sburg, the painters, the inventors of
printing and of that terrible engine the bombard. But nearest to his
heart lay a question debated then as now: to whom should rightfully
belong the western part of the Rhine valley, between the river and the
Vosges? It was there that his home lay, Schlettstadt, one of the
fairest cities of the plain. With all the 'zeal and fervour of the
ancient German princes' he sets out to prove that it must be German:
'where are there any traces' he cries 'of the French language? There
are no books in French, no monuments, no letters, no epitaphs, no
deeds or documents. For seven or eight centuries there is nothing but
Latin or German.' The cathedral of Spires, the fine monastery of St.
Fides in his native town, supply him with a further argument: would
the good Dukes of Swabia have lavished so much money, the substance of
their fathers, upon Gallic soil, to pour it out among the French? With
such arguments he convinced himself and others. Almost at the same
time Peutinger put out a little volume of 'Conversations about the
wonderful antiquities of Germany'; supporting Wimpfeling with further
evidence and concluding satisfactorily that French had never ruled
over Germans.

A work of very different calibre which appeared about this time was
the _Germaniae Exegesis_ of Francis Fritz, who Latinized his name into
Irenicus. Wimpfeling was growing grey when he had made his defence of
Germany: the new champion was a young man of 23, who had scarcely
emerged from his degree. The book was published in 1518; printed at
Hagenau by Anshelm at the cost of John Koberger, the great Nuremberg
printer, and fostered by Pirckheimer. In his later years Irenicus
became a Lutheran and displayed some dignity in refusing to sacrifice
his convictions to worldly interests; but at this time he was
enthusiastic and heady, and as a result his work is an uncritical
jumble. 'Puerile and silly' Erasmus called it, when he saw some of the
proof-sheets at Spires in 1518. 'A most unfortunate book', wrote
Beatus Rhenanus in 1525, 'without style and without judgement.' To
Aventinus in 1531 it was 'an impudent compilation from Stabius and
Trithemius, by a poor creature of the most despicable intelligence'.
But even a bad book can be a measure of the time, showing the ideas
current and the catchwords that were thought likely to attract the
reading public. It is much larger than Wimpfeling's Defence, and even
more miscellaneous; rangi