Bartholomew Sastrow: Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster. Bartholomäus Sastrow
in addition to a couple of silver crucifixes. Though their rules forbade the monks of St. John to touch coined metal, the father custodian did not scruple to carry away with him all that the convent held in clinking coin and precious objects.
Called to the ministry by a small group of citizens who had not given a thought to the question of his salary, Ketelhot had no other resource for his daily sustenance than the city "wine cellar" and The King Arthur.[12] He found hospitable board and good company, but the life was detrimental to his studies. A Jew with whom he flattered himself he was studying the lingua sancta induced him to announce from the pulpit the error a Judaeo conceptus. As a consequence the council promptly appointed Johannes Knipstro as superintendent at Stralsund. He was the first that bore the title there, and Ketelhot neither suffered in consideration, rank, nor benefices. He remained all his life primarius pastor, and his effigy at St. Nicholas, facing the pulpit, is inscribed with the words: Repurgator ecclesiae Sundensis. Appointed in 1524, Knipstro, by his talent and solicitude, succeeded in leading Ketelhot back to the right path, for he broke for ever with the error. The two ministers lived in the most brotherly understanding. Ketelhot was no more jealous of the superintendent than Knipstro, took umbrage at the title of primarius pastor. They were not vainglorious, as were later on Runge and Kruse. Gradually the dukes admitted that the evangelicals, far from making common cause with the zealots of Eastern Pomerania, energetically opposed them. The Stralsund preachers were henceforth left in peace; they were more firmly established in their functions, and neither the council nor the citizens were any longer molested for having called them.
I now beg to resume the story of my family from the year 1523. My parents started house-keeping in the midst of plenty; they had a mill and a brewery, sold their corn, butter, honey, wool and feathers, and were even blessed with the superfluous. Everything was so cheap that it seemed easy to make money. It seemed as if the golden age had returned. Nevertheless, prosperity had to make room for misfortune.
In the course of that year (1523), in fact, George Hartmann, the son-in-law of Doctor Stroïentin,[13] bought of my father a quantity of butter. A violent discussion having occurred between them, Hartmann, who was on his way to Burgomaster Peter Kirchschwanz with a short sword belonging to the latter, went instead to his mother-in-law to pour his grievances into her ears. This haughty and purse-proud woman, full of contempt for very humble folk because she happened to have married a doctor and a ducal counsellor (I omit for charity's sake some details which I shall tell my children by word of mouth), that woman, I say, presented her son-in-law with a hatchet, saying: "There, go to market with this piece of money, and buy a bit of courage." Emboldened by a safe-conduct of the prince, which Doctor Stroïentin had got for him, Hartmann fell in with my father at the top of the Sporenmacher Strasse. He was going to the public weigh-house to have a case of honey weighed, and he had not as much as a pocket knife wherewith to repel an assailant armed with a sword and a hatchet. He rushed into a spurmaker's shop, getting hold of a large pitchfork, but the bystanders wrenched it out of his hands; moreover, they prevented him taking refuge in the gallery. Thereupon my father snatched up a long stick with an iron prod standing against the wall, and going back into the street, shouted:
"Let the fellow who wants to take my life come out and show himself." At these words, Hartmann issued from an adjoining workshop. Not satisfied with his short sword and his hatchet, he had taken a hammer from the anvil and flung it at my father, who warded it with his stick, though only partly, for my father spat blood for several days. The hatchet went the same way, and just caught my father on the shoulder. The double exploit having imbued him with the idea that the game was won, the aggressor made a rush with his bare sword, but my father spitted him on his iron-prodded pole, and Hartmann dropped down dead. This is the true account of this deplorable accident. I am quite aware of the version invented by the ill-will of the others, which is to the effect that my father having found Hartmann altogether disarmed behind the stove in the spurmaker's room, straightway killed him on the spot. These are vain rumours, nugae sunt, fabulae sunt.
My father sought asylum with the "black" monks, to whom he was known. They hid him at the top of the church in a recess near the vault. In a little while Doctor Stroïentin, at the head of his servants and of a numerous group of followers, came to search every nook and corner of the convent. Naturally, he went into the church, and the fugitive, fancying it was all over with him, was going to speak in order to prove his innocence; fortunately Providence closed his lips and shut his enemies' eyes. In the middle of the night the monks smuggled him over the wall. Keeping to the high road, he succeeded in reaching Neuenkirchen, where a peasant's cart, sent by his father-in-law, was waiting for him. He managed to squeeze himself into a sack of fodder by the side of a sack of barley. Doctor Stroïentin stopped the vehicle on the road. The driver told him he was going to Stralsund. "What have you got there?" asked the doctor, beating the sacks with him. "Barley and my fodder," was the answer. "Have not you noticed any one going in a great hurry either on horseback or on foot?" "Yes; I saw a man galloping as hard as he could in the direction of Horst. I may have been mistaken, but I fancy it was Sastrow, of Greifswald, and I was wondering why he should be scouring the highway at that hour of night." Stroïentin wanted to hear no more. He turned his horse's head as fast as it would go in the direction of Horst.
My father reached Stralsund without further trouble; the council gave him a safe-conduct, which was only a broken reed in the way of a guarantee, for he had to deal with proud, rich and powerful enemies. Doctor Stroïentin, His Highness' counsellor, took particular advantage of the fact that Hartmann enjoyed the protection of Duke George. My father went from pillar to post in Denmark, at Lubeck, at Hamburg, and other spots; finally, he appeased his suzerain by paying him a considerable sum in cash; then, after long-drawn negotiations, his father-in-law succeeded in reconciling him with his adversaries. The expiatory fine was 1,000 marks, but Greifswald, where the family of the deceased resided, remained closed to him. Nor did the 1,000 marks prove any benefit to the son of Hartmann; the contrary has been the case. Misfortune pursued him without cessation in his health, his wealth, his wife and children.
At the gates of Stralsund stood the monastery of St. Brigitta; monks and nuns inhabited different parts. A wall divided the gardens. It was, however, by no means high enough to prove an obstacle to a nimble climber. It is the monks that did the cooking, and the dishes came to the nuns in a kind of lift large enough for one person. How the vow of chastity was observed was proved on the day of the invasion of the convent, when the skeletons, head and bones of new-born children were found everywhere.
At the period of the invasion of the churches and the monasteries, Franz Wessel, who at that time had discharged the functions of councillor for more than a twelvemonth, was charged with preventing at St. Catherine's the abstraction of precious objects. In order to cut short the idolatrous practices, he had a trench dug at the door of the garden of eighteen ells long, in which the images were buried. On the Holy Thursday, between four and six in the morning, the nuns whose retreat had been attacked were taken to St. Catherine's. Wessel received them courteously on the threshold of the cloister, took the abbess by the hand and intoned the popish hymn Veni, sponsa salvatoris, etc. The abbess begged of him to cease this joking, and rather to welcome her with some flagons of wine. Wessel objected that the hour was too early to begin drinking.
I have narrated the circumstances which compelled Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow to take refuge at my mother's with his two sons, Nicholas and Bertrand. The first-named, a doughty young man, good-looking and of independent character, had with great credit to himself terminated his studies. I have rarely seen such beautiful handwriting as his. Impatient to see the world, he felt himself cramped in Pomerania, and when he heard that Emperor Charles had an army in Italy, he induced his father to give him an outfit and to allow him to join it. Provided with a well-lined purse, he joined the Imperial troops, took part in the storming and sacking of Rome, got a great deal of loot, but fell ill and died.
Fate proved not more lenient to Doctor Zutfeld Wardenberg, also the son of a burgomaster. Berckmann and other writers have made him pass as a great prelate. Be this as it may; he certainly fancied himself a member of the Trinity which rules the universe. In his official functions he observed no law but his own sweet will. His own house contained a prison, and he behaved as if the council did not exist. In short, he wound up by setting the magistrates against