There are men who still deny the necessity of the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century, and contend that a slight reform in discipline, such as a pious pope would have conceded, was all that the Church required. But if such a reform had been possible, would it have been lasting? We have seen within these few years how little that singular phenomenon, a liberal pope, can do--how impotent he is when the clergy are opposed to him. It is very probable that if the Church had seriously undertaken to reform itself, the great disruption never would have taken place; for, as Ranke says, “Even the Protestants severed themselves slowly and reluctantly from the communion of the Church.”[2] France was fully prepared for a religious reform. The king had made his court the most learned centre in Europe; for among the many noble qualities possessed by Francis I., not the least of them was the patronage he extended to artists and men of letters. The great painters Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, and Rosso were invited from Italy to adorn his palaces with their magic pencils. Lascaris, a learned Greek, was commissioned to form the king’s library at Fontainebleau. Under the advice of the learned Budæus the college of France was established for the study of the Greek and Hebrew languages. This great intellectual movement, especially the study of Hebrew, “which turned Christians into Jews,”[3] so terrified that guardian of orthodoxy, the theological college of the Sorbonne, that They in their zeal splenetic Forbade the Greek and Hebrew tongues as heathen and heretic. So wrote Marot, adding that they proved the truth of the old proverb, “Learning has for enemy no creature but a dunce.”