Who could guarantee that, since the last decades had
seen so great an increase of their power at home, their ambition would
stop short of the States of the Church? Leo himself witnessed the
prelude of what was fulfilled in the year 1527; a few bands of Spanish
infantry appeared of their own accord, it seems-- at the end of 1520,
on the borders of the Pontifical territory, with a view to laying the
Pope under contribution, but were driven back by the Papal forces. The
public feeling, too, against the corruptions of the hierarchy had of
late years been drawing rapidly to a head, and men with an eye for the
future, like the younger Pico della Mirandola, called urgently for
reform. Meantime Luther had already appeared upon the scene.
Under Adrian VI (1521-1523), the few and timid improvements, carried
out in the face of the great German Reformation, came too late. He
could do little more than proclaim his horror of the course which
things had taken hitherto, of simony, nepotism, prodigality,
brigandage, and profligacy. The danger from the side of the Lutherans
was by no means the greatest; an acute observer from Venice, Girolamo
Negro, uttered his fears that a speedy and terrible disaster would
befall the city of Rome itself.
Under Clement VII the whole horizon of Rome was filled with vapors,
like that leaden veil which the sirocco drew over the Campagna, and
which made the last months of summer so deadly.
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