The jurist Scheurl writes from Nuremberg to Cardinal Campeggi, March 15, 1524: “Every common man is now asking for books or pamphlets and more reading is being done in a day than heretofore in a year.”[95] In Nuremberg, as in other towns, it became the practice to read the books of Luther out loud in the market place. Erasmus complains, in 1523, that since the publication of the German New Testament, the whole book-trade seems to be absorbed with the writings of Luther, and to be interested in giving attention to nothing else. He says, further, that it is very difficult to find in Germany publishers willing to place their imprint upon books written in behalf of the Papacy. As an example of the kind of interest caused by the writings of Luther, it is recorded that the magistrates of Bremen sent a bookseller to Wittenberg for the purpose of purchasing for their official use a set of Luther’s works. The citizens of Speyer are described as having the books read to them at supper, and as making transcripts of the texts. In hundreds of towns throughout Germany, Luther’s writings were brought to the notice of the people by means of the very edict which had for its purpose their final suppression, and after the Diet of Worms, the demand for them rapidly increased. The preacher Matthaeus Zell writes from Strasburg, in 1523: “The Lutheran books are for sale here in the market-place immediately beneath the edicts of the emperor and of the pope declaring them to be prohibited.” With the beginning of the 13th century, it was realised that the newly organised universities had become the centres of intellectual activity. The popes undertook promptly the institution of machinery for the supervision of the work done in the universities and of the literary productions that came from the instructors. It was the contention of the papal representatives that the appointments of the university officials having to do directly with the work of multiplying books, must rest with the theological faculty, that is to say with the immediate representatives of the Church. This contention was, in the main, sustained in such university centres as Bologna, Paris, Prague, Vienna, and Cologne. A brief, issued in 1479 by Sixtus IV, charges the rectors and the deacons of the university with the responsibility of censorship. The edict in 1486 by Berthold, Archbishop of Mayence, is to be classed not as an ecclesiastical act but as an expression of authority of a German prince. The Archbishop asserted the right on behalf not of the Roman Church but of his State. The censorship exercised by the University of Cologne terminated with the close of the 15th century. The representative of the Archbishop claimed authority, on the strength of the Bull issued in 1486 by Innocent VIII, directed against the printers of pernicious books, to take into his own hands the direction of censorship of the entire principality. [Sidenote: Early Printers and the Church]