German Culture Past and Present

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

The Roman law rested on a totally different basis. It represented the
legal ethics of a society on most of its sides brutally and crassly
individualistic. That that society had come to an end instead of
evolving to its natural conclusion--a developed capitalistic
individualism such as exists to-day--was due to the weakness of its
economic basis, owing to the limitation at that time of man's power
over Nature, which deprived it of recuperative and defensive force,
thereby leaving it a prey not only to internal influences of decay but
also to violent destructive forces from without. Nevertheless, it left
a legacy of a ready-made legal system to serve as an implement for the
first occasion when economic conditions should be once more ready for
progress to resume the course of individualistic development, abruptly
brought to an end by the fall of ancient civilization as crystallized
in the Roman Empire.

The popular courts of the village, of the mark, and of the town, which
had existed up to the beginning of the sixteenth century with all
their ancient functions, were extremely democratic in character. Cases
were decided on their merits, in accordance with local custom, by a
body of jurymen chosen from among the freemen of the district, to whom
the presiding functionaries, most of whom were also of popular
selection, were little more than assessors. The technicalities of a
cut-and-dried system were unknown. The Catholic-Germanic theory of the
Middle Ages proper, as regards the civil power in all its functions,
from the highest downward, was that of the mere administrator of
justice as such; whereas the Roman law regarded the magistrate as the
vicegerent of the _princeps_ or _imperator_, in whose person was
absolutely vested as its supreme embodiment the whole power of the
State. The Divinity of the Emperors was a recognition of this fact;
and the influence of the Roman law revived the theory as far as
possible under the changed conditions, in the form of the doctrine of
the Divine Right of Kings--a doctrine which was totally alien to the
Catholic feudal conception of the Middle Ages. This doctrine,
moreover, received added force from the Oriental conception of the
position of the ruler found in the Old Testament, from which
Protestantism drew so much of its inspiration.

But apart from this aspect of the question, the new juridical
conception involved that of a system of rules as the crystallized
embodiment of the abstract "State," given through its representatives,
which could under no circumstances be departed from, and which could
only be modified in their operation by legal quibbles that left to
them their nominal integrity. The new law could therefore only be
administered by a class of men trained specially for the purpose, of
which the plastic customary law borne down the stream of history from
primitive times, and insensibly adapting itself to new conditions but
understood in its broader aspects by all those who might be called to
administer it, had little need. The Roman law, the study of which was
started at Bologna in the twelfth century, as might naturally be
expected, early attracted the attention of the German Emperors as a
suitable instrument for use on emergencies. But it made little real
headway in Germany itself as against the early institutions until the
fifteenth century, when the provincial power of the princes of the
empire was beginning to overshadow the central authority of the
titular chief of the Holy Roman Empire. The former, while strenuously
resisting the results of its application from above, found in it a
powerful auxiliary in their Courts in riveting their power over the
estates subject to them. As opposed to the delicately adjusted
hierarchical notions of Feudalism, which did not recognize any
absoluteness of dominion either over persons or things, in short for
which neither the head of the State had any inviolate authority as
such, nor private property any inviolable rights or sanctity as such,
the new jurisprudence made corner-stones of both these conceptions.

Even the canon law, consisting in a mass of Papal decretals dating
from the early Middle Ages, and which, while undoubtedly containing
considerable traces of the influence of Roman law, was nevertheless
largely customary in its character, with an infusion of Christian
ethics, had to yield to the new jurisprudence, and that too in
countries where the Reformation had been unable to replace the old
ecclesiastical dogma and organization. The principles and practice of
the Roman law were sedulously inculcated by the tribe of civilian
lawyers who by the beginning of the sixteenth century infested every
Court throughout Europe. Every potentate, great and small, little as
he might like its application by his feudal overlord to himself, was
yet only too ready and willing to invoke its aid for the oppression of
his own vassals or peasants. Thus the civil law everywhere triumphed.
It became the juridical expression of the political, economical, and
religious change which marks the close of the Middle Ages and the
beginnings of the modern commercial world.

It must not be supposed, however, that no resistance was made to it.
Everywhere in contemporary literature, side by side with denunciations
of the new mercenary troops, the _Landsknechte_, we find
uncomplimentary allusions to the race of advocates, notaries, and
procurators who, as one writer has it, "are increasing like
grasshoppers in town and in country year by year." Whenever they
appeared, we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang up. He who
had but the money in hand might readily defraud his poorer neighbour
in the name of law and right. "Woe is me!" exclaims one author, "in
my home there is but one procurator, and yet is the whole country
round about brought into confusion by his wiles. What a misery will
this horde bring upon us!" Everywhere was complaint and in many places
resistance.

As early as 1460 we find the Bavarian estates vigorously complaining
that all the courts were in the hands of doctors. They demanded that
the rights of the land and the ancient custom should not be cast
aside; but that the courts as of old should be served by reasonable
and honest judges, who should be men of the same feudal livery and of
the same country as those whom they tried. Again in 1514, when the
evil had become still more crying, we find the estates of Wuertemberg
petitioning Duke Ulrich that the Supreme Court "shall be composed of
honourable, worthy, and understanding men of the nobles and of the
towns, who shall not be doctors, to the intent that the ancient usages
and customs should abide, and that it should be judged according to
them in such wise that the poor man might no longer be brought to
confusion." In many covenants of the end of the fifteenth century,
express stipulation is made that they should not be interpreted by a
doctor or licentiate, and also in some cases that no such doctor or
licentiate should be permitted to reside or to exercise his
profession within certain districts. Great as was the economical
influence of the new jurists in the tribunals, their political
influence in the various courts of the empire, from the
_Reichskammergericht_ downwards, was, if anything, greater. Says
Wimpfeling, the first writer on the art of education in the modern
world: "According to the loathsome doctrines of the new jurisconsults,
the prince shall be everything in the land and the people naught. The
people shall only obey, pay tax, and do service. Moreover, they shall
not alone obey the prince but also them that he has placed in
authority, who begin to puff themselves up as the proper lords of the
land, and to order matters so that the princes themselves do as little
as may be reign." From this passage it will be seen that the modern
bureaucratic State, in which government is as nearly as possible
reduced to mechanism and the personal relation abolished, was ushered
in under the auspices of the civil law. How easy it was for the
civilian to effect the abolition of feudal institutions may be readily
imagined by those cognizant of the principles of Roman law. For
example, the Roman law, of course, making no mention of the right of
the mediaeval "estates" to be consulted in the levying of taxes or in
other questions, the jurist would explain this right to his too
willing master, the prince, as an abuse which had no legal
justification, and which, the sooner it were abolished in the interest
of good government the better it would be. All feudal rights as
against the power of an overlord were explained away by the civil
jurist, either as pernicious abuses, or, at best, as favours granted
in the past by the predecessors of the reigning monarch, which it was
within his right to truncate or to abrogate at his will.

From the preceding survey will be clearly perceived the important role
which the new jurisprudence played on the Continent of Europe in the
gestation of the new phase which history was entering upon in the
sixteenth century. Even the short sketch given will be sufficient to
show that it was not in one department only that it operated; but
that, in addition to its own domain of law proper, its influence was
felt in modifying economical, political, and indirectly even ethical
and religious conditions. From this time forth Feudalism slowly but
surely gave place to the newer order, all that remained being certain
of its features, which, crystallized into bureaucratic forms, were
doubly veneered with a last trace of mediaeval ideas and a denser
coating of civilian conceptions. This transitional Europe, and not
mediaeval Europe, was the Europe which lasted on until the eighteenth
century, and which practically came to an end with the French
Revolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] One silver groschen = 1-1/5d.

[16] The authorities for the above data may be found in Janssen, i.,
vol. i., bk. iii., especially pp. 330-46.

[17] _Zur Geschichte der deutschen Gesellenverbaende._ Leipzig, 1876.

[18] C. 1/5d. The denarius was the South German equivalent of the North
German pfennig, of which twelve went to the groschen.

CHAPTER VI

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD

We have already pointed out in more than one place the position to
which the smaller nobility, or the knighthood, had been reduced by the
concatenation of causes which was bringing about the dissolution of the
old mediaeval order of things, and, as a consequence, ruining the
knights both economically and politically--economically by the rise of
capitalism as represented by the commercial syndicates of the cities;
by the unprecedented power and wealth of the city confederations,
especially of the Hanseatic League; by the rising importance of the
newly developed world-market; by the growing luxury and the enormous
rise in the prices of commodities concurrently with the reduction in
value of the feudal land-tenures; and by the limitation of the
possibilities of acquiring wealth by highway robbery, owing to Imperial
constitutions, on the one hand, and increased powers of defence on the
part of the trading community, on the other--politically, by the new
modes of warfare in which artillery and infantry, composed of
comparatively well-drilled mercenaries (_Landsknechte_), were rapidly
making inroads into the omnipotence of the ancient feudal chivalry, and
reducing the importance of individual skill or prowess in the handling
of weapons, and by the development of the power of the princes or
higher nobility, partly due to the influence which the Roman civil law
now began to exercise over the older customary Constitution of the
empire, and partly to the budding centralism of authority--which in
France and England became a national centralization, but in Germany, in
spite of the temporary ascendancy of Charles V, finally issued in a
provincial centralization in which the princes were _de facto_
independent monarchs. The Imperial Constitution of 1495, forbidding
private war, applied, it must be remembered, only to the lesser
nobility and not to the higher, thereby placing the former in a
decidedly ignominious position as regards their feudal superiors. And
though this particular enactment had little immediate result, yet it
was none the less resented as a blow struck at the old knightly
privilege.

The mental attitude of the knighthood in the face of this progressing
change in their position was naturally an ambiguous one, composed
partly of a desire to hark back to the haughty independence of
feudalism, and partly of sympathy with the growing discontent among
other classes and with the new spirit generally. In order that the
knights might succeed in recovering their old or even in maintaining
their actual position against the higher nobility, the princes, backed
as these now largely were by the Imperial power, the co-operation of
the cities was absolutely essential to them, but the obstacles in the
way of such a co-operation proved insurmountable. The towns hated the
knights for their lawless practices, which rendered trade unsafe and
not infrequently cost the lives of the citizens. The knights for the
most part, with true feudal hauteur, scorned and despised the artisans
and traders who had no territorial family name and were unexercised in
the higher chivalric arts. The grievances of the two parties were,
moreover, not identical, although they had their origin in the same
causes.

The cities were in the main solely concerned to maintain their old
independent position, and especially to curb the growing disposition
at this time of the other estates to use them as milch cows from
which to draw the taxation necessary to the maintenance of the
empire. For example, at the Reichstag opened at Nuernberg on November
17, 1522--to discuss the questions of the establishment of perpetual
peace within the empire, of organizing an energetic resistance to the
inroads of the Turks, and of placing on a firm foundation the
Imperial Privy Council (_Kammergericht_) and the Supreme Council
(_Reichsregiment_)--at which were represented twenty-six Imperial
towns, thirty-eight high prelates, eighteen princes, and twenty-nine
counts and barons--the representatives of the cities complained
grievously that their attendance was reduced to a farce, since they
were always out-voted, and hence obliged to accept the decisions of
the other estates. They stated that their position was no longer
bearable, and for the first time drew up an Act of Protest, which
further complained of the delay in the decisions of the Imperial
courts; of their sufferings from the right of private war, which was
still allowed to subsist in defiance of the Constitution; of the
increase of customs-stations on the part of the princes and
prince-prelates; and, finally, of the debasement of the coinage due
to the unscrupulous practices of these notables and of the Jews. The
only sympathy the other estates vouchsafed to the plaints of the
cities was with regard to the right of private war, which the higher
nobles were also anxious to suppress amongst the lower, though
without prejudice, of course, to their own privileges in this line.
All the other articles of the Act of Protest were coolly waived
aside. From all this it will be seen that not much co-operation was
to be expected between such heterogeneous bodies as the knighthood
and the free towns, in spite of their common interest in checking the
threateningly advancing power of the princes and the central Imperial
authority in so far as it was manned and manipulated by the princes.

Amid the decaying knighthood there was, as we have already intimated,
one figure which stood out head and shoulders above every other noble
of the time, whether prince or knight, and that was Franz von
Sickingen. He has been termed, not without truth, "the last flower of
German chivalry," since in him the old knightly qualities flashed up
in conjunction with the old knightly power and splendour with a
brightness hardly known even in the palmiest days of mediaeval life. It
was, however, the last flicker of the light of German chivalry. With
the death of Sickingen and the collapse of his revolt the knighthood
of Central Europe ceased any longer to play an independent part in
history.

Sickingen, although technically only one of the lower nobility, was
deemed about the time of Luther's appearance to hold the immediate
destinies of the empire in his hand. Wealthy, inspiring confidence and
enthusiasm as a leader, possessed of more than one powerful and
strategically situated stronghold, he held court at his favourite
residence, the Castle of the Landstuhl, in the Rhenish Palatinate, in
a style which many a prince of the empire might have envied. As
honoured guests were to be found attending on him humanists, poets,
minstrels, partisans of the new theology, astrologers, alchemists, and
men of letters generally--in short, the whole intelligence and culture
of the period. Foremost amongst these, and chief confidant of
Sickingen, was the knight, courtier, poet, essayist, and pamphleteer,
Ulrich von Hutten, whose pen was ever ready to champion with unstinted
enthusiasm the cause of the progressive ideas of his age. He first
took up the cudgels against the obscurantists on behalf of Humanism as
represented by Erasmus and Reuchlin, the latter of whom he bravely
defended in his dispute with the Inquisition and the monks of Cologne,
and in his contributions to the _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_ we see
the youthful ardour of the Renaissance in full blast in its onslaught
on the forces of mediaeval obstruction. Unlike most of those with whom
he was first associated, Hutten passed from being the upholder of the
New Learning to the role of champion of the Reformation; and it was
largely through his influence that Sickingen took up the cause of
Luther and his movement.

Sickingen had been induced by Charles V to assist him in an abortive
attempt to invade France in 1521, from which campaign he had returned
without much benefit either material or moral, save that Charles was
left heavily in his debt. The accumulated hatred of generations for
the priesthood had made Sickingen a willing instrument in the hands of
the reforming party, and believing that Charles now lay to some extent
in his power, he considered the moment opportune for putting his
long-cherished scheme into operation for reforming the Constitution of
the empire. This reformation consisted, as was to be expected, in
placing his own order on a firm footing, and of effectually curbing
the power of the other estates, especially that of the prelates.
Sickingen wished to make the Emperor and the lower nobility the
decisive factors in his new scheme of things political. The Emperor,
it so happened, was for the moment away in Spain, and Sickingen's
colleagues of the knightly order were becoming clamorous at the
unworthy position into which they found themselves rapidly being
driven. The feudal exactions of their princely lieges had reached a
point which passed all endurance, and since they were practically
powerless in the Reichstags, no outlet was left for their discontent
save by open revolt. Impelled not less by his own inclinations than by
the pressure of his companions, foremost among whom was Hutten,
Sickingen decided at once to open the campaign.

Hutten, it would appear, attempted to enter into negotiations for the
co-operation of the towns and of the peasants. So far as can be seen,
Strassburg and one or two other Imperial cities returned favourable
answers; but the precise measure of Hutten's success cannot be
ascertained, owing to the fact that all the documents relating to the
matter perished in the destruction of Sickingen's Castle of Ebernburg.

It should be premised that on August 13th, previous to this
declaration of war, a "Brotherly Convention" had been signed by a
number of the knights, by which Sickingen was appointed their captain,
and they bound themselves to submit to no jurisdiction save their own,
and pledged themselves to mutual aid in war in case of hostilities
against any one of their number. Through this "Treaty of Landau,"
Sickingen had it in his power to assemble a considerable force at a
moment's notice. Consequently, a few days after the issue of the above
manifesto, on August 27, 1522, Sickingen was able to start from the
Castle of Ebernburg with an army of 5,000 foot and 1,500 knights,
besides artillery, in the full confidence that he was about to destroy
the position of the Palatine prince-prelate and raise himself without
delay to the chief power on the Rhine.

By an effective piece of audacity, that of sporting the Imperial flag
and the Burgundian cross, Franz spread abroad the idea that he was
acting on behalf of the Emperor, then absent in Spain; and this
largely contributed to the result that his army speedily rose to 5,000
knights and 10,000 footmen. The Imperial Diet at Nuernberg now
intervened, and ordered Sickingen to cease the operations he had
already begun, threatening him with the ban of the empire and a fine
of 2,000 marks if he did not obey. To this summons Franz sent a
characteristically impudent reply, and light-heartedly continued the
campaign, regardless of the warning which an astrologer had given him
some time previously, that the year 1522 or 1523 would probably be
fatal to him. It is evident that this campaign, begun so late in the
year, was regarded by Sickingen and the other leaders as merely a
preliminary canter to a larger and more widespread movement the
following spring, since on this occasion the Swabian and Franconian
knighthood do not appear to have been even invited to take part in it.

After an easy progress, during which several trifling places, the most
important being St. Wendel, were taken, Franz with his army arrived on
September 8th before the gates of Trier. He had hoped to capture the
town by surprise, and was indeed not without some expectation of
co-operation and help from the citizens themselves. On his arrival he
shot letters within the walls summoning the inhabitants to take his
part against their tyrant; but either through the unwillingness of the
burghers to act with knights, or through the vigilance of the
Archbishop, they were without effect. The gates remained closed; and
in answer to Sickingen's summons to surrender, Richard replied that he
would find him in the city if he could get inside. In the meantime
Sickingen's friends had signally failed in their attempts to obtain
supplies and reinforcements for him, in the main owing to the
energetic action of some of the higher nobles. The Archbishop of Trier
showed himself as much a soldier as a Churchman; and after a week's
siege, during which Sickingen made five assaults on the city, his
powder ran out, and he was forced to retire. He at once made his way
back to Ebernburg, where he intended to pass the winter, since he saw
that it was useless to continue the campaign, with his own army
diminishing and the hoped-for supplies not appearing, whilst the
forces of his antagonists augmented daily. In his stronghold of
Ebernburg he could rely on being secure from all attack until he was
able to again take the field on the offensive, as he anticipated doing
in the spring.

In spite of the obvious failure of the autumnal campaign, the cause of
the knighthood did not by any means look irretrievably desperate,
since there was always the possibility of successful recruitments the
following spring. Ulrich von Hutten was doing his utmost in Wuertemberg
and Switzerland to scrape together men and money, though up to this
time without much success, while other emissaries of Sickingen were
working with the same object in Breisgau and other parts of Southern
Germany. Relying on these expected reinforcements, Franz was confident
of victory when he should again take the field, and in the meantime he
felt himself quite secure in one or other of his strong places, which
had recently undergone extensive repairs and seemed to be impregnable.
In this anticipation he was deceived, for he had not reckoned with the
new and more potent weapons of attack which were replacing the
battering-ram and other mediaeval besieging appliances. Franz retired
to his strong castle of the Landstuhl to await the onslaught of the
princes which followed in the spring. After heavy bombardment
Sickingen was mortally wounded on May 6th, and the place was
immediately surrendered. The next day the princes entered the castle,
where, in an underground chamber, their enemy lay dying.

He was so near his end that he could scarcely distinguish his three
arch-enemies one from the other. "My dear lord," he said to the Count
Palatine, his feudal superior, "I had not thought that I should end
thus," taking off his cap and giving him his hand. "What has impelled
thee, Franz," asked the Archbishop of Trier, "that thou hast so laid
waste and harmed me and my poor people?" "Of that it were too long to
speak," answered Sickingen, "but I have done nought without cause. I
go now to stand before a greater Lord." Here it is worthy of remark
that the princes treated Franz with all the knightliness and courtesy
which were customary between social equals in the days of chivalry,
addressing him at most rather as a rebellious child than as an
insurgent subject. The Prince of Hesse was about to give utterance to
a reproach, but he was interrupted by the Count Palatine, who told
him that he must not quarrel with a dying man. The Count's chamberlain
said some sympathetic words to Franz, who replied to him: "My dear
chamberlain, it matters little about me. It is not I who am the cock
round which they are dancing." When the princes had withdrawn, his
chaplain asked him if he would confess; but Franz replied: "I have
confessed to God in my heart," whereupon the chaplain gave him
absolution; and as he went to fetch the host "the last of the knights"
passed quietly away, alone and abandoned. It is related by Spalatin
that after his death some peasants and domestics placed his body in an
old armour-chest, in which they had to double the head on to the
knees. The chest was then let down by a rope from the rocky eminence
on which stands the now ruined castle, and was buried beneath a small
chapel in the village below.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14