Then Zwingli
sent him to a kindly friend, the Pastor Hans Schnegg, who lived on the
little Island of Ufnau, in the Lake of Zuerich. And here at Ufnau, worn
out by his long, double conflict with the Pope and with disease, Ulrich
von Hutten died in 1523, at the age of thirty-five. "He left behind
him," wrote Zwingli, "nothing of worth. Books he had none; no money,
and no property of any sort, except a pen."
[Illustration: Ulrich Zwingli.]
What was the value of this short and troubled life? Three hundred
years ago it was easy to answer with Erasmus and the rest--Nothing.
Hutten had denounced the Pope, and the Pope had crushed him. He had
stirred up noble men to battle for freedom, and they, too, had been
destroyed. Franz von Sickingen was dead. The league of the cities and
princes had faded away forever. Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, no
one knew where, and scarcely a trace of the Reformation was left in
Germany. Whatever Hutten had touched he had ruined. He had "dared
it," and the force he had defied had crushed him in return.
But, looking back over these centuries, the life of Hutten rises into
higher prominence. His writings were seed in good ground.
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