Luther heard few preachers at Rome, and those that he heard he did not like.  They were very lively in the delivery of their sermons, they would run to and fro in their pulpit, bend far over toward the audience, utter violent cries, change their voice suddenly, and gesticulate like madmen.

Luther saw Pope Julius from a distance several times.  He thought it queer that a healthy and strong man like the Pope should have himself carried to church in a litter instead of walking thither, and that such show should be made of his going there and a procession should be formed to accompany him.  He saw the Pope sit at the altar and hold out his foot to be kissed by people.  He saw the Pope take communion.  He did not kneel like other communicants, but sat on his magnificent throne; a cardinal priest handed him the chalice, and he sipped the wine through a silver tube.

However, these and other things did not at the time shake Luther’s belief in the Catholic Church.  He came to Rome and left Rome a devout Catholic.  Staupitz, the vicar of his order, had really gratified him in permitting him to go to Rome as the traveling companion of another monk.  Luther had expressed the wish to make a general confession at Rome.  With this thought on his mind he started out, and he treated the whole journey as a pilgrimage.  After the manner of pious monks the two companions walked one behind the other, reciting prayers and litanies.  Whether his general confession and his first mass at Rome, probably at Santa Maria del Popolo, gave him that sense of spiritual satisfaction which he craved, he has not told us.  When he had come in sight of the city, he had fallen on his face like the crusaders in sight of Jerusalem, and had fervently blessed that moment.  Now he ran through the seven stations of Rome, read masses wherever he could, gathered an abundance of indulgences by going through prescribed forms of worship at many shrines, listened to miracle-tales, knelt before the veil of St. Veronica near the Golden Gate at San Giovanni and before the bronze statue of St. Peter in the chapel of St. Martin, where a crucifix had of its own accord raised itself up and become transfixed in the dome, saw the rope with which Judas hanged himself fastened to the altar of the Apostles Simon and Judas at St. Peter’s, the stone in the chapel of St. Petronella on which the penitential tears of Peter had fallen, cutting a groove in it two fingers wide, had the guide show him the Pope’s crown, the tiara, which, he thought, cost more money than all the princes of Germany possessed, was perplexed at finding the heads and bodies of Peter and Paul assigned to different places, at the Lateran Church and at San Paolo Fuori, mounted the Scala Santa—­Pilate’s staircase—­on his knees, passed with awe the relief picture in one of the streets which the popular legend declared to be that of the female Pope Johanna and her child, saw the ancient pagan deities of Rome depicted in Santa Maria della Rotonda, the