I neither can nor will relate all the many and great dangers to which I am hourly exposed. You won't believe me tmtil (may God prevent it!) I am stoned or torn to pieces by these people, who, if they meet me on the street, always put their hands to their swords or grind their teeth, and, with a Ger- man curse, threaten me with death. Only yesterday the Bishop of Sion^ told me that whenever I crossed the square in front of his house his people adopted this attitude. Mind- ful of what may happen, I now commend my soul to God's mercy, and ask from his Holiness full absolution, and com- mend my brothers and servants who have to suffer with me, to your Lordship's grace.
Finally, I urgently request your Lordship to answer the questions raised in the enclosed letter,* which are of great importance for the pacification of this rebellion. For the danger is so great that if the good Emperor had only shown the least indecision, not to mention the obstacles that he might have put in our way, we should have lost, and the whole of Germany would have fallen away from the Roman See. . . .
395. RUDOLPH AGRICOLA TO VADIAN AT ST. GALL.
Vadianische Brief sammlung, ii. 338. Cracow, February 8, 1521.
Rudolph Agricola (Baumann, not to be confounded with the elder Rudolph Agricola (Hausmann) of Heidelberg), of Wasserburg, went to Cracow before 1500, where he studied classics and mathematics. From 1515 to 1518 he was at Vienna, then he returned to Cracow, where he died in 1521.
. . . Bovillus* writes me from Wittenberg how Luther trixmiphs, how evangelic he is, how the Pope longs to have Luther taken bound by the legates to Rome and all his books burned, how Frederic protects the man, and how Luther in the presence of a great concourse of people annihilated and burned that great sea of litigious strife, the Canon Law, Until I can be with you, may God grant me my prayer ! Write me anything that you desire your friends to know, if I, who am so devoted to you, may call myself one. Philip Melanch- thon, that great master of Greek and Latin, Luther's Achates,
^Matthew Schinner. •February 6.
- Lewis Oechslin of Schafniausen, mentioned several times in the Vadianische
Brief tammlung, otherwise unknown to me.
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