colony of Portuguese Jews, the Marranos as they
were called, became, if not converts, at least active agents in the
dissemination of Lutheran works.

[Sidenote: Catholic answers]

A vigorous counter-propaganda was at once started by the partisans of the
pope. This was directed against both Erasmus and Luther and consisted
largely, according to the reports of the former, in the most violent
invective. Nicholas of Egmont, "a man with a white pall but a black
heart" stormed in the pulpit against the new heretics. Another man
interspersed a sermon on charity with objurgations against those whom he
called "geese, asses, stocks, and Antichrists." [Sidenote: 1533] One
Dominican said he wished he could fasten his teeth in Luther's throat,
for he would not fear to go to the Lord's supper with that blood on his
{241} mouth. It was at Antwerp, a little later, that were first coined,
or at least first printed, the so celebrated epigrams that Erasmus was
Luther's father, that Erasmus had laid the eggs and Luther had hatched
the chickens, and that Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Erasmus were
the four soldiers who had crucified Christ.

The principal literary opposition to the new doctrines came from the
University of Louvain. Luther's works were condemned by Cologne, and
this sentence was ratified by Louvain. [Sidenote: August 30, 1519] A
number of the leading professors wrote against him, [Sidenote: November
7] among them the ex-professor Adrian of Utrecht, recently created Bishop
of Tortosa and cardinal, and soon to be pope.

The conservatives, however, could do little but scold until the arrival
of Charles V in June 1520, and of the papal nuncio Aleander in September.
The latter saw Charles immediately at Antwerp and found him already
determined to resist heresy. Acting under the edict procured at that
time, though not published until the following March 22, Aleander busied
himself by going around and burning Lutheran works in various cities and
preaching against the heresy. [Sidenote: October, 1520] He found far
more opposition than one would think probable, and the burning of the
books, as Erasmus said, removed them from the bookstores only, not from
the hearts of the people. The nuncio even discovered, he said, at this
early date, heretics who denied the real presence in the eucharist:
evidently independent spirits like Hoen who anticipated the doctrine
later taken up by Carlstadt and Zwingli.

The validity