No one could, of course, blame his love of a joke, but his jokes were sometimes very coarse; for instance, that concerning his friend Jonas in his letter of February 10, 1525, to Spalatin, of which the tone is indelicate, to say the least, even if we make all allowance for the age and for the customs in vogue among the Wittenberg professors. Jonas, he there says, was accustomed to write his letters on paper which had served the basest of services; he (Luther) was, however, more considerate for his friends. “Farewell,” he concludes, “and give my greetings to the fat husband Melchior [Meirisch, the stout Augustinian Prior of Dresden, who had married on February 6]; my wishes for him are, that his wife may prove very obedient; she really ought to drag him by the hair seven times a day round the market-place and, at night, as he richly deserves, ‘_bene obtundat connubialibus verbis_.’”[365] The reference in this letter to Carlstadt and his “familiar demon” (a fanatical monk who was given to prophesying) calls to mind the indecent language in which Luther assailed the Anabaptists and “fanatics” during those years. He makes great fun at the expense of the “nackte Braut von Orlamünde” and her amorous lovers, referring, in language which is the reverse of modest, to a ludicrous, mystical work produced by the “fanatics.”[366] Melanchthon is very severe in censuring Luther’s free behaviour and coarse jests, especially when in the presence of ex-nuns. It has been pointed out by a Protestant that Luther’s tendency to impropriety of language, though it cannot be denied, is easily to be explained by the fact of his being a “monk and the son of a peasant.”[367] It is hard to see what his being a monk has to do with it, and by what right the excesses which were perhaps noticeable in some few frivolous monks are to be regarded as characteristic of the religious state. Melanchthon’s reproaches lead the same writer to say, this time with at least some show of reason, that his friend surpassed Luther in “delicacy of feeling.” Melanchthon, on June 16, 1525, in a confidential letter written in Greek to Camerarius about Luther’s recent marriage, complains of his behaviour towards the runaway nuns then at Wittenberg: “The man,” he says, “is light-hearted and frivolous (_εὐχερής_) to the last degree; the nuns pursued him with great cunning and drew him on. Perhaps all this intercourse with them has rendered him effeminate, or inflamed his passions, noble and high-minded though he is.” Melanchthon desiderates in him more “dignity,” and says that his friends (“we”), had frequently been obliged to reprove him for his buffoonery (_βωμολοχία_).[368] In consequence of this unseemly behaviour with the nuns, blamed even by his intimate friends, we can understand that the professors of theology at Leipzig and Ingolstadt came to speak of Luther with great want of respect.