The Pope, not the Leo of earlier years, but Clement VII, another Medici, absolved Francis from his treaty oath. This benevolence can scarce be ascribed to religious grounds, for Charles was assuredly a better Catholic than Francis. But as a temporal ruler Clement feared to have in Italy a neighbor so powerful and unchecked as the Emperor was becoming. Charles had his revenge. A German army of "Lutheran heretics" marched into Italy swearing to hang the Pope to the dome of St. Peter's. They stormed Rome, sacked it with such cruelty as rivalled the barbarian plunderings of over a thousand years before; and if they did not hang Clement, it was only because his castle of St. Angelo proved too strong for their assaults. The marvellous art treasures which had been slowly garnered in Rome since the days of Nicholas V, were almost wholly destroyed.[6] Charles hastened to disclaim responsibility for this direct assault upon the head of his Church; but he did not relinquish any of the advantages it gave. He and the Pope arranged an alliance and the Imperial army turned from Rome against Florence, where Pope Clement's family, the Medici, had recently been expelled as rulers. The siege and capture of Florence (1529) mark almost the last fluttering of real independence in Italy. From that time the country remained in the grasp of the Hapsburgs or their heirs and allies. Petty tyrants, minions of Austria or Spain, ruled over the various cities. Their intellectual supremacy passed over to France. Only within the last half-century has a brighter day redawned for Italy, has she ceased to be what she was so long called, "the battle-ground" of other nations. Meanwhile since neither Pope nor Emperor had found time to offer any vigorous opposition to the German Reformation, it had grown unchecked. In its inception it had unquestionably been a pure and noble movement: but as the "protesting" princes moved further in the matter, it dawned on them that the suppression of the Roman Church meant the suppression of all the bishoprics and abbeys, to which at least half the lands of the empire belonged. Such an opportunity for plunder, and such easy plunder, had never been before. Luther and the other preachers urged that the church property should be used to erect schools and support Protestant divines; but only a small fraction of it was ever surrendered by the princes for these purposes. The Reformation had ceased to be a purely religious movement.