The authority of religion lay in the hearts of men, in the religious morality and imagination to which they could entrust themselves. And when Pope Alexander VI, with the most conspicuous and despicable worldly schemes, trampled the Catholic Church's last moral authority underfoot... it also meant that the Holy See, which had once been able to gather the shared convictions in the hearts of the Catholic World's faithful, had come crashing down and died, utterly ceasing to exist!
The coming Italian Wars were only the prelude to the toppling of the Catholic Church. And the age of great schism that followed, the Reformation whose struggles would be even crueler, had already gone from hidden sparks to flames slowly kindling beneath the furnace. As for the standard-bearer who would sound the Reformation's horn, Martin Luther of the Holy Roman Empire's Electorate of Saxony was already eleven by nominal age this year, and had just begun to reveal a beautiful singing voice for hymns of praise...
Of course, even King John II, famed for his wisdom, likewise could not imagine at this moment the stormy waves that would batter the Catholic World in the next era! Right now, he merely furrowed his brow slightly and wrote an elegantly worded reply.
Before the Italian Wars were about to begin, at this juncture when the French had already entered the field while the Spanish had yet to be drawn in, he needed to work hard to maintain Portugal's neutral position, doing his utmost to avoid a direct clash with Castile and the Pope, so as to quietly await the changes in the situation.
"To the esteemed Holy See and Pope Alexander VI, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I pay tribute to the Latin sacraments and beautiful ceremonies