lent Leo, who were worthy of a better age, have been made pontiff
in this. For the Roman Court is not worthy of you and those like you,
but of Satan himself, who in truth is more the ruler in that Babylon
than you are.

Oh, would that, having laid aside that glory which your most abandoned
enemies declare to be yours, you were living rather in the office of a
private priest or on your paternal inheritance! In that glory none are
worthy to glory, except the race of Iscariot, the children of perdition.
For what happens in your court, Leo, except that, the more wicked and
execrable any man is, the more prosperously he can use your name
and authority for the ruin of the property and souls of men, for the
multiplication of crimes, for the oppression of faith and truth and
of the whole Church of God? Oh, Leo! in reality most unfortunate, and
sitting on a most perilous throne, I tell you the truth, because I wish
you well; for if Bernard felt compassion for his Anastasius at a time
when the Roman see, though even then most corrupt, was as yet ruling
with better hope than now, why should not we lament, to whom so much
further corruption and ruin has been added in three hundred years?

Is it not true that there is nothing under the vast heavens more
corrupt, more pestilential, more hateful, than the Court of Rome? She
incomparably surpasses the impiety of the Turks, so that in very truth
she, who was formerly the gate of heaven, is now a sort of open mouth
of hell, and such a mouth as, under the urgent wrath of God, cannot be
blocked up; one course alone being left to us wretched men: to call back
and save some few, if we can, from that Roman gulf.

Behold, Leo, my father, with what purpose and on what principle it is
that I have stormed against that seat of pestilence. I am so far from
having felt any rage against your person that I even hoped to gain
favour with you and to aid you in your welfare by striking actively and
vigorously at that your prison, nay, your hell. For whatever the efforts
of all minds can contrive against the confusion of that impious Court
will be advantageous to you and to your welfare, and to many others with
you. Those who do harm to her are doing your office; those who in every
way abhor her are glorifying Christ; in short, those are Christians who
are not Romans.

But, to say yet more, even this never entered my heart: to inveigh
against the Court of Rome or to dispute at all about her. For, seein