Wolsey's scheme of reforming the Church was no doubt suggested to him by the discontent against the clergy which was at this moment beginning to break out all over Europe. Since the days of Wicliffe, religious matters had not been taking any very prominent place in English politics, but a storm was now at hand far more terrible than that which had swept over the land in the days of the Lollards. The condition of the church of Western Christendom had become more and more deplorable of late. The worst example was set at head-quarters: bad as the Popes of the fourteenth century had been, those who were contemporary with the Tudors were far worse. Rome had seen in succession three scandalous Popes, the first of whom--Alexander VI., the celebrated Rodrigo Borgia--was a monster of depravity, a murderer given up to the practice of the foulest vices; the second--Julius II.--was a mere secular statesman with no piety, but a decided talent both for intrigue and for hard fighting; the third--Leo X.--was a cultured atheist, of artistic tastes, who used to tell his friends that "Christianity was a profitable superstition for Popes." Under such pontiffs all the abuses of the mediaeval Church came to a head. Ill living, corruption, open impiety, reckless interference in secular politics, non-residence, neglect of all spiritual duties, greed for money, were more openly practised by the clergy than in any previous age. Even the better sort of ecclesiastics could see no harm in obvious abuses;--Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, a man of great virtue, absented himself for twenty years from his see. Wolsey held three sees at once, and never went near any of them. [Sidenote: =The Renaissance.--Printing.=] The lamentable state of the Church would have provoked murmuring in any age, but in the sixteenth century it led to open rebellion in all those countries of Europe which still retained some regard for religion and morals. The revival of arts and letters, which men call the Renaissance, was now at its height, and Europe was for the first time full of educated laymen who could criticize the Church from outside, and compare its teaching with its practice. The multiplication of books, owing to the discovery of printing, had placed the means of knowledge in every man's hands, and the revived study of Hebrew and Greek was setting the learned to read the Scriptures in their original tongues. All the elements of a violent outbreak against the papacy, its superstitions and its enormities, were ready to combine. [Sidenote:=Martin Luther.=]