In connection with Melanchthon’s story some Protestants have recently urged that, in 1523, Luther was subject to attacks of “sudden indisposition” which came on him in the morning and from which he found relief in vomiting, and that the above incident is explained by this circumstance; the fact that he was sick “before the meal and after a lengthy drive proves that we have to do with a result not of intemperance but of nervous irritation.” Of such “sudden indispositions” arising from nervousness we, however, hear nothing, either during that year or for long after. None of the sources mention anything of the kind. On the contrary, at Whitsun, 1523, Luther wrote to Nicholas Hausmann that he felt “fairly well” (“_satis bene valeo_”); that he was of a nervous temperament is of course true, but that the morning hours were, as a rule, his worst we only begin to learn from his letters in 1530 and 1532; there, moreover, he does not mention sickness, but merely “giddiness and the attacks of Satan,” which were wont to come on him before breakfast, (“_prandium_,”[984] a meal taken about 9 or 10 a.m.). Melanchthon’s story speaks, however, not of the morning at all, but of the time before the “_coena_” (i.e. the principal meal, taken about 5 p.m.), when Luther was presumably no longer fasting. Still, it would be better not to lay too much stress on this isolated particular incident.[985] Next in the series of statements coming from preachers of the new Evangel, we meet that of Johann Agricola, who, according to Thiele, in the recently discovered notes of his (above, p. 216), when he had already separated from Luther, represents him as a “drunken profligate,” “who gave the rein to his passions and whom only his wife’s sway could influence for good.” Agricola says that Luther had contemptuously put aside certain letters of his, but “at last read them one morning before the wine had mounted to his head (‘_mane, nondum vino calefactus_’). Then he showed himself willing to take me into favour again”; this being the result of Katey’s intercession. After this we have the testimony of the Swiss theologian, Leo Judæ, who, as Kolde tells us,[986] in the letter to Bucer quoted above (p. 277) and dated April 24, 1534, “reproaches Luther with drunkenness and all manner of things, and declares that such a bishop he would not tolerate even in the tiniest diocese.”