Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/310

 said they have reinstated the Duke of Wurttemberg/ and that they will appoint him their captain against the Archduke.

It was reported yesterday that the Grand Master of Prus- sia,* of the Teutonic Order, has married the daughter of the King of Poland, with an express stipulation that all the prop- erty, even such as is ecclesiastical, be hereditary. This intel- ligence is held of great importance at Innsbruck by reason of the affairs of Martin Luther, to whom the King of Poland has hitherto been opposed, whereas the King now seems to be of Luther's opinions. A very great quantity of Lutheran books has been sold at the fair of Bolzano.

676. VINCENT GUIDOTO, VENETIAN SECRETARY IN HUN- GARY, TO THE GOVERNMENT OF VENICE.

Brown, 1520-6, no. 995. Buda, May — ,* 1525.

Intelligence received of the agreement the King of Poland and the Grand Master of Prussia, Albert of Brandenburg, who has been given other titles, so that from spiritual he has become temporal. The Legate Campeggio ponders {pondera) this ill fashion, adopted without the knowledge of the Pope or of the legate, or of any other dispensation. The Grand Master confesses himself a Lutheran, and it is said that the King of Poland gives him in marriage his daughter by his first wife, promising him in the event of his, the Duke's, death, that the duchy shall be inherited by the Duke's brother. Mar- quis Joachim, who is also of the house of Brandenburg. The Duke has written letters to Buda, announcing that a Luth- eran, having been arrested in Lower Germany, and condemned to be burnt, was taken three times to the stake, but the fire took no effect upon him; thereupon they beheaded him, but with great difficulty. The Duke adds that the Church of

^ On this supra, no. 662.

■Albert of Brandenburg (1490-1568), last Grand Master of the Tentonic Order, and first Duke of Prussia, became a personal friend and disciple of I«uther in the autumn of 1523. In 1525 he turned his spiritual fief into a temporal duchy, incorporated under King Sigismund I of Poland, with whom he had hitherto been at constant strife. It was not true, however, that he married his daughter, for in 1526 he married Dorothy, daughter of the King of Denmark. The aboli- tion of the Teutonic Order was completed at Cracow, April 9, 1525, and Albert swore allegiance to Sigismund the day following.

about two weeks earlier. On the subject-matter see last letter, with note.
 * As this letter is registered by Sanuto, i6th May, it must have been written

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