Ulrich von Hutten
Ulrich von Hutten -- P. 98
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It was for
the schools and universities that reformers first sprung
up in Erasmus and Reuchlin; then, almost at the
same time, an Ulrich von Hutten began to call on
his countrymen to feel and to assert their national
unity and their ancient rights against Italian priests
and Spanish mercenaries, and to reform their own
lives. His vigorous appeals, expressed, not in Latin,
but in clear and trenchant German, made themselves
heard by all classes, and helped to pave the way for
the reformation that was coming. The following
99
poem, written when he had been forced to seek an
asylum in the castle of his friend Franz von Sickingen,
was ere long circulated all over the country on broadsheets,
and became a favourite song of the earliest adherents of the Reformation.
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