Martin Luther Against the Bankers and the Renaissance Balance Sheet

The last time the west was at a cultural crossroads of sorts, like the present, was around the year 1500.

Whether it be a global Spreadsheet of today or the ledgers of the Medicis that dominated international banking of the day, the difference between things material and or spiritual remain the same I think.

Thesis 50 - Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter’s church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep. ~~ Martin Luther, 95 Theses

History has a way of being told sometimes without all the details sometimes being disclosed.

Like when the German Cleric Martin Luther was nailing up his grievance in the public square against the sale of Indulgences by the Church of Rome, the Church of Rome under Pope Leo (DeMedici) X, the son of a Florentine banker, the Banking family of Italy, Europe etc. was signing off on some of the work of the Half Assed Church Council – the Fifth Council of the Lateran.

Out of the sixty four years at the close of the council in 1517 since the fall of the premier Center of Christianity in Constantinople, Rome had endured close to thirty seven years of four absolutely corrupt popes, Sixtus IV (della Rovere), Alexander VI (Borgia) and Julius II (della Rovere) and Leo X (de Medici)  

The Sistine Chapel was built by Sixtus IV and decorated by Julius II. Julius II was the likely grandson of Sixtus. Julius II was son of a “nephew” of Sixtus. The word “nepotism” owes its origin to the nephews ( and or bastard sons ) of popes being made cardinals in this period of absolute Renaissance corruption.

Two Highlights of that Lateran Council was a Papal Bull “Inter Multiplices” by Leo X – regulating Pawn Shops as a place for poor people to get loans to pay for indulgences

And

One requiring that before a book could be printed, the local bishop had to give permission.

Luther’s broadside was not a book or even a pamphlet. It is amazing on a time line to see the rise of corruption of the popes with the fall of Constantinople, filling a vacuum. Struggling to be both a Secular power like the late Emperor of Constantinople and an absolute "celibate" cleric.

One can also see collateral damage, the Renaissance, such as the founding of the Vatican Library with books pouring in from a collapsed Constantinople and the invention of metal movable type by Gutenberg to build the basis of the Renaissance on the reprinting by printing press of hundreds and thousands of copies of those emigrating Greek and Latin Books out of Constantinople.

Luther’s broadside got printed in the hundreds and spread worldwide or through Europe, the same thing.

That Luther was only a minor irritation and the whole Reformation was something that happened outside the corrupt bubble of Rome. A bubble that stands to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_X

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Council_of_the_Lateran

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