tburg, where Frederic kept him
safely concealed for nine months, not allowing even his friends to know
the place of his concealment. Luther, acquiescing in the prudence of
this measure, called this retreat his Patmos, and devoted himself most
assiduously to the study of the Scriptures, and commenced his most
admirable translation of the Bible into the German language, a work
which has contributed vastly more than all others to disseminate the
principles of the Reformation throughout Germany.

It will be remembered that Maximilian's son Ferdinand, who was brother
to Charles V., had married Anne, daughter of Ladislaus, King of Hungary
and Bohemia. Disturbances in Spain rendered it necessary for the emperor
to leave Germany, and for eight years his attention was almost
constantly occupied by wars and intrigues in southern Europe. Ferdinand
was invested with the government of the Austrian States. In the year
1521, Leo X. died, and Adrian, who seems to have been truly a
conscientious Christian man, assumed the tiara. He saw the deep
corruptions of the Church, confessed them openly, mourned over them and
declared that the Church needed a thorough reformation.

This admission, of course, wonderfully strengthened the Lutheran party.
The diet, meeting soon after, drew up a list of a hundred grievances,
which they intreated the pope to reform, declaring that Germany could no
longer endure them. They declared that Luther had opened the eyes of the
people to these corruptions, and that they would not suffer the edicts
of the diet of Worms to be enforced. Ferdinand of Austria, entering into
the views of his brother, was anxious to arrest the progress of the new
ideas, now spreading with great rapidity, and he entered--instructed by
a legate, Campegio, from the pope--into an engagement with the Duke of
Bavaria, and most of the German bishops, to carry the edict of Worms
into effect.

Frederic, the Elector of Saxony, died in 1525, but he was succeeded by
his brother John the Constant, who cordially embraced and publicly
avowed the doctrines of the Reformation; and Luther, in July of this
year, gave the last signal proof of his entire emancipation from the
superstitions of the papacy by marrying Catharine Bora, a noble lady
who, having espoused his views, had left the nunnery where she had been
an inmate. It is impossible for one now to conceive the impression which
was produced in Catholic Europe by the marriage of a priest and a nu