I heard and saw--things wonderful to tell of and describe. While I was still young I saw a bright light in the gloom. While I was still young my life also underwent a change. What does the great bell Benedicta in the church of Saint Sebaldus want with its solemn tolling? What do the other bells in all the belltowers of my home town want by ringing so? I can hear their tones, both near and far, intermingle with each other. I can hear my brothers and sisters making their way through streets and marketplaces singing psalms and plaintive hymns. I hear the people tramp like the roar of a faraway river breaking its banks. To the churchyard of Saint Sebaldus, to the sound of its iron clapper voice they stream as one: Vox ego sum vitae, voco vos, orate, venite! (I am the voice of life, I am calling you to pray, come!) Friar Johannes Capistranus is standing in the stone pulpit outside the walls of the church to preach about the pagan victory, the fall of the Eastern Empire, the coming of the Anti-Christ and the end of the world. His call to repentance has been tolled out by all the bells. In all the towns through which he has passed people have lit fires and thrown on them with cries and sobs their ephemeral vain things: dice and board games, little bells and sledges, quilted hoods and pointed shoes. This they will do today too in Nuremberg, rid themselves a hundredfold of aids to sensuality and find themselves beset by courtly love and the pride of life yet again tomorrow as they were yesterday and are today. Truly this zealous Franciscan friar speaks well. The whole of Christendom, to whom he addresses himself, has learnt that. He does not speak to bandy words with the foolish and the weak. He tugs at the heartstrings of the strongest man. He spares no-one. He grips men in armour so that even their iron breastplates become no more than the flimsy garment that a woman wears. He seizes them and those who wear crowns on their helmets must get down on their knees like the women who have come here from the cradles of their children, like the young women who have been weaving garlands and gathering bunches of flowers, who have come here from their spindles and their looms. Brother Johannes speaks well. He drowns out the sound of the bells, but how could he drown out the gentle voice that once spoke to me?