In the early 16th century on the eve of the Reformation an anonymously published tract called "Julius Exclusus" became a publishing sensation. The pamphlet was an imagined account of what happened when Pope Julius II, sometimes called "the warrior pope," ascended to Heaven and attempted to enter through the Pearly Gates after addressing St Peter.
Though he never claimed it, it is highly probable the author was the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmus had been present in Bologna when Julius led his armies in like a conquering general. For Erasmus, a man captivated by the moral vision of the Bible and scornful of ritualistic accretions that built up and obscured that moral clarity, the sight of a pope astride a horse like some conquering pagan of forgotten days was something he never forgot.
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