Down to quite recent times it was not unusual to find in Catholic works a story of a poem, said to have been by Luther, found in a MS. Bible in the Vatican Library, in which Luther prayed that God in His Goodness would bestow “many wives and few children.” At the present day no MS. Bible containing a poem by Luther, or any similar German verses, exists in the Vatican Library. What is meant, however, is a German translation of Holy Scripture, in five volumes, dating from the fifteenth century, which was formerly kept in the Vatican and now belongs to the Heidelberg University library. It is one of those Heidelberg MSS. which were brought to Rome in 1623 and again wandered back to their old quarters in 1816 (Palat. German. n. 19-23). The “poem” in question is at the end of vol. ii. (cod. 20). Of it, as given by Bartsch (“Die altdeutschen Handschriften der Universität Heidelberg”) and Wilken (“Heidelberger Büchersammlung”),[953] we append a rough translation: God Almighty, Thou art good, Give us coat and mantle and hood, * * * * * Many a cow and many a ewe, _Plenty of wives and children few_. Explicit: A small wage Makes the year to seem an age. The “poem” has nothing whatever to do with Luther. It is a product of the Middle Ages, met with under various forms. The “Explicit,” too, is older than Luther and presumably was added by the copyist of the volume. In the seventeenth century the opinion seems to have gained ground that Luther was the author, though no Roman scholar can be invoked as having said so. Of the MS. Montfaucon merely says: “A very old German Bible is worthy of notice”; Luther’s name he does not mention.[954] One witness for the ascription of its authorship to Luther was Max. Misson, who, in his “Nouveau voyage d’Italie,”[955] gives the “poem” very inaccurately and states that a Bible was shown him at the Vatican in which Luther was said to have written it, and that the writing was the same as that of the rest of the volume. He adds, however, that it was hardly credible that Luther should have written such things in a Bible. Later, Christian Juncker, a Protestant, relates the same thing in his “Life of Luther,” published in 1699, but likewise expresses a doubt. He quotes the discourse on Travels in Italy by Johann Fabricius, the theologian of Helmstedt, where the version of the verses differs from that given by Misson.[956] According to a record of a journey to Rome undertaken in 1693, given by Johann Friedrich von Wolfframsdorf, he, too, was shown a MS. Bible alleged to have been written by Luther, doubtless that mentioned above.[957]