The Pope of the Roman Church is the successor of Peter, to whom Christ entrusted the keys to the gate of heaven. This is, in one sentence, the spiritual foundation of the power of the medieval papacy. To this foundation relates an unprecedentedly bold dialogue that has always been attributed to the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. A recently deceased pope, the violent and worldly Julius II, whom we primarily remember as the patron of Raphael and Michelangelo, arrives at the heavenly gate and is not admitted by Peter. Anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the tumultuous spiritual state before the onslaught of the Reformation should read this brilliant piece of Latin prose, which Werner von Koppenfels has now published in a bilingual edition with a German translation. Dante had already sent individual popes to hell, but the institution of the papacy had never before been attacked so incisively, so wittily, and at the same time so fundamentally comprehensively.