Being in Bavaria, the religion of the Protestant parishes was Lutheran, and at Muggendorf the church is furnished with a crucifix and candles on the altar, as well as with processional crosses and faded banners that are never used, and have no significance to the worshippers. At Nürnberg the churches are a veritable Pompeii of Mediævalism. Although the religion is changed, there has been no iconoclasm, and, happily, no invasion of Rococo or Baroque. Every church is left as it was when the last priest said his last Mass at the altar.
At S. Lorenz, the crucifix is on the altar, and six candles always lighted for the Lutheran service; angels as well stand on the supports of the ridell curtains sustaining more candles. From the vault sustained by chains is a huge sculptured, gilt and coloured Assumption of Our Lady. Above the side altars are reliquaries still containing bones. Every altar is spread with white linen ready for Mass, which is never said. Of these side altars there are eighteen. The bells call every morning to worship, but the doors are locked, and are only opened by the sacristan to show a stranger round, for a fee. At S. Sebaldus the perpetual light still burns before the Sacramentshäuslein, but the Tabernacle contains nothing but cobwebs.
The sole church in Nürnberg given up to the Catholics is the Liebfrau Kirche, and in that the crowd is so packed that it is almost impossible to obtain standing room unless one goes to it half an hour before Mass begins, whereas the Protestant churches are all but empty. What congregations gathered there consist mainly of children and their attendants, and a few old women.
The Lutheran service is much like our English Ante-communion. The pastor is in black with a ruff about his neck. He stands in the midst before the altar, and proceeds with prayers, collect, epistle and Gospel, to the sermon, and that concludes the performance.
The Franconian Switzerland presents the—to English visitors—extraordinary spectacle of adjoining villages being occupied by inhabitants of different religions. Each little territory, at the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War, was required by agreement to conform itself to the religion of its feudal lord. A walk up the Wiesent from Muggendorf brings one to Gossweinstein with a castle on the high tableland above the gorge. Here the
