While on the one hand the poor were still mocked and insulted as they always had been by foolish and heartless possessors of inherited wealth and position, from other quarters they now began to be also flattered and courted.

The peasant became in the large pamphlet literature of the time an ideal figure, the type of the plain, honest, God-fearing man.

[Sidenote: The peasant idealized] Nobles like Duke Ulrich of Wuerttemberg affected to be called by popular nicknames.

Carlstadt and other learned men proclaimed that the peasant knew better the Word of God and the way of salvation than did the learned.

Many radical preachers, especially the Anabaptist {91} Muenzer, carried the message of human brotherhood to the point of communism.