Prierio--System of Rome--The Dialogue--System of Reform--Reply to Prierio--The Word--The Pope and the Church--Hochstraten--The Monks--Luther replies--Eck--The School--The Obelisks--Luther's Sentiments--The Asterisks--Rupture. A more serious resistance than that of Tezel was already opposed to Luther. Rome had answered. A reply had issued from the walls of the sacred palace. It was not Leo X who had taken it into his head to speak theology. "A quarrel of monks," he had one day said. "The best thing is not to meddle with it." And on another occasion, "It is a drunken German who has written these theses; when he recovers from his wine he will speak differently."[423] A Dominican of Rome, Sylvester Mazolini de Prierio or Prierias, master of the sacred palace, exercised the functions of censor, and in this character was the first man in Italy who knew of the Saxon monk's theses. [423] "Ein voller trunkener Deutscher." (Luth. Op. (W.) xxii, p. 1337.) A Roman censor and the theses of Luther! What a rencounter! Liberty of speech, liberty of investigation, liberty of faith, come into collision in Rome, with that power which pretends to have in its hands a monopoly of intelligence, and to open and shut the mouth of Christendom at its pleasure. The struggle between Christian liberty, which begets children of God, and pontifical despotism, which begets slaves of Rome, is, as it were, personified during the first days of the Reformation, in the encounter between Luther and Prierio. The Roman censor, prior-general of the Dominicans, employed to determine what Christendom must say, or not say, and know or not know, hastened to reply, and published a tract, which he dedicated to Leo X. He spoke contemptuously of the German monk, and declared, with a self-sufficiency altogether Roman, "that he was anxious to know whether this Martin had a nose of iron, or a head of brass, which could not be broken."[424] Then, in the form of a dialogue, he attacked the theses of Luther, employing alternately, ridicule, insult, and threatening. [424] "An ferreum nasum aut caput æneum gerat iste Lutherus, ut effringi non possit." (Sylv. Prieratis Dialogus.) The combat between the Augustin of Wittemberg and the Dominican of Rome took place on the very question which lies at the foundation of the Reformation; viz., "What is the sole infallible authority to Christians?" The following is the system of the Church, as expounded by its most independent organs.[425] [425] See Joh. Gersonis Propositiones de Sensu Literali S. Scripturæ. (Op. tom. i.)