224 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Let iSa
Rector, the Duke of Pomerania, and told us that in Rome people thought very little of Miltitz. They say he so boasted of his relationship by marriage with the Dukes of Saxony, that he was always called by the Ita,l*ans after his relative, the Duke of Saxony. The provost told other vain, ridiculous things about Miltitz, concluding that the man was to be pitied, for as he always had been mocked he always would be. . . .
Please excuse my sudden departure. I did it because I know the name of monks is in bad repute in courts,^ and also because I did not wish to offend that man of whom I spoke to you, who, I thought, regarded me as an uncongenial guest at table. You know that for the sake of one man we ought to refrain even from lawful acts.* You also see how sharply the men of Leipsic observe me. If that man had secretly written to his friends at Leipsic that I had been gay and frivolous, and had played at dice with our baker, would not they have seized this chance to compare my life with the Word, which my teaching makes odious to them, and would not they have thus caused me to become a hindrance to the gospel of Christ?* What would they not write, who through Rubeus* have blabbed that at Leipsic I carried in my hand a bunch of flowers,' for the sake of their odor and beauty? Had they dared they would have said that I wore the flowers on my head. I neither can nor wish to prevent all such stories; I will give place, as far as I can, to weakness and envy. Wherefore I did not hurry away in scorn, but for fear of offending.
A cruel pestilence is raging in Switzerland, having taken off sixteen thousand men, not counting women and children. The provost above mentioned told us this. . . . Vicar Stau- pitz came safe and sound to Nuremberg on September 24, and thence went to Munich.
^Propter aulas et ollas/' literally "by courts and pots," a derogatory way of speaking of courts chiefly recommended by the pun.
>C/. I Corinthians* viii. 13.
'C/. I Corinthians, ix. la.
^John Rubeus, a Franconian studying at Leipsic, had published an account of the debate favorable to £ck. For the title of his work, and Montanus's anawer to it, cj. Enders, ii. 157.
6 Luther was very fond of flowers, and is usually said to have carried a bouquet of them at the Leipsic debate. C/. Smith, p. 365. But does he not seem to deny this in the passage here translated?
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