she suffered less than her neighbours--Rothenburg for example. But the new-found spiritual freedom preached from Lutheran pulpits was likely to be misinterpreted by the lower classes in the town, as it had been by the peasants outside, and construed into temporal licence. The Council, therefore, whilst striving not to cause any irritation, had to take strong measures to repress the outbreaks which occurred within the walls, when the peasants, whom Götz von Berlichingen had joined, were ravaging and rioting through the country in their barbarous struggle for emancipation. First of all the Council very wisely expelled Thomas Münzer, the mad, well-meaning fanatic and agitator, and then promised the peasants to remain neutral, as long as they did not ravage her territory or tamper with her citizens. Still, for a few months, Nuremberg was in imminent danger. She might have fallen into the hands of the rebels at any moment in the May of this year (1525). The Council, realising the peril, remitted some of the tithes, as a sop to the peasants, and sent urgent appeals for aid to the Swabian League. But the thunder-cloud passed by without breaking over Nuremberg, and she, to her credit be it recorded, when the revolt was crushed, was not slow to speak on behalf of towns like Rothenburg which had taken the side of the peasants. The result of her intervention was to preserve for us the walls and fortifications of Rothenburg. The illustration shows the towers and gateways there which recall the White Tower and Lauferschlagthurm at Nuremberg. In the later developments of the Protestant revolution, we find Willibald Pirkheimer warmly supporting Luther with his pen, when Zwingle, denying the Real Presence, treated the Sacrament as symbolic, and was violently denounced by Luther for this view. Pirkheimer, however, was no blind follower of Luther. He, remembering his sister's case, thought the monasteries and convents too hardly treated, and he saw, what Luther failed to see, that the peasant risings were the inevitable results of such times of upheaval and repression. He grew soured and disappointed with Luther. Like Scheurl, and, as he says (1528)-- "Like Durer, I was at first a good Lutheran. We hoped things would be better than in the Roman Church, but the Lutherans are worse. The former were hypocrites: the latter openly live disgraceful lives. For Justification by Faith alone is not possible. Without works faith is dead. Luther, with his bold, petulant tongue, has either fallen under a delusion, or else is being led astray by the Evil One."