CLXIII.

Gothic Architecture

Ecclesiastical architecture took its rise from the Ro­mans and Byzantines. After the crusades, and under the Hohenstaufen, a new style of architecture arose in Germany, far superior to the Byzantine in sublimity and beauty; the churches were built of a greater size, the towers became more lofty, lightness and beauty of form were studied, the pointed arch replaced the rounded one, and architecture was rendered altogether more symbolical in design. This new and thoroughly German style was denominated the Gothic. ’ This art was cultivated and exercised by a large civil corporation. At an earlier period every monastery had its working-monks (operarii), architect, sculptor, painter, musician; but, in the thirteenth century, the great guild of masons and stonemasons were formed in the cities, who adopted in the service of the church its mystical ideas, and eternalized them in their gigantic labors. Their secret was preserved in the guild as the heritage of its members, who enjoyed great privileges and were termed Freemasons, their art the royal one. In Upper Germany, for instance, at Ulm, this guild even ruled the city for some time, a circumstance that explains the existence of so many fine churches in that city, in all of which the same idea, the same rules, may be traced.

The churches were skillfully adorned with carved work, rich ornaments, pillars, and pictures, and built in such a manner as to echo and give the finest tone to music. At length the Germans acquired the grand idea of expressing the sublimity of the Deity by means of architectural designs; and while the churches still served their former purpose, the rough masses of stone became fraught with meaning. The majestic edifices still stand to bear witness to the spirit to which they owed their rise. The buildings were to be lofty and large, striking the eye with wonder and filling the heart with the feeling of immensity, for the God to whom the temple is raised is great and sublime. The appearance of heaviness was to be carefully avoided, art was to be hidden and its creations to spring forth with the apparent ease of a plant from the soil, for faith in God is neither forced nor oppressive, but free, natural, and sublime. The building must be lofty, the columns and the pillars shoot like plants and trees upward toward the light, and terminate in high and pointed towers, for faith aspires to heaven. The altar must stand toward the East, whence came the Saviour. The chancel, the holy of holies, only trodden by the priest, must be separated from the aisle, where stood the people, for the priesthood is nearer than the people to the Deity. Finally, the sublimity of the whole edifice was to be veiled by rich and beauteous ornaments, the straight and abrupt lines were to be bent into a thousand elegant curves and degrees, manifold as the colors of the prism, while the massive edifice rose as if from blocks of living stone, for God is hidden in the universe, in nature and in endless variety. All these ornaments had also one principal form, as if the idea of the whole pervaded each minute particle. This form is the rose in the windows, doors, arches, pillar ornaments; and borne by it, or blossoming out of it, the cross. By the rose is signified the world, life; by the cross, faith and the Deity. A cross within the rose was in the Middle Ages the general symbol of the Deity.

The sublimity of Gothic architecture was regulated by a scale according to law. All the archiepiscopal cathedrals had three towers, two in front and one over the high altar. All episcopal ones had two on the western side. All parish churches one in front, or where the aisle joins the chancel. All chapels of ease, merely a belfry. Among the monastic churches, those of the Benedictines had two towers, between the chancel and the aisle; those of the Cistercians, one over the high altar; those of the Carthusians, a very high tower

The building was the work of centuries. The plan devised by the bold genius of one man required unborn genera­tions to complete, for the live-long toil of thousands and thou­sands of skillful hands was necessary to impress the hard stone with the master’s thought. With genuine self-denial and freedom from a mania for improvement, artists of equal skill followed in spirit and in thought the first laid-down plan, and each in turn, ambitious for his work and not for a name, have, almost all, the inventor and the perfecter, remained utterly unknown. The cathedral of Cologne is, both in size and in idea, the greatest of these works of won­der. It was commenced in 1248; the chancel was finished in 1320. It is still in an unfinished state, none of its towers are completed, and yet it is the loftiest building in the world, and surpasses all as a work of art. Ranking next to it stands the Strasburg cathedral, begun in 1015; the plan of its cele­brated tower was designed in 1276, by Erwin von Steinbach, and the tower itself at length completed in 1439, by John Hutz of Cologne. The other tower is still wanting. Among the other great works of this period may be enumerated the splendid churches of Freiburg in Breisgau, Ulm, Erfurt, Mar­burg, Wurzburg, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, Oppenheim, Esslin­gen, Wimpfen, Zanten, Metz, Frankfort, Tann, Naumburg, Halberstadt, Misnia, the St. Stephen’s church at Vienna; at a later date, the stately edifices at Prague, and numerous fine churches in the Netherlands. The palaces of Barba­rossa at Hagenau and Gelnhausen have long been destroyed, besides many churches, for instance, at Paulinzelle, etc. Many of the town-council houses, as well as many of the cathedrals, still retain their ancient beauty.

Among the other arts in the service of religion, those of the sculptor, the founder, and the carver, were early put into requisition in Germany for the adornment of the churches. Fine statues existed as early as the age of the Ottos; for in­stance, that of Otto I. at Magdeburg, and that in the church at Naumburg of the time of Otto III. In Germany sculpt­ure never rose essentially above architecture in merit. The secret of the great effect produced by art in the Middle Ages was the accordance of every separate part with the whole, like the different organs of life, which, when united, ex­pressed the idea no single part could represent, and produced a joint effect in which each art assisted the other. As the wondrous pile wholly consisted of sculptured materials, sculpture merely exerted its skill in shafts and decorations, while painted windows and frescoes gave light and coloring to each object, and the subject of each picture accorded with all around. Then the pile resounded and spoke like God from the clouds, from its lofty tower, or alternately sorrowed and rejoiced like man in the deep-swelling organ. The art of the founder and of the musician was devoted solely to the service of the church.

The worship of the saints encouraged that of images and pictures, which was at first violently opposed as heathenish and idolatrous; thus the people’s natural sense of beauty saved art. The painting of profane subjects was also en­couraged, as the picture of the battle of Merseburg, cele­brated by contemporaries, proves. Painting also rose to greater perfection as architecture advanced. The fine old German paintings appeared after the crusades. The picture of the Saviour, or of the Virgin, or of a saint, ever adorned the high altar. All the subordinate pictures were to corre­spond with and refer to that over the altar, and to represent the actions, the miracles, or the symbols of the patron Deity of the church. All represented sacred objects, or what was holy by profane ones. For this reason they were, until the fifteenth century, always painted upon a golden ground, which signified the glory and brightness of religion. Their subjects, whether landscapes or figures, bear a character of repose, for the essence of holiness is calm, childlike simplicity, and the truth of nature. The first great school of painting appeared in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at Cologne, and probably resulted from the connection between the Netherlands and Greece. Its most celebrated master, in the fourteenth century, was William of Cologne. A cele­brated painter, Henry of Bavaria, flourished as early as the twelfth century; in the thirteenth, appeared Jacob Kern of Nuremberg; in the fourteenth a society of painters formed at Prague, having at its head Nicolas Wurmser, court painter to the emperor Charles IV. Painting on glass was afterward brought to great perfection. Oil painting was first introduced about this period. This art appears to have been principally practiced in the Netherlands, and more particularly in the city of Cologne, or, as it was called during the Middle Ages, the Holy City. The excellence and fame of the Colognese school remained unrivaled, and the works of William unsur­passed, until the commencement of the fifteenth century, when painting in oils was invented by a Dutchman, John van Eyk, the first master of the pure German school. A peculiar style of painting on parchment was practiced in manuscripts. Charlemagne possessed devotional books orna­mented with pictures, and almost all the manuscripts, until quite the latter part of the Middle Ages, are filled with them.

The churches were rendered still more imposing in vari­ous other ways, by the management of the light, the fumes of incense, the measured movements of the priests, the splen­dor of their attire, the sumptuous plate, etc. The solemn tones of the organ accompanied Latin hymns of deep and stirring import. Under the last of the Salic dynasty, Guido d’Arezzo had introduced harmony into music in Italy. Dur­ing the reign of Barbarossa, Franco of Cologne improved the writing and the measure of music.

CLXIV.

The Emperor and the Empire

According to the idea of Charlemagne, the German em­peror was to be the chief shepherd of the nations of Christen­dom, and to unite the separate races. The supremacy had, however, been usurped by the pope, to whom the emperor and the rest of the sovereigns and princes of Europe were declared subordinate. In the empire itself the officers of the crown had become hereditary princes, and their support of the emperor depended entirely on their private inclination. The emperor grasped but a shadowy scepter, and the impe­rial dignity now solely owed its preservation to the ancestral power of the princely families to whom the crown had fallen. The choice of the powerful princes of the empire therefore fell purposely upon petty nobles, from whom they had noth­ing to fear; and even when the crown, by bribery and cun­ning, came into the possession of a great and princely house, the jealousy of the rest of the nobility had to be appeased by immense concessions, and thus, under every circumstance, the princes increased in wealth and power, while the emperor was gradually impoverished. Imperial investiture had be­come a mere form, which could not be refused except on certain occasions. The Pfalzgrafs, formerly intrusted with the management of the imperial allods, had seized them as hereditary fiefs. The customs, mines, and other royal dues had been mortgaged to the church, the princes, and the cities; the cities had made themselves independent of the imperial governor, and the free peasantry, at length, also lost the protection of the crown, and fell under the jurisdic­tion of the bishops and princes, who again strove to enslave them.

The most productive sources of the imperial revenue were presents in' return for grants of privileges, for exemptions from certain duties, and the legitimation of bastards, or for the settlement of disputed inheritances, with which a dis­graceful traffic was often made. Thus the dukes of Austria paid a certain sum of money to the emperor for investing them with their dignity in their own territory, instead of in the diet. The taxes paid by the Jews for toleration within the empire also poured a considerable sum into the imperial treasury. They were on this account termed the lackeys of the holy Roman empire. As the universities increased in importance they were granted imperial privileges, and the emperor held the preferment to the professorships, etc., in his gift, which was managed in his name by a Pfalzgraf nominated for that purpose; but, as the dignities bestowed upon poor professors were not very profitable, the emperors carried on a more lucrative traffic in titles, which they be­stowed upon the nobility, raising counts to the dignity of princes, lords to that of counts, and citizens to the knight­hood. By this means there existed before long numbers of petty princes, having the title of duke (dux), who possessed a mere shadow of an army; counts, who were neither pro­vincial nor popular judges; and all the doctors in the univer­sities, although they might never have bestrode a horse, were enrolled as chevaliers or knights. These follies commenced in the fourteenth century.

According to the mystical fashion of the times, the differ­ent grades in the empire were illustrated by the number of the planets. The empire was represented as a great camp with seven gradations and seven shields, the first of which was borne by the emperor, the second by the spiritual lords, the third by the temporal princes, the fourth by the counts of the empire, the fifth by the knights of the empire, the sixth by the country nobility, the vassals of the princes, the sev­enth by the free citizens and peasantry; the serfs, who were incapable of bearing arms, being excluded.

The ancient distinction between the feudal vassals and the freehold proprietors still existed. Every knight who pos­sessed an ancient allod, however small in extent, considered himself equal in birth to the most powerful counts and dukes. These nobles, originally nobles of the empire, were generally termed the Semperfreien, ever free. Their privilege con­sisted in their freedom from any bounden duty save to the emperor, while they could be feudal lieges over other free­men; a privilege so much the more pertinaciously insisted on by the weaker among them, who possessed rank without the ability to maintain it. Hence arose the importance attached to the ancient allod, to ancestral castles, to ancient names and arms, in short, to birth, and the haughty contempt with which the barons of the empire looked down upon the feudal nobility. There was, in reality, a great differ­ence between the Semperfreien themselves, and the pow­erful dukes might often smile at the impoverished counts and barons (Freiherren), who set themselves up as their equals in rank.     .

The three spiritual princes, the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves, had anciently precedence in the elec­tion of the emperor and in the administration of the affairs of the empire. In the fourteenth century, four temporal princes associated themselves with them, and seized the exclusive right of electing the emperor and the exercise of the imperial offices as their hereditary right. The electors, or Churfursten, were restricted to the number of seven, on account of the mystical idea represented by that number. They were, the archbishop of Mayence, as arch-chancellor of the German empire; the archbishop of Treves, as chancellor of Burgundy; the archbishop of Cologne, as chancellor of Italy; the Rhenish Palatine, as imperial Truchsess (dapifer), seneschal, who at the coronation bore the imperial ball in the procession, and at the banquet placed the silver dishes on the table; the duke of Saxon-Wittenberg, as marshal of the empire, who bore the sword before the emperor, and acted as master of the horse; the Margrave of Brandenburg, as imperial chamberlain, who bore the scepter before the emperor, held the ewer and basin, and managed the imperial house­hold; the king of Bohemia, as imperial cupbearer. These Churfiirsten elected the emperor according to custom at Frankfort on the Maine, and crowned him at Aix-la-Chapelle. The first diet was always opened by the emperor in person at Nuremberg.

This princely aristocracy, however, could not succeed in totally excluding the rest of the spiritual lords of the German church, the jealous nobles of the empire, and the powerful cities, from the government of the empire, and they were be­fore long compelled to concede seats and votes in the diet to the bishops, abbots, petty princes, counts, knights, and burgesses.

After the fall of the Hohenstaufen and the Babenbergs, , the following princely houses or races come chiefly to no­tice: the ancient race of the Welfs in Brunswick, that of Wittelsbach in Bavaria, that of Ballenstadt or Ascanien in Brandenburg and Anhalt, the Zahringer in Baden, that of Wettin in Misnia, that of Lowen in Brabant and Hesse, then those of the counts of Habsburg, Luxemburg, Wurtem- berg, those of the Truchsesses of Waldburg, Hohenzollern, Nassau, Oldenburg, all of which acquired great fame at a later period. The reigning families of Holland, Flanders, Guelders, Juliers, Holstein, and Meran became extinct, and only the modern houses of Burgundy and Lothringia became celebrated in the west of the empire. To the south of the Alps, the Earl of Savoy, the Visconti in Milan, the Mar­graves d’Este in Ferrara, gained great power. In Hungary, the ancient royal house of Arpad reigned for a short period longer, and the old Slavonian races also in Bohemia, Pome­rania, Mecklenburg (the descendants of Niclot), and Silesia (the ancient house of Piast).

The prince only ruled as liege lord over his vassals, among whom all the clergy, all the counts and knights of the em­pire, the imperial cities, and free peasantry were not included, although within his demesnes. In his quality as duke, the prince had the banner, and a right to summon to the field; but the ancient duchies had been dismembered and divided into several fiefs, and the nobles of the empire marched under the imperial banner, so that the prince merely took the field at the head of his immediate vassals. In his quality as count, he had the right of jurisdiction, but merely over his vassals, the clergy and all the vas­sals of the empire being free from it. The highest offi­cer, who acted in the name of the prince, was the Vizdom or deputy (vice-domus), also termed the captain of the country. The sheriff of the country, who represented the prince in feudal matters, and the judge of the court, who superintended the private possessions of the prince, held sometimes separate offices. Many of the princes gained the privilege of no appeal being permitted from their tribunal to the emperor (privilegium de non appellando). The em­peror, nevertheless, always remained the sole source of legis­lative and executive power, so that a privilege of this descrip­tion can merely be counted as an exception, and the emperor had the right of bestowing new privileges, according to his will, throughout the whole empire, even on the princes his subjects. Below the upper provincial courts of justice were especial provincial courts, answering to the ancient Gau or provincial courts (judicia provincialia), over which a sheriff presided; and below these again the old hundred courts, the bailiwicks with bailiffs and domain judges. The lower courts judged petty offenses; the provincial courts of justice, capital crimes.

The power of the princes was also considerably increased by the royal dues, such as customs, mines, etc., conceded to them by the emperor.

The rule of the princes was most despotic in the Slavonian frontier provinces, where the feeling of personal independ­ence was not so deeply rooted among the people; the princes of Brandenburg, Bohemia, and Austria, consequently, ere long surpassed the rest in power. In the western countries of Germany there were a greater number of petty princes. After rendering the emperor dependent upon themselves, the princes had to carry on a lengthy contest with the lower classes, the result of which was the institution of the pro­vincial estates. The example of the princes, who had made their great possessions independent of the emperor and hered­itary, was followed in turn by their vassals, the feudal nobil­ity, who endeavored to secure to themselves the free posses­sion of their estates; while a fixed station, similar to that gained in the empire by the imperial towns and free peas­antry, was also aspired to by the provincial towns and serfs. The tyranny of some of the princes, like Frederick the Quar­relsome and Henry Raspe, occasioned confederacies to be set on foot between the provincial nobility, the cities, and the peasantry, against the princes. In other places, the necessi­ties of the princes caused the imposition of taxes, which, be­ing at that period unheard of, were laid before the people in the form of requests (Beden, precaria). Hostile attacks, the encroachments of neighboring powers, disputed claims, often rendered it necessary for the princes to turn to their subjects, and to purchase their aid with grants and privileges. It was in this manner that the provincial estates, which stood in the same relation to the prince as the imperial estates did to the emperor, and that provincial diets, which represented the im­perial diet on a small scale, arose. At first, separate agree­ments were made for certain purposes. Thus, in 1302, the barons and knights of Upper Bavaria granted a tax to their duke; in 1307, the clergy and the cities did the same; but each estate separately, and it was not until 1396 that the three estates met in a general diet. The fourth or peasant class was only free, and therefore possessed of a right to sit in the diet, in the Tyrol, Wurtemberg, Kempten, Hadeln, Hoja, Baireuth.—The provincial diets secured the privileges of the princes and the estates, and bound them together by the ties of mutual interest and mutual protection. The maxim of the estates was, “Where we do not counsel, we will not act.”

The policy pursued by some of the princely houses is re­markable. Primogeniture (the right of the first-born to the whole of the inheritance, by which subdivision, so prejudi­cial to family power and influence, was avoided) was, not­withstanding the evident advantage, introduced at a later period, and became by no means general. The Zahringer and the Welfs at first attempted to strengthen themselves by means of the cities, in which they were unsuccessful, the cities of Zurich and Berne on the one hand, and that of Lu­beck on the other, making themselves independent. The Wittelsbacher were more successful, and increased their au­thority by favoring the institution of the provincial estates. .At a later period, the Habsburgs chiefly supported themselves upon the provincial nobility, the Luxemburgs on the citizen class, on art and science, and raised Bohemia to a high degree of civilization; while the Wurtembergs raised themselves imperceptibly to greater power, by purging their demesnes as much as possible of the ecclesiastical and lay lords and of the cities, and by solely favoring their peasantry.

The laws wholly consisted of treaties and privileges. The former were: First, Concordates between the emperor and the pope, m which the emperor always made concessions to the church, and by which the canon law was essentially increased. Second, Laws of the empire concluded in the diet between the emperor and the assembled states, and answer­ing to the capitularies of former times, but now chiefly con­sisting of resolutions for the maintenance of public tranquil­lity, decrees of the states for the regulation of the empire. The independent spirit of the estates opposed a more com­prehensive mode of legislation, as had been, for instance, attempted to be introduced by Frederick II. Third, Capitula­tions, grants, charters, negotiations concerning inheritances and divisions, concluded between the emperor and the pow­erful princes. Fourth, Feudal laws agreed to by the feoffer and the feodary. Fifth, Provincial laws settled between the princes and the provincial estates. Sixth, Federative laws of the federated knights, cities, and peasants. Seventh, Com­mercial privileges of the citizens and peasantry. Eighth, Privileges of corporations and guilds, some for the single towns, others for the members of a corporation spread throughout the empire.¹ Every trade imposed its particu­lar regulations upon itself; the customs of the craft were everywhere similar, and merely the political privileges of the corporation differed in different towns.

Privileges were conferred by the emperor, and also by the princes, and always merely related to single prerogatives.

The canon law, clear and comprehensive, as greatly con­trasted with the confused state of the temporal legislature as did the church with the empire. It was on this account that the Hohenstaufen endeavored to introduce the Roman law, and, at all events, favored the study of this law, which was introduced into the university of Bologna by the great lawyer Irnerius (Werner): besides which, the Germans them­selves endeavored to compile general codes of law out of the numerous single laws. Eike (Ecco, Echard) von Repcow was the first who, by command of Count Hoier von Falkenstein (the picturesque ruins of whose castle are still to be seen on the Harz), collected all the Saxon laws, and formed them into a compilation called the Saxonspiegel, or Saxonlage, written in Latin and Low German in 1215. It con­tained the imperial prerogatives, feudal laws, provincial laws, and ancient usages in law matters, and every Saxon could refer to it for information in every legal case. When­ever the ancient Saxon law opposed the new papal ordinances, it was defended and maintained, on account of which the pope rejected many of the rights insisted on in this code. Although the Saxonspiegel was simply a private collection (first ratified by Frederick II.), and was not only far from containing all the German laws, but was also compiled with­out reference to order, the want of a general code of laws was so deeply felt that this code shortly became extremely celebrated, was continually copied, and finally completed by the addition of local laws and regulations. In 1282, it ap­peared in a new form as the Schwabenspiegel, or code of Swabian laws, and, as was natural on the fall of the Hohen­staufen, with a much more decided papist tendency; also with new additions, as the standard law-book and imperial law, to all of which the Saxonspiegel served as a founda­tion.—Among the especial laws, the feudal laws of Lom­bardy of 1235, and the Austrian provincial laws of 1250, the municipal laws of Soest and Lubeck, and the Friscian peas­ant laws, were the most celebrated.

The feudal system gradually gained ground. So little was it deemed disgraceful to be a feodary, that’it often hap­pened that the feudal lord was at the same time vassal to his vassals.¹ Hence arose the strange and scarcely accountable symbols of enfeoffment. Wheh a wealthy man of rank held a property or a privilege in fee of an inferior, he humbled himself merely in a laughable manner before him. The same took place between equals, and, in this manner, a number of feudal tenures became associated with ridiculous customs suggested by chance and by good humor. The feoffee of a church was invested by touching the bell-rope.

In the administration of justice, the right of every crimi­nal to choose his own judges was still preserved. Thus, the Schwabenspiegel says, “Every temporal tribunal is raised by election, in order that no lord may impose a judge upon the people except the one whom they choose themselves.” In the same manner, the proceedings were held in public, and conducted by word of mouth, both in the imperial courts of justice and all others, down to those of the peasantry. Even evidence by averment, single combat, and ordeals was still retained in the law, and single combat came into still greater practice on account of the customs of chivalry.

The influence of the Roman and Mosaic notions, however, introduced a fresh barbarity into criminal law, unknown in Germany, even during the earliest ages. All the lower courts were not only empowered, as formerly, to fix the Wergeld or fine at a certain amount, but also to pronounce over “hide and hair,’’ that is, to adjudge the criminal to be flogged, beaten, or shorn; while all the upper courts were empowered to pronounce over “head and hand,” over life and death. The gallows and the rack were ever at work. Chopping off the hands, putting out the eyes, etc., became the order of the day. It is remarkable in the transition from the ancient Germanic to the Roman-Mosaic administration of justice, that the office of headsman, which, in ancient pagan times, was a priestly function in the name of the Divinity, was long deemed sacred and honorable, and was, consequently, per­formed by the youngest counselors; and it was not until Roman tortures and numerous and cruel bodily punishments and modes of death were introduced together with the Doc­tors of the Roman law, that the people attached the idea of disgrace and infamy to the headsman’s office, now become both hateful and difficult to perform, and it was for the future committed to a newly-formed corporation or society of headsmen, who were licensed to follow that bloody and dis­gusting profession, but were, on that account, deprived of all honorable privileges in social life.—The mode of crime often furnished the mode of punishment. Thus, for instance, coin­ers were boiled in kettles. Heretics were burned alive. The aristocracy, like the clergy, enjoyed privileges. For a high dignitary of the church to be convicted of misdemeanor, a greater number of witnesses were requisite than could by any possibility be present. It gradually became a settled custom, that equals in birth alone could prefer a complaint against one another. The emperor himself conferred the right upon certain knights of being solely amenable to ac­cusations laid to their charge by another knight. The same difference was made in punishments; the hanging of a knight has always been cited by historians as an exception, and that of the lower classes as a general rule.—The Roman law also introduced the use of the most horrid modes of torture into the German administration of justice; and also in lawsuits, written and secret proceedings gradually gained ground by means of secret examinations, written decisions, and reports to higher courts.

In Westphalia, as in Friesland, the ancient mode of ad­ministering justice was longest preserved. There the pro­vincial Gr^fs still held their tribunal in the open air, with the elected justices or sheriffs, in the presence of the free peasantry. This tribunal was denominated a free court of justice; the seat of justice, the free seat; the Graf, the free Graf; the sheriffs, the free sheriffs. In each district, Gau, or province, were several seats of justice, answering to the ancient hundred courts. These courts were afterward replaced by the Femgericht, superior or high court of judi­cature, the secret tribunal (secreta judicia) formed under the great regent of the empire, Engelbert, archbishop of Co­logne, and duke of Westphalia, who federated with a num­ber of honorable men of every class for the purpose of se­cretly judging and punishing all evil-doers. Secrecy was, at that time, highly necessary, each of the judges, in case his name was discovered, being exposed to the vengeance of the innumerable turbulent spirits. The utility of this tribunal was ere long so generally recognized that in the fourteenth century it already counted 100,000 members. These mem­bers were bound by a solemn oath. A traitor was hanged seven feet higher than other criminals. The chief judge presided over the whole of the members. Next in order were the free Grafs, who elected the chief judge; then the free sheriffs, who elected the free Graf; and fourthly and lastly, the messengers who summoned the court and the ac­cused, and executed the sentence. All the members recog­nized each other by a secret sign. No ecclesiastic, except the spiritual lord, no Jew, woman, or servant, were per­mitted among the members, nor were they amenable to the court. Freeborn laymen alone were, in this manner, judged by their peers. Such accusations were also alone brought before this court that either had not been, or could not be, brought before any other. The tribunal assembled in secret. A member came forward as accuser. The accused was summoned three times. There was no appeal except in cases of indecision, and then only to the emperor or to the pope. If the accused neglected to appear, the oath of the accuser was declared sufficient proof of his guilt. On the other hand, every member accused by another could clear himself by oath. The condemned criminal was secretly and mysteri­ously deprived of life. His body was always found with a dagger marked with the letters S S G G (stick, stone, grass, grein), plunged into it.

CLXV.

The Aristocracy and the Knighthood

The lower nobility were of three kinds. The old and proud families, who still retained their allods and despised feudality, were the sworn enemies of the princes, the bish­ops, the abbeys, and the cities. Within the walls of their ancestral castles they bade defiance to all, and acknowledged no superior except the emperor. The more powerful families strove to place themselves on an equal footing with the princes, and took advantage of the disturbances of the times to extend their authority, more especially since the fall of the duchies of Franconia, Saxony, and Swabia. In this manner noble families, such as those of Habsburg, Lux­emburg, Wurtemberg, Hohenzollern, Nassau, Mansfeld, Schwarzburg, etc., which, at first, merely possessed some small castle, gradually rose. The weaker families were partly ruined by their more powerful neighbors, who at­tacked and reduced them to submission, and partly main­tained their independence by entering into a mutual league after the example of the cities. The mode in which these bold knights existed was very romantic. Whenever the

’ The memory of the wild knights still lives in numerous legends. The four robber-nests of the notorious knight Landschaden von Neckar-Steinach still stand on the Neckar. This knight was put out of the ban of the empire, but disguising himself in black armor, and wearing his visor always closed, accom­panied a crusade to the Holy Land, where he distinguished himself by perform­ing prodigies of valor, and at length, when the emperor, struck with his bravery, offered him a reward in the presence of his other knights, lifted his visor and discovered the well-known features of the old robber.—Who is there through- labor of their enslaved serfs was insufficient for their main­tenance and for that of their men-at-arms, they robbed the monasteries, and waylaid the merchants traveling with their goods from one city to another. The citizens often marched against them, and sometimes the emperor in person; many of their castles were destroyed, and themselves, whenever they could be caught, hanged on the nearest tree, booted and spurred.—It often happened that several poor neighbor­ing knights would build a castle at their common expense, in which they dwelt together, and which formed the com­mon inheritance of their children. These were termed co­proprietors. In the songs of the Minnesingers, the bitter complaints of the poor knights, that although equal in birth to the princes, they were so far inferior to them in power, are of frequent recurrence.

The nobles belonging to the different orders of knight­hood formed a second and distinct class. They also still breathed the spirit of ancient freedom and proud independ­ence, and, at the same time, acquired an aristocratic in­fluence equaling that of the princes. The first of these orders, the Templars, became so powerful in Italy that the French monarch made use of his influence over the pope in order to annihilate them. Had the German order of knight­hood settled in the heart of Germany, a coalition between

out Bavaria unacquainted with grim Heinz von Stein? And stories, like the following, are .to be met with in all the old chronicles. A troop of Hessian robber-knights, headed by the lords of Bibra, Ebersberg, Thungen, and , Steinau, entered the little town of Brtickenau concealed in wine-casks, out of which they crept during the night, and pillaged the place, but, being delayed by packing the booty, were attacked by the citizens, and, after losing all their ill-gotten gain, were chased from the town. The independent spirit of the knights, however, was sometimes shown in a more worthy manner. The legend of the knight Thedel Unverferden von Wallmoden, who was said to use the devil as his steed, and was famed for his fearlessness, is perfectly in accord­ance with the age. Henry the Lion once attempting to startle him by suddenly biting his finger, he gave him in return a hearty box on the ear, angrily ex­claiming, “Have you become a dog?” The conduct of the Freiherr von Krenkingen was still more independent; when visited by the emperor Barbarossa at his estate at Tengen near Constance, he received him sitting, because he held his lands in fee of no one but of the sun, and although he personally honored the emperor, did not own him as his liege lord.

it and the whole of the discontented nobles of the empire would have resulted, and a strong opposition have thus been raised against the princes; but by migrating to the utmost limits of the empire, to Prussia, it ever remained a stranger to the internal affairs of Germany, merely recruiting its numbers from the German aristocracy.

The feudal aristocracy formed a third class as court nobility, and filled all the chief offices of state. This class consisted of the ancient ministeriales, who actually served at court’ and of the vassals, the feudal nobles, who either held lands in fee of the clergy and of the temporal princes for services rendered, or who had changed their originally free allods into a feudum oblatum. These nobles, although raised by their own services, still maintained an aristocratic power, opposed to that of the princes. The vassals often rose in arms against their liege, as was the case in Thu­ringia, Austria, Bavaria, etc., and at length gained new political rights as provincial estates, and yet these nobles were bound both by their feudal oath, by habit, and by interest, to the court of the prince. Many fiefs were in­separable from court offices, and those knights who could neither live by robbery, support the solitude of their rocky fastnesses, nor enter the church, were alone able (no value being at that period attached to agriculture and industry) to satisfy their ambition, their love of splendor, and their romantic love of adventure, at court.

The institution of knighthood (ordo militaris) was founded during the crusades, and formed an exclusive so­ciety, in which novices (noble youths, pages, guargune, ar­mor-bearers) and companions (squires, men-at-arms) learned the art of arms under the master (a knight), and followed him to the field, until they had rendered themselves worthy of the honor of knighthood. The ceremony consisted of be-

¹ It often happened that their original vassalage was not removed, even when a family was already in the enjoyment of all the other privileges of the minis­terial nobles, but it was only in law questions that the real rank of these aristo­crats was brought into notice. Hullmann has collected several cases of this kinding invested with the weapons sacred to knighthood, and receiving a stroke with the flat of the sword, which was deemed the highest honor that even a sovereign could at­tain. The youthful knight, in sign of devoting himself to the service of God, prepared himself like a priest by fasting and watching (over his arms at night) for the solemnity, and, robed in white, swore, before the altar, ever to speak the truth, to defend right, religion, and her servants, to pro­tect widows, orphans, and innocence, and to fight against the infidels. Besides these general duties, each knight im­posed upon himself the private one of fighting in honor of his mistress or his wife, bore her favorite color and her token, and used her name as his war-cry.

The institution of knighthood was the result of the an­cient heroic spirit of our pagan forefathers, sanctified by that of Christianity. The chivalric school of arms was an imitation of the ancient warlike fraternities, in which per­sonal bravery and unflinching courage were, as in chivalry, necessary in the warrior. The ancient spirit of the people might be traced even in the lawless insolence of the wild robber knights and ruffians. It was this spirit that inspired these bold and venturesome knights with such profound con­tempt for all law save sword-law, according to the motto of that wildest of knights, Count Eberhard von Wurtemberg: “The friend of God and foe of all mankind!” Like to a race of royal eagles, they built their eyries on the summits of the rocks, and looked down with proud contempt on the laborious dwellers in the vale. It was the same spirit that drove them to the mountain-tops, there to erect their lordly castles, and thence to rule the plain, that in olden time caused mountains to be selected for the abode of kings and the seat of gods. The hardy habits of these mountain knights, life and continual exercise in the open air, the ob­jects by which they were surrounded, the sunny height, the forest shade, the rushing stream, the flowery mead, also fos­tered in their bosoms that love of nature with which the German in days of yore was so strongly imbued, and tuned the poet’s soul.

The courts of the emperor and of the princes naturally became the centers of chivalry. It was in these courts, to which the assemblage of knights lent splendor, that they sought to earn distinction by deeds of prowess in honor of their dames, and acquired all the accomplishments of the day. Wherever a prince proclaimed a tournament the knights poured in crowds to the spot. A herald or king-at- arms examined their genealogies and right of admission to the noble pastime. After the usual forms, the tourna­ment began in the presence of the princes, of the ladies, by whom the prize was bestowed, and of an innumerable crowd composed of every class. The advantage of ground, light, and sun was rendered as equal as possible. The weapons also were alike. A tournament generally signified a mimic fight, of which there were several kinds, on foot and on horseback, merely with the sword and the lance. The prin­cipal part of the tournament was the tilting or breaking of lances, by which the prowess of the knights was proved. The knights and their horses were clothed cap-à-pie in mail, and ran against each other with long heavy lances. The one who bore the fearful blow without being unseated, and cast his opponent to the ground, was declared victor. This dangerous sport often proved fatal. Each knight bore his arms. Each of the nations of Germany had originally two colors, into which the shield was divided, or one was the ground-color and the other that of the figure represented upon it. These colors were the same in every family be­longing to the same nation, the figures alone varying. The French shields were white and red, those of the Swabians red and yellow, those of Bavaria white and blue, those of Saxony black and white. The hereditary offices of the em­pire and the free imperial towns assumed the colors of the reigning dynasty. The rapid succession of different reign­ing families, the intermixture and exchange of feudal posses­sions, had, it is true, been productive of great confusion in the ancient colors of the four principal nations of Germany. The greatest variety reigned in the symbols, each family having its own peculiar sign; and some individuals again made choice of particular ones, as, for instance, Henry the Welf, the lion, Albrecht of Brandenburg, the bear. It must further be remarked that the names of families with the ad­dition “von” was originally no sign of nobility of birth, every peasant having a right to add to his name that of his birth­place or place of abode.

It was at the courts that the knights also learned to carry the feeling of honor to a high degree of refinement, and to practice the customs of chivalry. There it was that tjiey smoothed down the rough, coarse manners that had accom­panied them from their villages, that bloodthirsty cruelty was checked, and the difficult art of honor fostered and cul­tivated to an incredible excess, with the same assiduous en­thusiasm with which the Germans, at that period, pursued every object regarded by them as sacred. When at length the spirit had vanished that once animated the noble to deed of chivalry, the dead form of honor alone remained in the corrupt system of dueling, and in the foolish prejudices allied with birth and station.

The service of the fair formed an essential part of courtly and knightly customs. It originated in the reverence paid during pagan times to women, was ennobled by Christian­ity, and, in conformity with the rules of art and manners practiced in the courtly circle, admitted into the code of honor. To insult or injure a woman was against the laws of chivalry, for honor imposed upon the strong the defense and care of the weak. W oman, the ideal of beauty, gentle­ness, and love, inflamed each knightly bosom with a desire to serve her, to perform great deeds at her bidding or in her name, to worship her as a protecting divinity or a saint, to conquer or to die under her colors; and this submission to the gentle yoke of women, bred in humility and religion, chiefly contributed to civilize and humanize the manners of the age. The knight of renowned courage and an adept in the rules of honor was likewise required to understand the rules of female society, the service of the fair, courtship or the service of love, before he could secure the reward of love, the heart and hand of his beloved. Love became an art, a knightly study. The rules of love were recorded in verse and in song, and applied with the greatest minuteness to every case. There were also courts of love composed of select women and knightly poets, who gave their judgment with extraordinary sagacity on every question of love. This art was in romantic countries termed gallantry, a term now merely indicative of the empty, vain shadow of the ancient reality. The difference is so great that the term gallantry, which at that period signified modesty and virtue, now sig­nifies immodesty and vice. Fidelity was the very essence of true love. And the practice of chastity and continence bestowed those blessings of health and strength on the gen­erations of that period, which the license of later ages, like rust upon iron, could alone destroy.

CLXVI.

The Chivalric Poetry of Swabia

The chivalric poetry of Swabia flourished from the com­mencement of the twelfth until that of the fourteenth cent­ury. The poets sang to the harp, the favorite instrument during the Middle Ages. The violin or fiddle appears to have also come into use at an early period, the singers being termed harpers or fiddlers. Poetry, of whatever description, was generally in rhythm, an ancient German invention, and peculiar to the German language, it having been unknown to the more ancient nations, the Greeks and the Romans, and being adopted from the German by the Italians of more modern date. By the meter the shortness or length of the vowel was merely marked; rhythm, on the contrary, marked the difference between the vowels, and added the charm of harmony, thus converting the monotonous rise and fall of one tone into a language varied as the tones of music. Rhythm introduced a higher species of poetry, and added richness and expression to language.

Minnelieder, or love songs, were of high antiquity in Germany. We find, in the time of Louis the Pious, that the German nuns sang Winlieder (Win, friend), which were forbidden as too worldly by that pious emperor. In the days of chivalry the sun of love once more rose upon Swabia, and awoke thousands of flowers, a world full of songs of love, which have been handed down to us by hun­dreds of poets. The joy of the heart is in these songs com­pared to spring; pain, to winter. They are full of beautiful comparisons. They are themselves flowers, their roots the heart, their sun love, their atmosphere fate. The preserva­tion of the most beautiful of the Minnelieder is due to the noble knight, Rudiger Maness von Manek, a citizen of Zu­rich, who, about the year 1300, assiduously collected them into a manuscript enriched with pictures. This collection was left at Paris by mistake in 1815. Another valuable col­lection of Minnelieder is to be seen at Jena, a smaller one at Heidelberg. Among the Minnesingers were several princes, among whom the Hohenstaufen chiefly distin­guished themselves; the emperor Frederick II, Manfred, and Enzio always used the Italian language; Minnelieder, in the German tongue, of the emperors Henry VI. and Con­rad of Swabia, are still extant, besides some composed by Wenzel, king of Bohemia, Henry, duke of Breslau, Henry, duke of Anhalt, John, duke of Brabant, Henry, Margrave of Misnia, Otto, Margrave of Brandenburg, etc. The finest and greatest number of Minnelieder were the work of Swabian nobles of lesser degree, the most distinguished among whom was Walther von der Vogelweide, who sang not only of love, but of national glory, and of the corrup­tion that began to prevail in the church and state. Next to him came Reinmar von Zweter. The most ardent admirers of the sex were Ulrich von Lichtenstein (who, attired as “Dame Venus,” traveled from Venice into Bohemia, chal­lenging every knight to single combat), and Henry Frauen- lob of Mayence, who was borne to his grave by the most beautiful of the women of that city, and wine was poured over his tomb. Hartmann von Owe was the finest of the pastoral poets.

An anonymous poet of the twelfth century blended the finest of the old ancestral legends of the Franconians, Bur­gundians, and Goths, bearing reference to Saxony, Swabia, and Bavaria, into one great epic poem, that carries us back to the time of Attila (Etzel), and in the description of the different races and of their heroes borrows many traits from later history, and softens the gloom and cruelty of pagan times by tingeing the whole with the brighter spirit of chiv­alry and Christianity. This most extraordinary of all Ger­man poems is the song of the Nibelungen, which has been with justice said to figure in German poetry as the epic poem of Homer does in that of Greece. The general idea of the Nibelungenlied is similar with that of the Edda, nor is the resemblance fortuitous. The fate of the ancient heroic age was fixed beforehand; it was to be fulfilled by the universal struggle caused by the migrations, and the new and milder age promised in the Edda after the conflagration of the world was to commence with the Christian era, and under the wise legislation of Theodoric the Great. The composer of the Nibelungenlied took a similar view of ancient times. He assembles all the German heroes at Etzel’s court, and de­stroys them all, together with the empire of the Huns, in one immense conflict, whence Dietrich von Bern (Verona) alone issues victorious and becomes the founder of a new era.

The histories of Henry IV, of the Saxon war, and of Frederick Barbarossa (Gunther Ligurinus), written in Latin verse, are imitations of the ancient Roman poets. The fol­lowing heroic legends, written in German rhythm, bear more resemblance in their tone and spirit to the ancient book of heroes: the legend, of Duke Ernest of Swabia, written by Henry von Veldek and others, the wondrous histories of Henry the Lion, Louis of Thuringia, Frederick of Swabia, Frederick the Quarrelsome, Godfred of Bouillon, etc., and many other ancestral legends of both the princes and lower aristocracy.

To these may be added the chronicles written in rhythm of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which histori­cal facts intermingle with legendary tales.

The poetry of Germany became gradually influenced by the taste prevalent throughout Europe. The orders of knight­hood embraced the whole of the Christian aristocracy of Eu­rope, without distinction of nation or of language, and the conquest of the Holy Sepulcher united them in one common object, and brought them into contact. They became ac­quainted with the manners and customs of the East, studied the poets of Greece and Rome, and the fantastic magic tales of Araby. A new species of poetry, full of warmth and life, replaced the old popular legends; a similar spirit animated the poets of Germany and Italy, who mutually borrowed from each other. German romance, however, bore away the palm, and surpassed that of rival nations both in com­pass and depth.

In the twelfth century, the legends of Greece and Rome began to be interwoven with those of Germany, and gave birth to the chronicle of the emperors, which was written in verse. This and other chronicles of the same period are a complete medley of ancient legends and classical stories. Lamprecht’s Life of Alexander the Great is, on the other hand, remarkable for beauty and simplicity, but the tone was first given to German romance by Henry von Veldek, in the reign of Barbarossa, the splendor of whose court he has described in his free translation of the Aeneid. He was followed by several others of the same school. The foreign legends of King Arthur of the round table, etc., were also borrowed and successfully imitated. These poems, still breathing the spirit of those chivalric times, are in them­selves a golden key to the Middle Ages.

In the thirteenth century, Reinecke Fuchs, a satire writ­ten by Willem de Matoc in the Netherlands, offered a strong contrast with this chivalric poetry, and ridiculed the policy of the courts and of the great with surpassing wit. The materials from which this fable was composed belong to a still earlier date, and appear to have formerly served as satires upon political life.

The knights, assembled at the different courts, emulated each other in feats of arms or in song. The German legen­dary bards, in particular, opposed, as national poets, those of the holy “Graal,” or universal ones. Hermann, Land­grave of Thuringia, assembled the most renowned poets of the age of either party in the Wartburg, where a prize was to be contested. Among the number were Henry von Vel­dek, Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschen- bach, Bitterolf, Reinhard von Zwetzen, Henry von Ofter­dingen. They first tried each other’s wit, by proposing enigmas and ingenious questions. Henry von Ofterdingen sang in praise of Leopold, duke of Austria, and Wolfram von Eschenbach in that of the Landgrave Hermann. The contest, without doubt, aroused bitter feelings; these two bards had been the most redoubtable champions of German legendary poetry and of that of the holy Graal, and the fend carried on during those times between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines is visible even in their songs. This is seen in the names of the German-Rhenish Nibelungen, and of the Italian-Gothic Wolfinger, Welfs; and a poem of Henry von Ofterdingen, the Little Rose-garden, clearly favors the Wolfinger (Welfs or Guelphs). According to the story, the contest between Wolfram and Henry became at length one of life and death, and the headsman stood in readiness to decapitate the discomfited singer. Eschenbach’s metallic notes were victorious, and Henry von Ofterdingen fled for protection to the Landgravine Sophia, who covered him with her mantle and saved his life. He received permis­sion to visit Hungary and bring thence to his assistance the celebrated bard and magician, Clingsor, to whose art and influence at court he afterward owed his life. This scene took place, in 1207, in the great hall in the Wartburg, which is still standing.

The pipers and musicians were distinct from the knightly bards, and exercised their art merely at festivals and dances. They traveled about in small bands. They also formed a particular guild or society, that spread throughout the whole empire; the counts of Rappoltstein in Alsace, who were their hereditary governors, were termed the piper-kings, and, adorned with a golden crown, annually held a great court of justice, the pipers’ court, to which all the musicians in Europe brought their complaints.

CLXVII.

 The Cities

The cities had, from an insignificant origin, risen to a height of power that enabled them to defy the authority of the sovereign, and to become the most powerful support of the empire. Increasing civilization had produced numerous wants, which commerce and industry could alone supply. The people, moreover, oppressed by the feudal system in the country, sheltered themselves beneath the aegis of the city corporations. The artisans, although originally serfs, were always free. In many cities the air bestowed freedom; who­ever dwelt within their walls could not be reduced to a state of vassalage, and was instantly affranchised, although for­merly a serf when dwelling beyond the walls. In the thir­teenth century, every town throughout Flanders enjoyed this privilege. It was only in the villages that fell, at a later period, under the jurisdiction of the towns that the peasants still remained in a state of vassalage. The emperors, who beheld in the independence and power of the cities a defense against the princes and the popes, readily bestowed great privileges upon them, and released them from the jurisdic­tion of the lords of the country, the bishops and the impe­rial governors. The cities often asserted their own inde­pendence, the power of a bishop being unable to cope with that of a numerous and high-spirited body of citizens. They also increased their extent at the expense of the provincial nobility, by throwing down their castles, by taking their serfs as Pfahlbiirger (suburbans), or by purchasing their lands.

The imperial free cities had the right of prescribing their own laws, which were merely ratified by the emperor. The sovereign princes of the country at first projected laws in favor of the citizens, as, for instance, the Zahringer, the civic legislature of Freiburg in the eleventh century, and Henry the Lion, that of Lubeck. The celebrated civic laws of Soest date from the twelfth century. These were followed by those of Stade, earlier than 1204; those of Schwerin, in 1222; of Brunswick, in 1232; and by those of Muhlhausen, Hamburg, Augsburg, Celle, Erfurt, Ratisbon, etc. To the right of legislation was added that of independent jurisdic­tion, which was denoted by the pillars, known as Roland’s pillars, and by the red towers. The red flag was the sign of penal judicature, and red towers were used as prisons for criminals; and as the practice of torture became more gen­eral in criminal cases, torture, famine, witch, and heretic towers were erected in almost every town. The  management of the town affairs was at length entirely intrusted to the council, which originally consisted of the sheriffs headed by a mayor, but was afterward chiefly composed of mem­bers elected from the different parishes, and was at length compelled to admit among its number the presidents of the various guilds; and the mayor, the president of the ancient burgesses, was, consequently, replaced by the burgomaster, or president of the guilds. The right of self-government was denoted by the bell on the town or council house, in the Middle Ages the greatest pride of the provincial cities, which had gained independence.

The annual election of all the city officers was an almost general regulation, and by this means the communes, at first the aristocratic burgesses, and afterward the democratic guilds, always controlled the affairs of the town. At a later period, the most powerful party attempted to render their dignities hereditary, and revolutions repeatedly ensued in consequence. All the citizens were freemen, bore arms, and could attain knighthood. The burgesses formed chivalric guilds according to families, as the Overstolzen at Cologne, the Zoren and Muhlheimer at Strasburg; or free associations, as, for instance, the Lilien-Vente, in Bruns­wick, which numbered four hundred and two knights.

Many of the cities were invested with royal privileges, such as minting and levying customs. All possessed the right of holding large markets, which the country people were obliged to attend. On this account, artisans were not permitted to reside in the villages, but were compelled to take up their abode according to their craft in the cities. Several of the towns had also staple laws, that is, all mer­chants passing through them or along the river on which they were built, were compelled to stop and to expose their goods for sale for some time within their walls. It was also settled that all great festivals and assemblies should be held in the cities.

The great burgesses in the cities were on an equality with the provincial nobility, with whom they continually intermarried; consequently, many of the citizens possessed castles in the province, or the knights, who inhabited the castles, had a right of citizenship. The interest of the nobility was, however, opposed to that of the cities, which they molested either in order to serve the prince, or on their own account, and the great burgesses were compelled to declare for one party. In the cities of Southern Germany, their inclination in favor of the aristocracy and of the princes generally terminated in their expulsion from the city. In the North of Germany, they were animated with a more civic spirit, placed themselves at the head of the populace, and in strong opposition to the nobility, by which means they more firmly secured their authority. As time passed on, the numbers of the artisans, divided into guilds according to the craft they followed, increased to an enormous extent, while that of the great burgess families gradually dimin­ished, numbers of them becoming extinct. As the aid of the artisans was indispensable for carrying on the feuds between the burgher families of different cities, they were compelled to grant them a part of the profit gained in trade, hence it naturally followed that the guilds ere long grasped at greater privileges, and formed a democratic party, which aimed at wresting the management of the town business out of the hands of the aristocratic burghers.

The corporations corresponded with the ancient German guilds. The artisan entered as an apprentice, became part­ner, and finally master. The apprentice, like the knightly squire, was obliged to travel. The completion of a master­piece was required before he could become a master. Ille­gitimate birth and immorality excluded the artisan from the guild. Each guild was strictly superintended by a tribune. Every member of a guild was assisted when in need by the society. Every disagreement between the members was put a stop to, as injurious to the whole body. The members of one corporation generally dwelt in one particular street, had their common station in the market, their distinguishing colors, and a part assigned to them in guarding the city, etc. These guilds chiefly conduced to bring art and handi­craft to perfection. The apprentice returned from his travels with a stock of experience and knowledge he could not have acquired at home. The guilds of different cities had little connection with each other beyond housing their brother craftsmen on their arrival in a strange city, and by the general similarity in their rules of art and in their corpora­tive regulations. The mercantile guilds were an exception, and formed the great Hansa league in which several cities were included. The society of Freemasons, whose art called them to different parts of the world, were also closely united. They were divided, according to the four quarters of the heavens, into four classes, each of which had a particular place of assembly, symbolically termed a lodge, where the masters met, for the purpose of deliberating over the mode in which any great architectural design was to be executed, of laying down rules, and of giving directions in matters relating to art or to the corporation, of nominating new masters, etc. The four great lodges were at Cologne, Stras­burg, Vienna, and Zurich.

The princes, bishops, and aristocracy, as well as, gen­erally speaking, the great burgher families, dreaded the rising power of the guilds, and sought to annihilate it by violence. The emperor, on the contrary, favored them from prudential motives. Favor and disgrace were equally ineffectual; the power possessed by the guilds made its own way. The burghers, few in number, and disdaining the co­operation of the other ancient burgesses of ignoble descent, could not withstand the immense numerical strength of the artisans. Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Strasburg, could each raise a body of twenty thousand able-bodied citizens and suburbans. At Louvain, the weavers’ guild alone num­bered four thousand masters and fifteen thousand appren­tices. Revolts before long broke out in all the cities. The guilds were sometimes victorious, and drove the burghers from the towns, or incorporated them with their guilds; sometimes the burghers succeeded in defending themselves for some time, with the aid of their partisans and of the neighboring nobility. The emperor sometimes attempted to arbitrate between the contending parties, or peace was brought about by the neighboring cities. These events gave rise to constitutions varying from each other in the different cities, in some of which the burghers retained the shadow of their former authority, and in others were utterly pushed aside and a new council was formed, consisting of the heads of each corporation. The whole of the citizens were, conse­quently, divided into corporations, and the lesser and less numerous craftsmen of different kinds united into one body. But, as the son generally followed his father’s business, and, consequently, succeeded him in his guild, particular families retained possession of the presidency of the guild, and often formed a new order of patricians, which, whenever it seemed likely to endanger the liberties of the citizens, was associated with a civic committee. The former, in-that case, was termed the little council, and exercised the executive power according to prescribed rules; the latter, the great council, which had the legislative power, and called the little one to account.

The guilds first rose to power in the cities of Southern Germany; at Basel and Ulm, in the thirteenth century. In Northern Germany, the burghers maintained their power by means of the commercial league, which was chiefly between themselves. The democratic reaction in the North took place as the power of the Hansa declined, and during the general struggle for liberty at the time of the first reformation.

German commerce flourished in the Northern Ocean ear­lier than in the Baltic, which, until the twelfth century, was infested by Scandinavian and Slavonian pirates. Flanders far surpassed the other countries of Germany in her munici­pal privileges, art, and industry, possessed the first great commercial navy, and founded the first great commercial league or Hansa, in the twelfth century.

This example, the final subjection of the Wends on the Baltic, and the crusades, greatly increased the activity of commerce in the thirteenth century on the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Baltic. The crusades were undertaken from a mer­cantile as well as a religious point of view. In the East, the merchant pilgrims formed themselves into the German or­ders of knighthood, and, on their return to their native coun­try, leagued together, in 1241, for the purpose of defending their rights against the native princes, and their commerce against the attacks of the foreigner.

This Hansa league extended to such a degree in the thir­teenth and fourteenth centuries as sometimes to include up­ward of seventy cities; its fleets ruled the Northern Ocean, conquered entire countries, and reduced powerful sovereigns to submission. The union that existed between the cities was, nevertheless, far from firmly cemented, and the whole of its immense force was, from want of unanimity, seldom brought to bear at once upon its enemies. A single attempt would have placed the whole of Northern Germany within its power, had the policy of the citizens been other than mer­cantile, and had they not been merely intent upon forcing the temporal and spiritual lords to trade with them upon the most favorable conditions.

All the cities included in the league sent their represen­tatives to the Hanse diet at Lubeck, where the archive was kept. The leagued cities were, at a later period, divided into three and afterward into four quarters or circles, each of which had its particular metropolis, and specially elected aidermen. In the fifteenth century they stood as follows: First, The Wendian cities, Lubeck (the metropolis of the whole league, where the directory of the Hansa, the general archive and treasury, were kept, where the great Hanse diets were held by the deputies from all the Hanse towns, in which they took into deliberation commercial speculations, the arming of fleets, peace and war), Hamburg, Bremen, Wismar, Rostock, Kiel, Greifswald, Stralsund, Luneberg, Stettin, Colberg, Wisby (celebrated for giving the maritime laws, the “Wisbyska watter-recht,” to the Hansa) in Gothland, etc Second, The Western cities, Cologne, with the Dutch towns of Nimwegen, Stavern, Groningen, Dor- trecht, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Maestricht, Emden, Zutphen, etc., with Westphalian Soest, Osnabruck, Dortmund, Duis­burg, Munster, Wesel, Minden, Paderborn, etc. Third, The Saxon cities, Brunswick, Magdeburg, Halle, Hildesheim, Goslar, Gottingen, Eimbeck, Hanover, Hameln, Stade, Hal­berstadt, Quedlinburg, Aschersleben, Erfurt, Nordhausen, Muhlhausen, Zerbst, Stendal, Brandenburg, Frankfort on the Oder, Breslau, etc. Fourth, The Eastern cities, Dantzig (from Danskewik, Danish place, having been first founded by the Danes), Thorn, Elbing, Konigsberg, Culm, Lands­berg, Riga, Reval, Pernau, etc. The German order of Hos­pitalers also sent its representatives to the diet; its close connection with the Hanse towns was partly due to its origin and partly to the position of Prussia, to which those towns sent German colonists and aid of every description, a union between that country and the Germanized mere of Branden­burg being still hindered by Wendian Pomerania and Poland.

Firmly as the Hospitalers and the Hansa were allied, the interests of the two parties were, nevertheless, totally at variance, that of the former being conquest, that of the lat­ter commerce. The cities on the Elbe and Rhine required protection against the German princes; the maritime cities merely applied themselves to commerce. Those on the Bal­tic were continually engaged in disputes with the Flemish, who supported themselves by their manufactures and their alliance with Italy, while the more distant towns on the coast of the Baltic refused to interfere. At Bruges, the Hansa merely possessed a depot for their goods, which passed thence into the hands of the Italians. The Colognese merchants possessed a second great depot as early as 1203, in London, still known as Guildhall, the hall of the mer­chants’ guild of Cologne. At a later period, the Hansa mo­nopolized the whole commerce of England. At Bergen, in Norway, the Hansa possessed a third and extremely remark­able colony, three thousand Hanseatic merchants, masters, and apprentices living there like monks without any women.

The Hanseatic colonists were generally forbidden to marry, lest they should take possession of the country in which they lived and deprive the league of it. The fourth great depot was founded at Novgorod in the north of Russia, in 1277. By it the ancient commercial relations between the coasts of the Baltic and Asia were preserved, and the Hansa traded by land with Asia at first through Riga, but on the expul­sion of the Tartars from Russia and the subjugation of Nov­gorod by the Czars, through Breslau, Erfurt, Magdeburg, and Leipzig. Germany and Europe were thus supplied with spices, silks, jewels, etc., from Asia, with furs, iron, and im­mense quantities of herrings from the North. France prin­cipally traded in salt, while Germany exported beer and wine, corn, linen, and arms; Bohemia, metals and precious stones; and Flanders, fine linen, and cloths of every description.

The ferocity of the Hungarians, Servians, and Wallachians, and the enmity of the Greeks, effectually closed the Danube, the natural outlet for the produce of the interior of Germany toward Asia. The traffic on this stream during the crusades raised Ulm, and, at a later period, Augsburg, to considerable importance. The traffic on the Rhine was far more considerable, notwithstanding the heavy customs levied by the barbarous princes and knights which the Rhen­ish league was annually compelled to oppose and put down by force. Cologne was the grand depot for the whole of the inland commerce. Goods were brought here from every quarter of the globe, and, according to a Hanseatic law, no merchant coming from the West, from France, Flanders, or Spain, was allowed to pass with his goods further than Co­logne; none coming from the East, not even the Dutch, could mount, and none from the upper country descend, the Rhine beyond that city. —The highroads were naturally in a bad state, and infested with toll-gatherers and robbers. The merchants were compelled to purchase a safe-conduct along the worst roads, or to clear them by force of arms. Most of the roads were laid by the merchants with the permission of well-disposed princes. Thus, for instance, the rich burgher, Henry Cunter of Botzen, laid the road across the rocks, until then impassable, on the Eisack, between Botzen and Brixen, in 1304; travelers, up to that period, having been com­pelled to make a wearisome detour through Meran and Jauffen.

The lace and cloth manufactures of the Flemish, which lent increased splendor to the courts, the wealthy, and the high-born, were the first that rose into note, the Hansa being merely occupied with trade and commercial monopoly. Ulm afterward attempted to compete with the Italian manufac­turers; but Nuremberg, on account of her central position, less attracted by foreign commerce, became the first town of manufacturing repute in Germany.

The trade with the rich East, and the silver mines discovered in the tenth century in the Harz, in the twelfth, in the Erz Mountains in Bohemia, brought more money into circulation. The ancient Hohlpfennigs (solidi, shillings), of which there were twenty-two to a pound (and twelve denarii to a shilling), were replaced by the heavy Groschen (solidi grossi), of which there were sixty to a silver mark, and by the albus or white pennies, which varied in value. The working of the Bohemian mines in the fourteenth century brought the broad Prague Groschen into note; they were reckoned by scores, always by sixties, the cardinal number in Bohemia. The smaller copper coins, or Heller —from hohl (hollow), halb (half), or from the imperial free town, Halle—were weighed by the pound, the value of which was two gulden, which at a later period, when silver became more common, rose to three.

The Jews were greatly oppressed during this period. In the cities they were forced to dwell in certain narrow streets that were closed with iron gates at night. They were forbidden to purchase land, or to belong to any corporation. They were chiefly pawnbrokers and usurers, Christians being strictly prohibited by the church from taking interest on money lent.

CLXVIII.

 The Peasantry

In Swabia and Saxony the free communes of peasantry, in the Alps, the Tyrol, Wurtemberg, Friesland, Ditmarsch, and some of less importance in the country around Hadel, Baireuth, and Hall, retained their liberties for the longest period. These communes had been originally either Gaue, districts, or hundreds under the jurisdiction of the counts and centners, and now resembled oases varying in extent, whither liberty had fled from the barren waste of vassalage. The peasants of Friesland and Switzerland, whose power equaled their love of liberty, gained the upper hand in those countries, while, in other countries, where their power was less, they remained unnoted and in obscurity.

Friesland was divided by the Fly (Zuyder See) into Western and Eastern Friesland. The former fell, in 1005, under the counts of Holland, and the attempt to suppress the liberties still proudly upheld by the peasantry proved fatal to more than one of their rulers. The latter enjoyed greater freedom under the bishops of Utrecht, Bremen, and Munster, whose spiritual authority they recognized, but administered their temporal affairs themselves, the interference of the clergy in temporal matters being prohibited by law. The Frieslanders, moreover, disregarded the decree of Gregory VII, concerning the celibacy of the clergy, and compelled their priests to marry for the better maintenance of morality. The ancient and still pagan popular assembly was maintained even in Christian times, or, at all events, was renewed. The different tribes assembled during Whitsuntide, at a place near Aurich, sanctified by three old oaks (the ancient Upstales-boom, tree of high justice), for the purpose of voting laws and of deliberating over the affairs of the country. During war-time, and more especially whenever strange fleets and pirates landed, barrels of pitch were set on fire, the alarm spread rapidly from village to village, and the people rose en masse to defend the coasts. It appears that the Marcellus flood, as it was termed, which laid Friesland waste in 1219, and swallowed up whole villages, occasioned the reinstitution of the ancient meeting at the Upstales-boom, in 1224. The numerous crusades undertaken by the Friscians at this period were partly occasioned by this flood, as the crusaders were accompanied by their wives and children, and were, in reality, emigrants. In 1287, a second and still more de­structive flood overwhelmed Friesland, and fifty thousand men, with their villages and a large portion of the country, sank into the sea, on the spot now occupied by the bay of Dollart. A fresh meeting at the Upstales-boom followed in 1323, in which the older laws of the country were formed into a general code. The separate tribes among the Friscians were independent freemen, as in the ancient days of Germany. They annually elected a judge (Rediewa), and a Talemann whose office it was to restrain the power of the former. Each of these tribes had its own laws, which were perfectly similar to those of ancient Germany. The most important of these are the Hunsingoer provincial law, the Rustringer Asegabook, and the Brokmer Briefs. The whole of the laws were popular resolutions; “so will the Brockmen, so have the people decided,” were the simple words annexed to them. The common salutation between the people was, “Eala fria Fresena!” “Hail, free Friscian!” Nobility and stone houses came into vogue among them at a very late period.

In the rest of the countries of Germany, the peasantry were chiefly in a state of servitude. In the ancient Gaue, the Graf no longer stood at the head of free-born men and equals. He still exercised the penal judicature, the highest office of a judge, and bore the banner, the highest command during war; but these offices had become hereditary in hi3 family. He was, moreover, lord over his ministeriales, who rendered him personal service; the protector of the few free and independent inhabitants of the Gau, who paid a tribute for the protection granted; the manorial and feudal lord of the vassals (peasants who kept horses, and instead of paying ground-rent to their lord rendered him average service), and proprietor of the serfs. A governor or mayor was placed over the peasantry in the separate villages. Their local customs were, at a later period, sometimes termed village regulations, village rights, and were laid down by the peasantry themselves. In criminal matters, the punishments for the serfs were of a more disgraceful nature than those for the free-born. The ringleaders of mobs were so called, owing to their being condemned to carry a ring or wheel into the neighboring country, where they were put to death. The German, generally speaking, preserved, even in servitude, more personal honor than the Slavonian; the peasants in Western Germany were in consequence more harassed with dues, while those in the Eastern provinces suffered a greater degree of personal ill-treatment. The former consequently possessed a certain degree of mental cultivation, nay, literature. The finest of the popular ballads were translated into the country dialect, and well known by every peasant, and numbers of legends and songs forgotten by the upper classes became traditional among the peasantry.—Heavy imposts and dues were levied at an early period. The nobles, more particularly since the crusades, appear to have become more luxurious, and, naturally, more needy. Several extraordinary customs, among others the jus primae noctis, from which a conclusion has been drawn of the degraded state of the peasantry, have been greatly misunderstood; the honor of the female serfs was guarded by the laws, and, in Lombardy, a woman whose chastity was violated by the lord of the demesne was instantly affranchised together with her husband, who thus acquired a right to revenge his injured honor. The misery of the peasantry was by no means so great during the Middle Ages as it became after the great peasant war in 1525.

The division of the ancient free nation into different classes with opposite views and interests, and particularly the subordination of the peasantry to petty village proprietors, had in general a most pernicious effect, and chiefly contributed, since the fall of the Hohenstaufen, to lower the high spirit and national pride of the German. The parish priest belonged to the universal Christian church, the knight to the universal European aristocracy, the citizen was solely intent on his mercantile affairs, and the cities were, like islets on the deep, distinct spots on the surface of the land; these upper classes as ill replaced the ancient and great order of free peasantry, as did their energy and civilization the na­tional vigor they had lost; and to this may justly be ascribed the misfortunes and disgrace with which the empire was subsequently overwhelmed.

CLXIX.

The Liberal Sciences

The emancipation of the sciences was fast approaching. The knowledge spread by the crusades had given rise to a general spirit of investigation and research. The monastic academies were placed on a more extensive footing, and transformed into universities. In Paris, independent of Borne, theology was particularly studied. Hence spread the Italian heresy of the pupils of Abelard, of Arnold of Brescia, and here was the birthplace of German mysticism, Hugh von Blankenburg being a professor in the Paris university, and abbot of the French monastery of St. Victoire. At Bologna, a school of law for the study of the resuscitated Boman law was formed, under the auspices of the Hohenstaufen, by the great law professor, Irnerius, and thus was laid the foundation to all the jurisprudence of later ages. At Salerno, the first celebrated school of medicine was founded. The medical science of the Arabs and Greeks was, after the crusades, also adopted by this school.

The study of the sciences and the university system were first introduced into Germany during the fourteenth century. Until then, Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, and Albertus Magnus, formed the ideal of German erudition.

The historiographers, chiefly clergy, by whom the ancient Latin chronicles were continued, were extremely numerous. Besides Wippo, who wrote a biography of Conrad II, the most celebrated among them were, Hermannus Contractus, 1054, who was a lame Swabian count and afterward a monk at Reichenau; Marianus Scotus, a Scotchman by birth, and monk at Fulda, who, the legend relates, read and wrote by the light of his own finger; Adelbold, bishop of Utrecht, the author of the biography of Henry III. Henry IV and his times have found many commentators, who generally wrote in a party spirit. The historians who favored the emperor were Waltram, Conrad of Utrecht, Benno of Misnia; those in favor of the pope, Hugo Blank and Deodatus, two German cardinals, Berthold of Constance, and the monk Bruno. The most veracious history of Gregory VII. was written by Paul Bernried. Some of the universal historians of this time acquired greater fame. Lambert of Aschaffen­burg wrote an excellent German history in Latin, the style of which is superior to that of his predecessors. Sigebert de Gemblours, in 1112, besides a violent attack upon the emperor, Henry IV, wrote a Universal Chronicle. Hepidanus wrote the Alemannic Annals; Eckhart, a History of St. Gall. Numerous chronicles of Quedlinburg, Hamersleben, Hildesheim, also belong to this period. The celebrated Adam von Bremen (1076) is the most valuable writer of that age in reference to the histories of the northern archbishoprics, and of the pagan North. To him succeeded Wibald, chancellor to the emperor Lothar, and Frederick Barbarossa’s embassador at Constantinople. He was poi­soned in Paphlagonia, in 1158, and left four hundred let­ters. Otto, bishop of Freysingen, the son of Leopold, Margrave of Austria, and stepbrother to the emperor, Conrad III, died in the same year after gaining great fame and left, besides a Universal Chronicle, a Biography of Barbarossa, and a History, since lost, of the House of Babenberg. Gunther, an Alsatian monk, wrote, in Latin verse, the exploits of Barbarossa in Upper Italy (Liguria), whence he received the surname of Ligurinus. Barbarossa’s deeds were also celebrated by Radewich, a canon of Freysingen. Godfred di Viterbo, who lived during his youth at Bamberg, and was probably a German, wrote a Universal Chronicle, up to the year 1186; another was written, as far as the reign of Con­rad III., by Honorius von Augst; a third excellent Chroni­cle (Chronica regia S. Pantaleonis) was written by some monks at Cologne; a fourth, that of Magdeburg, by the “Chronographus Saxo”; and another by the monk Ekkehart at Bamberg, or Fulda. The best national and provincial historians were Cosmas, a deacon at Prague, who wrote a History of Bohemia, prior to 1125; Helmold, a priest at Bosow, near Lubeck, a celebrated Chronicle of the Slavonians, prior to 1170; an anonymous monk at Weingarten, the Chronicle of the Welfs; Conrad, abbot of Moelk, a Chronicle of Austria; there were besides chronicles of the monastery of Muri in Switzerland, of Pegau in the Lausitz, of Liege, the Annals of Hildesheim, and other monastic chronicles of lesser importance.

In the thirteenth century, Oliverius, canon of Paderborn —who undertook a crusade against the Albigenses, accompanied another to Jerusalem, and, in 1227, died a cardinal —wrote a history of the Holy Land, and an account of the siege of Damietta. In 1226, Burchard of Biberach added a continuation to Ekkehart’s Chronicle. Conrad von Lichtenau, abbot of Ursperg in 1240, wrote a great Universal Chronicle, the celebrated Chronicon Urspergense; another was written about the same time by a monk of Neumunster near Liege; a third by Albrecht von Stade, abbot of the same monastery prior to 1260. A celebrated Chronicle of the Popes and Emperors was written by Martinus Polonus, of Troppau in Silesia, in 1278. The Letters, Conversa­tions, and Controversial Writings of Frederick II., and his Chancellor, Peter de Vineis, and the History of the English­man, Matthseus Paris, particularly concerning Frederick II, are of great historical value. An ancient Erfurt Chronicle, the Chronicon Schirense, by the prior Conrad von Scheyern, contains much interesting matter, besides several other lesser chronicles, those of Halberstadt, Lorch and Passau, St. Grail, Mayence, the Friscian Chronica, b. Emmonis et Manconis, etc.

The historians of the fourteenth century partly wrote chronicles in the spirit of the past age, as, for instance, Henry (Stero), a monk of Altaich, Sigfried, presbyter of Misnia, Matthias von Neuenburg, and Albert of Strasburg, partly learned collections, such as the Cosmodromium of Gobelinus Persona, deacon of Birkenfeld in Paderborn, in 1420, and the work de Temporibus Memorabilibus of Henry of Herford, who became a professor at Erfurt. Besides the Annals of Colmar, and those of Henry von Kebdorf, as well as the Ecclesiastical History of Henry von Diessenhofen, some of the city and provincial chronicles are in part excellent. These chronicles, as soon as the citizens took up the pen, were written in German; those written by the clergy are, without exception, in Latin. The most celebrated of the German writers were: Ottocar von Horneck, who composed a History of Austria in verse, which reached as far as 1309; Peter Suchenwirth of Austria, the author of ballads, in which he hands down to posterity the exploits of the heroes of his time; Ernst von Kirchberg, author of the Mecklen­burg Chronicle, written in verse; Albrecht von Bardewich, of the Lubeck Stades Chronicle; Closener, of that of Strasburg; Koenigshoven, of that of Alsace up to 1386; Kiedesel, of that of Hesse; and Gensbein, of that of Limburg, finally the Chronicle of the sheriffs of Magdeburg. In 1326, Peter von Duisburg penned, in Latin, the first History of Prussia, and Liebhold von Northa one of the frontier counts, and a catalogue of the archbishops of Cologne.

The knowledge of geography was greatly increased by the crusades. Some bold adventurers penetrated, even at that period, into the heart of Asia. The most celebrated travels are those of Marco Polo, the Venetian; but eighteen years earlier, in 1253, a German monk named Kuisbrock, frater Willielmus of the Netherlands, traveled through Great Tartary as far as China, confirmed for the first time the account given by the ancients of the position of the Caspian Sea, and brought the first news of the existence of a native Asiatic people with whom the Germans were related by descent. See the works of Roger Bacon, Bergeron, and Humboldt. William von Baldensleven, a German nobleman and monk, traveled, in 1315, into the Holy Land, and thence into Tartary.