There are seven parishes; of which four are catholic, and three protestant.  This brings me to lay before you a brief outline of the rise and progress of PROTESTANTISM in this place.  Yet, as a preliminary remark, and as connected with our mutual antiquarian pursuits, you are to know that, besides parish churches, there were formerly fourteen convents, exclusively of chapelries.  All these are minutely detailed in the recent work of M. Hermann,[205] from which indeed I have gleaned the chief of the foregoing particulars.  A great many of these convents were suppressed in the sixteenth century, upon the establishment of the protestant religion.

But for a brief outline of the rise and progress of this establishment.  It must indeed be brief; but if so, it shall at least be clear and faithful.  The forerunner of Luther (in my opinion) was JOHN GEYLER; a man of singular intrepidity of head and heart.  He was a very extraordinary genius, unquestionably; and the works which he has bequeathed to posterity evince the variety of his attainments.  Geyler preached boldly in the cathedral against the lax manners and doubtful morality of the clergy.  He exhorted the magistrates to do their duty, and predicted that there must be an alteration of religious worship ere the general morals of the community could be amended.  They preserve a stone chair or pulpit, of very curious workmanship, but which had nearly been destroyed during the Revolution, in which Geyler used to deliver his lectures.  He died in 1510; and within a dozen years after his death the doctrines of LUTHER, were sedulously inculcated.  The ground had been well prepared for such seed.  The court of Rome looked on with uneasiness; and the Pope sent a legate to Strasbourg in 1522, to vent his anathemas, and to raise a strong party against the growth of this new heresy—­as it was called.  At this time, the reformed doctrine was even taught in the cathedral; and, a more remarkable thing to strike the common people, the RECTOR of the church of St. Thomas (the second religious establishment of importance, after that of the cathedral) VENTURED TO MARRY!  He was applauded both by the common people and by many of the more respectable families.  His example was followed:  and the religious of both sexes were allowed to leave their establishments, to go where they would, and to enter upon the married state.  In 1530 the mass was generally abolished:  and the protestant religion was constantly exercised in the cathedral.

The spirit both of Geyler and of Luther might have rejoiced to find, in 1550, the chapter of St. Thomas resolutely avowing its determination to perform the protestant—­and nothing but the protestant—­religion within its own extensive establishment.  The flame of the new religion seemed now to have reached all quarters, and warmed all hearts.  But a temporary check to its progress was given by the cautious policy of Charles V. That wary and heartless monarch (who