When a great change is effected in human affairs it brings on by degrees a corresponding change in human conceptions. After the discovery of the Indies and of America, after the invention of printing and the multiplication of books, after the restoration of classic antiquity and the Reformation of Luther, any conception of the world then formed could no longer remain monastic and mystic. The tender and melancholy aspiration of a soul sighing for the celestial kingdom and humbly subjecting its conduct to the authority of an undisputed Church gave way to free inquiry nourished on so many fresh conceptions, and disappeared at the admirable spectacle of this real world which man now began to comprehend and to conquer. The rhetorical academies which, at first, were composed of a clerical body passed into the hands of the laity they had preached the payment of tithes and submission to the Church; they now ridiculed the clergy and combated ecclesiastical abuses. In 1533 nine citizens of Amsterdam were condemned to a pilgrimage to Rome for having represented one of these satirical pieces. In 1539, at Ghent, the question having been proposed of: Who are the greatest fools in the world? eleven out of nineteen academies reply: The monks. "A few poor monks and nuns," says a contemporary, "always appear in the comedies; it seems as if people could not enjoy themselves without making sport of God and the Church." Philip II. had decreed the punishment of death against authors and actors whose pieces were not authorized or were impious. But they were performed, nevertheless, even in the villages. "The word of God," says the same author, "first found its way into these countries through plays, and for this reason they are forbidden much more rigidly than the writings of Martin Luther." It is evident that the mind had become emancipated from ancient tutelage, and that people and burghers, artizans and merchants began to think for themselves on matters of salvation and morality.