law of the 26th of May 1521 abolishing the
celibacy of the clergy, he was forced, by the hostility of nobles and
clerics alike, to leave after a few weeks' stay. In June he was back in
Wittenberg, busy with tracts on the Holy Sacrament (he still believed in
the corporeal presence) and against the celibacy of the clergy (_de
coelibatu_). Carlstadt has been unjustly accused of being responsible
for the riots against the Mass fomented by the Augustinian friars and
the students; as a matter of fact, he did his best to keep the peace,
pending a decision by the elector of Saxony and the authorities of the
university, and it was not till Christmas day that he himself publicly
communicated the laity under both species. The next day he announced his
engagement to a young lady of noble family, Anna von Mochau.

From this moment Carlstadt was accepted as the leader of Protestantism
in Wittenberg; and, at his instance, auricular confession, the elevation
of the Host and the rules for fasting were abolished. On the 19th of
January he was married, in the presence of many of the university
professors and city magistrates. A few days later the property of the
religious corporations was confiscated by the city and, after pensions
had been assigned to their former members, was handed over to charitable
foundations. A pronouncement of Carlstadt's against pictures and images,
supported by the town, also led to iconoclastic excesses.

The return of Luther early in March, however, ended Carlstadt's
supremacy. The elector Frederick the Wise was strenuously opposed to any
alteration in the traditional services, and at his command Luther
restored communion in one kind and the elevation of the Host. Carlstadt
himself, though still professor, was deprived of all influence in
practical affairs, and devoted himself entirely to theological
speculation, which led him ever nearer to the position of the mystics.
He now denied the necessity for a clerical order at all, called himself
"a new layman," doffed his ecclesiastical dress, and lived for a while
as a peasant with his wife's relations at Segrena. In the middle of
1523, however, he went to Orlamunde, a living held by him with his
canonry, and there in the parish church reformed the services according
to his ideas, abolishing the Mass and even preaching against the
necessity for sacraments at all. He still continued occasionally to
lecture at Wittenberg and to fulminate against Luther's policy of