From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

forth its earliest blossoms; and it was amid the din
of arms that the arts of peace grew up.
But commerce did more than war to call into
existence such towns as Nuremberg. With the
prosecution of foreign trade came wealth, and with
wealth came independence and intelligence. Men
began to have a glimpse of higher powers than
those of brute force, and of wider rights than any
included within the narrow circle of feudalism.
They bought with their money, or they wrested by
their power, charters of freedom from their
sovereigns, or their feudal barons. They constituted
themselves into independent and self-governed
bodies. They were, in fact, republics on a small
scale, in the heart of great monarchies. Within the
walls of their cities slavery was abolished, laws
were administered, and rights were enjoyed.
Such towns began to multiply as it drew
towards the era of the Reformation, not in
Germany only, but in France, in Italy, and in the
Low Countries, and they were among the first to
welcome the approach of that great moral and
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