y of love. He does not talk big nor swell himself with boasting,
but simply, openly, honestly acts and speaks."

But all his wooing came to naught; another man wedded the fair
Cunigunde, and the coming storm of Romish wrath left Hutten no
opportunity to turn his attention elsewhere.

The old Pope was now dead, and one of the famous family of Medici, in
Florence, had succeeded him as Leo the Tenth. Leo was kindly disposed
toward the Humanist studies, and Hutten, as poet of the Humanists,
addressed to him directly a remarkable appeal, which made the
turning-point in his life, for it placed him openly among those who
resisted the Pope.

Recounting to the new Pope Leo all the usurpations which in his
judgment had been made, one by one, by his predecessors--all the
robberies, impositions, and abuses of the Papacy, from the time of
Constantine down--he appeals to Leo, as a wise man and a scholar, to
restore stolen power and property, to correct all abuses, to abandon
all temporal power, and become once more the simple Bishop of Rome.
"For there can never be peace between the robber and the robbed till
the stolen goods are returned."

Now, for the first time, the work of Luther came to Hutten's attention.
The disturbances at Wittenberg were in the beginning treated by all as
a mere squabble of the monks. To Leo the Tenth this discussion had no
further interest than this: "Brother Martin," being a scholar, was most
probably right. To Hutten, who cared nothing for doctrinal points, it
had no significance; the more monkish strifes the better--"the sooner
would the enemies eat each other up."

But now Hutten came to recognize in Luther the apostle of freedom of
thought, and in that struggle of the Reformation he found a nobler
cause than that of the Humanists--in Luther a greater than Reuchlin.
And Hutten never did things by halves. He entered into the warfare
heart and soul. In 1520 he published his "Roman Trinity," his gage of
battle against Rome.

He now, like Luther, began to draw his inspiration, as well as his
language, not from the classics, but from the New Testament. A new
motto he took for himself, one which was henceforth ever on his lips,
and which appears again and again in his later writings: "_Jacta est
alea_" ("the die is cast"); or, in the stronger German, in which he
more often gave it, "_Ich hab's gewagt_" ("I have dared it").

"Auf dasz ichs nit anheb umsunst
Wolauf, wir haben Gottes Gunst;