At St. Hippolyte, a town near the Swiss frontier, dependent upon the
Duke of Lorraine, similar success and a similarly tragic end were the
results of the zealous labors of Wolfgang Schuch, a priest of German
extraction. The "good duke" Antoine, having been led to confound the
peaceable disciples of Schuch with the revolted peasants, whose ravages
had excited widespread alarm throughout Germany, publicly proclaimed his
intention of visiting the town that harbored them with fire and sword.
To propitiate him by removing his misapprehension, Schuch wrote to the
duke a singularly touching letter containing a candid exposition of the
religion he professed;[251] but finding that his missive had been of no
avail, he resolved to immolate himself in behalf of his flock. At
Nancy, the capital of the duchy, whither he had gone to dissuade Antoine
from executing his savage threats, he was thrown into a loathsome
dungeon, while the University of Paris was consulted respecting the
soundness of thirty-one propositions extracted from his writings by the
Inquisitor of Lorraine. On the nineteenth of August, 1525--the
theologians of the Sorbonne having some months before reported
unfavorably upon the theses submitted to them--Wolfgang Schuch was
consigned to the flames.[252]

[Sidenote: Farel at Montbeliard.]

Less sanguinary results attended the Reformation at Montbeliard, where
the indefatigable Farel was the chief actor. One of those highly
dramatic incidents, in which the checkered life of this remarkable man
abounds, is said to have preceded his withdrawal from the city.
Happening, on St. Anthony's day, to meet, upon a bridge spanning a
narrow stream in the neighborhood, a solemn procession headed by priests
chanting the praises of the saint whose effigy they bore aloft, Farel
was seized with an uncontrollable desire to arrest the impious service.
Snatching the image from the hands of ecclesiastics who were little
prepared for so sudden an onslaught, he indignantly cried, "Wretched
idolaters, will you never forsake your idolatry?" At the same instant he
threw the saint into the water, before the astonished devotees had time
to interfere. Had not some one just then opportunely raised the shout,
"The saint is drowning," it might have gone hard with the fearless
iconoclast.[253]

The Reformation was thus gaining a foothold in the bishopric of Metz, in
the duchy of Lorraine, and the county of Montbeliard--districts as yet
independen