New regulations concerning the poor, more comprehensive than the former, appeared at Nuremberg in 1522. These deal with the actual needs and are in close touch with the maxims of government and old traditions of the Imperial cities. In them all the earlier charitable, social and police measures are codified: the restriction of begging, the management of the hospitals, the provision of work and tools, advances to artisans in difficulties, granaries for future famines, the distribution of alms, badges for privileged beggars, etc. The whole is crowned by the Bible text, so highly esteemed in the Catholic Middle Ages: “Blessed is he that hath pity on the poor and needy, for the Lord will deliver him in the evil day.” “Our salvation,” so we read when mention is made of the relief funds, “rests solely in keeping and performing the commandments of God which oblige every Christian to give such help and display such fraternal charity towards his neighbour.”[136] At Nuremberg the new teaching had already taken firm footing yet the olden Catholic conception of the meritorious character of almsgiving is nevertheless recognisable in the regulations of 1522.[137] At Strasburg a new system, dating from 1523, for regulating the distribution of the “common alms” was established in harmony with the great traditions of the 15th century, and above all with the spirit and labours of the famous Catholic preacher Geiler of Kaysersberg (†1510). Janssen has given us a fine series of witnesses, from Geiler’s sermons and writings, of the nature at once religious and practical of his exhortations to charity.[138] Charity, he insists, must show itself not merely in the bestowal of temporal goods; it is concerned above all with the “inward and spiritual goods, the milk of sound doctrine, and instruction of the unlearned, the milk of devotion, wisdom and consolation.” He repeatedly exhorts the authorities to stricter regulations on almsgiving. After various improvements had been introduced in the poor law at Strasburg subsequent to 1500, the magistrates—the clergy and the monasteries not having shown themselves equal to their task—issued a new enactment, though even this relied to a great extent on the help of the clergy. The regulations of Augsburg and Nuremberg were the most effectual. It was only later, after the work of Capito, Bucer and Hedio at Strasburg, that, together with the new spirit, changes crept into the traditional poor-law system of the town. All the enactments, dating from late mediæval times prior to the religious innovations, for the poor of the other great German towns, for instance, of Ratisbon (1523), Breslau (1525) and Würzburg (1533) are of a more or less similar character. Thus, thanks to the economic pressure, there was gradually evolved, in the centres of German prosperity and commercial industry, a sober but practical and far-sighted poor-law system.[139]