In order to show how swiftly a disease, propagated in the way syphilis is, might overrun the society of continental Europe towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, it is only necessary to allude to the dire and deplorable state of morals among those that ought to have set an example to the community—namely, the clergy of these days, as painted by the tongue and pens of their own writers. In an official sermon published by Martene (tom. ii. p. 1758), and preached in St. Peter’s at Rome by the Apostolic Auditor prior to the election of the Pope in the year 1484, the corrupt morals and dishonesty of the whole church are denounced; and it is added that many do not merely commit, but triumph even in, such sins as the subversion of chastity and other virtues (de pudicitia, cæterisque virtutibus subversis, triumphantes). The frightful licentiousness and obscene orgies of the reigning pontiff, and of his family and court, which speedily followed, formed a hideous practical commentary upon this text. A high Romanist who had the honour of refusing a cardinal’s hat, Claud D’Espence, Rector of the University of Paris, after exposing the infamy of the taxes of the apostolic chancery, with its list of “filthy and horrid iniquities” (fœdorum tamque horrendorum scelerum)—a license for any and all of which could be purchased—adds, “You shall say we ingenuously confess that God permits this (Lutheran) prosecution to come upon his church on account of the sins of men, chiefly of priests and prelates, from whose sins the Scriptures cry out that the sins of the people are derived.... Is it wonderful if the malady descend from the head to the members, from the supreme Pontiff to others?[624] Where under heaven is there a greater license of all evils (infamia, impudecentia, etc.)?... Truly (adds D’Espence, and he had personally visited Rome), evils such and so great that no one can believe but he who has seen, and no one can deny but he who has not seen.... Vivere qui cupitis sancte, discedite Roma; Omnia cum liceant, non licet esse bonum.”[625] Previously another orthodox Roman ecclesiastic, Nicolas de Clemangis, Archdeacon of Bayeaux, had, in indignant, and, let us hope, in too sweeping terms, denounced the continental nunneries of these dark days as little better than brothels, and the taking of the veil as almost synonymous with a profession of public prostitution:—“Nam quod aliud sunt puellarum monasteria nisi quædam non dicam Dei sanctuaria, sed Veneris execranda postibula. Sed lascivorum et impudicorum juvenum ad libidines explendas receptacula ut idem hodie sit puellam velare, quod et publice ad scortandum exponere.”[626] Truly in these pre-Reformation days there was, as Cardinal Bellarmine confesses and laments, “almost no religion left.”[627]