man could become a bishop or cardinal—for a price. These bribes helped pay for Leo’s extravagant court—and so did the sale of indulgences, which promised that the buyers would be released from years in purgatory. As it happened, the indulgences were what prompted Luther to launch the Reformation. Leo and his court were thoroughly unspiritual, with no desire for reforming the church. Leo excommunicated Luther as a heretic in January 1521, but he hardly took Luther seriously and assumed Luther’s “heresy”