At the source of the Itz, where the mountains decline in high terraces towards the Main, lies the old village of Stelzen, a holy place even in heathen times. Close to the church, from the corner of a spacious cavern, overshadowed by primeval beech and lime trees, springs up a miraculous well; near the well, before the Reformation, stood a chapel to the Holy Virgin, and many a time did hundreds of counts and noblemen, with numberless other people, flock together there as pilgrims. The village was entirely burnt down at Michaelmas, 1632, only the church, the school, and shepherd's hut remained standing. The pastor, Nicholas Schubert, wrote to the authorities in the winter as follows: "I have saved nothing but my eight poor, little, naked, hungry children. I continue to dwell _ex mandato_ in the very old, and on account of the want of a chimney, a floor and so forth, dangerous school-house, where I can neither attend to my studies, nor do anything for my support. For I have neither food nor clothes, _longe enim plura deficiunt_. Given at my castle of misery, Stelzen, 1633. Your willing servant, and obedient poor burnt-out pastor, Nicholas Schubert." Shortly he was removed. His successor likewise was pillaged, and stabbed in the left hip with a rapier; he too was removed; a second successor also was unable to maintain himself there. After that, the parsonage house was uninhabited for fifteen years, but the neighbouring pastor, Götz of Sachsendorf, came every third Sunday, and performed service in the ruined village. For two years there came no pence to the church coffers. At last, in 1647, the church was entirely burned to the bare walls. Gregory Ewald was pastor at Königsberg; in 1632, Tilly burnt down the city, and Ewald was taken prisoner in a vineyard by two Croats, and robbed; when they could not withdraw a gold ring from his finger they prepared to cut off the finger, but at last had so much consideration that they took only the skin with the ring, and demanded a thousand dollars ransom. Ewald released himself by this stratagem; he took the simple soldier, who was left with him to fetch the ransom, first to the door of a cellar in order to give him a drink of wine, and under the pretext of fetching the key he escaped. In his great necessity he took an appointment as Swedish army chaplain, and after the battle of Nördlingen, lived as an exile for a year in a foreign country, from thence he returned to his ruined parish, where for some years he and his family endured want and misery.