Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

massacre all the Calixtines, and three of the
citizens were put to the rack to extort from them a
confession of a conspiracy which had never
existed. They bore the torment [7] rather than
witness to a falsehood. An agreement was next
concluded by the influence of Zahera and Passek,
that no Lutheran should be taken into a workshop,
or admitted to citizenship. If one owed adebt, and
was unwilling to pay it, he had only to say the
other was a Lutheran, and the banishment of the
creditor gave him riddance from his
importunities.[8]
Branding on the forehead, and other marks of
ignominy, were now added to exile. One day Louis
Victor, a disciple of the Gospel, happened to be
among the hearers of a certain Barbarite who was
entertaining his audience with ribald stories. At the
close of his sermon Louis addressed the monk,
saying to him that it were "better to instruct the
people out of the Gospel than to detain them with
such fables." Straightway the preacher raised such
a clamor that the excited crowd laid hold on the too
courageous Lutheran, and haled him to prison.
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