vidual members of
congregations, in the wish to hear at least the new doctrines,
endeavored to win over their neighbors and friends, and thus gain a
majority, in order to call in a preacher? Such persons generally turned
to Zurich, where they found support, whilst the bailiffs made complaint
of it at the meetings of the Diet or to the Five Cantons; nor did they
complain the less also of their fierce invectives, mutual strife and
immunity from punishment. Here the will to punish was wanting; there
the power, especially if the offenders belonged to the distinguished
classes, as they frequently did. But the circumstances of the abbot and
monastery of St. Gall afforded the chief material for a new quarrel;
and these it will be necessary now to describe in detail.

The monastery of St. Gall, from its very origin, played an important
part in the history of our fatherland; in the first centuries by its
scientific reputation as a renowned and influential seminary of
learning, and afterward on account of its increasing possessions, its
political influence and the rank of its abbot as a prince of the
empire. The abbot ruled over that tolerably extensive district, lying
between Wyl and Roschach, on Lake Constance, under the title of the
"Old Province," and also, from the year 1469, over the County of
Toggenburg, under that of the "New Province." The abbacy of St. Gall
constituted the first and most considerable of the so-called Allied
Cantons; its deputies appeared at the sessions of the Diet, and its
armed soldiery marched out with the other confederates in their wars.
The County of Toggenburg enjoyed no mean privileges; it had the
choosing of its own general council (_landrath_), the right of
appointing lower courts, subject, it is true, to the sanction of the
abbot, and for the protection of these privileges stood under one
common law with the states of Schwyz and Glarus, to which, at a later
period, the abbot also was admitted for the security of its rights. He
had also formed an alliance with the four states, Zurich, Luzern,
Schwyz and Glarus, on behalf of his possessions, by which these cantons
were pledged to protect him and his abbey, with all his subjects, in
their rights and liberties. For this service, half the fines accruing
in the territories of St. Gall were paid over to them, and the
dependants of the abbot were bound to obey their call in time of war.
For the exercise of these rights and the performance of their du