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 remnants of the Hussite movement. Some members of that sect had settled on the borders of Silesia and Moravia in the middle of the fifteenth century; and they are claimed as the founders of the later Bohemian Brethren. Wimpheling and Pirkheimer had remarked the recrudescence of the Hussite heresy; and Wolfgang Capito declares that in his youth he had often heard his elders read the writings of the Bohemian Reformers. Luther's words were not entirely novel accents, but the echoes of half-forgotten sounds repeated with a novel force.

So while the Princes held aloof from the movement it progressed with rapid strides in the cities. At Nürnberg under the eyes of the national government the churches of St Lawrence and St Sebald resounded with the new doctrines, and Osiander under the protection of the city authorities began to proselytise not only among the citizens but among the numbers of public officials, from clerks to Princes, who were brought to Nürnberg by the business of the Empire. The Austrian administration of Württemberg closed its churches to the Reformers, but almost all the small imperial cities of Swabia favoured the Reformation. Eberlin of Günzburg was the most popular of the Swabian preachers, but Hall, Nördlingen, Reutlingen, Esslingen, and Heilbronn listened to the precepts of Brenz, Billicanus, Alber, Styfel, and Lachmann. Strassburg and the southern cities of the Swabian circle were powerfully influenced by the example of their Swiss neighbours; and in 1524, the year in which Zwingli established control over Zurich, Bucer and Capito effected a similar change in Strassburg, which had already shown its sympathies by committing Murner's works to the flames, by protecting Matthew Zell from the Bishop, and by exercising the censorship over the press in a way that inflicted no hardship on the Reformers. Elsewhere in Upper Swabia Zwingli's influence was strong; his friend Schappeler, who was to play an important part in the Peasants' Revolt, preached at Memmingen, and Hummelberg in Ravens-burg, while the disposition of Constance had been proved in 1521 by its refusal to publish the Edict of Worms. In Bavaria and Austria the Reformers were naturally less successful, and one was martyred at Rattenberg. But Jacob Strauss and Urbanus Regius preached in the valley of the Inn, Speratus at Salzburg and Vienna, and traces of the Reformed doctrines were found as far south as Tyrol.

In the north the Reformers were not less active. Heinrich Möller of Zutphen, an Augustinian from the Netherlands, prevailed in Bremen against its Archbishop. Hamburg and Lübeck, Stralsund and Greifs-wald, other cities of the Hanseatic League, followed its example. Bugenhagen, the historian of Pomerania, was also its evangelist. Königsberg became Lutheran under the auspices of Bishop Polenz of Samland, and beyond the limits of the Empire the new doctrines spread to the German colonies at Danzig and Dorpat, Riga and Reval. Hermann Tast laboured in Schleswig, Jurien van der Dare (Georgius Aportanus)