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In 1603 there was published a Bible History and Chronology, under the title of the "Geistliche Karten Spiel," where, much as Murner did in the instance we have given above, the cards were used as an aid to memory, the author giving to each of the suit signs the distinctive appellation of some character or incident in Holy Writ.
The most talented among them, as regards vigorous, popular German and coarse satire, was the Franciscan Thomas Murner; but his theology seemed to Luther so weak, that he only favoured him once with a brief allusion. Nothing new was contributed to the great struggle by this interchange of polemics.
The government of Luzern, excited to the highest pitch of hostility by the passionate Doctor Murner, did not prevent him from attacking Bern and her government in the most unmeasured style in various libelous writings, issued by a printing-house of his own. All this increased the hatred toward that state and the favorable inclination toward Zurich.
This view of the "regular" was shared, moreover, by not a few of the secular clergy themselves. Humanists, who were subsequently ardent champions of the Church against Luther and the Protestant Reformation men such as Murner and Erasmus had been previously the bitterest satirists of the "friar" and the "monk."
Thomas Murner, also, who was the type of the "moderate" of the situation, while professing to disapprove of the abuses of the Church, declared that Luther's manner of agitation could only lead to the destruction of all order, civil no less than ecclesiastical.
Yet it was Thomas Murner, who finally brought the matter to an issue. If Eck and Faber were undoubtedly fitted by their noble external appearance their scientific and worldly training, to gain influence among the higher classes, so was the barefooted monk not less the man, to work upon the multitude: to inspire some with enthusiasm and rouse up others to anger.
Thomas Murner, whose "Logica Memorativa Chartiludium," published at Strassburg in 1507, is the earliest instance known to us of a distinct application of playing cards to education, though the author expressly disclaims any knowledge of cards. The method used by the Doctor was to make each card an aid to memory, though the method must have been a severe strain of memory in itself.
They two, and several others of like mind, kept up the battle for sixteen days, against Eck, Faber, the not unlearned but extremely passionate Doctor Murner of Strassburg, preacher at Luzern, and their friends, who were present in great numbers. Meanwhile Zwingli was not idle. Every evening a report of the proceedings was brought to him from Baden, for inspection, counsel and advice.
In Luzern itself, even among individual members of the government, a friendly feeling was still found by the envoys of Zurich, who in the beginning of the year were sent thither to lay complaints against Thomas Murner.
First of all, the Territories were to be left to their own free choice in matters of religion; to declare for one system or the other. The alliance with King Ferdinand was to be abolished and its documents annihilated. Doctor Murner was to be arraigned before the Confederates in Baden, to answer for defamation of Zurich and Bern. These were the chief articles.
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