Bartholomew Sastrow: Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster. Bartholomäus Sastrow
such an extent that one night he judged it prudent to leave the city. His brother, Joachim, opened the gates to him without authority--a piece of daring which cost him ten weeks of imprisonment in the Blue Tower. At the sacking of Rome, Zutfeld Wardenberg tried to hide himself among the invalids of a hospital. He was soon discovered, killed, and everything taken away from him. In the church of St. Mary, at Stralsund, stands the handsome mausoleum he had prepared for himself, together with an epitaph setting forth his titles, but his body lies somewhere at Rome, no one knows where.
Burgomaster Smiterlow was as frank in his speech as he was open of heart. When he conversed in the street his strong and clear voice could be heard a couple of yards off. All his speeches began with "Yes, in the name of Jesus." One day, after dinner, he went into his stables where, as a rule, he had three horses; he saw one of his stablemen strike one of the animals with a pitchfork, saying, in imitation of himself, "In the name of Jesus." Smiterlow snatched the implement away from him, then stuck it between his shoulders so that he dropped down, and quietly remarked: "Now and again I cause people to cry 'In the name of all the devils.'"
According to the custom of the papists, my mother went at half-past twelve, especially during Lent, to recite a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria before each of the three altars of her ordinary church. She always took her little Bartholomäi with her. On one occasion I sat down on the steps of the first altar and began to relieve nature; when she passed on to the second, I followed her and continued the operation, which I finished on the third. When my mother perceived what had occurred she rushed home in hot haste and sent a servant with a broom to repair the mischief. Seeing how young she was when separated from her husband and left with four young children, it is not surprising that my mother had moments of sadness and discouragement. One day that she was cutting up some dry fish, a piece fell from the block. I picked it up. Without noticing my mother stooped at the same time, and as I was rising, the edge of the hatchet cut my forehead. The scar was never effaced. The Lord be praised, though, the accident had no further consequence.
Hartmann's family having received satisfaction, my father appointed to meet his wife and his children at the manse of Neuenkirchen. It was in the autumn and the pears were ripe. After having shaken down and eaten as many as they could, the children began to pelt each other with them. A big pear dropped under the hoofs of a couple of horses tied to a large pear tree. When I stooped to get hold of it, one of the animals dealt me a severe kick at the temple. There was general consternation, and the wound being seemingly dangerous, we came back immediately to town, and I was taken to the doctor.
The Dukes George and Barnim came to Stralsund with four hundred horsemen; they received homage and confirmed the privileges of the city. As for the claims of the priests, it was decided to refer them to the Imperial Chamber. Burgomasters, councillors, burghers, preachers (in all about threescore), were summoned to depose on oath before the Imperial Commissioners, sitting at Greifswald. The lawsuit cost the city a considerable sum; the clergy practically flung the money away, but the rector, Hippolytus Steinwer, began to perceive that the chances were turning against them, and one day he was found dead. It was believed he had strangled himself from vexation. That event put an end to the litigation. The priests returned one after another to Stralsund.
Gradually the sobered citizens began to open their eyes to the serious prejudice which was being done to public and private interests by the agitation of Moller. On the other hand, the princes had learned to know Smiterlow during the journey to Nuremberg; they were also aware of the esteem in which he had been held by their father. All those feelings showed themselves on the occasion of the rendering of homage. Rolof Moller was obliged to leave the city, and Burgomaster Smiterlow re-entered it on August 1, 1526. Moller, after a stay of several years at Stettin, received permission to come back to Stralsund, Smiterlow giving his consent; but scarcely a fortnight after his return had gone by when he died, it was said, of grief; and the assumption was sufficiently plausible.
Hence, Smiterlow spent the time of his exile at my mother's, at Greifswald, while his house at Stralsund sheltered my father. The wives of the two banished men went constantly and at all seasons from one town to another, through hail, snow, rain, frost and cold, and also to the great detriment of their purse and their health.
I have often been told afterwards I was a restless, energetic child. I often went up to the tower of St. Nicholas's, and on one occasion I made the round of it outside. My mother, standing on the threshold of her house, facing the church, was a witness of the feat, and dared scarcely breathe until her son came down safe and skin-whole. It would appear that little Bartholomäi had his reward at her hands.
While at Greifswald I had already been sent to school. Besides reading, I was taught declension, comparisons and conjugation, according to the grammar of Donat; after which we passed to Torrentinus. On Palm Sunday I was selected to intone the Quantus; the preceding years I had sung at first the short, then the long Hic est. What an honour for the child and for the parents! It was a real feast, for as a rule the sharpest boys are chosen those who, undeterred by the crowds of priests and laymen, bring out their clearest notes, especially for the Quantus. The continuation of this story will, however, soon show how, from being sanguine, my temperament became melancholy, and how my gaiety and recklessness vanished.
CHAPTER II
My Student's Days at Greifswald--Victor Bole and his tragical End--A Servant possessed by the Devil--My Brother Johannes' Preceptors and Mine--My Father's never-ending Law Suits
Having acquired the certainty that the Hartmanns would never consent to my father's return to Greifswald, my parents, like the conscientious married couple they were, desired to bear in common the domestic burdens. In the spring of 1528 my mother, after having let her dwelling at Greifswald, joined her husband at Stralsund, where he had the freeman's right and a tumble-down old house. My maternal grandfather, Christian Schwarz, at that time city treasurer, kept me with him in order to let me pursue my studies. I underwent the ceremonial of installation, a kind of burlesque function of initiation applied to novices. My tutor was George Normann, of the island of Rügen, who terminated his career in the service of the King of Sweden. I was the reverse of a studious boy and fonder of roving about with my relative in his journeys about Greifswald than of books. As a consequence my mental progress was in proportion to my efforts.
There was at Greifswald a burgomaster named Victor Bole, belonging to a notable family of the island of Rügen. Before he attained his civic honours he was a good evangelical and a zealous friend of the preachers, but his apostasy was thorough. As much as he had supported the ministry before his election, as much did he oppose them afterwards. I remember seeing him at the meetings of the corporation seated in the front place in virtue of his dual quality of eldest member and burgomaster, more or less in liquor, browbeating and talking everybody down (in High-German always). As he had taken part in several expeditions, fighting was the invariable theme of his discourses. He generally summoned the musicians, cymbal players and pipers before him. "Dost thou know a war cry?" he asked of a piper. "Yes, certainly," was the reply, while shrill notes rent the air. But the burgomaster was beaming. "This, at any rate, is a useful kind of fellow; while that Knipstro of Stralsund stammers in the pulpit about pap, pap, pap, I am sure he could play a war cry. Then what's the good of him?"
"Those who laugh last laugh loudest," says the proverb. That same year, 1528, the King of the May was Bertrand Smiterlow. I walked in front of him carrying his crown. Bole did Smiterlow the honour to prance by his side, being very pleased to parade his servants and his horses, of the latter of which he had four in his stable. If the skies had shown a little bit more clement we should have been very happy. But though it was the 1st May, there was not a bud nor a blade of grass to be seen. On the contrary, the snow powdered our procession with large flakes, both on coming and on going. As a consequence everybody was in a hurry to get back again. Odd to relate, the seed did not seem to suffer. After they had presented the crown to the May King in the city, everybody galloped back to his own roof tree. When the burgomaster reached his house he was taken with such violent colic