Of the fearful death of his Highness, Duke Philip II. of Pomerania, and of his melancholy but sumptuous burial.
After the before-mentioned festival of the jubilee, it happened that one day Anna Apenborg went to the brew-house, which lay inside the convent walls (it was one of Sidonia's praying days), and there she saw a strange apparition of a three-legged hare. She runs and calls the other sisters; whereupon they all scamper out of their cells, and down the steps, to see the miracle, and behold, there sits the three-legged hare; but when Agnes Kleist took off her slipper, and threw it at the devil's sprite, my hare is off, and never a trace of him could be found again in the whole brew-house or in the whole convent court. Hereat the nuns shuddered, and each virgin has her opinion on the matter, but speaks it not; for just then, too, comes Sidonia forth, with old Wolde and the cat, and the three begin their devil's dance, while the cat squalls and wails, and the old witch-hag screams her usual hell psalm:—
"Also kleien und also kratzen,
Meine Hunde und meine Katzen."
Next day, however, the poor virgins heard, to their deep sorrow, what the three-legged hare betokened even as they had suspected; for the cry came to the convent that his Grace, good Duke Philip, was dead, and the tidings ran like a signal-fire through the people, that this kind, wise, just Prince had been bewitched to death. (Ah! where in Pomerania land—yea, in all German fatherland—was such a wise, pious, and learned Prince to be found? No other fault had he but one, and that was not having, long before, burned this devil's witch, this accursed sorceress, with fire and faggot.)
And now I must tell how his Grace had scarcely left Marienfliess and reached Saatzig (they were but a mile from each other) when he felt suddenly weak. He wondered much to find that his dear lord brother, Duke Francis, had only left the castle two hours before. Item, that Jobst Bork had not arrived there, and no man knew whither the knight had flown. Here the Duke grew so much worse, that his ministers earnestly entreated him to postpone the diet at New Stettin, and return home; for how could it please the knights and burgesses to see their beloved Prince in this sad extremity of suffering?
Hereupon his Highness replied with the beautiful Latin words, "Officio mihi officio." (And after his death, these words were stamped on the burial-medals. Item, a rose, half-eaten by a worm, with the inscription, "Ut rosa rodimur omnes;" whereby many think allusion is made to the livid breath that passed over the flowers at Marienfliess, but I leave these things undecided.)
Summa.—His Highness proceeded to New Stettin, and decided all the boundary disputes amongst the nobles, &c., returned then to his court at Old Stettin, to hold the evangelical jubilee; but, by that time, all the doctors from far and near could do naught to help him; and though he lingered some months, yet, from the first, he knew that death was on him; for nothing could appease the tortures he suffered in his breast, even as all the others whom Sidonia had murdered, and finally, on the 3rd day of February 1618, at ten of the clock, he expired—his age being forty-four years, six months, and six days. And the corpse presented the same signature of Satan, though his Grace's sickness had differed in some particulars from that of Sidonia's other victims. To this appearance of the princely corpse I myself can testify, for I beheld it, along with many others, when it lay in state in the great hall.
On the 19th of March following, the princely ceremony of interment took place. Let me see if my tears will permit me to describe it:—
After the deputies from the three honourable estates had assembled—the Stettin, the Wolgastian, and the ecclesiastical—in the castle church, with the Princes of the blood, the nobles, knights, and magnates of the land, three cannons were fired; and at nine of the clock in the evening, the princely corpse was carried first into the count's chamber, then to the knights' chamber, from thence to the grand state-hall, by torchlight, by twenty-four nobles, and from that to the castle square, which was entirely covered with black cloth. Here it was laid down, and sixty students from the university of Grypswald, and forty boys from the town-school, sung the burial psalms from their books; while, at intervals, the priests chanted the appointed portions of the liturgy; after which all the bells of the town began to toll, and the swan song was raised, "Now in joy I pass from earth." Whereupon the nobles lifted up the bier again, and the procession moved forwards. And could my gracious Prince have looked out through the little window above his head, he would have seen not only the blessed cross, but also his dear town, from street to tower, covered with weeping human faces: for the procession passed on through the main street, across the coal market, through castle street, into the crane court—all which streets were lined with the princely soldatesca, who also, each man, carried a torch in his hand, besides the group of regular torch-bearers in the procession—and windows, roofs, towers, presented one living mass of human heads all along the way. And the order was thus:—
1. The song-master, cum choro-item, the rector, pædagogis, with his collegis.