Thus far extends what is preserved of Bötzinger's biography. He finally found rest at Heubach, and administered his office there for six-and-twenty years. He died in 1673, at the age of seventy-four, after having led for forty-seven years a life which cannot be designated as peaceful. Heubach was a new parish which had been formed at Gotha by Duke Ernest the Good, and Bötzinger was the first pastor. He was obliged to dwell in the royal shooting lodge, which had been built by Duke Casimir in the forest, for grouse shooting. In the neighbouring forester's house lived an insolent forester; the country was in a wild state, little inhabited, and the people, corrupted by the war, led a lawless forest life. It appears that the new pastor was not particularly welcome to these denizens of the woods, the forester especially was his vehement opponent, and the pastor secretly complained, in Latin distiches which he inscribed in the church records, to his successor, of the bitter sufferings which this servant of the woods occasioned him. He in a brotherly way warned his successor against the wickedness of the man and his bad wife. But in spite of this contention, it may be concluded that this long-tormented sufferer was not altogether unhappy, and a harmless self-contemplation is to be perceived in his Latin verses. When at last he died, laudatory poems by some of his noted clerical brothers were written, as was then the custom; some of them are extant both in Latin and German. Even Herr Andreas Bachmann, the court preacher at Gotha, a distinguished man, yielded a tribute of respect to his "Dear old, now deceased clerical brother;" it begins with the following verses, which will conclude this chapter:--
Martin Bötzinger, God's servant, faithful and true,Upright as Job--was long time pastor I ween;A much tormented man with crosses not a few,As will, in the record of his life, be seen.
Martin Bötzinger, God's servant, faithful and true,
Upright as Job--was long time pastor I ween;
A much tormented man with crosses not a few,
As will, in the record of his life, be seen.