“We are of opinion,” P. Schreckenbach writes in 1895, “that Luther had a large share in the revolution,” and he endorses his opinion by his observations on “Luther’s warfare against the greatest conservative power of the day,” and the “ways and means he chose with which to carry on his war.”[519] Fr. v. Bezold, in 1890, in his “History of the German Reformation,” remarked concerning Luther’s answer to the hostile treatment he received from the Diet at Nuremberg (1524), and his allusions to “the mad, tipsy Princes”: “Luther should never have written in such a way had he not already made up his mind to act as leader of a Revolution. That he should have expected the German nation of those days to listen to such passionate language from the mouth of its ‘Evangelist’ and ‘Elias’ without being carried beyond the bounds of law and order, was a _naïveté_ only to be explained by his ignorance of the world and his exclusive attention to religious interests. Herein lies his greatness and his weakness.”[520] Concerning the effects of such language upon the people, the same historian wrote, as late as 1908: “How else but in a material sense was the plain man to interpret Luther’s proclamation of Christian freedom and his extravagant strictures on the parsons and nobles?”[521] Luther’s Catholic contemporaries condemned in the strongest manner his share in the unchaining of the revolt; they failed entirely to appreciate the “greatness” referred to above. One who was well acquainted with his writings and published a polemical work in Latin against him at that time, referring to certain passages, some of which we have already met, makes the following representations to him on his responsibility in the Peasant War. It was he who first raised the call to arms, and it was impossible for him to wash his hands of all share in the revolt, even though he had told the people that they were not to make use of force without the consent of the authorities and had subsequently condemned the rising with violence. “The common people pay no attention to that,” he tells him, “but merely obey what pleases them in Luther’s writings and sermons.” “You declared in your public writings,[522] that they were to assail the Pope and the Cardinals with every weapon available, and wash their hands in their blood. You called all the bishops who would not follow your teaching, idolatrous priests and ministers of the devil; you said that the bishops deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth in a great rising.” “You called those, ‘dear children of God and true Christians,’ who make every effort for the destruction of the bishoprics and the extermination of episcopal rule. You said also that whoever obeyed the bishops was the devil’s own servant. You called the monasteries dens of murderers, and incited the people to pull them down.”[523]