cried out, “Gallus cantat.” Danes promptly rejoined, “Utinam illo gallicinio Petrus ad resipiscentiam et fletum excitetur.”—Le Plat, Monument. Concil. Trident. VII. 224.
[1034] The Epist. Obseur. Viror. probably reflects the general sentiment of the conservatives of the time in denouncing Erasmus and the learned wits as heretics. “Quia juvenes volunt se æquiparare senibus, et discipuli magistris, et juristæ theologis, et est magna confusio, et surgunt multi hæretici et pseudochristiani, Iohann. Reuchlin, Erasmus Roterodamus: Bilibaldus nescio quis, et Ulricus Huttenus, Hermannus Buschius, Jacobus Wimphelingus, qui scripsit contra Augustinenses, et Sebastianus Brandt, qui scripsit contra prædicatores, etc.”
So, at a later date, after Luther had arisen, the “Conciliabulum Theologistarum” classes them together “Habeo etiam ego unum spiritum familiarem; illum ego volo mittere ad Lutherum et Erasmum de nocte in lectum, ut eos tribulet et vexet.”
[1035] Erasmi Colloq. Confabulatio Pia.
[1036] Ibid. See also the Encomium Moriæ.—“Nam quid dicam de iis qui sibi fictis scelerum condonationibus suavissime blandiuntur, ac purgatorii spatia veluti clepsydris metiuntur, secula, annos, menses, dies, horas, tanquam e tabula mathematica citra ullum errorem dimentientes?”
[1037] Confabulatio Pia (Colloquia).
[1038] Speaking of the Virgin’s milk and the countless relics of the cross everywhere exposed to the adoration of the pious, he exclaims, “O matrem filio simillimam! ille nobis tantum sanguinis reliquit in terris; hæc tantum lactis quantum vix credibile est esse posse uni mulieri uniparæ, etiamsi nihil bibisset infans.... Idem caussantur de cruce Domini, quæ privatum ac publice tot locis ostenditur, ut si fragmenta conferantur in unum, navis onerariæ justum onus videri possint; et tamen totam crucem suam bajulavit Dominus”—to which he makes a pious interlocutor reply, “Novum fortasse dici possit; mirum nequaquam, quum Dominus, qui hæc auget pro suo arbitrio, sit omnipotens.”—Colloq. Peregrinat. Religionis.
[1039] Supplement. Epist. M. Lutheri, No. II. (Halæ, 1703).