In January 1522 a new Pope had been chosen, who took the title of Adrian VI. His election was a triumph for the party that confessed the urgent need of reforms, and thought that they ought to be effected by the hierarchy and from within the Church. Adrian was a pious man according to his lights, one who felt deeply the corruption which was degrading the Church. He believed that the revolt of Luther was a punishment sent by God for the sins of the generation. He had been the tutor of Charles V., and ascended the papal throne with the determination to reform corruptions, and to begin his reforms by attacking the source of all—the Roman Curia. But he was a Dominican monk, and had all the Dominican ideas about the need of maintaining mediæval theology intact, and about the strict maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline. He was as ignorant as his predecessor of the state of matters in Germany, and regarded Luther as another Mahomet, who was seducing men from the higher Christian life by pandering to their fleshly appetites. The _Reichsregiment_ met with the Diet at Nürnberg in 1522-1523, and to this Diet the Pope sent, as nuncio, Francesco Chieregati, Bishop of Terramo, in the kingdom of Naples. The nuncio was given lengthy instructions, which set forth the Pope’s opinion of the corruptions in the Church and his intention to cure them, but which demanded the delivery of Luther into the hands of the Roman Curia, and the punishment of priests, monks, and nuns who had broken their vows of celibacy.(316) Chieregati was no sooner in Germany than he understood that it would be impossible for him to get the Pope’s demand carried out, and he informed his master of the state of matters. When he met the Diet and presented the papal requests, he was practically answered that Germany had grievances against Rome, and that they would need to be set right ere the Curia could expect to get its behests fulfilled. They intimated that since the Pope had admitted the corruptions in the Church, it was scarcely to be expected that they should blame Luther for having pointed them out. They presented the nuncio with a list of one hundred German grievances against the Roman Curia;(317) and suggested that the most convenient way of settling them would be for the Pope to make over immediately, for the public use of Germany, the German _annates_,(318) and that a German Council should be held on German soil, and within one of the larger German cities. The practical result of this fencing at the Diet of 1522, repeated in 1523, was that the progress of the Lutheran movement was not checked. How deeply the people of Germany had drunk in the teaching of Luther may be learnt from the letters of the nuncio to the Curia, and from those of the Archduke Ferdinand to the Emperor. Both use the same expression, that “among a thousand men scarcely one could be found untainted by Lutheran teaching.”