God give us all a Christian mind, and especially to the Christian nobility of the German nation a right spiritual courage to do the best that can be done for the poor Church. Amen.
Wittenberg, 1520.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Unserm furnchmen nach. See Introduction, p. 57.
[2] An ironical comparison of the monks' cowl and tonsure with the headgear of the jester.
[3] i. e., Which one turns out to be the real fool.
[4] The proverb ran, Monachus semper praesens, "a monk is always there." See Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörterlexicon, under Mönch, No. 130.
[5] Evidently a reference to the Gravamina of the German Nation; see Gebhardt, Die Grav. der Deutschen Nation, Breslau, 1895.
[6] Councils of the Church, especially those of Constance (1414-18), and of Basel (1431-39).
[7] Charles V. was elected Emperor in 1519, when but twenty years of age. Hutten expresses his "hopes of good" from Charles in Vadiscus (Böcking, IV, 156).