"I envy you your fame, you murderer," he wrote. "A year will be named for you, and there shall be a day set off for you. Future generations shall read, for those who are born this year, that they were born in the year stained by the ineffaceable shame of Germany. You will come into the calendar, scoundrel. You will enrich history. Your deed is immortal, and you will be remembered in all future time. You have had your ambition, and you shall never be forgotten."
This struggle lasted long. Finally, after many appeals, the German nobles rose in arms and besieged Stuttgart, and Duke Ulrich was driven from the land he had disgraced.
[Illustration: Ulrich von Hutten.]
Again Hutten visited Italy, this time by a partial reconciliation with his father, who would overlook his failure to become a priest if he would study law at Rome. At about this time Luther visited Rome. He came, at first, in a spirit of reverence; but, at last, he wrote: "Wenn es gibt eine Hölle, Roma ist darauf gebant." ("If there is a hell, Rome is built on it.")
The impression on Hutten was scarcely less vivid. Little by little he began to see in the Pope of Rome a criminal greater that Professor Lötz, greater than Duke Ulrich, one who could devour not one cousin only, but the whole German people and nation. "For three hundred years," said he, "the Pope and the schoolmen have been covering the teachings of Christ with a mass of superstitious ceremonies and wicked books." These feelings were poured out in an appeal to the German rulers to shake off the yoke, and no longer send their money to "Simon of Rome."
Hutten's friends tried to quiet him. He was a man not of free thought only, but of free speech, and knew no concealment. Milder men in those times, as later Melancthon and Erasmus, were full of admiration of Hutten, and valued his skill and force. But they were afraid of him, and fearful always that the best of causes should be wrecked in his hands.
At this time, at the age of twenty-five, Hutten is described as a small, thin man, of homely features, with blonde hair and black beard. His pale face wore a severe, almost wild, expression. His speech was sharp, often terrible. Yet with those whom he loved and respected his voice had a frank and winning charm. He had but few friends, but they were fast ones. His personal character, so far as records go, was singularly pure, and not often in his writings does he strike a coarse or unclean note.
In these days, the two most learned men in Germany were Erasmus and Reuchlin. They were leaders of the Humanists, skilled in Greek, and even in the Hebrew tongue, and were called by Hutten "the two eyes of Germany." A Jew named Pfefferkorn, who had become converted to Christianity, was filled with an unholy zeal against his fellow-Jews who had not been converted. Among other things, he asked an edict from the Emperor that all Jewish books in Germany should be destroyed. Reuchlin was a Hebrew scholar. He had written a Hebrew grammar, and was learned in the Old Testament, as well as in the Talmud, and other deposits of the ancient lore of the rabbis. The Emperor referred Pfefferkorn's request to Reuchlin for his opinion. Reuchlin decided that there was no valid reason for the destruction of any of the ancient Jewish writings, and only of such modern ones as might be decided by competent scholars to be hostile to Christianity.