COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
For the complete understanding of the events which follow it must be
borne in mind that we are witnessing the end of a distinct historical
period; and, as we have pointed out in the Introduction, the expiring
effort, half conscious and half unconscious, of the people to revert to
the conditions of an earlier age. Nor can the significance be properly
gauged unless a clear conception is obtained of the differences between
country and town life at the beginning of the sixteenth century. From
the earliest periods of the Middle Ages of which we have any historical
record, the _Markgenossenschaft_, or primitive village community of the
Germanic race, was overlaid by a territorial domination, imposed upon
it either directly by conquest or voluntarily accepted for the sake of
the protection indispensable in that rude period. The conflict of these
two elements, the mark organisation and the territorial lordship,
constitutes the marrow of the social history of the Middle Ages.
In the earliest times the pressure of the over-lord, whoever he might
be, seems to have been comparatively slight, but its inevitable
tendency was for the territorial power to extend itself at the expense
of the rural community. It was thus that in the tenth and eleventh
centuries the feudal oppression had become thoroughly settled, and
had reached its greatest intensity all over Europe. It continued thus
with little intermission until the thirteenth century, when from
various causes, economic and otherwise, matters began to improve in
the interests of the common man, till in the fifteenth century the
condition of the peasant was better than it has ever been, either
before or since within historical times, in Northern and Western
Europe. But with all this, the oppressive power of the lord of the soil
was by no means dead. It was merely dormant, and was destined to spring
into renewed activity the moment the lord's necessities supplied a
sufficient incentive. From this time forward the element of territorial
power, supported in its claims by the Roman law, with its basis
of private property, continued to eat into it until it had finally
devoured the old rights and possessions of the village community. The
executive power always tended to be transferred from its legitimate
holder, the village in its corporate capacity, to the lord; and this
was alone sufficient to place the villager at his mercy.
At the time of the Reformation, owing to the new conditions which had
arisen and had brought about in a few decades the hitherto unparalleled
rise in prices, combined with the unprecedented ostentation and
extravagance more than once referred to in these pages, the lord was
supplied with the requisite incentive to the exercise of the power
which his feudal system gave him. Consequently, the position of the
peasant rapidly changed for the worse; and although at the outbreak of
the movement not absolutely _in extremis_, according to our notions,
yet it was so bad comparatively to his previous condition and that less
than half a century before, and tended so evidently to become more
intolerable, that discontent became everywhere rife, and only awaited
the torch of the new doctrines to set it ablaze. The whole course of
the movement shows a peasantry not downtrodden and starved, but proud
and robust, driven to take up arms not so much by misery and despair as
by the deliberate will to maintain the advantages which were rapidly
slipping away from them.
Serfdom was not by any means universal. Many free peasant villages
were to be found scattered amongst the manors of the territorial
lords, though it was but too evidently the settled policy of the
latter at this time to sweep everything into their net, and to compel
such peasant communes to accept a feudal over-lordship. Nor were they
at all scrupulous in the means adopted for attaining their ends. The
ecclesiastical foundations, as before said, were especially expert in
forging documents for the purpose of proving that these free villages
were lapsed feudatories of their own. Old rights of pasture were being
curtailed, and others, notably those of hunting and fishing, had in
most manors been completely filched away.
It is noticeable, however, that although the immediate causes of the
peasant rising were the new burdens which had been laid upon the
common people during the last few years, once the spirit of discontent
was aroused it extended also in many cases to the traditional feudal
dues to which until then the peasant had submitted with little
murmuring, and an attempt was made by the country side to reconquer the
ancient complete freedom of which a dim remembrance had been handed
down to them.
The condition of the peasant up to the beginning of the sixteenth
century, that is to say, up to the time when it began to so rapidly
change for the worse, may be gathered from what we are told by
contemporary writers, such as Wimpfeling, Sebastian Brandt,
Wittenweiler, the satires in the _Nürnberger Fastnachtspielen_, and
numberless other sources, as also from the sumptuary laws of the end
of the fifteenth century. All these indicate an ease and profuseness
of living which little accord with our notions of the word peasant.
Wimpfeling writes: "The peasants in our district and in many parts
of Germany have become, through their riches, stiff-necked and
ease-loving. I know peasants who at the weddings of their sons or
daughters, or the baptism of their children, make so much display that
a house and field might be bought therewith, and a small vineyard to
boot. Through their riches, they are oftentimes spendthrift in food and
in vestments, and they drink wines of price."
A chronicler relates of the Austrian peasants, under the date of 1478,
that "they wore better garments and drank better wine than their
lords"; and a sumptuary law passed at the Reichstag, held at Lindau
in 1497, provides that the common peasant man and the labourer in the
towns or in the field "shall neither make nor wear cloth that costs
more than half a gulden the ell, neither shall they wear gold, pearls,
velvet, silk, nor embroidered clothes, nor shall they permit their
wives or their children to wear such".
Respecting the food of the peasant, it is stated that he ate his full
in flesh of every kind, in fish, in bread, in fruit, drinking wine
often to excess. The Swabian, Heinrich Müller, writes in the year 1550,
nearly two generations after the change had begun to take place: "In
the memory of my father, who was a peasant man, the peasant did eat
much better than now. Meat and food in plenty was there every day, and
at fairs and other junketings the tables did well-nigh break with what
they bore. Then drank they wine as it were water, then did a man fill
his belly and carry away withal as much as he could; then was wealth
and plenty. Otherwise is it now. A costly and a bad time hath arisen
since many a year, and the food and drink of the best peasant is much
worse than of yore that of the day labourer and the serving man."
We may well imagine the vivid recollections which a peasant in the
year 1525 had of the golden days of a few years before. The day
labourers and serving men were equally tantalised by the remembrance
of high wages and cheap living at the beginning of the century. A
day labourer could then earn, with his keep, nine, and without keep,
sixteen groschen[24] a week. What this would buy may be judged from
the following prices current in Saxony during the second half of the
fifteenth century. A pair of good working shoes cost three groschen;
a whole sheep, four groschen; a good fat hen, half a groschen;
twenty-five cod fish, four groschen; a waggon-load of firewood,
together with carriage, five groschen; an ell of the best home-spun
cloth, five groschen; a scheffel (about a bushel) of rye, six or seven
groschen.
The Duke of Saxony wore grey hats which cost him four groschen.
In Northern Rhineland about the same time a day labourer could, in
addition to his keep, earn in a week a quarter of rye, ten pounds of
pork, six large cans of milk, and two bundles of firewood, and in the
course of five weeks be able to buy six ells of linen, a pair of shoes,
and a bag for his tools. In Augsburg the daily wages of an ordinary
labourer represented the value of six pounds of the best meat, or one
pound of meat, seven eggs, a peck of peas, about a quart of wine, in
addition to such bread as he required, with enough over for lodging,
clothing, and minor expenses. In Bavaria he could earn daily eighteen
pfennige, or one and a half groschen, whilst a pound of sausage cost
one pfennig, and a pound of the best beef two pfennige, and similarly
throughout the whole of the States of Central Europe.
A document of the year 1483, from Ehrbach in the Swabian Odenwald,
describes for us the treatment of servants by their masters. "All
journeymen," it declares, "that are hired, and likewise bondsmen
(serfs), also the serving men and maids, shall each day be given twice
meat and what thereto longith, with half a small measure of wine, save
on fast days, when they shall have fish or other food that nourisheth.
Whoso in the week hath toiled shall also on Sundays and feast days make
merry after mass and preaching. They shall have bread and meat enough,
and half a great measure of wine. On feast days also roasted meat
enough. Moreover, they shall be given, to take home with them, a great
loaf of bread and so much of flesh as two at one meal may eat."
Again, in a bill of fare of the household of Count Joachim von
Oettingen in Bavaria, the journeymen and villeins are accorded in
the morning, soup and vegetables; at mid-day, soup and meat, with
vegetables, and a bowl of broth or a plate of salted or pickled meat;
at night, soup and meat, carrots, and preserved meat. Even the women
who brought fowls or eggs from the neighbouring villages to the
castle were given for their trouble--if from the immediate vicinity,
a plate of soup with two pieces of bread; if from a greater distance,
a complete meal and a cruise of wine. In Saxony, similarly, the
agricultural journeymen received two meals a day, of four courses each,
besides frequently cheese and bread at other times should they require
it. Not to have eaten meat for a week was the sign of the direst famine
in any district. Warnings are not wanting against the evils accruing to
the common man from his excessive indulgence in eating and drinking.
Such was the condition of the proletariat in its first inception,
that is, when the mediæval system of villeinage had begun to loosen
and to allow a proportion of free labourers to insinuate themselves
into its working. How grievous, then, were the complaints when, while
wages had risen either not at all or at most from half a groschen to a
groschen, the price of rye rose from six or seven groschen a bushel to
about five-and-twenty groschen, that of a sheep from four to eighteen
groschen, and all other articles of necessary consumption in a like
proportion![25]
In the Middle Ages, necessaries and such ordinary comforts as were to
be had at all were dirt cheap; while non-necessaries and luxuries, that
is, such articles as had to be imported from afar, were for the most
part at prohibitive prices. With the opening up of the world-market
during the first half of the sixteenth century, this state of things
rapidly changed. Most luxuries in a short time fell heavily in price,
while necessaries rose in a still greater proportion.
This latter change in the economic conditions of the world exercised
its most powerful effect, however, on the character of the mediæval
town, which had remained substantially unchanged since its first
great expansion at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the
fourteenth centuries. With the extension of commerce and the opening
up of communications, there began that evolution of the town whose
ultimate outcome was to entirely change the central idea on which the
urban organisation was based.
The first requisite for a town, according to modern notions, is
facility of communication with the rest of the world by means of
railways, telegraphs, postal system, and the like. So far has this
gone now that in a new country, for instance America, the railway,
telegraph lines, etc., are made first, and the towns are then strung
upon them, like beads upon a cord. In the mediæval town, on the
contrary, communication was quite a secondary matter, and more of a
luxury than a necessity. Each town was really a self-sufficing entity,
both materially and intellectually. The modern idea of a town is that
of a mere local aggregate of individuals, each pursuing a trade or
calling with a view to the world-market at large. Their own locality
or town is no more to them economically than any other part of the
world-market, and very little more in any other respect. The mediæval
idea of a town, on the contrary, was that of an organisation of groups
into one organic whole. Just as the village community was a somewhat
extended family organisation, so was, _mutatis mutandis_, the larger
unit, the township or city. Each member of the town organisation owed
allegiance and distinct duties primarily to his guild, or immediate
social group, and through this to the larger social group which
constituted the civic society. Consequently, every townsman felt a kind
of _esprit de corps_ with his fellow-citizens, akin to that, say, which
is alleged of the soldiers of the old French "foreign legion," who,
being brothers-in-arms, were brothers also in all other relations. But
if every citizen owed duty and allegiance to the town in its corporate
capacity, the town no less owed protection and assistance, in every
department of life, to its individual members.
As in ancient Rome in its earlier history, and as in all other early
urban communities, agriculture necessarily played a considerable part
in the life of most mediæval towns. Like the villages they possessed
each its own mark, with its common fields, pastures, and woods. These
were demarcated by various landmarks, crosses, holy images, etc.; and
"the bounds" were beaten every year. The wealthier citizens usually
possessed gardens and orchards within the town walls, while each
inhabitant had his share in the communal holding without. The use of
this latter was regulated by the Rath or Council. In fact, the town
life of the Middle Ages was not by any means so sharply differentiated
from rural life as is implied in our modern idea of a town. Even in the
larger commercial towns, such as Frankfurt, Nürnberg or Augsburg, it
was common to keep cows, pigs, and sheep, and, as a matter of course,
fowls and geese, in large numbers within the precincts of the town
itself. In Frankfurt in 1481 the pigsties in the town had become such a
nuisance that the Rath had to forbid them _in the front_ of the houses
by a formal decree. In Ulm there was a regulation of the bakers' guild
to the effect that no single member should keep more than twenty-four
pigs, and that cows should be confined to their stalls at night. In
Nürnberg in 1475 again, the Rath had to interfere with the intolerable
nuisance of pigs and other farmyard stock running about loose in the
streets. Even in a town like München we are informed that agriculture
formed one of the staple occupations of the inhabitants, while in
almost every city the gardeners' or the winegrowers' guild appears as
one of the largest and most influential.
It is evident that such conditions of life would be impossible with
town-populations even approaching only distantly those of to-day; and,
in fact, when we come to inquire into the size and populousness of
mediæval cities, as into those of the classical world of antiquity, we
are at first sight staggered by the smallness of their proportions. The
largest and most populous free imperial cities in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, Nürnberg and Strassburg, numbered little more than
20,000 resident inhabitants within the walls, a population rather less
than that of (say) Gloucester at the present time. Such an important
place as Frankfurt-am-Main is stated at the middle of the fifteenth
century to have had less than 9000 inhabitants. At the end of the
fifteenth century Dresden could only boast of about 5000. Rothenburg on
the Tauber is to-day a dead city to all intents and purposes, affording
us a magnificent example of what a mediæval town was like, as the bulk
of its architecture, including the circuit of its walls, which remain
intact, dates approximately from the sixteenth century. At present a
single line of railway branching off from the main line with about
two trains a day is amply sufficient to convey the few antiquarians
and artists who are now its sole visitors, and who have to content
themselves with country-inn accommodation. Yet this old free city has
actually a larger population at the present day than it had at the time
of which we are writing, when it was at the height of its prosperity
as an important centre of activity. The figures of its population are
now between 8000 and 9000. At the beginning of the sixteenth century
they were between 6000 and 7000. A work written and circulated in
manuscript during the first decade of the sixteenth century, "A
Christian Exhortation" (_Ein Christliche Mahnung_), after referring to
the frightful pestilences recently raging as a punishment from God,
observes, in the spirit of true Malthusianism, and as a justification
of the ways of Providence, that "an there were not so many that died
there were too much folk in the land, and it were not good that such
should be lest there were not food enough for all".
Great population as constituting importance in a city is comparatively
a modern notion. In other ages towns became famous on account of their
superior civic organisation, their more advantageous situation, or the
greater activity, intellectual, political, or commercial, of their
citizens.
What this civic organisation of mediæval towns was, demands a few words
of explanation, since the conflict between the two main elements in
their composition plays an important part in the events which follow.
Something has already been said on this head in the Introduction. We
have there pointed out that the Rath or Town Council, that is the
supreme governing body of the municipality, was in all cases mainly,
and often entirely, composed of the heads of the town aristocracy, the
patrician class or "honorability" (_Ehrbarkeit_), as they were termed,
who on the ground of their antiquity and wealth laid claim to every
post of power and privilege. On the other hand were the body of the
citizens enrolled in the various guilds, seeking, as their position
and wealth improved, to wrest the control of the town's resources from
the patricians. It must be remembered that the towns stood in the
position of feudal over-lords to the peasants who held land on the
city territory, which often extended for many square miles outside
the walls. A small town like Rothenburg, for instance, which we have
described above, had on its lands as many as 15,000 peasants. The
feudal dues and contributions of these tenants constituted the staple
revenue of the town, and the management of them was one of the chief
bones of contention.
Nowhere was the guild system brought to a greater perfection than in
the free imperial towns of Germany. Indeed, it was carried further
in them, in one respect, than in any other part of Europe, for the
guilds of journeymen (_Gesellenverbände_), which in other places never
attained any strength or importance, were in Germany developed to the
fullest extent, and of course supported the craft-guilds in their
conflict with the patriciate. Although there were naturally numerous
frictions between the two classes of guilds respecting wages, working
days, hours, and the like, it must not be supposed that there was
that irreconcilable hostility between them which would exist at the
present time between a trades union and a syndicate of employers. Each
recognised the right to existence of the other. In one case, that of
the strike of bakers towards the close of the fifteenth century, at
Colmar in Elsass, the craft-guilds supported the journeymen in their
protest against a certain action of the patrician Rath which they
considered to be a derogation from their dignity.
Like the masters the journeymen had their own guild-house, and their
own solemn functions and social gatherings. There were, indeed,
two kinds of journeymen-guilds: one whose chief purpose was a
religious one, and the other concerning itself in the first instance
with the secular concerns of the body. However, both classes of
journeymen-guilds worked into one another's hand. On coming into a
strange town a travelling member of such a guild was certain of a
friendly reception, of maintenance until he procured work, and of
assistance in finding it as soon as possible.
Interesting details concerning the wages paid to journeymen and their
contributions to the guilds are to be found in the original documents
relating exclusively to the journeymen-guilds, collected by Georg
Schanz.[26] From these and other sources it is clear that the position
of the artisan in the towns was in proportion much better than even
that of the peasant at that time, and therefore immeasurably superior
to anything he has enjoyed since. In South Germany at this period the
average price of beef was about two denarii[27] a pound, while the
daily wages of the masons and carpenters, in addition to their keep and
lodging, amounted in the summer to about twenty, and in the winter to
about sixteen of these denarii. In Saxony the same journeymen-craftsmen
earned on the average, besides their maintenance, two groschen four
pfennige a day, or about one-third the value of a bushel of corn.
In addition to this, in some cases the workman had weekly gratuities
under the name of "bathing money"; and in this connection it may be
noticed that a holiday for the purpose of bathing once a fortnight,
once a week, or even oftener, as the case might be, was stipulated for
by the guilds, and generally recognised as a legitimate demand. The
common notion of the uniform uncleanliness of the mediæval man requires
to be considerably modified when one closely investigates the condition
of town life, and finds everywhere facilities for bathing in winter and
summer alike. Untidiness and uncleanliness, according to our notions,
there may have been in the streets and in the dwellings in many cases,
owing to inadequate provisions for the disposal of refuse and the like;
but we must not therefore extend this idea to the person, and imagine
that the mediæval craftsman or even peasant was as unwholesome as, say,
the Roumanian peasant of to-day.
When these wages received by the journeymen artisans are compared
with the prices of commodities previously given, it will be seen how
relatively easy were their circumstances; and the extent of their
well-being may be further judged from the wealth of their guilds,
which, although varying in different places, at all times formed a
considerable proportion of the wealth of the town. The guild system
was based upon the notion that the individual master and workman
was working as much in the interest of the guild as for his own
advantage. Each member of the guild was alike under the obligation to
labour, and to labour in accordance with the rules laid down by his
guild, and at the same time had the right of equal enjoyment with his
fellow-guildsmen of all advantages pertaining to the particular branch
of industry covered by the guild. Every guildsman had to work himself
_in propriâ personâ_; no contractor was tolerated who himself "in
ease and sloth doth live on the sweat of others, and puffeth himself
up in lustful pride". Were a guild-master ill and unable to manage
the affairs of his workshop, it was the council of the guild, and
not himself or his relatives, who installed a representative for him
and generally looked after his affairs. It was the guild again which
procured the raw material, and distributed it in relatively equal
proportions amongst its members; or where this was not the case, the
time and place were indicated at which the guildsman might buy at a
fixed maximum price. Every master had equal right to the use of the
common property and institutions of the guild, which in some industries
included the essentials of production, as, for example, in the case
of the woollen manufacturers, where wool kitchens, carding rooms,
bleaching houses and the like were common to the whole guild.
Needless to say, the relations between master and apprentices and
master and journeymen were rigidly fixed down to the minutest detail.
The system was thoroughly patriarchal in its character. In the
hey-day of the guilds, every apprentice and most of the journeymen
regarded their actual condition as a period of preparation which
would end in the glories of mastership. For this dear hope they were
ready on occasion to undergo cheerfully the most arduous duties.
The education in handicraft, and, we may add, the supervision of
the morals of the blossoming members of the guild, was a department
which greatly exercised its administration. On the other hand,
the guild in its corporate capacity was bound to maintain sick or
incapacitated apprentices and journeymen, though after the journeymen
had developed into a distinct class, and the consequent rise of the
journeymen-guilds, the latter function was probably in most cases taken
over by them. The guild laws against adulteration, scamped work, and
the like, were sometimes ferocious in their severity. For example, in
some towns the baker who misconducted himself in the matter of the
composition of his bread was condemned to be shut up in a basket which
was fixed at the end of a long pole, and let down so many times to the
bottom of a pool of dirty water. In the year 1456 two grocers, together
with a female assistant, were burnt alive at Nürnberg for adulterating
saffron and spices, and a similar instance happened at Augsburg in
1492. From what we have said it will be seen that guild life, like the
life of the town as a whole, was essentially a social life. It was
a larger family, into which various blood families were merged. The
interest of each was felt to be the interest of all, and the interest
of all no less the interest of each.
But in many towns, outside the town population properly speaking,
outside the patrician families who generally governed the Rath,
outside the guilds, outside the town organisation altogether, there
were other bodies dwelling within the walls and forming _imperia in
imperiis_. These were the religious corporations, whose possessions
were often extensive, and who, dwelling within their own walls,
shut out from the rest of the town, were subject only to their own
ordinances. The quasi-religious, quasi-military Order of the Teutonic
Knights (_Deutscher Orden_), founded at the time of the Crusades, was
the wealthiest and largest of these corporations. In addition to the
extensive territories which it held in various parts of the Empire,
it had establishments in a large number of cities. Besides this there
were, of course, the Orders of the Augustinians and Carthusians,
and a number of less important foundations, who had their cloisters
in various towns. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the
pomp, pride, and licentiousness of the Teutonic Order drew upon it
the especial hatred of the townsfolk; and amid the general wreck of
religious houses none were more ferociously despoiled than those
belonging to this Order. There were, moreover, in some towns, the
establishments of princely families, which were regarded by the
citizens with little less hostility than that accorded to the religious
Orders.
Such were the explosive elements of town life when changing conditions
were tending to dislocate the whole structure of mediæval existence.
The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had struck a heavy
blow at the commerce of the Bavarian cities which had come by way of
Constantinople and Venice. This latter city lost one by one its trading
centres in the East, and all Oriental traffic by way of the Black Sea
was practically stopped. It was the Dutch cities who inherited the
wealth and influence of the German towns when Vasco da Gama's discovery
of the Cape route to the East began to have its influence on the trade
of the world. This diversion of Oriental traffic from the old overland
route was the starting point of the modern merchant navy, and it must
be placed amongst the most potent causes of the break-up of mediæval
civilisation. The above change, although immediately felt by the German
towns, was not realised by them in its full importance either as to its
causes or its consequences for more than a century; but the decline of
their prosperity was nevertheless sensible, even now, and contributed
directly to the coming upheaval.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] One silver groschen = 1-1/5d.
[25] The authorities for the above data are to be found in
Janssen, i., vol. i., bk. iii., especially pp. 330-346.
[26] _Zur Geschichte der deutschen Gesellenverbände._ Leipz.,
1876.
[27] C. 1/5d. The _denarius_ was the South German equivalent
of the North German _pfennig_, of which twelve went to the _groschen_.