Page:Balthasar Hübmaier.djvu/295

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1528]
The Martyr
223

with reference to the late hearing; also that you learn by thorough inquiry whatever else you can concerning all that is herein included, and give us your counsel regarding the same, that we may know in future how to perform our whole duty in the uprooting of evil, and by punishment to make so much the better example for others.[1]

After this preliminary examination, which is distinctly stated to have been held in the royal prison at Vienna, Hübmaier and his wife were sent elsewhere for several months.

The place of their confinement is said by all the contemporary authorities to have been the castle of Greisenstein, or Grätzenstein or Greutzenstain, but there has been and is dispute as to the identification of this spot. Beck and Loserth think that the castle of Kreutzenstein is meant, on the ground that it is known to have been used in the sixteenth century as a State prison. Others have generally identified the place with Greifenstein, a castle still in possession of the Lichtenstein family, a few miles from Vienna on the Danube. This identification seems the more probable, and suggests that Hübmaier may have been left in the custody of his noble

  1. Quoted by Loserth (p. 174) from the State archives at Innsbruck.