In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

eneath it. The inferior clergy, pillaged by the
superior, as the superior by their Sovereign Priest
at Rome, fleeced in their turn those under them.
"Having bought," says the historian of the Swiss
Reformation, "the Church in gross, they sold it in
detail." Money, money was the mystic potency that
set agoing and kept working the machine of
Romanism. There were churches to be dedicated,
cemeteries to be consecrated, bells to be baptised:
all this must be paid for. There were infants to be
christened, marriages to be blessed, and the dead to
be buried: nothing of all this could be done without
money. There were masses to be said for the repose
of the soul; there were victims to be rescued from
the raging flames of purgatory: it was vain to think
of doing this without money. There was, moreover,
the privilege of sepulture in the floor of the
church–above all, near the altar, where the dead
man mouldered in ground preeminently holy, and
the prayers offered for him were specially
efficacious: that was worth a great sum, and a
heavy price was charged for it. There were those
who wished to eat flesh in Lent, or in forbidden
times, and there were those who felt it burdensome
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