Amongst the objects taken, were: a silver censer in the shape of a small boat, the silver caskets containing the heads of Saints Severus, Vincentia and Innocentia, the silver reliquary with the bones of SS. Eobanus and Adolarius in which they were carried in solemn procession every seven years. This art-treasure which belonged to St. Mary’s, was, not long after, melted down by the town-council when pressed for money, “and cast into bars which were taken to the mint at Weimar.” The silver pennies minted from them were later on called coffin pennies. Other valuables which the Council had taken in charge were put up for auction secretly, without their owners learning anything of the matter. “The prebendaries were well-justified in urging,” writes the Protestant historian who has collected these data, “as against these high-handed proceedings that the Council should first have laid hands on the valuables belonging to the burghers, or at the very least have summoned the rightful owners to be present at the sale of their property, in order that they might make a note of the prices obtained and thus be able to claim compensation later. The Council suffered a moral set-back, while at the same time reaping no appreciable material advantage.”[761] Not only the Council but the peasants too, led by the Lutheran preachers, were greatly to blame for the destruction of art treasures wrought at Erfurt in that same year. When, in order to put an end to the rule over the town of the Elector, Albert of Brandenburg, they stormed the so-called Mainzer Hof at Erfurt, “all the jewels, gold, silver and valuable household stuff were carried off.” Shortly after “the peasants, thanks to their sharpness, managed to unearth a pastoral staff in silver, worth 300 florins [in the then currency], which had been concealed in the privy attached to the room of the master cook to save it from the greed of the robbers.”[762] At the Mainzer Hof they removed all monumental tablets, pictures and statues as well as the elaborate coats of arms bearing witness to the Archbishop’s sovereignty. A stone effigy of St. Martin which stood in front of the Rathaus and the ancient symbols of the sovereignty of Mayence were pulled down and smashed to bits. In place of these they scrawled on the new stone edifice which had been erected there another coat of arms in chalk and charcoal, having a plough, coulter and hoe in the shield and in the field a horse-shoe. “During all this Adolarius Huttner [with Eberlin of Günzburg, the apostate Franciscan] and other Lutheran preachers were going to and fro amongst them.” The whole row of priests’ houses standing alongside the torrent was searched and the valuables plundered.[763] “The people of Erfurt did almost as much damage as the peasants.”[764]