[267] The profits of the trading-companies were enormous. The 9 per cent, annually of the Welser (Ehrenberg, Zeitalter der Fugger, I, 195), pales into insignificance beside the 1634 per cent, by which the fortune of the Fuggers grew in twenty-one years (Schulte, Die Fugger in Rom, I, 3). In 1511 a certain Bartholomew Rem invested 900 gulden in the Hochstetter company of Augsburg; by 1517 he claimed 33,000 gulden profit. The company was willing to settle at 26,000, and the resulting litigation caused the figures to become public (Wrede, op. cit., II, 842, note 4; III, pp. 574 ff.). On Luther's view of capitalism see Eck, Introduction to the Sermon von Kaushandlungund Wucher, in Berl. Ed., VII, 494-513.
[268] The Diets of Augsburg (1500) and Cologne (1512) had passed edicts against drunkenness. A committee of the Diet of Worms (1521) recommended that these earlier edicts be reaffirmed (Wrede, op. cit., II, pp. 343 f.), but the Diet adjourned without acting on the recommendation (ibid., 737)
[269] Sie wollen ausbuben, so sich's vielmehr hineinbubt.
[270] Cf. Müller, Luther's theol. Quellen, 1912, ch. I.
[271] In the Confitendi Ratio Luther had set the age for men at eighteen to twenty, or women at fifteen to sixteen years. See Vol. I, p. 100.
[272] Translated in this edition, Vol. I, pp. 184 ff; see especially pp. 266 ff.
[273] These sentences did not appear in the first edition.
[274] See Letter to Staupitz, Vol. I, p. 43.
[275] This "little song" is the Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. See below, pp. 170 ff.