The pope (Paul II.) viewed these proceedings with suspicion, as savouring of paganism, heresy and republicanism.
His letters and his poems abound in impudent demands for money from patrons, some of them couched in language of the lowest adulation, and others savouring of literary brigandage.
He had a stern love of justice, and a determined hatred of everything savouring of jobbery or dishonesty.
Unfortunately, in so doing, he used phrases savouring of aristocracy which offended many of his countrymen, - as in the sentence in which he suggested that " the rich, the well-born and the able " should be set apart from other men in a senate.
The charge of blasphemy was founded on certain statements in a book published by him in 1553, entitled Christianismi Restitutio, in which he animadverted on the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, and advanced sentiments strongly savouring of Pantheism.