Its title bears witness to the Messianic belief of the people that one of their {90} great, old emperors should sometime return and restore the world to a condition of justice and happiness.

The present tract preached that "obedience was dead and justice sick"; it attacked serfdom as wicked, denounced the ecclesiastical law and demanded the freedom given by Christ.
The same doctrine, adapted to the needs of the time, is preached in the _Reformation of the Emperor Frederic III_, published anonymously in 1523.

Though more radical than Luther it reflects some of his ideas.
Still more, however, does it embody the reforms proposed at Nuremberg in 1523.

It may probably have been written by George Ruexner, called Jerusalem, an Imperial Herald prominent in these circles.

It advocated the abolition of all taxes and tithes, the repeal of all imperial civil laws, the reform of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, and the limitation of the amount of capital allowed any one merchant to 10,000 gulden.
Though there was nothing new in either the manner of oppression or in the demands of the third estate during the last decade preceding the great rebellion, there does seem to be a new atmosphere, or tone, in the literature addressed to the lower classes.