At Zerbst, in 1524, images and church fittings were destroyed, part of these being used to “keep up the fire for the brewing of the beer”;[776] stone sculptures were mutilated and then used in the construction of the Zerbst Town-Hall, whence they were brought to light at a much later date, when a portion of the building was demolished. The statues, headless, indeed, but still gleaming with gold and colours, gave, as a narrator of the find said, “an insight into the horrors of the iconoclasm which had run riot in the neighbouring churches.”[777]
The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778] Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779] From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells, one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780]
When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.”
This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781]
During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.
In Jan., 1547, the Elector caused all the chalices, monstrances, episcopal crosses and other valuables that still remained at Halle and either were the property of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Johann Albert, or had been presented to the place by him, to be brought to Eisleben and either sold or coined. The Elector’s men-at-arms and the mob destroyed the pictures and statues in the Dominican and Franciscan friaries. When, shortly after this, Merseburg, as well as Magdeburg and Halberstadt, was occupied by the Saxon troops, the leaders robbed the Cathedral church (of Merseburg) of its oldest and most valuable art treasures, amongst which was the golden table which the Emperor Henry II had presented to it.[782]
Magdeburg was the rallying-place of Lutheran zealots, such as Flacius Illyricus, and was even called the “chancery of God and His Christ,” by Aquila in a letter to Duke Albert of Prussia;[783] before it was besieged in the Emperor’s name by Maurice of Saxony and was yet under the rule of a Council banned by the Empire, it passed through a period of wild outrage directed against the Catholic churches and convents, both within and outside the walls. The appeal addressed by the cathedral Chapter on Aug. 15, 1550, to the Estates of the Empire assembled at Augsburg gives the details.[784] The town, “for the protection of the true Christian religion and holy Evangel,” laid violent hands on the rich property of the churches and cloisters, and committed execrable atrocities against defenceless clerics. Bodies were exhumed in the churches and cemeteries. Never, so the account declares, would the Turks have acted with such barbarity. Even the tomb of the Emperor Otto, the founder of the archdiocese, was, so the Canons relate, “inhumanly and wantonly broken open and desecrated with great uproar.”
Several thousand men set out from the town for the monastery of Hamersleben, situated in the diocese of Halberstadt. They forced their way into the church one Sunday during Divine service, wounded or slaughtered the officiating priests, trampled under foot the Sacred Host and ransacked church and monastery. Among the images and works of art destroyed was some magnificent stained glass depicting the Way of the Cross. No less than 150 waggons bore away the plunder to Magdeburg, accompanied by the mob, who in mockery had decked themselves out in the Mass vestments and habits of the monks.[785]
Hans, Margrave of Brandenburg-Küstrin, was one who had war against the Catholic clergy much at heart. In a letter to the Elector Maurice he spoke of the clergy as “priests of Baal and children of the devil.” It was a proof of his Evangelical zeal, that, on July 15, 1551, he ordered the church of St. Mary at Görlitz to be pillaged and destroyed by Johann von Minckwitz. All the altars, images and carvings were hacked to pieces, all the costly treasures stolen. Minckwitz had great difficulty in rescuing the treasures from the hands of a drunken mob of peasants who were helping in the work, and conveying them safely to the Margrave at Küstrin.[786]
In the spring of 1552, when Maurice of Saxony levied a heavy fine on the town of Nuremberg for having revolted against the Emperor, the magistrates sought to indemnify themselves by taking nearly 900 lbs. weight of gold and silver treasures out of the churches of Our Lady, St. Lawrence and St. Sebaldus and ordering them to be melted down or sold.[787]