THE 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 characterises 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 civilisation 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 these 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[19] describes them as the curse of Germany, and stigmatises
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 shoebuckles 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."[20] Bringing
forth strange-looking phials, covered with cabalistic signs, a crystal
globe and an astrolabe, 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
repasses 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
horsecloths, 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 Peasant War was
more than usually characterised. 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
recognised 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:
[19] Sebastian Franck, _Chronica_, ccxvii.
[20] _Cf._ Trittheim's letter to Wirdung of Hasfurt regarding
Faust. _J. Tritthemii Epistolarum Familiarum_, 1536, bk. ii., ep. 47;
also the works of Paracelsus.