He recommends his brother-in-law, Hans von Bora, to intercede with Duke Heinrich, and reports news.
Handwritten in Aurifaber, vol. III, p. 278. Printed in Schütze, vol. III, p. 107 and in De Wette, vol. V, p. 201.
Grace and peace! Also I, my dear Jonas, cannot recognize from your so many letters that my letters were handed over to you, except one. But that may be either coincidence or Satan's fault. By the way, I recommend my brother-in-law, Haus von Bora, to you. You can say well for him that he is a sincere, honest and reliable person, just as you know him. I, too, am writing for him to the most illustrious Prince Heinrich, certainly not for a charlatan and braggart who accomplishes everything with words, but with deeds brings about the opposite in a nonsensical way, as you know this race of noblemen (centaurorum), who nowadays, through God's curse, are growing and multiplying in such a way that in a short time they are filling the earth with iniquities, that in a short time they will fill the earth with iniquity and make everything corrupt, so that it is necessary that the world be cleansed, not by a flood of sin, but either by some great conflagration, or (what I would prefer) by the fire of the last day.
There is no news, except that the good man Claus Bildenhain 2) (as your Sophie likes to say) has finally gone to the Lord. It has been written to the Lord Philip, 3) that in Spain, while the Empress
1) It should perhaps be read "dem".
2) Bildenhauer.
3) There is a dotum here in the editions by mistake.
When the mother was about to give birth, thirty men beat her with scourges to the point of blood (ad multum sanguinem == to the point of much blood), so that the birth would be a happy one. Two of them had collapsed under their scourge blows and died, and still they could not save the mother and the fruit. What more pagan thing could have happened or can still happen even among the pagans? namely, with these sacrifices God is reconciled by those who kill Christ. Perhaps the pope will also raise them among the saints (canonisabit) in the place of Benno, whom you have expelled from the number of saints (decanonisastis), 4) without fearing Cochleaeus, Schmid and people like Nausea 5), but also not the Sadoletus and his like (Sadoletos), who teach the contradiction, and will be indignant against you, indignant, also making indignant, 6) and everything that can only always be said either evil grammatically or exceedingly bad theologically. Be at ease in your house, by God's grace. Be well in the Lord. Thursday after Laurentii [Aug. 14] 1539. Yours, Martin Luther.
No. 2572.