another time, “I am not of a mind,” he observed “to venture my life for the truth’s sake; all men have not strength to endure the martyr’s death.  For myself, if it came to the point, I should do no better than Simon Peter.”  Moderate in all things, he would have liked, he said, to live without eating and drinking, although he never found it convenient to do so, and he rejoiced when advancing age diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures in which he had moderately indulged.  Although awake to the abuses of the Church, he thought Luther going too fast and too far.  He began by applauding ended by censuring the monk of Wittemberg.  The Reformation might have been delayed for centuries had Erasmus and other moderate men been the only reformers.  He will long be honored for his elegant, Latinity.  In the republic of letters, his efforts to infuse a pure taste, a sound criticism, a love for the beautiful and the classic, in place of the owlish pedantry which had so long flapped and hooted through mediveval cloisters, will always be held in grateful reverence.  In the history of the religious Reformation, his name seems hardly to deserve the commendations of Grotius.

As the schism yawns, more and more ominously, throughout Christendom, the Emperor naturally trembles.  Anxious to save the state, but being no antique Roman, he wishes to close the gulf, but with more convenience to himself:  He conceives the highly original plan of combining Church and Empire under one crown.  This is Maximilian’s scheme for Church reformation.  An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor, the Charlemagne and Hildebrand systems united and simplified—­thus the world may yet be saved.  “Nothing more honorable, nobler, better, could happen to us,” writes Maximilian to Paul Lichtenstein (16th Sept. 1511), “than to re-annex the said popedom—­which properly belongs to us—­to our Empire.  Cardinal Adrian approves our reasons and encourages us to proceed, being of opinion that we should not have much trouble with the cardinals.  It is much to be feared that the Pope may die of his present sickness.  He has lost his appetite, and fills himself with so much drink that his health is destroyed.  As such matters can not be arranged without money, we have promised the cardinals, whom we expect to bring over, 300,000 ducats, [Recall that the fine for redemption and pardon for the sin of murder was at that time one ducat.  D.W.] which we shall raise from the Fuggers, and make payable in Rome upon the appointed day.”

These business-like arrangements he communicates, two days afterwards, in a secret letter to his daughter Margaret, and already exults at his future eminence, both in this world and the next.  “We are sending Monsieur de Gurce,” he says; “to make an agreement with the Pope, that we may be taken as coadjutor, in order that, upon his death, we may be sure of the papacy, and, afterwards, of becoming a saint.  After my decease, therefore, you will be constrained to adore me, of which I shall be very proud.  I am beginning to work upon the cardinals, in which affair two or three hundred thousand ducats will be of great service.”  The letter was signed, “From the hand of your good father, Maximilian, future Pope.”