‘We are your guests, and guests should be accorded hospitality, all the more so as we’re here on official business,’ I tell the woman, who is now nervously swinging her arms back and forth. I basically had to force her to bring me and my immediate retinue something to eat and drink, which I did, not because we were rather hungry but because I am curious about the economic standards of our parishes. She hurried into the house, and I signalled one of my men to follow her. And it was a good thing I did, for he caught the woman at the back window telling some boy to run off somewhere and say such-and-such. My aide interrupted her and sent the boy to us so we could keep an eye on him. As I and my immediate retinue sat in the shade sampling the meat and the different kinds of bread and drinking water and wine – which was actually not bad, a white wine, probably a muscat – four male persons appeared in front of the house; they kept glancing back and forth between us and the upstairs windows of the presbytery.
‘So where are the four of you going?’ I ask, stopping them.
One of the men answers casually, ‘To have one.’
‘What kind of “one”?’ my aide asks, and another man volunteers that it could be long or short but it had to be a wet one, at which all four look at each other and wink.
‘But why come here, to the priest’s house?’ I ask.
‘Because it might be the priest’s house, but it’s also a winehouse and a whorehouse, too.’ Now they all burst out laughing. They are speaking German, and I can tell at once that they are Lutheran riff-raff from the north. I signal my soldiers to surround them.
‘Why? We haven’t done anything wrong,’ they protest. ‘We’re foundrymen from up north, and since it’s the Lord’s Day we thought we’d unwind a little and maybe have something wet.’
I told the soldiers to seize all four and lock them in the pigsty – on charges of vulgar behaviour, inane blather and disrespect for Church authority. And I again noticed that even more of the soldiers were glancing at the upstairs windows, where heads could be seen moving around.
Eventually, a large cart with a yoke of oxen rumbled into the garden; it was sagging under the weight of heavy oak barrels. A short and stocky middle-aged man jumped off and gave orders to his accomplices to roll the barrels off the cart. When he glanced over at the house and saw us beneath the pergola, and then saw the soldiers interspersed among the fruit trees, beads of sweat broke out on his bloated, well-fed face, which reflected the sun with an oily gleam. Although it was only noon, the day was already mercilessly hot. With his hands on his backside, the newcomer – obviously the parish priest and master – staggered over to us uncertainly and greeted us with ‘Praise Jesus!’
‘You must have drowned the entire village in extreme unction,’ I say, ‘considering the size of the barrels you just rolled off that cart.’
The man shifts his feet nervously and gives me a hangdog look. I gesture to my men to open the barrels. No heretical books, just wine – white, semi-dry, good quality, they tell me. The priest keeps looking at the house, where his housekeeper is now lurking behind a window downstairs, while upstairs, braids of black, brown and red can be seen bouncing in the windows.
‘When was the last time you served Mass in the church?’ I ask, peering intently at the priest.
‘Oh, I do it regularly …’ he replies.
‘Lying is a very grave sin, priest!’ I say sharply. Generally speaking, I have to repeat the same words regularly on my visitations. The priest bores his eyes into the ground, as I rapidly question him. Without prevaricating he confesses that he only gives Mass on feast days and at funerals (no one has been married here recently), that he operates a winehouse in the presbytery, and that there are three or four girls in the upstairs rooms who augment his income. When he has confessed everything, he repents. I prescribe him penance, which is partly of a financial nature, and one of my aides collects that part on the spot.
That very day I had my suffragan write an order for that parish priest to be replaced by a new and well-verified member of the clergy.
We left there in the early afternoon and reached the village of Selo before nightfall, just as the bells were ringing for vespers. As we approached the Church of St Barbara, patron saint of artillerymen, builders, stonemasons and miners, I gave the order to stop so we could examine first-hand how God’s word was being proclaimed here. I was worried our resplendent entourage might attract too much attention, but such considerations proved groundless. There were only a few old women sitting motionless in the church, some of them, in the front rows, mumbling out prayers, while from the pulpit their elderly priest was similarly mumbling. He did not even notice us entering, and when we went up to him after the service, he asked, squinting in the direction of St Barbara’s statue, if we had come to make an offering for the Mass or wished to purchase indulgences, or perhaps one of us was getting married and wanted the banns announced at next Sunday’s service, or would we maybe like to bury someone? … I could not determine if he was merely old or demented, drunk or stupid, or all of the above. When I told him who I was and explained the nature of our visit, he still understood nothing. In that same order, the one just mentioned, I commanded that he, too, be replaced by a younger man.
We went on to a nearby manor where we had made arrangements to spend the night.
Here resided an old knightly family of the lower nobility, loyal to the prince – so I was briefly informed by the aides who had organized the logistical aspects of my visitations. Their ancestors, as well as those living here now, had distinguished themselves in a number of battles, especially the noble Sir Georg, whose sabre felled two dozen Turks in a single day at the Carinthian Gate in the defence of Vienna in 1529.
When we reached the courtyard of the hunting lodge and the family caught sight of us, they did not know what to do. ‘You’re here already? How did you get here so soon? We thought you were coming tomorrow!’ they cried, as panic spread. The staff bustled nervously past, avoiding our eyes, while we climbed the stairs to the main hall, which was decorated with the horns and antlers of hunting trophies; on one wall, a fat boar’s head stared out at us. As we took our seats at a round oak table, I heard tense activity in the courtyard, a swarm of male and female voices, despite the closed windows. When I motioned to my men to spread out in the courtyard and sniff around a bit, the lord of the manor, the noble knight, stood up anxiously; it was obvious he did not know how to prevent them from doing what they had been told.
At first I thought the knight was trying to hide Protestant preachers, but it turned out to be more complicated than that. We had indeed announced our arrival for the following day, explaining that on this leg of the journey there were no decent lodgings to be had – which was not entirely true. We could have stayed at a nearby Carthusian monastery, which, I am told, has degenerated in every respect and will soon be dealt with separately. In any case, we had long had this knightly manor in our sights. But how can a visitation be successful if those we visit are given time to prepare, to conceal all suspicious indicators before we arrive and in a single day transform themselves into honest Catholics? To make a long story short, it turned out that certain apostate madmen – Baptists or Anabaptists, or just plain Leapers – were holding gatherings at the manor. When I pressed our hosts a little, saying it would be better to divulge everything straight away rather than have us discover whatever was happening for ourselves, the knight flared into a rage, and I at once understood that he had very likely himself dispatched at least half the carrion, antlers and wild boar hanging on the walls of his lodge. Glassy-eyed, he started telling me in a high, piping voice about some apocalypse in which the world had recently almost been destroyed by a huge comet, which would have wiped the greater part of sinful mankind off the face of the earth. If this did not happen, it was thanks to them: their prayers and rituals had altered the comet’s course so it circumvented the earth.
‘Prove it!’ I say.
‘My faith is my proof,’ he replies.
‘But yours is not the true faith!’ I persist.
‘It’s