In addition to the great work done by Luther for the world at large, he rendered to Germany the essential service of initiating (or, as some German historians say, of creating) high German literature. The half century’s work of the printing-press had thus far been devoted almost exclusively to the production of books for scholars, printed in Latin, the universal language of scholarship, or, in a few instances, in Greek. The Brothers of Common Life in Holland, and a small number of other printers in North Germany, had printed for the use of the people books of a popular character in low German, _platt-deutsch_. It was Luther who recognised the better possibilities of development and for literary expression existing in the division of the language known as high German, the form that (with the changes of three centuries) has since been known as German. In selecting this tongue for his own writings, and, what was of more abiding importance, for his version of the Bible, Luther made of it the foundation of modern German literature. He did not, in fact, find a vehicle ready-made and fully fitted for his purpose, but through his own wealth of imagination and study and incisive speech, he contributed not a little to secure for this new language of literature strength and flexibility for forcible and varied expression. The printed books in German before the appearance of the first tracts of Luther, formed but an inconsiderable group, and were restricted practically to chap-books and almanacs, and to popular medicine or herb-lore, a few folk-songs and tales, and some editions of lives of the Saints, printed principally by the Brothers of Common Life. The labour and natural philological capacity required for such a task as producing a German version of the Bible at a time when no such thing as a German dictionary existed, and when there was, in fact, no accepted standard for literary expression in the German tongue, must have been very considerable. It was peculiarly fortunate that this capacity was, in Luther, united with the strenuousness of purpose and persistent industry which rendered the work possible at all. The final work of his translation was completed in the Castle of the Wartburg, during his sojourn there as a voluntary prisoner in charge of his valiant defender, Ulrich von Hutten, after his return from the Diet of Worms.