xcommunication,
the dwellers in the Alps had sometimes ventured to bestow upon
themselves on their own authority in moments of power. The complicated
sentences and the promises contained in them, in case of fidelity and
submission, made, therefore, little impression upon the Reformer. How
independent he was, in this respect, even at Einsiedeln, appears from
his letter, of 1525, to Valentine Compar, former state-secretary in
Uri. "Observe," says he, "dear Valentine, what I will yet publicly
make known to the people, now living, that I, both before and since the
schism arose, have discoursed and treated with distinguished cardinals,
bishops and prelates concerning errors in doctrine, and warned them to
begin the correction of abuses, or else they would be involved in
greater trouble. Eight years ago at Einsiedeln and then at Zurich I
often proved to the Lord Cardinal of Sion, that the whole Papacy rested
on a rotten foundation, and this always by appealing to the Holy
Scriptures. The noble Sir Diebold von Geroldseck, Master Francis Zink
and Doctor Michael Sander, all three yet living are my witnesses; and
the above-named Cardinal has frequently expressed himself to me in this
way, 'If God restores me again to favor (for he was at that time in
disgrace with the Pope), I would then willingly see the pride and
falsehood of the Roman Bishop exposed and corrected.' And then, he has
not seldom conversed with me about doctrine and the Holy Scripture, and
every time would acknowledge the falsehood and his displeasure at it.
But how he behaved afterwards, need not be told here."

When, therefore, the Bishop of Constance himself, just at this time, in
a pastoral letter to the clergy of his diocese, uttered, in the
strongest terms, complaints of their thoroughly corrupt condition, and
deplored, that "many of them, without regard to shame and the fear of
God, kept lewd women in their houses, and would neither put them away
nor do better, and that others were addicted to gambling and oftener to
be met with in taverns than in their own rooms, wrangled in the
streets, scolded, giving rise to uproar as well as blasphemy against
the Savior, his blessed mother, and all the saints of God, wore weapons
and clothes altogether unsuited to their condition, entered into
unlawful agreements, crept into nunneries and otherwise led abandoned
lives at variance with the priestly character," and acknowledged the
urgent necessity of a remedy, was it a