they are wrong
and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the
cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from
a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the
greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began
his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September
1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last published
in 1532.

[Sidenote: The radicals]

While Luther was in retirement at the Wartburg, his colleagues
Carlstadt and Melanchthon, and the Augustinian friar Gabriel Zwilling,
took up the movement at Wittenberg and carried out reforms more radical
{82} than those of their leader. The endowments of masses were
confiscated and applied to the relief of the poor on new and better
principles. Prostitution was suppressed. A new order of divine
service was introduced, in which the words purporting that the mass was
a sacrifice were omitted, and communion was given to the laity in both
kinds. Priests were urged to marry, and monks were almost forced to
leave the cloister. An element of mob violence early manifested itself
both at Wittenberg and elsewhere. An outbreak at Erfurt against the
clergy occurred in June, 1521, and by the end of the year riots took
place at Wittenberg.

Even now, at the dawn of the revolution, appeared the beginnings of
those sects, more radical than the Lutheran, commonly known as
Anabaptist. The small industrial town of Zwickau had long been a
hotbed of Waldensian heresy. Under the guidance of Thomas Muenzer the
clothweavers of this place formed a religious society animated by the
desire to renovate both church and state by the readiest and roughest
means. Suppression of the movement at Zwickau by the government
resulted only in the banishment, or escape, of some of the leaders.
[Sidenote: December 27, 1521] Three of them found their way to
Wittenberg, where they proclaimed themselves prophets divinely
inspired, and conducted a revival marked with considerable, though
harmless, extravagance.

[Sidenote: January 20, 1522]

As the radicals at Wittenberg made the whole of Northern Germany
uneasy, the Imperial Council of Regency issued a mandate forbidding all
the innovations and commanding the Elector of Saxony to stop them. It
is remarkable that Luther in this felt exactly as did the Catholics.
Early in March he returned to Wittenberg with the express purpose of
checkin