“But what do these impious wretches care about beautiful and sacred things?  The temple desecrators removed and destroyed one venerable, holy image after another.  True, they did not venture into the cathedral, probably from fear of his Majesty the Emperor, and whoever had undertaken to lay hands upon the altar painting and the Madonna in our chapel would have paid for it—­I am not boasting—­with his life.  Though ’the beautiful Mary,’ in her superabundant mercy, quietly endured the affront offered, our Lord himself punished it, for he inspired the illustrious Duke of Bavaria to issue an edict which forbids his subjects to trade with Ratisbon.  Whoever even enters the city must pay a heavy fine.  This set many people thinking.  Ursel will tell you what sinful prices we have paid since for butter and meat.  Even the innocent are obliged to buckle their belts tighter.  Those who wished to escape fasting are now compelled by poverty to practise abstinence.  It is said the Roman King Ferdinand is urging the revocation of the order.  If I were in his place, I would advise making it more stringent till the rebels sweat blood and crept to the cross.”

Then Blomberg bewailed the untimely leniency of the Emperor, for there was not even any rumour of a serious assault upon the Turks.  And yet, if only he, Blomberg, was commissioned to raise an army of the cross, Christianity would soon have rest from its mortal foe!  But if it should come to fighting—­no matter whether against the infidels or the heretics —­in spite of Wawerl and his lame leg, he would take the field again.  No death could be more glorious than in battle against the destrover of souls.  The scoundrels were flourishing like tares among the wheat.  At the last Reichstag the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, as well as the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, brought their own preachers, whose sermons turned many heads, even the pastor of St. Emmeran’s, Zollern, who was a child of Ratisbon.  At Staufferhof Baron von Stauff, formerly a man worthy of all honour, had opened his chapel of St. Ann to all the citizens to permit them to participate in the Lutheran idolatry.  Two Protestant ministers, one of whom, Dr. Forster, Luther himself had brought to Ratisbon, were liberally paid by the Council.  Whether Wolf believed it or not, Father Hamberger, whom he surely remembered as Prior of the Minorites, and who at that time enjoyed universal esteem, had taken a wife, and the rest of the monks had followed the iniquitous example.  Many other priests had married if it suited them, and, instead of the cowl, wore secular garments.  The instruction given in the school of poets was perfectly abominable, as he heard from Councillor Steuerer, who was faithful to the Catholic Church, and strove to induce the Duke of Bavaria to adopt still sterner measures against all this disorder.

Very recently men hitherto blameless, like Andreas Weinzierl and Georg Seidl, had sent their eighteen-year-old sons to the University of Wittenberg, where the Lutheran heresies were flourishing most luxuriantly.