BASLE.
The provost Nicholas Watteville, whose whole interest bound him to the Roman hierarchy, and who was to be raised to the first vacant bishopric in Switzerland, also renounced his titles, his revenues, and his expectations, that he might preserve an unspotted conscience; and snapping all the bonds by which the popes had endeavoured to entangle him, he entered into the marriage state, established by God from the creation of the world. Nicholas Watteville married Clara May; and about the same time, her sister Margaret, the nun of Königsfeldt, was united to Lucius Tscharner of Coire.[551]
CHAPTER VIII.
Basle—Œcolampadius—He visits Augsburg—Enters a Convent—Retires to Sickingen's Castle—Returns to Basle—Ulrich Hütten—His Plans—Last Effort of Chivalry—Hütten dies at Ufnau.
Thus everything announced the triumphs that the Reformation would soon obtain at Berne. Basle, a city of no less importance, and which was then the Athens of Switzerland, was also arming herself for the great combat that has distinguished the sixteenth century.
ŒCOLAMPADIUS.
Each of the cities of the confederation had its peculiar character. Berne was the city of the great families, and it seemed that the question would be decided by the part adopted by certain of the leading men. At Zurich, the ministers of the Word,—Zwingle, Leo Juda, Myconius, and Schmidt,—carried with them a powerful class of citizens. Lucerne was the city of arms and military capitulations; Basle, of learning and the printing-press. Here Erasmus, the head of the literary republic in the sixteenth century, had taken up his abode; and preferring the liberty he enjoyed in this capital to the flattering invitations of popes and kings, he had become the centre of a numerous concourse of men of letters.
But an humble, meek, and pious man, though in genius far inferior to Erasmus, was destined erelong to exercise in this very city a more powerful influence than that of the prince of the schools. Christopher of Utenheim, bishop of Basle, in concert with Erasmus, was endeavouring to surround himself with men fitted to accomplish a kind of half-way Reformation. With this view he had invited Capito and Œcolampadius to his court. In the latter person there was a taint of monasticism that often annoyed the illustrious philosopher. But Œcolampadius soon became enthusiastically attached to him; and perhaps would have lost all independence in this close intimacy, if Providence had not separated him from his idol. In 1517, he returned to Weinsberg, his native place, where he was soon disgusted with the disorders and profane jests of the priests. He has left us a noble monument of the serious spirit which then animated him, in his celebrated work on The Easter Revels, which appears to have been written about that time.[552]
ŒCOLAMPADIUS IN THE CONVENT.