In the Franciscan Convent at Isenach, in Thuringia, was a monk named John Hilten. He was a careful student of the Prophet Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John; he even wrote a Commentary on these Books, and censured the most crying abuses of monastic life. The enraged monks threw him into prison. His advanced age, and the filthiness of his dungeon, bringing on a dangerous illness, he asked for the friar superintendant, who had no sooner arrived, than, without listening to the prisoner, he began to give vent to his rage, and to rebuke him harshly for his doctrine, which (adds the chronicle) was at variance with the monk's kitchen. The Franciscan, forgetting his illness, and fetching a deep sigh, exclaims, "I calmly submit to your injustice for the love of Christ; for I have done nothing to shake the monastic state, and have only censured its most notorious abuses. _But_," continued he, (this is the account given by Melancthon in his _Apology for the Confession of Augsburg_,) "_another will come in the year of the Lord one thousand five hundred and sixteen; he will destroy you, and you will not be able to resist him._"[80] John Hilten, who had announced the end of the world in the year 1651, was not so much mistaken in the year in which the future Reformer was to appear. He was born not long after at a short distance from Hilten's dungeon, commenced his studies in the same town where the monk was prisoner, and publicly engaged in the Reformation only a year later than the Franciscan had mentioned. [80] "Alius quidem veniet...." (Apologia Conf. Aug. xiii. De Votis Monasticis.) CHAP. VII. Letters--Revival--Remembrance of Antiquity in Italy--Influence of the Humanists--Christianity of Dante--Valla--Infidelity in Italy--Platonic Philosophy--Rise of Literature in Germany--Youth in Schools--Printing--Character of German Literature--Literati and Schoolmen--A New World--Reuchlin--Reuchlin in Italy--His Works--His Influence in Germany--Mystics--Struggle with the Dominicans. Thus princes and people, the living members of the Church, and the theologians, laboured, each in their sphere, to prepare the work which the sixteenth century was about to carry into effect. But there was another auxiliary which was to lend its aid to the Reformation,--I mean Literature. The human mind was expanding--a circumstance which must of itself have led to its emancipation. If a small seed fall close to an old wall, as it grows into a tree it will push down the wall.