THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN TOWN
From what has been said the reader may form for himself an idea of the
intellectual and social life of the German town of the period. The
wealthy patrician class, whose mainstay politically was the _Rath_,
gave the social tone to the whole. In spite of the sharp and sometimes
brutal fashion in which class distinctions asserted themselves then,
as throughout the Middle Ages, there was none of that aloofness
between class and class which characterizes the bourgeois society of
the present day. Each town, were it great or small, was a little world
in itself, so that every citizen knew every other citizen more or
less. The schools attached to its ecclesiastical institutions were
practically free of access to all the children whose parents could
find the means to maintain them during their studies; and consequently
the intellectual differences between the different classes were by no
means necessarily proportionate to the difference in social position.
So far as culture and material prosperity were concerned, the towns
of Bavaria and Franconia, Munich, Augsburg, Regensburg, and perhaps,
above all, Nürnberg, represented the high-water mark of mediæval
civilization as regards town life. On entering the burg, should it
have happened to be in time of peace and in daylight, the stranger
would clear the drawbridge and the portcullis without much challenge;
passing along streets lined with the houses and shops of the burghers,
in whose open frontages the master and his apprentices and _gesellen_
plied their trades, discussing eagerly over their work the politics of
the town, and at this period probably the theological questions which
were uppermost in men's minds, our visitor would make his way to some
hostelry, in whose courtyard he would dismount from his horse, and,
entering the common room, or _Stube_, with its rough but artistic
furniture of carved oak, partake of his flagon of wine or beer,
according to the district in which he was travelling, whilst the host
cracked a rough and possibly coarse jest with the other guests, or
narrated to them the latest gossip of the city. The stranger would
probably find himself before long the object of interrogatories
respecting his native place and the object of his journey (although
his dress would doubtless have given general evidence of this),
whether he were a merchant or a travelling scholar or a practiser of
medicine; for into one of those categories it might be presumed the
humble but not servile traveller would fall. Were he on a diplomatic
mission from some potentate he would be travelling at the least as a
knight or a noble, with spurs and armour, and, moreover, would be
little likely to lodge in a public house of entertainment.
In the _Stube_ he would probably see, drinking heavily,
representatives of the ubiquitous _Landsknechte_, the mercenary troops
enrolled for Imperial purposes by the Emperor Maximilian towards the
end of the previous century, who in the intervals of war were
disbanded and wandered about spending their pay, and thus constituted
an excessively disintegrative element in the life of the time. A
contemporary writer[13] describes them as the curse of Germany, and
stigmatizes them as "unchristian, God-forsaken folk, whose hand is
ever ready in striking, stabbing, robbing, burning, slaying, gaming,
who delight in wine-bibbing, whoring, blaspheming, and in the making
of widows and orphans."
Presently, perhaps, a noise without indicates the arrival of a new
guest. All hurry forth into the courtyard, and their curiosity is
more keenly whetted when they perceive by the yellow knitted scarf
round the neck of the new-comer that he is an _itinerans
scholasticus_, or travelling scholar, who brings with him not only the
possibility of news from the outer world, so important in an age when
journals were non-existent and communications irregular and deficient,
but also a chance of beholding wonder-workings, as well as of being
cured of the ailments which local skill had treated in vain. Already
surrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to
fall from his lips, he would start on that exordium which bore no
little resemblance to the patter of the modern quack, albeit
interlarded with many a Latin quotation and great display of mediæval
learning. "Good people and worthy citizens of this town," he might
say, "behold in me the great master ... prince of necromancers,
astrologer, second mage, chiromancer, agromancer, pyromancer,
hydromancer. My learning is so profound that were all the works of
Plato and Aristotle lost to the world I could from memory restore them
with more elegance than before. The miracles of Christ were not so
great as those which I can perform wherever and as often as I will. Of
all alchemists I am the first, and my powers are such that I can
obtain all things that man desires. My shoe-buckles contain more
learning than the heads of Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more
experience than all your high schools. I am monarch of all learning. I
can heal you of all diseases. By my secret arts I can procure you
wealth. I am the philosopher of philosophers. I can provide you with
spells to bind the most potent of the devils in hell. I can cast your
nativities and foretell all that shall befall you, since I have that
which can unlock the secrets of all things that have been, that are,
and that are to come."[14] Bringing forth strange-looking phials,
covered with cabalistic signs, a crystal globe and an astro-labe,
followed by an imposing scroll of parchment inscribed with mysterious
Hebraic-looking characters, the travelling student would probably
drive a roaring trade amongst the assembled townsmen in love-philtres,
cures for the ague and the plague, and amulets against them,
horoscopes, predictions of fate, and the rest of his stock-in-trade.
As evening approaches, our traveller strolls forth into the streets
and narrow lanes of the town, lined with overhanging gables that
almost meet overhead and shut out the light of the afternoon sun, so
that twilight seems already to have fallen. Observing that the
burghers, with their wives and children, the work of the day being
done, are all wending toward the western gate, he goes along with the
stream till, passing underneath the heavy portcullis and through the
outer rampart, he finds himself in the plain outside, across which a
rugged bridle-path leads to a large quadrangular meadow, rough and
more or less worn, where a considerable crowd has already assembled.
This is the _Allerwiese_, or public pleasure-ground of the town. Here
there are not only high festivities on Sundays and holidays, but every
fine evening in summer numbers of citizens gather together to watch
the apprentices exercising their strength in athletic feats, and
competing with one another in various sports, such as running,
wrestling, spear-throwing, sword-play, and the like, wherein the
inferior rank sought to imitate and even emulate the knighthood,
whilst the daughters of the city watched their progress with keen
interest and applauding laughter. As the shadows deepen and darkness
falls upon the plain, our visitor joins the groups which are now fast
leaving the meadow, and re-passes the great embrasure just as the
rushlights begin to twinkle in the windows and a swinging oil-lamp to
cast a dim light here and there in the streets. But as his company
passes out of a narrow lane debouching on to the chief market-place,
their progress is stopped by the sudden rush of a mingled crowd of
unruly apprentices and journeymen returning from their sports, with
hot heads well beliquored. Then from another side-street there is a
sudden flare of torches, borne aloft by guildsmen come out to quell
the tumult and to send off the apprentices to their dwellings, whilst
the watch also bears down and carries off some of the more turbulent
of the journeymen to pass the night in one of the towers which guard
the city wall. At last, however, the visitor reaches his inn by the
aid of a friendly guildsman and his torch; and retiring to his
chamber, with its straw-covered floor, rough oaken bedstead, hard
mattress, and coverings not much better than horse-cloths, he falls
asleep as the bell of the minster tolls out ten o'clock over the now
dark and silent city.
Such approximately would have been the view of a German city in the
sixteenth century as presented to a traveller in a time of peace. More
stirring times, however, were as frequent--times when the tocsin rang
out from the steeple all night long, calling the citizens to arms. By
such scenes, needless to say, the year of the Peasants' War was more
than usually characterized. In the days when every man carried arms
and knew how to use them, when the fighting instinct was imbibed with
the mother's milk, when every week saw some street brawl, often
attended by loss of life, and that by no means always among the most
worthless and dissolute of the inhabitants, every dissatisfaction
immediately turned itself into an armed revolt, whether it were of the
apprentices or the journeymen against the guild-masters, the body of
the townsmen against the patriciate, the town itself against its
feudal superior, where it had one, or of the knighthood against the
princes. The extremity to which disputes can at present be carried
without resulting in a breach of the peace, as evinced in modern
political and trade conflicts, exacerbated though some of them are,
was a thing unknown in the Middle Ages, and indeed to any considerable
extent until comparatively recent times. The sacred right of
insurrection was then a recognized fact of life, and but very little
straining of a dispute led to a resort to arms. In the subsequent
chapters we have to deal with the more important of those outbursts to
which the ferment due to the dissolution of the mediæval system of
things, then beginning throughout Central Europe, gave rise, of which
the religious side is represented by what is known as the Reformation.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Sebastian Franck, _Chronica_, ccxvii.
[14] Cf. Trittheim's letter to Wirdung of Hasfurt regarding Faust. _J.
Tritthemii Epistolarum Familiarum_, 1536, bk. ii. ep. 47; also the works
of Paracelsus.