A similar testimony may be borne to François de Seckingen, his illustrious friend and patron. This noble chevalier, whom several of his contemporaries deemed worthy of the imperial crown, holds first place among the warriors who were the antagonists of Rome. While delighting in the noise of arms, he had an ardent love of science, and a high veneration for its professors. When at the head of an army which threatened Wurtemberg, he gave orders, in the event of Stuttgard being taken by assault, to spare the property and house of the celebrated scholar, John Reuchlin. He afterwards invited him to his camp, and, embracing him, offered to assist him in his quarrel with the monks of Cologne. For a long time chivalry had gloried in despising literature, but this period presents us with a different spectacle. Under the massy cuirass of the Seckingens and Hüttens, we perceive the intellectual movement which is beginning to be everywhere felt. The first fruits which the Reformation gives to the world are warriors enamoured with the arts of peace. Hütten, who, on his return from Brussels, had taken refuge in the castle of Seckingen, invited the valorous knight to study the evangelical doctrine, and made him acquainted with the foundations on which it rests. "And is there any one," exclaimed Seckingen in astonishment, "who dares to overturn such an edifice? Who could do it?" Several individuals, who afterwards became celebrated as Reformers, found an asylum in this castle; among others, Martin Bucer, Aquila, Schwebel, and Œcolampadius, so that Hütten justly styled Ebernbourg "the hotel of the just." Œcolampadius had to preach daily in the castle, but the warriors there assembled began to weary hearing so much of the meek virtues of Christianity, and the sermons of Œcolampadius, though he laboured to shorten them, seemed too long. They, indeed, repaired to the church almost every day, but, for the most part, only to hear the blessing and offer a short prayer. Hence Œcolampadius exclaimed, "Alas! the Word is here sown on stony ground." Seckingen, longing to serve the cause of truth in his own way, declared war on the Archbishop of Treves, "in order," as he said, "to open a door for the gospel." In vain did Luther, who had by this time appeared, endeavour to dissuade him; he attacked Treves with five thousand knights and a thousand common soldiers, but the bold archbishop, aided by the Elector Palatine and the Landgrave of Hesse, forced him to retreat. The following spring, the allied princes attacked him in his castle of Landstein. After a bloody assault, Seckingen, having been mortally wounded, was forced to surrender. The three princes, accordingly, make their way into the fortress, and, after searching through it, at last find the indomitable knight on his death-bed, in a subterraneous vault.