Münster Commune

city of Münster

The Münster commune is a bizarre chapter in the history of the Reformation. Lasting slightly over a year beginning in 1534, it involved some revolutionary Anabaptists who took over the city of Münster and instituted a new order while defending against besieging troops.

In 1533, a Lutheran named Bernard Rothmann, a former Roman Catholic priest, succeeded in bringing Lutheran control to the city of Münster, a good-sized city in northwest Germany. Rothmann, who had only been Lutheran since 1531, became more convinced of the Anabaptist beliefs and in May 1533 formally renounced infant baptism.

Later that year, he began preaching in favor of primitive Christianity, interpreted to mean sharing of all goods in common and living a simpler, morally upright life. This caused much controversy with those citizens continuing to hold Lutheran beliefs.

The success of Rothmann drew other Anabaptists flocking to the city, increasing the tension between the merchants and guildsmen in the town and those emigrating from other places in Germany and the Netherlands. In early 1534, Rothmann and nearly 1,400 others were rebaptized in Münster.

Around this same time, there was a heightened expectation by more radical Anabaptists of the end of the world described in the book of Revelation in the Bible. Associated with this were the rise of many so-called apostles and prophets ready to prepare the people for the second coming of Jesus Christ.

In February 1534, Jan Matthys (Matthijs) and Jan Bockelson, immigrants from the Netherlands, ran through the streets of Münster crying for all people to repent of their sins. This caused a mass hysteria, ending in an armed revolt against the town council (still predominately Lutheran).

The town council did not act aggressively, instead continuing to allow the Anabaptists their freedom. Many Lutheran citizens, concerned that the town would revolt, departed. This event, coupled with the continuing stream of immigrants, resulted in the town’s becoming Anabaptist.

On February 27, 1534, armed groups of men, led by Jan Matthys, went through the city, driving out all those not Anabaptist, calling, “Get out, you godless ones and never come back, you enemies of the Father.” By early March, the town was completely Anabaptist, with forcible rebaptizing of all those not already declaring themselves Anabaptist.

Matthys, Bockelson, and Rothmann, along with a leading merchant named Knipperdollinck, took over the control of the city. They declared that all possessions were to be held in common, threatening the wrath of God and public execution against those who withheld possessions from the community. After three days of prayer, Matthys appointed seven deacons to administer these goods.

All of this activity did not escape the notice of the Roman Catholic prince-bishop of Münster. While he did not live in the city and failed to get the support of those in the town in the early days of the conflict, the problems in Münster concerned the other princes enough to allow him to raise funds for troops to besiege the city.

By mid-March 1534, the city was somewhat ineffectively besieged. In early April, Matthys, believing God would give him power over the besiegers, went out with a band of troops, but he and all the troops were killed immediately.

Matthys’s death gave opportunity to Jan Bockelson to strengthen control over the town. Though the son of a tailor, Bockelson was an effective organizer and had, if anything, a more radical approach than Matthys.

In May 1534, Bockelson ran through the town naked and then sat silent for three days. He then prophesied that God had a new plan and organization for the town, with himself as chief apostle and 12 elders.

A morally strict code was at first enforced, but eventually the lack of men in the town (and probably Knipperdollinck’s very attractive daughter) led Bockelson, who was already married, to declare that God had ordained polygamy. Bockelson eventually married 15 wives, and many other men took multiple wives. This caused many problems in a few short months, resulting in an increasingly loose approach to sexual relations.

In August 1534, an attack by the bishop’s forces was effectively fought off by the town militia. Bockelson took the opportunity to declare himself the king of Münster, and the short-lived kingdom began. Bockelson appointed many immigrants as his councilors and had a gold-covered throne placed in the market square.

He thought of himself as a new King David and dressed in magnificent robes and held court with his equally well dressed counselors. At the same time, a reign of terror began for any of those who opposed the king and his counselors.

By January 1535, the blockade of the town was increasingly effective. A time of famine followed, though the king and his court managed to escape it for the most part by requisitioning supplies. In March, the king predicted that the town would be saved by Easter, but when this day passed, he quickly asserted it was a spiritual salvation and continued to proclaim the imminent return of Christ.

Finally in June of 1535, aided by some residents, the forces of the prince-bishop invaded the town, killing Rothmann during the battle. The deposed king and Knipperdollinck were put to death by torture after the king was hung in a cage and then led around the town on a chain.

While a few smaller Anabaptist uprisings occurred after this, most Anabaptists distanced themselves from these more radical uprisings and somewhat in reaction would disavow any kind of military role for their followers in future generations.

Philip Melancthon - Religious Reformer

Philip Melancthon

Philip Melancthon was a key Lutheran reformer. He worked very closely with Martin Luther and was the author of many of the major Reformation documents, including the Augsburg Confession.

Philip Melancthon was born Philip Schwarzerd on February 16, 1547, in Bretten, Germany. A brilliant boy, he was tutored in Greek and Latin and entered the University of Heidelberg just before his 13th birthday in 1509, graduating at age 14.

The university would not allow him to study for his master’s at such a young age, so Philip moved to Tübingen, studying both philosophy and humanistic thought. He completed his master’s degree in 1514 at age 17. He was offered a position as an instructor at Tübingen and taught there until 1518.

During his time at Tübingen as an instructor, Melancthon began to study theology and continued his studies of Greek, producing a Greek grammar in 1518. Offered a position at Wittenberg as a professor of Greek in 1518, Melancthon eagerly accepted. It was there he met another professor, the monk Martin Luther, who had posted his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, on the church door at Wittenberg.


Melancthon was an early supporter of Luther, attending the debates that preceded Luther’s excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. By the time of his publishing a defense of Luther against Johann Maier von Eck in 1519, Melancthon was considered a part of the Lutheran camp.

Augsburg Confession

Melancthon was the primary author of the Augsburg Confession, written in 1530. This is a key Reformation document, explaining the Lutheran position on various theological issues. Written in Melancthon’s clear and lucid style, it represented the Lutheran position in a manner that many hoped would bring about reconciliation between the Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Melancthon would prove always to take the more moderate position in the various Reformation controversies.

Melancthon worked closely with Luther on many of Luther’s writings. He assisted in Luther’s translation of the Bible into German, revised many of Luther’s commentaries on the Bible, and assisted Luther in some of the Luther’s most important polemical works.

Yet Melancthon would not always agree with Luther. In 1537, at a meeting in Smalcald, Luther had previously prepared what are commonly called the Smalcald Articles (a part of the Book of Concord), attacking the pope virulently.

Melancthon, writing his own “Treatise on the Primacy and the Power of the Pope,” persuaded the others present to adopt his more moderate position. Melancthon married Katharina Krapp, daughter of the mayor of Wittenberg, in 1520. They had four children and their marriage lasted 37 years until Katharina’s death in 1557. They lived in Wittenberg throughout their marriage.

Melancthon had many roles at the University of Wittenberg. He gave immensely popular lectures in over 100 courses to thousands of students (some of his most popular lectures had over 2,000 in attendance). His lectures included theology, philosophy, philology, and world history. He served as rector and academic dean at various times, helping to establish the university as a leading educational institution.

Melancthon published many books. His most famous book, a systematic theology called the Loci communes, was first published in 1521 and revised several times by Melancthon.

Melancthon reached out to many church and public figures including Henry VIII, king of England; King Francis I of France; and the patriarch of Constantinople. He also counted as friends many Calvinists, including Oecolampadius, Bucer, and John Calvin himself. This would leave him open to later charges of being a crypto-Calvinist.

The most tragic event in Melancthon’s life was his role in the document called the Leipzig Interim. Soon after Luther’s death in 1546, Emperor Charles V invaded the German area of Saxony and forced the defeated princes to adopt a document that was designed to be an interim document until the theological matters were settled by the Council of Trent, which had begun recently.

The authors of the document were two Roman Catholic bishops and Luther’s old nemesis, John Agricola. The resulting document so favored Roman Catholicism that the defeated princes refused to sign it.

Melancthon was asked to improve the document to make it more palatable. This he did, but just barely. The document compromised on justification by faith, a key Lutheran tenet, and Melancthon’s association with it would unfairly brand him as a traitor to the Lutheran cause for the rest of his life.

Melancthon provided a kind of balance to Luther that Luther himself appreciated. He was not a strong leader, and many rightly accuse him of being too eager to compromise. Yet his key role in many of the Reformation documents and his personal influence and friendship with many of the reformers clearly show how essential Melancthon was in the early years of the Reformation. Melancthon died in 1560 and was buried next to Luther in the castle Church of Wittenberg.

Lebna Dengel - Ethiopian Ruler

 Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia

Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia, also known as Dawit II, or David II, was one of the celebrated Christian kings of Ethiopia. Lebna Dengel succeeded to the throne of Ethiopia at the age of 12, partly through the maneuverings of his grandmother, the empress Eleni.

The empress was the daughter of King Hadiya, a Muslim, and she officially served as Lebna Dengel’s regent. Eleni had begun her rise to power when she became one of the four wives of Zara Yakob (1438–68) in 1445, thereby joining her prominent Muslim family with the Christian family of Zara Yakob.

As one of the celebrated evangelizing emperors of Ethiopia, along with Amda Tseyon (1314–44) and Sayfa Arad (1344–72), Zara Yakob holds a unique place in Ethiopian history. When he built a new royal residence at Debre Berhan, Eleni, who had converted to Christianity, established a church on the grounds.


Zara Yakob died after designating his young son Ba’eda Maryam (1468–78) as his heir, and Eleni became even more prominent in Ethiopian politics. Since his mother was dead, Ba’eda Maryam designated Eleni, to whom he was close, as the queen mother and chose her to serve as his regent.

Eleni also served in this capacity during the troubled reign of her son Na’od (1494–1505), who had succeeded his half brother Ba’eda Maryam to the throne. When Na’od was killed in a battle against the Muslims, his son Lebna Dengel was only seven years old.

Throughout much of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Eleni served as the power behind the Ethiopian throne, essentially serving as the reigning monarch. As a devout and active Christian, Eleni is credited with founding the modern church of Ethiopia. Although her exact birth date is unknown, Eleni was born sometime in the 1430s and died in the early 1520s in her 90s.

While Christians and Muslims coexisted in Ethiopia during Lebna Dengel’s reign, it was far from a peaceful relationship. In 1516, when the emir Mahfuz of Haran invaded the Ethiopian highlands, Lebna Dengel ambushed the invaders and continued to press his advantage by killing the emir and following them back to Haran, where he again attacked.

Lebna Dengel returned to his home a hero, convinced that the Muslims would no longer threaten Ethiopian Christians. He was fatally wrong. Suspecting that a Muslim attack was imminent, Eleni sent out a plea for assistance from Portugal. Consequently, in 1520, a Portuguese expeditionary force arrived in Ethiopia, led by Dom Ridrigo da Lama.

Despite the presence of the Portuguese in Ethiopia, in March 1529, Muslim forces under Ahmed Ibn Ghazi (c. 1507–43), popularly known as “the Gran,” triumphed over Lebna Dengel’s forces. By 1531, Muslim forces were in control of Ethiopia and remained so until 1543.

During the period of Muslim dominance, Emperor Lebna Dengel actively resisted all efforts to make him renounce his faith. When Ahmed ibn Ghazi demanded the hand of Lebna Dengel’s daughter in marriage, warning Lebna Dengel that he had no other course than to comply, the emperor summarily refused.

Assuring the Gran that he would not allow his daughter to marry a nonbeliever, Lebna Dengel wrote to him that he was determined to retain his trust in the Lord rather than in the Gran. Afterward, Lebna Dengel’s faith was repeatedly tested as he was forced to flee for his life. For the rest of his life, he was often hungry, uncomfortable, and in physical danger.

Lebna Dengel was still hiding from Muslim forces when he was killed in battle on September 2, 1540, near the monastery of Dabra Dam in Tigre. Subsequently, the tide turned for Christian Ethiopians. Lebna Dengel had appealed to Portugal for assistance in 1535, but help did not arrive until after his death.

The emperor Galawdewos (Claudius) succeeded to his father’s throne, and the Ethiopian Empire was restored with the help of the Portuguese who arrived in Ethiopia in 1541. This force of 400 Portuguese musketeers was led by Cristóvão da Gama, the son of the celebrated explorer Vasco da Gama.

After Lebna Dengel’s death, his son Galawdewos, assisted by the Portuguese musketeers, led an attack in which the Gran was killed in 1543 in a battle near Lake Tana. Once the Muslims were ousted, the Christians performed a penitential and reinstatement ceremony and proclaimed the return of Christianity to Ethiopia.

Although the Muslims had been ousted from Ethiopia, the Gran’s widow, Bati Del Wambara, continued raids on the Christians. Galawdewos was killed in battle in 1559, and the Muslims triumphantly displayed his head on a stake.

Many of the Portuguese who survived the various battles remained in Ethiopia when the troops pulled out of Ethiopia in 1547. They were soon joined by a group of Jesuit missionaries. The presence of the Portuguese was evident in Ethiopia in a number of ways since the Portuguese government fully intended to retain a certain amount of power in the country The Portuguese taught the Ethiopian soldiers how to use firearms and converted a number of locals to Western Catholicism.

By the mid-17th century, however, the Ethiopian government had expelled the Jesuits and denied other missionaries admission to the country. For the next two centuries, Ethiopia rejected all foreign overtures, preferring to exist in isolation.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Bartolomé de Las Casas

One of the most influential figures in the history of Latin America, the Spanish priest and historian Bartolomé de Las Casas became known as the “Apostle of the Indians” for his impassioned and relentless susila condemnations of the excesses of violence and cruelty perpetrated by Spanish conquistadores and encomenderos against the native inhabitants of the Americas.

His book, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, first published in 1552, caused a sensation across Spain and at the highest levels of church and state. Translated into many languages, it also formed an important component of the “Black Legend” of Spanish atrocities, a perspective that continues to hold enormous sway in considerations of the Spanish impact on the Americas. An indefatigable writer and activist, he continued writing, publishing, and speaking in favor of Indian rights from 1514 until his death in 1566.

His writings were an important element of later Enlightenment discourses on the universality of human rights and continue to resonate among liberation theologians, human rights activists, and indigenous rights activists across Latin America more than 450 years after his “brief account” was first published.

Born in Seville in 1484, son of a well-to-do merchant, Las Casas first came to the New World in 1502, at age 18, in the company of his father and some 2,500 other adventurers in the fleet of Nicolás de Ovando. Around 1506–07, he returned to Europe, was ordained a deacon in Rome, and returned to the Indies, where he was granted an encomienda.


In 1512, he became the first priest ordained in the Americas. Over the next two years, an encomendero himself and eyewitness to the forced labor, enslavement, and violence that characterized the conquest of the Caribbean, he gradually came to an understanding of Spanish actions that diverged radically from that of the vast majority of his countrymen.

His first public condemnation of Spanish excesses was in a Pentecost Sunday sermon in 1514. Freeing his own Indians, henceforth he preached incessantly about the evils of encomienda and other forms of forced labor and violence, making many enemies in the process.

In 1520, King Charles granted him an official hearing to expound his views and defend himself against his many detractors. A handful of other ecclesiastics, most notably Antonio de Montesinos and Juan Quevedo, had been advancing similar arguments.

The king sympathized with Las Casas’s position and decreed that the Indies would henceforth be ruled without recourse to force of arms—an unenforceable edict that was largely ignored. After a failed attempt to establish an economically self-sustaining Indian commune in Venezuela, in 1522 Las Casas became a Dominican monk.

Over the next four decades, he wrote prolifically and became an obsessive collector of documents that later proved of inestimable value to scholars. He was instrumental in persuading the king to issue the New Laws of 1542, which placed severe restrictions on encomienda, sparked furious resistance by encomenderos across the empire, and were repealed in 1545–46.

In 1544, he was appointed bishop of Chiapas (Mexico), where he continued his work on behalf of the Indians. Three years later, in response to mounting opposition to the radical bishop, the Council of the Indies recalled him to Spain.

In 1550, came one of the most memorable and important public debates in early modern Europe, on the question of the morality of Spain’s actions in the Americas. Pitting two intellectual giants—Las Casas versus the eminent humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued from Aristotelian premises that Indians were “natural slaves” and that Spanish actions were therefore just and appropriate—the great debate of Vallodolid failed to resolve the question, even though most council members sided with Las Casas.

In the coming years, he wrote many other works of enduring historical importance, most notably his Brief Account (1552), Apologética historia, and Historia de las Indias. He continued denouncing the institution of encomienda and Spanish cruelties and championing Indian rights until his death in July 1566. His body was interred at Our Lady of Atocha in Madrid.

Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa

Among the first Spaniards to venture into the Maya heartland of the Yucatán Peninsula, the Franciscan friar Diego de Landa owes his fame, and infamy, to two distinct but related actions.

His infamy rests on his systematic destruction of dozens of Maya texts (or codices) and thousands of Mayan idols in his crusade to extinguish idolatry and spread Christianity among the Maya in the 1560s—a crusade accompanied by tortures, burnings at the stake, and many other atrocities against the region’s indigenous inhabitants.

Yet Landa was also among the earliest experts on Mayan language and culture, his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (Account of the Things of Yucatán, 1556) representing a landmark document that provided an exceptionally vivid, detailed, and important description of Maya language and culture, and that proved key in the eventual decipherment of ancient Maya texts in the second half of the 20th century.

Landa thus occupies a peculiar and highly ambiguous position as both the most important early destroyer and preserver of knowledge on the preconquest Maya of Yucatán.


Born in Cifuentes, Guadalajara, Spain, on March 17, 1524, Landa entered the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo in 1540. Nine years later he journeyed to Yucatán as part of the broader missionary effort to convert the New World’s indigenous inhabitants to Christianity.

His first several years were spent at the monastery at Izamal, learning Mayan, revising an existing grammar, and undertaking the routine duties of Franciscan missionaries: preaching, tending to the sick, performing sacraments.

Growing restless, Landa sought and received permission to venture alone into the interior, where he spent many months wandering through large parts of the peninsula and acquiring intimate knowledge of Mayan language and culture.

In 1553, he returned to the monastery at Izamal and supervised the construction of a permanent structure at the prominent Maya religious center. Eight years later, in 1561, the General Chapter of the Franciscans appointed the 37-year-old Landa as the region’s first provincial.

By 1562, Landa had overseen the construction of 12 monasteries and the baptism of thousands of Maya, who Landa believed had abandoned their idols and embraced the Christian faith.

In May 1562, a chance discovery of a cave near the village of Maní containing numerous idols and human skulls launched Landa on a crusade to extirpate, once and for all, idolatry among the natives.

Employing a torture technique known as the garrucha, or hoist (in which the individual was bound at the wrists, hoisted into the air, and lashed, sometimes with large stones attached to the feet and hot wax hurled onto the body), the friars gained numerous “confessions” from the natives on their continuing adherence to non-Christian religious beliefs and practices.

Soon afterward, on Sunday, July 12, 1562, the friars celebrated a massive auto-da-fé at Maní, in which great piles of idols (including at least 27 Maya manuscripts, or codices) were set to the torch, and various punishments meted out to offenders against the Christian faith, including floggings, incarceration, and fines.

The inquisition continued for the next three months. Altogether an estimated 4,500 natives were tortured, with many hundreds left permanently disabled and 158 dying in consequence of the interrogations.

Landa’s illegal and unauthorized excesses led to a prolonged power struggle with the region’s bishop, Francisco de Toral, whose authority he was charged with usurping. Ordered back to Spain, he was absolved by the Council of the Indies, and in 1573 he returned to Yucatán as second bishop of Mérida, in which capacity he served until his death on April 30, 1579.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when he nailed his 95 Theses on the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther was a controversial figure in his day, with great friends and foes during a period of tumult in the Roman Catholic Church.

Born in 1483, Luther was the son of a reasonably prosperous copper miner. An intelligent boy, he was sent away to school by his father, who hoped he would be a lawyer. That was not to be. At the end of his university studies at Erfurt in 1505, Luther was caught in a terrible thunderstorm, where he prayed to St. Anne for deliverance, vowing to become a monk. Soon after that, he made good on his promise and entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt.

The monastic life at that time varied greatly, depending on the monastery. The Augustinian monks were quite strict, with fasting and a rigorous schedule of prayer, study, and work. Luther was ordained a Catholic priest in 1507 and completed his doctoral studies in 1512.

He then was assigned by his superior to teach biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. Preparing his lectures on the Bible (especially the books of Romans and Galatians), he became increasingly dissatisfied with the current practice of the church compared to what he saw in the Bible. His lectures were quite popular among the students, and he drew together a circle of other professors around him for discussion.


In 1517, he decided to tackle the issue of the sale of indulgences (a document granting a person exemption from the penalty for his or her sins) by writing a document that contained 95 statements (or theses) that argued against the practice of the sale of indulgences.

Many knew that Prince Albert of Germany had arranged with Pope Leo X to turn over half of the proceeds from the sale of indulgences to the pope, who needed money to finish building St. Peter’s Basilica, and turning the rest over to bankers who had funded Prince Albert’s purchase of bishoprics. But it was the shameless manner in which the indulgences were sold that was too much for Luther.

Freedom from the penalty of even the gravest sins was promised by the Dominican monk Tetzel as he sold the indulgences in the neighboring areas. At that time, Luther did not imagine the storm of controversy that his few pages would cause. Because of the recently invented movable type printing press, within a few short months, Luther’s 95 Theses were printed and sent out all over western Europe.

The Catholic Church’s response was first to wait and see whether the controversy would die down. When it did not, Luther was approached by high-ranking church officials who asked him to retract or recant his statements. Finally in 1521, Luther was summoned before the emperor at the Diet of Worms.

There, with his books and pamphlets in front of him, he was asked to recant his writings. His response, considered apocryphal by some, “Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear and distinct grounds and reasoning ... then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen.”

Luther knew that his statements would probably cause his expulsion (excommunication) from the Roman Catholic Church and that he would have to flee for his life. Fortunately for Luther, a sympathetic German prince, Frederick the Wise, “kidnapped” him and hid him in the Wartburg castle till the storm blew over.

Because of the support of Frederick and other German princes, the “Lutheran” movement grew in strength over the next 10 years. Excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, Luther and his followers took over the churches in the areas in Germany that had sympathetic princes.

Luther continued to teach and write at the University of Wittenberg. He married a former nun, Katherina von Bora, in 1525 and had six children. Luther died in 1546. Luther wrote a great many books and shorter articles. (There are more than 100 volumes of his works.) These include Luther’s Small Catechism, Luther’s Large Catechism, The Bondage of the Will, and On the Freedom of a Christian. He also translated the Bible into German—prior to this time it was only available in Latin.

Luther was an outspoken man, tending to make outrageous statements, especially at the dinner table (e.g., “When I die I want to be a ghost and pester the bishops, priests, and godless monks so that they have more trouble with a dead Luther than they could have had before with a thousand living ones”).

Some controversy has arisen in more recent years about Luther’s statements in his later years against the Jews. These were not unusual for their time but are seen by Lutherans today as very unfortunate.

Many people try to simplify the Reformation as if Martin Luther appeared out of nowhere with a strident call for reform. This was not the case. There were many calls for reform and many attempts at it during the previous 100 years.

Luther was also heavily influenced by the humanists, especially Erasmus of Rotterdam, who were arguing for an intellectual reform, returning to the original Greek and Hebrew sources for both philosophical and Christian thought.

“Luther hatched the egg that Erasmus laid” is a common phrase describing the intellectual development of Luther. Luther was a somewhat reluctant, but certainly courageous leader and thinker during a time of great change in the church and society.

Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X was born Giovanni de’ Medici in Florence on December 11, 1475, and died in Rome on December 1, 1521. He was the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He became abbot of Font Douce in France in 1483, at the age of eight. Under political pressure by Lorenzo Giovanni, he was made a cardinal at age 13 by Pope Innocent VIII.

His family’s political dealings caused friction in late 15th century Italy, and Giovanni fled to France at the election of Ravenna, probably for purposes of ransom.

Giovanni was elected pope on February 21, 1513, at age 38, again because of the political pressures of his family on the college of cardinals. He lived a lavish life and expended the papal treasury within two years of his election; he also sold offices within the church to raise money to support the papacy.


This practice, known as simony, led in part to the Reformation in Germany and other parts of Europe. The reformers argued against the selling of church offices and indulgences, practices taken up by Leo X and other popes and bishops. Leo never recognized the gravity of the Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation did not come about until after his death.

He was a great patron of the arts and prepared a critical edition of the works of Dante. His greatest contribution was his support of the collection of historical Christian manuscripts and the merging of the Medici family library with the papal library.