God give us all a Christian mind, and especially to the Christian nobility of the German nation a right spiritual courage to do the best that can be done for the poor Church. Amen.
Wittenberg, 1520.
Luther here alleges that the annates are not applied to their ostensible purpose, viz., the Crusade. This charge is repeated in the Gravamina of the German Nation presented to the Diet of Worms (1521), with the additional allegation that the amount demanded in the way of annates has materially increased (A. Wrede, Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., II, pp. 675 f.). Similar complaints had been made at the Diet of Augsburg (1518), and were repeated at the Diet of Nurnberg (Wrede, op. cit., III, 660). Hutten calls the annates "a good at robbery" (Ed. Bocking, IV, 207). In England the annates were abolished by Act of Parliament (April 10, 1532)
A PRELUDE ON THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF THE CHURCH