[614] Magna Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum (Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1618), Rainerii Socchoni, Summa, c. vii.
[615] Egli, Die Züricher Wiedertäufer (Zurich, 1878), p. 96.
[616] Folio 158b of the Augsburg edition of 1565.
[617] The Swiss Anabaptists have been selected because we have very full contemporary documentary evidence in their case. Cf. Egli, Actensammlung zur Geschicht der Züricher Reformation (Zurich, 1879); Die Zuricher Wiedertäufer (Zurich, 1878); Die St. Gallen Wiedertäufer (Zurich).
The documentary evidence given in Egli’s works has been condensed and summarised by H. S. Burrage, A History of the Anabaptists in Switzerland (Philadelphia, 1881).
[618] The scene is described in Beck, Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Österreich-Ungarn von 1526 bis 1785 (Vienna, 1883).
[619] The history of the persecution in the Tyrol is to be found in J. Loserth, Anabaptismus in Tirol; and in Kirchmayr, Denkwürdigkeiten seiner Zeit, 1519-53, pt. i. in Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, i. 417-534.
[620] Cornelius, Geschichte des Münsterischen Aufruhrs (Leipzig, 1855), ii. 58.
[621] The disease was known as the English plague or the sweating sickness. It is thus described by Hecker (Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 181): “It was violent inflammatory fever, which, after a short rigour, prostrated the powers as with a blow; and amidst painful oppression at the stomach, headache, and lethargic stupor, suffused the whole body with fœtid perspiration. All this took place within the course of a few hours, and the crisis was always over within the space of a day and a night. The internal heat that the patient suffered was intolerable, yet every refrigerant was death.”
[622] Rothmann was born at Stadtlohn, and received the rudiments of education in the village school there; a relation sent him to the Gymnasium at Münster; he studied afterwards at Mainz, where he received the degree of M.A.; he was made chaplain in the St. Maurice church at Münster about 1525.