"Now came that lady bright,And as the rosy mornDispels the misty clouds,So he who long had borneHer image in his heart,Did banish all his care,And now before his eyesStood forth that lady fair."From her embroider'd vestThere glittered many a gem,While o'er her lovely cheekThe rosy red did beam;Whoe'er in raptur'd thoughtHad imag'd lady bright,Confess'd that lov'lier maidNe'er stood before his sight."And as the beaming moonRides high the stars among,And moves with lustre mildThe mirky clouds along;So, midst her maiden throng,Uprose that matchless fair;And higher swell'd the soulOf many a hero there."
"Now came that lady bright,And as the rosy mornDispels the misty clouds,So he who long had borneHer image in his heart,Did banish all his care,And now before his eyesStood forth that lady fair."From her embroider'd vestThere glittered many a gem,While o'er her lovely cheekThe rosy red did beam;Whoe'er in raptur'd thoughtHad imag'd lady bright,Confess'd that lov'lier maidNe'er stood before his sight."And as the beaming moonRides high the stars among,And moves with lustre mildThe mirky clouds along;So, midst her maiden throng,Uprose that matchless fair;And higher swell'd the soulOf many a hero there."
"Now came that lady bright,
And as the rosy morn
Dispels the misty clouds,
So he who long had borne
Her image in his heart,
Did banish all his care,
And now before his eyes
Stood forth that lady fair.
"From her embroider'd vest
There glittered many a gem,
While o'er her lovely cheek
The rosy red did beam;
Whoe'er in raptur'd thought
Had imag'd lady bright,
Confess'd that lov'lier maid
Ne'er stood before his sight.
"And as the beaming moon
Rides high the stars among,
And moves with lustre mild
The mirky clouds along;
So, midst her maiden throng,
Uprose that matchless fair;
And higher swell'd the soul
Of many a hero there."
Most expressive of popular feeling toward woman is, perhaps, the ballad and folklore poetry of a people. Though preserved mostly without date or name they breathe national sentiment most faithfully. True folk songs would betray the nationality from which they sprang even though the language did not. All the characteristics of the GermanGemut(mood, soul, sentiment, and longing strangely blended) exhale from songs like the following:
"Sweet nightingale, thyself prepare,The morning breaks, and thou must beMy faithful messenger to her,My best beloved, who waits for thee."She in her garden for thee stays,And many an anxious thought will spring,And many a sigh her breast will raise,Till thou good tidings from me bring."So speed thee up, nor longer stay;Go forth with gay and frolic song;Bear to her heart my greetings, sayThat I myself will come ere long."And she will greet thee many a time,'Welcome, dear nightingale! I will say;And she will ope her heart to thee,And all its wounds of love display."Sore pierced by love's shafts is she,Thou then the more her grief assail;Bid her from every care be free:Quick! haste away, my nightingale!"
"Sweet nightingale, thyself prepare,The morning breaks, and thou must beMy faithful messenger to her,My best beloved, who waits for thee."She in her garden for thee stays,And many an anxious thought will spring,And many a sigh her breast will raise,Till thou good tidings from me bring."So speed thee up, nor longer stay;Go forth with gay and frolic song;Bear to her heart my greetings, sayThat I myself will come ere long."And she will greet thee many a time,'Welcome, dear nightingale! I will say;And she will ope her heart to thee,And all its wounds of love display."Sore pierced by love's shafts is she,Thou then the more her grief assail;Bid her from every care be free:Quick! haste away, my nightingale!"
"Sweet nightingale, thyself prepare,
The morning breaks, and thou must be
My faithful messenger to her,
My best beloved, who waits for thee.
"She in her garden for thee stays,
And many an anxious thought will spring,
And many a sigh her breast will raise,
Till thou good tidings from me bring.
"So speed thee up, nor longer stay;
Go forth with gay and frolic song;
Bear to her heart my greetings, say
That I myself will come ere long.
"And she will greet thee many a time,
'Welcome, dear nightingale! I will say;
And she will ope her heart to thee,
And all its wounds of love display.
"Sore pierced by love's shafts is she,
Thou then the more her grief assail;
Bid her from every care be free:
Quick! haste away, my nightingale!"
Even more naïve and lovely is perhaps this gem:
"If a small bird I were,And little wings might bear,I'd fly to thee:But vain those wishes are;Here then my rest shall be."When far from thee I bide,In dreams still at thy sideI've talked with thee;And when I woke, I sigh'd,Myself alone to see."No hour of wakeful nightBut teems with thoughts of light--Sweet thoughts of theeAs when in hours more bright,Thou gav'st thy heart to me."
"If a small bird I were,And little wings might bear,I'd fly to thee:But vain those wishes are;Here then my rest shall be."When far from thee I bide,In dreams still at thy sideI've talked with thee;And when I woke, I sigh'd,Myself alone to see."No hour of wakeful nightBut teems with thoughts of light--Sweet thoughts of theeAs when in hours more bright,Thou gav'st thy heart to me."
"If a small bird I were,
And little wings might bear,
I'd fly to thee:
But vain those wishes are;
Here then my rest shall be.
"When far from thee I bide,
In dreams still at thy side
I've talked with thee;
And when I woke, I sigh'd,
Myself alone to see.
"No hour of wakeful night
But teems with thoughts of light--
Sweet thoughts of thee
As when in hours more bright,
Thou gav'st thy heart to me."
But in whatever sense the chivalry and minnesong were conceived, they certainly turned toward worldliness. The struggle of the Papacy against the Empire was accompanied by a struggle of the clergy against the knighthood. The clerics attempted to turn the warlike and passionate instincts of the time in the direction of spiritual things. An immense number of holy legends of good women resulted, the ideals of which were humility, self-abnegation, and chastity; we have the legend of Crescentia, a pure woman, who, accused like Saint Genevieve, is at last justified and saved; others die for their virtue, and are sanctified; the story of Lucretia of ancient Roman memory is revived in the style of contemporary court life, where she appears as a white raven.
This spirit of religious revival appears most strongly in a versified story of the thirteenth century, related by Konrad von Wurzburg in a work entitledFrau Welt(Lady World):
Wirent von Grafenberg, a Franconian knight, a romancer, and a man of the world, strove incessantly for worldly goods and honors. He was handsome, well educated, brilliant, a good hunter, player, and musician, loved by the ladies and ever ready to serve them; whenever there was a tournament, no matter how far, there he rode to win the minne-prize. It was love, and love alone, that filled all his senses. One day he sat in his chamber, passing his time in the perusal of a love romance until evening. All at once the dusky room brightened up in wonderful radiance, and a marvellously beauteous woman entered; she was more lovely than any earthly woman, than Venus or Pallas; she was clad with splendor, and a golden crown was upon her head. In spite of all her magnificence, Wirent became pale from fright. "Do not be frightened; I am indeed the woman for whose sake thou hast frequently risked life and limbs, whose faithful servant thou wert, of whom thou hast said and sung so much good; thou bloometh like a twig of May in manifold merits; thou hast from thy childhood worn the wreath of honor; now I have come to bestow thy reward upon thee." "Forgive, noble lady, if I have served thee, I do not know it; but tell me who thou art!" "I shall gladly tell thee; thou needest not be ashamed of having served me; I am served by emperors, kings, princes, counts, freemen. I fear no one but God, he is more powerful than I am. My name is Lady World. Thou shalt now have the reward which thou hast wished for so long: look at it!"
With these words, she turned her back. It was full of snakes and vipers and toads, of ulcers and sores, wherein flies and ants teemed and vermin crept. An abominable stench arose; her rich silken dress looked ash pale; and thus she went hence. But Wirent von Grafenberg, the spoiled child of the World, perceived the perdition of the soul in the service of the world; he left wife and children and the pleasures of the world, took the Cross, fought against the heathen, atoned for his sins, and obtained divine forgiveness and eternal bliss.
This story, evidently of clerical origin, proves the position of Church and clergy toward the life of chivalry and the ideals of the Minnesingers. They condemned the service of the world of love and power which, they averred, led only to eternal damnation. Earthly ideals, with their inner sins, were symbolized by the poetic picture of Lady World, which was even plastically represented on the Cathedral portals at Worms and Basle.
As here the typical knight is turned from the joys and aspirations of the world, thus the women of that brilliant period were drawn from their delight in earthly life and love; Christ was shown to them as the bridegroom of their souls; ideal joys of the world beyond were depicted to them in attractive colors. Numberless German hymns are devoted to Mary, but so little was it possible to get away from the realism of the love of the time that the sublime glow of holy fire makes room for the almost frivolous ardor of the time of chivalry. The Holy Virgin becomes more and more an earthly queen, whose court is provided with all the luxuries of the time. Religious sentimentality changes into passion. The piety of the noble ladies by no means deprives the minstrel knights of their due, or, as Scherer ingeniously says, "the result of the hundred years' struggle of the clergy against the world ends in the triumph of the latter." But not entirely so, for again and again there stirs in the German conscience the eternally spiritual element.
The Church placed in the field new troops, who did their work with victorious energy. Orders of beggar monks arose, and the Popes soon realized what a valuable instrument they were. The Dominicans and Franciscans had begun to settle in Germany. As preachers and confessors, they strove for dominance over souls. They inveighed passionately against the courtly life. Sinful was the tournament, sinful the luxuries of the table and courtly dress and fashions, sinful the dance and the minne, the worldly song and the service to women out of wedlock. Their influence upon women became very marked; many ladies began to turn from the world, sat like nuns, hid their bosoms and faces, and wore scapulars. "Instead of going with us to dance, you stand day and night in church," is a knightly complaint.
Not only piety and mysticism, but scholarship, which also was in conflict with chivalry, destroyed the minnesong. The great Italian Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, furnished to German mystics a considerable part of their philosophy. The essence of mysticism, poetically conceived, is the conviction that the soul is a bride of Christ. Mystic theology described the passionate emotions of the soul, in her ascent to, and union with her heavenly bridegroom. Eckard, Tauler, and Suso are the great leaders of the mystic movement which, seizing especially the minds and souls of women, transfers the nature of earthly minne to heavenly minne.
In this connection, we must mention a princely woman whose self-abnegating virtue rises well-nigh to the superhuman: Elizabeth of Thuringia. She was a daughter of King Andrew of Hungary, and in 1218 was married to Ludwig of Thuringia, after whose death she was treated most brutally by her brothers-in-law. Her confessor, the monk Konrad of Marburg, a dark fanatic, who tried to introduce the Inquisition the horrible Spanish institution into Germany, and who was killed in 1233 by a band of robber knights, tortured the pious princess with his gloomy ascetics. This princess devoted her life to charity and noble deeds for the poor and sick, whom she nursed and tended with her own hands. She died at the age of twenty-six, after having rejected the suit of the great and romantic Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II.; she is said to have earned her living during her last years by spinning wool. The saga has illumined the fame of that saintly royal woman with the aureole of glory and affection.
Pious women nursed the entire mystic movement. Mathilda of Magdeburg (1277) describes in her fragmentary and profoundly passionate revelations the mingling of the soul with God. Many ecstatic women followed her. Visions became a fashion in the fourteenth century. The ecstatic state of passionate love for the divine which shook her frame was considered the union with God, and the blissful rapture of one nun wrought a holy contagion among all her sisters. All the cloisters were drawn into the nervous whirlpool of religio-sensuous emotions. Ladies who formerly found satisfaction in the charms of the minnesong retired to the cloisters and passed through all the stages of the emotions of love toward the divinity, the Creator of all life.
Such was the period of the Minnesingers, and such the reaction against them. The cultural forces of the epoch can be expressed only by describing the literary trend of the events of life. They are correlative and interdependent. If, therefore, this chapter should appear to the reader to be unduly literary rather than historical, we can defend it by stating the fact that this was an era of song, and that this literature bears everywhere the stamp of truth. It is the faithful reflection of an infinitely rich time from which only the brilliant melodies of saga and song ring down to our prosaic and materialistic century.
After the lofty house of Hohenstaufen had been overwhelmed with destruction, theinterregnum, the time of anarchy, "the emperorless, the terrible time," in Schiller's words, (1250-1273), and the reign of Rudolf of the house of Habsburg mark the beginning of the era of the decline in German culture. Princes and nobles had long ago ceased to sing, for between arms the Muses are silent. Tenderness and refinement of feeling gradually drifted into the commonplace if not into downright coarseness. We are obliged to record a cheerless period of mediocrity and degradation lasting almost four centuries, though, of course, interwoven here and there with illuminating stars that shoot up to the heavens from this dreary waste, and continuing until about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the second classical bloom came into florescence and intensified strongly the classical era of the Middle Ages.
The decline that found its perigee in the period of the Mastersingers went on gradually. It was the result of various political and social causes. The aesthetic ideals, because of which in the time of the Hohenstaufens women were revered, vanished. With the decadence of culture superstition asserted itself more strongly. Women were burned as witches; and the general references to them in the literature of the period of decline are usually vulgar, and not infrequently obscene. Refined deportment toward women ceased. Saint Ruffian (Sanct Grobianus) became the idol of the era of decadence, and the vulgarities ofTill Eulenspiegelfurnished amusement. "Shamelessness celebrated a boisterous carnival." The classics alone, though diluted by pitiful scholasticism until rescued and raised to a higher plane by the Humanists of the Renaissance, became the only oasis in the dreary waste of the decadence.
In most of the cities that were centres of intellectual life, the plebeians arose and replaced the formerly highly cultured patricians. The burghers began to tune the melodies of a new music: a banausic artisan song. The comic anecdote and the dramatic farce pleased the people best and, therefore, prevailed. There was a general delight in comical, farcical roles, and such elements were even introduced into religious plays. For example, Saint Mary complains that she has no diapers to protect the Holy Child from frost. Saint Joseph gets into a quarrel with two maids; there is a free fight; vulgar reproaches and blows are exchanged. Darkness begins to spread over Germany. The devil, stupid or otherwise, introduces his spook; sorceresses and hags professing magic skill are everywhere. The defamation of the grand institutions of the Papacy, owing to several unworthy successors of Saint Peter, promotes contempt and ludicrous treatment. The ridiculous fiction of the alleged "Papess" Joanna becomes a farcical subject, but is, nevertheless, jokingly rescued from the claws of the devil. Her story goes thus: a maiden elopes with a priest, her lover, to Rome, dons man's dress, becomes a doctor, a cardinal, and at last a Pope. She is finally ignominiously unmasked, received by the devils in hell, but saved by the intercession of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas. Dietrich Schernberg treated this strange subject at Muhlhausen, in Thuringia, in his play ofFrau Jutla. All these morality plays, mysteries, farces, sottises, sacred or profane, are scarcely ever edifying, and this whether they treat of court sessions regarding love troubles, marriage calamities, allegorical figures, fools of love, women, wicked monks, or quacks. Here, a maiden leads her lovers by the nose; there, lovers present themselves before Lady Venus. An immoderate coarseness and indecency in manner and action is part of the game; even in the presence of women the utmost vulgarity was permitted. Women joined in the most obscene conversation, and it is astonishing to what depths of immodesty their speech descended. Nürnberg was the centre of carnival plays. Hans Rosenblut and Hans Folz, authors of incredibly obscene, though very clever, farces, were the forerunners of the great and lovable Hans Sachs,
"Who was a shoe-maker and a poet, too."
"Who was a shoe-maker and a poet, too."
"Who was a shoe-
maker and a poet, too."
But it is incumbent upon us to return to the beginning of the period of decadence and consider the decline in its sequence. During the era of chivalry the follies of the nobles were imitated by the peasants and burghers. Inter-marriages between poor nobles and rich peasants occurred now and then, liaisons and amours between them were much more frequent; the caricature of thebourgeois gentilhomme, whom Moliere satirized in his immortal comedy, was ever present. Neidhart's and Strieker's poems and Werner'sMeier Helmbrechtfurnish delightful figures and caricatures of the upstart class which was so scorned, ridiculed, and snubbed by the "smart set" of the time.
Yet, on the whole, it may be said that the boys and girls of the peasants and bourgeois led natural lives, courting and dancing and wooing, as long as they were kept from the influence of the chivalric craze. Instead of knight-errantry there were among these young people simple though not always platonic relations. The lords still exercised their harmful influence upon the freedom of the peasantry, but it gradually diminished. At springtide there was love and marriage, not always voluntarily, but in deference to the right of lords and princes to command their dependants to marry. In some localities a system of pairing prevailed, and maids were assigned as companions by lot, and mated couples danced together during an entire summer. Such play, very naturally, and not infrequently, became earnest.
The nobles were mostly landed proprietors, but when the cities began to grow, urban patricians, proud and self-satisfied, arose. The common people, however, because of their number and increasing wealth, gained a share in the government. They formed themselves, for strength and self-defence, into "corporations and guilds." They won city rights. In the course of time, instead of the rule of the "families," or patricians, there came the rule of the guilds. The democracy gained control, though not until after hard and frequently very bloody fights of the factions at the polls for municipal supremacy. With the victory of democracy begins the industrial, commercial, and political vigor of the common people. This is manifested in the great and important city leagues: especially theHansa, but also the League of Rhenish and of Suabian Cities unions that were at times more powerful than kings and emperors.
Socially, nevertheless, the picture is reversed: the castes remain separated even in the church, as they were separated in dancing halls and other places of pleasure and drinking. Yet the free artisans, their wives and daughters, led a joyful life at their weddings, dances, and carnivals, though they dwelt in narrow lanes and alleys, in houses of wood, straw-covered and with a few windows, and these frequently with panes of paper or none at all. Goethe in Faust describes these abodes:
"Out of the hollow, gloomy gate,The motley throngs came forth elate:Each will the joy of the sunshine hoard,To honor the day of the Risen Lord!They feel themselves their resurrection:From the low, dark rooms, scarce habitable;From the bonds of Work, from Trade's restriction;From the pressing weight of roof and gable;From the narrow crushing streets and alleys;From the churches' solemn and reverend night,Ah come forth to the cheerful light."
"Out of the hollow, gloomy gate,The motley throngs came forth elate:Each will the joy of the sunshine hoard,To honor the day of the Risen Lord!They feel themselves their resurrection:From the low, dark rooms, scarce habitable;From the bonds of Work, from Trade's restriction;From the pressing weight of roof and gable;From the narrow crushing streets and alleys;From the churches' solemn and reverend night,Ah come forth to the cheerful light."
"Out of the hollow, gloomy gate,
The motley throngs came forth elate:
Each will the joy of the sunshine hoard,
To honor the day of the Risen Lord!
They feel themselves their resurrection:
From the low, dark rooms, scarce habitable;
From the bonds of Work, from Trade's restriction;
From the pressing weight of roof and gable;
From the narrow crushing streets and alleys;
From the churches' solemn and reverend night,
Ah come forth to the cheerful light."
On the other hand, especially later during the Renaissance period when the wealth of the burghers excited the jealousy of the mighty country nobility, the houses of the wealthy burghers were often genuine palaces, with rich antique and Italian or French furnishings. Nürnberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, etc., were real treasure cities with their mediaeval architecture; so were Ulm, Frankfort, Mainz, Cologne, with their mansions filled with fine tapestry, rich furniture, colored carpets, precious art objects, painted windows, silver and gold trappings.
When theinterregnumwas over, with its political anarchy, with its plague (black death) that swept away hundreds of thousands, with its flagellants and other crazy penitents, the natural concomitants of the plague; when the gloomy religious fanaticism which vented its horrible "hatred of races and classes and masses" on heretics, Jews, and infidels in terrible Jew slaughters and witch burnings began to melt away under the radiant sun of the incipient Renaissance, there arose in western and southern Germany a wondrously rich and luxurious life among the city aristocracy. A caricature of chivalrous customs sprang up. It is characteristic that "a light miss" was the prize of a tournament in Magdeburg in 1229.
In the cities, life was more refined than on the estates of the nobles in the country. There were sleigh riding, dances, carnivals, and serenades before the windows of the fair ones. Even the churches, as stated before, offered for entertainment "mysteries and passion plays that verged on blasphemy." We hear of practical jokes which the ladies played with illustrious guests, like Emperor Sigismund and, later, Maximilian I., which genial lord the ladies took from his bed half naked, threw a wrapper over him, and danced with him through the streets of the city, which pleased the debonnaire emperor immensely.
Many German patrician women were already given over to the pleasures of society and became ladies of fashion rather than mothers, housekeepers, and helpers to their husbands. The nouveau-riche artisans soon began to imitate the luxuries of the patricians: we hear of gold bracelets, silk garments, gold girdles studded with diamonds; of shoes with silver buckles, garters embroidered with gold brocade. A chronicler relates the immense amount of wealth squandered at the wedding of a rich baker, Veit Gundlinger, in 1493. There were then consumed twenty oxen, thirty stags, forty-six calves, ninety-five swine, twenty-five peacocks (turkeys?), etc., etc.
Patricians were, however, more elegant: bridegroom and bride adorned with rings and bracelets of gold, walked to the Cathedral surrounded by bridesmaids, while fiddles, lutes, pipes, trumpets made music. At the dancing hall, however spacious, not more than five couples could dance at the same time on account of the ladies' long trains which, according to a preacher of the time, "served the devil as a dancing place." With torches the newly wed couple were at last led home to the bridal chamber, where the maidens undressed the bride, the cavaliers took off her shoes, and "when one cover covered the couple" as the technical term ran the companions discreetly retired.
But the unfree peasants, alas! continued to live in debasement; as also their wives and daughters. There is even documentary evidence from A. D. 1333 that women could be sold into slavery and at a very low price, moreover, "with all their descendants." The free and rich peasants, on the other hand, sometimes lived in an unbecoming state of luxury. We glean the most interesting types of peasant life from the poets who arose among the Bavarian-Austrian race. Neidhart von Reuenthal, who lived till about 1240 at the Bavarian and Austrian courts, though a noble himself, is a rugged, old German type who neutralizes the sentimental minnesong. He contrasts strikingly the bizarre life of the lower people with the unnaturalness of the "chivalric courtoisie." All is depicted in strong relief, though it appears to our taste extremely coarse. Yet if any poet ever understood the life and actions of the lower classes, it was Von Reuenthal. He describes South German peasant life as it is, their dances and carousals; he compares satirically the breaking of lances at tournaments, as practised by knights, with the peasants' festivals that are turned into bouts of gluttony and free fights. His types of rustic women, however, are "courteously" dressed, with wreaths in their prettily arranged hair, fashionable hand mirrors in their girdles; they appear at the village linden tree on a Sunday, courting and flirting with the rustics (Törper) who carry swords and spurs in truly knightly fashion. Nevertheless, the peasant girls prefer their liaisons with the genuine article, and the poet reveals no idyls, no abstinence, no innocent play, but downright immorality. As they could not have the knights for husbands, they chose them for lovers.
Frivolity is general also among the lower strata of society. Drastic pictures are drawn and overdrawn. There are dialogues in spring songs. Sometimes two maidens converse and open their hearts. Then mother and daughter commune; the mother desires to participate in the dance, the daughter tries in vain to dissuade her; or the daughter wishes to go and the mother dissuades; the daughter desires to join Neidhart, but the mother has a peasant ready for her to whom she is, however, indifferent; the mother keeps her clothing from her; the daughter takes it by force; the mother whips her daughter with a rake or a spindle; the other resists, and there are blows on both sides. In all these songs the girl is longing and passionate; the knight is a successful lover.
In the winter songs the case is reversed. Here the knight is sighing, complaining, rejected. The peasant girl for whom he pines makes him languish. The peasants prove superior to the knight, who avenges himself by mocking, satirizing, caricaturing the brutalities of the peasant dances, their fights, their gluttony, tawdry luxury of dress, and drunkenness.
However painful it may be to the historian of culture to record the mournful facts of degeneracy and demoralization of entire periods in the life of great and noble nations, yet he owes it to historical truth to conceal nothing. It is unfortunately true that entire classes of the German people, entire periods, entire regions, were sunk in the mire of immorality due to outer and inner conditions over which neither the nation nor its leaders had any control. Yet, such periods of moral depression are perhaps as necessary for a vigorous convalescence as the glorious periods of the moral purity, honor, and chastity of women.
As there can be no life without death, no joy without pain, no good without evil, as no religion was ever conceived in which the principle of God, of immortality, and of infinite goodness remained unassailed by the evil forces, be it devil, demon, Loki, or Ormuz, so the history of the German nation is filled with evil forces, against which generation after generation, so far as our records go, struggled, yet finally conqueredper aspera ad astral.
Every German historian of culture, especially Scherr, who sought the truth and stated it fearlessly, has been attacked, reviled by captious critics, but strong is the truth and it will prevail!veritas prevalebit!
In this period of German decadence the moral sense seems indeed frequently to have entirely vanished. In a mutual confession by a peasant and his wife of their moral shortcomings, which are treated jestingly, the demoralization appears plainly, without any apparent conception of its impropriety. At a peasant wedding, we hear of brutish drinking and gluttony, coarse speeches and actions, consummation of marriage before church consecration, brutal and deadly fights.
The character of the peasantry of the time appears most distinctly from Werner'sMeier Helmbrecht, a Bavarian village story, which depicts the ambitions, sorrows, and joys, and the dissatisfaction of that class. Young Helmbrecht, an ambitious peasant boy, who had been spoiled by mother and sister, proud as a peacock in knightly raiment, desires to play a role at the court. In spite of his father's warnings, he joins a robber knight. After one year of debauch and degradation, he returns home as a braggart, and the old and the new generation of peasants are contrasted. The father, who in his youth had known court life, when he went to the castle to sell his products, tells of knightly noble games, chaste dances with beautiful song and music, and the reading of the ancient heroic lays. The son reports heavy drinking, impure speeches, lies, quarrels, frauds. He replies to the exhortations of his father with vile threats. He induces his sister to follow him secretly, to be married to his comrade Lamsling; but the crisis comes at the wedding. The judge and sheriffs come and capture the robbers. Helmbrecht is blinded, driven away from home, and hanged by the peasants.
In the cities the state of affairs is even worse. Pandering is a common and thriving business, though the laws against it are of barbaric severity. In Brunswick, those convicted of the heinous crime of fostering prostitution were buried alive. But when did laws and police measures ever do away with crime when moral putrefaction once impregnated a social structure? The clerics and monks play a prominent role in the literature of the sexual excesses of that time, although, or perhaps because, celibacy as such has now become an enforced institution. It is true, however, that the literature of a decaying time, catering to corrupt tastes, furnishes to us sensational and extraordinary cases of impurity, while it fails to record the numerous instances of virtue, self-abnegation, and nobility.
An authority of first rank, Ænea Silvio Piccolomoni, later Pope Pius II., transmits to us a glaring picture, with little light and much lurid shadow, of Vienna as he saw it. We find there society of all ranks sadly demoralized. The burghers invite to their houses vile carousers and "light misses;" the common people are represented as steeped in immorality and drink. Wives are rarely satisfied with one husband, and the husbands knowing their shame are not specially pained by it. Gallant nobles call on married burgher women, their husbands offer wine and then leave them to themselves. Widows do not wait, even for decency's sake, the expiration of the year of mourning before they remarry; rich old men marry young girls, who then carry on adultery with their husband's valets as they did before marriage. It happens not infrequently that fathers or husbands who dare to disturb their daughters or wives in their iniquities with the nobles are killed or poisoned. Such is Æneas Silvio's account of Viennese society.
Similar stupefying pictures of social life in many other cities may be gleaned from chronicles, history, and sermons. Debauch is constant and appalling. In the thriving Hanseatic city of Lübeck we hear of illustrious ladies masked by thick veils holding bestial orgies with common sailors in the vilest drinking resorts. Again we read of the great severity of the penal laws, and again we note their practical inefficiency. The punishment for the crime of rape was death, usually by decapitation, but in Suabia and Hessen the criminal was buried alive or transfixed. The injured woman, however, to give legal force to her accusation was required to announce her disgrace immediately by loud screams and by the exhibition of dishevelled hair and torn garments. The statutes vary, but all are harsh. Adulterers belonging to the lower classes,--in the upper classes adultery was too common to be punished,--when seizedin flagranti delicto, were liable to be decapitated or to be buried alive together. Incest was punishable by confiscation of property; bigamy, by death. The penalty for infanticide also was death, either by decapitation or by drowning; sometimes a snake, a cat, or a dog was put into the sack with the victim to render her punishment more terrible. Shrews and evil-tongued women were sometimes punished by being placed backward on asses and driven through the streets in disgrace.
Even the pleasures considered legitimate during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era, were decidedly equivocal or immoral. Public bathing which was so general that even in the country every well-arranged house had its own bathroom, might be considered rather a redeeming feature of the unclean life recorded. But excesses soon make it doubtful whether public baths should not be regarded as baudy houses of the worst kind. The city of Basle in the thirteenth century had not fewer than fifteen bathhouses. As in ancient Rome, the bathhouses were public places of amusement somewhat like the clubs of to-day. There men were shaved and had their toilette perfected and the ladies had their hair dressed. Massage was in fashion. Amusements of all kinds, gambling, drinking, flirting, and love intrigues made public bathing a rather costly pastime. At most places there was common bathing of men and women. The most famous water resorts were the Wildbad in the Black Forest, Baden in the Breisgau, and Baden in Aargau. There is gathered all the wealth of the surrounding country. Princes and knights, highborn ladies, rich merchants, prelates, and abbesses bathed, jested, and led a gay life.
We have an intensely interesting account from the pen of the scholarly Francis Poggio of Florence (1380-1459) of the bathing customs of Baden. He had accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, and had then gone to Baden to cure the "chiragra" from which he suffered. From a Latin letter written to his friend Niccolo Niccoli, in the summer of 1417, and translated by Gustav Freytag, in his famous Pictures from German Life, we glean the following facts:
"Baden itself affords for the mind little or no diversion; but has in all other respects such extraordinary charm that Venus seems to have come from Cyprus, for whatever the world contains of beauty has assembled here, and so much do they uphold the customs of this goddess, so fully do you find again her manners and dissoluteness, that, though they may not have read the speech of Heliogabalus, they appear to be perfectly instructed by Nature herself....
"Two special baths, open on all sides, are prepared for the lowest classes of the people; and the common crowd, men, women, boys, and unmarried maidens, and the dregs of all that collect together here, make use of them. In these baths there is a partition wall, dividing the two sexes, but this is only put up for the sake of peace; and it is amusing to see how, at the same time, decrepit old beldames and young maidens descend into it naked, before all eyes, and expose their charms to the gaze of the men. More than once I have laughed at this splendid spectacle; it has brought to my mind the games of Flora at Rome, and I have much admired their simplicity who do not in the least see or think anything wrong in it....
"The special baths at the inns are beautifully adorned, and common to both sexes. It is true they are divided by a wainscot, but divers open windows have been introduced, through which they can drink with, speak to, see, and touch each other, as frequently happens. Besides this, there are galleries above, where the men meet and chatter together, for every one is free to enter the bath of another, and to tarry there, in order to look about, and joke and enliven his spirits, by seeing beautiful women nude when they go in and come out. In many baths both sexes have access to the bath by the same entrance, and it not unfrequently comes to pass that a man meets a naked woman, and the reverse. Nevertheless, the men bind a cloth around their loins, and the women have a linen dress on, but this is open either in the middle or on the side, so that neither neck, nor breast, nor shoulders are covered....
"It is wonderful to see in what innocence they live, and with what frank confidence they regard the men; the liberties which foreigners presume to take with their ladies do not attract their attention; they interpret everything well. In Plato's Republic, according to whose rules everything was to be in common, they would have behaved themselves excellently, as they already, without knowing his teaching, are so inclined to belong to his sect....
"There can be nothing more charming than to see budding maidens, or those in full bloom, with pretty, kindly faces, in figure and deportment like goddesses, strike the lute; then they throw their flowing dress a little back in the water, and each appears like a Venus. It is the custom of the women to beg for alms jestingly from the men who view them from above; one throws to them, especially to the pretty ones, small coins, which they catch with their hands or with the outspread dresses, whilst one pushes away the other, and in this game their charms were frequently unveiled....
"But the most striking thing is the countless multitude of nobles and plebeians, who gather here from the most distant parts, not so much for health as for pleasure. All lovers and spendthrifts, all pleasure seekers, stream together here, for the satisfaction of their desires. Many women feign bodily ailments, whilst it is really their hearts that are affected; therefore, one sees numberless pretty women, without husbands or relations, with two maidservants and a man, or with some old beldame of the family who is more easily deceived than bribed.... There are here also virgins of Vesta, or rather of Flora; besides, abbots, monks, lay-brothers, and ecclesiastics, and these live more dissolutely than the others; some of them also live with the women, adorn their hair with wreaths, and forget all religion.... And it is remarkable that among the great number, almost thousands of men of different manners and such a drunken set, no discord arises, no tumults, no partisanship, no conspiracies, and no swearing. The men allow their wives to be toyed with, and see them pairing off with entire strangers, but it does not discompose or surprise them; they think it is all in an honest and housewifely way." Poggio, with truly Rabelaisian irony, adds: "No baths in the world are more apt for the fecundity of women."
But whether the Italian classicist is willing to excuse the luxury and debauch, refined or otherwise, which he found at Baden, or which he might have found anywhere in the social circles of the rich German cities, the truth is that the intercourse between the sexes had become loose, and that the prelates and their ladies, the cavaliers and their mistresses, the rich burghers and the "light misses," the monks and roving women were swarming everywhere; and that those abuses became one of the foremost grievances which helped to swell the ranks of those German patriots so that a reform in head and limbs of the social structure became a necessity.
Indeed, "the good old time of pious memory" had reduced prostitution to the standard of a science; there is an ostentatious freedom in the treatment of the question which is quite offensive to modern ears. The fantastic romanticism described in the preceding chapter had really contributed very little to genuine morality: the theory of the veneration of women and the practice of unrestrained lust were absolutely opposed. The history of prostitution during this period is divided into two chapters: one treats of the women who remain stationary in their cities; the other of the migratory women who travel to fairs, church councils, tournaments, imperial diets, coronations. Scherr gives some statistics of the high prices paid for lust; he mentions the gain by one woman of eight hundred gilders on such an excursion, a sum which at that time represented a fortune. The armies, too, were accompanied by hosts of women who, with the other baggage, were under the control of the general provost (Hurenweibel). This stage of corruption, however, belongs more immediately to the abominations of the Thirty Years' War.
The settled prostitutes lived in public houses (Frauenhduser) of which, in large cities, there were several, usually under communal administration. We read that entertainment in these houses was then part of the hospitality offered to honored guests, just as at present the privileges of our clubs are extended as a courtesy. The houses were built and maintained avowedly for "a better protection of womanly and virgin honor" of the burgher wives and daughters. Emperor Sigismund and his suite were entertained without expense in the bawdy houses of Bern and Ulm, in 1413 and 1434 respectively, as is proved by historical evidence. Such houses, under the directorship of a landlord, called "ruffian," were the property of the communities, nay, they sometimes belonged to the "regalia" of secular or spiritual princes. The inmates must be strangers and unmarried. Married men, clerics, and Jews were to be excluded, but this was only a paper law. According to the spirit of accurate definition prevalent at the time, everything was strictly regulated: payment, food for the inmates, etc. The houses were closed on Sundays and holidays and on the eves before these festivals. The inmates were treated harshly in some cities, were under the surveillance of the hangman, and when dead they were buried in the potter's field; in other cities they were privileged; in Leipzig they had even the freedom of the city to pass yearly in solemn procession at the beginning of the fasting period. A certain professional or guild pride existed among them; they rigidly persecuted the unlicensed, unprivileged prostitutes. Some cities gave them citizenship for "their sacrifice for the common good"; in some places donations were given to those who married, a generous way indeed to rescue many unfortunates from shame. To make them noticeable, their garments, usually green in color, were prescribed for them. Augsburg ordered the hood of their veil to be green and two inches wide; Leipzig prescribed a short yellow mantle; Bern and Zurich a red cap. Sometimes luxurious fashions adopted by distinguished ladies were permitted to prostitutes in order to bring luxury into disrepute.
At the end of the fifteenth century, prostitution had assumed enormous proportions and carried in its train the terrible, loathsome, venereal disease. The Renaissance and the Reformation, it is true, had at first beneficent effects; disreputable houses were closed; a higher spirit swept over the land, but everything soon returned to its former condition, as we read in Erasmus's dialogues or Luther's writings. The brave and patriotic knight and humanist Ulrich von Hutton himself died, young and abandoned, of the loathsome disease; it is unknown whether he contracted it through his own fault, or by contagion.
Catholicism performed a noble work by opening many cloisters and asylums to penitent fallen women, and thus saved many victims. The church certainly strove, on the whole, to improve the moral conditions of the country. The monasteries were in most cases resorts for the daughters of the poorer nobility, and for the pious maidens, whether highborn or lowly, when marriage was impossible or other motives urged them to retire from the world. This statement must be made and emphasized for the honor of the millions of pure and noble women, who lived and worked and suffered and sacrificed themselves for humanity in the Church and in the cloisters which were the female academies of the time. Women lived there a happy and quiet life with intellectual and spiritual occupations. Reading, writing, religion, sewing, weaving, and embroidery were taught.
But it is only natural that among the thousands of women in religious life many failed in their mission, having mistaken their vocation. They became unhappy in their solitude without love, especially such as had been forced into the nunnery against their will and inclination. In such cases their conduct sometimes stands in glaring contrast with their vows of chastity.
The centuries leading up to the Reformation are full of complaints of priestly debauchery, which naturally reflected also upon the nuns. The cloister of Gnadenzell is reported to have been a pleasure resort for the neighboring nobility, who there celebrated nightly orgies and infamous dances; Count Hans von Lupfen, A. D. 1428, chided the prioress, in a document of historical interest, for having failed to remove in time the nuns who had become pregnant, and for having thus given cause to the neighbors to complain that "the cloister walls were resounding with the cries of babies." Bishop Gaimbus, of Castell, reports to the Pope (June 20, 1484) of the nunnery of Loflingen, near Ulm, that, at an investigation for reforms, the majority of the nuns were found "in an advanced state of motherhood" (in gesegneten Leibesumstanderi).
Sebastian Brant'sShip of Fools(1494) gives a terrible picture of the sins and follies of the era; never has there been such a heavy freight of perverse and wicked fools from all ranks and walks of life.
Thomas Murner'sConjuration of Fools(Narrenbeschworung), fourteen years later, shows the mediaeval ideals in the caricature to which they had degenerated. The old conditions that had produced lofty and genuine ideals had died away, nothing remained but the shell, the mere form and outline. The satire against the dissolute world, the chastisement of it by stinging words and sarcastic writings, proves simply the righteous anger which the good and patriotic men of the time felt regarding the national degradation; a total reform became a dire necessity. This was a Titanic task indeed, for during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries intellectual barrenness, spiritual corruption, and luxuriant debauchery prevailed. The worst feature was the chain of vice which, through apish imitation, was transmitted from the debased women of the upper classes to the women of the bourgeoisie, and from the latter to the peasants.
The new fashions were not only hideous, but became even obscene: "What nature wants to be concealed, that do they expose and prostitute. Shame upon the German nation!" are Brant's harsh words. The famous preacher Geiler von Kaisersberg thunders from the pulpit words hardly expressible in modern language: "Women's dresses are so short that they conceal nothing in front or behind, the upper garments are so cut down that the bosom is visible. Then again the trains are as long as tails. Women imitate man's foolish garb: the ridiculous high pointed shoes and tinkling bells on their garments." The pictures of the time and the attempts of cities and princes to regulate these monstrosities prove to us that the portraits of the satirists and the preachers are not overdrawn.
In order to illuminate a cultural epoch in the history of any nation it is, however, always safest to recur to the sources themselves, for they spring, knowingly or unknowingly, from the social soil upon which they thrive.
One of the most characteristic, though not edifying, "human documents" is the collection of contemporary poetry by a female author, Klara Hatzlerin, who was, according to her editor, Karl Haltaus, undoubtedly a nun from Augsburg, and who filled her leisure hours as was customary in the nunneries of her time in copying songs and poems. Evidently, though a cultured woman, she was not a pietist. This is apparent from the erotic and obscene matter found in her work, which even recalls Roswitha of Gandersheim's plays written more than five hundred years earlier. The work is undoubtedly genuine. It is signed: "A. 0.1471. Augsburg. Clara Hatzlerin." The manuscript contains two hundred and nineteen poems, besides ditties and sententious sayings. It marks the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, and is therefore of very great cultural value. The poems do not yet bear the scholastic, not to say pedantic, character of the best mastersingers; their type is, on the contrary, strictly popular, and frequently vulgar. The subjects of Klara Hatzlerin's collection of lyric poetry coincide with those of the minne: there are night songs and watch songs, songs of the love of the fair one, songs describing her virtues and her beauty, songs telling of fears of the light and the spies, rhythmical entreaties for slight favors of love, a glance, an embrace to appease the lover's sorrow or to give him strength to be constant.
Very characteristic of the time, especially as selections by a nun, betraying her interests and occupations, are the rustic caricatures and exaggerations of the coarseness of the peasant classes.
It must not be forgotten that as to material wealth the burghers and the peasant classes were never better off in Germany than during the two centuries preceding the Thirty Years' War, while the nobility had sunk into poverty, ruffianism, brigandage. What shall be said of a time when a prince of the highest rank, Duke Ernst of Bavaria, A. D. 1436, brutally murdered fair Agnes Bernauerin, the lawful wife of his son. To this very day the martyred woman is sung in German romance and poetry. She was the daughter of a barber and surgeon of Augsburg, where prince Albert, son of Duke Ernst, learned to know and to love her because of her almost unearthly beauty and charm. He made her in due form his lawful wife; but the old duke would not recognize the marriage. In the absence of her husband, Agnes was seized in the castle of Straubing, dragged upon the bridge of the Danube, and hurled into the stream. She drifted toward the bank, where one of the hangmen seized her with his hooked pole by her gold-colored hair, plunged her into deep water, and held her beneath its surface until she was drowned.
But let us return to Klara Hatzlerin, the nun, who so frequently chooses scenes from the most licentious poets.The Song of the Seven Greatest Pleasuresis original, but extremely coarse. Eating, drinking, minne play of the most bestial kind, the natural functions of stomach and kidneys, sleeping, bathing (as described by Poggio), are the ideals of fifteenth century materialism.
The most loathsome poem, however, in the collection so foul with obscene pictures, is the one in which a mother teaches her daughter in undisguised terms the arduous, though lucrative, art of prostitution. It is scarcely possible that any other literature should contain a poem so degraded.
Again, a poem by Hans Rosenpliit is given entirely in the manner of Boccaccio. The servant of a rich man seeks the favor of his mistress and finds acceptance. She takes him to her chamber and hides him under the bed. When the husband retires to his couch, she tells him that the servant sought her love and that she had invited him for the night to the garden to have him chastised. She advises her husband to put on her clothing, to go into the garden, and to chastise the scoundrel with a heavy club. The husband does as he is bidden. Meanwhile, the wife bestows her favors upon the man-servant. Thereupon she gives him a stick with which he belabors his master unmercifully, saying he only wished to test the fidelity of his mistress toward his beloved master. The latter barely escapes from the heavy volley of blows, tells his wife the adventure, and finally thanks God for such a faithful servant. The poet, Hans Rosenpliit, composed many carnival plays which are filled with obscene jests, and deal mostly with the lowest peasant elements.
In the same collection, Klara Hatzlerin presents rather barren encomiums on Saint Mary, all of which were composed by Muscatblüt. Feebly, the Maria-cult arose once more with a narrow and superstitious treatment, painfully different from the beautiful conceptions of the older periods. Here everything is Philistine. The statutes of the Rosenkrantz order and the brotherhood of Saint Ursula decree eleven thousand prayers in honor of the eleven thousand virgins who are still adored as saints, with their seat at Cologne. Spiritual songs exalt Saint Mary as equal in strength to Christ, nay, in the estimation of the lowly masses, superior to Him. There is a bombastic praise of all her material and spiritual perfections. The songs are scholastic in their exaggeration, artificial in form, and barbarous in language; in pompous terms church controversies are treated there: the Trinity, original sin, the last judgment, and other orthodox and mystic broodings, similes, allegories, etc. A type of the treatment is the description Muscatblüt gives of the Blessed Virgin when he calls her "a chest in which God himself dwells, the rod of Aaron, a well illuminated torch, a chaste Arc of Noah, a deep pond, a cask of myrrh, a reed of grace in God's field, her body a coffin or a castle the decadence is marked everywhere. We look back with longing eyes to the pure, the beautiful, the lofty, all-merciful Mother of God of the rich, uncontaminated past, the Holy Virgin who has enriched, ennobled, purified the German nation, German literature, German music, and, above all, the German arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture."
Next to those bombastic, pseudo-pious songs we find hideous drinking songs, poems of gluttony and licentiousness, all of which are, nevertheless, highly valuable to the historian of culture. There are authentic documents revealing the tremendous downfall of national ideals from the pedestal of the glorious past, and the immense recuperative power of the nation in struggling upward again after two centuries and a half to the Second Period of Bloom, crowned by Lessing, Schiller, Goethe!
A poem in the compilation of Klara Hatzlerin,On the Nature of the Child, is intensely interesting, first, as regards the popular physiological knowledge of the time on the mystery of gestation; secondly, as a cultural document on the character of Klara, the nun's, occupation during her leisure hours. She appeals first to her patroness: "Virgin Mary, I call to thee at all times for thy grace. May thy help point out to me thy way that I may walk on thy path, and may also begin anon to consider how the nature of man's strength mingles in the female womb," etc., and then by an extraordinary medley of truth, error, and fiction she describes the entire process of gestation.
There are stories of shrews and of scolding, nagging women, concluding with: "Whoever has a nagging wife, shall rid himself of her as soon as possible, buy a good rope, hang her on a bough, take three big wolves and hang them beside her. Whoever saw gallows with worse skins? There the song has an end, God evil women to Hades send!"
We cheerfully leave the foul atmosphere of a poetry which could not have sunk lower in form and spirit, and which, nevertheless, could not have existed but for its direct connection with the social sphere of which it treated and in which its roots were imbedded. And indeed we know also from incontestable historical evidence that while the privileges of the other three estates grew, a heavy slavery lay upon the fourth, the peasantry. When oppression lays its leaden hand too heavily upon a race or a class, it crushes out, gradually but surely, the divine instincts of the human soul. Munster, in hisKosmography, which appeared in 1545, speaks of "the low and wretched life of the peasants." Their houses are miserable hovels of dirt and wood, placed directly on the ground, and thatched with straw. Their food is black rye bread, oats or boiled lentils and peas. A coarse upper coat, two wooden shoes, and a cheap felt hat are their only clothing. These people have never peace or rest. Their masters they must serve through the whole year; there is nothing that the poor people must not do. The picture is completed by another author, who says: "The toilsome people of the peasantry are everybody's footrag, heavily laden and burdened with tasks of slavery, hard labor, interests, taxes, duties, etc." We will not unroll here the endless lists of personal and property dues which were imposed upon the unfortunate peasants of that period. The saddest aspect of that physical oppression is that the unfortunate people were not even conscious of their frightful moral subjugation. We have already mentioned that even the marriage of the serfs of both sexes depended upon the consent of their masters, the landed proprietor or, in most cases, of his steward, that the marital tax (maritagium) had to be paid for this consent, and that the body of the unfortunate peasant girl belonged to her oppressor, at least for the first night (jus primce noctis). The existence of this infamous right has been contested by German historians, but as proofs Scherr adduces two authentic documents of the years 1538 and 1543. All these facts are sufficient proof that the above literary remnants do not greatly exaggerate the moral and intellectual condition of that class, which is the basic element of every civilization.
We now proceed with more satisfaction to an estimate of the bourgeoisie. They became more and more cultured, and took upon themselves the task of raising the standards of education and morality, of upholding the sacred flame of German spiritual and intellectual life. They began to spin again the thread of poetry that had broken in the brutalized hands of a degraded nobility. This thread was now the "Mastersong." Mastersong, though of a prosaic, mechanical style, was nevertheless an ennobling, purifying element of culture in the frivolous and impure life of late mediæval German cities. Mastersong formed the bridge between the world of everyday realism and the world of ideals. Mastersong alone prevented an entire break of the continuity of German civilization between the two great periods of bloom, the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries. As the bourgeoisie acquired a social position and a personal worth of their own, as the German peasantry, in the extreme North at the mouth of the Elbe between marshes and sea, the Ditmarschen and Stedingers, and again in the South between the Alpine passes, the Swiss, heroically defended their manhood and liberties, there began among those lowly born, but high-minded, vigorous, and comparatively pure classes an intellectual and a moral life of a higher order. The folk song of love, of warlike honor, of victory over the brutal squirearchy, of invigorating patriotism, of a national union embracing all classes, begins to ring through the German "poetic forest," as Uhland calls it. The loving maid speaks of the falcen, and means the lover; the rose garden signifies love's favor; flowers are maidens, like the rose on the heath that is plucked by the boy in spite of its thorns; the forget-me-not designates modesty, humility, chastity. There are little love songs describing the sorrow of parting, the joy of the dance, the dream of love under the tree from which a rain of blossoms bedews the sleeping beauty.
Emperor Maximilian (1493-1519), "the last knight," the best-beloved son of the house of Habsburg, reigns now in Germany. It is a time of transition, of universal change. The world has doubled its size by the discovery of America, and the horizon has been enlarged accordingly. The printing press has revolutionized the arts. Yet poetry is dry, allegorical, wooden. Maximilian, aided by his secretaries, relates in a rimed allegorical romance, Teuerdank, his wooing of Mary of Burgundy, or, as he calls her in his poem, the beautiful and illustrious virgin Ehrenreich, only daughter of the powerful king "Glorious" (Ruhmreich). He recounts the mighty deeds which he must accomplish before he can possess her.
The barrenness of the time, in spite of a great and varied literary activity which, however, bears the stamp of mediocrity, appears also in the translations made by several highborn ladies: Elizabeth of Lorraine, and Eleanor of Scotland, consort of Duke Sigmund of Austria. Princess Mathilda, of the illustrious Wittelsbach-Palatine house, the "Lady of Austria," as she is called in the folk song, fostered the first advent of humanism into Suabia and Bavaria, and entertained sympathetic relations with all those who worked in the direction of humanism and literary reform. Niclas von Wyle, an early Humanist, had already in 1474, in opposition to the popular farces which contained offensive, coarse, and frequently obscene treatment of woman, composed an encomium or eulogy in her honor, in which he enumerated the manifold blessings which woman had brought to the world. Yet the ribald farces still abound, and are even stimulated by the incipient religious reform.Joseph in Egyptis the typical subject for poems expressing the criminal and passionate love of woman; the monologue of Potiphar's wife expressing her sinful feelings for Joseph is nothing less than edifying. The play ofFair Susannapresented wicked passion in aged men, and innocence persecuted, but finally saved;Judith and Holofernescharacterized the clash between conflicting religions.
In South Germany, Nürnberg, Luther's "eye and ear of Germany," is the centre of the culture of the transition period, and is the mirror in which the life of the time is reflected. The aesthetic culture and the lack of it, the status of woman in society, appear nowhere more plainly than in the plays of Hans Sachs, the greatest exponent of the life of his time. He is not stimulated by the passions of a Hutten, of a Luther, or of the latter's bitter foe, Thomas Murner. His soul overflows with peace and equanimity even where he censures and chides. His censure is always amiable and gentle. He even describes passions meekly. He touchingly represents the driving from Paradise of Adam and Eve, who become more closely attached to each other in misfortune; he delicately depicts Eve's naive anxiety concerning God, whose visit she apparently fears. He writes decorously of the priest and his fair housekeeper who has not yet attained the canonic age of safety: of the old hag who acts as a procuress and panderer, who is quarrelsome and hideous, and of whom even the devil is afraid; the faithless, cunning, amorous wife who makes sport of her deceived, foolish husband; the jealous and the credulous husband, etc.
In formulating a theory of love, Hans Sachs, who, in his own long life, had felt love's grief and unrest, decided to employ the examples which he gathered from his own experience as well as from history and poetry, especially the Italians Petrarca, Boccaccio, and others. In his carnival plays, however, he avoids, from the very first, the coarseness and obscenity of Rosenplut and Hans Folz; but though he no doubt considered that he had excluded all indecency from his works, they still are, here and there, grievous to our modern ears.
In his carnival play Vom Venusberg, the goddess speaks: "I am Venus, protectress of love, many a realm was destroyed through me; I have great power on earth over rich, poor, young, and old; whom I wound with the arrow mine, he must forever my servant be. I now draw my bow; he who will flee shall flee at once." Too late: the knight is struck, so are all the others, maids and gentlewomen.
In 1518 Sachs wrote theComplaint of the Exiled Lady Chastity, a very bold allegory: Virgin Chastity, daughter of Lady Honor, dwelt with many virgins in the realm of Virginitas. In the neighborhood lived the frivolous Queen Venus, who frequently invaded the former's kingdom and tried to conquer it. In the repeated wars, Queen Venus succeeded in capturing almost all the virgins, and took them over to the kingdom of Lady Shame. Only Chastity herself, with her royal retinue, the allegorized twelve womanly virtues, had been saved from capture; they fled and wandered long from one country to the other without finding a hospitable reception. At last they arrived at a distant wilderness, where Chastity was again suddenly attacked by Queen Venus and her allied princesses: Pride, Frivolity, Intemperance, Idleness, Faithlessness, etc. The poet then warns maidens of the dangers threatening them on the part of Venus and her suite. After explaining the twelve virtues which aid Chastity, he concludes: "Beware of love, be steady, spare your love until you come to marriage." Sachs himself had at an early age married, in 1519, Kunigunde Kreuzer, an orphan of good family.
The biographer of Hans Sachs described the marriage of Dr. Christoph Scheuerl, a famous jurist of Nürnberg, "the oracle of the Republic." The description of this marriage is interesting as a picture of the life of the high patrician families and their ceremonies and festivities. All the families (Geschlechter) of the city were present. The festivities lasted a whole week, and the ceremonies were elaborate and splendid. Marriage feasts of the city aristocracy took place either in the house of the parents of the bridal couple, or in the city hall, or even in the cloister. This last practice was, however, forbidden in Nürnberg in 1485, "because the carousals and dances had become unbefitting the holy place." The patrician bridegroom gave the bride a ring with precious stones, the latter presented the bridegroom with an embroidered silken kerchief. There was a great display of precious garments and silk damask. The servants wore the colors of the family to which they belonged. The headgear of the patrician lady was a high diadem, while the bridegroom wore a silver wreath adorned with artificial flowers. The bride's maids and the table maidens wore the same kind of wreath and their hair was arranged in loose waves. The first marriage day was followed by an "early morning dance at the city-hall, a night-dance, and a wedding-assembly only for the ladies."
The artisan marriages are recorded to have been similar in character, only the jests of the official "speaker" (Sprucksprecher) were probably somewhat rude, and the display was not so elaborate as that used in patrician weddings.
Hans Sachs's married life was very happy. His manifold jests regarding quarrelsome women and their qualities, and regarding the hardships of married life were merely products of his humor. "My wife is my Paradise dear, and also my daily hellfire sheer;" and the climax: