In 1525 the Lutherans at Dantzig took possession of the wealthy church of St. Mary’s, which was renowned for the number of its foundations and had 128 clergy attached to it. A list of the articles confiscated or plundered comprises: ten chalices of gold with precious stones of great value, and as many bejewelled gold patens and ampullae; a ciborium of gold with corals and gems, two gold crosses with gems, an image of the Virgin Mary with four angels in gold, a silver statue of the same, silver statues of the Apostles, four and twenty silver ciboriums, six and forty silver chalices, two dozen of them of silver-gilt, twelve silver and silver-gilt ampullae, eleven ungilt silver ampullae, twenty-three silver vessels, twelve of them being gilt, twelve silver-gilt chalices with lids, twelve silver-gilt crosses with corals and precious stones, two dozen small silver crosses, eight large and ten small silver censers, etc., twelve chasubles in cloth of gold with pearls and gems, twelve of red silk with a gold fringe, besides this eighty-two silk chasubles, twelve cloth-of-gold antependiums with pearls and gems, six costly copes, twelve other silk copes, six and forty albs of gold and silver embroidered flower-pattern, sixty-five other fine albs, eighty-eight costly altar covers, forty-nine gold-embroidered altar cloths, ninety-nine less elaborate altar cloths.[770] When Bugenhagen had secured the triumph of Lutheranism in the town of Brunswick the altars were thrown down, the pictures and statues removed, the chalices and other church vessels melted down and the costly mass vestments sold to the highest bidder at the Rathaus (1528). Bugenhagen, Luther’s closest spiritual colleague, laboured zealously to sweep the churches clean of “every vestige of Popish superstition and idolatry.” Only the collegiate churches of St. Blasius and St. Cyriacus, and the monastery of St. Egidius, of which Duke Henry of Brunswick was patron, remained intact.[771] The wildest outbreak of iconoclasm took place in 1542 in the Duchy of Brunswick, when the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and Landgrave Philip of Hesse occupied the country and proceeded to extirpate the Catholic worship still prevalent there. Within a short while over four hundred churches had been plundered, altars, tabernacles, pictures and sculptures being destroyed in countless numbers.[772]