[250] The Cardinal Morone, Archbishop of Modena, one of the most merciless persecutors of the Reformed in Italy.
[251] Henry of Brunswick maintained a very lively paper war against the Protestant princes of Germany before attacking them more openly. Luther replied to those attacks by one of his most virulent pamphlets, Hans Wurst, a name which the Germans use to designate their harlequin.—See Seckendorf, lib. iii. par. 93.
[252] George Martinuzzi, tutor of the young King of Hungary, John Sigismund.
[253] After the death of King Louis II. the crown of Hungary was long disputed between Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V., and John Zapoli. The treaty of Great Waradin (24th February 1538) guarantied the throne to the latter, but without reversion to his descendants. He died in 1541, leaving an infant in the cradle as his heir. His widow, yielding to the advice of George Martinuzzi, refused to cede the crown to Ferdinand, and called the Turks into Hungary.
[254] Sigismund I., King of Poland, (1506-1548.) This prince was continually engaged in strife with the Tartars of the Crimea, the Moldavians, and the Russians.
[255] An allusion to the state of bigamy in which the Landgrave of Hesse was then living, with the authorization of Luther, of Melanchthon, and of Bucer. The explanations given by Seckendorf (lib. iii. par. 79, addit. 3) are altogether ineffectual to clear up this affair—one of the scandals of the Reformation in Germany.
[256] There is little known concerning M. de Richebourg. It appears from the letter of the Reformer that he had been for some years separated from his sons Charles and Louis, who had repaired to Strasbourg, probably to finish their education. The plague, which raged in Alsace, carried off Louis, the younger of the two brothers, and his preceptor, both tenderly beloved by Calvin, who, from Ratisbon, where the sad intelligence had reached him, wrote this letter of Christian consolation to M. de Richebourg.
[257] Claude Ferey, so much regretted by Calvin, was tutor to the sons of M. de Richebourg, and a very distinguished professor of Strasbourg.
[258] Idelette de Bure, the wife of Calvin, Antony, his brother, and Marie, his sister, had quitted Strasbourg, to avoid the infection of the plague.
[259] One of the numerous French refugees, whom persecution had driven into Switzerland. He was a member of the Church at Neuchatel.