Was it strange that a century or so of this kind of work should produce a Luther?
Was it unnatural that plain people, who loved the ancient Church, should rather desire to see her purged of such blasphemous abuses, than to hear of St.Peter's dome rising a little nearer to the clouds on these proceeds of commuted crime?
At the same time, while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting, ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands.

The Church is no longer able to protect itself against the secular aim.

The halcyon days of ban, book and candle, are gone.

In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundy prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives.

Charles the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of making it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical property.