In Catholic literature, nevertheless, even down to the present day, we often find Melanchthon quoted as having said to his mother, speaking of the relative value of the old and the new religion: “_Hæc plausibilior, illa securior_; Lutheranism is the more popular, but Catholicism is the safer.”[1015] This story concerning Melanchthon assumed various forms as time went on. We must dismiss the version circulated by Florimond de Raemond in 1605, to the effect that the words had been spoken by Melanchthon on his death-bed to his mother who had remained a Catholic, when the latter adjured him to tell her the truth;[1016] his mother, as a matter of fact, died at her home at Bretten in the Lower Palatinate long before her son, in 1529, slightly before July 24, being then in her fifty-third year.[1017] Nor is there much to be said in favour of another version of the above story which has it that Melanchthon’s mother, after having been persuaded by him to come over, visited him in great distress of mind, and received from him the above reply. Melanchthon called on her at Bretten in May, 1524, during his stay in his native place, and _may_ have done so again in 1529 in the spring, when attending the Diet of Spires. A passage in his correspondence construed as referring to this visit is by no means clear,[1018] though the illness and death of his mother would seem to make such a flying visit likely. On a third occasion Melanchthon went to Bretten in the autumn of 1536. We shall first see what Protestant writers have to say of the supposed conversation with the mother. K. Ed. Förstemann, who, in 1830,[1019] dealt with the family records of the Schwarzerd family, says briefly of the matter: “Strobel was wrong in declaring this story to be utterly devoid of historical foundation.”[1020] C. G. Strobel, in his “_Melanchthoniana_” (1771), had expressed his disbelief in the tale under the then widespread form, according to which Melanchthon had spoken the words, when visiting his dying mother in 1529; he had been much shocked to hear it told in rhetorical style by M. A. J. Bose of Wittenberg in a panegyric on Melanchthon. Bose, whose leanings were towards the Broad School, had cited the story approvingly as an instance of Melanchthon’s large-mindedness in religion.[1021] Against the account Strobel alleges several _a priori_ objections of no great value; his best argument really was that there was no authority for it.