fell from power, there were but slight signs within the realm of the coming
revolt, mutterings of a growing storm. No prophet had arisen denouncing the
evil of the times convincingly, no statesman propounding drastic remedies;
only the scholars had been preaching amendment, and occasional zealots had
been bringing discredit on the cause of reformation by the violence of
their incriminations. The far-reaching political effect of the religious
differences was long in being realised on the Continent; in England it was
still longer in making itself felt. Yet the Lutheran revolt was destined
vitally to influence both the international relations and the internal
order of every State in Christendom.

[Sidenote: The Lutheran Revolt, 1517]

In 1517 Pope Leo X. was in want of money: and one of the recognised methods
of obtaining it was the sale of Indulgences--that is to say, remissions in
the duration of Purgatorial sufferings, ratified by His Holiness, and
purchasable for cash. The whole thing being simply a commercial
transaction, the Indulgences were offered at popular prices. There was
nothing new in the method. The Lay Princes had no objections to the sale in
their territories, since they could demand a share in the profits as the
condition of their permission. The system moreover had been held up to
ridicule before. But on this occasion, there were two novel features: one,
the unprecedented scale on which the transaction was to be worked, the
other the nature of the opposition it aroused. Doctor Martin Luther, an
Augustinian monk and Professor at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony
had been coming to the conclusion that the practices of the Church were not
what they should be, and that much of her teaching was false. The affair of
the Indulgences brought things to a head; and when Tetzel the Papal
Commissioner was approaching Saxony, Luther drew up a counterblast in the
form of a series of propositions which he nailed up publicly on the Church