Luther himself writes to Cardinal Lang, in the same year, that his books were being read by the theologians of the Sorbonne. Johann Faber, Vicar-General in Constance, writes in 1521 to Vadian, “Through the wrong-doing of irresponsible printers, all kinds of unlettered people have read or have had read to them the teachings of Luther: even the old women in the streets stop to chatter about them.”[129] It is to be remembered that the effective circulation of Luther’s pamphlets (and of all the popular publications of the time) was very much multiplied by the practice on the part of those interested in the doctrines, of reading such pamphlets out loud in the market-places, to all who might be interested. After the Lutheran writings had been put under interdict, such public readings had to be discontinued in the towns and districts which remained under Catholic control; but the pamphlets were still widely (though surreptitiously) sold by pedlars and colporteurs, and the readings continued in places which were less liable to interruption than the inns and market-places. The jurist Scheurl writes from Nuremberg to Cardinal Campeggi, March 15, 1524, “Every common man is now asking for books or pamphlets, and more reading is being done in a day than heretofore in a year.”[130] In Nuremberg, as in other towns, it became the practice to read the books of Luther out loud in the market-place. Erasmus complains, in 1523, that since the publication of the New Testament, the whole book-trade seems to be absorbed with the writings of Luther, and to be interested in giving attention to nothing else. He says that it is very difficult to find publishers willing to place their imprint upon works written in behalf of the papacy. In one form or another, the German Testament and the other writings of Luther were distributed with surprising rapidity among all classes of people. As an example of the kind of interest they excited, it is recorded that the magistrates of Bremen sent a bookseller to Wittenberg for the purpose of purchasing for their use a set of Luther’s works. The citizens of Speyer are described as having the books read to them at supper, and as making transcripts of them. In hundreds of towns throughout Germany, Luther’s writings were brought to the notice of the people by means of the very edict which had for its purpose their final suppression, and after the Diet of Worms, the demand for them rapidly increased. The preacher Matthäus Zell writes from Strasburg in 1523, “The Lutheran books are for sale here in the market-place immediately beneath the edicts of the Emperor and of the Pope declaring them to be prohibited.”