Whatever the truth may be concerning this particular charge which involves them both,[669] both Landgrave and Elector certainly left behind them so bad a record that Adolf Hausrath could say: The pair (but the Landgrave even more than the Elector) did their best “to make mockery of the claim of the Evangelicals that their Evangel would revive the morality of the German nation.” He instances in particular the bigamy, “which put any belief in the reality of their piety to a severe test and prepared the way for a great moral defeat of Luther’s cause.”[670] In the matter of the bigamy attempts were made to exculpate the Elector Johann Frederick by alleging, that he regarded the Landgrave’s step not as a real new marriage but as mere concubinage. The fact is, however, he was sufficiently well informed by Bucer in Dec. 1539, i.e. from the very beginning, learnt further details two months later from the Landgrave’s own lips, and declared himself “satisfied with everything.” When, later, the Elector began to take an unfavourable view of the business, Philip wrote to Bucer (July 24, 1540), pointing out that he had nevertheless sent his representative to the wedding. It is, however, true that the Elector had all along been against any making public of so compromising an affair and had backed up his theologians when they urged the Landgrave to deny it.[671] There is no more ground for crediting Johann Frederick with “strictness of morals” than for saying that the Elector Frederick the Wise (1486-1525), under whose reign Lutheranism took root in the land, was upright and truthful in his dealings with the Pope and the Empire. The diplomatic artifices by which the latter protected Luther whilst pretending not to do so, the dissembling and double-dealing of his policy throws a slur on the memory of one who was a powerful patron of Lutheranism. Even in Köstlin-Kawerau[672] we find his behaviour characterised as “one long subterfuge, seeing, that, whilst giving Luther a free hand, he persisted in making out that Luther’s cause was not his”; his declaration, that “it did not become him as a layman to decide in such a controversy,” is rightly branded as misleading.