a single one does not content him), and keeps up such a state that he requires a larger personal revenue than the Emperor. He has surrounding him a number of men called Cardinals, whose only apparent use is to draw to themselves the revenues of the richest convents and benefices and to spend this money in keeping up the state of a wealthy monarch in Rome. In this way, and through other holders of German benefices who live as hangers-on at the papal court, Rome takes from Germany a sum of 300, 000 gulden annually,—more than is paid to the Emperor. Rome robs Germany in many other ways, most of them fraudulent-annotes, absolution money, &c. The chicanery used to get possession of German benefices; the exactions on the bestowal of the pallium; the trafficking in exemptions and permissions to evade laws ecclesiastical and moral, are all trenchantly described. The plan of reform sketched includes the complete abolition of the supremacy of the Pope over the State; the creation of a national German Church with an ecclesiastical national Council, to be the final court of appeal for Germany and to represent the German Church as the Diet did the German State; some internal religious reforms, such as the limitation of the number of pilgrimages, which are destroying morality and creating in men a distaste for honest work; reductions in the mendicant Orders, which are mere incentives to a life of beggary; the inspection of all convents and nunneries and permission given to those who are dissatisfied with their monastic lives to return to the world; the limitation of ecclesiastical festivals which are too often nothing but scenes of gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery; a married priesthood and an end put to the universal and degrading concubinage of the German parish priests. The Appeal closes with some solemn words addressed to the luxury and licensed immorality of the cities.
None of Luther's writings produced such an instantaneous, widespread, and powerful effect as did this Appeal. It went circulating all over Germany, uniting all classes of society in a way hitherto unknown. It was an effectual antidote, so far as the majority of the German people was concerned, to the Bull of Excommunication which had been prepared in Rome by Cajetan, Prierias, and Eck, and had been published there in June, 1520. Eck was entrusted with the publication of the Bull in Germany, where it did not command much respect. It had been drafted by men who had been Luther's opponents, aad suggested the gratification of private animosity rather than calm judicial examination and rejection of heretical opinion. The feeling grew stronger when it was discovered that Eck, having received the power to do so, had inserted the names of Adelmann, Pirkheimer, Spengler, and Carlstadt along with that of Luther-all five personal enemies. The German Bishops seemed to be unwilling to allow the publication of the Bull within their districts. Later the publication became dangerous, so threatening was the attitude of the crowds. Luther, on his part, burnt the Bull publicly; and
