[1044] Cp. also Janssen. Ibid., 4, p. 301 f.: “The Erfurt preachers had for years long been among the most violent agitators in town and country.... On the news of the insurrection in Swabia and Franconia several gatherings of peasants were held in the Erfurt district in the spring, 1525,” etc.
[1045] Eitner, p. 33 f., pp. 43, 48.
[1046] Eitner, p. 68. According to Eitner we learn from local sources, “that, in view of the state of affairs, the council thought it the most prudent course to do as in 1521, and to set the peasants and the citizens against the common foe, the clergy of Mayence, in order thus to satisfy the coarser instincts of the mob and to divert their thoughts from dangerous projects.”
[1047] Ibid., p. 98.
[1048] Ibid., p. 70, n. 1.
[1049] Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Engl. trans.), 4, p. 304.
[1050] Eitner, p. 85 f.
[1051] “The peasant rising in the neighbourhood of Erfurt did nothing but harm [from the material point of view]. A phase in the business decay of the once flourishing community, a desperate attempt to mend what was wrong by what was worse, it merely sapped the strength of the town and so prepared the way for the event which some hundred and forty years later robbed her for ever of her political independence” (Eitner, ibid., p. 108).
[1052] It is thus that Melanchthon describes the object of the invitation in a letter to Camerarius of May 19, 1525, “Corp. reform.,” 1, p. 744.
[1053] It is true that the council declared on this occasion “that it was by no means its mind, desire or intention to oppress the people without necessity, contrary to evangelical equity and right, or to refuse them anything which it was its duty to permit or tolerate.” Eitner, ibid., 2, p. 93, where he remarks: “It will probably be best not to attribute any duplicity to the councillors.”