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130 Nadal had exhorted the Jesuits at Cologne, "to cultivate diligently the German language and to find out a method of teaching it; they should also select pupils and teachers for this branch." In 1567 he gave the same order in Mentz. During the Thirty Years' War, the German Jesuits Balde, Mair, Bidermann and Pexenfelder, planned the establishment of a society for the improvement of the German language; but the calamities of that horrible war, which reduced Germany to a state of utter misery, frustrated this whole plan. From about 1730 on, the German language was taught in the Jesuit schools according to fixed rules, and the pupils were diligently practised in writing prose compositions and poetry. Many valuable testimonies on this subject are given by Father Duhr. The fact that many Jesuits are to be found among the prominent writers in the different modern languages is another proof that the vernacular was not neglected, much less "proscribed" as M. Compayré says. One of the finest German writers of the seventeenth century was the Jesuit Spe. The sweetness, power and literary merits of his collection of exquisite poems, entitled Trutz-Nachtigall (Dare-Nightingale), and of his prose work Güldnes Tugendbuch (Virtue's Golden Book) are admired by critics of the most different schools, Protestants as well as Catholics. Father