German fiction -- Translations into English; Holy Roman Empire -- History -- Charles V, 1519-1556 -- Fiction
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
destroyer 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.
But the worst of all was that even faithful sons and daughters of Holy
Church could not keep themselves wholly untouched by such mischief.
Among these, alas! were he and his Wawerl, for he had been obliged to
allow the girl to join the choristers who sang in the Convivium Musicum,
which the Council had established in the summer three years before. Two
councillors were assigned to each Convivium, and thus these arrangements
were in Protestant hands.
“Of course,” he added dejectedly, “I wished to forbid her taking part in
them, but, though with me it is usually bend or break, what can a man
do when a woman is pestering him day and night, sometimes begging with
tears, sometimes with caresses?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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