When Luther afterwards visited the monastery of this same Prior, on the occasion of an official visitation, he found the community estranged from its head. He did not at that time take any steps, but after a few weeks he suddenly removed Michael Dressel from his office. In confidence he informed Johann Lang, rather cryptically, that: “I did this because I hoped to rule there myself for the half-year.”[691] Do the words perhaps mean that he was anxious to secure a victory for that party in the Order which was devoted to himself and opposed to Dressel, who on this hypothesis was an Observantine? His action was peculiar from the fact that his letter addressed to the community at Neustadt and to Dressel himself gave no reason for the measure against the Prior other than that the brothers were unable to live with him in peace and agreement; the Prior, he says, had always had the best intentions, but it is not enough for a Superior to be good and pious, “it is also necessary that the others should be at peace and in agreement with him”; when a Superior’s measures fail to establish concord, then he should revoke them.[692] Still more unusual than such advice was the circumstance that Luther would not allow the Prior to make any defence, and cut short any excuses by his sudden action. In another letter to the monks he justified his measure simply by stating that there was no peace. In short, the rebellious monks speedily got the better of the Superior whom they disliked. The ex-Prior, Luther tells him, must on no account murmur because he has been judged without a hearing (“_quia te non auditum iudicaverim_”); he himself (Luther) was convinced of his good will and also hoped that all the inmates of the convent were grateful to him for the good intentions which he had displayed. In the new election ordered by the Rural Vicar, Heinrich Zwetze was chosen as Prior. Of the latter or how the matter ended nothing more is known. The office of Rural Vicar required above all, that, when making his regular visitation of the religious houses, the Vicar should have a personal interview with each brother, hear what he had to say, and give him any spiritual direction of which he might stand in need. We learn the following of a visitation of this kind which Luther made in 1516: At the Gotha monastery the whole of the visitation occupied only one hour; at Langensalza two hours. He informs Lang: “In these places the Lord will work without us and direct the spiritual and temporal affairs in spite of the devil.”[693] He at once proceeded on the same journey to the house at Nordhausen and then on to those at Eisleben and Magdeburg. In two days the Rural Vicar was back in his beloved Wittenberg. There is no doubt that such summary treatment of his most important duties was not favourable to discipline.