Chapter 1

What follows are descriptions of some of the things that happened to our cloister here at Saint Clare's in Nürnberg in those dangerous, rebellious times, along with some letters written at the same time.

We all know that for a very long time it has been prophesied that in the year of our Lord 1524 a great deluge is to occur by which everything on earth will be twisted and changed. And, although this has generally been understood as a flood, experience has taught us that the stars did not indicate water as much as misery, fear and distress, and later, bloodshed. In the year noted above it happened that many things were changed by the new teachings of the Lutherans and much dissension befell the Christian faith. The ceremonies of the Church have been done away with in many instances and the clerical class has been almost completely destroyed in many areas. At that time Christian freedom was being preached as well as the idea that the laws of the Church and even the oaths of religious orders were invalid and no one was obligated to keep them.

And so it happened that many nuns and monks made use of such freedom and ran away from their cloisters and threw off their robes and habits; some married and did whatever they wanted. From this we suffered much distress and affliction. During the day many of the powerful as well as simple people came to their relatives who resided in our cloister. They preached to them and spoke of the new teachings and argued incessantly that the cloistered were damned and subject to temptations and that it was not possible for them to attain salvation there. We were all damned. Therefore, some wanted to remove their children, sisters and aunts from the cloister by force and with many threats and also with many promises half of which, without doubt, they could hardly keep.

This fighting and quarreling lasted a long time, often with great anger and foul language. Since, however, by God's grace no sister could be persuaded, the Franciscan friars were then blamed and everyone claimed that since they had instructed us it would, therefore, be impossible to convert us to the new teaching as long as we had them as preachers and confessors.