be edited, but the task remained to search farther for material that might still be accessible.
The latter was done first, and with good success. H. Wrampelmeyer found a collection of notes from the pen of Luther's friend and companion Conrad Cordatus, in Zellerfeld, and published it in 1885. As a matter of fact, the title of his publication19 is very misleading, for according to it one expects to find just as trustworthy and original notes of Luther's table-talks for the year 1537, as one does for the year 1538 in Lauterbach's diary. But this is by no means the case. Cordatus, who since 1532 was pastor at Niemeck, near Belzig, and, therefore, fully three German miles from Wittenberg, could hardly have kept a daybook on the table-talks of Luther, as often as he may have come to Wittenberg, and as faithfully as he probably recorded everything he heard Luther mention across the table. As a matter of fact, this collection of Cordatus only in one part contains notes by Cordatus himself; the other part consists of copies, extractions, as reviews from the notes of other table companions; these again do not all date back to 1537, but really to an earlier year. Cordatus concluded his collection in 1537.20 At that, Cordatus was inclined to be brief and to condense everything, so that, as a rule, we have mere excerpts from him instead of literal rendition.
We must, therefore, rank the publication that the member of the higher consistory at Muenchen, Preger, gave us three years later far higher as a true source.21 For here we have, thanks to Preger's care in the matter of handling the text, a truly, and in every respect, chronologically arranged, continual series of conversations from the end of the year 1531 until late fall of 1532. Four
