In the first place there were many among the Humanists who greeted him with joy because they trusted that their ideals, as expressed in the “_Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_,” would really be furthered by means of Luther’s boldness and energy. They took his side because they looked upon him as a champion of intellectual liberty and thus as a promoter of noble, humane culture against the prevalent barbarism. Erasmus, Mutian, Crotus Rubeanus, Eobanus Hessus and others were numbered amongst his patrons, though, as in the case of the first three, some of them forsook him at a later date. Most of the Humanists who sought, in verse and prose, to arouse enthusiasm for Luther in Germany were as yet unaware that the spirit of the man whom they were thus extolling differed considerably from their own, and that Luther would later become one of the sternest opponents of their views concerning the rights of reason and “humanity” as against faith. Meanwhile, however, Luther not only did not scorn the proffered alliance, but, as his letters to Erasmus show, condescended to crave favour in language so humble and flattering that it goes far beyond the customary protestations usual among the Humanists. He also drew some very promising Humanists into close relation with himself, for instance, Philip Melanchthon and Justus Jonas, whom he won over to his cause at an early date. Crotus Rubeanus, the principal author of the “_Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_,” sought to renew his old acquaintance with his friend by letter in October, 1519. To him Luther appeared as the man of whose courage in opposing tyrants all the world was talking, and who was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. Crotus, at the instigation of Hutten, was anxious to bring about an understanding between Luther and the Knight Franz von Sickingen.[1] The nobility was another important factor on whose support Luther was later to rely. Ulrich von Hutten, the Franconian Knight and Humanist, a typical representative of the revolutionary knights of the day, speaks to the Monk of Wittenberg in the same devout terms as Crotus. The language, well padded with quotations from the Gospel, which he adopts to please Luther and the Reformers, makes a very strange impression coming from him, the libertine and cynic. His first dealings with Luther were in January, 1520, when, through the agency of Melanchthon, he promised him armed protection should he stand in need of such. The message was to the effect, that Franz von Sickingen, the knight, would, in any emergency,[2] offer him a secure refuge in his castle of Ebernburg. As a matter of fact Sickingen, in 1520, made over this castle--called the “Hostel of Justice”--to Hutten, Bucer and Œcolampadius as a place of safety. Representatives of the nobility who had fallen foul of the Empire there made common cause with the theologians of the new teaching.