Note 675 — Chapter VI

Bilibald Pirckheimer wrote to Melanchthon complaining that a convent of nuns at Nuremberg, among whom were two of his sisters, had been molested and insulted because they would not accept confessors appointed by the senate. Res eo deducta est ut quicunque miserandas illas offendere et incessere audet, obsequium Deo se præstitisse arbitretur. Idque non solum a viris agitur, sed et a mulieribus; et illis mulieribus, quarum liberis omnem exhibuere caritatem. Non solum enim viris, qui alios docere contendunt, se ipsos vero minime emendant, urbs nostra referta est, sed et mulieribus curiosis, garrulis et otiosis, quæ omnia potius quam domum propriam gubernare satagunt. Pirckheimer Opera, Frankf. 1610, p. 375. He was a moderate man, concurring with the Lutherans in most of their doctrine, but against the violation of monastic vows. Several letters passed between him and Erasmus. The latter, though he could not approve the hard usage of women, hated the monks so much, that he does not greatly disapprove what was done towards them. In Germaniâ multa virginum ac monachorum monasteria crudeliter direpta sunt. Quidam magistratus agunt moderatius. Ejecerunt eos duntaxat, qui illic non essent professi, et vetuerunt novitios recipi; ademerunt illis curam virginum, et jus alibi concionandi quam in suis monasteriis. Breviter, absque magistratus permissu nihil licet illis agere. Videntur huc spectare, ut ex monasteriis faciant parochias. Existimant enim hos conjuratos phalangas et tot privilegiis armatos diutius ferri non posse. (Basil. Aug. 1525.) Epist. Dcccliv. Multis in locis durè tractati sunt monachi; verum plerique cum sint intolerabiles, alia tamen ratione corrigi non possunt. Epist. Dcclvii.