The mighty fortress of tradition, builded slowly and carefully during fifteen centuries of unlimited power, could not be taken by assault. The scandals which had taken place within these hallowed enclosures; the wars between three rival Popes, each claiming to be the legitimate and exclusive heir to the chair of Holy Peter; the utter corruption of the courts of Rome and Avignon, where laws were made for the purpose of being broken by those who were willing to pay for such favors; the utter demoralization of monastic life; the venality of those who used the recently increased horrors of purgatory as an excuse to blackmail poor parents into paying large sums of money for the benefit of their dead children; all these things, although widely known, never really threatened the safety of the Church. But the chance shots fired at random by certain men and women who were not at all interested in ecclesiastical matters, who had no particular grievance against either pope or bishop, these caused the damage which finally made the old edifice collapse. What the “thin, pale man” from Prague had failed to accomplish with his high ideals of Christian virtue was brought about by a motley crowd of private citizens who had no other ambition than to live and die (preferably at a ripe old age) as loyal patrons of all the good things of this world and faithful sons of the Mother Church. They came from all the seven corners of Europe. They represented every sort of profession and they would have been very angry, had an historian told them what they were doing. For instance, take the case of Marco Polo. We know him as a mighty traveler, a man who had seen such wondrous sights that his neighbors, accustomed to the smaller scale of their western cities, called him “Million Dollar Marc” and laughed uproariously when he told them of golden thrones as high as a tower and of granite walls that would stretch all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea.