The flight of the nuns was itself an unusual event, but it became immensely important, for extraordinary consequences resulted from it. Pains were taken to conceal the bold step they had assumed, especially from all other convents. But these exertions were useless; nuns at other places heard what their more adventurous sisters at Nimtschen had dared to do, and they also undertook to fly from their narrow, unwholesome cells to breathe the pure air of heaven. The abbess and four other nuns of the Benedictine convent at Zeitz; six at Sormitz; eight at Pentwitz, and sixteen at Wiedenstadt, escaped in a short time. Luther’s enemies now assailed him with ferocious malignity. They regarded him as the author of all this enormous mischief, and tried to show that his work was productive of nothing but unmitigated evil, because it occasioned such abominable results as the flight of poor nuns from their convent prisons. Luther replied to them very briefly; he represented the dark side of the picture of conventual life, and narrated some striking facts in illustration. He published the life of a nun, _Florentine de Oberweimer_, who had escaped from a convent at Eisleben. “I was but six years old,” she says, “when I was sent to the convent by my parents. When I was eleven, without knowing or being asked whether I could or would observe the rules, I was compelled to take the vow. When I was fourteen, and I began to find out that this mode of life was against my nature, and hence complained to the abbess, she told me that I must be contented and should continue to be a nun no matter what I thought or felt. I then wrote to the learned Dr. Luther and begged his advice: but my letter was intercepted by my superiors, who immediately put me in prison, where I remained four weeks and suffered much. The abbess then put me under the bans. (Florentine then minutely describes the severe treatment she received before the ban was dissolved.) After that, I wrote to my relative, Caspar de Watzdorf, who loved the gospel truth, and complained of my treatment. This also became known to the abbess, and I cannot tell to strangers how shamefully I was abused by her and others. _I was so violently beaten by her and four other persons that they became completely exhausted._ She put me in prison again and fastened my feet with iron chains,” &c., &c.