The report of all these conversions reached the courts of the two princes who were at this time disputing the crown. They thought they had better spare men of whose support they were ambitious. Persecution therefore slackened, and the transformation of the Church profited thereby. Liberty and truth made conspicuous progress. At Bartfeld, Doctor Esaias preached against Romish traditions, called his hearers to Jesus Christ, and stirred the whole town. At Leutschau, two evangelists, Cyriaci and Bogner, returning from Wittenberg, proclaimed the word of salvation; and the ultramontane churches, in spite of their incense, their images, and their pompous ceremonial, were day by day being deserted. At Hermanstadt the inhabitants, regardless of the outcries against them raised by the priests and their adherents, quickly adopted measures for positively abolishing the Roman services. The court of Rome, more and more perplexed, was intriguing at Vienna with a view to winning over Ferdinand. The pope wrote to the celebrated general Francisco Frangipani, who had been enrolled as a member of the order of St. Francis of Assisi, and was on this account under especial obligation to obey the pontiff. He entreated him to support with all his might the Catholic religion now so gravely threatened. The monks of Hermanstadt, provoked at seeing that the cruel decree of Ferdinand remained unexecuted, strove to stir up the people against their adversaries; and there were frequent disturbances. The magistrate would have consented that every one should be free to serve God according to his conscience; but persecution on the part of the monks appeared to be a rooted and incorrigible necessity. The council, despairing of enlightening them, ordered them (February 8, 1529) upon pain of death to leave the town within the space of eight days, unless they chose to live in conformity with the Gospel. This order was variously received by the monks. Some of them put off their cowls, dressed themselves like honest citizens, and began to earn their bread. Others left the town. Three days later there was not to be found in Hermanstadt a single Roman Catholic.[555] Some people cried out that freedom was trampled under foot by the council of Hermanstadt; others remarked that by the course it had taken it suppressed culpable intrigues. Liberty is a power which occasionally passes through very strange phases, and of which history presents some singular features. This was the case at this period in Hungary. The two rival kings, Ferdinand and Zapolya, were supported by two powerful emperors, the one eastern, the other western, Solyman and Charles the Fifth. This twofold movement at once endangered and favored religious liberty in Hungary. In 1529 Ferdinand went to Spire, where the emperor Charles the Fifth had convoked the Diet; and, submissive to the dictation of his august brother, annulled there the edict which he had published in 1526 in favor of religious liberty.[556]