CHAPTER VII.
The war had fearfully loosened the joints of burgher society. The old orderly and disciplined character of Germans appeared almost lost. Countless was the number of unfortunates who having lost house and farm, maintenance and family, wandered homeless through inhospitable foreign countries; and not less numerous were the troops of reprobates who had habituated themselves to live by fraud, extortion, and robbery. Excitement had become a necessity to the whole living race, for thirty years the vagrant rabble of all Europe had chosen Germany as their head-quarters.
Thus it happened that after the peace the doings of the fortune hunters, adventurers, and rogues increased to an extraordinary extent. A contrast of weakness and roughness is, in the following century, a special characteristic of the needy, careworn family life, into which the spirit of the German people had contracted itself. Some particulars of this wild life will be here related, which will denote the gradual changes it underwent. For like the German devils, the children of the devil have also their history, and their race is more ancient than the Christian faith.
People are hardly aware of the intimate connection between German life and Roman antiquity. Not only did the traditions of the Roman empire, Christianity, Roman law, and the Latin language become parts of the German civilization, but still more extensively were the numerous little peculiarities of the Roman world preserved in the middle ages. German agriculture acquired from the Romans the greater part of its implements, also wheat, barley, and much of the remaining produce. The most ancient of our finer kinds of fruit are of Roman origin, equally so our wine, many garden flowers, and almost all our vegetables; also the oldest woollen fabrics, cotton and silk stuffs, and all the oldest machines, as for example, watermills, and the first mining and foundry works; likewise innumerable other things, even to the oldest forms of our dress, house utensils, chairs, tables, cupboards, and even the panels of our folding doors. And if it were possible to measure how much in our life is gathered from antiquity, or from primitive German invention, we should still, after the lapse of fifteen centuries, find so much that is Roman in our fields, gardens, and houses, on our bodies, nay, even in our souls, that one may well have a right to inquire whether our primeval ancestors were more under the protection of Father Jove or of the wild Woden.
Thus amongst numberless others, the despised race of Gladiators, Histrions, and Thymelei--or jesters, were preserved throughout the storm of migration, and spread from Rome among the barbarian races. They introduced amongst the bloody hordes of Vandals the dissolute Roman pantomime; they stood before the huts of the Frank chiefs, and piped and played foreign melodies, which had perhaps once come with the orgies of the Asiatic gods to Rome; they intermingled with the Gothic congregation, which poured out of the newly built church into the churchyard, and there opened their chests in order to show a monkey in a red jacket as a foreign prodigy, or produced the grotesque figures of old Latin puppets, themaccus,bucco,papus, and whatever else the ancient fathers called our jack-puddings, for the amusement of the young parishioners, who opened wide their large blue eyes at these foreign wonders. Meanwhile other members of the band of jugglers offered on payment, to execute gymnastic games before the warriors of the community, which they performed with sharp weapons and all the artifices and cunning of the Roman circus; then these foolhardy men formed a ring and carried on with passionate eagerness, for the sake of pay, the dangerous hazards of the combat, which the spectators admired the more, the bloodier it became, whilst they held the unfortunates, who thus struggled for money, in no greater consideration than a couple of wolves or hungry dogs. But for the distinguished spectators there were other more enticing artists. Women also roved with the men amongst the German tribes, dexterous and bold, dancers, singers, and actresses, in brilliant cavalcades. When they shook the Greek tambourine or the Asiatic castanets, in the licentious mazes of the bacchanalian dance, they were generally irresistible to the German barons, but were extremely offensive to serious people. In the year 554 a Frank king interposed with his authority against the nuisance of these foreignrovers, and the worthy Hinkmar, paternally warned his priests also against these women, whose foreign sounding designation was expressed by the true-hearted monk with a very well known but bitter word.
To these foreign jugglers were speedily added numerous German recruits. The German races had had wandering singers from the primitive times, bearers of news, spreaders of epic songs and poems. These also moved from farm to farm, highly welcome in the large houses of persons of distinction, honoured guests, trusted messengers, who often received from their hosts a more affectionate reward than golden bracelets or new dresses. They had once upon a time sung to the harp by the fireside, of the adventurous expedition of the thunder god to the world of giants, and of the tragic fall of the Nibelungen, then of Attila's battle, and the wonders of southern lands. But to the new Christian faith, this treasure of old native songs was obnoxious. The high-minded Charlemagne made a collection of the heroic songs of the German race, but his Popish son Louis hated and despised them. These songs undoubtedly were so thoroughly heathen, that the Church had reason to remonstrate against them in synodical resolutions and episcopal decrees. Together with them, the race of singers who carried and spread them, fell into disfavour with the church. The songs did not however cease, but the singers sank to a lower scale, and finally a portion of them at least fell into the class of vagrants, and the people were accustomed to hear the fairest heritage of their past from the lips of despised players.
Another heritage also from German heathendom fell to these strollers. Even before the time of Tacitus there were simple dramatic processions in Germany; on the great feast days of the German gods, there already appeared the humorous ideas of the pious German regarding his world of deities, associating with them comic processions of mummers, the figures of goblins and giants, gray winter and green spring, the bear of Donar, and probably the magic white horse of Woden, which in the oldest form of dramatic play opposed each other either in mimic combat, or for their rights. The wandering jugglers, with great facility, added these German masks to the grotesque Roman figures which they had brought into the country; and in the churchyard of the new Christian congregation, the bear of the bacchanalian Asen bellowed beside the followers of the Roman god of wine, and the satyr with his goats' feet and horns.
Thus this race of wanderers soon Germanized themselves, and during the whole of the middle ages roved about amongst the people--in the eye of the law homeless and lawless. The Church continued to rouse suspicion against these strollers by repeated decrees; the clergy would on no account see or listen to such rabble, nay, they were denied the right of taking a part in the Christian sacraments. The old law books allowed hired pugilists to kill each other without penance, like stray dogs; or what was almost worse, they granted to the injured vagrant only the mockery of a sham penance. If a stroller was struck by a sword or knife, he could only return the thrust or blow upon the shadow of his injurers on the wall.
This ignominious treatment contrasted strongly with the favour which these strollers generally enjoyed. Singly, or in bands, they went through the country, and streamed together by hundreds at the great court and Church fêtes. Then, it was the general custom to distribute among them food, drink, clothes, and money. It was thought advisable to treat them well, as they were well known to be tale-bearers, and would publish in satirical songs throughout the whole country the scandalous conduct of the niggardly man, with a vindictiveness which was sharpened by the feeling that such revenge was the best means of making themselves feared. It was rarely that a prince like Henry II., or a pious bishop, ventured to send away these bands from their fêtes without a reward. Almost everywhere, till quite into the fifteenth century, they were to be found wherever a large assemblage of men sought for amusement. They sang ballads, satirical songs and love songs, and related heroic tales and legends from foreign lands, on the stove-bench of the peasant, in tins ante-room of the burgher, or the hall of the castle. From the latter its lord is absent perhaps on a crusade, and his wife and servants listen anxiously to the fables and lies of the wandering player. To-day he is the narrator of foreign tales of marvel, and to-morrow the clandestine messenger betwixt two lovers; then he again enters for a time the service of knightly minne-singers, whose minne-songs he accompanies with his music, and undertakes to spread them through the country, as a journal does now; or he dresses himself up more strikingly than usual, takes his bauble in his hand, places a fool's cap on his head, and goes as travelling fool to some nobleman, or follower of some distinguished ecclesiastic.
Wherever his fellows collected together in numbers, at courtly residences and tournaments, or in churchyards at great saints' feasts, he quickly pitched his tent and booth by the side of those of traders and pedlers, and began his arts; rope-dancing, jongleur exercises, sham-fights, dramatic representations in masks, shows of curiosities, songs, masked artistic dances, and playing for dances and festive processions. In the churchyard itself, or within the boundaries of some castle, were heard the sounds of noisy pleasure; and the sun-burnt women of the band slipped secretly through side doors into the castle or the priests' house.
Only some of the practices of these vagrants deserve special mention. The influence which these musicians exercised on the progress of epic and lyrical popular poetry, has been already mentioned; it is even now discerned in heroic poetry, for the players often endeavoured to introduce fellows of their own class into the old poetry, and took care that they should play no contemptible rôle. Thus in the Nibelungen, the brilliant form of the hero Volker the fiddler, is the representation of a musician; similar figures, grotesque in appearance, but rougher and coarser, hectored in the later poems and popular legends, as for example the monk Ilsan in the Rosengarten.
But it was not only in the German epos, that the strollers smuggled in, beautiful copies of their own life; despised as they were, they contrived, with all the insolence of their craft, to introduce themselves into the nave and choir of the church, though almost excluded from its holy rites. For even in the first strict ecclesiastical beginnings of the German dramas, they crept into the holy plays of the Easter festivals. Already in the beginning of the middle ages the history of the crucifixion and resurrection had assumed a dramatic colouring; alternate songs between Christ and his disciples, Pilate and the Jews, were sung by the clergy in the church choir; a great crucifix was reverently deposited in an artificial grave in the crypt, and afterwards there was a solemn announcement, on Easter morning, of the resurrection, songs of praise by the whole congregation, and the consecration of psalms. They began early to bring forward more prominently, individual rôles in dramatic songs, to put speeches as well as songs into their mouths, and to distinguish the chief rôles by suitable dress and particular attributes. On other Church festivals the same was done with the legends of the saints, and already in the twelfth century whole pieces were dramatically performed in the German churches, first of all in Latin, by the clergy in the choir. But in the thirteenth century the German language made its way into the dialogue; then the pieces became longer, the number of rôles increased, the laity began to join in it, the dialogues became familiar, sometimes facetious, and contrasted wonderfully with the occasional Latin songs and responses, which were maintained in the midst of them, and which also gradually became German. The personages in the Biblical plays still appear under the same comic figures, with the coarse jokes and street wit which the roving people had introduced into the churchyards. Generally the fool entered as servant of a quack. From the oldest times these strollers had carried about with them through the country, secret remedies, especially such as were suspicious to the Church, primitive Roman superstitions, ancient German forms of exorcism, and others also which were more noxious and dangerous. At the great Church festivals and markets, there were always doctors' booths, in which miraculous remedies and cures were offered for sale to the believing multitudes. These booths also of the wandering doctors are older than the Augustine age; they are to be seen depicted on the Greek vases, and came to Germany through Italy, with the grotesque masks of the doctors themselves and their attendant buffoons, and were the most profitable trade of the strollers. These doctors and their servants were introduced as interludes to the spiritual plays, with long spun out episodes of the holy traffic, in which ribaldry and drubbing are not wanting.
But the strollers introduced another popular person into the holy plays, the devil, probably his first appearance in the church. Long had this spirit of hell spit out fire under the tents of the churchyard, and wagged his tail, and probably he had often been beaten and cheated, to the delight of the spectators, by clever players, before he assisted in the thirteenth century as a much-suffering fellow-actor, in the holy Easter dramas, to the edification of the pious parishioners.
Such was the active industry carried on by these strollers through the middle ages. Serving every class and every tendency of the times, coarse in manners and morals, as privileged jesters both cherished and ill treated, they were probably united amongst themselves in firm fellowship, with secret tokens of recognition; they were distinguished by their outward attire, and chiefly by fantastic finery, and by the absence of long hair and beard, the honourable adornment of privileged people, which they were forbidden to wear.
In the fifteenth century the severity of the laws against them were relaxed, for the whole life of all classes had become more frivolous, daring, and reckless; an inordinate longing after enjoyment, an excessive pleasure in burlesque jesting, in music and dancing, in singing and mimic representations, was general in the wealthy towns. Thus many of the race of strollers contrived to make their peace with the burgher society. They became domestic fools in the courts of princes, the merry-andrews of the towns, associates of the town pipers, and players to the bands of Landsknechte.
But besides the players and their followers, there appeared along the roads of the armies, and in the hiding-places of the woods, other children of misfortune less harmless and far more awful to the people, first of all the gipsies.
The gipsies, from their language and the scanty historical records that there are of them, appear to be a race of northern border Indians, who lost their home, and their connection with their Indian relatives, at a time when the transformation of the ancient Sanscrit into the modern and popular languages had already begun. In their wanderings towards the west, which had gone on for centuries, they must have lived in continual intercourse with Arabians, Persians, and Greeks, for the language of these people has had a marked influence on their own. They were possibly, about the year 430 but more probably about 940, in Persia. They appeared about the twelfth century as Ishmaelites and braziers,[41]in Upper Germany. They were settled in the fourteenth century in Cypress, and in the year 1370, as bondsmen is Wallachia. The name of Zingaro or Zitano, is a corruption from their language; they still call themselves Scindians, dwellers on the banks of the Indus; their own statement also, that they came from Little Egypt, may be correct, as Little Egypt appears then to have denoted, not the valley of the Nile, but the frontier lands of Asia.
In the year 1417, they came in great hordes, with laughable pretensions and grotesque processions, from Hungary, into Germany, and shortly afterwards into Switzerland, France, and Italy. A band of three hundred grown-up persons, without counting the children, proceeded as far as the Baltic, under the command of a duke and count, on horseback and on foot; the women and children sitting with the baggage on the carts. They were dressed like comedians, and had sporting dogs with them as a sign of noble birth; but when they really hunted, they did so without dogs, and without noise. They showed recommendations and safe-conducts from princes and nobles, and also from the Emperor Sigismund. They asserted that their bishops had commanded them to wander for seven years through the world. But they were great swindlers, and passed their nights in the open air, for better opportunities of stealing. In 1418, they appeared in many parts of Germany, and the same year went under the command of Duke Michael, from Little Egypt into Switzerland. A rendezvous of many hordes seems to have taken place before Zurich. They numbered according to the lowest computation a thousand heads. They had two dukes and two knights, and pretended to have been driven from Egypt by the Turks: they carried much money in their pockets, and maintained that they had received it from their own people at home: they ate and drank well, and also paid well, but they have never shown themselves again like this. From thence they appear to have turned to France and Italy; in 1422, a band of them came under a duke from Egypt to Bologna and Forli. They stated that the King of Hungary had compelled about 4000 of them to be baptized, and had slain the remainder; the baptized had been condemned to the penance of seven years' wandering. They wished to go to Rome to visit the Pope. In 1427, the same band, probably, appeared before Paris with two dukes. They asserted that they had letters and a blessing from the Pope. The Pope had held council concerning them, and had decided that they were to wander through the world seven years, without lying on a bed; then he would send them to a fine country. For five years they had journeyed about, and their king and queen had died during their wanderings, &c. These were followed by other bands.
In 1424, a new horde appeared before Ratisbon, with letters of safe conduct from the Emperor Sigismund, one of which was dated Zips, 1423, and was published by the chroniclers. In 1438, another horde passed through Bohemia, Austria, and Bavaria; this time they were under a petty king, Zindelo; they also asserted that they came from Egypt, and declared that they were commanded by God to wander for seven years, because their forefathers had refused hospitality to the mother of God and the child Jesus, on their flight into Egypt.
In hordes like these they spread themselves, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, over the whole of Europe. In spite of their frivolous finery and cunning lies, there were very few places in which they succeeded in deceiving men. They proved, indeed, everywhere to be wicked heathens, magicians, fortune-tellers, and most shameless thieves. They split themselves into small bands during their distant travels; their leaders, whom they had honoured with all the feudal titles, in order to give themselves consideration, disappeared. They themselves were thoroughly decimated by their wandering lives, and the persecutions of the local inhabitants.
Their language gives the best explanation of their past. The original homogeneousness of the gipsy language is distinctly visible amidst the various changes which it has gone through in many countries. It appears to be the mode of speech of a single and special Indian race. The gipsy is apparently not the descendant of a mixed Indian people, or of a single low caste of Indians, but of a distinct race of people. The men call themselves everywhere,rom; and in contradiction to the western nations, alsocalo, black: their wives,romni, and their languageromany-tschib. The names which their race have had in different countries are numerous and various.
Their language is in its origin and internal structure a genuine daughter of the distinguished Sanscrit, but it has become for many centuries like a beggar and thief; it has lost much of its beauty, its elegance, and its resemblance to its mother and sisters; instead of which it has appropriated something to itself from every country in which these people have tarried in their wanderings, and its dress appears covered with the tatters of all nations, so that it is only here and there that the genuine gold threads are still visible. The race have lost a great portion of their own words, more especially those, that express ideas which they could not preserve in their paltry miserable life in foreign countries. They have lost the Indian expression for parrot, elephant, and lion, also for the tiger and buffalo snake, but sugar--gûlo, silk--pahr, and grapes--drakh, they call by their Indian, and wine--mohl, by its Persian name. Nay, they have also lost the Indian words for many current terms: they no longer call the sparrow by its Indian name: no fish, and hardly any plants; but undoubtedly they retain those of many large and small animals, amongst othersdschu, the louse. But in all countries, new representations, images, and ideas offered themselves, and too lazy and careless to form words of their own, they took those of every foreign language and adapted them to the necessities of their own tongue. The result was, that even the gipsies who were in bands, being without firm union, were split in pieces among the various people, so that what they still possessed did not remain common to all, and there arose in every country a peculiar gipsy idiom, in which old recollections were mixed up with the language of the country, in an original way. Finally theromappropriated to himself almost everywhere, besides the common language of the country that of the rogues, the thieves' dialect, to which he imparted, in friendly exchange, words from his own language. In Germany he understood gibberish, orJenisch; in Bohemia,Hantyrka; in French,Argôt; in England, Slang; and in Spain,Germania.
It is instructive to observe how their hereditary language became corrupted; for the decadence of one language, through the overpowering influence of another, proceeds according to fixed laws. First, foreign words penetrate in a mass, because foreign cultivation has an imposing effect; next the formation of sentences is taken from the foreign language, because the mind of the people accustoms itself to think after the method of the foreigners; and thirdly, they forget their own inflections; then the language becomes a heap of ruins, a weather-beaten organism, like a corroded mass of rock which crumbles away into sand or gravel. The gipsy language has gone through the first and second stages of decadence, and the third also in Spain.
The life of this race in Germany was far from comfortable. As their hands were against the property of every one, so did the popular hatred work against their lives. Charles V. commanded them to be banished, and the new police ordinances of the Princes allowed them no indulgence. Yet they were able to gain money from the country people by soothsaying and secret arts, by doctoring man and beast, or as horse-dealers and pedlers. Often, united with bands of robbers, they carried on a new service during the long war, as camp followers. Wallenstein made use of them as spies, as did the Swedes also later. The women made themselves agreeable to the officers and common soldiers. The cunning men of the band sold amulets and shod horses.
After the war they went about through the country audaciously, the terror of the countryman. In 1663 a band of more than two hundred of them invaded Thuringia, where they distributed themselves, and were considered as very malevolent, because it was reported of them that they reconnoitred the country probably for an enemy. They had in fact become a great plague throughout the country, and the law thundered against them with characteristic recklessness. Orders were issued everywhere for their banishment; they were considered as spies of the Turks, and as magicians, and were made outlaws; even after the year 1700, in a small Rhenish principality, a gipsy woman and her child were brought in amongst other wild game which had been slain. A band again broke into Thuringia in the eighteenth century, and a law in 1722 declared all the men outlawed. In Prussia, in 1710, an edict was promulgated, commanding the alarm to be sounded, and the community to be summoned together against them, whenever they should make their appearance. On the frontiers, gallows were erected with this inscription: "The punishment for thieves and gipsy rabble, both men and women." As late as the year 1725 all the gipsies in the Prussian states, over eighteen years of age, were to be hanged whether they had a passport or not. Even in 1748 Frederick the Great renewed this strong edict. The conduct of the civilized nineteenth century forms a pleasing contrast to this. In 1830 at Friedrichslohra in Thuringia, a philanthropic endeavour was made, and warmly promoted by the government, to reform a band of about one hundred men, by the maintenance of the adults and education of the children. The attempt was continued for seven years, and completely failed.
The name of Stroller disappeared, and the occupation of these possessionless rovers became to a certain degree free from the old defect; but the great society of swindlers maintained a certain organization. Their language also remained. The gibberish, of which many specimens remain to us from the latter end of the middle ages, shows already, before the demoralization of the people by the Hussite war, a full development of old German rogues' idioms. It consists for the greater part of Hebrew words as used by persons who were not themselves Jews; together with these are mingled some of the honoured treasures of the German language, beautiful old words, and again significant inventions of figurative expressions, for the sake of concealing the true sense of the speech by a deceptive figure: thus, windgap for mantle, broadfoot for goose. Few of their words lead us to expect an elevated disposition; the rough humour of desperadoes breaks out from many of them. The practice, like the language of these rogues, developed itself in greater refinement. The usual form in which the resident inhabitants were plundered was begging. The works of holiness of the old Church--an irrational alms-giving--had spread throughout Christendom an unwieldy mass of mendicancy. In the first century of German Christendom it is the subject of complaint of pious ecclesiastics. In churchyards and in public places lay the beggars, exposing horrible wounds, which were often artistically inflicted; they sometimes went naked through the country with a club, afterwards clothed, and with many weapons, and begged at every homestead for their children, or for the honour of their saints, or as slaves escaped from the Turkish galleys, for a vow, or for only a pound of wax, a silver cross, or a mass vestment. They begged also towards the erection of a church, producing letters and seals; they had much at heart to obtain special napkins for the priest, linen for the altar cloth, and broken plate for the chalice; they rolled about as epileptics, holding soap lather in their mouths. In like manner did the women wander about, some pretending to give birth to monsters (as for example a toad) which lived in solitude as miraculous creatures, and daily required a pound of meat. When a great festival was held they flocked together in troops. They formed a dangerous company, and even iron severity could scarcely keep them under restraint. Basle appears to have been one of their secret meeting-places; they had there their own special place of justice, and the famed "Liber Vagatorum" also, seems to have originated in that neighbourhood. This book, written by an unknown hand about 1500, contains, in rogues' language, a careful enumeration of the rogue classes and their tricks, and at the end a vocabulary of jargon. It was often printed; and Pamphilus Gengenbach of Basle rendered it into rhyme. It pleased Luther so well that he also reprinted the clever little book, after one of the oldest impressions.
To the order of beggars belong also the travelling scholars, who, as treasure diggers and exorcists, made successful attacks on the savings of the peasants and on the provisions in their chimneys. "They desired to become priests," then they came from Rome with shaven crowns and collected for a surplice; or they were necromancers, then they wore a yellow train to their coats and came from the Frau Venusberg; when they entered a house they exclaimed, "Here comes a travelling scholar, a master of seven liberal sciences, an exorciser of the devil, and from hail storms, fire, and monsters;" and thereupon they made "experiments." Together with them came disbanded Landsknechte, often associated with the dark race of outlaws, who worked with armed hand against the life and property of the resident inhabitants.
Throughout the whole of the middle ages it was impossible to eradicate the robbers. After the time of Luther they became incendiaries, more particularly from 1540 to 1542. A foreign rabble appeared suddenly in middle Germany, especially in the domains of the Protestant chiefs, the Elector of Saxony and Landgrave of Hesse. They burned Cassel, Nordheim, Göttingen, Goslor, Brunswick, and Magdeburg. Eimbech was burned to the ground with three hundred and fifty men, and a portion of Nordhausen; villages and barns were everywhere set on fire; bold incendiary letters stirred up the people, and at last also the princes. The report became general that the Roman Catholic party had hired more than three hundred incendiaries, and the Pope, Paul III., had counselled Duke Henry the younger, of Brunswick, to send the rabble to Saxony and Hesse. Undoubtedly much wickedness was laid to the credit of the unscrupulous Duke; but it was then the interest of Pope Paul III. to treat the Protestants with forbearance, for earnest endeavours were being made on both sides for a great reconciliation, and preparation was made for it at Rome, by sending the Cardinal Contarini to the great religious conference at Ratisbon. The terror, however, and anger of the Germans was great and enduring. Everywhere the incendiaries were tracked, everywhere their traces were found, crowds of rabble were imprisoned, tried for their lives, and executed. Luther publicly denounced Duke Henry as guilty of these reckless outrages; the Elector and Landgrave accused him of incendiarism at the Diet before the Emperor; and in vain did he, in his most vehement manner, defend himself and his adherents. It is true that his guilt was pronounced by the Emperor as unproved; but then he was desirous, above all, of internal peace and help against the Turks. In the public opinion, however, the stain on the prince's reputation remained. It is impossible to discover how far the strollers of that time were the guilty parties. The depositions of those arrested are inaccurately given, and it cannot be decided how much of it was dictated by torture. One thing is quite clear, they did not form into any fixed bands, and their secret intercourse was carried on through the medium of signs, which were scratched or cut on striking places, such as inns, walls, doors, &c. These signs were partly primitive German personal tokens, which, as house-marks, may still be found on the gables of old buildings, but partly also in rogues' marks. Above all, there was the characteristic sign of the Strollers, the arrow, once the signal announcing enmity; the direction of his arrow shows the way which the marker has taken; small perpendicular strokes on it, often with ciphers above, give probably the number of persons. These signs are to be found sometimes still on the trees and walls of the high-roads, and it betokens now, as it did then, to the members of the band, that the initiated has passed that way with his followers.
In addition to the indigenous rovers came also foreign ones; as in the middle ages, a stream of Italian adventurers again flowed through Germany. Together with the German player rose the cry of the Italian orvietan (Venice treacle) vendor, and side by side with the Bohemian bear were the camels of Pisa. The marvellous Venetian remedies and the harlequin jacket, mask, and felt cap of the Italian fool wandered over the Alps, and were added as new fooleries to our old stock.
The Italian, Garzoni, has given a lively picture of the proceedings of these strollers in his book, 'Piazza Universale,' a description of all the arts and handicrafts of his time. His work was translated in 1641, into German by Matthäus Merian, under the title of 'General Theatre of all Arts, Professions, and Handicrafts.' The description of the Italian portrays also in its chief features the condition of Western Germany after the war. The following extract is given according to Merian's German translation:--
"The wandering comedians in their demeanour are uncivil asses and ruffians, who consider that they have performed beautifully when they have moved the mob to laughter by their coarse sayings. Theirinventionesare such, that if the toads acted thus we might forgive them, and they all tally together without rhyme or reason; they do not care whether they are sufficiently polished and skilful so long as they can only obtain money. Though they could easily curtail or cloak whatever is coarse, they imagine that they give no satisfaction in their business if it is not set forth in the coarsest manner; on this account comedy and the whole comic art has fallen into the greatest contempt with respectable people, and even the high comedians are banished from certain places, are treated with contumely in public laws and statutes, insulted and derided by the whole community. When these good people come into a town they must not remain together, but must divide themselves among divers inns; the Lady comes from Rome, the Magnificus from Venice,[42]Ruffiana from Padua, the Zany from Bergamo, the Gratianus from Bologna, and they must lurk about for certain days, till they have begged and obtained permission if they wish to maintain themselves and carry on their profession; they can with difficulty obtain lodgings where they are known, every one being disgusted with their filth, as they leave for a length of time a bad smell behind them.
"But when they come into a town and are permitted to perform their tricks, they cause it to be made known by handbills, the beating of drums, and other war sounds, that this or that great comedian has arrived; then the woman goes after the drum dressed in man's clothes, girt about with a sword, and thus the people are invited in every place: 'Whoever would see a beautiful comedian, let him come to this or that place.' Thither come running all the curious people, and are admitted for three or four kreutzers into a yard, where they find a platform erected, and regular scenes. First there begins splendid music, just as if a troop of asses were all braying together; then comes a Prologus, making his appearance like a vagabond; afterwards come beautiful and ill-adorned persons, who make such a cackling that every one begins to find the time long, and if perchance any one laughs, it is more at the simplicity of the spectators than because he finds somewhat laughable. Then comes Magnificus, who is not worth three hellers; Zany, who truly does his best, but waddles like a goose walking through deep mud; a shameless Ruffiana, and also a lover, whom it would be disgusting to listen to long; a Spaniard who knows not how to say more thanmi vida, ormi corazon; a pedant who jumbles all sorts of languages together; and Buratinus, who knows no other gesture than that of twirling his hat or his hood from one hand to the other. The best of them has so little capacity as to be unfit either to boil or roast, so that the bystanders all become weary, and laugh at themselves for having so long given heed to such insane tricks. And assuredly they must be idle folk or superlative fools to allow themselves to be caught there a second time; the incapacity of the players in the first comedy they perform, is so well known and cried down, that others of respectability are mistrusted on their account.
"There are now-a-days many genuine dramatic performances in vogue at almost all the market-places and fairs, namely the plays of Ceretani, of orvietan vendors, and other similar fellows. They are called Ceretani in Italy because it is presumed they have their origin and first commencement in a small spot called Cereto, near Spoleto in Umbria, and afterwards gradually attained such credit and consideration, that when they were to be heard there was as great a concourse of people assembled as were ever collected by the cleverest doctor of the liberal arts, nay even by the best preacher who ever entered a pulpit. For the common people run together in crowds, gaping with open mouth, listen to them the whole day, forget all their cares, and God knows how difficult it is,--even the peasants find it so,--to keep one's purse in such a throng.
"When one sees these cheats take a whole lump of arsenic, sublimate, or other poison, indiscriminately, that they may make proof by it of the excellence of their orvietan, it should be known that, in the summer-time before they came to the place, they have filled themselves with lettuce dressed with so much vinegar and oil that they might swim therein, and in winter they stuff themselves upon fat ox-brawn well boiled. And this they do that they may by means of the fat of the brawn and oiliness of the salad, with the coldness of their nature, obstruct the internal passage of the body, and thus weaken the sharpness or heat of the poison. They have besides this also a secure way of managing, namely, before they enter the place they go to the nearest apothecary, who generally in the towns is in or near the market; there they ask for a box of arsenic, from which they select some small bits, and wrap them in paper, begging the apothecary to deliver the same to them when they send for it. Now when they have sufficiently extolled their wares, so that nothing more remains but to make proof of them, they send out one of the bystanders, in order that there may appear to be no fear of deceit, to the apothecary, that he may obtain some arsenic for the money which they give him. This said person runs forthwith, that there may be no hindrance in such useful work, and as he goes, considers that though he has been deceived a thousand times, he cannot be so this time, he will see well to that. Meantime he comes to the apothecary, demands the arsenic for his money, receives it, and runs with joy to the orvietan vendor's table to see the marvel; this one holds meanwhile in his hand little boxes, amongst them one wherein he puts the aforesaid arsenic, he speaks and addresses the people for a time before he takes it, for in a case of so much danger there must be no haste; meantime he changes the aforesaid little box for another, wherein are small pieces of paste made of sugar, meat, and saffron that they may appear like the former. These he then eats with singular gestures as if he were much afraid, and the peasants stand by open mouthed to see whether he will not soon burst asunder; but he binds himself up firmly that this may not happen, although he knows that there is no occasion for it; he afterwards takes a piece as large as a chestnut of his orvietan or stuff, and all the swelling disappears as if there had been no poison in question. 'This, dear gentlemen, will be a precious orvietan to you.' Whereupon the peasants undraw their purse strings, and thank God that they have such a dear good man, and can obtain in their village such costly wares for so little money.
"But who would venture to describe all the cunning practices whereby these strollers contrive to make and collect money? For my own part I fear I should never get to the end of it. Yet I cannot refrain from describing some of their tricks.
"One rushes through the street, having with him a young girl dressed in boy's clothes, who bounds about, jumping through a hoop like a monkey. Then he begins to tell, in good Florentine, some remarkable jests or pranks, and meanwhile the little maiden sets to work in every kind of way, throws herself on all-fours, reaches the ring from out of the hoop, then bends herself backwards, and picks up a coin from under the right or left foot, with such graceful agility that the lads have pleasure in looking at her. But finally he also can do nothing farther than to bring out his wares, and offer the same for sale as well as he can.
"But those who boast themselves of being of the race of St. Paul, make their appearance with much consequence, namely, with a great flying banner, on one side of which stands St. Paul with his sword, but on the other a heap of serpents, which are so painted that one fears to be bitten by them. Then one of the party begins to relate their genealogy, how St. Paul, in the island of Malta, was bitten by a viper without injury, and how the same virtue was accorded to his descendants; then they make divers trials, but always keep the upper hand, having a bond and seal thereupon. Finally they lay hold of the boxes which are standing on the table or bench, take out of one a salamander, two ells long and an arm in thickness, from another a great snake, from another a viper, and relate concerning each how they had caught it when the peasant was reaping his corn, who would have been in great danger therefrom, if they had not come to his relief. Thereupon the peasants become so frightened that they dare not return home till they have had a draught of the costly snake-powder, and bought still more to take home to their wives and children, that they may be preserved from the bite of snakes and other poisonous reptiles; and the game does not end herewith, for they have still more boxes at hand, which they open, and take out of one a rough viper, out of another a dead basilisk, out of another a young crocodile brought from Egypt, an Indian lizard, a tarantula from the Campagna, or somewhat of the like, whereby they frighten the peasants, that they may buy the favour of the Holy Paul, which is imparted to them by small written papers, for a consideration.
"Meanwhile, because the people are still assembled together, another comes, spreads his mantle on the ground, places upon it a little dog which can singut,re,mi,fa,so,la,si; it makes also frolicksome somersaults, somewhat less than a monkey, barks at the command of its master, who is very ill clad, howls when the Turkish Emperor's name is mentioned, and makes a leap into the air when this or that sweetheart is named; and finally, for it is done to obtain hellers, his master hangs a little hat to his paw, and sends him round on his hind feet to the bystanders, for travelling expenses, as he has a great journey in prospect.
"The Parmesan also does not neglect the like opportunity with his goat, which he brings to thePlatz; he makes there a palisade, within which it walks up and down, one foot behind the other, and sits up on a little platform of hardly a hand's breadth, and licks the salt under its feet. He makes it also go round upon its hind legs, with a long spear over its shoulder, making fools of all beholders, who present it with pence for food.
"Sometimes a bold rope-dancer is to be seen, who walks on the rope, till at last he breaks his leg, or falls headlong; or a daring Turkish juggler who lies on the ground, and allows himself to be struck on the chest by a great hammer, as if he were an anvil; or by a jerk, tears up a big pile which has been driven by force into the ground, whereby he obtains a good sum for his journey to Mecca.
"Sometimes a baptized Jew makes his appearance, who bawls and cries out, till at length he collects a few people, when he begins to preach about his conversion; whereby one comes to this conclusion, that he has become a crafty vagrant instead of a pious Christian.
"In short there is no market-place, either in village or town, where some of these fellows are not to be found, who either perform divers facetious juggling tricks, or sell various drugs.
"These are the tricks of charlatans, strollers, and jugglers, and other idle people, whereby they get on in the world."
Here ends the narrative of Garzoni. Numberless light-footed people also of the same class thronged into the German market towns. But besides the old traders and jugglers, a new class of strollers had come into Germany, harmless people of far higher interest for these days, the wandering comedians. The first players that made a profession of their performances came to Germany from England or the Netherlands, towards the end of the sixteenth century. They were still accompanied with rope dancers, jumpers, fencers, and horsebreakers; they still continued to furnish the courts of princes and the market-places of great cities with clowns and the favourite figure of jack-puddings, and soon after, the French "Jean Posset," on bad boarded platforms still continued to excite the uproarious laughter of the easily amused multitude. Shortly after, the popular masques of the Italian theatre became familiar in the south of Germany and on the Rhine. At the same time that the regular circulation of newspapers commenced, the people received the rough beginnings of art; the representation of human character and the secret emotions of restless souls by the play of countenance, gestures, and the deceptive illusion of action.
It is remarkable also, that almost precisely at the same period, the first entertaining novels were written for the people. And these spontaneously invented pictures of real life had reference to the strolling people; for the adventures of vagrants, disbanded soldiers, and in short all those who had travelled in foreign countries, and had seen there an abundance of marvels, and undergone the most terrible dangers with almost invulnerable bodies, were the heroes of these imperfect creations of art. Shortly after the war, Christoph von Grimmelshausen wrote 'Simplicissimus,' 'Springinsfeld,' 'Landstörzerin Courage,' and the 'Wonderful Vogelnest,' the heroes of which are gathered from strollers; these were followed by a flood of novels describing the lives of rogues and of adventurers.
The war had rendered the existence of the settled population joyless, their manners coarse, and their morals lax. And the craving for excitement was general. Thus at first these modes of representation allured, by bestowing what was wanting to this ungenial life. They endeavoured with much detail to represent either an ideal life of distinguished and refined persons, under entirely foreign conditions, such as antique shepherds, and foreign princes without nationalities; this was done by the highly educated; or they tried at least to ennoble common life, by introducing into it abstractions not less coarse and soulless, virtues and vices, mythological and allegorical figures; or they caught endless materials from the lowest circles of life, to whom they felt themselves superior, but in whose strange mode of life there was something alluring: they depicted strollers or represented clowns and fools; and this last development of art was the soundest. Thus these rough families of jugglers, buffoons, and rogues were of the utmost significance to the beginning of the drama, theatrical art, and novels.
But besides the numerous companies, who wandered about either modestly on foot or in carts, vagrants of higher pretensions rode through the country, some of them still more objectionable. To be able to prognosticate the future, to gain dominion over the spirits of the elements, to make gold, and to renew the vigour of youth in old age, had for many centuries been the longing desire of the covetous and inquisitive. Those who promised these things to the Germans were generally Italians or other foreigners; or natives of the country, who had, according to the old saying, been thrice to Rome. When the new zeal for the restoration of the Church brought good and bad alike before the tribunal of the inquisition in Italy, the emigration of those whose lives were insecure must have been very numerous. It is probably from the life of one of these charlatans that the adventures of Faust have been gathered and formed into the old popular tale. After Luther's death, it is evident that they penetrated into the courts of the German princes. It was an adventurer of this kind, "Jerome Scotus," who, in 1593, at Coburg, estranged the unhappy Duchess Anna of Saxe Coburg from her husband, and brought her into his own power by villainous means. Vain were the endeavours of the Duke to obtain the extradition of Scotus from Hamburg, where he lived long in princely luxury. Five-and-thirty years before, the father of the Duke Johann Friedrich, the Middle-sized, was long deluded by an impudent impostor, who gave herself out to be Anne of Cleves (the wife who had been selected for Henry VIII. of England), and promised him a great treasure of gold and jewels if he chose to protect her. Another piece of credulity bore bitter fruits to the same prince, for the influence which Wilhelm of Grumbach, the haggard old wolf from the herd of the wild Albrecht of Brandenburg, gained over the Duke, rested on his foolish prophecies concerning the Electoral dignity and prodigious treasures. A poor weak-minded boy who was maintained by Grumbach, had intercourse with angels who dwelt in the air-hole of a cellar, and declared themselves ready to produce gold, and bring to light a mine for the Duke. It may be perceived from judicial records, that the little angels of the peasant child had a similarity, unfavourable to their credibility, to our little old dwarfs.
There was at Berlin, about the time of Scotus, one Leonhard Turneysser, a charlatan, more citizen-like in his occupation, who worked as gold maker and prepared horoscopes; he escaped by flight the dismal fate, which almost always overtook his fellows of the same vocation who did not change their locality soon enough. The Emperor Rudolph also became a great adept, and amalgamated in the gold crucible both his political honour and his own Imperial throne. The princes of the seventeenth century at least show the intense interest of dilettanti. During the war the art of making gold became very desirable. At that period, therefore, the adepts thronged to the armies; the more needy the times, the more numerous and brilliant became the stories of alchemy. It was proposed by an enthusiastic worshipper of Gustavus Adolphus, to make gold out of lead; and in the presence of the Emperor Ferdinand III. many pounds of gold were to be made, by one grain of red powder, from quicksilver; a gigantic coin also was to be struck from the same metal. After the peace, the adepts resided at all the courts; there were few dwellings where the hearth and the retorts were not heated for secret operations. But every one had to beware how he trifled with the reigning powers, as the paws of the princely lions might be raised against him for his destruction. Those who could not make gold were confined in prison, and those who were under suspicion, yet could fabricate something, were equally put in close confinement. The Italian Count Cajetan was hanged in a gilded dress, on a gallows at Küstrin the beams of which were adorned with cut gold; the German Rector von Klettenberg was beheaded at Königstein, where fourteen years before, Böttiger was kept in strict cloistral confinement, because he had produced innocent porcelain instead of gold. There is no doubt that it was the case with the adepts and astrologers, as it ever has been with the leaders of a prevailing superstition, that they were themselves convinced of the truth of their art; but they had strong doubts of their own knowledge, and they deceived others as to their success, either because they were seeking the means to attain to greater results, or because they wished to appear, to the world, to understand what they considered of importance. These however were not the worst of the lot.
The most mischievous of all were, perhaps, the skilful impostors, who appeared in Germany, France, and England, with foreign titles of distinction, shining with the glimmer of secret art, sometimes the propagators of the most disgraceful vices, shadowy figures, who by their worldly wisdom and the limited intercourse of nations were enabled to bring themselves into notoriety. Their experience, their deceptions, their secret successes, for a long period overpoweringly excited the fancies of Germans. Even Goethe considered it worth his while to repair to the spot and set on foot serious investigations as to the origin of Cagliostro.
The changes in the moral diseases of that society, of which we are the representatives, can be gradually traced. After the war astrology and horoscopes fell into disuse. The princes sought for red powder, or the unknown tincture, whilst the people dug for money pots. Dilettante occupation with physical science introduced again to the people the ancient divining rod, by which springs, murders, thefts, and always concealed gold, were to be discovered. The superior classes again realized in their own minds the ancient belief in mysterious men, who by unknown proceedings, in unfathomable depths, had obtained the power of giving supernatural duration of life, and had confidential intercourse with the spirit world. Besides the honourable order of Freemasons, with their Humanitarian tendencies, there arose more secret unions, wherein the weak minded of the time were enticed to a refined sensuality and sickly mysticism, and an extensive apparatus of absurd secret teaching.
Since the end of the last century a vigorous dash of the waves of German popular strength has washed away these diseased fantasies. The old race of strollers too have diminished in number and influence. It is only rarely that Bajazzo, with his pointed felt cap, bewitches the village youth; the meagre neck of the camel no longer stretches itself to the flowering trees of our village gardens, the black dog seldom rolls his fiery eyes at buried chests of silver. Even the impostors have learned to satisfy higher demands.