entertain plans and to advocate the advisability of calling a National Synod and of withdrawing the Church of Poland from the jurisdiction of Rome.[14] When the papal legate, Commendoni, dreading such a consequence, urged the Vatican to forbid, contrary to the decisions of the Council of Trent, the holding of Provincial Synods in Poland for fear that one of them might at any time be turned into a National Synod, the Polish bishops rose in protest against it in the senate of the Diet, going even so far as to declare that the king, and not the Pope, was their overlord and judge.[15] The people, too, manifested the same spirit of independence in their attitude toward the church, whenever occasion demanded. In the eleventh century they arose in rebellion against the oppression of both state and church, particularly the church, owing to the foreign character of its clergy and their burdensome exactions. They demolished churches and monasteries, drove out the priests and the monks, and reverted to paganism.[16] In the struggles of the state with the papacy for supremacy the people generally supported the state. This explains the boldness and self-confidence of the Polish rulers, with which they successfully opposed the pretensions of the papacy much longer than the German emperors.[17] The papal anathema, hurled against recalcitrant princes and shaking the very foundations of Western thrones, fell in Poland without causing much disturbance or harm. Another factor, which in a large measure prepared the soil for the spread of the Reformation in Poland, was humanism.[18] The new turn in literature and philosophy reached Poland early in the fifteenth century, and found many friends both among the laity and among the clergy.[19] One of the most distinguished Polish humanists was John Ostrorog (1402-1501), a doctor of both laws from the University of Erfurt and a strong advocate of the supremacy of the state over the church. In his dissertation, “Monumentum pro reipublicae ordinatione congestum,” Ostrorog wrote in 1473: