d for the
people, but what Ulfilas was free to do in the fourth century, was
condemned by the prelates assembled at the Synod of Trier in 1231. Nor
were the sermons of the itinerant friars in towns and villages always to
the taste of bishops and abbots. We possess collections of these
discourses, preached by Franciscans and Dominicans under the trees of
cemeteries, and from the church-towers of the villages. Brother Berthold,
who died in 1272, was a Franciscan. He travelled about the country, and
was revered by the poor like a saint and prophet. The doctrine he
preached, though it was the old teaching of the Apostles, was as new to
the peasants who came to hear him, as it had been to the citizens of
Athens who came to hear St. Paul. The saying of St Chrysostom that
Christianity had turned many a peasant into a philosopher, came true again
in the time of Eckhart and Tauler. Men who called themselves Christians
had been taught, and had brought themselves to believe, that to read the
writings of the Apostles was a deadly sin. Yet in secret they were
yearning after that forbidden Bible. They knew that there were
translations, and though these translations had been condemned by popes
and synods, the people could not resist the temptation of reading them. In
1373, we find the first complete version of the Bible into German, by
Matthias of Beheim. Several are mentioned after this. The new religious
fervor that had been kindled among the inferior clergy, and among the
lower and middle classes of the laity, became stronger; and, though it
sometimes degenerated into wild fanaticism, the sacred spark was kept in
safe hands by such men as Eckhart (died 1329), Tauler (died 1361), and the
author of the German Theology. Men like these are sure to conquer; they
are persecuted justly or unjustly; they suffer and die, and all they
thought and said and did seems for a time to have been in vain. But
suddenly their work, long marked as dangerous in the smooth current of
society, rises above the surface like the coral reefs in the Pacific, and
it remains for centuries the firm foundation of a new world of thought and
faith. Without the labors of these Reformers of the Faith, the Reformers
of the Church would never have found a whole nation waiting to receive,
and ready to support them.

There are two other events which prepared the way of the German Reformers
of the sixteenth century: the foundation of universities, and the
invention of prin