My brother Johannes had been admitted magister--the first of thirteen--at Wittemberg, and on leaving he brought with him a letter from Dr. Luther to my father, who, in consequence of the Bruser-Leveling lawsuit, had stayed away for many years from the Communion table. The letter was couched as follows: "To the honourable guildmaster, Nicholas Sastrow, my good friend: Grace and peace be with you. Your dear son, magister Johannes, after having expressed to me his sorrow at your having kept away for many years from the Holy Communion table--which absence is calculated to create a bad example--has requested me to rescue you from that dangerous path. Not one hour of our lives in reality belongs to ourselves. His filial solicitude, therefore, induced me to send you these present lines. Let me exhort you as a Christian, as a brother, according to the precept of Christ, to change your resolution, and well to remember the much greater sufferings of the Son of God, who forgave His executioners. Bear in mind that at your last hour you will be bound to forgive, as a brigand who is tied to the gallows forgives. Wait for the decision of the court before whom your suit is pending, but do not forget that nothing prevents you from participating in the Holy Supper. If it were otherwise I myself and our princes would have to remain away from the Holy Board until our differences with the papists be settled. Leave the matter in the hands of the law, and say to yourself for the comfort of your conscience: 'It is the judge's place to decide where lies the right; meanwhile, I forgive those who have wronged me and I will partake of the Holy Communion.' You consider yourself as having been wronged. You have had recourse to the courts; it is they who shall decide. Nothing can be more simple. Take in a friendly spirit this exhortation which was prompted to me at the instance of your son. May God watch over you, Amen. Wednesday after Miser. Dni. 1540. Martinus Luther."
I trust my descendants will transmit religiously from generation to generation the autograph of the saintly man to whom the whole world owes gratitude and affection. Together with this letter, and as a proof of the wise outlay of the paternal allowance, my brother brought home with him a number of his poemata printed in a volume. My parents' means not admitting of his being maintained in a foreign land, he spent nearly four years at home, studying all the while. Besides the Progymnasmata quaedam, issued from the Lubeck press in 1538, he published in 1542 at Rostock an Elegia de officio principis dedicated to Duke Magnus of Mecklenberg; and in the same year at Lubeck, a Querela de Ecclesia and the Epicidion Martyris Christi Doctoris Ruberti Barns, which caused a good deal of trouble both to him and his printer.[[25]]
At the advice of my brother, my parents sent me to study at Rostock with Arnoldus Burenius and Henricus Lingensis. My brother, who became intimately acquainted with the latter, wrote to him that I had already gone through the ceremony of initiation; but the students found out that since then I had gone back to school at Stralsund, and each day my entrance at the lectorium caused a fearful tumult.[[26]] The depositor having pulled me by my cloak, I hurled a large inkstand which I happened to have in my hand at him. The ink soaked his long grey mantle with black fastenings, a fashionable garment of the time. Verily, I got my reward, when, for the sake of peace, I submitted a second time to the ordeal. It literally rained blows. The depositor pressed my upper lip with his wooden razor and the wound was a long while healing, for no sooner did it close up than my food, and, above all, salted things inflamed it once more.
The two magistri directed in common the purses (scholarships or otherwise) of the Arnsburg, which was the most numerous, as it consisted of thirty students. We took our meals at Jacob Broecker's, and we paid sixteen florins per annum for our breakfast and two other meals, plus, in the summer afternoons, some curdled milk or other refreshments.
At the end of two years my parents complained of the expense involved in my stay at Rostock; they were, moreover, displeased at my leaning towards theology. In fact, I felt neither old enough nor sufficiently advanced in learning to choose between the different faculties, but being unwilling to relinquish my studies I exposed my difficult position to my tutors, who at once decided to forego their fees, and also induced our host Broecker to feed me for eight florins per annum.
Truly, I had to lay the table, attend at meals, to clear it, and in addition to this to look after young Broecker, who was about my size and who was afterwards confined at Ribbenitz, to dress and undress him, to clean his shoes and to arrange his books. On the other hand, there were certain services to be rendered to magister H. Lingenfis. I had to brush his shoeleather, make his bed, keep his room heated, accompany him to church and to other places, and to carry his lantern in winter. It seemed very hard to me at first not to be served any longer, and not to sit down to meals with my college chums, but there was no help for it.
Besides, we had fallen into good hands. Arnoldus Burenius read us twice Cicero's Offices, which he interpreted in a thoroughly artistic manner, and afterwards the orations pro Milone, pro rege Deiotaro, pro Marco Marcello, pro Roscio Amerino, pro domo sua, and the de Aruspicum responsis, the Epistolae familiares, the long and beautiful chapter ad Quintum fratrem, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, etc. His colleague expounded Terence, the Dialectica Molleri, even the Sphaera Joannis de Sacrobusto, the Theoriae planetarum, the Computum ecclesiasticum Spangenbergii, the libellus de Anima Philippi, and finally he presided over useful exercitia styli et disputationum.
My bedroom fellows were Franz von Stetten and Johannes Vegesack, the nephew of the Bishop of Dorpat, who kept him on a grand footing, and allowed him the staff of servants of a grand seigneur rather than that of a youngster. Vegesack practised all kind of sword-play, but I have heard that after the death of the bishop, he became a schoolmaster in Livonia. My private tutor, Danquart, coached him in the praecepta grammaticae, gave him themes to treat in German, and corrected his exercises.
The money we received from our parents had to be handed to our tutor Lingenfis; he gave it back to us as we needed it. We were bound to make notes of even our most trifling expenses. My tutors showed much interest in me, either out of consideration for my brother or because of my own unwearied application. I, on the other hand; served them zealously and faithfully, and was always at their bidding. The cross looks of my fellow-students, however, suggested the advisability of a change of residence; my brother counselled Greifswald.