with this, Count William inflicted seven Lutheran beneficiaries upon them, obliging them to lodge and feed them gratis.  Lutheran preachers and school teachers were salaried out of the convent revenues, which the Count managed by fraud and cunning to confiscate.  That portion of the convent buildings which bordered on his property he turned into stables for his own horses, so that entrance to the friar’s quarters was open to his servants, while the Carmelites were themselves forbidden to go in and out on that side.

The new Provincial succeeded in time by dint of courage and firmness, in getting back all that the Count had seized by force; but other houses were in as deplorable a condition, and little could be done to improve matters.  Billick appealed to the Emperor, who had taken all the Carmelite convents in Lower Germany under his protection; but the Emperor’s goodwill surpassed his power to help, the whole of his money and energy being needed to oppose the Turks, the French, and the Duke of Cleves.

The greatest danger and difficulty lay in the behaviour of Count Hermann of Wied, Archbishop and Elector of Cologne.  From the outset his rule had been detrimental to the Church.  The best that could be said of him in his youth was that he was “kind and peace-loving, fond of hunting, but not particularly learned.”  Charles V., in a letter to the landgrave Philip of Hessen, who had joined the Lutherans, says:  “How should the good man be able to reform his diocese?  He has no Latin, and has never said more than three Masses in his life.  He does not even know the Confiteor.”  Philip replied:  “I can assure your Majesty that he reads German industriously, and interests himself in religious questions.”

Unfortunately, these “religious questions” threw the archbishop into the arms of the Lutherans, and already in 1536, Aleander considered him as much lost to the Church as Philip of Hessen himself, who made no secret of his apostasy.  Melancthon was his dear friend already when he made the acquaintance of Martin Bucer at the Diet of Hagenau in 1540.

Two years later, Archbishop Hermann invited this violent and notorious heretic to preach in the minster at Bonn.  Immediately, Cologne rose up in protest, and the Cathedral Chapter, the clergy and the Magistrate presented the archbishop with a remonstrance.  Hermann replied by sending Melancthon to support Bucer at Bonn, and thus, by entrusting the work of reform to men whose sole aim was to subvert Catholic doctrine and to disorganise Christian society, proved himself faithless to the solemn promise he had made neither to introduce religious novelties into his diocese, nor to abolish customs founded on Catholic tradition.