In 1511, Luther spent a year in Rome. The sale of indulgences, corruption, and the general moral decay that plagued the eternal city prepared him for his Damascus experience: he became aware that God does not allow Himself to be bargained with, that righteousness is a pure gift of grace given solely through faith in Jesus Christ. For Voegelin, with this sola fide principle, Luther is a representative of the great confusion, "essentially occupied with nothing other than the dissemination of his peculiar, personal experience, which he wanted to impose on all of humanity as a way of existence. The shadow of selfish obscurantism, the strongest force of the modern world, began to spread.".