German Culture Past and Present

E >> Ernest Belfort Bax >> German Culture Past and Present

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The priest, especially of the regular orders, was indeed an old foe,
but his offence had now become very rank. From the middle of the
fifteenth century onwards the stream of anti-clerical literature waxes
alike in volume and intensity. The "monk" had become the object of
hatred and scorn throughout the whole lay world. This view of the
"regular" was shared, moreover, by not a few of the secular clergy
themselves. Humanists, who were subsequently ardent champions of the
Church against Luther and the Protestant Reformation--men such as
Murner and Erasmus--had been previously the bitterest satirists of the
"friar" and the "monk." Amongst the great body of the laity, however,
though the religious orders came in perhaps for the greater share of
animosity, the secular priesthood was not much better off in popular
favour, whilst the upper members of the hierarchy were naturally
regarded as the chief blood-suckers of the German people in the
interests of Rome. The vast revenues which both directly in the shape
of _pallium_ (the price of "investiture"), _annates_ (first year's
revenues of appointments), _Peter's-pence_, and recently of
_indulgences_--the latter the by no means most onerous exaction, since
it was voluntary--all these things, taken together with what was
indirectly obtained from Germany, through the expenditure of German
ecclesiastics on their visits to Rome and by the crowd of parasitics,
nominal holders of German benefices merely, but real recipients of
German substance, who danced attendance at the Vatican--obviously
constituted an enormous drain on the resources of the country from all
the lay classes alike, of which wealth the papal chair could be
plainly seen to be the receptacle.

If we add to these causes of discontent the vastness in number of the
regular clergy, the "friars" and "monks" already referred to, who
consumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will be
sufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something very
much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious
reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but
their preachings had taken no deep root. The powerful personality of
the Monk of Wittenberg found an economic soil ready to hand in which
his teachings could fructify, and hence the world-historic result. The
peasant revolts, sporadic the Middle Ages through, had for the
half-century preceding the Reformation been growing in frequency and
importance, but it needed nevertheless the sudden impulse, the
powerful jar given by a Luther in 1517, and the series of blows with
which it was followed during the years immediately succeeding, to
crystallize the mass of fluid discontent and social unrest in its
various forms and give it definite direction. The blow which was
primarily struck in the region of speculative thought and
ecclesiastical relations did not stop there in its effects. The attack
on the dominant theological system--at first merely on certain
comparatively unessential outworks of that system--necessarily of its
own force developed into an attack on the organization representing
it, and on the economic basis of the latter. The battle against
ecclesiastical abuses, again, in its turn, focussed the
ever-smouldering discontent with abuses in general; and this time, not
in one district only, but simultaneously over the whole of Germany.
The movement inaugurated by Luther gave to the peasant groaning under
the weight of baronial oppression, and the small handicraftsman
suffering under his _Ehrbarkeit_, a rallying-point and a rallying cry.

In history there is no movement which starts up full grown from the
brain of any one man, or even from the mind of any one generation of
men, like Athene from the head of Zeus. The historical epoch which
marks the crisis of the given change is, after all, little beyond a
prominent landmark--a parting of the ways--led up to by a long
preparatory development. This is nowhere more clearly illustrated than
in the Reformation and its accompanying movements. The ideas and
aspirations animating the social, political, and intellectual revolt
of the sixteenth century can each be traced back to, at least, the
beginning of the fifteenth century, and in many cases farther still.
The way the German of Luther's time looked at the burning questions of
the hour was not essentially different from the way the English
Wyclifites and Lollards, or the Bohemian Hussites and Taborites viewed
them. There was obviously a difference born of the later time, but
this difference was not, I repeat, essential. The changes which, a
century previously, were only just beginning, had, meanwhile, made
enormous progress.

The disintegration of the material conditions of mediaeval social life
was now approaching its completion, forced on by the inventions and
discoveries of the previous half-century. But the ideals of the mass
of men, learned and simple, were still in the main the ideals that had
been prevalent throughout the whole of the later Middle Ages. Men
still looked at the world and at social progress through mediaeval
spectacles. The chief difference was that now ideas which had
previously been confined to special localities, or had only had a
sporadic existence among the people at large, had become general
throughout large portions of the population. The invention of the art
of printing was, of course, largely instrumental in effecting this
change.

The comparatively sudden popularization of doctrines previously
confined to special circles was the distinguishing feature of the
intellectual life of the first half of the sixteenth century. Among
the many illustrations of the foregoing which might be given, we are
specially concerned here to note the sudden popularity during this
period of two imaginary constitutions dating from early in the
previous century. From the fourteenth century we find traces, perhaps
suggested by the Prester John legend, of a deliverer in the shape of
an emperor who should come from the East, who should be the last of
his name; should right all wrongs; should establish the empire in
universal justice and peace; and, in short, should be the forerunner
of the kingdom of Christ on earth. This notion or mystical hope took
increasing root during the fifteenth century, and is to be found in
many respects embodied in the spurious constitutions mentioned, which
bore respectively the names of the Emperors Sigismund and Friedrich.
It was in this form that the Hussite theories were absorbed by the
German mind. The hopes of the Messianists of the "Holy Roman Empire"
were centred at one time in the Emperor Sigismund. Later on the role
of Messiah was carried over to his successor, Friedrich III, upon whom
the hopes of the German people were cast.

_The Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_, originally written about 1438,
went through several editions before the end of the century, and was
as many times reprinted during the opening years of Luther's movement.
Like its successor, that of Friedrich, the scheme attributed to
Sigismund proposed the abolition of the recent abuses of feudalism, of
the new lawyer class, and of the symptoms already making themselves
felt of the change from barter to money payments. It proposed, in
short, a return to primitive conditions. It was a scheme of reform on
a Biblical basis, embracing many elements of a distinctly communistic
character, as communism was then understood. It was pervaded with the
idea of equality in the spirit of the Taborite literature of the age,
from which it took its origin.

The so-called _Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_ dealt especially with
the peasantry--the serfs and villeins of the time; that attributed to
Friedrich was mainly concerned with the rising population of the
towns. All towns and communes were to undergo a constitutional
transformation. Handicraftsmen should receive just wages; all roads
should be free; taxes, dues, and levies should be abolished; trading
capital was to be limited to a maximum of 10,000 _gulden_; all
surplus capital should fall to the Imperial authorities, who should
lend it in case of need to poor handicraftsmen at 5 per cent.;
uniformity of coinage and of weights and measures was to be decreed,
together with the abolition of the Roman and Canon law. Legists,
priests, and princes were to be severely dealt with. But, curiously
enough, the middle and lower nobility, especially the knighthood, were
more tenderly handled, being treated as themselves victims of their
feudal superiors, lay and ecclesiastic, especially the latter. In this
connection the secularization of ecclesiastical fiefs was strongly
insisted on.

As men found, however, that neither the Emperor Sigismund, nor the
Emperor Friedrich III, nor the Emperor Maximilian, upon each of whom
successively their hopes had been cast as the possible realization of
the German Messiah of earlier dreams, fulfilled their expectations,
nay, as each in succession implicitly belied these hopes, showing no
disposition whatever to act up to the views promulgated in their
names, the tradition of the Imperial deliverer gradually lost its
force and popularity. By the opening of the Lutheran Reformation the
opinion had become general that a change would not come from above,
but that the initiative must rest with the people themselves--with the
classes specially oppressed by existing conditions, political,
economic, and ecclesiastical--to effect by their own exertions such a
transformation as was shadowed forth in the spurious constitutions.
These, and similar ideas, were now everywhere taken up and elaborated,
often in a still more radical sense than the original; and they
everywhere found hearers and adherents.

The "true inwardness" of the change, of which the Protestant
Reformation represented the ideological side, meant the transformation
of society from a basis mainly corporative and co-operative to one
individualistic in its essential character. The whole polity of the
Middle Ages industrial, social, political, ecclesiastical, was based
on the principle of the group or the community--ranging in
hierarchical order from the trade-guild to the town corporation; from
the town corporation through the feudal orders to the Imperial throne
itself; from the single monastery to the order as a whole; and from
the order as a whole to the complete hierarchy of the Church as
represented by the papal chair. The principle of this social
organization was now breaking down. The modern and bourgeois
conception of the autonomy of the individual in all spheres of life
was beginning to affirm itself.

The most definite expression of this new principle asserted itself in
the religious sphere. The individualism which was inherent in early
Christianity, but which was present as a speculative content merely,
had not been strong enough to counteract even the remains of corporate
tendencies on the material side of things, in the decadent Roman
Empire; and infinitely less so the vigorous group-organization and
sentiment of the northern nations, with their tribal society and
communistic traditions still mainly intact. And these were the
elements out of which mediaeval society arose. Naturally enough the new
religious tendencies in revolt against the mediaeval corporate
Christianity of the Catholic Church seized upon this individualistic
element in Christianity, declaring the chief end of religion to be a
personal salvation, for the attainment of which the individual himself
was sufficing, apart from Church organization and Church tradition.
This served as a valuable destructive weapon for the iconoclasts in
their attack on ecclesiastical privilege; consequently, in religion,
this doctrine of Individualism rapidly made headway. But in more
material matters the old corporative instinct was still too strong and
the conditions were as yet too imperfectly ripe for the speedy triumph
of Individualism.

The conflict of the two tendencies is curiously exhibited in the popular
movements of the Reformation-time. As enemies of the decaying and
obstructive forms of Feudalism and Church organization, the peasant and
handicraftsman were necessarily on the side of the new Individualism. So
far as negation and destruction were concerned, they were working
apparently for the new order of things--that new order of things which
_longo intervallo_ has finally landed us in the developed capitalistic
Individualism of the twentieth century. Yet when we come to consider
their constructive programmes we find the positive demands put forward
are based either on ideal conceptions derived from reminiscences of
primitive communism, or else that they distinctly postulate a return to
a state of things--the old mark-organisation--upon which the later
feudalism had in various ways encroached, and finally superseded. Hence
they were, in these respects, not merely not in the trend of
contemporary progress, but in actual opposition to it; and therefore, as
Lassalle has justly remarked, they were necessarily and in any case
doomed to failure in the long run.

This point should not be lost sight of in considering the various
popular movements of the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The
world was still essentially mediaeval; men were still dominated by
mediaeval ways of looking at things and still immersed in mediaeval
conditions of life. It is true that out of this mediaeval soil the new
individualistic society was beginning to grow, but its manifestations
were as yet not so universally apparent as to force a recognition of
their real meaning. It was still possible to regard the various
symptoms of change, numerous as they were, and far-reaching as we now
see them to have been, as sporadic phenomena, as rank but unessential
overgrowths on the old society, which it was possible by pruning and
the application of other suitable remedies to get rid of, and thereby
to restore a state of pristine health in the body political and
social.

Biblical phrases and the notion of Divine Justice now took the place
in the popular mind formerly occupied by Church and Emperor. All the
then oppressed classes of society--the small peasant, half villein,
half free-man; the landless journeyman and town-proletarian; the
beggar by the wayside; the small master, crushed by usury or
tyrannized over by his wealthier colleague in the guild, or by the
town-patriciate; even the impoverished knight, or the soldier of
fortune defrauded of his pay; in short, all with whom times were bad,
found consolation for their wants and troubles, and at the same time
an incentive to action, in the notion of a Divine Justice which should
restore all things, and the advent of which was approaching. All had
Biblical phrases tending in the direction of their immediate
aspirations in their mouths.

As bearing on the development and propaganda of the new ideas, the
existence of a new intellectual class, rendered possible by the new
method of exchange through money (as opposed to that of barter), which
for a generation past had been in full swing in the larger towns, must
not be forgotten. Formerly land had been the essential condition of
livelihood; now it was no longer so. The "universal equivalent,"
money, conjoined with the printing press, was rendering a literary
class proper, for the first time, possible. In the same way the
teacher, physician, and the small lawyer were enabled to subsist as
followers of independent professions, apart from the special service
of the Church or as part of the court-retinue of some feudal
potentate. To these we must add a fresh and very important section of
the intellectual class which also now for the first time acquired an
independent existence--to wit, that of the public official or
functionary. This change, although only one of many, is itself
specially striking as indicating the transition from the barbaric
civilization of the Middle Ages to the beginnings of the civilization
of the modern world. We have, in short, before us, as already
remarked, a period in which the Middle Ages, whilst still dominant,
have their force visibly sapped by the growth of a new life.

To sum up the chief features of this new life: Industrially, we have
the decline of the old system of production in the countryside in
which each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most part
self-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almost
entirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, and
where such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the form
of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the
beginnings of a national-market and distinct traces of that of a
world-market. In the towns the change was even still more marked. Here
we have a sudden and hothouse-like development of the influence of
money. The guild-system, originally designed for associations of
craftsmen, for which the chief object was the man and the work, and
not the mere acquirement of profit, was changing its character. The
guilds were becoming close corporations of privileged capitalists,
while a commercial capitalism, as already indicated, was raising its
head in all the larger centres. In consequence of this state of
things, the rapid development of the towns and of commerce, national
and international, and the economic backwardness of the country-side,
a landless proletariat was being formed, which meant on the one hand
an enormous increase in mendicancy of all kinds, and on the other the
creation of a permanent class of only casually-employed persons, whom
the towns absorbed indeed, but for the most part with a new form of
citizenship involving only the bare right of residence within the
walls. Similar social phenomena were, of course, manifesting
themselves contemporaneously in other parts of Europe; but in Germany
the change was more sudden than elsewhere, and was complicated by
special political circumstances.

The political and military functions of that for the mediaeval polity
of Germany, so important class, the knighthood, or lower nobility, had
by this time become practically obsolete, mainly owing to the changed
conditions of warfare. But yet the class itself was numerous, and
still, nominally at least, possessed of most of its old privileges and
authority. The extent of its real power depended, however, upon the
absence or weakness of a central power, whether Imperial or
State-territorial. The attempt to reconstitute the centralized power
of the empire under Maximilian, of which the _Reichsregiment_ was the
outcome, had, as we have seen, not proved successful. Its means of
carrying into effect its own decisions were hopelessly inadequate. In
1523 it was already weakened, and became little more than a "survival"
after the Reichstag held at Nuernberg in 1524. Thus this body, which
had been called into existence at the instance of the most powerful
estates of the empire, was "shelved" with the practically unanimous
consent of those who had been instrumental in creating it.

But if the attempt at Imperial centralization had failed, the force of
circumstances tended partly for this very reason to favour
State-territorial centralization. The aim of all the territorial
magnates, the higher members of the Imperial system, was to
consolidate their own princely power within the territories owing them
allegiance. This desire played a not unimportant part in the
establishment of the Reformation in certain parts of the country--for
example, in Wuertemberg, and in the northern lands of East Prussia
which were subject to the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights. The
time was at hand for the transformation of the mediaeval feudal
territory, with its local jurisdictions and its ties of service, into
the modern bureaucratic state, with its centralized administration and
organized system of salaried functionaries subject to a central
authority.

The religious movement inaugurated by Luther met and was absorbed by
all these elements of change. It furnished them with a religious
_flag_, under cover of which they could work themselves out. This was
necessary in an age when the Christian theology was unquestioningly
accepted in one or another form by wellnigh all men, and hence entered
as a practical belief into their daily thoughts and lives. The
Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the Peasants'
War of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the
revolutionary elements of the time. Up to the last-mentioned date it
gathered revolutionary force year by year. But this was the turning
point.

With the crushing of the peasants' revolt and the decisively
anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious movement
associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionary
character. It henceforth became definitely subservient to the new
interests of the wealthy and privileged classes, and as such
completely severed itself from the more extreme popular reforming
sects.

Up to this time, though by no means always approved by Luther himself
or his immediate followers, and in some cases even combated by them,
the latter were nevertheless not looked upon with disfavour by large
numbers of the rank and file of those who regarded Martin Luther as
their leader.

Nothing could exceed the violence of language with which Luther
himself attacked all who stood in his way. Not only the
ecclesiastical, but also the secular heads of Christendom came in for
the coarsest abuse; "swine" and "water-bladder" are not the strongest
epithets employed. But this was not all; in his _Treatise on Temporal
Authority and how far it should be Obeyed_ (published in 1523), whilst
professedly maintaining the thesis that the secular authority is a
Divine ordinance, Luther none the less expressly justifies resistance
to all human authority where its mandates are contrary to "the word of
God." At the same time, he denounces in his customary energetic
language the existing powers generally. "Thou shouldst know," he says,
"that since the beginning of the world a wise prince is truly a rare
bird, but a pious prince is still more rare." "They" (princes) "are
mostly the greatest fools or the greatest rogues on earth; therefore
must we at all times expect from them the worst, and little good."
Farther on, he proceeds: "The common man begetteth understanding, and
the plague of the princes worketh powerfully among the people and the
common man. He will not, he cannot, he purposeth not, longer to suffer
your tyranny and oppression. Dear princes and lords, know ye what to
do, for God will no longer endure it? The world is no more as of old
time, when ye hunted and drove the people as your quarry. But think ye
to carry on with much drawing of sword, look to it that one do not
come who shall bid ye sheath it, and that not in God's name!"

Again, in a pamphlet published the following year, 1524, relative to
the Reichstag of that year, Luther proclaims that the judgment of God
already awaits "the drunken and mad princes." He quotes the phrase:
"Deposuit potentes de sede" (Luke i. 52), and adds "that is your case,
dear lords, even now when ye see it not!" After an admonition to
subjects to refuse to go forth to war against the Turks, or to pay
taxes towards resisting them, who were ten times wiser and more godly
than German princes, the pamphlet concludes with the prayer: "May God
deliver us from ye all, and of His grace give us other rulers!"
Against such utterances as the above, the conventional exhortations to
Christian humility, non-resistance, and obedience to those in
authority, would naturally not weigh in a time of popular ferment. So,
until the momentous year 1525, it was not unnatural that,
notwithstanding his quarrel with Muenzer and the Zwickau enthusiasts,
and with others whom he deemed to be going "too far," Luther should
have been regarded as in some sort the central figure of the
revolutionary movement, political and social, no less than religious.

But the great literary and agitatory forces during the period referred
to were of course either outside the Lutheran movement proper or at
most only on the fringe of it. A mass of broadsheets and pamphlets,
specimens of some of which have been given in a former volume (_German
Society at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp. 114-28), poured from the
press during these years, all with the refrain that things had gone on
long enough, that the common man, be he peasant or townsman, could no
longer bear it. But even more than the revolutionary literature were
the wandering preachers effective in working up the agitation which
culminated in the Peasants' War of 1525. The latter comprised men of
all classes, from the impoverished knight, the poor priest, the
escaped monk, or the travelling scholar, to the peasant, the mercenary
soldier out of employment, the poor handicraftsman, of even the
beggar. Learned and simple, they wandered about from place to place,
in the market place of the town, in the common field of the village,
from one territory to another, preaching the gospel of discontent.
Their harangues were, as a rule, as much political as religious, and
the ground tone of them all was the social or economic misery of the
time, and the urgency of immediate action to bring about a change. As
in the literature, so in the discourses, Biblical phrases designed to
give force to the new teaching abounded. The more thorough-going of
these itinerant apostles openly aimed at nothing less than the
establishment of a new Christian Commonwealth, or, as they termed it,
"the Kingdom of God on Earth."

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