[248] "Sentences" (_Sententiae, libri sententiarum_) was the title of the text-books in theology. Theological instruction was largely by way of comment on the most famous book of Sentences, that of Peter Lombard. [249] Cf. Vol. I, p. 7. [250] i. e., Doctors. [251] The head-dress of the doctors. [252] See above, p. 118, note 2. [253] i. e., The monasteries and nunneries. [254] i. e.. The name of Christian. [255] This section did not appear in the first edition; see Introduction, p. 59. [256] Charles the Great, King of the Franks, was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800 A. D. He was a German, but regarded himself successor to the line of emperors who had ruled at Rome. The fiction was fostered by the popes, and the German kings, after receiving the papal coronation, were called Roman Emperors. From this came the name of the German Empire of the Middle Ages, "the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." The popes of the later Middle Ages claimed that the bestowal of the imperial dignity lay in the power of the pope, and Pope Clement V (1313) even claimed that in the event of a vacancy the pope was the possessor of the imperial power (cf. above, p. 109). On the whole subject see Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, 2d ed. (1904), and literature there cited. [257] The city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410. [258] Luther is characteristically careless about his chronology. By the "Turkish Empire" he means the Mohammedan power. [259] _So sol man die Deutschen teuschen und mit teuschen teuschenn_, i.e., made Germans (_Deutsche_) by cheating (_teuschen_) them. [260] See _Cambridge Mediæval History_, I (1911), pp. 244 f. [261] Such a law as Luther here suggests was proposed to the Diet of Worms (1521). Text in Wrede, _Reischstagsakten_, II, 335-341. [262] Cf. Luther's _Sermon von Kaubandlung und Wucher_, of 1524. (_Weim. Ed. XV_, pp. 293) [263] Spices were one of the chief articles of foreign commerce in the XVI Century. The discovery of the cape-route to India had given the Portuguese a practical monopoly of this trade. A comparative statement of the cost of spices for a period of years was reported to the Diet of Nürnberg (1523). See Wrede, _op. cit._, III, 576. [264] The _Zinskauf_ or _Rentenkauf_ was a means or evading the prohibition of usury. The buyer purchased an annuity, but the purchase price was not regarded as a loan, or it could not be recalled, and the annual payments could not therefore be called interest. [265] The practice was legalised by the Lateran Council, 1512.