The lords of the town assembled all the archers and the halberdiers, and brought four or five serpentines into the market-place, "and scoured the streets every way" all night, keeping the gates of the town shut till a search had been made, and fourteen or fifteen of the band taken. It is hard to tell what will come of this, for the town is thought to be marvelously corrupt. My Lady [Margaret] will leave on Tuesday, and return to Holland, "which country is largely infect," and in many places has denied the aid, but her good beginning here may make the rest beware.
699. MARK ANTONY LONGIN TO HIS BROTHER JOHN JEROME.
Brown, 1520-6, no. 1098. Tübingen in Württemberg, August 18, 1525.
On quitting Augsburg, went to the free town of Ulm, which (if Augsburg is Lutheran) may be styled most Lutheran, as are all the other free towns; but to speak more properly, they tend towards downright heresy rather than to anything else. They disregard masses and other offices, and the few which they perform are for the most part in German, so that the masses may be intelligible to the populace. Above all, they are regardless of burying their dead in consecrated ground, many of whom are carried into the fields beyond the town, to avoid paying the priests. Has also heard that the members of the League have beheaded a person who, besides many other heresies, trampled under foot the host, as if it had not contained the real body of Christ.[1]
They eat meat on Fridays and Saturdays, and on the vigils, and do other things too long to narrate, in such wise as to be so tainted with this pest that none but God can extirpate it.
On quitting Ulm, entered this duchy of Württemberg, where apparently there are not many Lutherans and the inhabitants are better disposed towards their duty, for books have been
- ↑ At St. Blasien in the Black Forest, the rustics broke into the church, demolished the altars and monstrances, and one of them swallowed the hosts, remarking that "for once he would eat enough of God." Similar proceedings took place at Ries and Rothenburg. Janssen-Pastor,20 ii, 575, 597, 667, note 1. In a sermon of April 19, 1538 (Buchwald: Ungedruckte Predigten Luthers, p. 338), Luther attributes similar outrages to Münzer. The Swabian League under Catholic leaders would punish such acts severely.
