Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/426

 (where the late Emperor died) to frustrate and punish the Lutherans, but the people of Wels cut the halberdiers to pieces; which disturbances will greatly prejudice the affairs of the Archduke Ferdinand.

782. PAUL ARNDT TO STEPHEN ROTH AT ZWICKAU. Buchwald, Wittenberger Brief e, 16. Wittenberg, November 19, 1527.

. . . Your good wife* knows how the tavemkeepers here are faring these days. Even the brewers have beer in their cellars. The students, who should be drinking it, are away; so are the joume)mien ; the boothkeepers * should be drinking it, but people are everywhere discouraging the holding of the market and saying that they cannot sell their wares and can- not keep any help, so who is going to drink our beer? The peasants are buying their beer in the nearby hamlets, and the nobles brew their own and make their peasants buy it, so that there is no way to make a living here. God order it for the best! To be sure there have been only three deaths this week, thank God 1 and in the last three or four days none at all, but everybody is avoiding us poor folk and nobody is bringing anything into the town. A scheflfel of flour costs five groschen,* and the officials and the nobles have forbidden the peasants to use it ; a goose costs two groschen. . ..

783. LUTHER TO WENZEL LINK IN NUREMBERG. Enders, vi, 121, (WrrxENBERc), November 22, 1527.

Grace and peace. Lo, I am breaking my silence, my dearest Wenzel ; and what wonder that I am silent 1 By God's mercy I am alive and am well enough in body, but what I am or what

^Roth's wife was Imng In Wittenberg; ef, infra, no. 795.

moved on account of the plague.
 * I.e., the people who set up booths at the weekly market. The ttniversity had

■The difficulty of reducing this to our standards lies in the fact that the litres. As a litre is rather more than seven-eighths of a quart, there would be about 36 litres to a bushel; a scheffel would, therefore, equal 2.9 bushels. The gulden used at this time in Saxony was worth 2.33 marks, or about 56 cents. A groschen was a twentietii part of a gulden, or about 2.8 cents. In other words, if wheat was 5 groschen a scheffel it would be about $ cents a bushel. I«uther mentions 3 groschen a scheffel as very cheap and i gulden as very high for wheat, Enders, xii, 127, xiv, 221. Money had at this time twenty times the purchasing power' that it had in 191 1, and twenty-five times that of 1917.

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