the Anabaptists. Lord Adam proceeded to enforce his faith with energy and to root out of the town and the surrounding country all who were suspected of heresy.
There were at this time in Nikolsburg and adjacent towns 3720 persons known or reputed to be Anabaptists. A historian of the period records the success of Dietrichstein's efforts to purify the region. Nikolsburg had been the refuge of all sorts of pernicious heretics, who had so flourished as to give the town a bad name everywhere. It had passed into a proverb: "He is from Nikolsburg, therefore he is an Anabaptist." Dietrichstein brought to pass in a few years so great a change that it might be said with equal truth: "He is from Nikolsburg, therefore he is a Roman Catholic and Jesuit Christian."[1]
This is, however, the usual and perhaps pardonable exaggeration of the eulogist. The new lord, like the proverbial new broom, swept clean—as clean as he could—but he did not accomplish so complete an alteration in the character of Nikolsburg
- ↑ Christopher Erhard, in Sampt angetruckten Gespräch, Ingolstadt, 1586, p. 31. Quoted by Loserth, Communismus, p. 55.
