In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

prostrating one's self before an image, adoring a
relic, purchasing an indulgence, performing a
pilgrimage, or paying one's tithes. This was the
devotion, these were the graces that lent their glory
to the ages in which the Roman faith was in the
ascendant. The baron could not ride out till he had
donned his coat of mail, lest he should be assailed
by his neighbor baron: the peasant tilled the earth,
or herded his oxen, with the collar of his master
round his neck: the merchant could not pass from
fair to fair, but at the risk of being plundered: the
robber and the murderer waylaid the passenger
who traveled without an escort, and the blood of
man was continually flowing in private quarrels,
and on the battle-field; but the times, doubtless,
were eminently holy, for all around wherever one
looked one beheld the symbols of devotion–
crosses, pardons, privileged shrines, images, relics,
aves, cowls, girdles, and palmer-staffs, and all the
machinery which the "religion" of the times had
invented to make all things holy–earth, air, and
water – everything, in short, save the soul of man.
Polydore Virgil, an Italian, and a good Catholic,
wishing to pay a compliment to the piety of those
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