“Because the excess of liberty which you gentlemen grant to the human intellect blinds him,” observed the abbot.  “His learning would throw the doors wide open to heresy.  The Scriptures are true.  On them Tungern and Kollin, whom you mention, rely.  In the original Hebrew text they will be given up to every one who wishes to seek an interpretation——­”

“Then a new bridge will be built for truth,” declared the little Thuringian with flashing eyes.

“The Cologne theologians hold a different opinion,” replied the abbot.

“Because the Grand Inquisitor and his followers—­Tungern, Kollin, and whatever the rest may be called—­are concerned about some thing very different from the noblest daughter of Heaven,” said Lienhard Groland, and the other gentlemen assented.  “You yourself, my lord abbot, admitted to me on the ride here that it angered you, too, to see the Cologne Dominicans pursue the noble scholar ’with such fierce hatred and bitter stings.’”—­[Virgil, Aeneid, xi. 837.]

“Because conflict between Christians always gives me pain,” replied the abbot.

But here Dr. Eberbach impetuously broke in upon the conversation: 

“For the sake of a fair woman Ilion suffered unspeakable tortures.  But to us a single song of Homer is worth more than all these Hebrew writings.  And yet a Trojan war of the intellect has been kindled concerning them.  Here freedom of investigation, yonder with Hoogstraten and Tungern, fettering of the mind.  Among us, the ardent yearning to hold aloft the new light which the revival of learning is kindling, yonder superior force is struggling to extinguish it.  Here the rule of the thinking mind, in whose scales reason and counter-argument decide the matter; among the Cologne people it is the Grand Inquisitor’s jailers, chains, dungeons, and the stake.”

“They will not go so far,” replied the abbot soothingly.  “True, both the front and the back stairs are open to the Dominicans in Rome.”

“Yet where should humanism find more zealous friends than in that very place, among the heads of the Church?” asked Dr. Peutinger.  “From the Tiber, I hope——­”

Here he paused, for the new guest who had just entered the room attracted his attention also.  The landlord of The Blue Pike respectfully preceded him and ushered him directly to the Nuremberg party, while he requested the Dominican monks who accompanied him to wait.

The late arrival was Prof.  Arnold von Tungern, dean of the theological faculty at the University of Cologne.  This gentleman had just been mentioned with the greatest aversion at the table he was now approaching, and his arrogant manner did little to lessen it.

Nevertheless, his position compelled the Nuremberg dignitaries to invite him to share their meal, which was now drawing to a close.  The Cologne theologian accepted the courtesy with a patronizing gesture, as if it were a matter of course.  Nay, after he had taken his seat, he ordered the landlord, as if he were the master, to see that this and that thing in the kitchen was not forgotten.