{240} A group to take up with the Wittenberg professor's doctrines were the Augustinians, many of whom had been in close relations with the Saxon friaries. One of them, James Probst, had been prior of Wittenberg where he learned to know Luther well [Sidenote: 1515] and when he became prior of the convent at Antwerp he started a rousing propaganda in favor of the reform. [Sidenote: 1518] Another Augustinian, Henry of Zuetphen, made his friary at Dordrecht the center of a Lutheran movement. Hoen at the Hague, Hinne Rode at Utrecht, Gerard Lister at Zwolle, Melchior Miritzsch at Ghent, were soon in correspondence with Luther and became missionaries of his faith. His books, which circulated among the learned in Latin, were some of them translated into Dutch as early as 1520. The German commercial colony at Antwerp was another channel for the infiltration of the Lutheran gospel. [Sidenote: 1520-1] The many travelers, among them Albert Duerer, brought with them tidings of the revolt and sowed its seeds in the soil of Flanders and Holland. Singularly enough, the colony of Portuguese Jews, the Marranos as they were called, became, if not converts, at least active agents in the dissemination of Lutheran works. [Sidenote: Catholic answers] A vigorous counter-propaganda was at once started by the partisans of the pope. This was directed against both Erasmus and Luther and consisted largely, according to the reports of the former, in the most violent invective. Nicholas of Egmont, "a man with a white pall but a black heart" stormed in the pulpit against the new heretics. Another man interspersed a sermon on charity with objurgations against those whom he called "geese, asses, stocks, and Antichrists." [Sidenote: 1533] One Dominican said he wished he could fasten his teeth in Luther's throat, for he would not fear to go to the Lord's supper with that blood on his {241} mouth. It was at Antwerp, a little later, that were first coined, or at least first printed, the so celebrated epigrams that Erasmus was Luther's father, that Erasmus had laid the eggs and Luther had hatched the chickens, and that Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Erasmus were the four soldiers who had crucified Christ. The principal literary opposition to the new doctrines came from the University of Louvain. Luther's works were condemned by Cologne, and this sentence was ratified by Louvain. [Sidenote: August 30, 1519] A number of the leading professors wrote against him, [Sidenote: November 7] among them the ex-professor Adrian of Utrecht, recently created Bishop of Tortosa and cardinal, and soon to be pope.