on their own heads and will only succeed in making themselves odious. Such indecent violence will only arouse deep hatred. But let it pass, perhaps the time of their visitation is at hand. So far I have had no word from our friends at Wittenberg or elsewhere. At Erfurt the students made a night attack on some of the priests' houses;* it was at the time we came to Eisenach. They were indignant because the Dean of St. Scverus'," a great papist, seized Master Draco," who is well- disposed to us, by the robe and publicly dragged him out of the choir, alleging that he was under excommunication because he, along with others, had come to meet me when I entered Erfurt. Meanwhile worse is feared; the city council is wink- ing at the disorder; the priests there have a bad reputation, and it is said that the young artisans are conspiring with the students. A little more and they will make the prophetic proverb true, "Erfurt, a second Prague."
Yesterday I heard that a certain priest at Gotha had been ill-used, because they had sold some property or other to increase the revenue of the Church, and then under pretext of ecclesiastical liberty, refused to pay the so-called "burdens" or taxes. We see that the people are neither able nor willing — ^as Era^nus also wrote in his Advice * — to bear the yoke of the Pope and the papists; therefore let us not cease to press upon it and to pull it down, especially as we have already lost name and fame by so doing. Now the light reveals all things and their show of piety is no longer valuable and cannot rule as hitherto. We have grown by violence and driven them back by violence ; we must see if they can be driven back any more.
I sit here idle and drunken * the whole day. I am reading the
<A contemporary account of this student-riot was printed under the title, Ain •«v G*dick$ «!> d%€ Gaystlichkeit, . . . Gesturmbt ist warden (Flugschriften mms d. ersUn Jahren d, Ref, I, 36 iff)* Cf. Kampschulte* DU Univ. Erfurt, II, p. 117. The date was April 9, when Luther was on his way to Worms. See also Jansen*Pastor* (1915)1 u, 2o6f.
'James Schrocder, known as Doliator.
• Vid€ VoL I, p. 343, n. 1.
- This buU probably refers to the "Axioms" handed by Erasmus to Fred-
eric 9t Cologne on November 5, 1520, reprinted in Lutheri opera latina varii crgmmenti, v. 24if. See Smith, 100, 103; supra, VoL I, 460, 473. Luther puts it rather strongly, but the first Axiom reads: "The source of the [anti-Lutheran] affur is evil: the hatred of sound learning and the love of tyranny."
^Crapulosus properly has this meaning, and is so used by Luther himself.
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