CHAPTER I

Produced by Jeannie Howse, Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net

* * * * *

+-----------------------------------------------------------+

| Transcriber's Note: |

| |

| Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has |

| been preserved. |

| |

| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this |

| text. For a complete list, please see the end of this |

| document. |

| |

+-----------------------------------------------------------+

* * * * *

GERMAN CULTURE

PAST AND PRESENT

BY

ERNEST BELFORT BAX

AUTHOR OF "JEAN PAUL MARAT," "THE RELIGION

OF SOCIALISM," "THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM,"

"THE ROOTS OF REALITY," ETC., ETC.

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LTD.

RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.

_First published in 1915_

[_All rights reserved_]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTORY:--SITUATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 7

I. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 65

II. POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE TIME 85

III. THE FOLKLORE OF REFORMATION GERMANY 99

IV. THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN TOWN 114

V. COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 122

VI. THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD 154

VII. GENERAL SIGNS OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REVOLT 174

VIII. THE GREAT RISING OF THE PEASANTS AND THE

ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT 183

IX. POST-MEDIÆVAL GERMANY 229

X. MODERN GERMAN CULTURE 263

PREFACE

The following pages aim at giving a general view of the social and

intellectual life of Germany from the end of the mediæval period to

modern times. In the earlier portion of the book, the first half of

the sixteenth century in Germany is dealt with at much greater length

and in greater detail than the later period, a sketch of which forms

the subject of the last two chapters. The reason for this is to be

found in the fact that while the roots of the later German character

and culture are to be sought for in the life of this period, it is

comparatively little known to the average educated English reader. In

the early fifteenth century, during the Reformation era, German life

and culture in its widest sense began to consolidate themselves, and

at the same time to take on an originality which differentiated them

from the general life and culture of Western Europe as it was during

the Middle Ages.

To those who would fully appreciate the later developments, therefore,

it is essential thoroughly to understand the details of the social and

intellectual history of the time in question. For the later period

there are many more works of a generally popular character available

for the student and general reader. The chief aim of the sketch given

in Chapters IX and X is to bring into sharp relief those events which,

in the Author's view, represent more or less crucial stages in the

development of modern Germany.

For the earlier portion of the present volume an older work of the

Author's, now out of print, entitled _German Society at the Close of

the Middle Ages_, has been largely drawn upon. Reference, as will be

seen, has also been made in the course of the present work to two

other writings from the same pen which are still to be had for those

desirous of fuller information on their respective subjects, viz. _The

Peasants' War_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists_ (Messrs.

George Allen & Unwin).

German Culture Past and Present

INTRODUCTORY

The close of the fifteenth century had left the whole structure of

mediæval Europe to all appearance intact. Statesmen and writers like

Philip de Commines had apparently as little suspicion that the state

of things they saw around them, in which they had grown up and of

which they were representatives, was ever destined to pass away, as

others in their turn have since had. Society was organized on the

feudal hierarchy of status. In the first place, a noble class,

spiritual and temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either wholly

servile or but nominally free. In addition to this opposition of noble

and peasant there was that of the township, which, in its corporate

capacity, stood in the relation of lord to the surrounding peasantry.

The township in Germany was of two kinds--first of all, there was the

township that was "free of the Empire," that is, that held nominally

from the Emperor himself (_Reichstadt_), and secondly, there was the

township that was under the domination of an intermediate lord. The

economic basis of the whole was still land; the status of a man or of

a corporation was determined by the mode in which they held their

land. "No land without a lord" was the principle of mediæval polity;

just as "money has no master" is the basis of the modern world with

its self-made men. Every distinction of rank in the feudal system was

still denoted for the most part by a special costume. It was a world

of knights in armour, of ecclesiastics in vestments and stoles, of

lawyers in robes, of princes in silk and velvet and cloth of gold, and

of peasants in laced shoe, brown cloak, and cloth hat.

But although the whole feudal organization was outwardly intact, the

thinker who was watching the signs of the times would not have been

long in arriving at the conclusion that feudalism was "played out,"

that the whole fabric of mediæval civilization was becoming dry and

withered, and had either already begun to disintegrate or was on the

eve of doing so. Causes of change had within the past half-century

been working underneath the surface of social life, and were rapidly

undermining the whole structure. The growing use of firearms in war;

the rapid multiplication of printed books; the spread of the new

learning after the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and the

subsequent diffusion of Greek teachers throughout Europe; the surely

and steadily increasing communication with the new world, and the

consequent increase of the precious metals; and, last but not least,

Vasco da Gama's discovery of the new trade route from the East by way

of the Cape--all these were indications of the fact that the

death-knell of the old order of things had struck.

Notwithstanding the apparent outward integrity of the system based on

land tenures, land was ceasing to be the only form of productive

wealth. Hence it was losing the exclusive importance attaching to it

in the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The first form of modern

capitalism had already arisen. Large aggregations of capital in the

hands of trading companies were becoming common. The Roman law was

establishing itself in the place of the old customary tribal law which

had hitherto prevailed in the manorial courts, serving in some sort as

a bulwark against the caprice of the territorial lord; and this change

facilitated the development of the bourgeois principle of private, as

opposed to communal, property. In intellectual matters, though

theology still maintained its supremacy as the chief subject of human

interest, other interests were rapidly growing up alongside of it, the

most prominent being the study of classical literature.

Besides these things, there was the dawning interest in nature, which

took on, as a matter of course, a magical form in accordance with

traditional and contemporary modes of thought. In fact, like the

flicker of a dying candle in its socket, the Middle Ages seemed at the

beginning of the sixteenth century to exhibit all their own salient

characteristics in an exaggerated and distorted form. The old feudal

relations had degenerated into a blood-sucking oppression; the old

rough brutality, into excogitated and elaborated cruelty (aptly

illustrated in the collection of ingenious instruments preserved in

the Torture-tower at Nürnberg); the old crude superstition, into a

systematized magical theory of natural causes and effects; the old

love of pageantry, into a lavish luxury and magnificence of which we

have in the "field of the cloth of gold" the stock historical example;

the old chivalry, into the mercenary bravery of the soldier, whose

trade it was to fight, and who recognized only one virtue--to wit,

animal courage. Again, all these exaggerated characteristics were

mixed with new elements, which distorted them further, and which

foreshadowed a coming change, the ultimate issue of which would be

their extinction and that of the life of which they were the signs.

The growing tendency towards centralization and the consequent

suppression or curtailment of the local autonomies of the Middle Ages

in the interests of some kind of national government, of which the

political careers of Louis XI in France, of Edward IV in England, and

of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain were such conspicuous instances,

did not fail to affect in a lesser degree that loosely connected

political system of German States known as the Holy Roman Empire.

Maximilian's first Reichstag in 1495 caused to be issued an Imperial

edict suppressing the right of private warfare claimed and exercised

by the whole noble class from the princes of the empire down to the

meanest knight. In the same year the Imperial Chamber (_Reichskammer_)

was established, and in 1501 the Imperial Aulic Council. Maximilian

also organized a standing army of mercenary troops, called

_Landesknechte_. Shortly afterwards Germany was divided into Imperial

districts called circles (_Kreise_), ultimately ten in number, all of

which were under an imperial government (_Reichsregiment_), which had

at its disposal a military force for the punishment of disturbers of

the peace. But the public opinion of the age, conjoined with the

particular circumstances, political and economic, of Central Europe,

robbed the enactment in a great measure of its immediate effect.

Highway plundering and even private war were still going on, to a

considerable extent, far into the sixteenth century. Charles V pursued

the same line of policy as his predecessor; but it was not until after

the suppression of the lower nobility in 1523, and finally of the

peasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then the

centralization, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, rather

than of the Imperial power, which, after Charles V's time, grew weaker

and weaker. The speciality about the history of Germany is, that it

has not known till our own day centralization on a national or racial

scale like England or France.

At the opening of the sixteenth century public opinion not merely

sanctioned open plunder by the wearer of spurs and by the possessor of

a stronghold, but regarded it as his special prerogative, the exercise

of which was honourable rather than disgraceful. The cities certainly

resented their burghers being waylaid and robbed, and hanged the

knights wherever they could; and something like a perpetual feud

always existed between the wealthier cities and the knights who

infested the trade routes leading to and from them. Still, these

belligerent relations were taken as a matter of course; and no

disgrace, in the modern sense, attached to the occupation of highway

robbery.

In consequence of the impoverishment of the knights at this period,

owing to causes with which we shall deal later, the trade or

profession had recently received an accession of vigour, and at the

same time was carried on more brutally and mercilessly than ever

before. We will give some instances of the sort of occurrence which

was by no means unusual. In the immediate neighbourhood of Nürnberg,

which was _bien entendu_ one of the chief seats of the Imperial power,

a robber-knight leader, named Hans Thomas von Absberg, was a standing

menace. It was the custom of this ruffian, who had a large following,

to plunder even the poorest who came from the city, and, not content

with this, to mutilate his victims. In June 1522 he fell upon a

wretched craftsman, and with his own sword hacked off the poor

fellow's right hand, notwithstanding that the man begged him upon his

knees to take the left, and not destroy his means of earning his

livelihood. The following August he, with his band, attacked a

Nürnberg tanner, whose hand was similarly treated, one of his

associates remarking that he was glad to set to work again, as it was

"a long time since they had done any business in hands." On the same

occasion a cutler was dealt with after a similar fashion. The hands in

these cases were collected and sent to the Bürgermeister of Nürnberg,

with some such phrase as that the sender (Hans Thomas) would treat all

so who came from the city.

The princes themselves, when it suited their purpose, did not hesitate

to offer an asylum to these knightly robbers. With Absberg were

associated Georg von Giech and Hans Georg von Aufsess. Among other

notable robber-knights of the time may be mentioned the Lord of

Brandenstein and the Lord of Rosenberg. As illustrating the strictly

professional character of the pursuit, and the brutally callous nature

of the society practising it, we may narrate that Margaretha von

Brandenstein was accustomed, it is recorded, to give the advice to the

choice guests round her board that when a merchant failed to keep his

promise to them, they should never hesitate to cut off _both_ his

hands. Even Franz von Sickingen, known sometimes as the "last flower

of German chivalry," boasted of having among the intimate associates

of his enterprise for the rehabilitation of the knighthood many

gentlemen who had been accustomed to "let their horses on the high

road bite off the purses of wayfarers." So strong was the public

opinion of the noble class as to the inviolability of the privilege of

highway plunder that a monk, preaching one day in a cathedral and

happening to attack it as unjustifiable, narrowly escaped death at the

hands of some knights present amongst his congregation, who asserted

that he had insulted the prerogatives of their order. Whenever this

form of knight-errantry was criticized, there were never wanting

scholarly pens to defend it as a legitimate means of aristocratic

livelihood; since a knight must live in suitable style, and this was

often his only resource for obtaining the means thereto.

The free cities, which were subject only to Imperial jurisdiction,

were practically independent republics. Their organization was a

microcosm of that of the entire empire. At the apex of the municipal

society was the Bürgermeister and the so-called "Honorability"

(_Ehrbarkeit_), which consisted of the patrician clans or _gentes_ (in

most cases), those families which were supposed to be descended from

the original chartered freemen of the town, the old Mark-brethren.

They comprised generally the richest families, and had monopolized the

entire government of the city, together with the right to administer

its various sources of income and to consume its revenue at their

pleasure. By the time, however, of which we are writing, the

trade-guilds had also attained to a separate power of their own, and

were in some cases ousting the burgher-aristocracy, though they were

very generally susceptible of being manipulated by the members of the

patrician class, who, as a rule, could alone sit in the Council

(_Rath_). The latter body stood, in fact, as regards the town, much in

the relation of the feudal lord to his manor. Strong in their wealth

and in their aristocratic privileges, the patricians lorded it alike

over the townspeople and over the neighbouring peasantry, who were

subject to the municipality. They forestalled and regrated with

impunity. They assumed the chief rights in the municipal lands, in

many cases imposed duties at their own caprice, and turned guild

privileges and rights of citizenship into a source of profit for

themselves. Their bailiffs in the country districts forming part of

their territory were often more voracious in their treatment of the

peasants than even the nobles themselves. The accounts of income and

expenditure were kept in the loosest manner, and embezzlement clumsily

concealed was the rule rather than the exception.

The opposition of the non-privileged citizens, usually led by the

wealthier guildsmen not belonging to the aristocratic class, operated

through the guilds and through the open assembly of the citizens. It

had already frequently succeeded in establishing a representation of

the general body of the guildsmen in a so-called Great Council

(_Grosser Rath_), and in addition, as already said, in ousting the

"honorables" from some of the public functions. Altogether the

patrician party, though still powerful enough, was at the opening of

the sixteenth century already on the decline, the wealthy and

unprivileged opposition beginning in its turn to constitute itself

into a quasi-aristocratic body as against the mass of the poorer

citizens and those outside the pale of municipal rights. The latter

class was now becoming an important and turbulent factor in the life

of the larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the body of

non-patrician citizens, were naturally in general dominated by their

most wealthy section.

We may here observe that the development of the mediæval township from

its earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth

century was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, or

rather what later became the township, was represented entirely by

the circle of _gentes_ or group-families originally settled within the

mark or district on which the town subsequently stood. These

constituted the original aristocracy from which the tradition of the

_Ehrbarkeit_ dated. In those towns founded by the Romans, such as

Trier, Aachen, and others, the case was of course a little different.

There the origin of the _Ehrbarkeit_ may possibly be sought for in the

leading families of the Roman provincials who were in occupation of

the town at the coming of the barbarians in the fifth century. Round

the original nucleus there gradually accreted from the earliest period

of the Middle Ages the freed men of the surrounding districts,

fugitive serfs, and others who sought that protection and means of

livelihood in a community under the immediate domination of a powerful

lord, which they could not otherwise obtain when their native

village-community had perchance been raided by some marauding noble

and his retainers. Circumstances, amongst others the fact that the

community to which they attached themselves had already adopted

commerce and thus become a guild of merchants, led to the

differentiation of industrial functions amongst the new-comers, and

thus to the establishment of craft-guilds.

Another origin of the townsfolk, which must not be overlooked, is to

be found in the attendants on the palace-fortress of some great

overlord. In the early Middle Ages all such magnates kept up an

extensive establishment, the greater ecclesiastical lords no less than

the secular often having several castles. In Germany this origin of

the township was furthered by Charles the Great, who established

schools and other civil institutions, with a magistrate at their head,

round many of the palace-castles that he founded. "A new epoch," says

Von Maurer, "begins with the villa-foundations of Charles the Great

and his ordinances respecting them, for that his celebrated

capitularies in this connection were intended for his newly

established villas is self-evident. In that proceeding he obviously

had the Roman villa in his mind, and on the model of this he rather

further developed the previously existing court and villa constitution

than completely reorganized it. Hence one finds even in his new

creations the old foundation again, albeit on a far more extended

plan, the economical side of such villa-colonies being especially more

completely and effectively ordered."[2] The expression "Palatine," as

applied to certain districts, bears testimony to the fact here

referred to. As above said, the development of the township was

everywhere on the same lines. The aim of the civic community was

always to remove as far as possible the power which controlled them.

Their worst condition was when they were immediately overshadowed by a

territorial magnate. When their immediate lord was a prince, the area

of whose feudal jurisdiction was more extensive, his rule was less

oppressively felt, and their condition was therefore considerably

improved. It was only, however, when cities were "free of the empire"

(_Reichsfrei_) that they attained the ideal of mediæval civic freedom.

It follows naturally from the conditions described that there was, in

the first place, a conflict between the primitive inhabitants as

embodied in their corporate society and the territorial lord, whoever

he might be. No sooner had the township acquired a charter of freedom

or certain immunities than a new antagonism showed itself between the

ancient corporation of the city and the trade-guilds, these

representing the later accretions. The territorial lord (if any) now

sided, usually though not always, with the patrician party. But the

guilds, nevertheless, succeeded in ultimately wresting many of the

leading public offices from the exclusive possession of the patrician

families. Meanwhile the leading men of the guilds had become _hommes

arrivés_. They had acquired wealth, and influence which was in many

cases hereditary in their family, and by the beginning of the

sixteenth century they were confronted with the more or less veiled

and more or less open opposition of the smaller guildsmen and of the

newest comers into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs and

free peasants, whom economic pressure was fast driving within the

walls, owing to the changed conditions of the times.

The peasant of the period was of three kinds: the _leibeigener_ or

serf, who was little better than a slave, who cultivated his lord's

domain, upon whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and who was in all

respects amenable to the will of his lord; the _höriger_ or villein,

whose services were limited alike in kind and amount; and the _freier_

or free peasant, who merely paid what was virtually a quit-rent in

kind or in money for being allowed to retain his holding or status in

the rural community under the protection of the manorial lord. The

last was practically the counterpart of the mediæval English

copyholder. The Germans had undergone essentially the same

transformations in social organization as the other populations of

Europe.

The barbarian nations at the time of their great migration in the

fifth century were organized on a tribal and village basis. The head

man was simply _primus inter pares_. In the course of their wanderings

the successful military leader acquired powers and assumed a position

that was unknown to the previous times, when war, such as it was, was

merely inter-tribal and inter-clannish, and did not involve the

movements of peoples and federations of tribes, and when, in

consequence, the need of permanent military leaders or for the

semblance of a military hierarchy had not arisen. The military leader

now placed himself at the head of the older social organization, and

associated with his immediate followers on terms approaching equality.

A well-known illustration of this is the incident of the vase taken

from the Cathedral of Rheims, and of Chlodowig's efforts to rescue it

from his independent comrade-in-arms.

The process of the development of the feudal polity of the Middle Ages

is, of course, a very complicated one, owing to the various strands

that go to compose it. In addition to the German tribes themselves,

who moved _en masse_, carrying with them their tribal and village

organization, under the overlordship of the various military leaders,

were the indigenous inhabitants amongst whom they settled. The latter

in the country districts, even in many of the territories within the

Roman Empire, still largely retained the primitive communal

organization. The new-comers, therefore, found in the rural

communities a social system already in existence into which they

naturally fitted, but as an aristocratic body over against the

conquered inhabitants. The latter, though not all reduced to a servile

condition, nevertheless held their land from the conquering body under

conditions which constituted them an order of freemen inferior to the

new-comers.

To put the matter briefly, the military leaders developed into barons

and princes, and in some cases the nominal centralization culminated,

as in France and England, in the kingly office; while, in Germany and

Italy, it took the form of the revived Imperial office, the spiritual

overlord of the whole of Christendom being the Pope, who had his

vassals in the prince-prelates and subordinate ecclesiastical holders.

In addition to the princes sprung originally from the military leaders

of the migratory nations, there were their free followers, who

developed ultimately into the knighthood or inferior nobility; the

inhabitants of the conquered districts forming a distinct class of

inferior freemen or of serfs. But the essentially personal relation

with which the whole process started soon degenerated into one based

on property. The most primitive form of property--land--was at the

outset what was termed _allodial_, at least among the conquering

race, from every social group having the possession, under the

trusteeship of his head man, of the land on which it settled. Now,

owing to the necessities of the time, owing to the need of protection,

to violence, and to religious motives, it passed into the hands of the

overlord, temporal or spiritual, as his possession; and the

inhabitants, even in the case of populations which had not been

actually conquered, became his vassals, villeins, or serfs, as the

case might be. The process by means of which this was accomplished was

more or less gradual; indeed, the entire extinction of communal

rights, whereby the notion of private ownership is fully realized, was

not universally effected even in the West of Europe till within a

measurable distance of our own time.[3]

From the foregoing it will be understood that the oppression of the

peasant, under the feudalism of the Middle Ages, and especially of the

later Middle Ages, was viewed by him as an infringement of his rights.

During the period of time constituting mediæval history, the peasant,

though he often slumbered, yet often started up to a sudden

consciousness of his position. The memory of primitive communism was

never quite extinguished, and the continual peasant-revolts of the

Middle Ages, though immediately occasioned, probably, by some fresh

invasion, by which it was sought to tear from the "common man" yet

another shred of his surviving rights, always had in the background

the ideal, vague though it may have been, of his ancient freedom.

Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the Jacquerie in France, with

its wild and apparently senseless vengeance; of the Wat Tyler revolt

in England, with its systematic attempt to envisage the vague

tradition of the primitive village community in the legends of the

current ecclesiastical creed; of the numerous revolts in Flanders and

North Germany; to a large extent of the Hussite movement in Bohemia,

under Ziska; of the rebellion led by George Doza in Hungary; and, as

we shall see in the body of the present work, of the social movements

of Reformation Germany, in which, with the partial exception of Ket's

rebellion in England a few years later, we may consider them as

virtually coming to an end.

For the movements in question were distinctly the last of their kind.

The civil wars of religion in France, and the great rebellion in

England against Charles I, which also assumed a religious colouring,

open a new era in popular revolts. In the latter, particularly, we

have clearly before us the attempt of the new middle class of town and

country, the independent citizen, and the now independent yeoman, to

assert supremacy over the old feudal estates or orders. The new

conditions had swept away the special revolutionary tradition of the

mediæval period, whose golden age lay in the past with its

communal-holding and free men with equal rights on the basis of the

village organization--rights which with every century the peasant felt

more and more slipping away from him. The place of this tradition was

now taken by an ideal of individual freedom, apart from any social

bond, and on a basis merely political, the way for which had been

prepared by that very conception of individual proprietorship on the

part of the landlord, against which the older revolutionary sentiment

had protested. A most powerful instrument in accommodating men's minds

to this change of view, in other words, to the establishment of the

new individualistic principle, was the Roman or Civil law, which, at

the period dealt with in the present book, had become the basis

whereon disputed points were settled in the Imperial Courts. In this

respect also, though to a lesser extent, may be mentioned the Canon

or Ecclesiastical law--consisting of papal decretals on various points

which were founded partially on the Roman or Civil law--a juridical

system which also fully and indeed almost exclusively recognized the

individual holding of property as the basis of civil society (albeit

not without a recognition of social duties on the part of the owner).

Learning was now beginning to differentiate itself from the

ecclesiastical profession, and to become a definite vocation in its

various branches. Crowds of students flocked to the seats of learning,

and, as travelling scholars, earned a precarious living by begging or

"professing" medicine, assisting the illiterate for a small fee, or

working wonders, such as casting horoscopes, or performing

thaumaturgic tricks. The professors of law were now the most

influential members of the Imperial Council and of the various

Imperial Courts. In Central Europe, as elsewhere, notably in France,

the civil lawyers were always on the side of the centralizing power,

alike against the local jurisdictions and against the peasantry.

The effects of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the

consequent dispersion of the accumulated Greek learning of the

Byzantine Empire, had, by the end of the fifteenth century, begun to

show themselves in a notable modification of European culture. The

circle of the seven sciences, the Quadrivium, and the Trivium, in

other words, the mediæval system of learning, began to be antiquated.

Scholastic philosophy, that is to say, the controversy of the Scotists

and the Thomists, was now growing out of date. Plato was extolled at

the expense of Aristotle. Greek, and even Hebrew, was eagerly sought

after. Latin itself was assuming another aspect; the Renaissance Latin

is classical Latin, whilst Mediæval Latin is dog-Latin. The physical

universe now began to be inquired into with a perfectly fresh

interest, but the inquiries were still conducted under the ægis of the

old habits of thought. The universe was still a system of mysterious

affinities and magical powers to the investigator of the Renaissance

period, as it had been before. There was this difference, however; it

was now attempted to _systematize_ the magical theory of the universe.

While the common man held a store of traditional magical beliefs

respecting the natural world, the learned man deduced these beliefs

from the Neo-Platonists, from the Kabbala, from Hermes Trismegistos,

and from a variety of other sources, and attempted to arrange this

somewhat heterogeneous mass of erudite lore into a system of organized

thought.

The Humanistic movement, so called, the movement, that is, of revived

classical scholarship, had already begun in Germany before what may be

termed the _sturm und drang_ of the Renaissance proper. Foremost among

the exponents of this older Humanism, which dates from the middle of

the fifteenth century, were Nicholas of Cusa and his disciples,

Rudolph Agricola, Alexander Hegius, and Jacob Wimpheling. But the new

Humanism and the new Renaissance movement generally throughout

Northern Europe centred chiefly in two personalities, Johannes

Reuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus. Reuchlin was the founder of the new

Hebrew learning, which up till then had been exclusively confined to

the synagogue. It was he who unlocked the mysteries of the Kabbala to

the Gentile world. But though it is for his introduction of Hebrew

study that Reuchlin is best known to posterity, yet his services in

the diffusion and popularization of classical culture were enormous.

The dispute of Reuchlin with the ecclesiastical authorities at Cologne

excited literary Germany from end to end. It was the first general

skirmish of the new and the old spirit in Central and Northern Europe.

But the man who was destined to become the personification of the

Humanist movement, us the new learning was called, was Erasmus. The

illegitimate son of the daughter of a Rotterdam burgher, he early

became famous on account of his erudition, in spite of the adverse

circumstances of his youth. Like all the scholars of his time, he

passed rapidly from one country to another, settling finally in Basel,

then at the height of its reputation as a literary and typographical

centre. The whole intellectual movement of the time centres round

Erasmus, as is particularly noticeable in the career of Ulrich von

Hutten, dealt with in the course of this history. As instances of the

classicism of the period, we may note the uniform change of the

patronymic into the classical equivalent, or some classicism supposed

to be the equivalent. Thus the name Erasmus itself was a classicism of

his father's name Gerhard, the German name Muth became Mutianus,

Trittheim became Trithemius, Schwarzerd became Melanchthon, and so on.

We have spoken of the other side of the intellectual movement of the

period. This other side showed itself in mystical attempts at reducing

nature to law in the light of the traditional problems which had been

set, to wit, those of alchemy and astrology: the discovery of the

philosopher's stone, of the transmutation of metals, of the elixir of

life, and of the correspondences between the planets and terrestrial

bodies. Among the most prominent exponents of these investigations may

be mentioned Philippus von Hohenheim or Paracelsus, and Cornelius

Agrippa of Nettesheim, in Germany, Nostrodamus in France, and Cardanus

in Italy. These men represent a tendency which was pursued by

thousands in the learned world. It was a tendency which had the honour

of being the last in history to embody itself in a distinct mythical

cycle. "Doctor Faustus" may probably have had an historical germ; but

in any case "Doctor Faustus," as known to legend and to literature, is

merely a personification of the practical side of the new learning.

The minds of men were waking up to interest in nature. There was one

man, Copernicus, who, at least partially, struck through the

traditionary atmosphere in which nature was enveloped, and to his

insight we owe the foundation of astronomical science; but otherwise

the whole intellectual atmosphere was charged with occult views. In

fact, the learned world of the sixteenth century would have found

itself quite at home in the pretensions and fancies of our modern

theosophist and psychical researchers, with their notions of making

erstwhile miracles non-miraculous, of reducing the marvellous to

being merely the result of penetration on the part of certain seers

and investigators of the secret powers of nature. Every wonder-worker

was received with open arms by learned and unlearned alike. The

possibility of producing that which was out of the ordinary range of

natural occurrences was not seriously doubted by any. Spells and

enchantments, conjurations, calculations of nativities, were matters

earnestly investigated at Universities and Courts.

There were, of course, persons who were eager to detect impostors: and

amongst them some of the most zealous votaries of the occult arts--for

example, Trittheim and the learned Humanist, Conrad Muth or Mutianus,

both of whom professed to have regarded Faust as a fraudulent person.

But this did not imply any disbelief in the possibility of the alleged

pretensions. In the Faust-myth is embodied, moreover, the opposition

between the new learning on its physical side and the old religious

faith. The theory that the investigation of the mysteries of nature

had in it something sinister and diabolical which had been latent

throughout the Middle Ages, was brought into especial prominence by

the new religious movements. The popular feeling that the line between

natural magic and the black art was somewhat doubtful, that the one

had a tendency to shade off into the other, now received fresh

stimulus. The notion of compacts with the devil was a familiar one,

and that they should be resorted to for the purpose of acquiring an

acquaintance with hidden lore and magical powers seemed quite natural.

It will have already been seen from what we have said that the

religious revolt was largely economical in its causes. The intense

hatred, common alike to the smaller nobility, the burghers, and the

peasants, of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, was obviously due to its

ever-increasing exactions. The chief of these were the _pallium_ or

price paid to the Pope for an ecclesiastical investiture; the

_annates_ or first year's revenues of a church fief; and the _tithes_

which were of two kinds, the great tithe paid in agricultural produce,

and the small tithe consisting in a head of cattle. The latter seems

to have been especially obnoxious to the peasant. The sudden increase

in the sale of indulgences, like the proverbial last straw, broke down

the whole system; but any other incident might have served the purpose

equally well. The prince-prelates were in some instances, at the

outset, not averse to the movement; they would not have been

indisposed to have converted their territories into secular fiefs of

the empire. It was only after this hope had been abandoned that they

definitely took sides with the Papal authority.

The opening of the sixteenth century thus presents to us mediæval

society, social, political, and religious, in Germany as elsewhere,

"run to seed." The feudal organization was outwardly intact; the

peasant, free and bond, formed the foundation; above him came the

knighthood or inferior nobility; parallel with them was the

_Ehrbarkeit_ of the less important towns, holding from mediate

lordship; above these towns came the free cities, which held

immediately from the empire, organized into three bodies, a governing

Council in which the _Ehrbarkeit_ usually predominated, where they did

not entirely compose it, a Common Council composed of the masters of

the various guilds, and the General Council of the free citizens.

Those journeymen, whose condition was fixed from their being outside

the guild-organizations, usually had guilds of their own. Above the

free cities in the social pyramid stood the Princes of the empire, lay

and ecclesiastic, with the Electoral College, or the seven Electoral

Princes, forming their head. These constituted the feudal "estates" of

the empire. Then came the "King of the Romans"; and, as the apex of

the whole, the Pope in one function and the Emperor in another,

crowned the edifice. The supremacy, not merely of the Pope but of the

complementary temporal head of the mediæval polity, the Emperor, was

acknowledged in a shadowy way, even in countries such as France and

England, which had no direct practical connection with the empire.

For, as the spiritual power was also temporal, so the temporal

political power had, like everything else in the Middle Ages, a

quasi-religious significance.

The minds of men in speculative matters, in theology, in philosophy,

and in jurisprudence, were outgrowing the old doctrines, at least in

their old forms. In theology the notion of salvation by the faith of

the individual, and not through the fact of belonging to a corporate

organization, which was the mediæval conception, was latent in the

minds of multitudes of religious persons before expression was given

to it by Luther. The aversion to scholasticism, bred by the revived

knowledge of the older Greek philosophies in the original, produced a

curious amalgam; but scholastic habits of thought were still dominant

through it all. The new theories of nature amounted to little more

than old superstitions, systematized and reduced to rule, though here

and there the later physical science, based on observation and

experiment, peeped through. In jurisprudence the epoch is marked by

the final conquest of the Roman civil law, in its spirit, where not

in its forms, over the old customs, pre-feudal and feudal.

The subject of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages,

characterized by what is known as the revival of learning and the

Reformation, is so important for an understanding of later German

history and the especial characteristics of the German culture of

later times, that we propose, even at the risk of wearying some

readers, to recapitulate in as short a space as possible, compatible

with clearness, the leading conditions of the times--conditions which,

directly or indirectly, have moulded the whole subsequent course of

German development.

Owing to the geographical situation of Germany and to the political

configuration of its peoples and other causes, mediæval conditions of

life as we find them in the early sixteenth century left more abiding

traces on the German mind and on German culture than was the case with

some other nations. The time was out of joint in a very literal sense

of that somewhat hackneyed phrase. At the opening of the sixteenth

century every established institution--political, social, and

religious--was shaken and showed the rents and fissures caused by time

and by the growth of a new life underneath it. The empire--the Holy

Roman--was in a parlous way as regarded its cohesion. The power of the

princes, the representatives of local centralized authority, was

proving itself too strong for the power of the Emperor, the recognized

representative of centralized authority for the whole German-speaking

world. This meant the undermining and eventual disruption of the

smaller social and political unities,[4] the knightly manors with the

privileges attached to the knightly class generally. The knighthood,

or lower nobility, had acted as a sort of buffer between the princes

of the empire and the Imperial power, to which they often looked for

protection against their immediate overlord or their powerful

neighbour--the prince. The Imperial power, in consequence, found the

lower nobility a bulwark against its princely vassals. Economic

changes, the suddenly increased demand for money owing to the rise of

the "world-market," new inventions in the art of war, new methods of

fighting, the rapidly growing importance of artillery, and the

increase of the mercenary soldier, had rendered the lower nobility,

as an institution, a factor in the political situation which was fast

becoming negligible. The abortive campaign of Franz von Sickingen in

1523 only showed its hopeless weakness. The _Reichsregiment_, or

Imperial governing council, a body instituted by Maximilian, had

lamentably failed to effect anything towards cementing together the

various parts of the unwieldy fabric. Finally, at the Reichstag held

in Nürnberg, in December 1522, at which all the estates were

represented, the _Reichsregiment_, to all intents and purposes,

collapsed.

The Reichstag in question was summoned ostensibly for the purpose of

raising a subsidy for the Hungarians in their struggle against the

advancing power of the Turks. The Turkish movement westward was, of

course, throughout this period, the most important question of what in

modern phraseology would be called "foreign politics." The princes

voted the proposal of the subsidy without consulting the

representatives of the cities, who knew the heaviest part of the

burden was to fall upon themselves. The urgency of the situation,

however, weighed with them, with the result that they submitted after

considerable remonstrance. The princes, in conjunction with their

rivals, the lower nobility, next proceeded to attack the commercial

monopolies, the first fruits of the rising capitalism, the appanage

mainly of the trading companies and the merchant magnates of the

towns. This was too much for civic patience. The city representatives,

who, of course, belonged to the civic aristocracy, waxed indignant.

The feudal orders went on to claim the right to set up vexatious

tariffs in their respective territories, whereby to hinder

artificially the free development of the new commercial capitalist.

This filled up the cup of endurance of the magnates of the city. The

city representatives refused their consent to the Turkish subsidy and

withdrew. The next step was the sending of a deputation to the young

Emperor Karl, who was in Spain, and whose sanction to the decrees of

the Reichstag was necessary before their promulgation. The result of

the conference held on this occasion was a decision to undermine the

_Reichsregiment_ and weaken the power of the princes, by whom and by

whose tools it was manned, as a factor in the Imperial constitution.

As for the princes, while some of their number were positively opposed

to it, others cared little one way or the other. Their chief aim was

to strengthen and consolidate their power within the limits of their

own territories, and a weak empire was perhaps better adapted for

effecting this purpose than a stronger one, even though certain of

their own order had a controlling voice in its administration. As

already hinted, the collapse of the rebellious knighthood under

Sickingen, a few weeks later, clearly showed the political drift of

the situation in the _haute politique_ of the empire.

The rising capitalists of the city, the monopolists, merchant princes,

and syndicates, are the theme of universal invective throughout this

period. To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the early

years of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent on

the increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sections

of the population, were attributed by noble and peasant alike. The

whole trend of public opinion, in short, outside the wealthier

burghers of the larger cities--the class immediately interested--was

adverse to the condition of things created by the new world-market,

and by the new class embodying it. At present it was a small class,

the only one that gained by it, and that gained at the expense of all

the other classes.

Some idea of the class-antagonisms of the period may be gathered from

the statement of Ulrich von Hutten about the robber-knights already

spoken of, in his dialogue entitled "Predones," to the effect that

there were four orders of robbers in Germany--the _knights_, the

_lawyers_, the _priests_, and the _merchants_ (meaning especially the

new capitalist merchant-traders or syndicates). Of these, he declares

the robber-knights to be the least harmful. This is naturally only to

be expected from so gallant a champion of his order, the friend and

abettor of Sickingen. Nevertheless, the seriousness of the

robber-knight evil, the toleration of which in principle was so deeply

ingrained in the public opinion of large sections of the population,

may be judged from the abortive attempts made to stop it, at the

instance alike of princes and of cities, who on this point, if on no

other, had a common interest. In 1502, for example, at the Reichstag

held in Gelnhausen in that year, certain of the highest princes of the

empire made a representation that, at least, the knights should permit

the gathering in of the harvest and the vintage in peace. But even

this modest demand was found to be impracticable. The knights had to

live in the style required by their status, as they declared, and

where other means were more and more failing them, their ancient right

or privilege of plunder was indispensable to their order. Still,

Hutten was right so far in declaring the knight the most harmless kind

of robber, inasmuch as, direct as were his methods, his sun was

obviously setting, while as much could not be said of the other

classes named; the merchant and the lawyer were on the rise, and the

priest, although about to receive a check, was not destined speedily

to disappear, or to change fundamentally the character of his

activity.

The feudal orders saw their own position seriously threatened by the

new development of things economic in the cities. The guilds were

becoming crystallized into close corporations of wealthy families,

constituting a kind of second _Ehrbarkeit_ or town patriciate; the

numbers of the landless and unprivileged, with at most a bare footing

in the town constitution, were increasing in an alarming proportion;

the journeyman workman was no longer a stage between apprentice and

master craftsman, but a permanent condition embodied in a large and

growing class. All these symptoms indicated an extraordinary economic

revolution, which was making itself at first directly felt only in the

larger cities, but the results of which were dislocating the social

relations of the Middle Ages throughout the whole empire.

Perhaps the most striking feature in this dislocation was the transition

from direct barter to exchange through the medium of money, and the

consequent suddenly increased importance of the rôle played by usury in

the social life of the time. The scarcity of money is a perennial theme

of complaint for which the new large capitalist-monopolists are made

responsible. But the class in question was itself only a symptom of the

general economic change. The seeming scarcity of money, though but the

consequence of the increased demand for a circulating medium, was

explained, to the disadvantage of the hated monopolists, by a crude form

of the "mercantile" theory. The new merchant, in contradistinction to

the master craftsman working _en famille_ with his apprentices and

assistants, now often stood entirely outside the processes of

production, as speculator or middleman; and he, and still more the

syndicate who fulfilled the like functions on a larger scale (especially

with reference to foreign trade), came to be regarded as particularly

obnoxious robbers, because interlopers to boot. Unlike the knights, they

were robbers with a new face.

The lawyers were detested for much the same reason (cf. _German

Society at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp. 219-28). The

professional lawyer class, since its final differentiation from the

clerk class in general, had made the Roman or civil law its

speciality, and had done its utmost everywhere to establish the

principles of the latter in place of the old feudal law of earlier

mediæval Europe. The Roman law was especially favourable to the

pretensions of the princes, and, from an economic point of view, of

the nobility in general, inasmuch as land was on the new legal

principles treated as the private property of the lord; over which he

had full power of ownership, and not, as under feudal and canon law,

as a _trust_ involving duties as well as rights. The class of jurists

was itself of comparatively recent growth in Central Europe, and its

rapid increase in every portion of the empire dated from less than

half a century back. It may be well understood, therefore, why these

interlopers, who ignored the ancient customary law of the country, and

who by means of an alien code deprived the poor freeholder or

copyholder of his land, or justified new and unheard-of exactions on

the part of his lord on the plea that the latter might do what he

liked with his own, were regarded by the peasant and humble man as

robbers whose depredations were, if anything, even more resented than

those of their old and tried enemy--the plundering knight.

The priest, especially of the regular orders, was indeed an old foe,

but his offence had now become very rank. From the middle of the

fifteenth century onwards the stream of anti-clerical literature waxes

alike in volume and intensity. The "monk" had become the object of

hatred and scorn throughout the whole lay world. This view of the

"regular" was shared, moreover, by not a few of the secular clergy

themselves. Humanists, who were subsequently ardent champions of the

Church against Luther and the Protestant Reformation--men such as

Murner and Erasmus--had been previously the bitterest satirists of the

"friar" and the "monk." Amongst the great body of the laity, however,

though the religious orders came in perhaps for the greater share of

animosity, the secular priesthood was not much better off in popular

favour, whilst the upper members of the hierarchy were naturally

regarded as the chief blood-suckers of the German people in the

interests of Rome. The vast revenues which both directly in the shape

of _pallium_ (the price of "investiture"), _annates_ (first year's

revenues of appointments), _Peter's-pence_, and recently of

_indulgences_--the latter the by no means most onerous exaction, since

it was voluntary--all these things, taken together with what was

indirectly obtained from Germany, through the expenditure of German

ecclesiastics on their visits to Rome and by the crowd of parasitics,

nominal holders of German benefices merely, but real recipients of

German substance, who danced attendance at the Vatican--obviously

constituted an enormous drain on the resources of the country from all

the lay classes alike, of which wealth the papal chair could be

plainly seen to be the receptacle.

If we add to these causes of discontent the vastness in number of the

regular clergy, the "friars" and "monks" already referred to, who

consumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will be

sufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something very

much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious

reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but

their preachings had taken no deep root. The powerful personality of

the Monk of Wittenberg found an economic soil ready to hand in which

his teachings could fructify, and hence the world-historic result. The

peasant revolts, sporadic the Middle Ages through, had for the

half-century preceding the Reformation been growing in frequency and

importance, but it needed nevertheless the sudden impulse, the

powerful jar given by a Luther in 1517, and the series of blows with

which it was followed during the years immediately succeeding, to

crystallize the mass of fluid discontent and social unrest in its

various forms and give it definite direction. The blow which was

primarily struck in the region of speculative thought and

ecclesiastical relations did not stop there in its effects. The attack

on the dominant theological system--at first merely on certain

comparatively unessential outworks of that system--necessarily of its

own force developed into an attack on the organization representing

it, and on the economic basis of the latter. The battle against

ecclesiastical abuses, again, in its turn, focussed the

ever-smouldering discontent with abuses in general; and this time, not

in one district only, but simultaneously over the whole of Germany.

The movement inaugurated by Luther gave to the peasant groaning under

the weight of baronial oppression, and the small handicraftsman

suffering under his _Ehrbarkeit_, a rallying-point and a rallying cry.

In history there is no movement which starts up full grown from the

brain of any one man, or even from the mind of any one generation of

men, like Athene from the head of Zeus. The historical epoch which

marks the crisis of the given change is, after all, little beyond a

prominent landmark--a parting of the ways--led up to by a long

preparatory development. This is nowhere more clearly illustrated than

in the Reformation and its accompanying movements. The ideas and

aspirations animating the social, political, and intellectual revolt

of the sixteenth century can each be traced back to, at least, the

beginning of the fifteenth century, and in many cases farther still.

The way the German of Luther's time looked at the burning questions of

the hour was not essentially different from the way the English

Wyclifites and Lollards, or the Bohemian Hussites and Taborites viewed

them. There was obviously a difference born of the later time, but

this difference was not, I repeat, essential. The changes which, a

century previously, were only just beginning, had, meanwhile, made

enormous progress.

The disintegration of the material conditions of mediæval social life

was now approaching its completion, forced on by the inventions and

discoveries of the previous half-century. But the ideals of the mass

of men, learned and simple, were still in the main the ideals that had

been prevalent throughout the whole of the later Middle Ages. Men

still looked at the world and at social progress through mediæval

spectacles. The chief difference was that now ideas which had

previously been confined to special localities, or had only had a

sporadic existence among the people at large, had become general

throughout large portions of the population. The invention of the art

of printing was, of course, largely instrumental in effecting this

change.

The comparatively sudden popularization of doctrines previously

confined to special circles was the distinguishing feature of the

intellectual life of the first half of the sixteenth century. Among

the many illustrations of the foregoing which might be given, we are

specially concerned here to note the sudden popularity during this

period of two imaginary constitutions dating from early in the

previous century. From the fourteenth century we find traces, perhaps

suggested by the Prester John legend, of a deliverer in the shape of

an emperor who should come from the East, who should be the last of

his name; should right all wrongs; should establish the empire in

universal justice and peace; and, in short, should be the forerunner

of the kingdom of Christ on earth. This notion or mystical hope took

increasing root during the fifteenth century, and is to be found in

many respects embodied in the spurious constitutions mentioned, which

bore respectively the names of the Emperors Sigismund and Friedrich.

It was in this form that the Hussite theories were absorbed by the

German mind. The hopes of the Messianists of the "Holy Roman Empire"

were centred at one time in the Emperor Sigismund. Later on the rôle

of Messiah was carried over to his successor, Friedrich III, upon whom

the hopes of the German people were cast.

_The Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_, originally written about 1438,

went through several editions before the end of the century, and was

as many times reprinted during the opening years of Luther's movement.

Like its successor, that of Friedrich, the scheme attributed to

Sigismund proposed the abolition of the recent abuses of feudalism, of

the new lawyer class, and of the symptoms already making themselves

felt of the change from barter to money payments. It proposed, in

short, a return to primitive conditions. It was a scheme of reform on

a Biblical basis, embracing many elements of a distinctly communistic

character, as communism was then understood. It was pervaded with the

idea of equality in the spirit of the Taborite literature of the age,

from which it took its origin.

The so-called _Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_ dealt especially with

the peasantry--the serfs and villeins of the time; that attributed to

Friedrich was mainly concerned with the rising population of the

towns. All towns and communes were to undergo a constitutional

transformation. Handicraftsmen should receive just wages; all roads

should be free; taxes, dues, and levies should be abolished; trading

capital was to be limited to a maximum of 10,000 _gulden_; all

surplus capital should fall to the Imperial authorities, who should

lend it in case of need to poor handicraftsmen at 5 per cent.;

uniformity of coinage and of weights and measures was to be decreed,

together with the abolition of the Roman and Canon law. Legists,

priests, and princes were to be severely dealt with. But, curiously

enough, the middle and lower nobility, especially the knighthood, were

more tenderly handled, being treated as themselves victims of their

feudal superiors, lay and ecclesiastic, especially the latter. In this

connection the secularization of ecclesiastical fiefs was strongly

insisted on.

As men found, however, that neither the Emperor Sigismund, nor the

Emperor Friedrich III, nor the Emperor Maximilian, upon each of whom

successively their hopes had been cast as the possible realization of

the German Messiah of earlier dreams, fulfilled their expectations,

nay, as each in succession implicitly belied these hopes, showing no

disposition whatever to act up to the views promulgated in their

names, the tradition of the Imperial deliverer gradually lost its

force and popularity. By the opening of the Lutheran Reformation the

opinion had become general that a change would not come from above,

but that the initiative must rest with the people themselves--with the

classes specially oppressed by existing conditions, political,

economic, and ecclesiastical--to effect by their own exertions such a

transformation as was shadowed forth in the spurious constitutions.

These, and similar ideas, were now everywhere taken up and elaborated,

often in a still more radical sense than the original; and they

everywhere found hearers and adherents.

The "true inwardness" of the change, of which the Protestant

Reformation represented the ideological side, meant the transformation

of society from a basis mainly corporative and co-operative to one

individualistic in its essential character. The whole polity of the

Middle Ages industrial, social, political, ecclesiastical, was based

on the principle of the group or the community--ranging in

hierarchical order from the trade-guild to the town corporation; from

the town corporation through the feudal orders to the Imperial throne

itself; from the single monastery to the order as a whole; and from

the order as a whole to the complete hierarchy of the Church as

represented by the papal chair. The principle of this social

organization was now breaking down. The modern and bourgeois

conception of the autonomy of the individual in all spheres of life

was beginning to affirm itself.

The most definite expression of this new principle asserted itself in

the religious sphere. The individualism which was inherent in early

Christianity, but which was present as a speculative content merely,

had not been strong enough to counteract even the remains of corporate

tendencies on the material side of things, in the decadent Roman

Empire; and infinitely less so the vigorous group-organization and

sentiment of the northern nations, with their tribal society and

communistic traditions still mainly intact. And these were the

elements out of which mediæval society arose. Naturally enough the new

religious tendencies in revolt against the mediæval corporate

Christianity of the Catholic Church seized upon this individualistic

element in Christianity, declaring the chief end of religion to be a

personal salvation, for the attainment of which the individual himself

was sufficing, apart from Church organization and Church tradition.

This served as a valuable destructive weapon for the iconoclasts in

their attack on ecclesiastical privilege; consequently, in religion,

this doctrine of Individualism rapidly made headway. But in more

material matters the old corporative instinct was still too strong and

the conditions were as yet too imperfectly ripe for the speedy triumph

of Individualism.

The conflict of the two tendencies is curiously exhibited in the popular

movements of the Reformation-time. As enemies of the decaying and

obstructive forms of Feudalism and Church organization, the peasant and

handicraftsman were necessarily on the side of the new Individualism. So

far as negation and destruction were concerned, they were working

apparently for the new order of things--that new order of things which

_longo intervallo_ has finally landed us in the developed capitalistic

Individualism of the twentieth century. Yet when we come to consider

their constructive programmes we find the positive demands put forward

are based either on ideal conceptions derived from reminiscences of

primitive communism, or else that they distinctly postulate a return to

a state of things--the old mark-organisation--upon which the later

feudalism had in various ways encroached, and finally superseded. Hence

they were, in these respects, not merely not in the trend of

contemporary progress, but in actual opposition to it; and therefore, as

Lassalle has justly remarked, they were necessarily and in any case

doomed to failure in the long run.

This point should not be lost sight of in considering the various

popular movements of the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The

world was still essentially mediæval; men were still dominated by

mediæval ways of looking at things and still immersed in mediæval

conditions of life. It is true that out of this mediæval soil the new

individualistic society was beginning to grow, but its manifestations

were as yet not so universally apparent as to force a recognition of

their real meaning. It was still possible to regard the various

symptoms of change, numerous as they were, and far-reaching as we now

see them to have been, as sporadic phenomena, as rank but unessential

overgrowths on the old society, which it was possible by pruning and

the application of other suitable remedies to get rid of, and thereby

to restore a state of pristine health in the body political and

social.

Biblical phrases and the notion of Divine Justice now took the place

in the popular mind formerly occupied by Church and Emperor. All the

then oppressed classes of society--the small peasant, half villein,

half free-man; the landless journeyman and town-proletarian; the

beggar by the wayside; the small master, crushed by usury or

tyrannized over by his wealthier colleague in the guild, or by the

town-patriciate; even the impoverished knight, or the soldier of

fortune defrauded of his pay; in short, all with whom times were bad,

found consolation for their wants and troubles, and at the same time

an incentive to action, in the notion of a Divine Justice which should

restore all things, and the advent of which was approaching. All had

Biblical phrases tending in the direction of their immediate

aspirations in their mouths.

As bearing on the development and propaganda of the new ideas, the

existence of a new intellectual class, rendered possible by the new

method of exchange through money (as opposed to that of barter), which

for a generation past had been in full swing in the larger towns, must

not be forgotten. Formerly land had been the essential condition of

livelihood; now it was no longer so. The "universal equivalent,"

money, conjoined with the printing press, was rendering a literary

class proper, for the first time, possible. In the same way the

teacher, physician, and the small lawyer were enabled to subsist as

followers of independent professions, apart from the special service

of the Church or as part of the court-retinue of some feudal

potentate. To these we must add a fresh and very important section of

the intellectual class which also now for the first time acquired an

independent existence--to wit, that of the public official or

functionary. This change, although only one of many, is itself

specially striking as indicating the transition from the barbaric

civilization of the Middle Ages to the beginnings of the civilization

of the modern world. We have, in short, before us, as already

remarked, a period in which the Middle Ages, whilst still dominant,

have their force visibly sapped by the growth of a new life.

To sum up the chief features of this new life: Industrially, we have

the decline of the old system of production in the countryside in

which each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most part

self-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almost

entirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, and

where such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the form

of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the

beginnings of a national-market and distinct traces of that of a

world-market. In the towns the change was even still more marked. Here

we have a sudden and hothouse-like development of the influence of

money. The guild-system, originally designed for associations of

craftsmen, for which the chief object was the man and the work, and

not the mere acquirement of profit, was changing its character. The

guilds were becoming close corporations of privileged capitalists,

while a commercial capitalism, as already indicated, was raising its

head in all the larger centres. In consequence of this state of

things, the rapid development of the towns and of commerce, national

and international, and the economic backwardness of the country-side,

a landless proletariat was being formed, which meant on the one hand

an enormous increase in mendicancy of all kinds, and on the other the

creation of a permanent class of only casually-employed persons, whom

the towns absorbed indeed, but for the most part with a new form of

citizenship involving only the bare right of residence within the

walls. Similar social phenomena were, of course, manifesting

themselves contemporaneously in other parts of Europe; but in Germany

the change was more sudden than elsewhere, and was complicated by

special political circumstances.

The political and military functions of that for the mediæval polity

of Germany, so important class, the knighthood, or lower nobility, had

by this time become practically obsolete, mainly owing to the changed

conditions of warfare. But yet the class itself was numerous, and

still, nominally at least, possessed of most of its old privileges and

authority. The extent of its real power depended, however, upon the

absence or weakness of a central power, whether Imperial or

State-territorial. The attempt to reconstitute the centralized power

of the empire under Maximilian, of which the _Reichsregiment_ was the

outcome, had, as we have seen, not proved successful. Its means of

carrying into effect its own decisions were hopelessly inadequate. In

1523 it was already weakened, and became little more than a "survival"

after the Reichstag held at Nürnberg in 1524. Thus this body, which

had been called into existence at the instance of the most powerful

estates of the empire, was "shelved" with the practically unanimous

consent of those who had been instrumental in creating it.

But if the attempt at Imperial centralization had failed, the force of

circumstances tended partly for this very reason to favour

State-territorial centralization. The aim of all the territorial

magnates, the higher members of the Imperial system, was to

consolidate their own princely power within the territories owing them

allegiance. This desire played a not unimportant part in the

establishment of the Reformation in certain parts of the country--for

example, in Würtemberg, and in the northern lands of East Prussia

which were subject to the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights. The

time was at hand for the transformation of the mediæval feudal

territory, with its local jurisdictions and its ties of service, into

the modern bureaucratic state, with its centralized administration and

organized system of salaried functionaries subject to a central

authority.

The religious movement inaugurated by Luther met and was absorbed by

all these elements of change. It furnished them with a religious

_flag_, under cover of which they could work themselves out. This was

necessary in an age when the Christian theology was unquestioningly

accepted in one or another form by wellnigh all men, and hence entered

as a practical belief into their daily thoughts and lives. The

Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the Peasants'

War of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the

revolutionary elements of the time. Up to the last-mentioned date it

gathered revolutionary force year by year. But this was the turning

point.

With the crushing of the peasants' revolt and the decisively

anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious movement

associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionary

character. It henceforth became definitely subservient to the new

interests of the wealthy and privileged classes, and as such

completely severed itself from the more extreme popular reforming

sects.

Up to this time, though by no means always approved by Luther himself

or his immediate followers, and in some cases even combated by them,

the latter were nevertheless not looked upon with disfavour by large

numbers of the rank and file of those who regarded Martin Luther as

their leader.

Nothing could exceed the violence of language with which Luther

himself attacked all who stood in his way. Not only the

ecclesiastical, but also the secular heads of Christendom came in for

the coarsest abuse; "swine" and "water-bladder" are not the strongest

epithets employed. But this was not all; in his _Treatise on Temporal

Authority and how far it should be Obeyed_ (published in 1523), whilst

professedly maintaining the thesis that the secular authority is a

Divine ordinance, Luther none the less expressly justifies resistance

to all human authority where its mandates are contrary to "the word of

God." At the same time, he denounces in his customary energetic

language the existing powers generally. "Thou shouldst know," he says,

"that since the beginning of the world a wise prince is truly a rare

bird, but a pious prince is still more rare." "They" (princes) "are

mostly the greatest fools or the greatest rogues on earth; therefore

must we at all times expect from them the worst, and little good."

Farther on, he proceeds: "The common man begetteth understanding, and

the plague of the princes worketh powerfully among the people and the

common man. He will not, he cannot, he purposeth not, longer to suffer

your tyranny and oppression. Dear princes and lords, know ye what to

do, for God will no longer endure it? The world is no more as of old

time, when ye hunted and drove the people as your quarry. But think ye

to carry on with much drawing of sword, look to it that one do not

come who shall bid ye sheath it, and that not in God's name!"

Again, in a pamphlet published the following year, 1524, relative to

the Reichstag of that year, Luther proclaims that the judgment of God

already awaits "the drunken and mad princes." He quotes the phrase:

"Deposuit potentes de sede" (Luke i. 52), and adds "that is your case,

dear lords, even now when ye see it not!" After an admonition to

subjects to refuse to go forth to war against the Turks, or to pay

taxes towards resisting them, who were ten times wiser and more godly

than German princes, the pamphlet concludes with the prayer: "May God

deliver us from ye all, and of His grace give us other rulers!"

Against such utterances as the above, the conventional exhortations to

Christian humility, non-resistance, and obedience to those in

authority, would naturally not weigh in a time of popular ferment. So,

until the momentous year 1525, it was not unnatural that,

notwithstanding his quarrel with Münzer and the Zwickau enthusiasts,

and with others whom he deemed to be going "too far," Luther should

have been regarded as in some sort the central figure of the

revolutionary movement, political and social, no less than religious.

But the great literary and agitatory forces during the period referred

to were of course either outside the Lutheran movement proper or at

most only on the fringe of it. A mass of broadsheets and pamphlets,

specimens of some of which have been given in a former volume (_German

Society at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp. 114-28), poured from the

press during these years, all with the refrain that things had gone on

long enough, that the common man, be he peasant or townsman, could no

longer bear it. But even more than the revolutionary literature were

the wandering preachers effective in working up the agitation which

culminated in the Peasants' War of 1525. The latter comprised men of

all classes, from the impoverished knight, the poor priest, the

escaped monk, or the travelling scholar, to the peasant, the mercenary

soldier out of employment, the poor handicraftsman, of even the

beggar. Learned and simple, they wandered about from place to place,

in the market place of the town, in the common field of the village,

from one territory to another, preaching the gospel of discontent.

Their harangues were, as a rule, as much political as religious, and

the ground tone of them all was the social or economic misery of the

time, and the urgency of immediate action to bring about a change. As

in the literature, so in the discourses, Biblical phrases designed to

give force to the new teaching abounded. The more thorough-going of

these itinerant apostles openly aimed at nothing less than the

establishment of a new Christian Commonwealth, or, as they termed it,

"the Kingdom of God on Earth."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] We are here, of course, dealing more especially with Germany; but

substantially the same course was followed in the development of

municipalities in other parts of Europe.

[2] _Einleitung_, pp. 255, 256.

[3] Cf. Von Maurer's _Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-Verfassung_;

Gomme's _Village Communities_; Laveleye, _La Propriété Primitive_;

Stubbs's _Constitutional History_; also Maine's works.

[4] It should be remembered that Germany at this time was cut up into

feudal territorial divisions of all sizes, from the principality, or the

prince-bishopric, to the knightly manor. Every few miles, and sometimes

less, there was a fresh territory, a fresh lord, and a fresh

jurisdiction.

CHAPTER I

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT

The "great man" theory of history, formerly everywhere prevalent, and

even now common among non-historical persons, has long regarded the

Reformation as the purely personal work of the Augustine monk who was

its central figure. The fallacy of this conception is particularly

striking in the case of the Reformation. Not only was it preceded by

numerous sporadic outbursts of religious revivalism which sometimes

took the shape of opposition to the dominant form of Christianity,

though it is true they generally shaded off into mere movements of

independent Catholicism within the Church; but there were in addition

at least two distinct religious movements which led up to it, while

much which, under the reformers of the sixteenth century, appears as a

distinct and separate theology, is traceable in the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries in the mystical movement connected with the names

of Meister Eckhart and Tauler. Meister Eckhart, whose free treatment

of Christian doctrines, in order to bring them into consonance with

his mystical theology, had drawn him into conflict with the Papacy,

undoubtedly influenced Luther through his disciple, Tauler, and

especially through the book which proceeded from the latter's school,

the _Deutsche Theologie_. It is, however, in the much more important

movement, which originated with Wyclif and extended to Central Europe

through Huss, that we must look for the more obvious influences

determining the course of religious development in Germany.

The Wyclifite movement in England was less a doctrinal heterodoxy than

a revolt against the Papacy and the priestly hierarchy. Mere

theoretical speculations were seldom interfered with, but anything

which touched their material interests at once aroused the vigilance

of the clergy. It is noticeable that the diffusion of Lollardism, that

is of the ideas of Wyclif, if not the cause of, was at least followed

by the peasant rising under the leadership of John Ball, a connection

which is also visible in the Tziska revolt following the Hussite

movement, and the Peasants' War in Germany which came on the heels of

the Lutheran Reformation. How much Huss was directly influenced by the

teachings of Wyclif is clear. The works of the latter were widely

circulated throughout Europe; for one of the advantages of the custom

of writing in Latin, which was universal during the Middle Ages, was

that books of an important character were immediately current amongst

all scholars without having, as now, to wait upon the caprice and

ability of translators. Huss read Wyclif's works as the preparation

for his theological degree, and subsequently made them his text-books

when teaching at the University of Prague. After his treacherous

execution at Constance, and the events which followed thereupon in

Bohemia, a number of Hussite fugitives settled in Southern Germany,

carrying with them the seeds of the new doctrines. An anonymous

contemporary writer states that "to John Huss and his followers are to

be traced almost all those false principles concerning the power of

the spiritual and temporal authorities and the possession of earthly

goods and rights which before in Bohemia, and now with us, have called

forth revolt and rebellion, plunder, arson, and murder, and have

shaken to its foundations the whole commonwealth. The poison of these

false doctrines has been long flowing from Bohemia into Germany, and

will produce the same desolating consequences wherever it spreads."

The condition of the Catholic Church, against which the Reformation

movement generally was a protest, needs here to be made clear to the

reader. The beginning of clerical disintegration is distinctly visible

in the first half of the fourteenth century. The interdicts, as an

institution, had ceased to be respected, and the priesthood itself

began openly to sink itself in debauchery and to play fast and loose

with the rites of the Church. Indulgences for a hundred years were

readily granted for a consideration. The manufacture of relics became

an organized branch of industry; and festivals of fools and festivals

of asses were invented by the jovial priests themselves in travesty of

sacred mysteries, as a welcome relaxation from the monotony of

prescribed ecclesiastical ceremony. Pilgrimages increased in number

and frequency; new saints were created by the dozen; and the disbelief

of the clergy in the doctrines they professed was manifest even to the

most illiterate, whilst contempt for the ceremonies they practised was

openly displayed in the performance of their clerical functions. An

illustration of this is the joke of the priests related by Luther, who

were wont during the celebration of the Mass, when the worshippers

fondly imagined that the sacred formula of transubstantiation was

being repeated, to replace the words _Panis es et carnem fiebis_,

"Bread thou art and flesh thou shalt become," by _Panis es et panis

manebis_, "Bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain."

The scandals as regards clerical manners, growing, as they had been,

for many generations, reached their climax in the early part of the

sixteenth century. It was a common thing for priests to drive a

roaring trade as moneylenders, landlords of alehouses and gambling

dens, and even in some cases, brothel-keepers. Papal ukases had proved

ineffective to stem the current of clerical abuses. The regular clergy

evoked even more indignation than the secular. "Stinking cowls" was a

favourite epithet for the monks. Begging, cheating, shameless

ignorance, drunkenness, and debauchery, are alleged as being their

noted characteristics. One of the princes of the empire addresses a

prior of a convent largely patronized by aristocratic ladies as "Thou,

our common brother-in-law!" In some of the convents of Friesland,

promiscuous intercourse between the sexes was, it is said, quite

openly practised, the offspring being reared as monks and nuns. The

different orders competed with each other for the fame and wealth to

be obtained out of the public credulity. A fraud attempted by the

Dominicans at Bern, in 1506, _with the concurrence of the heads of the

order throughout Germany_, was one of the main causes of that city

adopting the Reformation.

In addition to the increasing burdens of investitures, annates, and

other Papal dues, the brunt of which the German people had directly or

indirectly to bear, special offence was given at the beginning of the

sixteenth century by the excessive exploitation of the practice of

indulgences by Leo X for the purpose of completing the cathedral of

St. Peter's at Rome. It was this, coming on the top of the exactions

already rendered necessary by the increasing luxury and debauchery of

the Papal Court and those of the other ecclesiastical dignitaries,

that directly led to the dramatic incidents with which the Lutheran

Reformation opened.

The remarkable personality with which the religious side of the

Reformation is pre-eminently associated was a child of his time, who

had passed through a variety of mental struggles, and had already

broken through the bonds of the old ecclesiasticism before that

turning-point in his career which is usually reckoned the opening of

the Reformation, to wit--the nailing of the theses on to the door of

the Schloss-Kirche in Wittenberg on the 31st of October, 1517. Martin

Luther, we must always bear in mind, however, was no Protestant in the

English Puritan sense of the word. It was not merely that he retained

much of what would be deemed by the old-fashioned English Protestant

"Romish error" in his doctrine, but his practical view of life showed

a reaction from the ascetic pretensions which he had seen bred nothing

but hypocrisy and the worst forms of sensual excess. It is, indeed,

doubtful if the man who sang the praises of "Wine, Women, and Song"

would have been deemed a fit representative in Parliament or elsewhere

by the British Nonconformist conscience of our day; or would be

acceptable in any capacity to the grocer-deacon of our provincial

towns, who, not content with being allowed to sand his sugar and

adulterate his tea unrebuked, would socially ostracise every one whose

conduct did not square with his conventional shibboleths. Martin

Luther was a child of his time also as a boon companion. The freedom

of his living in the years following his rupture with Rome was the

subject of severe animadversions on the part of the noble, but in this

respect narrow-minded, Thomas Münzer, who, in his open letter

addressed to the "Soft-living flesh of Wittenberg," scathingly

denounces what he deems his debauchery.

It does not enter into our province here to discuss at length the

religious aspects of the Reformation; but it is interesting to note

in passing the more than modern liberality of Luther's views with

respect to the marriage question and the celibacy of the clergy,

contrasted with the strong mediæval flavour of his belief in

witchcraft and sorcery. In his _De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiæ_

(1519) he expresses the view that if, for any cause, husband or wife

are prevented from having sexual intercourse they are justified, the

woman equally with the man, in seeking it elsewhere. He was opposed to

divorce, though he did not forbid it, and recommended that a man

should rather have a plurality of wives than that he should put away

any of them. Luther held strenuously the view that marriage was a

purely external contract for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, and

in no way entered into the spiritual life of the man. On this ground

he sees no objection in the so-called mixed marriages, which were, of

course, frowned upon by the Catholic Church. In his sermon on "Married

Life" he says: "Know therefore that marriage is an outward thing, like

any other worldly business. Just as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk,

ride, buy, speak, and bargain with a heathen, a Jew, a Turk, or a

heretic, so may I also be and remain married to such an one, and I

care not one jot for the fool's laws which forbid it.... A heathen is

just as much man or woman, well and shapely made by God, as St. Peter,

St. Paul, or St. Lucia." Nor did he shrink from applying his views to

particular cases, as is instanced by his correspondence with Philip

von Hessen, whose constitution appears to have required more than one

wife. He here lays down explicitly the doctrine that polygamy and

concubinage are not forbidden to Christians, though, in his advice to

Philip, he adds the _caveat_ that he should keep the matter dark to

the end that offence might not be given. "For," says he, "it matters

not, provided one's conscience is right, what others say." In one of

his sermons on the Pentateuch[5] we find the words: "It is not

forbidden that a man have more than one wife. I would not forbid it

to-day, albeit I would not advise it.... Yet neither would I condemn

it." Other opinions on the nature of the sexual relation were equally

broad; for in one of his writings on monastic celibacy his words

plainly indicate his belief that chastity, no more than other fleshly

mortifications, was to be considered a divine ordinance for all men or

women. In an address to the clergy he says: "A woman not possessed of

high and rare grace can no more abstain from a man than from eating,

drinking, sleeping, or other natural function. Likewise a man cannot

abstain from a woman. The reason is that it is as deeply implanted in

our nature to breed children as it is to eat and drink."[6] The worthy

Janssen observes in a scandalized tone that Luther, as regards certain

matters relating to married life, "gave expression to principles

before unheard of in Christian Europe";[7] and the British

Nonconformist of to-day, if he reads these "immoral" opinions of the

hero of the Reformation, will be disposed to echo the sentiments of

the Ultramontane historian.

The relation of the Reformation to the "New Learning" was in Germany

not unlike that which existed in the other northern countries of

Europe, and notably in England. Whilst the hostility of the latter to

the mediæval Church was very marked, and it was hence disposed to

regard the religious Reformation as an ally, this had not proceeded

very far before the tendency of the Renaissance spirit was to side

with Catholicism against the new theology and dogma, as merely

destructive and hostile to culture. The men of the Humanist movement

were for the most part Free-thinkers, and it was with them that

free-thought first appeared in modern Europe. They therefore had

little sympathy with the narrow bigotry of religious reformers, and

preferred to remain in touch with the Church, whose then loose and

tolerant Catholicism gave freer play to intellectual speculations,

provided they steered clear of overt theological heterodoxy, than the

newer systems, which, taking theology _au grand sérieux_, tended to

regard profane art and learning as more or less superfluous, and spent

their whole time in theological wrangles. Nevertheless, there were not

wanting men who, influenced at first by the revival of learning, ended

by throwing themselves entirely into the Reformation movement, though

in these cases they were usually actuated rather by their hatred of

the Catholic hierarchy than by any positive religious sentiment.

Of such men Ulrich von Hutten, the descendant of an ancient and

influential knightly family, was a noteworthy example. After having

already acquired fame as the author of a series of skits in the new

Latin and other works of classical scholarship, being also well known

as the ardent supporter of Reuchlin in his dispute with the Church,

and as the friend and correspondent of the central Humanist figure of

the time, Erasmus, he watched with absorbing interest the movement

which Luther had inaugurated. Six months after the nailing of the

theses at Wittenberg, he writes enthusiastically to a friend

respecting the growing ferment in ecclesiastical matters, evidently

regarding the new movement as a Kilkenny-cat fight. "The leaders," he

says, "are bold and hot, full of courage and zeal. Now they shout and

cheer, now they lament and bewail, as loud as they can. They have

lately set themselves to write; the printers are getting enough to do.

Propositions, corollaries, conclusions, and articles are being sold.

For this alone I hope they will mutually destroy each other." "A few

days ago a monk was telling me what was going on in Saxony, to which I

replied: 'Devour each other in order that ye in turn may be devoured

(_sic_).' Pray Heaven that our enemies may fight each other to the

bitter end, and by their obstinacy extinguish each other."

Thus it will be seen that Hutten regarded the Reformation in its

earlier stages as merely a monkish squabble, and failed to see the

tremendous upheaval of all the old landmarks of ecclesiastical

domination which was immanent in it. So soon, however, as he perceived

its real significance, he threw himself wholly into the movement. It

must not be forgotten, moreover, that, although Hutten's zeal for

Humanism made him welcome any attempt to overthrow the power of the

clergy and the monks, he had also an eminently political motive for

his action in what was, in some respects, the main object of his life,

viz. to rescue the "knighthood," or smaller nobility, from having

their independence crushed out by the growing powers of the princes of

the empire. Probably more than one-third of the manors were held by

ecclesiastical dignitaries, so that anything which threatened their

possessions and privileges seemed to strike a blow at the very

foundations of the Imperial system. Hutten hoped that the new

doctrines would set the princes by the ears all round; and that then,

by allying themselves with the reforming party, the knighthood might

succeed in retaining the privileges which still remained to them, but

were rapidly slipping away, and might even regain some of those which

had been already lost. It was not till later, however, that Hutten saw

matters in this light. He was, at the time the above letter was

written, in the service of the Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, the

leading favourer of the New Learning amongst the prince-prelates, and

it was mainly from the Humanist standpoint that he regarded the

beginnings of the Reformation. After leaving the service of the

archbishop he struck up a personal friendship with Luther, instigated

thereto by his political chief, Franz von Sickingen, the leader of the

knighthood, from whom he probably received the first intimation of the

importance of the new movement to their common cause.

When, in 1520, the young Emperor, Charles V, was crowned at Aachen,

Luther's party, as well as the knighthood, expected that considerable

changes would result in a sense favourable to their position from the

presumed pliability of the new head of the empire. His youth, it was

supposed, would make him more sympathetic to the newer spirit which

was rapidly developing itself; and it is true that about the time of

his election Charles had shown a transient favour to the "recalcitrant

monk." It would appear, however, that this was only for the purpose of

frightening the Pope into abandoning his declared intention of

abolishing the Inquisition in Spain, then regarded as one of the

mainstays of the royal power, and still more to exercise pressure upon

him, in order that he should facilitate Charles's designs on the

Milanese territory. Once these objects were attained, he was just as

ready to oblige the Pope by suppressing the new anti-Papal movement as

he might possibly otherwise have been to have favoured it with a view

to humbling the only serious rival to his dominion in the empire.

Immediately after his coronation he proceeded to Cologne, and convoked

by Imperial edict a Reichstag at Worms for the following 27th of

January, 1521. The proceedings of this famous Reichstag have been

unfortunately so identified with the edict against Luther that the

other important matters which were there discussed have almost fallen

into oblivion. At least two other questions were dealt with, however,

which are significant of the changes that were then taking place. The

first was the rehabilitation and strengthening of the Imperial

Governing Council (_Reichsregiment_), whose functions under Maximilian

had been little more than nominal. There was at first a feeling

amongst the States in favour of transferring all authority to it, even

during the residence of the Emperor in the empire; and in the end,

while having granted to it complete power during his absence, it

practically retained very much of this power when he was present. In

constitution it was very similar to the French "Parliaments," and,

like them, was principally composed of learned jurists, four being

elected by the Emperor and the remainder by the estates. The character

and the great powers of this council, extending even to ecclesiastical

matters during the ensuing years, undoubtedly did much to hasten on

the substitution of the civil law for the older customary or common

law, a matter which we shall consider more in detail later on. The

financial condition of the empire was also considered; and it here

first became evident that the dislocation of economic conditions,

which had begun with the century, would render an enormously increased

taxation necessary to maintain the Imperial authority, amounting to

five times as much as had previously been required.

It was only after these secular affairs of the empire had been

disposed of that the deliberations of the Reichstag on ecclesiastical

matters were opened by the indictment of Luther in a long speech by

Aleander, one of the papal nuncios, in introducing the Pope's letter.

In spite of the efforts of his friends, Luther was not permitted to be

present at the beginning of the proceedings; but subsequently he was

sent for by the Emperor, in order that he might state his case. His

journey to Worms was one long triumph, especially at Erfurt, where he

was received with enthusiasm by the Humanists as the enemy of the

Papacy. But his presence in the Reichstag was unavailing, and the

proceedings resulted in his being placed under the ban of the empire.

The safe-conduct of the Emperor was, however, in his case respected;

and in spite of the fears of his friends that a like fate might

befall him as had befallen Huss after the Council of Constance, he was

allowed to depart unmolested.

On his way to Wittenberg Luther was seized, by arrangement with his

supporter, the Kurfürst of Saxony, and conveyed in safety to the

Castle of Wartburg, in Thüringen, a report in the meantime being

industriously circulated by certain of his adherents, with a view of

arousing popular feeling, that he had been arrested by order of the

Emperor and was being tortured. In this way he was secured from all

danger for the time being, and it was during his subsequent stay that

he laid the foundations of the literary language of Germany.

Says a contemporary writer,[8] an eye-witness of what went on at Worms

during the sitting of the Reichstag: "All is disorder and confusion.

Seldom a night doth pass but that three or four persons be slain. The

Emperor hath installed a provost, who hath drowned, hanged, and

murdered over a hundred men." He proceeds: "Stabbing, whoring,

flesh-eating (it was in Lent) ... altogether there is an orgie worthy

of the Venusberg." He further states that many gentlemen and other

visitors had drunk themselves to death on the strong Rhenish wine.

Aleander was in danger of being murdered by the Lutheran populace,

instigated thereto by Hutten's inflammatory letters from the

neighbouring Castle of Ebernburg, in which Franz von Sickingen had

given him a refuge. The fiery Humanist wrote to Aleander himself,

saying that he would leave no stone unturned "till thou who earnest

hither full of wrath, madness, crime, and treachery shalt be carried

hence a lifeless corpse." Aleander naturally felt exceedingly

uncomfortable, and other supporters of the Papal party were not less

disturbed at the threats which seemed in a fair way of being carried

out. The Emperor himself was without adequate means of withstanding a

popular revolt should it occur. He had never been so low in cash or in

men as at that moment. On the other hand, Sickingen, to whom he owed

money, and who was the only man who could have saved the situation

under the circumstances, had matters come to blows, was almost overtly

on the side of the Lutherans; while the whole body of the impoverished

knighthood were only awaiting a favourable opportunity to overthrow

the power of the magnates, secular and ecclesiastic, with Sickingen as

a leader. Such was the state of affairs at the beginning of the year

1521.

The ban placed upon Luther by the Reichstag marks the date of the

complete rupture between the Reforming party and the old Church.

Henceforward, many Humanist and Humanistically influenced persons who

had supported him withdrew from the movement and swelled the ranks of

the Conservatives. Foremost amongst these were Pirckheimer, the

wealthy merchant and scholar of Nürnberg, and many others, who dreaded

lest the attack on ecclesiastical property and authority should, as

indeed was the case, issue in a general attack on all property and

authority. Thomas Murner, also, who was the type of the "moderate" of

the situation, while professing to disapprove of the abuses of the

Church, declared that Luther's manner of agitation could only lead to

the destruction of all order, civil no less than ecclesiastical. The

two parties were now clearly defined, and the points at issue were

plainly irreconcilable with one another or involved irreconcilable

details.

The printing-press now for the first time appeared as the vehicle for

popular literature; the art of the bard gave place to the art of the

typographer, and the art of the preacher saw confronting it a

formidable rival in that of the pamphleteer. Similarly in the French

Revolution, modern journalism, till then unimportant and sporadic,

received its first great development, and began seriously to displace

alike the preacher, the pamphlet, and the broadside. The flood of

theological disquisitions, satires, dialogues, sermons, which now

poured from every press in Germany, overflowed into all classes of

society. These writings are so characteristic of the time that it is

worth while devoting a few pages to their consideration, the more

especially because it will afford us the opportunity for considering

other changes in that spirit of the age, partly diseased growths of

decaying mediævalism and partly the beginnings of the modern critical

spirit, which also find expression in the literature of the

Reformation period.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _Sämmtliche Werke_, vol. xxxiii. pp. 322-4.

[6] Quoted in Janssen, _Ein Zweites Wort an meine Kritiker_ 1883, p. 94.

[7] _Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes_, vol. ii. p. 115.

[8] Quoted in Janssen, bk. ii. 162.