Even in Southern Germany the princes were soon in all parts masters of the situation. In this war 100,000 men had lost their lives and the most fertile districts had been turned into barren wastes. § 125. FRIENDS AND FOES OF LUTHER’S DOCTRINE, A.D. 1522-1526. Luther’s fellow labourers in the work of the gospel increased from day to day, and so too the number of the cities in Northern and Southern Germany in which pure doctrine was preached. But Wittenberg was the heart and centre of the whole movement, the muster-ground for all who were persecuted and exiled for the sake of the gospel, the gathering point and nursery of new preachers. Among the theological opponents of Luther’s doctrine appears a crowned head, Henry VIII. of England, and also “the king of literature,” Erasmus of Rotterdam, entered the lists against him. But neither the one nor the other, to say nothing of the rude invectives of Thomas Murner, was able to shake the bold reformer and check the rapid spread of his opinions. § 125.1. =Spread of Evangelical Views.=--The most powerful heralds of the Reformation were the monkish orders. Cloister life had become so utterly corrupt that the more virtuous of the brethren could no longer endure it. Anxious to breathe a healthier atmosphere, evangelists inspired by a purer doctrine arose in all parts of Germany, first and most of all among the Augustinian order (§ 112, 6), which almost to a man went over to the Reformation and had the glory of providing its first martyr (§ 128, 1). The order regarded Luther’s honour as its own. Next to them came the Franciscans, prominent during the Middle Ages as a fanatical opposition (§ 98, 4; 108, 5; 112, 2), of whom many had the courage to free themselves of their shackles. From their cloisters proceeded, _e.g._, the two famous popular preachers, Eberlin of Günzburg and Henry of Kettenbach in Ulm, the Hamburg reformer Stephen Kempen, the fervent Lambert reformer of Hesse, Luther’s friend Myconius of Gotha, and many more. Other orders too supplied their contingent, even the Dominicans, to whom Martin Bucer, the Strassburg reformer, belonged. Blaurer of Württemberg was a Benedictine, Rhegius a Carmelite, Bugenhagen a Premonstratensian, etc. At least one of the German bishops, George Polenz of Samland, openly joined the movement, preached the gospel in Königsberg, and inspired the priests of his diocese with the same views. Other bishops, such as those of Augsburg, Basel, Bamberg, Merseburg, sympathised with the movement or at least put no hindrance in its way. But the secular clergy gave crowds of witnesses. In all the larger and even in some of the smaller towns of Germany Luther’s doctrines were preached from the pulpits with the approval of the magistrates, and where these were refused the preachers took to the market-places and fields.