On first perceiving Rome from the heights of Monte Mario, he devoutly greeted the city, as all pilgrims were wont to do, overjoyed at having reached the goal of their long pilgrimage.[67] After that, he untiringly occupied himself, so far as his chief business permitted, in seeing all that Rome had to show. He assures us that he believed everything that was told him of the real or legendary reminiscences of the holy places both above and under ground. He does not, however, appear to have been very careful in his choice of guides and acquaintances, for the anecdotes concerning the condition of things at Rome which he brought back with him to his own country were, if not untrue, at least exceedingly spiteful. The Augustinians whom he there met had not the spirit of the reform inaugurated by Proles. Their southern freedom and lack of restraint found all too strong an echo in Luther’s character. The general confession he had projected was probably never made,[68] for, as he asserts later, he had not found among the clergy a single suitable, worthy man. During his distracting stay in the Eternal City he said Mass, so he tells us, perhaps once, perhaps ten times, i.e. occasionally, not regularly.[69] He was greatly scandalised at much he heard and saw, partly owing to his looking at things with the critical eye of a northerner, partly owing to the really existing moral disorders. The Rome of that day was the Rome of Julius II, the then Pope, and of his predecessor Alexander VI; it was the Rome of the Popes of the height of the Renaissance, glorified by art, but inwardly deeply debased. The capital of Christendom, under the influence of the frivolity which had seized the occupants of the Papal throne and invaded the ranks of the higher clergy, had proved false to her dignity and forgetful of the fact that the eyes of the Faithful who visited Rome from every quarter of the globe were jealously fixed upon her in their anxiety lest the godless spirit of the world should poison the very heart of the Church.