In vain did the gentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his smooth rhetoric.

The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was over.

Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty months.

He dies 13th Sept., 1523, having arrived at the conviction, according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life was to have reigned.
Another edict, published in the Netherlands, forbids all private assemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussions within one's own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papal authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death.

The edicts were no dead letter.