Hans Hornbeck, a blessed man and a very good friend and supporter of Luther greets you very respectfully, my dear father in Christ, and humbly requests that you answer his enclosed letter and has requested that I should send it in order to receive an answer.If you should do this it would be something appropriate for a Christian man to do. However, you are so idle, as Ebeling Alemann reports, that Luther has nothing to do but to lecture, to preach,to write and give letters to all the world so in that respect you would be better off to answer this letter. I hear that the one behind this letter is a good man who loves Christ from the heart and would not do any sort of thing that would not agree with the Gospel which you can easily learn from the letter which he has written to you. I believe that you know what the bride of Mainz has put forward in Halle how he no longer is going to waver from side to side, which he has long thought, but now publicly is in open war with us. I may not venture to write the great sum of gold with which the tyrant has blackmailed his subjects namely an unbelieveable amount and never ever heard of in this land. He has set up a new Counselor at the Court namely , "the Domherr is his Court-master, three Domherr and an Abbot are his superior-Council."Be it right well with you in Christ, my dear father. Magdeburg, the 18th of October Anno 1531. Your Nic.Amsdorff.
Notes: The bride of Mainz is the Cardinal and not Crotus Rubeanus as some think according to the editors.
Amsdorff is a very close friend and jesting with ML about being idle. Ebeling Alemann is a medic whom ML requested Amsdorff to find a position for him in Magdeburg. Domherr are the pastors in the Stiftkirche-bishop's church or main church.
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