Here he wrote his treatise _On Monastic Vows_, declaring that they are wrong and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the cloister and to marry.

In thus freeing thousands of men and women from a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the greatest of his practical reforms.

At the Wartburg also Luther began his translation of the Bible.

The New Testament appeared in September 1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last published in 1532.
[Sidenote: The radicals] While Luther was in retirement at the Wartburg, his colleagues Carlstadt and Melanchthon, and the Augustinian friar Gabriel Zwilling, took up the movement at Wittenberg and carried out reforms more radical {82} than those of their leader.

The endowments of masses were confiscated and applied to the relief of the poor on new and better principles.