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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth
+and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I., by Gustav Freytag
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I.
+
+Author: Gustav Freytag
+
+Translator: Georgiana Malcolm
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2010 [EBook #33794]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE, VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+1. Page scan source: Google Books
+http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA315&dq=editions:52ZfIxnPQ6cC&id=52Zf
+IxnPQ6cC
+
+2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+                        PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE
+
+                                 IN THE
+
+            FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
+
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+                                VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                PICTURES
+
+                                   OF
+
+                              GERMAN LIFE
+
+
+                 In the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries.
+
+
+                                   BY
+                             GUSTAV FREYTAG
+
+
+
+                    Translated from the Original by
+                             MRS. MALCOLM.
+
+
+
+                 _COPYRIGHT EDITION.--IN TWO VOLUMES_.
+
+
+                                VOL. I.
+
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                   CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.
+                                 1862.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+The great interest which these graphic Pictures of Life in Germany have
+created in that country, has induced me to translate them. The object
+of the distinguished author seems to have been, to convey a lesson, a
+warning, and at the same time an encouragement to his countrymen,
+derived from the experience of the past; whilst he demonstrates to
+other nations how it is, that a people so superior in intellectual
+power, has remained so far behind in social and political development.
+
+I have also felt as an additional reason, that at the present moment,
+the British public must take a deep interest in everything connected
+with the past, and future, of the country in which the daughter of our
+beloved Queen has cast her lot, and which was the Fatherland of the
+revered Prince, who has been a source of blessing to England for so
+many years, and whose irreparable loss we now so deeply deplore.
+
+                                                GEORGIANA MALCOLM.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS.
+
+
+                   FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.
+
+Introduction.--Life of a German proprietor, 300, 200, and 100 years
+ago--In what respect the life of the past appears alien to us--Greater
+repression of the individual mind--Significance of the last four
+centuries
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+Scenes From The Hussite War (1425)--Emigration of Germans to
+the east after the thirteenth century--Silesia and its Sclave
+Princes--Colonization, the blessing of free labour recognized--
+Character and fate of the German Silesians--Contrast of the
+Bohemians--Narrative by Martin von Bolkenhain--Consequences of the
+Hussite war and subsequent fate of the Silesians
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+A German Lady Of The Royal Court (1440)--Development of the
+popular mind in the Hussite time--Life at Court--The last of
+the Luxemburgers--The Hungarian Crown--Narration of Helen
+Kottanner--Struggles of conscience in the fifteenth century
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+A Travelling Student (1509)--Characteristics of the fifteenth
+century--Introductions in the sixteenth century--Excitement in
+the people, wandering propensities, exciting news, Landsknechte,
+art of printing--German learning; the Humanitarians--The Latin
+schools, the children of the people as scholars--Narrative Of Thomas
+Platter--Influence of the Latin schools upon the people
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Mental Struggles of a Youth, and his Entrance into a Monastery
+(1510)--The wants of the popular mind--The church--Brotherhoods;
+Indulgences--Opposition to them--Narrative Of Friedrich Myconius
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+Out of the Cloister into the Struggle (1522)--The storm among the
+people--Luther's popularity--Narration of Ambrosius Blaurer--The knight
+from the Wartburg--Narrative of Johann Kessler
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+Doctor Luther (1517 to 1546)--His importance to us--The tragic in his
+life--Distinct periods in it--His father--Mental struggle in the
+monastery, and how he delivered himself from it--His character in
+1519--Three letters to the Pope--An inward struggle--Luther as a
+writer--At the Wartburg--Adherence to Scripture, and defects in his
+method--The marriage of priests--Return to Wittenberg--His political
+position--The crisis--How he married--Activity of his latter years--His
+spirit, his family, his God, his temptations, and ideas of the end of
+the world--From the funeral discourse of Melancthon--Letter of Luther
+to the Elector Friedrich the Wise, March, 1522
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+German Princes At The Imperial Diet (1547)--Luther and Charles
+V.--The Roman Empire--Possibility of a new confirmation--The man
+wanting--Princes of the sixteenth century--Charles V.--Narrative of
+Bartholom�us Sastrow--Weakness of the Imperial power--Alliance of the
+German opposition with France--Internal disorganization of the empire
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A Burgher Family (1488)--Insight into the lower circles of German
+life--Increasing popular strength--Social superiority of the Protestant
+provinces (1542)--Insecurity of life--Family History Of Bartholom�us
+Sastrow
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+The Marriage and Housekeeping of a Young Student (1557)--The female sex
+among the Germans--Position of women in the middle ages--Marriage
+considered as an alliance between families--The betrothal--Narrative of
+Felix Platter
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+Of a Patrician House (1526 to 1598)--The patricians rich and
+educated--Hans Schweinichen's account of the riches of the
+Fuggers--Their women--Clara Pirkheimer and Argula von Grumbach--Letters
+of a Lady of the Glauburg Family
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+German Nobility In The Sixteenth Century (1500)--False position
+in the nation--Unproductiveness--Gradual change--Character of G�tz
+von Berlichingen--Extract from his Autobiography--Character of
+Sch�rtlin--Narrative Of Sch�rtlin--Hans von Schweinichen and Duke
+Heinrich von Liegnitz--Narrative Of Schweinichen--Transition to modern
+life
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+German Ideas of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century (1500)--The
+introduction of German traditions concerning him; change in the middle
+ages--Luther spiritualizes the ideas regarding the devil--Activity of
+the devil in the new Church--Compacts with the devil after Luther's
+time--Favourable position of the possessed--The money devil at
+Frankfort--Satan exorcised from one possessed--Witches--Dreadful
+persecutions--Gloomy state of men's minds at the end of the sixteenth
+century
+
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION.
+
+
+To my dear Friend Solomon Hertzel.
+
+Without your knowledge I dedicate this work to you, who have taken so
+kind an interest in it, whose excellent library has so often helped
+when other sources failed, and where, as industrious collectors, we
+have examined so many old flying sheets and manuscripts.
+
+To you also these records of the olden times, in which the private life
+and feelings of the writers are portrayed, are especially valuable, for
+by them a clear light is thrown on events in our political history
+which till now have been only occasionally noticed, and we may discover
+from them how the German people have felt, suffered, and lived.
+
+If these records of individuals can be judiciously arranged according
+to periods and their position in life, it appears to me that an
+instructive insight may be obtained into the gradual development of the
+mind of the German people.
+
+I have endeavoured to carry this out from the middle ages to the
+beginning of the present era.
+
+What I have added of my own is simple explanation: I have avoided
+saying anything where it could be given in the original; only where the
+old records fail to give a complete picture have I supplied the
+deficiency.
+
+As there are very few who can read the language of the fifteenth, or
+even the seventeenth, century with ease, I have thought it necessary to
+translate the records into modern German, but at the same time to
+preserve something of the old style.
+
+Accept kindly then, my friend, what of right belongs to you, for your
+flag waves on every vessel that I launch; and I trust that the freight
+that I have this time prepared, may meet with your hearty approbation.
+
+                                             GUSTAV FREYTAG.
+
+_Siebleben, 8th October_, 1859.
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+In vain does the German seek for "the good old times." If even the
+pious zealot who condemns Hegel and Humboldt as the greatest of
+Atheists, or the conservative proprietor who is struggling for the
+privileges of his order, were to be thrown back into one of the last
+centuries, he would feel first unmitigated astonishment, then horror,
+at the position in which he would find himself placed. What now appears
+to him so desirable would make him miserable, and he would be driven to
+despair at the loss of all the advantages of that civilization which he
+at present so little appreciates.
+
+Let a German proprietor endeavour to realize to himself the position
+of one of his ancestors in the year 1559. Instead of the house he
+has now, built in the old German style, surrounded by its English
+pleasure-grounds, he would find himself shut up in a gloomy, dirty, and
+comfortless building, placed either on a height destitute of water, and
+exposed to the cutting blasts of the wind, or else surrounded by the
+f[oe]tid smells of stagnant ditches. It is true that three generations
+back dim panes had been added to the small windows,[1] and large stoves
+of Dutch tiles, which were fed with logs from the neighbouring forest,
+kept the cold out of the sitting-rooms; but the accommodation was
+limited, as it was occasionally necessary to defend the house against
+attacks from the citizens of the nearest town, roving bands of
+marauders, or reckless soldiers bent on revenge because they had been
+cheated of half their pay by the neighbouring prince.
+
+Comfortless and dirty is the house, for it is occupied by many others
+beside the family of the owner: younger brothers and cousins, with
+their wives and children, numberless servants, amongst them many of
+doubtful character, men-at-arms, labourers, and in 1559, mercenaries,
+may be added. In the court-yard, from the dung-heap is heard the cry of
+children quarrelling, and from round the kitchen fire the no less
+inharmonious sound of wrangling women. The children of the house grow
+up amongst horses, dogs, and servants; they receive scanty instruction
+in the village school; the boys keep the geese[2] and poultry for their
+mother, or they go with the village people to the wood to collect wild
+pears and mushrooms, which are dried for the winter meal; the lady of
+the castle is housekeeper, head cook, and doctor of the establishment,
+and is well accustomed to intercourse with lawless men and to the
+ill-treatment of her drunken husband. She is faithful, a thorough
+manager, proud of her escutcheon, of the gold chains and brocades
+belonging to the family; she looks suspiciously on the dress and finery
+of the wives of the counsellors of the town, who she considers have no
+right to wear sable and ermine, velvet dresses, pearls in their hair,
+and precious stones round their necks. The love and tenderness of her
+nature frequently gave elevation to her countenance and manners; but in
+those days, both in the homes of the nobles and in the courts of
+princes, much was considered decorous and was permitted to women of the
+highest character in familiar conversation which now would be condemned
+as unseemly in the wife of a common labourer.
+
+The daily life of the landed proprietor is one of idleness or wild
+excitement. The hunting is certainly excellent. Where the forest has
+not been laid waste by the reckless stroke of the axe, grow the stately
+trees of the primeval wood; the howl of the wolf is still heard in the
+winter nights; the hunters sally forth on horseback, with spear and
+cross-bow, against beasts of prey, stags, roedeer, and the wild boar,
+and all adopt the habits of the rough hunters. But whilst hunting, even
+in his own wood, every one must be provided with weapons against other
+foes than the wolf and the boar. There are few hunting-grounds
+concerning which there is not some quarrel with a neighbour or feudal
+lord, who often claims the right of following the chase up to the
+squire's castle; the squire is also set at defiance by the peasants of
+the nearest village, whose crops have been laid waste by the stag and
+the boar, and who hates the master of the castle for having beaten or
+thrown him into prison for crossing the path of the chase; and not
+unfrequently an arrow whistles through the darkness of the wood with
+other aim than a wild animal; or an armed band breaks through a
+clearing, and then begins a race for freedom and life. We will suppose
+the game to be brought home and cut up in the castle yard; then follows
+the banquet, with endless drinking of healths and wild revelry, and
+seldom a night passes without the whole party breaking up in a state of
+intoxication. Drunkenness was at this time a national evil, prostrating
+alike the powers of princes, nobles, and people. The guests at the hunt
+and the banquet are of the same rank as their host--some are old
+cavaliers, constantly swearing, and relating anecdotes of the knightly
+feats they have performed in the greenwood against the traders and
+townspeople; others a younger race, hangers-on of the great feudal
+lords, who proudly wear the gold-laced caps given by these lords to
+their vassals.
+
+Thus the week passes away. On Sunday it is considered a duty to attend
+the village church, and listen to the preacher's endless sermon, which
+generally breathes hatred to Calvinists or Papists, and denounces the
+factious Schwenkfeld or the apostate Melancthon. There is but little
+intercourse with foreign countries: the country gentleman gratifies his
+curiosity by buying from the itinerant pedler what was then called a
+newspaper, being a few quarto sheets published at intervals in the
+towns, containing very doubtful intelligence, such as a horrible fight
+having taken place between the sons of the Turkish sultan, a young
+maiden being possessed by the devil, or the French king having been
+struck on the head by one of his nobles. Sometimes the young squire
+listens to the songs of ballad singers, who recite similar news to old
+popular tunes, or, what is still more welcome, satirical verses on some
+neighbour, which the singer has been paid to propagate far and wide
+through the country. The reading which gives most pleasure at home, is
+either some astrological absurdity, such as a prophecy of old Wilhelm
+Friese or Gottfried Phyllers, or a description of the funeral festival
+of the Emperor Charles V. at Augsburg; besides these, theological
+writings find their way into the castle.
+
+This life, which in spite of all its excitement is so meagre and
+monotonous, is sometimes varied by the discovery of a murdered man in
+the fields, or by some old woman of the village being accused of
+witchcraft. These incidents give rise to judicial proceedings, in the
+first case tardy and of little interest, in the latter fierce and
+bloodthirsty.
+
+There are other annoyances in these times from which the landed
+proprietor is seldom free,--lawsuits and many difficulties. His father
+had sought to obtain money for the payment of his debts on the highway
+in his breastplate and saddle, and thus revenged himself for his
+injured rights. But now a new age has begun, and law asserts its
+supremacy over the self-will and independence of individuals; it is
+however an uncertain, dilatory, distorted law, which overlooks the
+powerful, and too often favours the wealthy. The young squire still
+rides his charger, armed with lance and pistol, but he is no longer
+eager to obtain fame and booty in war. The foot-soldier with pike and
+musket, and light-horseman of the town have outstripped him. Even at
+the tournament he prefers running at the ring; and if perchance he
+should encounter in the lists any person of distinction, he finds it
+more advantageous to allow himself to be unhorsed, than to contend
+manfully.
+
+The condition of his peasantry is wretched: they have sunk from freemen
+to slaves; the rent they have to pay in labour, corn, and money,
+swallows up their earnings, yet he benefits little by it. The roads
+being bad and unsafe, it is impossible to export his produce: he is
+just able to keep himself and his household, for his income is small;
+everything has become dear; the new gold which has been brought to
+Europe from America is amassed in the great commercial towns, and is of
+little advantage to him, and he is unable to maintain the state
+suitable to his position.
+
+He holds obstinately to all he considers his right, and supports or
+resists his feudal lord according to his personal advantage;
+occasionally he follows him to the Imperial Diet. But in the Provincial
+States, he eagerly resists the impost of new taxes; he has no real love
+of his country, and only feels himself German in opposition to Italians
+and Spaniards, whom he hates; but looks with a selfish interest on
+France, whose King burns cursed Calvinists and engages German Lutherans
+at high salaries. The province in which he lives has no political
+unity; the sovereignty of his feudal lord is no longer a firm edifice,
+and his attachment is therefore only occasional. His egotism alone is
+firm and lasting, a miserable hateful egotism, which has scarce power
+to excite him to deeds of daring, not even to bind him to others of his
+own class. Rarely does the feeling of his own social position ennoble
+his conversation or actions; his education and knowledge of the world
+are not greater than those of a horsedealer of the present day.
+
+A century has passed, it is the year 1659--ten years since the
+conclusion of the great German war. The walls of the old castles have
+been shattered, foreign soldiers have encamped within them, whose fires
+have blackened the ruins, and whose fury has emptied the granaries and
+destroyed all the household goods. The squire has now erected a new
+building with the stones of the old one; it is a bare house, with thick
+walls, and without ornament; the windows look on a miserable village,
+which is only partly built, and on a field which, for the first time
+for many years, is prepared for cultivation; the flock of sheep has
+been replenished, but there are no horses, and the peasants have
+learned to plough with oxen. The owner of the house has no longer to
+provide for the horses of troopers and knights; a coach stands in a
+hovel,--a kind of lumbering chest on leather straps, but nevertheless
+the pride of the family. The house is surrounded by walls and moats
+with drawbridges; massive locks and strong iron work defend the
+entrances, for the country is still insecure. Gipsies and bands of
+marauders lurk in the neighbourhood, and the daily conversation is of
+robberies and horrible murders. There is great regularity both in house
+and village, and strict order is kept by the squire amongst his
+children, servants, and retainers; but many wild figures may be still
+seen about the court-yard,--disbanded soldiers who have taken service
+as messengers, foresters, halberdiers, &c. The village school is in sad
+decay, but the squire's children receive instruction from a poor
+scholar. The squire wears a wig with flowing curls; instead of the
+knightly sword, a slender rapier hangs at his side; in society his
+movements and conversation are stiff and formal; the townspeople call
+him your honour, and his daughter has become "fraulein" and
+"damoiselle;" the lady of the house wears a bunch of keys at her side;
+she is great in receipts and superstitious remedies, and her repose is
+troubled by ghostly apparitions in the old tower of the castle. When a
+visitor approaches, the spinning-wheel is hidden, an embroidered dress
+is quickly put on, the scanty family treasures of silver goblets and
+tankards laid out on the sideboard, a groom, who is just capable of
+making a bow, is hastily put into livery, and perfumes are burnt in
+the room. The young squire when he visits appears as a gallant � la
+mode,--in lace coat and wig, and pays the most fulsome compliments to
+the lady of the house; he is her most devoted slave, he extols the
+daughter as a heart-enslaver, and declares that she is quite angelic in
+her appearance; but these finely turned compliments are bad sauce to
+coarse manners, and are generally interspersed with stable language and
+oaths. When conversation begins to flow more freely, it is directed by
+preference to subjects which are no longer ambiguous, and women listen,
+not with the na�vet� of former times, but with secret pleasure, to the
+boldness of such language, for it is the fashion to relate improper
+anecdotes, and by enigmatical questions to produce a pretty affected
+embarrassment in the ladies. But even such conversation soon wearies,
+and the wine begins to circulate, the hilarity becomes noisy, and they
+finish by getting very drunk, after the old German fashion. They smoke
+clay pipes, and cavaliers of high breeding take snuff from silver
+boxes. The chase is again the amusement of the country gentleman: he
+tries to exterminate the wolves, which during the late war have become
+numerous and insolent; he exhibits rifles among his hunting gear, but
+no longer mounts his steed as an armed knight; his armour is rusty, his
+independence is gone, war is carried on by the soldiers of the Prince,
+and he appears at court only as the obsequious servant of his
+illustrious lord.
+
+He is still firm in his faith, and adheres to the rites of the Church;
+but he holds in contempt the theological controversies of the clergy,
+and does not object to holding intercourse with unbelievers, though he
+prefers Jesuits to zealous sectarians. The pastor of his village is
+poor and devout, and from living amongst lawless men, has lost much of
+his priestly pride; he strives to support himself by agriculture, and
+considers it an honour to dine at the squire's table, and has in return
+to laugh at his patron's jokes, and retail the news of the day. When it
+is a f�te day at the castle he presents a pompous poem, in which he
+calls on Venus, the Muses and Graces, to celebrate in Olympus the
+birthday of the lady of the house. On such days there is music at the
+castle, and the viola da gamba is the fashionable instrument. Once a
+week the newspaper is brought to the castle, from thence it is sent to
+the parsonage, then to the schoolmaster and forester: the chief reading
+besides this consists of tedious novels and histories of adventures, or
+anecdotes of ghostly apparitions and discoveries of treasure; sometimes
+also dissertations on the phenomena of nature, the first glimmering of
+a more intellectual literature. The squire interests himself in
+politics; he distrusts Sweden, and abhors the regicide tendencies of
+England, but admires everything French, and whosoever can give him news
+of Paris is a welcome guest. He attends the Diet, but it is only for
+the sake of maintaining the privileges of his order; he lounges in
+antechambers, and by bribery endeavours to secure for his relations
+some appointment about the court. He unwillingly allows his son to
+study law, with the hope that he may, as royal counsellor, advance the
+interests of his family; in short, he looks upon the court and the
+government as wine vats to be tapped, so as to afford him a good
+draught. Germany is to him a mere geographical spot, which he neither
+loves nor hates; his family or his order are all that he serves or
+cares for, and if one abstracts from him his high pretensions, and
+compares the remains of the kernel with the men of our own time, we
+should find more sense and rectitude in the stubborn head of a
+corporation of the smallest town than in him.
+
+Again a century has passed, a time of little energy or national
+strength, and yet great changes have taken place. The year 1759 is in
+the youth of our grandfathers; numberless remembrances cling to our
+hearts; it will be sufficient to recall a few. The squire's house has
+no longer a bare front: a porch has been added, supported by stone
+pillars; the staircase is ornamented with vases; over the hall door a
+rudely carved angel holds the family arms emblazoned on a spiral shell.
+On one side of the building lies the farm-yard, on the other the
+garden, laid out with trim beech hedges and obelisks of yew. The old
+whitewashed walls are almost all covered with plaster-of-paris, and
+some are highly ornamented. There is an abundance of household
+furniture beautifully carved in oak or walnut; near the ancient family
+portraits hang modern pastil pictures, amongst them perhaps the
+daughter of the house as a shepherdess with a crook in her hand. In the
+apartments of the lady of the house there is a porcelain table with
+coloured tankards, small cups, pug-dogs, and Cupids of this newly
+discovered material. Propriety reigns everywhere with a strict stern
+rule; women and servants speak low, children kiss their parents' hands,
+the master of the house calls his wife "ma ch�re," and uses other
+French phrases. The hair is powdered, and the ladies wear stiff gowns
+and high head-dresses; violent emotions or strong passions seldom
+disturb the stiff formality of their carriage or the tranquillity of
+the house.
+
+The squire has become economist, and looks a little after the farming;
+he tries by selecting choice breeds to improve the wool of his flocks,
+and raises carefully the new bulb called the potato, which is to be a
+source of unfailing nourishment to man and beast. The mode of life is
+quiet, simple, and formal. The mother shakes her head about Gellert's
+'Life of the Swedish Countess;' the daughter is delighted with Kleist's
+'Spring,' and sings to the harpsichord of violets and lambs; and the
+father carries in his pocket the 'Songs of a Grenadier.' Coffee is
+placed before the visitors, and on high holidays chocolate makes its
+appearance. Everything is managed by government officials, and much is
+required of the country gentleman, who has to pay taxes without being
+consulted: he is a person of more consideration than the citizen, but
+is now far removed from the prince. The great noble looks with
+contempt on him, and it is well for him if he does not feel the
+weight of his stick: the officials of the capital interfere with his
+farming; they order him to dig a drain, to build a mill, even to plant
+mulberry-trees, and send him the eggs of silkworms, insisting upon his
+rearing them. It is a weary time; the third, or Seven years', war is
+raging between the king and emperor; the squire is walking about his
+room, wringing his hands and weeping. How is it that this hard man has
+so completely lost his composure? The letter on the table has informed
+him that his son, an officer in the king's army, has come unscathed out
+of the fight at Cunnersdorf; why then does he weep and wring his hands?
+His King is in distress; the state to which he belongs is in danger of
+destruction, and it is for this that he grieves. He is greater, richer,
+and better than any of his ancestors, for he has a fatherland; the
+training of his generation is rough, manners coarse, and government
+despotic; his knowledge of the world is not greater than that of a
+subordinate official of the present day, but this feeling within him,
+either in life or death, makes him a man.
+
+Life in every period of the German past was much rougher than now; but
+it is not the hardships of individuals which make the old time appear
+so strange to us, it is that the whole mode of life, in every thought
+and feeling, is so essentially different. The reason of this difference
+is, that at all periods of the past the mind of the individual was less
+free and more subordinate to the spirit of the nation; we may see this
+especially in the middle ages, but it may still be observed in the last
+century.
+
+There was no such thing as public opinion. The individual submitted his
+conscience to the approbation of those with whom he lived; he committed
+to them his honour, interests, and safety, and only felt that he
+existed as a member of the society, thus rendering the necessity of
+union more urgent. How strikingly this tendency of the old times was
+exemplified in the clubs of Hanseatic stations! The constraint within
+their closed walls was almost monkish. Every word and gesture at the
+dinner-table was regulated, and this rule was maintained by severe
+punishments. The soldiers who roamed about together in troops from all
+parts of Germany, made laws for themselves, by which they kept the
+strictest discipline, each being accuser and judge of the other. Upon a
+sea voyage the passengers selected from amongst themselves a
+magistrate, judge, and police-officer, who declared the law, imposed
+fines, and awarded even bodily punishment; and if at the conclusion of
+the journey any individual wished to free himself from this control, he
+had to take an oath that he would not revenge himself for any annoyance
+or injury he might have suffered under the ship's law; and it was the
+same with pilgrimages to the Holy Land, especially where it was
+question of any dangerous enterprise. For instance, when, in the year
+1535, five-and-twenty men from Amberg undertook to explore the cavern
+of the "awful" mountains, their first act at the entrance to the
+caverns was to choose two leaders, and take an oath of obedience to
+stand by one another in life or death.
+
+The same feature is to be found amongst the artists of the middle ages:
+thus did the life of individuals first find its full expression, in
+association with others.
+
+One peculiar charm which we find in the national character of those
+early ages, is the union of a strong love of freedom with a spirit of
+obedience. To this characteristic of the old times may be added
+another. All, from the emperor to the wandering beggar, from their
+birth to their death, from morning till night, were fenced in by
+customs, forms, and ceremonies. A wonderful creative genius produced
+endless pictures and symbols, by which everything on earth was
+idealized. By these means was expressed the way in which the people
+understood their relations with God, and the right direction of all
+human energy; there were also many mysterious rituals which served as
+means of defence against the supposed influence of unearthly powers.
+Even in law mimic and figurative proceedings were laid down. Whoever
+sought revenge before a court of justice for the murder of a relative,
+had everything as to garments and gestures, the very words of the
+accusation, and even their complaints, prescribed to them. Every
+transfer of property, every investiture and contract, had its
+significant forms and precise words, on which its legality depended.
+The knights were summoned to the lists by the herald; the bride was
+claimed and the guests invited to the wedding by fixed forms of speech;
+it was considered of importance which foot was placed first on the
+ground in the morning, which shoe was first put on, and what stranger
+was first met on going out; also, how the bread was laid on the table
+at each meal, and where the salt-cellar was placed. All that concerned
+the body, the cutting of the hair, baths, and bleeding, had their
+appointed time and appropriate regulations. When the agriculturist
+turned up the first clod, when he brought in the last sheaf, leaving a
+truss of corn in the field, in short, all the incidents of labour had
+their peculiar usages; there were customs for every important day of
+the year, and they abounded at every festival. Many relics of these
+remain to our day; we maintain some for our amusement, but most of them
+appear to us useless, senseless, and superstitious.
+
+Many of these practices had been derived in Germany from the heathen
+faith and ancient laws and customs. The Church of the middle ages
+followed in the same track, idealizing life. The services became more
+frequent, the ceremonials more artificial. In the same way that it had
+sanctified the great epochs of life by the mystery of its sacraments,
+it tried, rivalling the heathen traditions, to influence even the
+trifling actions of every-day life. It consecrated fountains and
+animals, and professed that it could stop the effusion of blood and
+turn away the enemy's shot by its blessing. Its endeavours to make the
+spiritual perceptible to the senses of the multitude, produced many
+proverbs and symbolical actings, which gave rise to the dramas of the
+middle ages. But whilst it thus met the imaginative tendencies of the
+people, its own spiritual and moral character was injured by all these
+outward observances; and when Luther accused the Church of thirty-seven
+errors, from the sale of indulgences, to the consecrated salt, and the
+baptism of bells with their two hundred godfathers, he was not in a
+position to perceive that the old Church had given growth to these
+excrescences, by having yielded too much to the imaginative disposition
+of the German popular mind.
+
+The artisans liked to reproduce the formulas of their religion and
+guilds for their amusement: dialogue and gesture were interchanged, and
+thus dramatic representations arose. The initiated and best informed of
+every class became known by this; they had an opportunity of showing
+their nature under the traditional form. In such a way every young
+nation tries to represent life, and among the Germans, this
+inclination, together with the love of mystery, worked most powerfully
+in the same direction. It gave much opportunity for dramatic acting,
+though it was a peculiarly undramatic period in the life of the people,
+for words and characteristic gestures do not flow from the inward man;
+they come with imposing power from external circumstances, leading,
+forming, and restraining the individual.
+
+Such union of order and discipline belongs to the epic time of the
+people.
+
+How the German mind outgrew these bonds we shall learn from the
+following stories of the olden time. In the course of four centuries
+the great change was accomplished--a powerful action of the mind
+brought freedom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a fearful
+political catastrophe brought destruction in the seventeenth.[3] After
+a long deathlike sleep the modern spirit of the people awoke in the
+eighteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+
+                        PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+                      SCENES FROM THE HUSSITE WAR.
+                             (about 1425.)
+
+
+Among the events of the thirteenth century, the wonderfully rapid
+colonization of the Sclave country east of the Elbe has never been
+sufficiently appreciated. In the course of one century a numerous body
+of German emigrants of all classes, almost as many as now go to
+America, spread themselves over a large tract of country, established
+hundreds of cities and villages, and united it for the most part firmly
+to Germany. Nearly the whole of the eastern part of Prussia extends
+over a portion of the territory that was thus colonized.
+
+The time however of this outpouring of national strength was not the
+heroic period of Germany. The enthusiasm of the Crusades, the splendour
+of the Hohenstaufen, the short reign of German chivalry, and the
+greatest elevation of German art, were at the end of the twelfth and
+beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the colonization of the
+Sclave frontier was carried on with most energy towards the close of
+it. This was the period when Neumark and Prussia were conquered, and
+Lausitz, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Rugen, and Silesia colonized. But
+there was a striking difference in the case of Silesia; for whilst in
+the other Sclave countries the people were crushed by the iron hand of
+the conqueror, and were compelled to adopt German habits of life,
+Silesia became the centre of a quiet, peaceful colonization, which
+spread itself far and wide over, the frontier towards the east.
+
+How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German
+people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon.
+The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the
+Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and
+eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in
+Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks,
+enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at
+the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers
+to follow them to Poland. But little is known concerning this
+emigration; we do not even know from what province the great stream of
+Silesian wanderers flowed. There are grounds for thinking that most of
+them came from Magdeburg, Thuringia, and perhaps Franconia. There is no
+mention of it in the ancient manuscripts or chronicles; the only
+evidence concerning it might perhaps be found in the Silesian and
+Thuringian dialects, but even these have not been sufficiently
+investigated. We have however more knowledge as to who invited the
+Germans into the country of the Oder. It was the Sclavonian dukes of
+the Piasten family, who were then rulers of the country.
+
+At the end of the twelfth century a race of ancient Polish princes
+resided on their paternal inheritance in Silesia; inferior to these
+were numerous Sclave nobles, and below them again a much oppressed and
+enslaved people. The country was thinly populated, and poor both in
+capital and labour. The heights of the Riesenberge and the plains of
+the Oder were clothed with wood; between them stretched out miles of
+desolate heath. Herds of wild boars laired in the swamps, bears picked
+the wild honey from the hollow trunks of the trees, and the elks fed on
+the branches of the pine; the beaver made its home beside the rivers,
+the fish eagle hovered about the ponds, and above him soared the noble
+falcon. The beaver and falcon were more valuable in the eyes of the
+princes than their serfs. The peasants looked from their miserable huts
+with horror on the lords of the water and air, for the preservation of
+which they had to pay exorbitant penalties. What the earth yielded
+freely they had to collect for their rigorous masters and the Church.
+They had to pay tribute from the water and the heath of fish and honey,
+and heavy imposts on their arable land, sheaves of corn, grain and
+money; and a certain amount of service was required of them. The
+greater part were serfs; few were free. And not only the peasants, but
+also the artisans and tradesmen of all kinds lived in every gradation
+of servitude, ground down by oppression without hope or pleasure in
+their work. The Sclave cities only differed from the villages in being
+a larger collection of bare huts, surrounded by a moat and wooden
+palisades, and usually situated in the vicinity of a nobleman's castle,
+under whose protection they lived. In peaceable times markets were held
+in the towns. Even till the end of the twelfth century the merchants
+often made their payments, as in Poland, with the tails of martins and
+skins of squirrels instead of money. But the Silesian mines were
+already being worked; they yielded silver and gold, copper and lead,
+and mining, which was considered the nobleman's right, was carried on
+actively. Mints were erected in all the great market towns, and, as in
+Poland, the coinage was changed three times a year; and the princes
+derived some of their income from tolls on the market-places, butchers'
+stalls, and public-houses.
+
+Such was the country that was then ruled by the royal Piasten families
+under the Polish sovereignty, which, however, was often disputed, and
+sometimes entirely thrown off. A great dissimilarity might however be
+discerned in the different branches of the family. The Piastens of
+Upper Silesia united themselves closely with Poland, and kept up the
+Sclave habits in their country, so that even at the present day a
+Sclave population is to be found there; but the rulers of Lower Silesia
+adhered to the Germans. It was their policy to marry the daughters of
+the German princes: they set the highest value upon everything German,
+and German manners were introduced into the court; their children were
+sent to travel in Germany, and often brought up there, so that in the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, the Piasten family was held in
+great consideration throughout that country; they sought for knighthood
+from their relations in the west, and out of courtesy to them dressed
+their followers in their colours. They knighted their own nobles with
+the German straight sword, instead of using the crooked Sclave sabre;
+they preferred getting drunk on malmsey and Rhine wines, instead of the
+old mead. The German dances were in great request among the ladies of
+the court.
+
+In this way a numerous German nobility was established in the country,
+for these courtiers or adventurers and their relations soon became
+landed proprietors, and the Sclavonian institution of the Castellan was
+replaced by the German feudal tenure. But an influx of priests and
+monks tended still more to the promotion of German habits; a stream of
+them poured incessantly from the west into the half-civilized country.
+Monasteries, cloisters, and other pious establishments sprang up
+rapidly, and became as it were the strongholds of German life; for the
+brotherhoods of the west sent their best and most distinguished
+members, and continued to furnish them with learning, books, and
+spiritual energy. The princes, nobles, and clergy soon became aware of
+the difference between German and Sclave labour; under the latter,
+large tracts of country yielded little produce, except wood from the
+forest and honey from the heath. The landed proprietors therefore, with
+due regard to their own interests, introduced everywhere German labour.
+Thus in Silesia the great truth first dawned upon men, on which rests
+the whole system of modern life, that the labour of free men, can alone
+give stability to a nation and make it powerful and prosperous. The
+landed proprietors gave up the greater part of the claims which,
+according to the Polish law, they had upon men who dwelt on their
+property, and which were so exorbitant that they derived but little
+benefit from them. The princes granted the inhabitants as a favour, the
+right of founding cities and villages in accordance with German law,
+that is to say, free communities, and this privilege was eagerly sought
+after, especially by the ecclesiastical bodies, such as Cistertians,
+Augustines, &c.
+
+A regular method was pursued in founding these communities; but the
+fate of the villages was very different from that of the cities in the
+latter part of the middle ages. In the cities, as the body politic
+continually gained fresh strength, their rights and independence
+increased; the burgesses acquired by purchase the mayoralty, with its
+rights and jurisdiction; whilst, on the other hand, the villages were
+unable to protect themselves from the exactions of the landed
+proprietors and the burdens laid upon them by their princes; they lost
+much of their freedom, and many rights they had possessed at their
+foundation in the thirteenth century were only restored to them in the
+beginning of this present one.
+
+It was thus that after the beginning of the thirteenth century a new
+German race sprang up with a surprising rapidity, bordering on the
+Oder, between the Reisenberge and the plains of Poland. The emigration
+continued for a considerable period, and the quiet struggle between the
+German and Polish races lasted long after the former had gained the
+predominance; indeed, in some districts it has not yet ceased. But for
+the most part the pliant Sclave race of Silesia peaceably adopted the
+new customs, as it was very advantageous to put themselves under German
+law. And thus the new race showed in its dialect, manners, and
+education a new phase of the German popular character which one may
+perceive has arisen from the union of the German and Sclave races.
+
+The people who thus sprang up were not destined to an easy life, and it
+required all the excitability they derived from the Sclaves, together
+with the higher capacity they inherited from the Germans, to preserve
+them from annihilation. Driven in like a wedge between Bohemia and
+Poland quite to the vicinity of Hungary, they contended with all these
+nations, dispensing blows and receiving them from their stronger
+neighbours. They were never able to attain to the independence of a
+united people. However strong particular communities and confederations
+became when it was a question of external enemies, the Silesians were
+almost always divided.
+
+In the fifteenth century the country was visited by that terrible
+scourge the Hussite war. It is in that fearful time, when the fanatical
+warriors of the chalice burnt the Silesian villages and cloisters, and
+threw everything ecclesiastical into the flames, when the land was
+devastated for nearly a century by the horrors of war, that the
+peculiar Silesian character may be traced in contradistinction to that
+of the races dwelling in the adjoining country.
+
+Whilst in the regions adjoining the Oder, and still farther off by the
+shores of the Baltic, the German race, proud of their recent conquest
+over the Sclaves, desired to improve themselves by union with Germany,
+a great Sclave population had arisen in the middle of the German
+states, the toughest and most stable of all that family: it was firmly
+incorporated in the Empire, and had long been under the influence of
+German culture. Prague in the beginning of the fifteenth century might
+have passed for a German city, for not only in its laws and commerce,
+but also in science and art it exhibited all the vigour and
+independence of German life. About 1289 the King of Bohemia rode as a
+German elector to the election of the Emperor, and waved the golden
+glass at the coronation; the Bohemian minstrels and chroniclers wrote
+in the Swabian language and style, and Bohemian artists painted
+pictures of saints and windows for the German churches. Under the
+Luxemburgers Bohemia became the centre of the empire. The Bohemian
+throne was adorned with the German Imperial eagle and crown, and the
+flower of Germany's youth flocked to the many-turreted Moldavian city,
+in order to win in the first German university a nobler patent of
+nobility than the sword could give. It seemed then for a considerable
+period as if this fine compact Sclave country, lying with its mountain
+ramparts in the midst of Germany like a gigantic fortress, was likely
+to become the kernel of a great united empire, spreading far beyond the
+Rhine on the west, and to the Vistula on the east, or even perhaps to
+the swamps of the Theis. But just at this time an energetic reaction of
+Sclave popular feeling was roused in Bohemia against the Germans, and a
+long struggle ensued which fearfully shook the political, religious,
+and social life of Germany, rent the unity of the Roman Catholic
+Church, weakened the empire and threw it into confusion, depopulated
+large districts by a war full of cruelty, and amidst the flames of
+burning cities and the waning of millions, gave the death-blow to the
+Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages. It was the peculiar destiny of
+Germany that this great struggle should first break out among the
+teachers and scholars in the halls of the universities, and that the
+funeral pile of a Bohemian professor should give a new direction to the
+policy of German princes and people.
+
+The auto-da-f� of Huss did not appear to the Germans a very striking or
+blamable occurrence; people in those days were hastily condemned to
+death, and there hardly passed a year that the torch was not laid to
+the stake in every large city. However great the grief and indignation
+of the national party of Bohemia might be at these proceedings, the
+wild fanaticism of the people was first roused by another, and greater
+crime of the reckless Emperor Sigismund, who, at the head of the
+orthodox German fanatics, began the strife by the great massacre in
+1420; this outrage gave the Bohemians the strength of despair, and was
+the beginning of the wars which raged between the Germans and the
+Sclaves to the end of that century. Even after dissensions had broken
+out amongst the Bohemians themselves, and after the death of Georg von
+Podiebrad, feuds continued, and predatory bands spread themselves over
+the neighbouring lands, the people and nobility of Bohemia as well as
+those of the suffering frontier lands became lawless, and a hatred of
+races, less passionate but more savage and more enduring, took the
+place of fanaticism.
+
+No land suffered more from the terrors of the Hussite time than
+Silesia, and it must be confessed that the Silesians showed to less
+advantage in this century than at any other period of their history; by
+the division of their country they were politically weak, and quite
+unfitted to withstand by their own strength the attacks of powerful
+enemies; when danger approached a feeling of the helplessness of their
+position came over them and disheartened them; but whenever they could
+breathe more freely, they became overbearing and full of high-flown
+plans which generally ended in nothing. As neighbours they were bitter
+enemies of the Bohemians, and from hatred to them, zealous in their
+orthodoxy; they were actively engaged in the first disgraceful
+devastation of Bohemia, and thus, by breach of faith, brought down on
+themselves the vengeance of the Bohemians. As in the Roman time the
+truth of a Carthaginian was a byword, so now in Silesia was that of a
+Bohemian; but the Silesians had no right to reproach the Bohemians with
+breach of faith. Their dangerous position did not make them more
+careful, and they allowed their possessions and cities to be destroyed
+from the want of timely succour; they were always irritating their
+enemies and causing fresh attacks by their insolent witticisms and
+small perfidies. Their vigour and elasticity, however, were most
+enduring; as often as the Bohemians burnt down their cities and
+villages, they rebuilt them, and patched up whatever would hold
+together; they never tired of irritating the heretical Girsik, as they
+called Georg von Podiebrad.[4] If, however, they were in need of his
+assistance, they tried to appease him by a present of a hundred oxen.
+After a time, however, their hatred became more manly; they took up
+arms and fought him valiantly; and when at last he sank into the grave,
+they had the satisfaction of feeling that they had embittered the life
+and thwarted the ambitious plans of this determined character by their
+perpetual opposition.
+
+It is the beginning of this unhappy period which is described in the
+following narrative. It is taken from the report of a merchant in
+Bolkenhain,[5] named Martin, the fragment of his notes which we
+possess, published by Heinrick Hoffman (in Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum
+I., 1839).
+
+"In the year of our Lord 1425, the Hussites appeared one Saturday
+evening before the town of W�nschelburg. On Sunday, about the time of
+vespers, they made breaches in the walls, and by their overwhelming
+force gained an entrance. The people flew to the house of the mayor,[6]
+which was a high stone building. When all the men and women had arrived
+there, they set fire to the city from the mayor's house, and thought
+thereby to save themselves; but the Bohemians waited till the fire had
+burnt out, then rushed in a powerful body against the stone house,
+endeavouring to storm and undermine it. Then followed a parley: the
+mayor let himself down to the Hussites by means of a coarse tilt,[7]
+that he might negotiate with them whether the citizens should be
+allowed to go free. He was so long absent in the town that the people
+began greatly to fear, especially the pastor of the town, who was
+godfather to the mayor; he called out to them, asking whether the mayor
+was still below, requiring him to show and report himself, and come
+back to them; whereupon the mayor returned to the house and was again
+drawn up. When he had come up, his godfather the pastor asked how it
+had gone with him, and whether he had obtained from the enemy freedom
+for himself and his chaplain. Then spake the mayor: 'No, godfather;
+they give no mercy to priests!' Then the pastor and his chaplain were
+sore troubled, and said, 'How miserably you abandon and betray me, be
+God Almighty your judge. When aforetime I wished to fly, you bade me
+remain with you, saying you would abide by me for good or for evil,
+even unto death; and you said, Shall the shepherd fly from his sheep?
+And now, alack, evil is the day, the sheep fly from the shepherd.' Then
+spake the women and the citizens' wives to him, weeping, 'We will
+disguise you and your chaplains, and will bring you down with us
+safely.' Then spoke the pastor Herr Megerlein, 'That, please God, will
+I never do. I must not disavow my office and dignity, for I am a priest
+and not a woman; but look to it well, you men; see in what a pitiful
+way you deliver me over to death to save yourselves.' No one heeded
+these complaints; but the two chaplains allowed themselves to be
+disguised, and carried children on their shoulders--not so the pastor.
+
+"Whilst they thus held converse together, the mayor agreed with the
+citizens on what terms they would surrender. They then went down, one
+after the other, and the Bohemians and Hussites were there in front of
+the building, and made prisoners of them all; they allowed only the
+women and children to go free. But many of the women, maidens, and
+children had been in such fear that they had taken refuge in the
+cellars; so when the fire reached them they were suffocated and
+perished. Now when all in the house had surrendered, there remained
+only the pastor, with a few journeymen and artisans who had been unable
+to purchase their liberty, and who feared death and imprisonment; these
+the pastor exhorted as follows: 'Dear companions, look well after your
+necks, and be firm, for if they make you prisoners they will torment
+and martyrize you.' Then they replied they would do as he advised. But
+when they saw that the citizens had all surrendered, great fear came
+over them, and they went down and submitted themselves; but the pastor
+remained there with an old village priest to the last. Then the
+Hussites went up to them and brought them down, and led them into the
+midst of the army and the multitude. Then Master Ambrosius, a heretic
+of Gr�tz, being present, spoke to these gentlemen in Latin: 'Pastor,
+wilt thou gainsay and retract what thou hast preached? thus thou mayst
+preserve thy life; but if thou wilt not do this, thou must be burnt.'
+Then answered Herr Megerlein the pastor, and said, 'God forbid that I
+should deny the truth of our holy Christian faith on account of this
+short pain. I have taught and preached the truth at Prague, at G�rlitz,
+and at Gr�tz,[8] and for this truth will I gladly die.' Then one of
+them ran and fetched a truss of straw, which they bound round about his
+body so that he could not be seen; they then set fire to the straw, and
+made him, thus surrounded by flames, run and dance about in the midst
+of the multitude, till he was suffocated. Then they took him as a
+corpse and threw him into a brewer's vat of boiling water; they also
+threw in the old village priest, and let them boil therein; thus they
+were both martyred; but the two chaplains of whom I have before spoken,
+came out with the women concealed in women's clothes, and the child
+that one of these priests bore on his arm began to weep and to cry
+after its mother, and the priest tried to comfort and quiet it. So the
+Hussites discovered by the voice that it was a man, and one of them
+took the veil off him; then he let fall the child, took to flight, and
+ran with all his might; they followed after and killed him. The other
+came away with the women and children. This happened at W�nschelburg.
+
+"1429. Soon after this the Hussites returned home, but remained there
+scarcely six weeks; they called out for another campaign, collected
+again in great strength, and passed into the land of Meissen. The
+Meisseners, however, were strong in the field, with others such as
+Brunswickers, Saxons, and people from the marshes, also some from the
+Imperial cities. The Hussites entered the country with fire and sword,
+killing and taking prisoners and living lawlessly. Now when the
+Hussites had advanced to where a large army of Meisseners and people
+from the Imperial cities were collected together, they encamped
+opposite to them, and threw up a barricade of waggons. When the armies
+were thus lying opposite each other they exchanged letters. The
+Meisseners wrote thus:--'Oh! you apostates from the faith, and cursed
+heretics, we shall, God willing, fight you to-morrow, and make you food
+for the dogs.' To which the Hussites thus replied:--'Oh! you hounds,
+we shall, God willing, make you food for the dogs, only wait for us
+to-morrow.' When it was still quite early on the following morning, the
+Hussites prepared themselves for the fight; they first heard mass, than
+ate and drank their fill, and when they moved forward to begin the
+fight, they received intelligence that the Meisseners had fled. When
+they heard this, they hastened onward and chased them two whole days.
+When they found they could not catch them, they deliberated, and
+dividing themselves spread all over the country, burning, killing, and
+making prisoners, and entering the towns from which the people had
+retired.
+
+"1443. The country armed and prepared itself, and raised a troop of
+four hundred horse. It was known that the Bohemians and Hussites
+intended making an inroad upon the country, therefore the States
+encamped themselves some miles from Schweidnitz by B�gendorf, in order
+to watch the enemy, as they knew not at what point they would enter.
+But Hein von Czirnan had a presentiment that they would come to
+Bolkenhain (where he had settled), as did indeed happen; therefore he
+sent a horseman in all haste to Bolkenhain, to inform the burgomaster,
+and beg him to set a strong and vigilant watch, as he had certain
+intelligence that the enemy would enter the country in that quarter.
+The burgomaster sent warning to the villagers, but Hein von Czirnan's
+messenger arriving only in the evening, the watch not being well
+established in the city, the enemy appeared on the walls at the dawn of
+morning; for they had approached the city early in the evening and
+concealed themselves behind the hills and among the rocks, and had in
+the night quite at their leisure prepared ladders. The ladders were
+short, each of four rundles, so that four of these ladders could hardly
+reach up the wall; but the first piece of ladder had in front a little
+wheel; when this was placed, not being fixed, it advanced up the wall.
+The other ladders were so contrived that one fitted into the other, and
+fastened together by an iron band. With such cunning and malice had
+they so early set to work against us. They had placed these same
+ladders in the night by the walls where the city and hill were highest,
+the ladders were so broad and wide that two of the enemy could mount at
+a time. As now at daybreak they had placed many of the ladders, they
+began to ascend four at once, but when they arrived at the top of the
+wall they found no passage on it towards the city, and were obliged for
+some distance to slide and creep along till they came to a watch-house,
+where they found some steps; so, alas! they came upon us in the city.
+And when in this way many of them had assembled, they began to cry and
+to holloa out most terribly, like devils. This took place the last
+Thursday before Bartlemy-tide. When we heard this terrible noise and
+tumult, we were woefully frightened, and every one that was able fled
+to the towers of the gate, church, or any other tower that was
+accessible; but we could not get into the stronghold, as the enemy had
+surrounded it, and whoever attempted to enter it was slain. As the
+people of the city thus concealed themselves, the Hussites went in
+great troops about the town; some rushed to the churches, others to the
+best houses; about eight came to my house and forced themselves up into
+the shop, and placed two of their number with naked swords at the door,
+and let no one enter the house till they had plundered and divided the
+whole of my shop and goods. My wife was at that time in the midst of
+her confinement, God be merciful to her, and she had in her room many
+valuable things, such as her bed-linen and her clothes; they treated
+her however with such respect, that no one entered her room. But two of
+them who were well known to her, and to whom she had shown great
+kindness, went to the door of her room, told her how they pitied her,
+and brought her secretly a coverlet and bed-cover, and said, 'Good
+woman, they will soon set fire to the city, therefore lose no time in
+being carried to the cellar with all that you desire to save, for we
+shall be off immediately.' When they had pillaged all the houses they
+would gladly have left the town, but could not, for the inhabitants who
+had taken refuge in the towers and gate-houses, threw down stones upon
+them, so that they could not pass through the gates, however much they
+wished it. At last they found an old gate which for many years had been
+walled up; this they broke open, and carried through it all their
+plunder, with which they loaded their waggons, and intended to return
+to Bohemia; they fired the city, and marched off to Landshut. When the
+troops of the provincial states assembled at B�gendorf beheld such a
+great smoke and fire, they said to one another, 'It is indeed at
+Bolkenhain, or in its neighbourhood;' then they started off at full
+speed for Landshut, and overtook their enemies. When therefore the
+Bohemians and Hussites began to retrace their steps, they perceived a
+great host of our town-people coming towards them over the Galgenberg;
+so they in great fear took to flight. Then our people fell upon them,
+and the men who had charge of the waggons loaded with our goods,
+abandoned them and fled for refuge into the woods; thus we deprived
+them of their plunder, and made many prisoners, both horse and foot,
+who were distributed among the cities."--So writes Martin of
+Bolkenhain.
+
+This endless war ruined German Silesia: the plains lay waste and
+desolate, and most of the German peasantry in this century of fire and
+sword sank into a state little removed from that of the Sclave serfs.
+The smaller cities were burnt down and impoverished, and only a few of
+the larger ones have since attained any degree of importance. The
+Silesian nobles became rude and predatory; they learnt from the
+Bohemians to steal cattle, to seize merchants and traders, and to levy
+contributions on the cities. The princes in their endless disputes with
+one another allied themselves sometimes with the Bohemians, and shared
+their booty with them; indeed, some of them took pleasure in a wild
+robber life, carrying it on even in their own country. These deeds of
+violence and lamentable struggles continued quite into the sixteenth
+century, till the Reformation gave a new bent to this lively and
+impressible race, and brought with it new sufferings.
+
+Through all these times the Silesians retained their love of orderly
+arrangements, even in the most desperate situations. When, for example,
+in the year 1488, Duke Hans of Sagen, one of the lawless characters who
+figured in the border wars, imprisoned seven honourable counsellors of
+his own city, Glogau, in a tower, and starved them to death because
+they had refused to act contrary to a solemn engagement; these seven
+martyrs, in a truly German manner, punctually and conscientiously kept
+a diary of their sufferings, and left in writing, prayers to the
+Almighty for mercy and a happy death; but it is a truly Silesian and
+almost modern trait, that the writer of this fearful journal had a
+certain gloomy pleasure in reflecting on his painful fate, and in the
+last lines he wrote before his death, he endeavoured to depict the
+destitution of his situation by mentioning that he had been obliged to
+use the black of the burnt wick as ink.[9]
+
+In the century of the reformation, the Silesians, as might be expected
+of a people of such quick susceptibilities, were for the most part
+zealous for the new teaching. They had been bound by strong ties to the
+old Church, like most of the other races; for it was partly at the call
+of the Church that their ancestors had come into that country;
+notwithstanding which, almost the whole people freed themselves from
+Rome, and manfully ventured life and property for their convictions.
+And most severely was their constancy tried; for the supreme power,
+which had been in Polish and Bohemian hands, had now fallen into those
+of the House of Austria.[10] Of all the countries under the power of
+the House of Hapsburg, Silesia is the only one which did not make a
+sacrifice of the new faith to the iron hand of reaction, but maintained
+a desperate resistance even into the eighteenth century. These were
+indeed two most unhappy centuries; the Thirty years' war laid the
+country waste, and not a third part of the former population escaped
+from the brutality of the soldiers, or from pestilence, or famine. But
+just at this time, when the whole of Germany had become one vast
+burial-ground, in which not even the loud wail of sorrow was heard, the
+genius of Silesia, as the representative of Germany, entered on the
+only domain in which advance was possible. Whilst they were still
+exchanging blows with the Imperial soldiers, they took pleasure in
+poetry and songs. Already the delicate and polished writings of the
+vapid Opitz gave pleasure amidst the coarse language of the camp; but
+truly refreshing to the heart was the short; humorous laugh of Logau,
+at a period when nothing was to be seen save sad or angry faces. The
+whole of the educated Silesians were eager to sympathize with Opitz,
+Logau, Gryphius, and G�nther, and to vie with them in making heroic
+verses. Their songs have few charms for us, but we must always feel
+thankful to them that they had the power of giving expression to the
+ideal feelings of Germany. It was a great thing to be able to show at
+such a time, when the coarse and the commonplace overlaid the German
+life, that there was still something beautiful on earth, and a more
+intellectual enjoyment than could be found in dissolute revelry, and
+also that behind the grey and colourless sky which overspread the land,
+there was another world, full of brilliant colours, and of nobler and
+more refined feelings.
+
+But whilst the songs of the Silesian "Swans and Nightingales" were held
+in honour by the other German races, and the fame of the Silesian poets
+rose high, the worldly position of the Silesians themselves was
+lamentable. The Thirty years' war was followed by a century of
+persecution and oppression, which so diminished their energies, that at
+last it appeared as if they would fall into the same condition as that
+in which they had found the Sclaves,--a death-like apathy, and a future
+without hope. The Silesians never became utterly downcast, for they
+took every opportunity of enjoying themselves, but it was only in
+feasting and revelry. When, however, the misery of the country was at
+the highest, the Prussian drum sounded on the frontier from M�ncheberg,
+and the trumpets of the Ziethen hussars pealed along the same roads on
+which five hundred years before the first song of the German colonists
+had resounded with the good words, "We come in God's name."
+
+The Germanizing of the country was not thoroughly accomplished till it
+was conquered by Prussia; it is only since that time that the Silesians
+have become conscious of being an integral part of the German nation.
+What was begun by the Sclave Piastens of the thirteenth, was concluded
+by the German Hohenzollern of the eighteenth, century.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                   A GERMAN LADY OF THE ROYAL COURT.
+                             (about 1440.)
+
+
+Many incidents may be found in the descriptions of the struggles
+between the Silesians and Hussites, which are characteristic of the
+minds and manners of the people in their epic period. We are made
+sensible of the great dissimilarity between the past and present by the
+style of Martin's narration. In his scanty yet graphic description he
+gives us the facts, but makes no reflections on them. The writer
+undoubtedly feels how noble and manly was the death of the Pastor
+Megerlein; but he does not consider it necessary, and, indeed, seems to
+want the facility and confidence requisite, to give expression to his
+judgment.
+
+Decisions hastily taken were on the impulses of the moment as hastily
+given up. The pastor, even when abandoned by his flock, still advised
+resistance to the young men that remained, though there was little hope
+of saving himself; but he rejected the proposal of his Hussite friend,
+and met death like a man. Little value was set upon human life: hard
+hearted and cruel, the people murdered each other without compunction;
+yet the infuriated Bohemians kept respectfully out of the sick woman's
+room, and the plunderers with touching zeal requited past kindness. We
+find unbridled egotism together with heroic self-denial, rude levity
+with the deepest religious convictions: the minds of individuals moved
+in a narrow circle, but with firmness and decision.
+
+An insight into the mental struggles of the fifteenth century may be
+supplied by another narrative, in which the life and feelings of a
+clever and strong-minded woman are made known. The circle in which she
+moved was the court of the German emperor's daughter. Few of our court
+officials are aware, how much their office has increased in comfort,
+honour, and decorum since the days of their predecessors, at whose
+heads the Emperor Wenzel threw his boots, or on whom Margaret Maltash
+used to inflict blows with her clenched fist. It was necessary for the
+men and women of a court in former centuries to have strong nerves and
+good health, to bear heat and cold, to endure in winter the draughts of
+badly constructed dwellings, and in summer whole days of riding on
+rough hacks: men had to drink deep and yet keep sober longer than their
+worthy masters, if they would not be blackened with coals, and trodden
+under foot by them and other drunken princely guests; the women of the
+court had to jest with crowds of drunken men with rough manners, or to
+have their nights' rest disturbed by the clashing of naked swords, or
+by the cries of an excited multitude. It actually happened once at the
+Imperial court, that there was no money in the chest for the purchase
+of new shoes, and frequently the honest citizens declined to furnish
+the court with the necessary supplies of bread and meat. Most of the
+great courts led a wandering life, and on their journeys, bad inns,
+worse roads, and scanty fare were by no means their greatest
+discomforts: the roads were unsafe, and the reception at the end of the
+journey was often doubtful.
+
+The scenes we are about to portray are of a Hungarian court, but the
+royal family and the narrator are German. It is the court of Queen
+Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Sigismund, widow of Albrecht of
+Austria, king of Hungary, who died in the year 1439. The German
+Imperial race of Luxemburg was, after Charles IV., the least worthy of
+renown of all who have ruled over central Europe, and the Emperor
+Sigismund was one of the worst of his race. His daughter Elizabeth
+suffered under the curse of her house: it was her fate to throw Hungary
+into confusion and weakness; but as she must be judged from history, it
+appears she was somewhat better than her father or her reprobate
+mother: she had a feeling of her own dignity, and was, unlike her
+parents, a person of distinguished manners. This did not hinder her
+committing, for political purposes, unworthy actions, which every age
+has stigmatized as mean; but she attached people to her by that
+fascination of manner which often takes the place of better qualities.
+
+It was thus that one of her attendants, Helen Kottenner, was devoted to
+her with the most unshaken fidelity; she was bed-chamberwoman and
+governess to the young princess, a child of four years old, and at the
+same time she was confidante and counsellor of her mistress. Her ardent
+loyalty and motherly love for the little king Ladislaus made her the
+most zealous partisan of his family. She secretly stole for her
+sovereign the Hungarian crown, and she carried the little Ladislaus
+through the swamps of Hungary and the rebellious magnates to his
+coronation, and became his instructress when fate separated him from
+his mother. It was remarkable that this woman, in a stirring time, when
+writing was troublesome and difficult even to men, recorded the
+important events of her life and her share in politics in the shape of
+a memoir. Our surprise at so unusual a circumstance increases, when we
+examine closely the fragment of her memoirs which is preserved to us.
+Her narrative is strikingly detailed, clear, and graphic.
+
+There is no doubt that the fragment is genuine: it was published at
+Leipzig, 1846, with some explanatory remarks by Stephen Endlisher, from
+the manuscript still preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna (No.
+2920), under the title, 'From the Memoirs of Helen Kottenner, 1439,
+1440.' The principal event recorded is the theft of the Hungarian
+crown, by which the coronation of the child Ladislaus was effected.
+
+To enable the reader to understand this, we must mention that up to the
+present time a mysterious importance has been attached by the
+Hungarians to the crown of the Holy Stephen, "_die heilige_," without
+which no one could become rightful King of Hungary; and this mysterious
+importance has, as is well known, added many romantic adventures to the
+long and sorrowful history of this crown. When King Albrecht died, his
+widow Elizabeth had not given birth to the heir who was to secure the
+succession of the throne of Hungary. Amid the fierce and egotistical
+quarrels of the nobles who then decided the fate of the country, two
+large parties may be distinguished,--the national and the German. The
+national party was desirous of giving the throne to the King Wladislaus
+of Poland, whilst the Germans sought every means of preserving it to
+the royal family of Germany. Helen Kottenner writes as follows:--
+
+"Her highness the noble Queen came to reside at Plintenburg,[11] and
+many Hungarian lords with her. These went down to the vaults and
+brought up from thence a chest in which was kept the holy crown, which
+they took out with its case: there were many seals to this, which they
+broke open, and looked to see that it was all right. I was present.
+Then they placed the holy crown in a small chest. This was standing
+near a bed in which lay the noble Queen, about to be confined, and in
+the same room with her were two maidens, one called Barbara, the
+daughter of a Hungarian lord, the other called Ironacherin, and there
+was a wax taper for a nightlight, as is the custom amongst princesses.
+One of these maidens got up in the night, and upset the light without
+perceiving it; and a fire broke out in the room, and was burning so
+near the chest that it was singed, and a hole as large as a hand's
+breadth was burnt in a blue velvet cushion that layover the chest. Now
+observe this wonder: the King who was to wear the holy crown was yet
+within his mother's womb, and they were scarcely two fathoms apart from
+the chest, and the evil one would gladly have injured them by the fire;
+but God was their protector, and caused the Queen to awake at the right
+time. I was then with the young princess. Then came the maidens and
+bade me quickly rise up, as there was fire in the chamber wherein lay
+my honoured lady. I was sore afraid, rose up hastily, and went into the
+room, which was full of smoke: having extinguished the fire, I let in
+fresh air to clear away the smoke, so that the noble Queen might be
+able to remain there. In the morning the Hungarian lords waited on my
+honoured lady. Her highness told them what had happened in the night,
+and how nearly both she and the holy crown had been burnt. Then the
+lords were much amazed, and they advised that the holy crown should be
+replaced in its chest, and carried again down to the vault from whence
+it had been taken; which was done at once. The door was sealed again as
+before, but with fewer seals. And the Hungarian lords desired that the
+castle might be given over to her cousin, Lassla Wan von Gara,[12]
+which was also done. Herr Lassla Wan took possession of the castle, and
+placed it under the superintendence of a Burgrave.
+
+"After all this had happened, the noble widow, my honoured lady,
+departed for Ofen, in great anxiety of mind, because the Hungarian
+lords wished her to take another husband; and the King of Poland was
+the one whom her cousin Lassla Wan was desirous she should choose.
+This, however, she would not do, as her doctors had assured her she
+would bear a son: she hoped that this might prove true, but not having
+any certainty thereof, she was undecided how to act. Then the noble
+Queen had begun to consider and devise how she could get the holy crown
+from the Hungarian lords. These Hungarian lords would have been glad
+for the confinement of the noble Queen to have taken place at the
+Plintenburg; but that did not please her highness, and she would not
+return to the castle; for having weighed the matter well, she had
+reason to fear that were she there, she and her child might be forcibly
+detained; still less could she think of going there now, as she was
+endeavouring to obtain possession of the holy crown. The noble Queen
+had taken her youngest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, with her from the
+castle, as also myself and two young maidens, and left all the others
+there. Every one was astonished that her highness should leave the
+remainder of the court up at the castle; the reason was known only to
+God, her highness, and myself.
+
+"The noble Queen went with her youngest daughter, Princess Elizabeth,
+to Komorn. Here Count Ulric von Eily[13] came to visit her highness,--a
+faithful friend, with whom she consulted by what means she could bring
+away the holy crown from the Plintenburg. Then came my honoured lady to
+me, desiring that I should undertake it, as there was no one else she
+could trust, or who knew so well the locality. This sorely troubled me;
+for it was a dangerous venture for me and my little children, and I
+turned it over in my mind what I should do, for I had no one to take
+counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did it not, and evil arose
+therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the world. So I consented
+to risk my life on this difficult undertaking, but desired to have some
+one to help me. Then I was asked whom I should consider fit for this: I
+proposed a Croat whom I thought faithfully devoted to my lady. He was
+called into secret council, and we laid before him what we desired of
+him: the man was so terrified that he changed colour, and became as
+one, half dead: he would not consent, and went forthwith to the stable
+for his horse. I know not whether it came to pass through his own
+awkwardness, or if it was the will of God, but an account was received
+at court that he had had a bad fall from his horse, and as soon as he
+recovered he made the best of his way to Croatia; so the plan was
+delayed, and my honoured lady was very sorrowful that one who was so
+weak hearted should know of the affair, and I also was in great
+anxiety.
+
+"When the time came that the Almighty had ordained that this great work
+should be done, He sent us a Hungarian who was willing to undertake to
+obtain the holy crown; his name was the....[14]; he set about it in a
+wise and manly manner. We arranged what we should require, and took
+certain keys and two files. This man who was about to venture
+his life--as I was mine--in this affair, put on a black velvet
+dressing-gown and a pair of felt shoes, and in each shoe he placed a
+file, and he hid the keys under his dress. I took my honoured lady's
+little seal and the keys of the front door; at the side of the door
+there was a chain and hook; we had before we left put on a lock, so as
+to prevent any one else from putting another. When we were ready, my
+honoured lady sent forward a messenger to the Plintenburg, to let the
+Burgrave and the maidens know that the latter were to prepare
+themselves to join her highness at Komorn, as soon as the carriage
+arrived. When the carriage which was to be sent for the maidens, and
+also the sledge which was to convey me and my confederate were ready,
+two Hungarian noblemen were directed to accompany me. We proceeded, and
+information was given to the Burgrave, that I had arrived for the
+maidens. He and the other courtiers were surprised that I had left my
+young mistress, because she was so little, and they all knew well that
+I was rarely allowed to do so. The Burgrave was ill, and had intended
+to place his bed near the first door of the place where the holy crown
+was kept; but God ordained that his illness should increase, and he was
+unable to sleep there, and he could not place servants there, it being
+in the women's apartment; therefore he placed a cloth over the padlock,
+which we had placed on the chain, and sealed it up.
+
+"When we arrived at the Plintenburg, the maidens were right glad to
+find they were to rejoin my honoured lady: they immediately made
+preparations, and had a trunk made for their clothes; this occupied a
+long time, even up to the eighth hour. My confederate came also into
+the apartment of the women, and jested with the maidens. Now there was
+a little heap of fire-wood lying near the stove, under which he hid the
+files; but the servants who waited on the maidens observed this, and
+began to whisper among themselves. I heard them, and forthwith told
+him; this frightened him so much that he changed colour, but he took
+the files away and concealed them elsewhere, and said to me, 'Woman,
+take care that we have a light.' And I begged of the old woman to give
+me some tapers, because I had many prayers to say, for it was the first
+Saturday night after the carnival. I took the tapers and hid them near
+me. When the maidens and every one else slept, there remained in the
+small room besides myself, only the old woman whom I had brought with
+me, who did not know a word of German, nor anything about my business;
+she had also no knowledge of the house, and lay there sleeping soundly.
+At the right time my confederate came through the chapel and knocked at
+the door, which I opened and closed again after him. He had brought a
+servant with him to help him, who was called by the same Christian name
+as himself, and was bound to him by oath. I then intended to give him
+the tapers, but they had disappeared. I was in such terror that I knew
+not what to do, and the business had well-nigh miscarried only for want
+of the lights. Then I bethought me that I would go and quietly awake
+the woman who had given me the tapers; and I told her the tapers were
+lost, and I had yet some time to pray; so she gave me more. Then I was
+glad, and gave them to him with the keys and the little seal of my
+honoured lady, that he might fasten and seal everything up again. I
+gave him also the three keys which belonged to the first door. He took
+off the cloth with the seal of the castle, which had been placed on it
+by the Burgrave, opened the door and went in with his servant, and
+worked so hard at the other locks that the noise of the knocking and
+filing became alarming. But though the watchers and the Burgrave's
+people were more than usually vigilant that night in the care of the
+crown, yet Almighty God stopped their ears, so that they did not hear
+the noise. I however heard it all, and kept watch in great trouble and
+anxiety. And I devoutly prayed to God and the Holy Virgin that they
+would support and help me; yet I was in greater anxiety for my soul
+than for my life, and I prayed to God that He would be merciful to my
+soul, and let me die at once there, rather than that anything should
+happen against his will, or that should bring misfortune on my country
+and people. Whilst I was thus praying, I heard a loud noise and
+rustling, as if many armed men were at the door through which I had
+admitted my confederate, and it appeared to me as if they desired to
+break open the door. In great fear I rose from my knees, and was about
+to warn him to desist from his work, when it occurred to me to go first
+to the door, which I did; when I came to the door, the noise was at an
+end, and no one seemed to be there; then I bethought me that it was a
+spirit, and went again to my prayers; and I vowed to our dear lady a
+pilgrimage to Zell[15] barefooted, and until I could fulfil it, I would
+every Saturday night forego my feather bed, and also as long as I lived
+would make an especial prayer to the Holy Virgin, thanking her for her
+favour, and begging her to express my gratitude to our dear Lord Jesus
+Christ, for the great mercy which out of his compassion He had shown
+me. Whilst I was still at my prayers, I thought again that there was a
+great noise and rustling of armour at the other door, which was the
+special entrance into the women's room; and this frightened me so much
+that I trembled and perspired all over, and thought it was surely not a
+spirit, but that they had gone round to this door whilst I was still
+standing at that of the chapel. I knew not what to do, and listened to
+find out whether the maidens had heard anything. But I heard no one,
+then I went slowly down the small stairs through the chamber of the
+maidens, to the door which was the usual entrance into the women's
+apartments; when I came to the door there was no one. Then was I glad,
+and thanked God, and went again to my prayers, and bethought me it was
+the devil who wished to hinder our business.
+
+"When I had ended my prayer I got up, and determined to go to the vault
+and see what they were doing: the man met me, and told me to rejoice,
+as it was all accomplished. They had filed away the locks of the doors,
+but that on the case was so fast they could not file it, and were
+obliged to burn the wood. From this arose a great smoke, and I was
+again in much anxiety lest inquiry should be made about it; but God
+averted this danger. As we had now got the holy crown we closed the
+doors again, and fixed on other locks instead of those we had broken,
+and put on them again the seal of my honoured lady: we made fast the
+outer door, and replaced on it the cloth with the seal of the castle,
+as had been done by the Burgrave, and as we had found it. And I threw
+the file into the privy that was in the women's apartments; and if it
+were broken open, the file would be found in evidence of the truth of
+all this. The holy crown we carried out through the chapel, wherein
+rest in God the remains of St. Elizabeth; and I, Helen Kottenner, owe
+to this chapel a priestly garment for the mass, and an altar cloth,
+which shall be paid by my honoured lord, King Lassla. My confederate
+took a red velvet cushion which he opened, and taking a portion of the
+feathers out, placed the holy crown therein, and then sewed it up
+again.
+
+"In the meanwhile it was almost daylight, the maidens and every one had
+arisen, and we were to depart: now the maidens had in their service an
+old woman, who my honoured lady had commanded should have her wages
+paid, and be left behind, that she might return home to Ofen. When she
+had received her wages she came to me, and told me that she had seen a
+curious thing lying before the stove, and did not know what it might
+be. I was much alarmed at this, for I saw plainly that it was part of
+the case in which the holy crown had been kept; and I did my best to
+persuade her not to believe her own eyes; but I went secretly to the
+stove, and threw the fragments that I found into the fire, that they
+might be entirely burnt; and I took the woman with me on the journey.
+Every one was surprised at my doing this; but I said that I intended
+asking my honoured lady for a benefice at St. Martins at Vienna for
+her, which I afterwards did.
+
+"When the maidens and the retinue were ready to depart, my confederate
+took the cushion in which the holy crown was concealed, and commanded
+his servant to carry it from the house to the sledge on which he and I
+were to sit. Then the good fellow took the cushion on his shoulders,
+and threw over it an old cowhide with the tail on, which hung down
+behind, and every one who saw it began to laugh.
+
+"When we arrived in the market-place we would gladly have had something
+to eat, but could find nothing except herrings. When we had eaten a
+little, and assisted at the usual mass in the Church, the day was far
+advanced, and we had to go that day from the Plintenburg to Komorn,
+which was full twelve German miles off. On mounting the sledge I took
+great care not to sit on the corner of the cushion in which the holy
+crown was concealed, and thanked God Almighty for all his mercies; yet
+I often turned round to see if any one followed us; and there was no
+end to my anxiety, for my thoughts troubled me much.
+
+"On arriving at the inn where we intended to dine, the faithful servant
+to whom the care of the cushion was intrusted carried it into the
+chamber, and laid it on a table before me, so that it was under my eye
+the whole time that we were eating; and before starting, the cushion
+was replaced. We journeyed onwards, and about dark arrived at the
+Danube, which was still frozen over, but the ice in some places was
+very thin. When we were half way across the river the ice gave way
+under the carriage in which the maidens were, and it was upset; they
+raised a great cry, for it was so dark they could not see each other. I
+was in great fear that we, with the holy crown, should be lost in the
+Danube; but God was our help, so that no one got under the ice, but
+many things from the carriage fell into the water under the ice. Then I
+took the Duchess of Silesia and the principal maidens into the sledge
+with me, and we, with all the others, got safe over the river. When we
+arrived at the castle of Komorn, my confederate took the cushion with
+the holy crown, and carried it to a place of safety, and I went to my
+honoured lady the noble Queen, who received me graciously, and said,
+'That with God's help, I had been a good messenger.'
+
+"The noble Queen received me in bed, and told me how she had suffered
+during the day. Two widow ladies had come from Ofen to her highness,
+bringing with them two nurses, one was the midwife, the other the
+wet-nurse; and the latter had brought her child with her, which was a
+son, for the wise people think that the milk which comes with a son is
+better than that which comes with a daughter. These women were to have
+gone with her highness to Presburg, where she was to have been
+confined, for according to their reckoning her highness had yet another
+week to go; but either the reckoning was wrong, or, as I said to the
+noble Queen, it was God's will: her grace told me that the women from
+Ofen had given her a bath, after which her pains had come on. I
+discovered from this that the birth was now approaching. The women from
+Ofen were staying in the market-place, but we had a midwife with us,
+called Margaret, who had been sent to my honoured lady by the Countess
+Hans von Schaumberg, as being particularly good, which she was. Then I
+said, 'Honoured lady, it seems to me that you will not go to-morrow to
+Presburg;' so her highness got up and began to prepare herself for the
+event. Then I sent for the Hungarian housekeeper who was called Aessem
+Margit, who came immediately, and also the maiden called Ironacherin,
+and I hastened to call the midwife whom the Countess von Schaumberg had
+sent. She was in the room with my young lady,[16] and I said,
+'Margaret, rise quickly, for the hour of my honoured lady is come;' the
+woman being heavy with sleep answered, 'By the holy cross, if the child
+is born to-night we shall hardly go to Presburg to-morrow;' and she
+would not get up. The contest between us appeared to me so long that I
+hastened back to my honoured lady, lest anything should go wrong, as
+those who were with her did not understand such things; and she
+inquired, 'Where is Margaret?' and I gave her the foolish answer of the
+woman; and her highness said, 'Go again quickly, and bid her come, for
+this is no jesting matter.' I hurried back in great anger, and brought
+the woman with me; and in less than half an hour after she came to my
+honoured lady, Almighty God sent us a young King. The same hour that
+the holy crown came from the Plintenburg to Komorn, the King Lassla was
+born. The midwife was sharp-witted, and exclaimed, 'Honoured lady,
+grant me my wish, and I will tell you what I have in my arms.' The
+noble Queen answered, 'Yes, dear mother;' and the nurse said, 'I have a
+young King in my arms.' This made the noble Queen very happy: she
+raised her hands to God, and thanked Him for his mercy. When she had
+been arranged comfortably in her bed, and no one was with her save I
+alone, I knelt down and said to the Queen, 'Honoured lady, your
+Highness must thank God as long as you live for his great mercy, and
+for the miracle which He has wrought in bringing the crown and the King
+together in the same hour.' The noble Queen replied, 'It is indeed a
+great miracle of God Almighty, the like of which has never happened
+before.'
+
+"When the noble and faithful Count Ulric von Eily heard that a King and
+friend was born to him, who was both his lord and cousin, he was
+overjoyed, as were also the Croats, and all the lords and attendants on
+the court. The noble Count von Eily had bonfires made, and they had a
+procession on the water with torches, and amused themselves till after
+midnight. Early in the morning they sent for the Bishop of Gran to come
+and christen the young King: he came, accompanied by the pastor of
+Ofen, Master Franz. And my honoured lady desired that I should be
+godmother; but I answered, 'Honoured madam, I am bound to obey your
+Highness always, but I beg of you to take the Aessem Margit instead of
+me,' which her Highness did. When the noble King was to be baptized, we
+took off the black dress from the young princess, which she had worn
+for the great and dear prince, King Albrecht, and put on her a golden
+dress woven with red; and the maidens were all gaily dressed to the
+honour and praise of God, who had given an hereditary King to the
+people and country.
+
+"Not long after, there came certain intelligence that the King of
+Poland was approaching, and had designs upon Ofen, which proved true.
+It became therefore necessary to make secret and hasty preparations for
+the coronation; and my honoured lady sent to Ofen to get cloth of gold
+for the coronation dress of the little King Lassla; but this took so
+long a time that we feared it would be too late, for the coronation
+must take place on a high festival, and Pentecost, which was the first,
+was near at hand, so that it was necessary to make haste. Now there was
+a rich and beautiful vestment for the mass which had belonged to the
+Emperor Sigismund; it was red and gold, with silver spots worked on it;
+this was cut up and formed into the first dress of the young King that
+he was to wear with the holy crown. I sewed together the small pieces,
+the surplice and the humeral, the stole and the banner, the gloves and
+the shoes; and I was obliged to make these secretly in the chapel with
+bolted doors.
+
+"In the evening, when every one had gone to rest, my honoured lady sent
+for me to come to her immediately; this made me fear that something had
+gone wrong. The noble Queen's thoughts had been wandering to and fro,
+and she said to me, 'What would you advise? our affairs are not going
+on well; they desire to stop us on our way; where shall we conceal the
+holy crown? It will be a great misfortune if it falls into the hands of
+the enemy.' I stepped aside for a little while, wishing to reflect and
+to pray to the mother of all mercy to intercede with her Son, that we
+might manage our business so that no evil should accrue from it. Then I
+returned to the noble Queen and said, 'Honoured lady, with deference to
+your wisdom, I will advise what seems good to me: your Highness knows
+well that the King is of more importance than the holy crown; let us
+lay the holy crown in the cradle under the King, so that wherever God
+leads the King there will the crown be also.' This counsel pleased her
+Highness, who answered: 'We will do so, and thus let him take care of
+the crown himself.' In the morning I took the holy crown and packed it
+carefully in a cloth, and laid it in the mattress of the cradle, for
+his Highness did not yet lie on a feather-bed; and laid there also a
+long spoon, such as we use for mixing the child's pap. This I did to
+make any one who felt in the cradle, believe that what lay therein was
+the vessel in which the pap for the noble King was prepared.
+
+"On the Tuesday afternoon before Whitsunday the noble Queen set out
+with the young King, the noble Count von Eily, the Croatian counts, and
+the Dukes of Lindbach. A large boat had been prepared for the noble
+Queen, her son, and daughter; and many good people went on board with
+them, so that the boat being heavy laden was scarce a hand's breadth
+above the water: there was much fear and danger, especially as the wind
+was high; but God took us prosperously over the river. The young King
+was carried in the cradle by four men, most of them armed, and I myself
+rode by the side of it. He had not been carried far when he began to
+cry violently, and would not remain in the cradle; so I descended from
+my horse and carried him in my arms: and the roads were bad, for there
+had been much rain; but there was a pious knight there, Herr Hans of
+Pilach, who conducted me through the swampy ground.
+
+"We went on in great anxiety, for all the peasants had fled from their
+villages into the wood, and most of them were vassals of the lords who
+were our enemies; therefore, when we came to the mountains, I
+dismounted from my horse and took the noble King out of his cradle, and
+placed him in the carriage, wherein sat the noble Queen and her young
+daughter Elizabeth; and we women and maidens formed a circle round the
+noble family, so that if any one fired at the carriage we should
+receive the shots. And there were many foot-soldiers who went on both
+sides of the carriage, and searched in the underwood, lest there should
+be any enemies there who might injure us. Thus, with God's help, we
+crossed the mountain without hurt. Then I took the noble King again out
+of the carriage, and placed him in his cradle, riding by the side of
+it: we had not gone far when he began again to cry; he would not remain
+in the cradle or carriage, and the nurse could not quiet him. Then I
+took him up in my arms and carried him a good bit of the way; the nurse
+also carried him till we were both tired, when I laid him again in his
+cradle; thus we continued to change during the whole of our journey.
+Sometimes it rained so that the noble King was quite wet. I had brought
+a fur pelisse with me for my own wear, but when the rain was very heavy
+I covered the cradle with it, till it was wet through, I then had it
+wrung out, and again covered the cradle with it as long as it was
+wanted. The wind also was so high that it blew the dust into the
+cradle, so that the King could hardly open his eyes; and at times it
+was so hot that he perspired all over, and from that a rash broke out
+upon him afterwards. It was almost night when we arrived at the inn;
+and when every one had eaten, the gentlemen placed themselves round the
+house in which the royal family were, and made a fire, keeping watch
+all night, as is the custom in the kingdom of Hungary. The next day we
+journeyed to Weissenburg.
+
+"When we arrived near Weissenburg, Miklosch Weida of the free city rode
+to meet us, accompanied by full five hundred horse.
+
+"When we went through the marshy ground the young King began again to
+cry, and would not remain in the cradle or carriage; and I was again
+obliged to carry his Highness in my arms, till we arrived in the city
+of Weissenburg. Then the gentlemen sprang from their horses, and formed
+themselves into a wide circle of armed men, holding naked swords in
+their hands, and I, Helen Kottenner, had to carry the young King in the
+midst of this circle; and Count Bartholom� of Croatia went on one side
+of me, and another on the other side, to do honour to the noble King;
+thus we went through the city till we arrived at the inn. This was on
+Whitsun eve.
+
+"On our arrival my honoured lady sent for the elders of the city; she
+showed them the holy crown, and gave directions to prepare everything
+that was meet for the coronation, according to the old usages. And
+there were certain burghers there, who remembered the coronation of the
+Emperor Sigismund, having been present at it. On Whitsun morning I got
+up early, bathed the young King, and dressed him as well as I could;
+then they carried him to the church, where all the Kings were crowned,
+and there were many good people there, both ecclesiastics and laymen.
+When we arrived at the church they carried the young King to the choir,
+but the door of the choir was closed; the citizens were within, and my
+honoured lady was outside the door with her son, the noble King. My
+honoured lady spoke Hungarian with them, and the burghers answered her
+Highness in the same language: her Highness took the oath instead of
+her son, for his Highness was only twelve weeks old that day. When all
+this was accomplished according to the old customs, they opened the
+door and let in their rightful lord and lady, and all the others who
+were summoned, both ecclesiastics and laymen. And the young Princess
+Elizabeth stood up by the organ, that her Highness might not be injured
+in the throng, as she was only just four years old. When the service
+was about to begin, I had to raise up the young King that his Highness
+might be confirmed. Now Miklosch Weida had been appointed to knight the
+young King, because he was a genuine Hungarian knight. The noble Count
+von Eily had a sword which was thickly ornamented with silver and gold,
+and on it was a motto that ran thus: 'Indestructible.' This sword he
+gave to the young King that his Highness might be knighted with it.
+Then I, Helen Kottenner, raised the young King in my arms, and the
+knight of the free city took the sword; and he gave the King such a
+blow that I felt it on my arm. This the noble Queen, who stood near me,
+remarked, and said to the knight of the free city: 'Istemere nem
+misertem!' that is to say, 'For God's sake do not hurt him!' to which
+he replied: 'Nem;' that is to say, 'No,' and laughed. Then the right
+reverend prelate, the Archbishop of Gran, took the holy oil, and
+anointed the noble child, King; and the dress of cloth of gold, such as
+is worn by kings, was put on the noble child; and the archbishop took
+the holy crown and placed it on his head; and thus he, King Albrecht's
+son, grandson of the Emperor Sigismund, who throughout all holy
+Christendom is recognized as King Lassla, was crowned at Weissenburg by
+the Archbishop of Gran, with the holy crown, on Whitsunday. For there
+are three laws in the kingdom of Hungary which must not be departed
+from, as without them no king is deemed legally crowned. One of these
+is, that a king of Hungary must be crowned with the holy crown; another
+that it must be done by the Archbishop of Gran; and the third, that it
+shall take place at Weissenburg. When the archbishop placed the crown
+on the head of the noble King Lassla, he held his head quite upright
+with the strength of a child of a year old, which is seldom to be seen
+in children of twelve weeks. After the noble King, seated in my arms,
+had been crowned at the altar of St. Stephen, I carried him up a small
+staircase to a high gallery, according to custom, and the prescribed
+ritual for the festival was read; but there being no golden cloth for
+the King to sit on, after the old usage, I took for the purpose a red
+and gold cover lined with ermine from his cradle; and whilst the noble
+King was held upon the golden cloth, Count Ulric von Eily held the
+crown over his head during the chanting of the office.
+
+"The noble King had little pleasure in his coronation, for he wept
+aloud, so that all in church heard him; and the common people were
+astonished, and said, 'It was not the voice of a child of twelve weeks;
+it might be taken for that of a child of a year old, which, however, he
+was not. Then knighthood was conferred by Miklosch Weida on behalf of
+the noble King Lassla. When the office was completed I carried the
+noble King down again, and laid him in the cradle, for he was very
+tired from sitting so long upright. Then he was borne to St. Peter's
+church, where I was again obliged to take him out of his cradle and
+place him on a chair, as it is the custom for every king when crowned
+to be seated there. Again I carried his Highness down and laid him in
+his cradle; and he was taken from St. Peter's church, followed by his
+noble family on foot, back to the inn. The only one who rode was Count
+von Eily, for he had to hold the holy crown over the head of the noble
+King, that every one might see it was the holy crown which had been
+placed on the head of the holy St. Stephen and other Hungarian Kings.
+Count Bartholom� carried the orb, and the Duke von Lindbach the
+sceptre; a legate's staff was borne before the noble King, because he
+did not hold any part of Hungary on feudal tenure from the holy Roman
+Empire; and the sword with which his Highness had been knighted was
+also carried before him, and pence were scattered among the people. The
+noble Queen was so humble and showed such respect to her son, that I,
+poor woman, had to walk before her, next to the noble King, because I
+had held his Highness in my arms at the anointing and coronation. When
+the noble King had arrived at the inn, he was put to rest, as his
+Highness was very tired. The lords and all others went away, and the
+noble Queen remained alone with her son. Then I knelt down before her,
+and reminded her of the service which I had rendered to her Highness
+and the noble King; and also to her other children and members of the
+royal family. Thereupon the noble Queen gave me her hand and said,
+'Rise up, and if please God our affairs prosper, I will exalt you and
+your whole race. You have well deserved it, for you have done for me
+and my children what I myself could not have done.' Then I inclined
+myself humbly, and thanked her Highness for her kind encouragement."
+
+Thus far Helen Kottenner. History tells us in what consternation the
+party of King Wladislaus of Poland was placed by the robbery of the
+crown, and also how the crown itself was mortgaged by the Queen to the
+Emperor Frederick III., but of the after life of Helen Kottenner we
+know nothing.
+
+What interests us most in this narrative is the night scene in which
+the holy crown of Hungary is purloined, and the mental struggles of a
+strong female character. But these inward struggles and scruples of
+conscience assume to the daughter of the fifteenth century a palpable
+form: they become to her an outward reality that mysteriously assails
+her. Her soul is not tormented with thoughts alone that accuse and
+excuse each other, but with delusive appearances that strike her with
+terror.
+
+This activity of the senses, which clothes with an appearance of
+outward life all that rises in the soul, of the fearful and
+incomprehensible, is generally and peculiarly characteristic of the
+early life of every people. The souls of individuals are not
+sufficiently free to enable them to understand the inward struggles of
+their own minds: they begin by contending against what torments them,
+as if it were an outward form or enemy. Such were the noble struggles
+of Luther; and when the incomparable English poet of the sixteenth
+century caused his tragic hero to struggle with the apparitions of
+murdered men, and with the dagger which was the implement of his crime,
+this conception, which we consider as a highly poetical and spiritual
+creation, had a far deeper truth for him and his spectators.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+                        THE TRAVELLING STUDENT.
+                      (1509, and following years.)
+
+
+The fifteenth century passed away. To us Germans it appears an
+introduction to the great events of the following one,--a period of
+earnest but imperfect striving towards improvement. The excitement of
+the masses in the great half-Sclave population of the Roman empire had
+brought death and destruction over the German provinces, and the
+fanaticism of the Hussites had appeared to exhaust itself in the
+burning ruins of hundreds of cities and villages; but the same feeling
+had stirred the hearts of two generations, and in the next century the
+flame again blazed forth, more powerful and unquenchable, a pillar of
+fire to all Europe. The house of Luxemburg had passed away; its last
+heirs had mortgaged the Hungarian crown to the Austrian Hapsburgers,
+and bequeathed to them their claims to the wide and insecure
+acquisitions of their race. In the next century Charles V. made them
+the greatest dynasty of the world. It was a century of strife and
+reckless egotism, and on all sides arose knightly associations and
+confederacies; but it was also a time when the German mind, having
+become more practical in its tendencies, arrived at the greatest of all
+new discoveries,--the art of printing; when, in spite of fighting on
+the highways and bloody quarrels within the cities, commerce and trade
+began to flourish; when citizens and peasants acquired the habits of
+regular soldiers; when the German merchant established his supremacy on
+the northern seas, while the Italian navigator pressed on through the
+mists of boundless oceans, to unknown regions of the earth; finally, it
+was the time in which the Alpine mules bore, together with the spices
+of the East and the papal bulls, the manuscripts of a foreign nation,
+by means of which a new enlightenment was spread over Germany,--the
+early dawn of modern life.
+
+With the sixteenth century began the greatest spiritual movement that
+ever roused a nation. This century has for ever impressed its seal on
+the spirit and temper of the German people. A wonderful time, in which
+a great nation anxiously yearning after its God, sought peace for the
+burdened soul, and a moral and mental aim for a life hitherto so poor
+and joyless.
+
+This effort of the popular mind to found a new collective life by a
+deep apprehension of the eternal, produced a political development in
+Germany which is strikingly distinct from that of other nations. The
+whole powers of the nation were so engrossed in this passionate
+struggle, that it sank into a state of extreme exhaustion: the
+political concentration of Germany was delayed for centuries; most
+fearful civil wars were followed by a deathlike lassitude; German was
+divided from German, and a deep chasm was formed between the new and
+the middle ages. The result was, that a large portion of the German
+people, who might carry back their history in uninterrupted continuity
+up to the struggles of Arius and Arminus, now regard the time of the
+Hohenstaufen, and even the imperial government of the first Maximilian,
+as a dark tradition; for their state polity, their rights, and their
+municipal laws are hardly as old as those of the free states of North
+America. The oldest of the proud nations that arose from the ruins of
+the Roman empire, is now in many respects the youngest member of the
+European family. But whatever may have been the influence of the
+sixteenth century on the political formation of the fatherland, every
+German should look back to it with respect, for we owe to it all which
+now is our hope and pride; our power of self-sacrifice, our morality
+and freedom of mind, an irresistible impulse for truth, our art, and
+our unrivalled system of science, and lastly, the great obligation
+which our ancestors have imposed upon us of accomplishing what they
+failed in. It is especially now, in the midst of a political struggle
+for German national life, that it would be useful to us to consider how
+this struggle began three centuries and a half ago.
+
+Whoever attempts to examine the German mind at the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, will observe a secret restlessness, something like
+that of migratory birds when spring approaches; this indefinite impulse
+reproduced frequently the old German love of wandering. Many causes
+combined to make the poor restless and desirous of novelty. The number
+of vagrants, young and old, such as pedlers, pilgrims, beggars, and
+travelling students, was very great; many of the adventurers went to
+France, but the greater part to Italy.
+
+Wonderful reports came from distant lands. Beyond the Mediterranean,
+in the countries contiguous to Jerusalem (which was annually visited by
+the German pilgrims), a new race and a new and obnoxious religion had
+spread itself. Every pilgrim who came from the south related in the
+hostelries tales of the warlike power of the Turks, of their polygamy,
+of the Christian children whom they stole and brought up as slaves,
+and of danger to the Christian islands and seaports. On the other hand
+the fancy was led from the terrors of endless seas to the new gold
+lands,--countries like paradise, coloured tribes who knew nothing of
+God, and endless booty and dominion for believing Christians. To this
+was added the news from Italy itself,--how discontented the inhabitants
+were with the pope, how wanton the simony, and how wicked the princes
+of the Church.
+
+And those who brought these tidings into the city and country were no
+longer timid traders or poor pilgrims, but sunburnt hardy troopers,
+bold in aspect, and well accoutred; children of neighbours, and
+trustworthy men, who had accompanied the Emperor as mercenaries to
+Italy, where they had fought with Italians, Spaniards, and Swiss, and
+now returned home with all kinds of booty, gold in their purses, and
+the golden chains of knighthood round their necks. The youths of the
+village gazed with respect on the warrior who thrust his halberd into
+the ground before the inn, and took possession of the rooms for himself
+and his guests, as if he were a nobleman or a prince; for he, the
+peasant's son, had trodden under foot Italian knights, and dipped deep
+into the money coffers of Italian princes; had obtained full
+dispensation from the Pope for his deeds, and, it was even whispered, a
+secret blessing which made him invulnerable. The lower orders began for
+the first time to have an idea of their own strength and capacities;
+they felt that they also were men; the hunting-spear hung in their
+huts, and they carried the long knife in their belt. But what was their
+position at home? The use of their hands and their teams was required
+by the landed nobleman for his fields; to him belonged the forest and
+the game within it, and the fish in their waters; and when the peasant
+died, his heir was obliged to give up the best of his herd, or its
+worth in money. In every feud in which the nobleman was engaged they
+were the victims: the enemy's soldiers fell upon their cattle, and they
+themselves were shot down with arrows, and imprisoned in dark dungeons
+till they were able to pay ransom. The Church also sought after their
+sheaves and concealed money. Dishonest, cunning, and voluptuous were
+the deans, who rode through their villages, falcon on hand, with
+troopers and damsels; the priests, whom the peasants could neither
+choose nor dismiss, seduced their wives, or lived scandalously at home.
+The mendicant monks forced their way into their kitchens, and demanded
+the smoked meats from their chimneys, and the eggs from their baskets.
+All the communities throughout Southern Germany were in a state of
+silent fermentation, and already, at the end of the fifteenth century,
+local risings had begun, the forerunners of the Peasant war.
+
+But more wonderful still was the influence of the new art, through
+which the poorest might acquire knowledge and learning. The method of
+multiplying written words by thousands was discovered on the banks of
+the Rhine in the middle of the fifteenth century. The printing of
+patterns by means of wooden blocks had been practised for many
+centuries, and frequently single pages of writing had in this way been
+struck off; at last it occurred to a citizen that whole books might be
+printed with cast metal type. Its first effect was to give intelligence
+to the industry of the artisan, and a way was thus opened to the people
+of turning their mental acquirements to profit.
+
+The learning of the middle ages still occupied the professors' chairs
+at the German universities, but it was without soul, and consisted in
+dry forms and scholastic subtleties. There was little acquaintance with
+the ancient languages, Hebrew and Greek were almost unknown; the solid
+learning of the olden times was taught in bad monkish Latin; the Bible
+and Fathers of the Church, the Roman historians, institutes and
+pandects, the Greek text of Aristotle, and the writers upon natural
+philosophy and medicine, were found only in dusty manuscripts; nothing
+but the commentators and systematizers of the middle ages were ever
+expounded or learnt by heart. Such was the state of things in Germany.
+But in Italy, for more than a century, mental cultivation had begun,
+from the study of Roman and Greek poets, historians, and philosophers.
+The men of high intellect on the other side of the Alps rejoiced in the
+beauty of the Latin language and poetry, admired the acute logic of
+Cicero, and regarded with astonishment the powerful life of the Roman
+people. Their whole literature entwined itself, like the tendrils of a
+creeper, round the antique stem. It was soon after the invention of
+printing, and during the war carried on by the Germans in the
+Peninsula, that this new Humanitarian learning was gradually introduced
+into Germany. The Latin language, which appeared to the Germans like a
+new discovery, was industriously studied in the classical schools, and
+disseminated through the means of manuals. The close attention and long
+labour necessary in Germany to acquire the foreign grammar, acted as
+discipline to the mind. Acuteness and memory were strongly exercised;
+the logical construction of the language was more attended to than the
+phonetic; the grandeur and wisdom of the subject, more than the beauty
+and elegance of the style: the German mind required more exercise,
+therefore the result was more lasting, because the mastery had to be
+gained over two languages of different roots. A number of earnest
+teachers first spread the new learning; among these were Jacob
+Wimpfeling and Alexander Hegius, Crato of Udenheim, Sapidus, and
+Michael Hilspach. To these may be added the poets Henry Bebel and
+Conrade Celtes, Ulrich Zasius the lawyer, and others; in close union
+with them were to be found all the men of powerful talent in Germany;
+Sebastian Brand, author of Narrenschiffs, and also the great preacher
+John Geiler of Kaisersberg, although he had been brought up in the
+scholastic teaching.
+
+They were sometimes led by their knowledge of ancient philosophy into
+secret speculations upon the being of God, and all were opposed to the
+corruptions of the Romish Church; but their opposition differed from
+that of Italy in this respect, that the German mind gave it more
+elevation. It is true that many of the Humanitarian teachers considered
+the German language as barbarous; they Latinized their names, and in
+their confidential letters took the liberty of calling their countrymen
+unpolished; they hated the despotic arrogance with which the Romish
+priests looked down upon them and their nation; yet they did not cease
+to be good Christians. Besides their unceasing attacks on the vices of
+the Italian priesthood, they ventured, though with hesitation and
+caution, upon an historical critique on the foundation of the claims of
+the Papacy. They were united in bonds of friendship, and formed one
+large community. Bitterly persecuted by the representatives of the old
+scholastic school, they nevertheless gained allies everywhere,--in the
+burgher houses of the Imperial cities, in the courts of the Princes, in
+the entourage of the Emperor, and even in the cathedral chapters and on
+the Episcopal thrones.
+
+The mental culture of these men, however, could not keep a lasting hold
+on German life; its groundwork was too foreign to the real needs of the
+mental life of the people; its ideal, which it had gathered from
+antiquity, was too vague and arbitrary; its fantastical occupation with
+a bygone world, of whose real meaning they knew so little, was not
+favourable to the development of their character. Some indeed became
+forerunners in the struggle of faith, but others, offended by the
+roughness and narrowness of the new teaching, fell back to the old
+Church which they had before so severely judged. One of this school,
+the enthusiastic and high-minded Ulrich von Hutten, who was
+passionately German, and attached to the teaching of Luther, suffered
+for his devotion to the popular cause.
+
+In the beginning of the century, however, the Humanitarians carried on
+almost alone the struggle against the oppression under which the nation
+groaned. They exercised a powerful influence on the minds of the
+multitude; even what they wrote in Latin was not lost upon them, and
+the rhymesters of the cities were never weary of propagating the
+witticisms and bitter attacks of the Humanitarians in the form of
+proverbs, jocose stories, and plays.
+
+The desire for learning became powerful amongst the people. Children
+and half-grown boys rushed from the most distant valleys into the
+unknown world to seek for knowledge; wherever there was a Latin school
+established, there the children of the people congregated, often
+undergoing the greatest sufferings and hardships, demoralized by the
+uncertainty of their daily life; for though the founders and managers
+of the schools, or the burghers of the cities, gave these strangers
+sometimes a roof over their heads, and beds to lie on, they were
+obliged for the most part to beg for their daily subsistence.
+Little control was exercised over them; only one thing was strictly
+enjoined,--that there should be some method in the lawlessness of their
+life; it was only under appointed forms, and in certain districts of
+the city, that they were allowed to beg. When the travelling scholar
+came to a place where there was a Latin school, he was bound to join
+the association of scholars, that he might not make claims on the
+benevolence of the inhabitants, to the prejudice of the schoolmaster or
+of those already there. An organization was formed among these
+scholars, as was always the case where Germans assembled together in
+the middle ages, and a code was established, containing many customs
+and demoralizing laws, with which every one was obliged to comply;
+besides this there was the rough poetry of an adventurous life, which
+few could go through without injury to their characters in after life.
+The younger scholars, called Sch�tzen, were, like the apprentices of
+artisans, bound to perform the most humiliating offices for their older
+comrades, the Bacchanten: they had to beg and even to steal for their
+tyrants, who in return gave them the protection of their strength. It
+was considered honourable and advantageous for a Bacchant to have many
+Sch�tzen, who obtained gifts from the benevolent, on which he lived;
+but when the rough Bacchant rose to the university, he was paid off for
+all the tyrannical injustice he had practised towards the younger
+scholars: he had to lay aside his school dress and rude manners, was
+received into the distinguished society of students with humiliating
+ceremonies, and was obliged in his turn to render service and to bear
+rude jests like a slave. The scholars were perpetually changing their
+schools, for with many the loitering on the high roads was the main
+object; their youth was passed in wild roving from school to school, in
+begging, theft, and dissoluteness. Whilst we rejoice in finding a few
+individuals who, by strength of mind and ability, rose through all this
+to intellectual preeminence, we must bear in mind how many a pet child
+died miserably under some hedge, or in the lazar-house of a foreign
+city, whose youthful minds had looked forward with hope to reaching the
+same goal.
+
+The instruction in the Latin schools was very deficient, for a book was
+a rare treasure: the boys had often to copy the text for themselves,
+and the old grammar of Donat still served as the groundwork by which
+they learned to read Latin. There was still much useless scholastic
+pedantry, and what was then admired as elegant Latin, has somewhat of a
+monkish flavour. But the great teacher Wimpfeling took every
+opportunity of selecting examples which might excite the boys to
+honesty, integrity, and the fear of God; he endeavoured to impart not
+merely the knowledge of forms, or the subtle distinctions of words, but
+the spirit that flows from the ancients. The mind was to be ennobled;
+intellect and faith were to be advanced; learning was to act as a
+preservative against war, to promote peace, the greatness of states,
+and the reformation of the Catholic Church, for its object was
+knowledge of the truth.
+
+Some idea of the life of a travelling student has been preserved to us
+in the description of Thomas Platter, the poor shepherd boy from
+Visperthale, in the Valais, later a renowned printer and schoolmaster
+at Basle; his autobiography has been published by Dr. Fechter, Basle,
+1840. In those days no travellers in search of the picturesque had
+begun to roam in the wild mountain valley from which the Visp rushes
+towards the Rhone, nor to visit Zermatt, the Matterhorn, and the
+glaciers of Monte Rosa. The shepherd boy grew up amidst the rocks, with
+no companions but his goats; his herd straying into a corn-field, or an
+eagle hovering threateningly above him, his climbing a steep rock, or
+being punished by his severe master, were the only events of his
+childhood; how he was cast out into the wide world from his solitude he
+shall himself relate.
+
+"When I was with the farmer, one of my aunts, named Frances, came to
+see me; she wished me, she said, to go to my cousin, Herr Anthony
+Platter, to learn the Scriptures; thus they speak when they want one to
+go to school. The farmer was not well pleased at this; he told her I
+should learn nothing: he placed the forefinger of his right hand in the
+middle of the left, and went on to say, 'The lad will learn about as
+much, as I can push my finger through there.' This I saw and heard.
+Then said my aunt: 'Who knows? God has not denied him gifts; he may yet
+become a pious priest.' So she took me to that gentleman. I was, if I
+remember right, about nine or ten years old. First it fared ill with
+me, for he was a choleric man, and I but an unapt peasant lad. He beat
+me cruelly, and ofttimes dragged me by the ears out of the house, which
+made me scream like a goat into which the knife had been stuck; so that
+the neighbours oft talked of him as if he wished to murder me.
+
+"I was not long with him, for just at that time my cousin came, who had
+been to the schools at Ulm and Munich, in Bavaria; the name of this
+student was Paulus of Summermatten. My relations had told him of me,
+and he promised that he would take me with him to the schools in
+Germany. When I heard this I fell on my knees, and prayed God Almighty
+that He would preserve me from the 'Pfaffs,'[17] who taught me almost
+nothing and beat me lamentably, for I had learned only to sing a little
+of the Salve, and to beg for eggs with the other scholars, who were
+with the Pfaff in the village.
+
+"When Paulus was to begin his wanderings again, I was to go to him at
+Stalden. Simon, my mother's brother, dwelt at Summermatten, on the road
+to Stalden: he gave me a gold florin, which I carried in my little hand
+to Stalden. I looked often on the way to see that I still had it, and
+gave it to Paulus. Then we departed into the country, and I had to beg
+for myself, and to give of what I got to my Bacchant Paulus: on account
+of my simplicity and countrified language, much was given to me. At
+night going over the Grimsel Mountain we came to an inn; I had never
+seen a _kachelofen_,[18] and as the moon shone on the tiles, I imagined
+it was a great calf: I saw only two tiles shining, which were, I
+imagined, the eyes. In the morning I saw geese. I had never seen any
+before, and when they hissed at me I thought they were devils, and
+would eat me; so I cried out and ran away. At Lucerne I saw the first
+tiled roofs.
+
+"Afterwards we went to Meissen: it was a long journey for me, as I was
+not accustomed to travel so far and to obtain food on the road. There
+were eight or nine of us travelling together; three small Sch�tzen, the
+others great Bacchanten, as they are called; amongst all these I was
+the smallest and youngest. When I could not keep up well, my cousin
+Paulus came behind me with a rod, or little stick, and switched me on
+my bare legs, for I had no stockings, and bad shoes. I do not remember
+all that happened to us on the road. Once when we were talking together
+on the journey, the Bacchanten said it was the custom in Meissen and
+Silesia for the scholars to steal geese and ducks, and other such food;
+and nothing was done to them on that account, if they could escape from
+those to whom the things belonged. One day, when not far from a
+village, we saw a large flock of geese, and the herdsman was not with
+them; then I inquired of my fellow-Sch�tzen when we should be in
+Meissen; as then I thought I might venture to kill the geese; they
+answered, 'Now we are there.' So I took a stone, threw it at one of the
+geese, and hit it on the leg; the others flew away, but the lamed one
+could not rise. I took another stone, and hit it on the head, so that
+it fell down. I ran up and caught the goose by the neck, carried it
+under my coat, and went along the road through the village. Then came
+the gooseherd running after me, and called aloud in the village, 'The
+boy has stolen my goose!' I and my fellow-Sch�tzen fled away, and the
+feet of the goose hung out behind my coat. The peasants came out with
+spears to throw at us, and ran after us. When I saw that I could not
+escape with the goose, I let it fall, and sprang out of the road into
+the bushes; but two of my fellows ran along the street, and were
+overtaken by two peasants. Then they fell down on their knees, and
+asked for mercy, as they had done them no harm; and when the peasants
+saw that it was not they who had killed the goose, they returned to the
+village, taking the goose with them. But when I saw how they hastened
+after my fellows, I was in great trouble, and said to myself: 'Ah, my
+God! I think I have not blessed myself this day.' (For I had been
+taught to bless myself every morning.) When the peasants returned to
+the village, they found our Bacchanten in the public-house, for these
+had gone forward; and the peasants desired that they would pay for the
+goose: it would have been about two batzen; but I know not whether or
+no they paid. When they joined us again, they laughed, and asked how it
+had happened. I excused myself, as I had imagined it was the custom of
+the country; to which they said it was not yet the right moment.
+
+"Another time a murderer came to us in the wood, eleven miles on this
+side of Nuremberg, who wished to play with our Bacchanten, that he
+might delay us till his fellows joined him; but we had an honest fellow
+amongst us called Anthony Schallbether, who warned the murderer to
+leave us, which he did. Now it was so late that we could hardly get to
+the village; there were very few houses, but there were two taverns.
+When we came to one of these the murderer was there before us, and
+others besides, without doubt his comrades; so we would not remain
+there, and went to the other public-house. As they themselves had
+already that night had their food, every one was so busy in the house,
+they would not give anything to us little lads; for we never sat at
+table to our meals; neither would they take us to a bedroom; but we
+were obliged to lie in the stable. But when they were taking the bigger
+ones to their bedroom, Anthony said to the host: 'Host, methinks you
+have strange guests, and are not much better yourself. I tell you what,
+place us in safety, or we will treat you in such a way that you will
+find your house too narrow for you.' When they had taken them to rest
+(I and the other little boys were lying in the stable without supper),
+some persons came in the night to their room, perhaps among them the
+host himself, and would have opened the door; but Anthony had put a
+screw before the lock inside, placed his bed before the door and struck
+a light; for he had always wax tapers and a tinder-box by him, and he
+quickly woke up the other fellows. When the rogues heard that, they
+made off. In the morning we found neither host nor servants. When they
+told us boys about it, we were all glad that nothing had happened to us
+in the stable. After we had gone from thence about a mile, we met with
+people, who when they heard where we had passed the night, were
+surprised that we had not all been murdered; for almost all the
+villagers were suspected of being murderers.
+
+"Our Bacchanten treated us so badly that some of us told my cousin
+Paulus we should escape from them; so we went to Dresden; but here
+there was no good school, and the sleeping apartments for strange
+scholars were full of lice, so that we heard them at night crawl on the
+straw. We then left and went on to Breslau: we suffered much from
+hunger on the road, having nothing for some days to eat but raw onions
+and salt, or roasted acorns and crabs. Many nights we lay in the open
+air; for no one would receive us into their houses or at the inns, and
+often they set the dogs upon us. But when we arrived at Breslau,
+everything was in abundance; indeed so cheap that we poor scholars
+overate ourselves, and frequently made ourselves ill. We went at first
+to the chapter school of the Holy Cross, but when we found that there
+were some Swiss in the parsonage house at St. Elizabeth, we went there.
+The city of Breslau has seven parishes, and each its separate school:
+no scholar ventured to sing in another parish; if he did the cry of 'Ad
+idem, ad idem,' was raised, and the Sch�tzen collected together and
+fought. It is said that there were at one time some thousands of
+Bacchanten and Sch�tzen who all lived on alms; it is also said that
+some of them who were twenty or thirty years old, or even more, had
+their Sch�tzen who supported them. I have often of an evening carried
+home to the school where they lived, for my Bacchanten, five or six
+meals. People gave to me willingly because I was little, and a Swiss,
+for they loved the Swiss.
+
+"There I remained for some time, as I was very ill that winter, and
+they were obliged to take me to the hospital; the scholars had their
+own especial hospital and doctors, and sixteen hellers a week are given
+at the town hall for the use of the sick, which provided for us well.
+We were well nursed and had good beds, but there were lice therein,
+beyond belief, as big as hempseed, so that I and others would much
+rather have lain on the floor than in the beds. It is hardly possible
+to believe how the scholars and Bacchanten were covered with lice. I
+have ofttimes, especially in the summer, gone to wash my shirt in the
+water of the Oder, and hung it on a bush to dry; and in the mean time
+cleared my coat of the lice, buried the heap, and placed a cross over
+the spot. In the winter the Sch�tzen used to lie on the hearth in the
+school; but the Bacchanten lived in small rooms, of which there were
+some hundreds at St. Elizabeth; but during the summer, when it was hot,
+we lay in the churchyard, like pigs in straw, on grass which we
+collected from before the houses of the principal streets, where it was
+spread on Sundays; but when it rained we ran into the school, and if
+there was a storm we chanted almost all night the responsoria and other
+things with the succentor. We often went in summer after supper to the
+beerhouses to beg for beer: they gave us the strong Polish peasant
+beer, which, before I was aware of it, made me so drunk that even when
+within a stone's throw from the school I could not find my way to it.
+In short, we got sufficient nourishment, but little study.
+
+"In the school of St. Elizabeth, nine bachelors always read together at
+the same hour in one room, for there were no printed Greek books in the
+country at that time; the preceptor alone had a printed Terence: what
+was read, therefore, had first to be dictated, then parsed and
+construed, and lastly explained; so that the Bacchanten when they went
+away carried with them large sheets of writing.
+
+"From thence our eight went off again to Dresden, and fell into great
+want. We determined therefore one day to divide ourselves; some were to
+look out for geese, some for turnips and onions, and one for a kitchen
+pot; but we little ones went to the town of Neumarkt, to get bread and
+salt, and we were to meet together in the evening outside the town,
+where we were to camp out, and then cook what we had. There was a well
+about a stone's throw from the town, near which we wished to pass the
+night; but when they saw our fire in the town, they began to shoot at
+us, yet did not hit us. Then we retired behind a bank to a little
+stream and grove; the big fellows lopped off branches and made a kind
+of hut, some plucked the geese, of which we had two; others put the
+heads and feet and the giblets into the pot, in which they had shred
+the turnips, others made two wooden spits and roasted the meat; when it
+had become a little brown, we ate it with the turnips. In the night we
+heard a kind of flapping: we found there was a pond near us which had
+been drained in the day, and the fish were struggling in the mud; then
+we took as many of them as we could, in a shirt fastened on a stick,
+and went away to a village, where we gave some of them to a peasant,
+that he might cook the others for us in beer.
+
+"Soon after we went again from thence to Ulm, there Paulus took with
+him another lad called Hildebrand Kalbermatter, son of a Pfaff: he was
+quite young, and had some cloth given to him, such as is made in that
+country, for a little coat. When we came to Ulm, Paul desired me to go
+about with the cloth begging for money to pay for its making up; in
+this way I got much money, for I was well accustomed to begging in
+God's name, for the Bacchanten had constantly employed me in this, so
+that I had hardly ever been taken to school, and not once taught to
+read. Going thus seldom to the school, and having to give up to the
+Bacchanten all I got by going round with the cloth, I suffered much
+from hunger.
+
+"But I must not omit to mention that there was at Ulm a pious widow,
+who had two grown-up daughters; this widow had often, when I came in
+the winter, wrapped up my feet in a warm fur, which she had laid behind
+the stove on purpose to warm them, and gave me a dish of porridge and
+sent me home. I was sometimes so hungry that I drove the dogs in the
+streets away from their bones, and gnawed them; item, searched for the
+crumbs out of the bag, which I ate. After that we returned again to
+Munich: there also I had to beg for money to make up the cloth, which
+nevertheless was not mine. The year following we went once more to Ulm,
+and I brought the cloth with me, and again begged on account of it; and
+I remember well that some one said to me, 'Botz Marter! is not the coat
+made yet? I believe you are employed in knavish work.' We went from
+thence, and I know not what happened to the cloth, or whether or no the
+coat was ever made up. One Sunday, when we came to Munich, the
+Bacchanten had got a lodging, but we three little Sch�tzen had none; we
+intended therefore to go at night to the corn market, in order to lie
+on the corn sacks; and certain women were sitting in the street by the
+salt magazine, who inquired where we were going. When they heard that
+we had no lodging, a butcher's wife who was near, when she saw that we
+were Swiss, said to her maid, 'Run and hang up the boiler with the
+remains of the soup and meat; they shall stay with me over the night; I
+like all Swiss. I served once at an inn in Innspruck, when the Emperor
+Maximilian held his court there: the Swiss had much business to arrange
+with him; and they were so friendly that I shall always be kind to them
+as long as I live.' The woman gave us good lodging, and plenty to eat
+and drink. In the morning she said to us, 'If one of you would like to
+remain with me, I would give him food and lodging.' We were all willing
+to do so, and inquired which she wished to have: when she had inspected
+us, as I looked more bold than the others, she took me, and I had
+nothing to do but to get the beer, to fetch the meat from the shambles,
+and to go with her sometimes to the field; but still I had to provide
+for the Bacchant. This the woman did not like, and said to me, 'Botz
+Marter! let the Bacchant go, and remain with me; you shall not beg any
+more.' So for a whole week I did not return to my Bacchant, nor the
+school; then he came to the house of the butcher's wife, and knocked at
+the door; and she said to me, 'Your Bacchant is there; say that you are
+ill.' She let him in, and said to him, 'You are truly a fine gentleman;
+you should have looked after Thomas, for he has been ill, and is so
+still.' Then he said to me, 'I am sorry for it, lad: when you can go
+out again, come to me.' Some time after, one Sunday, I went to vespers,
+and when they were over, my Bacchant came up to me and said, 'You
+Sch�tz, if you do not come to me, I will trample you under foot.' This
+I determined he should not do, and made up my mind to run away. That
+Sunday I said to the butcher's wife, 'I will go to the school and wash
+my shirt.' I dared not tell her of my intention, for I feared she would
+speak of it. So I left Munich with a sorrowful heart, partly because I
+was leaving my cousin, with whom I had gone so far (though he had been
+so hard and unmerciful to me), and also on account of the butcher's
+wife, who had treated me so kindly. I journeyed on over the river Isar,
+for I feared if I went to Switzerland, Paulus would follow me, and beat
+me, as he had often threatened. On the other side of the Isar there is
+a hill. I seated myself on the top, looked upon the town, and wept
+bitterly, because I had no longer any one to take an interest in me,
+and I thought of going to Saltzburg, or Vienna, in Austria. Whilst I
+was sitting there a peasant came with a waggon, which had carried salt
+to Munich: he was already drunk, though the sun had only just risen. I
+begged him to let me sit in it, and I went with him till he unharnessed
+the horses in order to give them and himself food; meanwhile I begged
+through the village, and waiting for him not far from it, fell asleep.
+When I awoke I again wept bitterly, for I thought the peasant had gone
+on, and it appeared to me as if I had lost a father. Soon, however, he
+came, and was still drunk, but called to me to sit in the cart, and
+asked me where I wished to go; I replied, 'To Saltzburg.' When it was
+evening, he turned off from the road, and said, 'Get down, there is the
+road to Saltzburg.' We had gone eight miles that day. I came to a
+village, and when I got up in the morning everything was white with
+rime, as if it had snowed, and I had no shoes, only torn stockings, no
+cap, and a scanty jacket. Thus I travelled to Passau, and intended to
+get on the Danube and go to Vienna, but when I came to Passau they
+would not admit me. Then I thought of going to Switzerland, and I asked
+the guard at the gate the nearest way to Switzerland: he answered by
+Munich. I said, 'I will not go by Munich, I had rather travel ten
+miles, or even more, out of the way to avoid it.' Then he pointed out
+the way by Friesingen. There was a high school there, and I found some
+Swiss, who inquired of me from whence I came? In the course of a few
+days Paulus arrived: the Sch�tzen told me that the Bacchant from Munich
+was looking for me. I ran out of the gate as if he had been behind me,
+and travelled to Ulm, where I went to the widow's house, who had so
+kindly warmed my feet, and she received me, and I was to guard the
+turnips in the field, and did not go to school. Some weeks after, a
+companion of Paul's came to me, and said, 'Your cousin is here, and is
+seeking for you.' He had followed me for eighteen miles, as he had lost
+in me a good provider, I having supported him for some years. When I
+heard this, although it was night, I ran out of the gate towards
+Constance. I again wept bitterly, for I was sorry to leave the kind
+widow.
+
+"I crossed the lake, and arrived at Constance; and as I went over the
+bridge I saw some of the Swiss peasant girls with their white
+petticoats. Oh my God, how glad I was! I thought I was in heaven. When
+I came to Zurich I saw there some people from the Valais, big
+Bacchanten, to whom I offered my services for getting food, if they in
+return would teach me; but I learned no more with them than with the
+others. After some months Paulus sent his Sch�tz Hildebrand from
+Munich, to desire me to return to him, and said he would forgive me;
+but I would not go back, and remained at Zurich, where however I
+studied little.
+
+"One Antonius Venetz from Visp in the Valais persuaded me to go with
+him to Strasburg. When we arrived there we found many poor scholars,
+but no good school; there was however a very good one at Schlettstadt,
+so we went there. In the city we took a lodging with an old couple, one
+of whom was stone blind; then we went to my dear preceptor, the late
+Johannes Sapidus, and begged him to receive us. He asked from whence we
+came, and when we said out of Switzerland, from the Valais, he
+answered, 'The peasants there are bad, for they drive all their Bishops
+out of the country; if, however, you study industriously, I will take
+little from you, if not, you must pay me, or I will take the coat off
+your back.' That was the first school in which it appeared to me that
+things went on well. At that time learning, especially that of
+languages, was gaining ground--it was the year of the Diet at Worms.
+Sapidus had once nine hundred students, some of them fine scholars, who
+afterwards became doctors and men of renown.
+
+"When I came to this school I knew little, could not even read the
+Donat. Though I was eighteen years old, I was placed among the little
+children, and looked like a hen amidst her small chickens. One day when
+Sapidus called over the list of the scholars, he said, 'I find many
+barbarous names, I must try to Latinize them.' He then called over the
+new names: he had turned me into Thomas Platterus, and my fellow,
+Anthony Venetz into Antonius Venetus, and said, 'Which are the two?' We
+stood up and he exclaimed, 'Poof! what measly Sch�tzen to have such
+fine names!' this was partly true, especially of my companion, for I
+was more accustomed to the change of air and food.
+
+"When we had stayed there from autumn to the following Whitsuntide, a
+great many fresh scholars arrived, so that there was not sufficient to
+support us all; and we went off to Solothurn, where there was a
+tolerably good school, and more food; but we were obliged to be so
+constantly in church that we lost all our time; therefore we returned
+home.
+
+"The following spring I went off again with my two brothers. When we
+took leave of our mother, she wept and said, 'Am I not to be pitied, to
+have three sons going to lead this miserable life?' It was the only
+time I ever saw my mother cry, for she was a brave, strong-minded
+woman, respected by every one as honourable, upright, and pious.
+
+"I came to Zurich, and went to the school of the monastery of our Lady.
+About this time it was reported that a thoroughly good and learned but
+severe schoolmaster was coming from Einsiedeln. I seated myself in a
+corner not far from the schoolmaster's chair, and I thought to myself,
+in this corner will I study or die. When he (Father Myconius) entered,
+he said, 'This is a fine school (it had only just been built); but
+methinks you are a set of ignorant boys: but I will have patience with
+you, if you will only be industrious.' I knew that if it had cost me my
+life I could not have declined a word, even of the first declension;
+but I could repeat the Donat by heart from beginning to end, for when I
+was in Schlettstadt, Sapidus had a bachelor who plagued the Bacchanten
+so grievously with the Donat, that I thought it must be such a good
+book, I had better learn it by heart. I got on well with Father
+Myconius: he read Terence to us, and we had to conjugate and decline
+every word of a whole play; and it often happened that my shirt became
+quite wet, and my sight seemed to fail me with fear; and yet he had
+never given me a blow, except once with the back of his hand on my
+cheek. He read also the Holy Scriptures, and to these readings many of
+the laity came, for it was the time when the light of the holy Gospel
+was beginning to dawn. If at any time he was severe with me, he would
+take me home and give me something to eat, and he liked to hear me
+relate how I had gone all through Germany, and how it had fared with
+me.
+
+"Myconius was obliged to go with his pupils to church at the monastery
+of our Lady, to sing at vespers, matins, and mass, and conduct the
+chanting. He said to me once, 'Custos (for I was his custos), I would
+rather hold four lectures than sing one mass. Dear son, if you would
+sometimes chant the easy masses for me, requiems, and the like, I will
+requite it to you.' I was well content with this, for I had been
+accustomed to it, and everything was still regulated in the popish
+manner. As custos, I had often not enough wood to burn in the school,
+so I observed which of the laymen who came to it had piles of wood in
+front of their houses: there I went about midnight and secretly carried
+off wood to the school. One morning I had no wood; Zwinglius was to
+preach at the monastery early that morning, and when they were ringing
+the bells, I said to myself, 'Thou hast no wood, and there are so many
+images in the church that no one cares about them.' So I went to the
+nearest altar in the church, and carried off a St. John, and took him
+to the stove in the school, and said to him, '_J�gli_, now thou must
+bend and go into the stove.' When he began to burn, the paint made a
+great hissing and crackling, and I told him to keep quiet, and said,
+'If thou movest, which however thou wilt not do, I will close the door
+of the stove: thou shalt not get out unless the devil carry thee away.'
+In the mean time came Myconius' wife; she was going to hear the sermon
+in the church, and in passing by the door, said, 'God be with you, my
+child, have you heated the stove?' I closed the door of the stove, and
+answered, 'Yes, mother, I have already warmed it;' but I would not tell
+her how, for she might have tattled about it, and had it been known, it
+would have cost me my life. Myconius said to me in the course of the
+lesson, 'Custos, you have had good wood to-day.' When we were beginning
+to chant the mass, two Pfaffs were disputing together in the church;
+the one to whom the St. John belonged said to the other, 'You rogue,
+you have stolen my St. John;' and this dispute they carried on for some
+time.
+
+"Although it appeared to me that there was something not quite right
+about Popery, I still intended to become a priest. I wished to be
+pious, to administer my office faithfully, and to ornament my altar. I
+prayed much, and fasted more than was good for me. I had also my saints
+and patrons, and prayed to each for something especial; to our Lady,
+that she would be my intercessor with her child; to St. Catherine, that
+she would help me to learning; to St. Barbara, that I might not die
+without the sacrament; and to St. Peter, that he would open the door of
+heaven to me; and I wrote down in a little book what prayers I had
+neglected. When I had leave of absence from the school on Thursdays or
+Saturdays, I went into a confessional chair in the monastery, and wrote
+the omitted prayers on a chair, and counted out every sin one after
+another; then rubbed them out, and thought I had done my duty. I went
+six times from Zurich with processions to Einsiedeln, and was diligent
+in confession. I often contended with my associates for the Papacy,
+till one day M. Ulrich Zwinglius preached on this text from the gospel
+of St. John:--'I am the good shepherd.' He explained it so forcibly,
+that I felt as if my hair stood on end; and he showed how God will
+demand the souls of the lost sheep at the hands of those shepherds who
+caused their perdition. I thought, if that is the true meaning, then
+adieu to priestcraft, I will never be a Pfaff. I continued my studies,
+began to dispute with my companions, listened assiduously to the
+sermons and to my preceptor Myconius. There still continued to be mass
+and images at Zurich."
+
+Thus far Thomas Platter. His struggle in life lasted some time longer:
+he had to learn rope-making in order to support himself; he studied at
+night, and when Andreas Kratander, the printer at Basle, had sent him a
+Plautus, he fastened the separate sheets on the rope by means of a
+wooden prong, and read whilst he was working. Later he became a
+corrector of the press, then citizen and printer, and lastly rector of
+the Latin school at Basle. The unsettled life of his childhood was not
+without its influence on the character of the man; for however great
+his capacities, he displayed neither energy nor perseverance in his
+undertakings.
+
+It was among the thousands who, like the boy Thomas, thronged to the
+Latin schools, that the new movement won its most zealous followers.
+These children of the people carried from house to house with unwearied
+activity their new ideas and information. Many of them never arrived at
+the university; they endeavoured to support themselves by private
+tuition, or as correctors of the press. Most of the city, and in later
+times the village schools were occupied by those who could read Virgil,
+and understand the bitter humour of the Klagebriefes, _de miseria
+plebenorum_. So great were their numbers that the reformers soon urged
+them to learn, however late, some trade, in order to maintain
+themselves honestly. Many members of guilds in the German cities were
+qualified to furnish commentaries to the papal bulls, and translate
+them to their fellow-citizens; and subtle theological questions were
+eagerly discussed in the drinking-rooms. Great was the influence
+exercised by these men on the small circles around them. Some years
+afterwards they, together with the poor students of divinity who spread
+themselves as preachers over all Germany, became a great society; and
+it was these democrats of the new teaching who represented the Pope as
+antichrist in the popular plays, harangued the armed multitudes of
+insurgent peasants, and made war on the old Church in printed
+discourses, popular songs, and coarse dialogues.
+
+In this way they made preparation for what was coming. But however
+clearly it had been shown by the Humanitarians that the Church had in
+many places falsified the Holy Scriptures, however humorously they had
+derided the tool of the Inquisition--the baptized Jew Pfefferkorn, with
+his pretty little wife--and however zealously the small school teachers
+had carried among the people the colloquies of Erasmus on fasting, &c.,
+and his work on the education of children, yet it was not their new
+learning alone that gave birth to the Reformation and the spiritual
+freedom of Germany. Deeper lay the sources of this mighty stream; it
+sprang from the foundation of the German mind, and was brought to light
+by the secret longings of the heart, that it might, by the work of
+destruction and renovation, transform the life of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                THE MENTAL STRUGGLES OF A YOUTH, AND HIS
+                       ENTRANCE INTO A MONASTERY.
+                                (1510.)
+
+
+Great was the wickedness of the world, heavy the oppression under which
+the poor suffered, coarse the greed after enjoyment, boundless the
+covetousness both of ecclesiastics and laymen. Who was there to punish
+the young nobleman who maltreated the peasants? who to defend the poor
+citizen against the powerful family unions of the rich counsellors?
+Hard was the labour of the German peasant from morning till evening,
+through summer and winter; pestilence was quickly followed by famine
+and hunger: the whole system of the world seemed in confusion, and
+earthly life devoid of love. The only hope of deliverance from misery,
+was in God; before Him all earthly power, whether of Emperor or Pope,
+was weak and insignificant, and the wisdom of man was transitory as the
+flower of the field. By his mercy men might be delivered from the
+miseries of this life, and compensated by eternal happiness for what
+they had suffered here; but how were they to obtain this mercy? by what
+virtues could weak men hope to gain the endless treasure of God's
+favour? Man had been doomed from the time of Adam to will the good and
+do the evil. Vain were his highest virtues; inherited sin was his
+curse; and if he obtained mercy from God, it was not by his own
+merits.[19]
+
+These were the questions that then struggled within the agonized hearts
+of men. But from the holy records of Scripture, which had only been a
+dark tradition to the people, went forth the words; Christ is love. The
+ruling Church knew little of this love; in it God was kept far from the
+hearts of men: the image of the Crucified One was concealed behind
+countless saints, who were all made necessary as intercessors with a
+wrathful God. But the great craving of the German nature was to find
+itself in close connection with the Almighty, and the longing for the
+love of God was unquenchable. But the Pope maintained that he was the
+only administrator of the inexhaustible merits of Christ; and the
+Church also taught, that by the intercession of saints for the sins of
+men, an endless treasure of good works, prayers, fasts, and penances
+were made available for the blessing of others; and all these treasures
+were at the disposition of the Pope, who could dispense them to whom he
+chose, as a deliverance from their sins. Thus, when believers united
+together in a pious community, the Pope was able to confer on such a
+brotherhood the privilege of passing over from one to the other, the
+merits of the saints, the surplus of prayers and masses, as well as of
+good works done for the Church.
+
+In the year 1530, Luther complained that the number of these
+communities was countless.[20] An example will show how rough and
+miserable their mechanism was, and the "Brotherhood of the Eleven
+Thousand Virgins," called "St. Ursula's Schifflein," is selected,
+because the Elector, Frederick the Wise, was one of the founders and
+brothers. The collection of spiritual treasures given by statute to
+enable the brotherhood to obtain eternal happiness, amounted to 6,455
+masses, 3,550 entire psalters, 200,000 rosaries, 200,000 _Te Deum
+Laudamus_, 1,600 _Gloria in excelsis Deo_. Besides this, 11,000 prayers
+for the patroness St. Ursula, and 630 times 11,000 Paternosters and Ave
+Marias; also 50 times 10,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias for 10,000
+knights, &c.; and the whole redeeming power of these treasures was for
+the benefit of the members of the brotherhood. Many spiritual
+foundations and private persons had gained to themselves especial merit
+by their great contributions to the prayer treasures. At the revival of
+the society, the Elector Frederick had presented a beautiful silver
+Ursula. A layman was entitled to become a member of the brotherhood if
+he once in his life had repeated 11,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias: if
+he repeated daily thirty-two, he gained it in a year, if sixteen, in
+two, and if eight, in four years: if any one was hindered by marriage,
+sickness, or business, from completing this number of prayers, he was
+enabled to enter by having eleven masses read for him; and so on. Yet
+this brotherhood was one of the best, for the members had not to pay
+money; it was to be a brotherhood of poor people who wished only to
+assist each other to heaven by mutual prayer; and we maintain that
+these brotherhoods were the most spiritual part of the declining Church
+of the middle ages.
+
+The indulgences, on the other hand, were the foulest spot in its
+diseased body. The Pope, as administrator of the inexhaustible treasure
+of the merits of Christ, sold to believers, drafts on this store in
+exchange for money. It is true that the Church itself had not entirely
+lost the idea that the Pope could not himself forgive sins, but only
+remit the penances the Church prescribed; those, however, who held
+these views, individuals of the university and worthy village priests,
+were obliged to be careful that their teaching should not come into
+open collision with the business of the seller of indulgences. For what
+did the right teaching of their own Church signify to the papists of
+the sixteenth century? It was money that they craved for their women
+and children, their relatives, and princely houses. There was a fearful
+community of interests between the bishops and the fanatical members of
+the mendicant orders. Nothing had made Huss and his tenets so
+insupportable to them as the struggle against the sale of indulgences:
+the great Wessel had been driven out of Paris into misery for teaching
+repentance and grace; and it was the sellers of indulgences who caused
+the venerable Johannes Vesalia to die in the prison of a monastery at
+Mayence, he who first spoke the noble words, "Why should I believe what
+I know?"
+
+It is known how prevalent the traffic in indulgences became in Germany
+in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and how impudently the
+reckless cheating was carried on. When Tetzel, a well-fed haughty
+Dominican, rode into a city with his box of indulgences, he was
+accompanied by a large body of monks and priests: the bells were rung;
+ecclesiastics and laymen met him, and reverentially conducted him to
+the church; his great crucifix, with the holes of the nails, and the
+crown of thorns, was erected in the nave, and sometimes the believers
+were allowed to see the blood of the Crucified One trickling down the
+cross. Church banners, on which were the arms of the Pope with the
+triple crown, were placed by the cross; in front of it the cursed box,
+strongly clamped with iron, and near these on one side, a pulpit from
+which the monk set forth with rough eloquence the wonderful powers of
+his indulgences, and showed a large parchment of the Pope's with many
+seals appended to it. On the other side was the pay table, with
+indulgence tickets, writing materials, and money baskets; there the
+ecclesiastical coadjutors sold to the thronging people everlasting
+salvation.[21]
+
+Countless were the crimes of the Church, against which all the wounded
+moral feelings of the Germans were roused. The opposition spread all
+over Germany; but the man had not yet appeared, who, by a fearful
+inward struggle, discerning all the griefs and longings of the people,
+was preparing to become the leader of his nation, which would in his
+determined character, see with enthusiasm its own mind embodied. For
+two years he had been teacher of natural philosophy and dialects in the
+new university of Wittenberg, and was still lying in the dust of the
+Roman plains, looking with pious enthusiasm at the towers of the holy
+city appearing on the verge of the horizon. In the mean while we may
+learn from the experiences of a Latin scholar, what was working in the
+souls of the people.
+
+Frederick Mecum (Latinized into Myconius[22]) was the son of honest
+citizens of Lichtenfelds, in Upper Franconia, and was born in 1491.
+When thirteen years of age, he went to the Latin school of the then
+flourishing city of Annaberg, where he experienced what we propose
+giving in his own words. In 1510 he went into a monastery, and as a
+Franciscan he was one of the first, most zealous, and faithful
+followers of the Wittenberg professors. He left his order, became a
+preacher at the new church in Thuringia, and finally pastor and
+superintendent at Gotha, where he established the Reformation, and died
+in 1546. The connecting link between him and Luther was of a very
+peculiar nature; he was not only his most intimate friend in many
+relations of private life, but there was a poetry in his connection
+with him which spread a halo round his whole life. Seven years before
+Luther began the Reformation, Myconius saw in a dream the vision of
+that great man, who calmed the doubts of his excited heart; enlightened
+by his dream, the faithful, pious German discovered in him the great
+friend of every future hour. But another circumstance gives us an
+interest in the narrator. However unlike, this gentle, delicately
+organized man may appear to his daring friend, there was a striking
+similarity in the youthful life of both, and much which is unknown to
+us of Luther's youth may be explained in what Myconius relates of his
+own. Both were poor scholars from a Latin school; both were driven by
+their inward struggles and youthful enthusiasm into a monastery, and
+found there only new doubts, greater struggles, and years of torment
+and anxious uncertainty instead of that peace for which they so
+passionately longed. To both was the shameless Tetzel the rock of
+offence, which stirred up their minds, and determined the whole course
+of their future life: finally, both died in the same year,--Myconius
+seven weeks after Luther, having five years before, been restored to
+life from a mortal illness by Luther's letter of invocation.[23] Few of
+Frederick Myconius' works have been printed: besides theological
+essays, he wrote a chronicle of his own time in German, in which he
+describes with the greatest detail his own labours and the state of
+Gotha. "The dream" which he had the first night after he entered the
+monastery is well known, and has often been printed. In the dream the
+Apostle Paul presents himself to him as his leader, and, as Myconius in
+after years fancied, had the form, face, and voice of Luther. This long
+dream was written in Latin, but we find a German translation of the
+introduction, in a manuscript of the same date, in the Duke's library
+at Gotha, from which we give the following extracts:--
+
+"Johannis Tetzel of Pyrna in Meissen, a Dominican monk, was a powerful
+preacher of the papal indulgences. He tarried two years in the then new
+city of Annaberg for this object, and so deluded the people that they
+all believed there was no other way to obtain forgiveness of sins and
+eternal life, than by the sufficiency of our own works, which
+sufficiency he added was impossible. But there was one way remaining,
+namely, to obtain it by money from the Pope: so we bought the papal
+indulgence, which he called forgiveness of sins and a certain entrance
+into eternal life. Here I could relate wonder upon wonder, and many
+incredible things which I heard preached by Tetzel for two years at
+Annaberg, for he preached every day, and I listened to him assiduously.
+I even repeated his sermons by heart to others; imitating his delivery
+and gestures; not that I did it to ridicule him, but from my great
+earnestness, for I considered it all as _oracular_, and the word of
+God, which ought to be believed; and what ever came from the Pope I
+considered as if it were from Christ himself.
+
+"At last, about Whitsuntide, 1510, he threatened to take down the red
+cross, close the door of heaven, and extinguish the sun, adding, that
+we should never more have the opportunity of obtaining remissions of
+sins and eternal life for so little money, as it could not be hoped
+that this benevolent mission from the Pope would return again as long
+as the world lasted. He admonished every one to take care of his soul,
+and those of his friends, both living and dead, for that now was the
+accepted time, now was the day of salvation. And he said, 'Let no one
+neglect his own eternal happiness, for if ye have not the papal letter,
+ye cannot be absolved from many sins, nor, _casibus reservatis_, by any
+man.' Printed letters were publicly affixed to the walls and doors of
+the church, in which it was promised that, as a token of thanks to the
+German people for their piety, from henceforth till the close of the
+sale, the indulgence letters and the full power of remission should be
+sold at a less price; at the end of the letter, underneath, was
+written, _pauperibus dentur gratis_,--to the poor who have nothing, the
+letters of indulgence shall be given without money, for God's sake.
+
+"Then I began to deal with this commissary of indulgence wares; but in
+truth I was led and encouraged hereto by the Holy Spirit, although I
+myself knew not at the time what I did.
+
+"My dear father had taught me in my childhood the Ten Commandments, the
+Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, and insisted upon my continually praying;
+for, said he, all that we have is from God alone, and He gives it us
+gratis, and He will lead and direct us if we pray to Him diligently. Of
+the papal indulgences, he said, they were only nets with which money
+was fished out of the pockets of the simple, and one could not
+assuredly obtain for money the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
+But the priests became angry when such things were said. When,
+therefore, I daily heard in the sermons nothing but praise of the
+indulgences, I doubted whom I should most believe, my dear father, or
+the priests as teachers of the Church. But though I had doubts, I
+believed more the instructions of the priests than those of my father.
+The only thing I could not, however, allow, was, that the forgiveness
+of sins could only be obtained by money, especially when it was
+question of the poor. Therefore, the _clausula_ at the end of the papal
+letter, _pauperibus gratis dentur propter Deum_, pleased me
+wonderfully.
+
+"As at the end of three days, the cross, together with the steps and
+ladder to heaven, were to be taken down with extraordinary solemnity,
+the spirit led me to go to the commissary, and beg of him letters of
+remission out of charity to the poor. I declared that I was a sinner,
+and poor, and needed forgiveness of my sins, which I ought to receive
+gratis. The second day, at the time of vespers, I entered the house of
+Hans Pflock, where Tetzel with the confessors and crowd of priests were
+assembled together. I accosted them in the Latin language, and
+entreated that they would, according to the command in the Pope's
+letter, allow me, a poor lad, to obtain the absolution of all my sins
+gratis, and for God's sake, '_Etiam nullo casu reservato_,'--without
+reserve, and thereupon they should give me the '_literas
+testimoniales_,'--written testimony, of the Pope. The priests were much
+astonished at my Latin speech, for it was at this time a rare thing,
+especially with young boys; and they went speedily out of the room into
+the next apartment, where was Herr Commissary Tetzel. They laid before
+him my request, and begged of him to give me gratis the letter of
+indulgence. At last, after holding long counsel, they came again, and
+brought me this answer: 'Dear son, we have carefully laid your petition
+before the Herr Commissary, and he bids us say he would gladly grant
+it, but he cannot; and if he were to do so, this concession would
+become powerless, and of no avail. For he has shown us that it is clear
+from the Pope's letter, it is those only _qui porrigent manum
+adjutricem_,--those who help with the hand, that is, those who give
+money, that will certainly partake of the merciful indulgences and
+treasures of the Church, and of the merits of Christ.' And this they
+told me all in German, for there was not one among them who could speak
+three words of Latin rightly.
+
+"But I again renewed my petition, and showed them, how in the papal
+letter the holy father had commanded that these indulgences should be
+freely given to the poor, for God's sake, more especially as it was
+therein written: _ad mandatum Domini pap� proprium_, that is, by his
+highness the Pope's own commands.
+
+"Then they went again to the proud, haughty monk, and begged him to
+grant my petition, for I was a deep-thinking and eloquent youth, who
+deserved that more should be bestowed upon him than upon others. But
+they brought back the same answer. I remained firm, however, and said
+that they did great injustice to me, a poor boy whom neither God nor
+the Pope would shut out from grace, and whom they wanted to discard for
+the sake of a few pence, which I had not. Then followed a dispute. They
+said I must give something, however little, if it was only a few
+groschen, that the helping hand might not be wanting. I answered, 'I
+have it not, I am poor.' At last it came to this, I was to give six
+_pfennige_, to which I replied again, 'I have not a single _pfennig_.'
+They tried to persuade me, and conferred together. At last I heard them
+say that they were in anxiety on two points; first, they must on no
+account let me go without the indulgence, as this might be a concerted
+plan, and lead to mischief hereafter, for it was clearly written in the
+Pope's letter that indulgences were to be given free to the poor; but
+on the other hand, it was necessary to take something from me, that
+others might not hear that they were given away gratis, in which case a
+whole crowd of poor scholars and beggars would come and demand them.
+They need not have had any anxiety on this account, for the poor
+beggars would rather seek for bread to drive away their hunger.
+
+"After they had taken counsel they came again to me, and offered me six
+_pfennige_, that I might give it to the commissary; by this
+contribution they said that I should become one of the builders of the
+church of St. Peters at Rome, a slayer of the Turks, and partaker of
+the indulgence and grace of Christ. But I spoke out freely, stirred by
+the Holy Spirit, and said that if I was to buy indulgence and remission
+of sins, I could sell one of my books, and obtain it with my own money;
+but I wished to have it given me freely for God's sake, or they would
+have to answer before God, for having trifled with the happiness of my
+soul for the sake of six _pfennige_, when both God and the Pope desired
+that I should be partaker of the forgiveness of sins for charity sake.
+I said this, but truly did not know how it stood with the letters of
+indulgence.
+
+"After this speech the priests inquired of me from whence I had been
+sent, and who had instructed me to deal with them about this matter.
+Then I told them the simple truth, how it was that I had not been told
+or sent by any one, or induced to come by other men's counsel, but had
+of myself made this request, in full trust and confidence in the free
+and charitable gift of forgiveness of sins; and I had never before in
+my life spoken to, or dealt with such great people, for I was by nature
+modest; and if I had not been constrained by my great thirst for the
+mercy of God, I should not have ventured on so high an undertaking.
+Then they again offered me the indulgence, but in this way: I was to
+buy it with six _pfennige_, and these _pfennige_ were to be returned to
+me for myself. But I remained firm that he who had the power should
+give me the indulgence free; and if he would not, I would commend the
+affair to my dear God, and resign myself into his hands; and so they
+dismissed me.
+
+"The holy thieves were however sorrowful over this affair. I too was
+somewhat troubled that I had not got my indulgence; yet I also rejoiced
+that in spite of them there was one in heaven who would forgive the
+sins of the penitent sinner, without money and without price, according
+to the text which I had often repeated in church: 'As I live, saith the
+Lord God, I would not the death of a sinner, but that he should be
+converted and live.' Ah, dear Lord God, thou knowest that I have not
+lied or invented.
+
+"I was so overcome by all this, that whilst I was going home to my
+lodging, I was dissolved in tears. When I arrived there, I went into my
+room and took the crucifix, that always lay on the table in my study,
+placed it on the bench, and fell down before it on the ground. I cannot
+here describe it, but I then felt the spirit of prayer and grace, which
+thou, my God and Lord, pouredst out upon me. The purport of my prayer
+was this, I beg that thou, dear God, wouldst be my father, and wouldst
+forgive me my sins. I resign myself to thee altogether and entirely;
+thou mayest do with me what thou pleasest, and though the priests will
+not be merciful to me without money, be thou my merciful God and
+Father.
+
+"Then I found that my whole heart was changed: I felt vexed with all
+worldly things, and imagined that I was quite wearied with this life.
+Only one thing I desired, which was, to live for God and to please Him.
+But who was there that could teach me, and how was I to effect this?
+For the Word, the light and life of men, was throughout the whole world
+buried in the darkness of human traditions and the mad idea of 'good
+works.' Of Christ nothing was said, nothing was known of Him; or if He
+was mentioned, He was represented to us as an angry and terrible judge,
+whom his mother and all the saints in heaven could hardly appease, or
+persuade to be merciful even by tears of blood; and it was said that
+He, Christ, would cast those men who repented, for seven years into
+purgatory for every mortal sin: there was no difference between the
+pains of purgatory and those of hell, except that they were not
+eternal. But now the Holy Spirit gave me the hope that God would be
+merciful unto me.
+
+"After this I began to consider how I was to enter upon a new course of
+life. I saw the sinfulness of the whole world, and of the whole human
+race. I saw my own manifold sins which were so very great. I had heard
+somewhat of the great holiness and of the pure and innocent life of
+monks; how they served God day and night, were separated from all the
+wickedness of the world, and lived a temperate, pious, and chaste life,
+performed masses, sang psalms, and were always fasting and praying. I
+had also seen something of this plausible life, but I did not know that
+it was the greatest idolatry and hypocrisy.
+
+"I consulted with my preceptor, the master Andreas Staffeltstein, who
+was rector of the school; he advised me to enter the newly built
+Franciscan monastery, and for fear I should change my mind through any
+long delay, he went himself with me to the monks, praised my talents
+and intellect, and boasted that in me alone amongst all his scholars he
+had perfect confidence, that I should become a truly godly man.
+
+"I desired, however, beforehand to mention my undertaking to my
+parents, and to hear their opinion upon it, as I was their only son and
+heir; but the monks showed me out of St. Jerome that I ought not to
+regard father or mother, but leave them, and take up the cross of
+Christ. And they quoted the saying of Christ: 'No man, having put his
+hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God;'
+and thus they pressed me to become a monk. I will not here speak of the
+many bonds and fetters with which they bound and shackled my
+conscience. They told me I could never henceforth be happy if I did not
+at once accept the offered grace of God; and as I would rather have
+died than have been deprived of the grace of God and eternal life, I at
+once consented, and promised that I would in three days return to the
+monastery, and commence my year of probation, as it is called; that is,
+I would become a pious, devout, and God-fearing monk.
+
+"On the 14th of July, in the year 1510, about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, I entered the monastery, accompanied by my preceptor, some
+of my schoolfellows, and certain devout matrons, to whom I had partly
+explained why I entered the ecclesiastical order. I then gave my
+blessing to all who had thus accompanied me, who with many tears
+implored for me God's grace and blessing. And so it came to pass that I
+went into a monastery. Dear God, thou knowest that this is all true. It
+was not a life of idleness nor good living that I sought, nor yet the
+odour of sanctity, but I wished to please thee, and to serve thee well.
+
+"Thus for a time I groped on in great darkness."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+                OUT OF THE MONASTERY INTO THE CONFLICT.
+                             (about 1522.)
+
+
+The storm broke loose; it convulsed the whole nation as with electric
+fire: the words of the Augustine of Wittenburg rolled through the land
+like peals of thunder, and every clap betokened an advance and a
+victory. Even now, after three centuries and a half, this prodigious
+movement has an irresistible fascination for the German people. Never,
+from its first existence, had the nation revealed its innermost being
+so touchingly and grandly. All the fine qualities of the German mind
+and character burst forth at this time; enthusiasm, self-devotion, a
+deep moral indignation, an intense pleasure in systematic thought, and
+an inward seeking after the highest. Every individual took his share in
+the strife. The travelling trader over the fire at night contended for
+or against the indulgences, the countryman in the most remote villages
+heard with astonishment of the new heretic whom his spiritual father
+cursed in every sermon, and the women of the villages no longer gave
+willingly to the mendicant monks. A sea of small literature overflowed
+the country, a hundred printing-presses were in activity, spreading
+abroad the numerous controversial writings, both learned and popular;
+parties raged in every cathedral and parish church; everywhere men of
+resolute character amongst the ecclesiastics declared themselves for
+the new doctrines, whilst the weaker ones struggled with timid doubts;
+the doors of the monasteries were opened, and the cells soon became
+empty. Every month brought to the people something new and unheard of.
+
+It was no longer a quarrel between priests, as Hutten had in the
+beginning contemptuously called the dispute between the Wittenberger
+and Tetzel; it had become a war of the nation against the Romish
+supremacy and its supporters. Ever more powerfully rose the image of
+Luther before his cotemporaries. Banished, cursed, persecuted by Pope
+and Emperor, by princes and high ecclesiastics, he became in four short
+years the idolized hero of the people. His journey to Worms was
+described in the style of the Holy Scriptures, and the over-zealous
+placed him on a footing with the martyrs of the New Testament.[24] The
+learned also felt themselves irresistibly drawn into the struggle; even
+Erasmus smiled approbation, and Hutten's soul fired up in the cause of
+the new teacher, he no longer wrote in Latin, but broke forth in
+German, more stormy and wild than the Wittenberger, with a fire that
+consumed himself, the knight fought his last fight for the peasant's
+son.
+
+The man on whom for half a generation the highest feelings of his
+nation were concentrated, now enters upon the scene. Yet before we
+endeavour to understand his mind, it is well to point out, shortly, how
+his peculiar character worked upon impartial cotemporaries. We first
+take the witness of a moderate and truthful mind, who never personally
+knew Luther, and who later, in a middle position between the
+Wittenberger and the Swiss reformer, had reason to be dissatisfied with
+Luther's stubbornness. Ambrosius Blaurer, born in Constance, of noble
+family, was a brother of the old Benedictine monastery of Alpirsbach,
+in the wildest part of the Black Forest; he was afterwards a writer of
+sacred poetry, and at the time we are speaking of, thirty years old. He
+had left the cloister in 1523, and fled to his family. At the
+instigation of his Abbot, the Stadtholder of the principality of
+W�rtemberg demanded that he should be sent back to the monastery by the
+Burgomaster and council of Constance. Blaurer published a defence, from
+which the following is taken. He became shortly after a preacher in
+Constance, and on the restoration of Duke Ulrich, one of the reformers
+of W�rtemberg, and died at a great age at Winterthur. What he praises
+and blames in Luther may be considered as the general view of his
+character taken at that time by earnest minds.
+
+"I call God and my own conscience to witness that no wilfulness or
+frivolous motive drove me out of the monastery, or excited me to
+abandon it. Vulgar rumour reports, that monks and nuns have left their
+convents on account of their aversion to its tranquil life, and that
+they might live in carnal freedom, and give vent to their wilfulness
+and worldly desires. But I was actuated by honourable and weighty
+reasons, and great troubles and urgings of conscience, on account of
+the word of God. I hope that all the circumstances of my departure will
+show neither levity, wantonness, nor unseemly purpose? I laid aside
+neither cowl nor capouch except for a few days after my departure for
+my greater security, till I had reached my place of refuge. I neither
+left to fight, nor to carry away a pretty wife, but I went forthwith as
+quickly as I could to my much loved mother and relations, who are
+undoubted Christians, and are held in such honour and esteem in the
+city of Constance, that it is certain they would never counsel or help
+me in any unworthy undertaking.
+
+"Therefore I trust that my previous conduct and course of life will
+relieve me from any suspicion of unseemly or wilful intentions; for
+although I may not boast myself before God, yet I may before men glory
+in the Lord, that I, whether in the cloister or the school, here, and
+wherever I have been, have retained a good repute and esteem, with much
+love and favour, on account of my uprightness. You yourselves have
+heard the messengers from W�rtemberg acknowledge that there was no
+complaint or evil report of my conduct or manner of life at the
+monastery of Alpirsbach, but that I have behaved myself well and
+piously; all they can say against me is, that I have concerned myself
+too much with what they call the seductive and cursed teaching of
+Martin Luther, whose writings I have read and adhered to, and preached
+them, contrary to the command of the abbot, publicly to the laity in
+the monastery; and when this was forbidden me, I yet continued
+secretly, and as it were in a corner, to infuse them into the souls of
+some of the young gentlemen there. With such praise from my fathers and
+brethren I am well content, and can justify myself for this one
+misdeed, as a Christian, from the word of God, and I hope that my
+defence will serve to remove false and ungrounded suspicions, not only
+from me, but also from others.
+
+"When in the course of the last year, the works and opinions of Martin
+Luther were spread abroad and became known, they came into my hands
+before they had been condemned and forbidden by the ecclesiastical and
+lay authorities; and like other newly printed works, I saw and read
+them. In the beginning, these doctrines appeared to me somewhat strange
+and objectionable, and contrary to the long-established theology and
+clever teaching of the schools, in opposition also to the papal and
+ecclesiastical rights, and to the old, and, as I then considered them,
+praiseworthy customs and usages of our forefathers. But it was not less
+evident to me that this man interspersed everywhere in his teaching
+clear and distinct passages from the Holy Scriptures, according to
+which all human teaching ought to be guided and judged, accepted or
+rejected. I was much amazed, and stirred up to read these doctrines,
+not once or twice, but frequently, with much industry and earnest
+attention, and to weigh and compare them with the evangelical writings
+to which they constantly appealed. The longer I did this, the more I
+perceived with what great dignity the Holy Scriptures were treated by
+this learned and enlightened man,--how purely and delicately he handled
+them, how cleverly and well he everywhere brought them forward, how
+skilfully he compared and weighed them one with the other, and how he
+explained the dark and difficult texts, by bringing forward others that
+were clearer and more comprehensible. I saw also that there was great
+mastership in his treatment of the Scriptures, and that it afforded the
+most substantial aid to a right understanding of them, so that every
+intelligent layman who industriously studied his books, could
+distinctly perceive that these doctrines were true and Christian, and
+had the firmest foundation. On that account they impressed themselves
+on my mind, and deeply touched my heart: it was to me as if a veil had
+fallen from before my eyes; I felt they were in no wise to be
+distrusted, like those of so many other school teachers that I had
+formerly read, because their aim was neither dominion, fame, nor
+worldly enjoyment, but to place before us, only the poor, despised, and
+crucified Christ, and to teach us to live a pure, moderate, and sober
+life, conformable in all things to the doctrine of Christ; and they
+were therefore too hard and self-denying for the ambitious and many
+beneficed priests and doctors, puffed up with pride and vain glory, who
+sought in the Scriptures their own honour and fame, more than the
+Spirit of God. Therefore would I rather give up all my worldly means
+and life itself, than be deprived of them, not for the sake of Luther,
+who, except as he appears in his writings, is unknown to me, and being
+only a man, may, like other men, be in error; but for the sake of the
+word of God, which he holds so clearly and distinctly, and explains so
+victoriously and triumphantly from the fullness of his undaunted
+spirit.
+
+"The enemy endeavoured to embitter this honey to us by representing
+that Luther was testy and irritable, aggressive and sarcastic; that he
+attacked his opponents the great princes and ecclesiastical and lay
+lords, with audacity; had recourse to abuse and slander, and forgot all
+brotherly love and Christian moderation. He had, it is true, often
+displeased me by this, and I would not desire any one to do the like;
+but I could not on that account reject and cast aside his good
+Christian teaching, nor even condemn him in these respects; and for
+this reason, that I could not read his mind, nor the secret counsels of
+God, as perhaps it might be the means of drawing people from his
+teaching. And as it was not his own cause, but the divine word that he
+defended, much allowance should be made for him, and all should be
+attributed to zealous indignation for God. Even Christ, the source and
+pattern of all meekness, severely rebuked before others the stubborn
+and stony-hearted Pharisees, and called them false hypocrites, painted
+sepulchres, sons of harlots, blind leaders of the blind, and also the
+children of the devil, as may be seen in the gospels. (Matt. xii. 15,
+23; John viii.) Perhaps Luther would gladly speak well of many if he
+could do so with truth; he may not think it fitting to call those who
+are in darkness, enlightened; nor rapacious wolves, good shepherds; nor
+the unmerciful, merciful; for without doubt, had God not been more
+merciful to him than they have been, he would not now be upon earth.
+But however this may be, I will not defend him in this place, but
+laying aside his expressions of contempt and abuse, accept with
+thankfulness the earnestness of his valiant Christian writings for our
+amendment.
+
+"As I openly persevered in what I had undertaken advisedly, and would
+not desist at the bidding of any one, being bound as a Christian not to
+do so, the displeasure of my superior at Alpirsbach, and certain others
+of the monastery, greatly increased, and the sword of God's anger began
+to cause division and discord between the brothers. I was peremptorily
+ordered to abstain from my undertaking, and also not to speak of these
+matters with others; but as I could not do this, being bound to yield
+obedience to God's commands, rather than to those of man, I earnestly
+begged of my Abbot and monastery, that they would graciously give me
+leave of absence. I wished for a year or two to support myself at some
+school or elsewhere, without being any expense to the monastery, and
+perhaps in the mean while, by a godly examination of the cause of our
+discord, it might be brought to a peaceable end.
+
+"This being however refused by them, I resolved, after having taken
+counsel with many wise, learned, and God-fearing men and friends, to
+leave the monastery." So far Ambrosius Blaurer.
+
+Whilst brother Ambrosius was yet looking anxiously from the windows of
+his cell, over the pines of the Black Forest into the free expanse,
+another was riding out of the gate of a princely castle near the
+woodclad mountains of Thuringia. Behind him lay the dark
+_Drachenschlucht_; before him the long ridge of the magic H�rselberges,
+wherein dwelt an enchantress, to whom the Pope, that wicked forgiver of
+sins, had once driven back the repentant Tannh�user. But the dry stick
+which the Pope had then thrust into the ground, brought forth green
+foliage during the night; God himself confuted the Pope. The poor
+penitent man no longer required the Bishop of Rome to enable him to
+find mercy and grace from his heavenly Father; but the wicked Pope
+himself would descend into the jaws of the old dragon.
+
+The exterior of the man who was riding down from Wartburg to
+Wittenberg, shall be described by a young student who was travelling
+with a friend from Switzerland to Saxony. His narrative is well known,
+yet we must not omit it here.
+
+His name was John Kessler; he was born at St. Gallen, in 1502; his
+parents were poor citizens; he attended the school of the monastery
+there, studied theology at Basle, and went early in the spring of 1522
+with a companion to Wittenberg, to continue his studies under the
+Reformers. In the autumn of 1523, he returned to his native town, and
+as the new doctrines had not yet taken root there, being very poor he
+determined to learn a trade, and became a saddler. He soon collected a
+small community round him, taught and preached, laboured in his
+workshop, wrote books, and became at last schoolmaster, librarian and
+member of a council of education. He had an unpretending, pure nature,
+with a heart full of love and gentle warmth, but he took no active part
+in the theological controversies of his time. His narrative begins as
+follows:--
+
+"When we were travelling to Wittenberg to study the Holy Scriptures, we
+arrived at Jena in Thuringia, in, God knows how wild a storm; and after
+many inquiries in the city for a lodging wherein we might pass the
+night, we could not find any; everywhere lodging was denied us, for it
+was Shrovetide,[25] when pilgrims and strangers were little cared for.
+So we determined to leave the town, and endeavour to reach a village
+where they would lodge us. In the mean while we met at the gate an
+honest man, who spoke kindly to us, and inquired where we were going so
+late, as there was neither house nor farm that we could reach before
+night; besides which, it was a road that was difficult to find;
+therefore he advised us to remain there.
+
+"We answered: 'Dear father, we have tried all the inns to which we have
+been directed, and having everywhere been refused a lodging, we are
+obliged to proceed further.' Then he asked us whether we had made
+inquiry at the Black Bear; and we replied: 'It has never been mentioned
+to us; tell us, dear father, where we shall find it.' He then showed us
+a little way out of the town, and when we came to the Black Bear,
+behold, the landlord, instead of refusing us, as all the others had
+done, came to meet us at the door, and not only received us, but kindly
+begged of us to lodge there, and took us into a room.
+
+"There we found a man sitting alone at a table, and before him lay a
+book; he greeted us kindly, and bid us approach and sit by him at the
+table; for we were seating ourselves quietly on a bench close to the
+door, as our shoes (if one may be allowed to write it) were so covered
+with mud and dirt, that we were ashamed to enter the room on account of
+our dirty footmarks. He invited us to drink, which we could not refuse,
+and as we found him so kind and cordial, we seated ourselves by him at
+his table as he had asked us, and called for a quart of wine, that we
+might return his civility by asking him to drink. We supposed him
+however to be a knight, as he was dressed in hosen and jerkin, with a
+red leather cap, and without armour, and sat, according to the custom
+of his country, with a sword at his side, with one hand resting on the
+pommel and the other clasping the hilt. His eyes were black and deep
+set, flashing and sparkling like stars, so that one could hardly bear
+to look at them.
+
+"Shortly after, he asked where we were born, but answered himself: 'You
+are Swiss; from what part of Switzerland do you come?' We replied,
+'From St. Gallen.' He then said, 'If you are going, as I hear, to
+Wittenberg, you will find there some good countrymen of yours, Dr.
+Jerome Schurf and his brother Dr. Augustin.'
+
+"We said, 'We have letters to them;' and we proceeded to inquire: 'Can
+you inform us, sir, whether Martin Luther is now at Wittenberg; or if
+not, where he is?'
+
+"He answered, 'I know for certain that Luther is not now at Wittenberg,
+but will return soon. Philip Melancthon is however there, who teaches
+Greek, and others who teach Hebrew. In truth I would advise you to
+study both, as they are needful for the right understanding of the Holy
+Scriptures.' We replied, 'So help us God! as long as He grants us life,
+we will not desist till we have seen and heard this man; for on his
+account we have undertaken this journey, as we learn that he will
+overthrow the priesthood, together with the mass, that being a service
+founded on error. As we have been brought up by our parents, and
+destined from our youth to be priests, we are anxious to hear what his
+teaching is, and what authority he can bring forward for such
+propositions.'
+
+"After we had thus spoken, he inquired: 'Where have you studied
+hitherto?'--Answer: 'At Basle.'--Then he said: 'How are things going on
+at Basle? Is Erasmus of Rotterdam still there, and what is he doing?'
+
+"We replied: 'We only know, sir, that all is going on well, and that
+Erasmus is there; but what he is about is unknown to and concealed from
+every one, as he keeps himself quite quiet and private.'
+
+"This manner of talk appeared to us very strange in the knight; how
+could he know everything relative to the two Schurfs, of Philip, and
+Erasmus, and also be aware of the necessity of learning Greek and
+Hebrew? He introduced occasionally Latin words, so that we bethought us
+he must be more than a common knight.
+
+"'Dear sons,' he said, 'what do they think in Switzerland about
+Luther?'
+
+"We answered: 'Sir, there, as everywhere, opinions vary. Many cannot
+exalt him sufficiently, and thank God who has manifested his truth
+through him, and exposed error; but many condemn him as a cursed
+heretic, especially all the ecclesiastics.'
+
+"He answered: 'I can well imagine it of the priests.'
+
+"Thus holding converse, we became quite at home with him, so that my
+companion took up the book that was lying before him and opened it. It
+was the Hebrew Psalter; he put it down again quickly and the knight
+drew it towards him. Then my companion said: 'I would give one of my
+fingers to be able to understand this language.' He answered, 'You will
+have no difficulty in comprehending it, providing you devote yourself
+to it industriously; I also desire to know more of it, and study it
+daily.'
+
+"In the mean while evening drew on, and it became quite dark. The
+landlord came to the table, and when he learned our longing desire to
+know Martin Luther, he said, 'Dear comrades, if you had been here two
+days ago, you would have succeeded, for he was here, and sat at this
+table, and,' pointing with his finger, 'in that very place.' We were
+much vexed and provoked that we had missed him, and laid the blame of
+it on the muddy bad road which had delayed us; but we said, 'We
+rejoice, however, that we are in the same house and sitting at the same
+table at which he sat.'
+
+"At this the landlord laughed and went away. After a little while the
+landlord called to me to come to him outside the door of the room. I
+was frightened, and thought that perhaps without intending it I had
+done something that was unbecoming.
+
+"Then he said to me, 'As I know that you wish to hear and see Luther;
+it is he who sits by you.'
+
+"I took this for a joke, and said, 'I see indeed, good sir, that you
+wish to banter me by imposing upon me a false Luther.' He answered, 'It
+is he most assuredly; but do not show that you think so, or that you
+recognize him.' I assented, but did not believe him. I went again into
+the room, and placed myself at the table; and was anxious to tell my
+companion what the landlord had said. At last I turned to him and
+whispered secretly, 'The landlord has told me that this is Luther.' He
+would not believe it any more than I, and said, 'He perhaps told you
+that it was Hutten, and you did not rightly understand him.' As the
+dress and bearing reminded me more of Hutten than a monk like Luther, I
+was persuaded that he had said it was Hutten, as the beginning of both
+names sounded so much alike: what I further said, was as if spoken to
+the knight, Herr Ulrich von Hutten.
+
+"In the mean while there arrived two merchants, who intended to remain
+there all night: after they had taken off their travelling dresses and
+spurs, one of them laid down near him an unbound book. Then Martinus
+asked what kind of book it was; and he answered, 'It is Dr. Luther's
+exposition of some of the gospels and epistles, just printed and
+published; have you not yet seen it?' Martinus said, 'I shall soon get
+it.' The host now desired us to arrange ourselves at table, as it was
+time to eat; we begged of him to have consideration for us and give us
+something separate, but he replied, 'Dear comrades, place yourselves by
+these gentlemen at table, I will charge you moderately.' When Martinus
+heard this, he said, 'Come here, I will settle for you with the
+landlord.'
+
+"During the meal, Martinus spoke many kind and godly words, so that the
+merchants as well as ourselves were mute before him; attending more to
+his words than to the viands before us. Amongst other things, he
+lamented with a sigh that the princes and lords just then assembled at
+the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg, on account of the troubles of the
+German nation, and for the sake of the pending proceedings concerning
+God's word, were only inclined to waste their time in costly
+tournaments, sledge drives, vanity, and dissipation, when fear of God
+and Christian prayer would be of more avail. 'But such are our
+_Christian_ princes.' He further said, 'There was hope that evangelical
+truth would bear more fruit among the children and descendants who were
+not poisoned by papal errors, and might yet be grounded in pure truth
+and the word of God, than among the parents in whom error was so deeply
+rooted that it could hardly be eradicated.
+
+"Then the merchants gave their opinions freely, and one of them said,
+'I am a simple layman, and understand little of these disputes, but I
+must speak of things as I find them; Luther must either be an angel
+from heaven, or a devil out of hell. I would gladly, however, give ten
+gulden to confess to him, for I believe he could and would give me good
+instruction.' Then the landlord came to us, and said secretly,
+'Martinus has paid for your supper:' that gave us much pleasure, not
+for the sake of the money and food, but for the hospitality shown us by
+this man. After supper the merchants rose and went to the stable to
+look after their horses; in the mean while Martinus remained alone with
+us in the room; we thanked him for the honour he had done us, as well
+as for the gift, and as we did so we showed him that we took him for
+Ulrich von Hutten; but he said, 'I am not Hutten.'
+
+"Then the landlord coming in, Martinus said, 'I have become a nobleman
+to-night, for these Swiss have taken me for Ulrich von Hutten.' The
+landlord replied, 'You are not him, but Martinus Luther.' Then Martinus
+laughing as if it were a joke, said, 'These take me for Hutten, you for
+Luther, soon I shall become a Markolfus.'[26] After this talk he took a
+long glass of beer, and said, according to the custom of the country,
+'Drink with me a friendly glass with God's blessing;' and when I was
+going to take the glass from him, he changed it, and offered instead a
+glass with wine, saying, 'The beer is foreign to you, and you are
+unaccustomed to it, drink the wine.' Meanwhile he rose and threw his
+tabard over his shoulders, and took leave. He held out his hand to us,
+and said, 'If you go to Wittenberg, greet Dr. Jerome Schurf for me.' We
+replied, 'We will do that with pleasure, but how must we designate you,
+that he may understand your greeting?' He answered, 'Say nothing
+further than that he who is coming sends you greeting; he will
+immediately understand these words.' So he departed from us and went to
+rest.
+
+"Afterwards the merchants returned into the room, and called to the
+landlord to bring them something to drink; in the mean while they had
+much talk about the guest, and wondered who he could be. The landlord
+declared it was Luther, and the merchants were soon convinced of it,
+and regretted that they had spoken so unbecomingly before him, and
+said, 'They would rise at an early hour in the morning, that they might
+see him before he started; and would beg of him not to be angry with
+them, as they had not known who he was.' This they did, and found him
+in the morning in the stable; but Martinus answered them, 'You said
+last night at supper that you would give ten gulden to confess yourself
+to Luther; when you do so, you will see and learn if I am Martinus
+Luther.' He did not make himself further known, but mounted his horse
+and rode off to Wittenberg.
+
+"On the following Saturday, the day before the first Sunday in Lent, we
+presented ourselves at Dr. Jerome Schurf's house to deliver our
+letters. When we entered the room, behold we found there the knight
+Martinus just as we had seen him at Jena, and with him were Philippus
+Melancthon, Justus Jodocus Jonas, Nicholas Amsdorf, and Dr. Augustin
+Schurf, who were telling him what had happened during his absence from
+Wittenberg: he greeted us, and laughing, pointed with his finger, and
+said, 'This is the Philip Melancthon of whom I told you.'"
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in the truthlike narrative of Kessler,
+than the cheerful tranquillity of the great man whilst riding through
+Thuringia under ban and interdict, his heart filled with anxious care,
+on account of the great danger with which his doctrines were threatened
+by the fanaticism of his own partisans.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                              DR. LUTHER.
+                              (1517-1546.)
+
+
+Even the most enlightened Roman Catholics look with horror upon Luther
+and Zwinglius as originators of the schism in their old Church. It is
+to be hoped that such views may disappear in Germany. All sects have
+reason to thank Luther for whatever depth and spirituality now remains
+in their faith: The heretic of Wittenberg was as much the reformer of
+German Roman Catholics as of Protestants; not only, because in the
+struggle with him the teachers of the Roman Catholic Church were
+obliged to erect at Trent a firmer building on the ruins of the Church
+of the middle ages, but because he left the impress of his mind on the
+character of the people, in which we all equally partake. Some things
+for which the obstinate and pugnacious Luther contended, against both
+Reformers and Catholics, have been condemned by the free judgment of
+modern times. His doctrines, vehement and high strained, wrung from a
+soul full of reverence, were in some weighty points erroneous, and he
+was sometimes bitter, unjust, indeed harsh to his opponents; but such
+things should not lead Germans astray, for all the deficiencies of his
+nature and education disappear in the fullness of blessing, which
+streamed from his great heart into the life of his nation.
+
+To few mortals has it been granted to exercise such an influence on his
+cotemporaries and on after times, as has fallen to the lot of Luther:
+his life may be divided into three periods. In the first, the character
+of the man was formed; it was powerfully influenced by the surrounding
+world, but from the depths of human nature, under the pressure of
+individual character, thoughts and convictions were gradually
+strengthened into resolutions which broke forth into action, and the
+individual commenced a struggle with the world. Then followed another
+period, one of more energetic action, of more rapid development and of
+greater triumph. Ever greater became the influence of the individual on
+the world; powerfully did he draw the whole nation along with him; he
+became their hero and model; the inward life of millions seemed
+concentrated in one man.
+
+But a single individual, however powerful in character, however great
+his aims, could not long dominate over the spirit of a nation, the
+life, strength, and wants of which are manifold. The man is under the
+constraint of the logical consequences of his thoughts and actions; all
+the spirits of his own deeds force him into a fixed limited path; but
+the soul of a people requires for its life, incessant working with the
+most varied aims. Much that an individual cannot bring himself to
+receive, is taken up by others in opposition to him. The reaction of
+the world begins: it is first weak, and from many quarters, with
+various tendencies and little authority; then it becomes stronger and
+more victorious. Finally, the inward spirit of the individual life
+confines itself within its own system, and becomes only a single
+element in the formation of the people. The end of a great life is
+always full of secret resignation, mixed with bitterness and quiet
+suffering.
+
+And thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods ended with the
+day on which he affixed his Theses; the second continued till his
+return from the castle of Wartburg; the third till the beginning of the
+Smalkaldic war and his death. It is not our intention to give his life
+here, but only to describe shortly how he became what he was. There was
+much in him which, only viewed from a distance, appears strange and
+unpleasing, but the more closely we examine his character, the greater
+and more amiable we find it.
+
+Luther rose from the peasant class; his father left M�hra, a place amid
+the forests of the Thuringian mountains, which was half peopled by his
+kindred, to engage in mining in the district of Mansfeld; thus the boy
+was born in a cottage, where the terrors inspired by the spirits of the
+pine woods, and dark fissures which served as entrances to the mine in
+the mountains, were still strong and vivid. His mind was no doubt often
+occupied with the dark traditions of the heathen mythology; he was
+accustomed to perceive in the terrors of nature, as well as in the life
+of man, the work of the powers of darkness. When he became a monk,
+these recollections of his childhood blended themselves with the figure
+of the devil, and the busy tempter always wore the same aspect to his
+imagination as the mischievous hobgoblins that frequent the hearth and
+stable of the countryman.
+
+His father was a man of concentrated and energetic character, firm and
+decided, and gifted with a full measure of strong common sense: he
+struggled hard to attain wealth; he kept strict discipline in his
+house, and in later years Luther remembered with grief the severe
+punishment he had received as a boy, and the sorrow it had inflicted on
+his childish heart. The influence of the old Hans Luther on the life of
+his son lasted till his death in 1530. When Martin went secretly into a
+monastery at the age of twenty-two, the old man was violently angry, as
+he had intended to provide for his son by a good marriage. At last
+friends succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between them, and
+when the supplicating son approached his father, confessing that he had
+been driven by a fearful apparition to take the monastic vows, he
+replied to him in the following words: "God grant that it may not have
+been a delusion of the devil." He agitated still more the heart of the
+monk by the angry question: "You thought you were listening to the
+command of God when you went into the cloister; have you never heard
+that it is a duty to be obedient to parents?" This made a deep
+impression on the son, and when, many years afterwards, he was residing
+at Wartburg, cast out of the Church, and proscribed by the Emperor, he
+wrote to his father these touching words: "Do you still wish to
+withdraw me from the thraldom of the monastery? You are still my
+father, I your son; you have on your side the power and commands of
+God; on my side there is only human error. Behold, that you may not
+boast yourself before God, He has anticipated you, and taken me out
+himself." From that time he was as it were restored to the old man.
+Hans had once reckoned upon having a grandson for whom he would work,
+and to this idea he stubbornly returned, regardless as to what the rest
+of world thought; he soon therefore admonished him earnestly, to marry,
+and his persuasions had a great share in determining Luther to do so.
+When the father, who at a great age had become councillor of Mansfeld,
+was about to draw his last breath, and the priest bending over him
+asked him whether he died in the pure faith of Christ and the Holy
+Gospel, old Hans collected himself once more, and said shortly: "He is
+a rogue who does not believe in it." When, afterwards, Luther was
+relating this, he added admiringly: "That was indeed a man of the olden
+time." The son received the account of his father's death, in the
+fortress of Coburg; and when he read the letter, which his wife had
+conveyed to him with the portrait of his youngest daughter, Magdalen,
+he spoke only these words to his companions: "God's will be done, my
+father is dead." He arose, took his psalter, went into his room, where
+he wept and prayed, and returned with a composed mind. The same day he
+wrote to Melancthon with deep emotion, of the heartfelt love of his
+father, and of the entire confidence that existed between them. "Never
+did I despise death so much as I do now: how often do we suffer death
+by anticipation before we really die! I am now the eldest of my race,
+and I have a right to follow him."
+
+Such was the father from whom the son derived the groundwork of his
+character, veracity, a steadfast will, an honest understanding, and
+circumspection in the management of business and in his dealings with
+men. His childhood was full of hardships, and he had much that was
+disagreeable to endure at his Latin school, and as a chorister; but he
+experienced also much good-will and love, and he retained, what is more
+easily kept in the smaller circles of life, a heart full of trust in
+the goodness of human nature, and respect for the great people of the
+world. His father was able to support him comfortably at the university
+of Erfurt; he was then full of youthful vigour, and took great delight
+in joining his companions in vocal and instrumental music. Of his
+mental life at that time we know but little, only that when in peril of
+death, in a storm, "a fearful apparition called to him from heaven." In
+his terror he vowed to go to a monastery, and quickly and secretly
+carried out his resolution.
+
+It is here that our accounts of the state of his mind begin. At
+variance with his father, full of terror at an incomprehensible
+eternity, frightened by the anger of God, he began, in a convulsive
+struggle, a life of self-denial, penance, and devotion. He found no
+peace. All the highest questions of life stormed with fearful power
+over his distracted soul, which had no anchor to rest on. Strongly did
+he feel the need of being in harmony with God and the world, and all
+that he derived from his faith was unintelligible and repulsive. The
+mysteries of the moral government of the world were to his mind matters
+of the deepest import. That the good should be tormented and the wicked
+made happy, that God should condemn the whole human race with the
+monstrous curse of sin, because an inexperienced woman had eaten an
+apple, and that on the other hand the same God should bear with our
+sins, in love and patience; that Christ should sometimes repel upright
+people with severity, and at others receive adulterers, publicans, and
+murderers,--about all this, the wisdom of man becomes foolishness. He
+complained in these words to his ghostly counsellor, Staupitz: "Dear
+doctor, our Lord God does indeed deal terribly with us; who can serve
+Him when He deals such blows on all?" To which the answer was: "How
+could He otherwise bow down the stiff-necked?" This ingenious argument
+was of no comfort to the youth. In his earnest strivings to find the
+incomprehensible God, he tormented himself in searching out all his
+thoughts and dreams. Every ebullition of youthful blood, every earthly
+thought, appeared to him a shocking iniquity; he began to despair, and
+wrestled with himself in endless prayer, fasting, and mortification. On
+one occasion the brothers were obliged to break into his cell, where he
+had been lying the whole day in a state not far removed from insanity.
+Staupitz observed with warm sympathy the agitation and torments of his
+soul, and endeavoured, though only by rough consolation, to give it
+rest. Once when Luther had written to him, "Oh my sins! my sins! my
+sins!" his ghostly counsellor answered him: "You wish to be without
+sin, and yet have no real sins. Christ is the forgiver of mortal sins,
+such as the murder of parents, &c., &c. If you would have the help of
+Christ, you must have mortal sins to record, and not come to Him with
+such trifles and peccadilloes, making a sin out of every little
+infirmity."
+
+The way in which Luther raised himself out of this despair decided the
+whole tenour of his life. The God whom he served appeared then as a God
+of terror, whose anger was only to be appeased by the means of grace
+given by the old Church, especially by continual confession, for which
+endless forms and directions were given, which were but cold and empty
+to the spirit. By the prescriptions of the Church and the practice of
+so-called good works, young Luther had not attained the feeling of true
+reconciliation and inward peace. At last a sentence from his spiritual
+adviser pierced him like an arrow: "There is no true repentance that
+does not begin by the love of God; the love of God, and the reception
+of it in the soul, does not follow, but precedes the means of grace
+enjoined by the Church." This teaching which came from Tauler's school
+became for him the foundation of a new, genial, and moral relation with
+God; it was a holy discovery to him. The change in his own spirit was
+the main point for which he must labour; repentance, penance, and
+expiation must proceed from the inward feelings of the heart. It was by
+his own efforts alone that man could raise himself to God. For the
+first time he experienced what direct prayer was. In the place of a
+distant God, whom hitherto he had sought in vain, by hundreds of forms
+and childish confessions, he beheld the image of an all-loving
+protector, with whom he could hold communion at every hour, whether in
+joy or sorrow, before whom he could lay every grief and doubt, who
+incessantly sympathized with, and cared for him, and, like a good
+father, either granted or denied the requests of his heart. Thus he
+learned to pray, and how ardent his prayers became! Now he was able to
+live in tranquillity, being daily and hourly in communion with his God,
+whom he had at last found; his intercourse with the Highest became more
+confidential than with those dearest to him on earth. When he poured
+out his whole soul before Him, he obtained rest, holy peace, and a
+feeling of inexpressible happiness; he felt himself a portion of God,
+and this sense of intimate communion with Him he preserved during the
+whole remainder of his life. He needed no longer the distant paths of
+the old Church; with his God in his heart he could defy the whole
+world. He already ventured to believe, that teaching must be false
+which laid such great weight on works of penance; that besides these
+there remained only cold satisfaction and ceremonious confession; and
+when later he learned from Melancthon that the Greek word for penance,
+"_Metanoia_," denotes literally "a change of heart," it appeared to him
+as a wonderful revelation. On this foundation was built that confidence
+of faith, with which he brought forward the words of Scripture in
+opposition to the prescriptions of the Church.
+
+It was in this way that Luther, whilst still in the monastery, attained
+to inward freedom. The whole of his later teaching, his struggle
+against the indulgences, his unshaken firmness, and his method of
+scriptural exposition, all rest on the inward process by which as a
+monk he had found his God; and one may truly say that the new period of
+German history began with Luther's cloister prayers. Life soon placed
+him under its hammer, to harden the pure metal of his soul.
+
+Luther unwillingly took the Professorship of Dialectics in the new
+university of Wittenberg, in 1508; he would rather have taught that new
+theology which he already began to consider the truth. It is known that
+in the year 1510 he went to Rome on the business of his order; how
+devoutly and piously he lingered in the holy city, and with what dismay
+he was seized on observing the heathenish character of the people of
+Rome, and the worldliness and corrupt morals of the ecclesiastics. But
+deeply as he was shaken by the depravity of the hierarchy, he felt that
+his whole life was still enclosed in it; out of it there was nothing:
+The exalted idea of the Roman Catholic Church, and its triumphant reign
+of 1500 years, fettered even the most powerful minds; and when the
+German in the dress of a Romish priest, and in danger of his life,
+contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome, and stood in amazement before
+the gigantic pillars of the temples, which, according to tradition, had
+once been destroyed by the Goths little did the valiant man from the
+mountains of the old Hermunduren then think, that it would be his own
+fate to destroy the temples of the Rome of the middle ages, more
+completely than the brethren of his ancestors had done in the olden
+time. Luther returned from Rome still a faithful son of the great
+Mother, holding all heretical proceedings, as for example those of the
+Bohemians, in detestation. He sympathized warmly in Reuchlin's dispute
+with the Cologne inquisitor, and about 1512 had sided with the
+Humanitarians. But even then he began to find something in their
+teaching which separated him from them. When some years later he was at
+Gotha, he did not visit the worthy Mutianus Rufus, though he wrote him
+a very civil letter of excuse. Soon after, he was much wounded by the
+coldness and worldly tone of Erasmus's dialogues, in which theological
+sinners are turned into ridicule. The profane worldliness of the
+Humanitarians did not suit the earnest faith of Luther; it aroused that
+pride which had already taken root in his soul, and caused him
+afterwards to wound the sensitive Erasmus in a letter intended to be
+conciliatory. Even the form of literary moderation adopted by Luther at
+this time, gives us the impression of being wrung by the pressure of
+Christian humility from a stubborn spirit.
+
+He felt himself already strong and secure in his faith: in 1506 he
+wrote to Spalatinus, who was the connecting link between him and the
+Elector, Frederic the Wise, that the Elector was of all men most
+knowing in secular wisdom, but in things pertaining to God and the
+salvation of souls, he was struck with sevenfold blindness.
+
+Luther had reason for the opinion here expressed, for the domestic
+disposition of this sober-minded prince showed itself in his anxiety to
+provide for his home the means of grace bestowed by the old Church.
+Amongst other things he had a particular fancy for relics, and
+Staupitz, vicar-general of the Augustine monks in Germany, was at that
+time engaged in collecting these treasures for the Elector. This
+absence of his superior was very important to Luther, for he had to
+fill his place. He was already a man of high repute in his order; but
+though a professor at Wittenberg, he continued to reside in his
+monastery, and generally wore his monk's dress. He visited the thirty
+monasteries of his congregation, deposed priors, delivered strong
+rebukes on account of lax discipline, severely admonished criminal
+monks, and had become in 1517 a man of fully developed character and
+commanding powers; yet he still preserved somewhat of the trusting
+simplicity of the monastic brother.
+
+Thus, when he had affixed the Theses against Tetzel to the church door,
+he writes confidingly to the Archbishop Albrecht of Maintz, the
+protector of the trader in indulgences. Full of the popular faith in
+the good sense and the good will of the governing powers, Luther
+thought--he often said so later--nothing was necessary but to represent
+straightforwardly to the princes of the Church the injurious effects
+and immorality of these malpractices.[27] But how childish did this
+zeal of the monk appear to the smooth and worldly prince of the Church!
+That which had roused such deep indignation in the upright man, had
+from the archbishop's point of view long been a settled question. The
+sale of indulgences was a much lamented evil in the Church, but
+unavoidable, as are to politicians many regulations not good in
+themselves, but necessary to preserve some great interests. The
+greatest interest of the archbishops and the guardians of the Romish
+Church was their dominion, which was to be won and maintained by such
+means of acquiring money. The greatest interest of Luther and the
+people was truth; here, therefore, their paths separated.
+
+Thus Luther entered into the struggle, full of faith, still a true son
+of the Church, and with all the German devotedness to authority; but
+yet his firm connection with his God worked in him strongly against
+this authority. He was then thirty-four years of age, in the full
+vigour of his strength, of middle size, thin, but strongly made, so
+that he appeared tall by the side of the small delicate boyish figure
+of Melancthon. Fiery eyes, whose intense brilliancy was almost
+overpowering, glowed in a face in which one could perceive the effects
+of night watches and inward struggles. Though a man of great repute,
+not only in his order, but in the university, he was no great scholar;
+he first began to learn Greek with Melancthon, and soon afterwards
+Hebrew; he possessed no great compass of book learning, and never had
+any ambition to shine as a Latin poet. But he was astonishingly well
+read in the Holy Scriptures and some of the Fathers, and whatever he
+took up he worked out profoundly. He was unwearied in his care for the
+souls of his congregation, a zealous preacher, and a warm friend; he
+had a certain frank gaiety, together with a self-possessed demeanour,
+and much courteous tact; the certainty of his convictions appeared in
+his social intercourse, and gave a cheerful radiance to his
+countenance. He was irritable, and easily moved to tears; the trifling
+events of the day excited and disturbed him; but when he was called
+upon for any great effort, and had subdued the first agitation of his
+nerves--which, for instance, had overcome him on his first entrance at
+the Imperial Diet at Worms--he then attained a wonderful composure and
+confidence. He did not know what fear was; indeed, his lion nature took
+pleasure in the most dangerous situations. The malicious snares of his
+enemies, and the dangers to which his life was occasionally exposed, he
+seemed to consider hardly worth speaking about. The foundation of this
+more than human heroism--if one may venture to call it so--was the firm
+personal union between him and his God. For a long period, with smiles
+and inward gladness, he desired to serve truth and God by becoming a
+martyr. A fearful struggle still lay before him, but it was not caused
+by the opposition of men; he had to contend constantly for years
+against the devil himself; he overcame also the terror of hell, which
+threatened to obscure his reason. Such a man might be destroyed, but
+could hardly be conquered.
+
+The period of struggle which now follows, from the beginning of the
+dispute about indulgences to his departure from Wartburg, the time of
+his greatest triumph and greatest popularity, is that of which perhaps
+most is known, and yet it appears to us that his character even then is
+not rightly judged.
+
+Nothing in this period is more remarkable than the way in which Luther
+gradually became estranged from the Romish Church. He was sober-minded
+and without ambition, and clung with deep reverence to the high idea of
+the Church, that community of believers fifteen hundred years old; yet
+in four short years he departed from the faith of his fathers, and
+shook himself free of the soil in which he had been so firmly rooted.
+During this whole time he had to maintain the struggle alone, or at
+least with very few faithful confederates: after 1518 Melancthon was
+united with him. He overcame all the dangers of fierce encounters, not
+only against enemies, but against the anxious dissuasions of honest
+friends and patrons. Three times did the Romish party try to silence
+him by the authority of Cajetan, the persuasive eloquence of Miltitz,
+and the unseasonable assiduity of the pugnacious Eckius; three times he
+addressed the Pope in letters which are among the most valuable
+documents of that century. Then came the separation: he was
+anathematized and excommunicated; he burnt--according to the old
+university custom--the enemy's challenge, and with it the possibility
+of return. With joyful confidence he went to Worms, where the princes
+of his nation were to decide whether he should die, or henceforth live
+amongst them, without Pope or Church, by the precepts of the Holy
+Scriptures alone.
+
+When first he published in print the "Theses against Tetzel," he was
+astounded at the prodigious effect they produced in Germany, at the
+venomous hatred of his enemies, and at the tokens of friendly
+approbation which he received from all sides. Had he done anything so
+very unprecedented? The opinions he expressed were entertained by all
+the best men in the Church. When the Bishop of Brandenburg sent the
+Abbot of Lehnin to him, with a request that he would withdraw from the
+press his German sermon upon indulgences and grace, however right its
+contents might be, the poor Augustine friar was deeply moved that so
+great a man should hold such friendly and cordial intercourse with him,
+and he felt inclined to give up the publication rather than make
+himself a lion disturbing the Church. He zealously endeavoured to
+refute the report that the Elector had induced him to engage in the
+dispute with Tetzel. "They wish to involve the innocent Prince in the
+odium that belongs to me only." He desired as much as possible to
+preserve peace with Miltitz before Cajetan; only one thing he would not
+do: he would not retract what he had said against the unchristian sale
+of indulgences. But this retraction was the only thing that the
+hierarchy required of him. Long did he continue to wish for peace,
+reconciliation, and a return to the peaceful occupations of his cell;
+but some false assertion of his opponents always reinflamed his blood,
+and every contradiction was followed by a new and sharper stroke of his
+weapons.
+
+The heroic confidence of Luther is striking; even in his first letter
+to Leo X., dated the 30th May, 1518, he is still the faithful son of
+the Church; he still concludes by laying himself at the feet of the
+Pope; offers him his whole life and being, and promises to respect his
+voice as the voice of Christ, whose representative he is as sovereign
+of the Church. But in the midst of all this submission, which became
+him as a monastic brother, these impassioned words burst forth: "If I
+have deserved death, I do not refuse to die." And in the letter itself,
+how strong are the expressions with which he describes the insolence of
+the indulgence vendors! Honest, too, are his expressions of surprise at
+the effect of his Theses, which were difficult to understand, being,
+according to the old custom, composed of enigmatical and involved
+propositions. Good humour pervades the manly words, "What shall I do? I
+cannot retract. I am only an unlearned man, of narrow capacity, not
+highly cultivated, in a century full of intellect and taste, which
+might even put Cicero into a corner. But necessity has no law; the
+goose must cackle among the swans."
+
+The following year all who esteemed Luther endeavoured to bring about a
+reconciliation. Staupitz, Spalatinus, and the Elector scolded,
+entreated, and urged. Even the Pope's chamberlain, Miltitz, praised his
+opinions, whispered to him that he was quite right, entreated, drank
+with, and kissed him; though Luther indeed had reason to believe that
+the courtier had a secret commission to take him if possible a prisoner
+to Rome. The mediators happily hit on a point in which the refractory
+man heartily agreed with them; it was, that respect for the Church must
+be maintained and its unity not destroyed; Luther therefore promised to
+keep quiet and to leave the disputed points to the decision of three
+eminent bishops. Under these circumstances he was pressed to write a
+letter of apology to the Pope; but this letter of the 3rd of March,
+1519, though undoubtedly approved by the mediators and wrung from the
+writer, shows the advance that Luther had already made. Of the humility
+which our theologians discover in it, there is little; it is, however,
+thoroughly cautious and diplomatic in its style. Luther regrets that
+what he has done to defend the honour of the Romish Church has been
+attributed to him as a want of respect; he promises henceforth to be
+silent on the subject of indulgences,--provided his opponents would be
+the same, and to address a letter to the people admonishing them
+loyally to obey the Church,[28] and not estrange themselves from it,
+because his opponents had been insolent and he himself harsh. But all
+these submissive words could not conceal the chasm which already
+separated his spirit from that of the Romish Church. With what cold
+irony he writes: "What shall I do, most holy father? All counsel fails
+me; I cannot bear your anger, and yet know not how to avoid it. It is
+desired that I should retract; if by this what they aim at could be
+effected, I would do so without delay, but the opposition of my
+opponents has spread my writings further than I had ever hoped, and
+they have laid too deep hold on the souls of men. There is now much
+talent, education, and free judgment in our Germany: were I to retract,
+I should, in the opinions of my Germans, cover the Church with still
+greater shame; but it is my opponents who have brought disgrace in
+Germany upon the Romish Church." He concludes his letter politely. "Do
+not doubt my readiness to do more, if it should be in my power. May
+Christ preserve your Holiness. M. Luther."
+
+There is much concealed behind this measured reserve. Even if the
+conceited Eckius had not immediately after stirred up the indignation
+of the whole university of Wittenberg, this letter could hardly have
+availed at Rome as a sign of repentant submission.
+
+The thunderbolt of excommunication was launched; Rome had spoken.
+Luther, now restored to himself, wrote once more to the Pope; it was
+the celebrated letter, which, at the request of the indefatigable
+Miltitz, he antedated, the 6th of September, 1520, in order to ignore
+the bull of excommunication. It is the noble expression of a determined
+spirit which contemplates its opponent from its elevated position,
+grand in its uprightness and noble in its sentiments! He speaks with
+sincere sympathy of the Pope, and of his difficult position; but it is
+the sympathy of a stranger: he still mourns over the Church, but it is
+evident that he has already passed out of it. It is a parting letter
+written with cutting sharpness and confidence, but in a tone of quiet
+sorrow, as of a man separating himself from one whom he had once loved,
+but found unworthy.
+
+Luther had in the course of these years become quite another man; he
+had acquired caution and confidence in intercourse with the great, and
+had gained a dear-bought insight into the political and private
+character of the governing powers. To the peaceful nature of his own
+sovereign nothing could be more painful than this bitter theological
+strife, which, though sometimes advantageous to him politically, always
+disquieted his spirit. Continual endeavours were made at court to
+restrain the Wittenbergers, but Luther was always beforehand with them.
+Whenever the faithful Spalatinus warned him against the publication of
+some new aggressive writing, he received for answer, that it could not
+be helped; that the sheets were already printed, already in many hands,
+and could not be withdrawn.[29] In intercourse also with his opponents
+Luther acquired the confidence of an experienced combatant. He was very
+indignant when in the spring of 1518, Jerome Emser had inveigled him at
+Dresden to a supper, at which he was obliged to contend with angry
+enemies; and still more when he heard that a begging Dominican had
+listened at the door, and had the following day reported all over the
+town that Luther had been put down by the number of his opponents, and
+that the listener had with difficulty restrained himself from springing
+into the room and spitting in his face. At the first interview with
+Cajetan, he placed himself humbly at the feet of the Prince of the
+Church; but after the second, he permitted himself to say that the
+Cardinal was as well suited to his business as an ass to play on the
+harp. He treated the polite Miltitz with corresponding civility; the
+Romanist had hoped to tame the German Bear, but the courtier himself
+was soon put in his proper position, and was made use of by Luther; in
+the disputation at Leipsic with Eckius, the favourable impression
+produced by Luther's unembarrassed, honest, and self-composed
+demeanour, was the best counterbalance to the self-sufficient
+confidence of his dexterous opponent.
+
+But Luther's inward life demands a higher sympathy. It was a fearful
+period for him; he experienced together with a sense of elevation and
+victory, mortal anguish, tormenting doubts, and terrible temptations.
+He, with a few others, stood against the whole of Christendom, always
+opposed by the most powerful and implacable enemies; and these
+comprised all that he had from his youth considered most holy. What if
+he should be in error? He was answerable for every soul that he carried
+away with him. And whither was he taking them? What was there beyond
+the pale of the Church?--Destruction, temporal and eternal ruin.
+Opponents and timid friends cut his heart with reproaches and warnings,
+but incomparably greater was one pain, that secret gnawing and
+uncertainty which he dared not confess to any one. In prayer, indeed,
+he found peace; when his glowing soul soared up to God, he received
+abundance of strength, rest, and cheerfulness; but in his hours of
+relaxation, when his irritable spirit writhed under any obnoxious
+impressions, he felt himself embarrassed, torn asunder, and under the
+interdict of another power which was inimical to his God. From his
+childhood he had known how busily evil spirits hover around men, and
+from the Scriptures he had learned that the devil labours to injure
+even the purest. On his own path lurked busy devils seeking to weaken
+and entice him, and to make countless numbers miserable through him. He
+saw them working in the angry mien of the Cardinal, the sneering
+countenance of Eckius, and indeed in his own soul; and he knew how
+powerful they were in Rome. In his youth he had been tormented by
+apparitions, and now they had returned to him. Out of the dark shadows
+of his study rose the tempter as a spectre, clutching at his reason,
+and when praying, the devil approached him, even under the form of the
+Saviour, radiant as king of heaven, with his five wounds as the old
+Church represented him. But Luther knew that Christ only approaches
+weak man in his word, or in humble form, as He hung upon the cross; so
+by a violent effort he collected himself and cried out to the
+apparition: "Away with thee, thou vile devil!" then the spectre
+vanished.[30] Thus again and again for years did the stout heart of the
+man struggle with wild excitement. It was a gloomy conflict between
+reason and delusion; he always came out as conqueror, the primitive
+strength of his healthy character gained the victory. In long hours of
+prayer the stormy waves of excitement were calmed; his solid
+understanding and his conscience led him always from doubt to security,
+and he felt this expansion of his soul as a gracious inspiration from
+his God. It was after such experiences, that he, who had been so
+anxious and timid, became firm as steel, indifferent to the judgment of
+men, intrepid and inexorable.
+
+He appeared quite another person in his conflicts with earthly enemies;
+in these he almost always showed the confidence of superiority, and
+especially in his literary disputes.
+
+The activity he displayed from this period as a writer was gigantic. Up
+to the year 1517, he had published little; but after that he became not
+only the most copious, but the most popular writer of Germany. By the
+energy of his style, the power of his arguments, the fire and vehemence
+of his convictions, he carried all before him. No one had as yet spoken
+with such power to the people. His language adapted itself to every
+voice and every key; sometimes brief, terse, and sharp as steel; at
+others, with the rich fullness of a mighty stream his words flowed upon
+the people; and a figurative expression or a striking comparison made
+the most difficult things comprehensible. He had a wonderful creative
+power, and pre-eminent facility in the use of language; when he took
+his pen, his spirit seemed to emancipate itself: one perceives in his
+sentences the cheerful warmth that animated him, and they overflow with
+the magic creations of the heart. This power is very visible in his
+attacks upon individual opponents, and was closely allied to rudeness,
+which caused much perplexity to his admiring cotemporaries. He liked
+also to play with his opponents: his fancy clothed them in a grotesque
+mask, and he rallied, derided, and hit at this fantastic figure, in
+expressions by no means measured, and not always very becoming. But the
+good humour which shone out from the midst of these insults had
+generally a conciliatory effect, though not upon those whom they
+touched. Scarcely ever do we perceive any small enmities, but
+frequently inexhaustible kindness of heart. Sometimes forgetting the
+dignity of the reformer, he played antics like a German peasant child,
+or rather like a mischievous hobgoblin. How he buffeted his
+adversaries! now with the blows of an angry giant's club, now with the
+rod of a buffoon. He delighted in transforming their names into
+something ridiculous; thus they were known in the Wittenberger's circle
+by the names of beasts and fools: Eckius became Dr. Geek,[31]
+Murner[32] was called Katerkopf[33] and Krallen; Emser, who had his
+crest (the head of a horned goat) engraved on every controversial
+writing, was insulted by being changed into Bock;[34] the Latin name of
+the apostate Humanitarian, Cochl�us, was translated back into German,
+and Luther greeted him as Schnecke (the snail) with impenetrable
+armour, and--it grieves one to say--sometimes as Rotzl�ffel.[35] Still
+more annoying, and even shocking in the eyes of his cotemporaries, was
+the vehement recklessness with which he broke forth against hostile
+princes; the Duke George of Saxony, cousin to his own sovereign, was
+the only one he was occasionally obliged to spare. The profligate
+despotism of Henry VIII. of England was abhorrent to the soul of the
+German reformer, who abused him terribly, and he dealt with Henry of
+Brunswick as a naughty school-boy. It cannot, we fear, be denied that
+it was this alloy to the moral dignity of his character that acted as
+the salt, which made his writings so irresistible to the earnest
+Germans of the sixteenth century.
+
+In the autumn of 1517, he had a controversy with the reprobate
+Dominican; in the winter of 1520, he burnt the papal bull; in the
+spring of 1518, he still laid himself at the feet of the Pope as the
+vicegerent of Christ; but in the spring of 1521, he declared before the
+Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios at the Imperial Diet at Worms, that
+he did not trust either in the Pope or the councils alone, but only in
+the witness of the Holy Scripture and the convictions of his own
+reason. He had now become a free man, but the papal interdict and the
+ban of the empire hung over him; he was inwardly free, but he was free
+like the wild beast of the forest, with the bloodthirsty hounds giving
+tongue after him. He had now arrived at the acme of his life: the
+powers against which he had revolted, and even the thoughts which he
+had excited in the people, began now to work against his life and
+doctrines.
+
+It appears that already at Worms, Luther was warned that he must
+disappear for a time. The habits of the Franconian knights, among whom
+he had many faithful adherents, gave rise to the idea of carrying him
+off by armed men. The Elector Frederic planned the abduction with his
+confidential advisers; yet it was quite in the style of this Prince to
+arrange that he himself should not know the place of his confinement,
+that in case of necessity he might be able to affirm his ignorance. It
+was not easy to make this plan acceptable to Luther, for his valiant
+heart had long overcome all earthly fear, and with ecstatic pleasure,
+in which there was much enthusiasm and some humour, he watched the
+attempts of the Romanists who wished to take away his life; this,
+however, was under the disposal of another and higher power, which
+spoke through his mouth.[36] He unwillingly submitted; but however
+cleverly the abduction was arranged, it was not easy to keep the
+secret. In the beginning, Melancthon was the only one of the
+Wittenbergers who knew the place of Luther's concealment; but Luther
+was not the man to accommodate himself, even to the most well-meaning
+intrigue, and soon messengers were actively passing to and fro between
+the Wartburg and Wittenberg, so that whatever circumspection was
+employed in the care of the letters, it was difficult to prevent the
+spreading of reports. Luther in the castle, learned what was going on
+in the great world sooner than the Wittenbergers; he received accounts
+of all the news of his university, and endeavoured to raise the courage
+of his friends and to guide their politics. It is touching to see how
+he tried to strengthen Melancthon, whose unpractical nature caused him
+to feel bitterly the absence of his stronger friend. "Things must go on
+without me," Luther writes to him. "Only take courage and you will no
+longer need me; if, when I come out, I cannot return to Wittenberg, I
+must go out into the world. You are the men to maintain, without me,
+the cause of the Lord against the devil." His letters are dated from
+the "aerial regions," from "Patmos," from the "wilderness," "from among
+the birds who sing sweetly among the branches, and praise God day and
+night with all their powers." Once he endeavoured to be cunning:
+writing to Spalatinus, he enclosed a crafty letter, saying, that it was
+believed without foundation that he was at Wartburg. That he was living
+among faithful brothers, and that it was remarkable no one thought of
+Bohemia; it concluded with a not ill-natured thrust at Duke George of
+Saxony, his keenest enemy. This letter, Spalatinus, with pretended
+negligence, was to lose, that it might come into the hands of his
+enemies; but in such diplomacy Luther was by no means consistent, for
+no sooner was his lion nature roused by any intelligence, than he made
+a hasty decision to burst forth to Erfurt or Wittenberg. He bore with
+difficulty the tedium of his residence; he was treated with the
+greatest consideration by the commander of the castle, and this care
+showed itself chiefly, as was then the custom, in providing him with
+the best food and drink. The good living, the absence of excitement,
+the fresh air on horseback, which the theologian enjoyed, worked both
+on soul and body. He had brought with him from Worms, a bodily ailment
+from which arose hours of dark despondency, which made him incapable of
+work.
+
+Two days successively he went out hunting; but his heart was with the
+poor hares and partridges, which were hunted by a host of men and dogs
+into a net. "Innocent little creatures! thus do the papists hunt." To
+preserve the life of a little hare he concealed it in the sleeve of his
+coat; then came the hounds and broke the limbs of the little animal
+within the protecting coat. "Thus does Satan gnash his teeth against
+the souls I seek to save." Luther had enough to do to defend himself
+and his from Satan; he had thrown off all the authorities of the
+Church, and now stood shuddering alone, only one thing remained to him,
+the Scriptures. The old Church had been continually expounding
+Christianity; traditions which were concurrent with the Scriptures,
+councils and decrees of the Pope, had kept the faith in constant
+agitation. Luther placed in its stead the word of Scripture, which
+while it brought deliverance from a wilderness of erroneous soulless
+conceptions, gave threatenings of other dangers. What was the Bible?
+There were about two centuries between the oldest and the newest
+writings of the holy book. The New Testament itself was not written by
+Christ, nor even always by those who had received his holy teaching
+from himself; it had been compiled long after his death, portions of it
+might have been delivered incorrectly; all was written in a foreign
+language that Germans could with difficulty understand. Expounders of
+the greatest discernment were in danger of interpreting falsely if not
+enlightened by the grace of God as the Apostles had been. The old
+Church had brought to its assistance that sacrament which gave to the
+priest's office this enlightenment; indeed the holy father assumed so
+much of the omnipotence of God, that he considered himself in the right
+even where his will was contrary to the Scripture. The reformer had
+nothing but his weak human understanding and his prayers.
+
+It was indeed imperative that Luther should use his reason, for a
+certain degree of criticism upon the Holy Scriptures was necessary. He
+did not set an equal value upon all the books of the New Testament: it
+is known that he had doubts about the Revelations of St. John, and he
+did not much value the Epistle of St. James; but objections to
+particular parts never disturbed his faith in the whole; his belief in
+the verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures (with the exception of a
+few books) could not be shaken; they were to him what was dearest on
+earth, the groundwork of his whole knowledge; he was so thoroughly
+imbued with their spirit, that he lived as it were under their shadow.
+The more deeply he felt his responsibility, the more intense was the
+ardour with which he clung to the Scriptures.[37] A powerful instinct
+for what was rational and judicious helped him over many dangers; his
+penetration had nothing of the hair-splitting sophistry of the old
+teachers; he despised unnecessary subtleties, and with admirable tact
+he left undecided what appeared to him not essential. But if he was not
+to become a frantic or godless man, nothing remained to him but to
+ground his new doctrines on the words which were spoken and written
+fifteen hundred years before him, and he fell in some case into what
+his opponent Eckius called "Black-letter style."
+
+Under these restraints his method was formed. If he had a question to
+solve, he collected all the passages in Scripture which appeared to him
+to contain an answer; he examined each passage to understand their
+mutual bearing, and thus arrived at his conclusions. By this mode of
+proceeding, he brought the Scriptures within the compass of an ordinary
+understanding; for example, in the year 1522, he undertook, out of the
+Holy Scriptures, to place marriage on a new moral foundation; he
+severely criticised the eighteen reasons given by ecclesiastical law,
+forbidding and dissolving marriages, and condemned the unworthy
+favouring of the rich in preference to the poor.
+
+It was this same system which made him so pertinacious in his
+transactions with the Reformers in the year 1529, when he wrote on the
+table before him: "This _is_ my body;" and looked gloomily on the tears
+and outstretched hands of Zwinglius. Never had that formidable man
+shown more powerful convictions, convictions won in vehement wrestling
+with his doubts and the devil. It may be considered by some as an
+imperfect system; but there was a genial strength in it, that made his
+own view more available to the cultivation and heart-cravings of his
+time, than even he himself anticipated.
+
+Besides these great trials, the proscribed monk at the Wartburg was
+exposed to smaller temptations: he had long, by almost superhuman
+spiritual activity, overcome, what great self-distrust led him to
+consider as merely sensual inclinations; still nature stirred
+powerfully in him, and he many times begged of his dear Melancthon to
+pray for him concerning this.
+
+It happened providentially, that just at this time at Wittenberg the
+restless spirit of Karlstadt took up the subject of the marriage of
+priests, in a pamphlet in which he decided that vows of celibacy were
+not binding upon priests and monks. The Wittenbergers were in general
+agreed on this question, especially Melancthon, who was perfectly
+unbiassed, as he himself had never entered into holy orders, and had
+been married two years.
+
+Thus a web of thoughts and moral problems was cast from the outer world
+upon Luther's soul, the threads of which enclosed the whole of his
+later life. Whatever joy of heart and earthly happiness was vouchsafed
+to him henceforth, rested on the answer to this question. It was the
+happiness of his home that made it possible for him to bear the trials
+of his later years; by that the full blossom of his rich heart was
+first unfolded. So graciously did Providence send to him, just in the
+time of his loneliness, the message which was to bind him anew, and
+more firmly than ever to his people. Again, the way in which Luther
+treated this problem is quite characteristic; his pious spirit and the
+conservative tendency of his character strove against the hasty and
+superficial way in which Karlstadt reasoned. It may be assumed, that
+his own feelings made him suspicious as to whether this critical
+question was not made use of by the devil, to tempt the children of
+God; and yet the constraint upon the poor monks in the monasteries
+grieved him much. He examined the Scriptures, and easily made up his
+mind as to the marriage of priests; but there was nothing in the Bible
+about monks: "Where the Scripture is silent, man is unsafe." It
+appeared to him, withal, a laughable idea that his friends could marry,
+and he wrote to the cautious Spalatinus: "Good God, our Wittenbergers
+wish also to give wives to the monks! now they shall not so encumber
+me;" and he warns him ironically: "Have a care that you also do not get
+married;" yet this problem occupied him incessantly. Men live fast in
+great times. Gradually, by Melancthon's reasoning, and we may add by
+fervent prayer, he arrived at certainty. What, almost unknown to
+himself, brought about the decision, was the perception that it had
+become wise and necessary for the moral foundation of social life, that
+the monasteries should be opened. For nearly three months this question
+had been struggling in his mind; on the 1st November, 1521, he wrote
+the afore-mentioned letter to his father.
+
+Unbounded was the effect of his words on the people; they produced a
+general excitement: out of almost all the cloister doors monks and nuns
+slipped away; it was at first singly and by stealth, but soon whole
+monasteries and convents dissolved themselves. When Luther in the
+following spring returned to Wittenberg, his heart full of anxious
+cares, the fugitive monks and nuns caused him a great deal of trouble.
+Secret letters were forwarded to him from all quarters, chiefly from
+excited nuns who had been placed as children in convents by harsh
+parents, and being now without money or protection, looked to the great
+Reformer for help; it was not unnatural that they should throng to
+Wittenberg. Nine nuns came from the foundation for noble ladies at
+Nimpschen, amongst them were a Staupitz, two Zeschau, and Catherine von
+Bora; besides these there were sixteen other nuns to take care of, and
+so forth. He was much grieved for these poor people, and hastened to
+place them under the protection of worthy families. Sometimes, indeed,
+it became too much of a good thing, and the crowd of runaway monks
+especially annoyed him. He complains: "They desire immediately to
+marry, and are unfit for every kind of work." He gave great scandal by
+his bold solution of this difficult question; and there was much that
+was very painful to his feelings; for amongst those who now returned in
+tumult to social life, though there were some high-minded men, others
+were coarse and dissolute. Yet all this did not for one moment make him
+turn aside; he became, according to his nature, more decided from
+opposition. When, in 1524, he published the history of the sufferings
+of a nun, Florentina von Oberweimar, he repeated in the dedication what
+he had so often preached: "God often testifies in the Scriptures that
+He desires no compulsory service, and no one can become his, who is not
+so in heart and soul. God help us! Is there nothing in this that speaks
+to us? Have we not ears and understanding? I say it again, God will not
+have compulsory service; I say it a third time, I say it a hundred
+thousand times, God will have no compulsory service."[38]
+
+Thus Luther entered the last period of his life. His disappearance in
+the Thuringian forest had made an immense sensation. His opponents, who
+were accused of his murder, trembled before the indignation which was
+roused against them, both in city and country. The interruption,
+however, of his public activity was pregnant with evil to him; as long
+as he was at Wittenberg, the centre of the struggle, his word and his
+pen could dominate the great spiritual movement both in the north and
+south, but in his absence it worked arbitrarily in different
+directions, and in many heads. One of Luther's oldest associates began
+the confusion, and Wittenberg itself was the scene of action of a wild
+commotion. Luther could no longer bear to remain at the Wartburg; he
+had already been once secretly to Wittenberg; he now returned there
+publicly, against the will of the Elector. Then began an heroic
+struggle against old friends, and against conclusions drawn from his
+own doctrines. His activity was superhuman; he thundered incessantly
+from the pulpit, and his pen flew over the pages, in his cell. But he
+was not able to bring back all the erring minds, neither could he
+prevent the excitement of the people from gathering into a political
+storm. What was more, he could not hinder the spiritual freedom which
+he had won for the Germans, from producing, even in pious and learned
+men, an independent judgment upon faith and life, which was often
+opposed to his own convictions. Then came the dark years of the
+Iconoclastic and Anabaptist struggle, the Peasant war; and the sad
+dispute about the Sacrament. How often at this time did the figure of
+Luther arise gloomy and powerful above the disputants! how often did
+the perversity of men and his own secret doubts, fill him with anxious
+cares about the future of Germany!
+
+In this wild time of fire and sword, the spiritual struggle was carried
+on more nobly and purely by him than by any one else. Every
+interference of earthly power was hateful to him; he did not choose to
+be protected even by his own sovereign, and would not have any human
+support for his teaching. He fought with a sharp pen, alone against his
+enemies; the only pile that he lighted was for a paper: he hated the
+Pope as he did the devil, but he had always preached toleration and
+Christian forbearance towards papists; he suspected many of having a
+secret compact with the devil, but he never burnt a witch. In all the
+Roman Catholic countries the stake was lighted for the confessors of
+the new faith, and even Hutten was strongly suspected of having cut off
+the ears of some monks; but so benevolent were Luther's feelings, that
+he had heartfelt compassion for the humbled Tetzel, and wrote him a
+consolatory letter. His highest political principle was obedience to
+the authorities ordained by God, and he never rose in opposition to
+them except when necessary for the service of God. On his departure
+from Worms, although on the point of being declared free from
+interdict, he was forbidden to preach; he did not, however, desist from
+doing so, but suffered great anxiety lest it should be imputed to him
+as disobedience. His conception of the unity of the Empire was quite
+primitive and popular; the reigning princes and electors, according to
+the laws of the Empire, owed the same obedience to the Emperor that
+their own subjects did to them.
+
+During the whole course of his life he took a heartfelt interest in
+Charles V., not only in that early period when he greeted him as the
+"Dear youth," but even later, when he knew well, the Spanish Burgundian
+only tolerated the German reformation for political reasons: he said of
+him, "He is good and quiet; he does not speak as much in one year as I
+do in a day; he is the favourite of fortune:" he had pleasure in
+extolling the Emperor's moderation, discretion, and long sufferance;
+and after he had begun to condemn his policy, and to distrust his
+character, he still insisted upon his companions talking with reverence
+of the sovereign of Germany; for he said, apologetically, "A politician
+cannot be as candid as we ecclesiastics." In 1530 he gave it as his
+opinion, that it would be wrong in the Elector to arm in opposition to
+the Emperor: it was not till 1537 that he unwillingly adopted a more
+enlarged view; but even then, the threatened Prince was not to take up
+arms first. So strongly in this man of the people still dwelt the
+honourable tradition of a firm well-ordered state, at a time when the
+proud edifice of that old Saxon and Frank empire was crumbling into
+ruin; but there was no trace of servile feeling in this loyalty: when
+the Elector on one occasion desired him to write a plausible letter,
+his truthful feeling revolted against the Emperor's title of "Most
+Gracious Sovereign," for the Emperor was not graciously disposed
+towards him; and in his intercourse with people of rank he showed a
+careless frankness that shocked the courtiers. To his own sovereign he
+had with all submission spoken truths as only a great character can
+speak, and to which only a good heart will listen. He had in general a
+poor opinion of the German princes, though he esteemed individuals
+among them; frequent and just are his complaints of their incapacity,
+licentiousness, and other vices:[39] the nobles too he treated with
+irony; the coarseness of most of them displeased him extremely.[40] He
+felt a democratic aversion to the hard and selfish lawyers who
+conducted the affairs of the princes, courted favour, and tormented the
+poor; to the best of them he allowed only a doubtful prospect of the
+grace of God: his whole heart, on the other hand, was with the
+oppressed: he blamed the peasants sometimes for their obduracy and
+their usuriousness, but he commended their class, regarded their vices
+with heartfelt compassion, and remembered that he sprang from them.
+These were his views on worldly government, but he served the
+spiritual: he held firmly the popular idea, that there should be two
+ruling powers,--the Church, and the princes, and he thought he was
+justified in proudly placing the domination of the former above that of
+worldly politics. He strove indignantly to prevent the governing powers
+from assuming the control in matters pertaining to the care of souls
+and to the autonomy of his communities. He estimated all politics with
+reference to the interests of his faith and according to the laws of
+his Bible. When the Scripture seemed to be endangered by worldly
+politics, he raised his voice, indifferent where it hit: it was not his
+fault that he was strong and the princes weak, and it ought to be no
+reproach to him, the monk, the professor, and the shepherd of souls, if
+the allied Protestant princes withstood the cunning statesmancraft of
+the Emperor, like a herd of deer; he himself was so conscious that
+politics were not his business, that when on one occasion the active
+Landgrave of Hesse would not follow ecclesiastical advice, he was the
+more esteemed for it by Luther: "He has a good head of his own; he will
+be successful; he thoroughly understands the world."
+
+Since Luther's return to Wittenberg a democratic agitation had been
+fermenting amongst the people. Luther had opened the cloisters, and now
+people desired to be delivered from many other social evils, such as
+the destitution of the peasants, the ecclesiastical imposts, the
+malversation of the benefices, and the bad administration of justice.
+The honest heart of Luther sympathized with this movement, and he
+exhorted and reproved the landed proprietors and princes; but when the
+wild waves of the Peasant war poured over his own country, when deeds
+of bloody violence wounded his spirit, and he found that factious men
+and enthusiasts exercised a dominion over the multitudes which
+threatened his doctrines with destruction, he threw himself with the
+deepest indignation into the struggle against the rough masses. Wild
+and warlike was his appeal to the princes; he was horrified at what had
+taken place: the gospel of love had been disgraced by the headstrong
+wilfulness of those who had called themselves its followers. His policy
+was right; there was in Germany, unfortunately, no better power than
+that of the princes; on them, in spite of everything, rested the future
+of the father-land, for which neither the peasant serfs, nor the
+rapacious noblemen, nor the dispersed cities of the empire, which stood
+like islands in the midst of the surging sea, could give a guarantee:
+he was entirely in the right; but in the same headstrong unbending way,
+which had hitherto made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular,
+he now turned against the people. A cry of dismay and horror was raised
+among the masses. He was a traitor. He, who for eight years had been
+their hero and darling, suddenly became the most unpopular of men:
+again his life and liberty were threatened; even five years afterwards
+it was dangerous for him to visit his sick father at Mansfeld, on
+account of the peasants. The anger of the multitude worked also against
+his teaching; the field preachers and new apostles treated him as a
+lost, corrupt man.
+
+He was excommunicated and outlawed by the higher powers, and cursed by
+the people; even many well-meaning men had been displeased with his
+attack on celibacy and monastic life. The nobility of the country
+threatened to waylay the outlaw on the high-roads, because he had
+destroyed the convents in which, as in foundling hospitals, the
+respectable daughters of poor nobles were thrown in early childhood.
+The Romish party triumphed; the new heresy was deprived of that which
+had hitherto made it powerful; Luther's life and doctrines seemed
+doomed to destruction.
+
+It was at this time that Luther determined to marry. Catherine von Bora
+had lived at Wittenberg for two years in the house of Reichenbach, the
+town clerk, afterwards burgomaster. She was a fine young woman of
+stately manners, the deserted daughter of a noble family of Meissen.
+Twice had Luther endeavoured to obtain a husband for her, as with
+fatherly care he had already done for many of her companions; at last
+Catherine declared that she would not marry any man, unless it were
+Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf. Luther was astonished, but he
+came to a rapid decision. Accompanied by Lucas Kranach, he went to woo
+her, and was married to her on the spot. He then invited his friends to
+his marriage feast, begged for venison from the court, which it was the
+habit of the prince to present to the professors on their wedding days,
+and received from the city of Wittenberg, as a bridal present, wine for
+the feast. We would fain understand what passed through Luther's soul
+at that time; his whole being was strained to the uttermost; his strong
+and wild primitive nature was excited on all sides; he was deeply
+shaken by the evils arising up everywhere around him, the burning
+villages and slaughtered men. If he had been a mere fanatic he would
+have ended in despair; but above the stormy disquiet, which is
+perceptible in him up to his marriage, a bright light shone; the
+conviction that he was the guardian of the divine law amongst the
+Germans, and that in order to protect social order and morals, he was
+bound to guide and not to follow the opinions of men. However eagerly
+and warmly he might declaim in individual cases, he appears now
+decidedly conservative and more firmly self-contained than ever. He
+had, moreover, the impression that it was ordained that he should not
+live much longer, and many were the hours in which he looked forward
+with a longing to martyrdom. He concluded his marriage in full harmony
+with his convictions. He had entered fully into the necessity of
+marriage and its conformity with Scripture, and he had for some years
+pressed all his acquaintances to marry, at last even his own opponent
+the Archbishop of Mentz. He himself gives two reasons for his decision.
+He had robbed his father for many years of his son; it would be to him
+a kind of expiation, in case he should die first, to leave old Hans a
+grandson. Besides this, it was also an act of defiance; his opponents
+triumphed that Luther was humbled, all the world was offended with him,
+and by this he would give them still more offence.
+
+He was a man of strong passions, but there was no trace of coarse
+sensuality; and we may assume that the best reason, which he did not,
+however, avow to any of his friends, was yet the most decisive, and
+that was, that there had long been gossip amongst people, and he
+himself knew that Catherine was favourably disposed towards him. "I am
+not passionately in love, but am very fond of her," he writes to one of
+his dearest friends. And this marriage, concluded contrary to the
+opinion of his cotemporaries, and amidst the derision of his opponents,
+was an act to which we Germans owe as much, as we do to all the years
+in which, as an ecclesiastic of the old Church, he had by deeds
+supported his theology. For from henceforth the father, husband, and
+citizen became also the reformer of the domestic life of his nation;
+and that which was the blessing of his earthly life, in which Roman
+Catholics and Protestants to this day have an equal interest, arose
+from a marriage contracted between an outcast monk and a fugitive nun.
+He had still, for one-and-twenty laborious years, to carry out the
+moulding of his nation. His greatest work, the translation of the
+Bible, which he had now brought to a conclusion, in union with his
+Wittenberger friends, gave him an entire mastery over the language of
+the people, a language, the richness and power of which first became
+practically known by this book. We know in how noble a spirit he
+undertook the work: he wished to produce a book for the people, for
+that purpose he studied assiduously the forms of speech, proverbs, and
+technical expressions used by them. The Humanitarians still continued
+to write clumsy and involved German, a bad resemblance to the Latin
+style. The nation now obtained for its daily reading a work which in
+simple words and short sentences gave expression to the deepest wisdom
+and the highest spiritual treasures. The German Bible, together with
+Luther's other writings, became the groundwork of the new German
+language; and this language, in which our whole literature and
+spiritual life have found expression, is an indestructible possession,
+which, though marred and spoilt, has even in the worst times reminded
+the different branches of the German race that they belong to one
+family. Individuals are now discarding their native dialects, and the
+language of education, poetry, and science which was created by Luther
+is the bond by which the souls of all Germans are united. Not less was
+done by this same man for the social life of Germany. Private devotion,
+marriage, the education of children, corporate life, school life,
+manners, amusements, all feelings of the heart, all social pleasures
+were consecrated by his teachings and writings; everywhere he
+endeavoured to place new boundary stones and to dig deeper foundations.
+There was no sphere of human duty over which he did not constrain his
+countrymen to meditate. By his numerous sermons and essays he worked on
+the public; by countless letters in which he gave counsel and comfort
+to inquirers he worked on individuals. He urged incessantly upon all
+the necessity of self-examination, and the duty of being well assured
+what was owing from the father to the child, from the subject to the
+sovereign, and from the chief magistrate to his community; the progress
+he thus made was important in this respect, that he freed the
+consciences of people; and in the place of outward pressure, against
+which egotism had haughtily rebelled, he substituted everywhere a
+genial self-control. How beautifully he comprehended the necessity of
+cultivating the minds of children by school instruction, especially in
+the old languages! How he recommended his beloved music to be
+introduced into the schools! How great his views were when he advised
+the magistrates to establish city libraries; and, again, how
+conscientiously he endeavoured to secure freedom of choice in
+matrimony! He had overthrown the old sacrament of marriage; but higher,
+nobler, and freer, he established the inward relation of man and wife.
+He had attacked the unwieldy monastic schools; everywhere in village
+and city, as far as his influence reached, flourished better
+institutions for the education of youth; he had removed the mass and
+the Latin chantings; he gave instead, to both disciples and opponents,
+regular preaching and the German chorale.
+
+His desire to find something divine in all that was lovely, good, and
+amiable, which the world presented to him, always kept increasing. With
+this feeling he was ever pious and wise, whether in the fields, or in
+decorous gaiety among his companions, in his playfulness with his wife,
+or when holding his children in his arms. He rejoiced when standing
+before a fruit tree at the splendour of the fruit: "If Adam had not
+fallen, we might thus have admired all trees." He would take a large
+pear admiringly in his hands, and exclaim: "See, six months ago it was
+deeper under the earth than its own length and breadth, and has come
+from the extreme end of the roots; these smallest, and least thought of
+things are the most wonderful of God's works. He is in the smallest of
+his creations, even to the leaf of a tree or a blade of grass." Two
+little birds had made a nest in his garden, and flew about in the
+evening, being frightened by the passersby: he thus addressed them:
+"Ah, you dear little birds, do not fly away. I wish you well from my
+heart, if you could only trust me--though I own we do not thus trust
+our God." He had great pleasure in the companionship of true-hearted
+men; he enjoyed drinking wine with them, and conversation flowed
+pleasantly on both great and small matters; he sang, or played the
+lute, and arranged singing-classes. He delighted in the art of music,
+as it yielded innocent enjoyment. He was lenient in his judgment about
+dancing, and spoke with indulgence--fifty years before Shakespeare--of
+plays: "For they teach," said he, "like a mirror how every one should
+behave himself."[41]
+
+Once when sitting with Melancthon, the mild and learned master Philip
+prudently moderated the too bold assertions of his vehement friend.
+Rich people were the subject of conversation, and Frau Kate could not
+resist remarking, eagerly, "If my husband had held such opinions he
+would have become very rich." Then Melancthon replied decidedly: "That
+is impossible, for those who thus strive after the good of the
+community cannot attend to their own interest." There was one subject,
+however, on which both men liked to argue. Melancthon was a great lover
+of astrology; Luther looked on this science with sovereign contempt; on
+the other hand, by his method of Biblical exegesis, and also by his
+secret political views, he had come to the conviction that the end of
+the world was near; and that appeared very doubtful to the sagacious
+Melancthon. When therefore the latter began with his signs and aspects
+of the heavens, and explained that Luther's success was owing to his
+having been born under the sign of the sun, Luther exclaimed: "I have
+no faith in your Sol. I am the son of a peasant; my father,
+grandfather, and ancestors have all been thorough peasants." "Yes,"
+answered Melancthon, "but even in a village you would have become the
+leader, the magistrate, or the head labourer over all others." "But,"
+exclaimed Luther, triumphantly, "I became a Baccalaureus, a master, and
+a monk; that was not written in the stars: after that, I quarrelled
+with the Pope, and he with me. I have taken a nun for my wife, and
+have had children by her; who has seen that in the stars?" Again
+Melancthon--continuing his astrological exposition--began to explain
+about the Emperor Charles; how he was destined to die in the year 1584.
+Then Luther broke out vehemently: "The world will not last so long, for
+when we have driven away the Turks, the prophecy of Daniel will be
+fulfilled, and the end of all things come, then assuredly the last day
+is at hand."
+
+How amiable he was as the father of a family! When his little children
+were standing at the table watching eagerly the peaches and other
+fruit, he said, "Whoever wishes to see a picture of one who rejoices in
+hope, will see it truly portrayed here. Oh, that we could look as
+joyfully for the last day. Adam and Eve must have had far better
+fruits: ours are in comparison only like crabs. The serpent was then, I
+have no doubt, the most beautiful of creatures, amiable and lovely; it
+still has its crest, but after the curse it lost its feet and beautiful
+body." Looking at his little son, just three years old, who was playing
+and talking to himself, he said, "This child is like a drunken man; he
+does not know that he lives, and yet he enjoys life in security,
+jumping and skipping about." He drew the child towards him, and thus
+addressed him: "Thou art our Lord's little innocent, not under the law,
+but under the covenant of grace and forgiveness of sins; thou fearest
+nothing, but art secure and without cares, and what thou doest is
+pure." He then continued: "Parents always love their youngest children
+best; my little Martin is my dearest treasure: the little ones have
+most need of care and love, therefore the love of parents naturally
+descends. What must have been the feeling of Abraham when he had to
+sacrifice his youngest and dearest son? he could not have told Sarah
+about it; this journey must have been a bitter one to him." His beloved
+daughter Magdalen lay dying; he laments thus: "I love her very much,
+but, dear Lord, as it is thy will to take her to thee, I am content to
+know that she is with thee. Magdalen, my little daughter, thou wouldst
+willingly remain with thy father here, yet gladly goest to thy Father
+yonder." The child then said, "Yes, dear father, as God wills it." As
+she was dying, he fell on his knees by the bed, weeping bitterly, and
+praying that God would redeem her. She then passed away in her father's
+arms. When the people came to bury her, he addressed them as was usual,
+saying, "I am joyful in spirit, but the flesh is weak; parting is
+beyond measure grievous. It is a wonderful thing, that, though feeling
+assured of all being well with her, and that she is at peace, one
+should yet feel so sorrowful." His _dominus_, or Herr Kate, as he used
+to call his wife in his letters to his friends, had soon become an apt
+and thrifty housewife. She had great troubles; many children, her
+husband frequently an invalid, a number of boarders (masters and poor
+students), always open house--as it seldom happened that they were
+without learned or distinguished guests, and in addition to all, a
+scanty income and a husband who preferred giving to taking; and who
+once during his wife's confinement got hold in his zeal of the baby's
+christening plate to give in alms.[42] From the way in which Luther
+treated her, we see how happy his family life was, and when he made
+allusions to the glib chattering of women, he had no right to do so,
+for he was by no means a man who was himself scanty in words. Once,
+when his wife appeared much delighted at being able to serve up
+different kinds of fish from the pond in their little garden, the
+doctor was heartily pleased to see her joy, and did not fail to take
+the opportunity of making a pleasant remark upon the happiness of
+contentment. Another time, when he had been reading to her too long in
+the Psalter, and she said that she heard enough upon sacred subjects,
+that she read much daily, and could talk about them, "God only grant
+that she might live accordingly," the doctor sighed at this sensible
+answer, and said, "Thus begins a weariness of the word of God; new
+trifling books will come in the place of the Scriptures, which will
+again be thrown into a corner." But this close union between these two
+excellent persons was still for many years disturbed by a secret
+sorrow. We only learn what was gnawing at the soul of the wife, by
+finding, that when as late as the year 1527, Luther, being dangerously
+ill, took a last leave of her, he spoke these words:--"You are my true
+wedded wife, of that you may feel certain."
+
+Luther's spiritual life was as much a reality to him as his earthly
+one. All the holy personages of the Bible were to him as true friends;
+through his lively imagination he saw them in familiar forms, and with
+the simplicity of a child he liked to picture to himself the various
+circumstances of their life. When Veit Dietrich asked him what kind of
+person he thought the Apostle Paul was, Luther answered quickly, "He
+was an insignificant, lean little man, like Philip Melancthon." He
+formed a pleasing image of the Virgin Mary: he used to say, admiringly,
+"She was a pretty, delicate maiden, and must have had a charming
+voice."
+
+He preferred thinking of the Redeemer as a child with his parents; how
+he took his father's dinner to the timber-yard, and how when he had
+been absent too long, Mary asked him, "Where have you been so long,
+little one?"
+
+The Saviour should be thought of, not as in his glory, nor as the
+fulfiller of the law, conceptions too high and terrible for man; but
+only as a poor sufferer, who lived among and died for sinners.
+
+His God was to him entirely as father and head of the family. He liked
+to meditate on the economy of nature: he was filled with astonishment
+at the quantity of wood which God must always be creating. "No one can
+reckon what God requires to nourish merely sparrows and useless birds:
+in one single year they cost Him more than the income of the King of
+France; and then think of all that remains." "God understands all
+trades: as a tailor He can make a coat for the deer, which might last a
+hundred years; as a shoemaker He gives him shoes to his feet, and by
+means of the dear sun He is a cook. He could become rich indeed, if He
+chose, if He were to withhold the sun and air, and threatened the Pope,
+Emperor, bishops, and doctors with death, if they did not pay Him a
+hundred thousand gulden on the spot. He does not do this, yet we are
+thankless miscreants." He seriously reflected whence came the means of
+nourishment for so many men. Old Hans Luther had maintained that there
+were more men than sheaves of corn; the doctor indeed thought that
+there were more sheaves than men, but that there were more men than
+shocks. "A shock of corn, however, hardly yields a bushel, and that
+will not nourish one man a whole year." Even a dung-heap was a subject
+of pleasant reflection to him. "God is obliged to clear away as well as
+to create; if He had not continually done so, the world would long ago
+have become too full." "When God chastises the godly more severely than
+the godless, He deals with him as a strict father of a family with his
+son, whom he more frequently punishes than the bad servant: but he
+secretly collects treasures as an inheritance for his son, whilst he
+finally casts the servant off." Luther comes joyfully to this
+conclusion: "If God can forgive me for having during twenty years
+offended Him by saying mass, He can also excuse my having sometimes had
+a good drink to his honour--let the world think what it will."
+
+It surprised him much that God should be so very wrath with the Jews.
+"For fifteen hundred years they have prayed fervently with great zeal
+and earnestness, as their little prayer-books show; and He has not
+revealed himself to them during the whole time by the smallest word. I
+would give two hundred florins' worth of books if I could pray as they
+do. It must be a great and unspeakable anger. Ah! dear Lord, punish me
+with pestilence, rather than be thus silent!"
+
+Luther prayed like a child morning and evening, and often during the
+day, even indeed, during his meals. He repeated again and again with
+fervent devotion those prayers which he knew by heart. His favourite
+was the Lord's Prayer, and then he repeated the short catechism; he
+always carried the Psalter with him as a little prayer-book. When he
+was in extreme trouble his prayer became like a storm, a wrestling with
+God, the power, the greatness, and the holy simplicity of which can
+hardly be compared with any other human emotion. He was then the son
+who despairingly lies at the feet of his father, or the faithful
+servant who supplicates his prince. For nothing could shake his
+conviction that we may influence God's decisions by prayer and
+supplication. Thus overflowing feelings alternated in his prayers with
+complaints and even remonstrances. It is often related how, in the year
+1540, he restored to life the dying Melancthon at Weimar. When Luther
+arrived he found "_Magister Philippus_" at the point of death,
+unconscious and with closed eyes. Luther, struck with terror, said,
+"God forbid! how has this organ of God been marred by the devil!" Then
+he turned his back on those assembled, and went to the window as he was
+wont to do when he prayed. "Now," said Luther, "must the Lord God
+stretch forth his hand to me, for I have brought the matter home to
+Him, and dinned in his ears all his promises as to the efficacy of
+prayer, which I could repeat from the Holy Scripture, so that He must
+hearken to me if I am to trust his promises." Then he took Melancthon
+by the hand, saying, "Be comforted, Philip, you will not die:" and
+Melancthon, under the spell of his powerful friend, began at once to
+breathe again, and recovered his consciousness. He was restored.
+
+As God was to Luther the source of all good, so was the devil the
+producer of all evil and wickedness. He considered that the devil
+interfered destructively with the course of nature by illness or
+pestilence, deformity and famine. All that this deep-thinking man
+preached so firmly and joyfully had formerly pressed with fearful
+weight upon his conscience; especially when awaking in the night, the
+devil stood full of malice by his bed, whispering horrors in his ear;
+then his spirit wrestled for freedom, often for a length of time in
+vain. It is extraordinary what this son of the sixteenth century went
+through in these inward struggles. Every fresh inquiry into the
+Scriptures, every important sermon upon a new theme, threw him again
+into this strife of conscience: then he reached such a state of
+excitement that his soul became incapable of systematic thought, and
+for whole days he trembled with anguish. When he was occupied with the
+question of monks and nuns, a text of the Bible startled him, which he
+thought, in his excitement, placed him in the wrong: his heart died
+within him, and he was nearly strangled by the devil. At this time
+Bugenhagen visited Luther, who showed him the threatening text.[43]
+Bugenhagen, probably infected by the eagerness of his friend, began
+also to doubt, unconscious of the greatness of the misery which it
+occasioned Luther. Now was Luther indeed terrified, and again passed a
+fearful night. The next morning Bugenhagen came back. "I am very
+angry," he said; "I have now, for the first time, understood the text
+rightly; it has quite another sense." "And it is true," said Luther
+later, "it was a ridiculous argument; ridiculous indeed for one who is
+in his right mind, and not under temptation."
+
+He often lamented to his friends, over the terrors which these
+struggles with the devil occasioned him. "He has never been from the
+beginning so fierce and raging as now, at the end of the world. I feel
+him well. He sleeps much nearer to me than my Kate; that is to say, he
+gives me more disquiet than she does pleasure." Luther never ceased to
+abuse the Pope as antichrist, or the papal system as devilish. But
+whoever observes more accurately, will perceive behind this hatred of
+the devil, the indestructible reverence by which the loyal spirit of
+the man was bound to the old Church. What became to him temptations,
+were often only the pious recollections of his youth, which stood in
+striking contrast to the changes he had gone through as a man.
+
+Indeed, no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds
+of his manhood. We ourselves do not become new through new actions; our
+inward life consists of the sum of all the thoughts and feelings which
+we have ever had. He who has been chosen by fate to create the new by
+the destruction of the old, shatters in pieces at the same time a
+portion of his own life: he must violate lesser duties to fulfil
+greater ones. The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels
+the rent which he has made in the order of the world, and also in his
+own inward nature. This is the secret sorrow, and even the regret, of
+every great historical character. Few mortals have felt this grief so
+deeply as Luther; and that which was so great in him, was his never
+being prevented by this feeling from acting with the utmost boldness.
+
+This appears to us a tragical moment in his inward life; and equally so
+was the effect of his teaching upon the life of the nation. He had laid
+the foundation of a new Church upon the pure Gospel, and had given
+greater depth and substance to the minds and conscience of the people.
+Around him burst forth a new life, greater general prosperity, many new
+arts, improvements in painting and music, comfortable enjoyment, and
+more refined cultivation in the middle classes. Yet there was a
+something gloomy and ominous which pervaded the German atmosphere.
+Fierce discord raged amongst princes and governors. Foreign powers were
+arrayed against the people, the Emperor from Spain, the Pope from Rome,
+and the Turks from the Mediterranean; enthusiasts and factious spirits
+were powerful, the hierarchy had not yet fallen. Had his gospel given
+greater unity and power to the nation? The discord had become only
+greater, and the future of his Church seemed dependent on the worldly
+interests of individual German princes. And well he knew what even the
+best among them were. Something terrible seemed approaching, the
+Scripture would be fulfilled, the last day was at hand. But afterwards
+God would raise up a new world, more beautiful, more splendid, and more
+pure, full of peace and blessing; a world in which there would be no
+devil; where the soul of man would find more enjoyment in the flowers
+and fruit of the new heavenly trees, than the present race do in gold
+and silver; where music, the most beautiful of all arts, would give
+birth to tones more entrancing than the most splendid song of the best
+singers of this world; and where good men would find again all that
+they had loved and lost.[44]
+
+Ever more powerful became in him the longing of the creature after an
+ideal purity of existence. If he expected the end of the world, it was
+the dim traditions of the German people from the distant past which
+still veiled the heaven of the new Reformer; and yet it was at the same
+time a prophetic presentiment of what was at hand. It was not the end
+of the world which was approaching, but the Thirty years' war.
+
+So he died. As the hearse bearing his corpse passed through the country
+of Thuringia, the bells tolled in every village and town, and the
+people pressed sobbing round his coffin. A large share of German
+popular strength was buried with this one man. Philip Melancthon, in
+the church of the castle at Wittenberg, standing before the corpse of
+Luther, said: "Every one who has known him well must bear witness that
+he was a truly good man; gracious in speech, friendly and lovable; not
+in the least insolent, violent, obstinate, or quarrelsome; and yet
+there was an earnestness and boldness in his words and bearing
+befitting such a man. His heart was true, and without guile; the
+harshness which appeared in his writings against the enemies of his
+doctrine, did not arise from a quarrelsome or bad spirit, but from his
+great earnestness and zeal for the truth. He showed great courage and
+manliness, and did not allow himself to be easily frightened. He was
+not dispirited by threatenings and danger. He possessed such a lofty
+and clear understanding, that in confused, dark, and difficult
+circumstances, he could see sooner than others what was to be
+counselled and done. He was not, as some perhaps have thought, so
+heedless as not to have remarked how it fared everywhere with the
+governments. He knew right well in what government consists, and paid
+assiduous attention to the opinions and will of the people with whom he
+had to do. Let us have a constant and undying remembrance of this our
+beloved father, and keep him ever in our hearts."[45]
+
+Such was Luther, a superhuman nature; his mind was ponderous and
+sharply defined, his will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, and
+his heart full of love. As besides him no other powerful spirit arose
+strong enough to become the leader of the nation, the German people
+have lost for centuries the supremacy over the world; their supremacy
+in the realm of mind rests however upon Luther. That he may in
+conclusion speak for himself, we will give a letter to the Elector
+Frederic the Wise, written at the time when Luther's whole powers were
+most strongly developed. The prudent prince had commanded him to remain
+at Wartburg, because he could not protect him at Wittenberg, as the
+anger of the Duke George of Saxony would lead him to insist immediately
+upon the carrying out of the ban of the empire against Luther. Luther
+then writes to his sovereign:--
+
+"Most Serene Highness, Illustrious Elector, and Gracious Sovereign!
+Your Electoral Highness's letter and gracious remembrance of me,
+reached me on Friday evening, when I was preparing to leave on Sunday
+morning. I need truly neither proof nor witness that your Electoral
+Highness's intentions are for the best, for I am as fully convinced
+thereof as any human being can be.
+
+"Yet in this matter, Gracious Sovereign, I must answer thus: your
+Electoral Highness knows, or if you do not know, permit me hereby to
+make you acquainted with it, that I have not received the gospel from
+man, but from heaven alone, through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I
+may, and indeed from henceforth will, boast and sign myself a servant
+and evangelist. If I have presented myself for trial and judgment, it
+was not because I doubted the truth, but from overflowing humility, and
+to persuade others. I have done enough for your Electoral Highness in
+leaving my place vacant for a whole year for the sake of your Electoral
+Highness. The devil knows well that I have not done it from fear. He
+saw what a heart I had when I came to Worms; for if I had known that as
+many devils were lying in wait for me as there were tiles on the roofs,
+yet I would have rushed into the midst of them with joy.
+
+"Now the Duke George is very unlike even a single devil. And since our
+Father, in his unfathomable mercy, has, by his gospel made us joyful
+lords over death and all devils, and has given us such a fullness of
+assurance that we may call Him 'Dearly beloved Father,' your Electoral
+Highness can yourself judge that it would be the greatest offence to
+such a Father if we did not so trust Him as to be above the anger of
+Duke George. For my part I know well, I would gladly ride into his own
+Leipzig--I hope your Electoral Highness will forgive my foolish
+jesting--even though it should rain, proud Duke Georges during nine
+following days, and every one should be ninefold more furious than this
+one. He considers my Lord Christ only a man of straw; this my Lord and
+I can well bear with for a time. But I will not conceal from your
+Electoral Highness that I have not once only, but often prayed and wept
+for Duke George, that God would enlighten him. I will still once more
+pray and weep for him, but after that never more. And I beg of your
+Electoral Highness to help and pray also that we may turn from him the
+evil, which, God help him, weighs incessantly upon him. I would at once
+strangle Duke George with a word if it could be thus removed.
+
+"I have written thus to your Electoral Highness, with the intention of
+making known to you that I come to Wittenberg under a far higher
+protection than that of the Elector. I also do not intend to request
+the protection of your Electoral Highness, for indeed, I think I could
+better protect your Electoral Highness than you could protect me. So
+much so, that if I knew your Electoral Highness could protect me, and
+would do so, I would not come. It is not the sword which can counsel or
+help in this business; it is God alone who can act, without any human
+assistance; therefore he who has most faith will have most power to
+protect.
+
+"As I therefore perceive that your Electoral Highness is as yet weak in
+faith, I can in no wise regard your Electoral Highness as the man to
+protect or deliver me.
+
+"As your Electoral Highness desires to know what you shall do in this
+business, especially as you think that you have done too little, I
+answer, with all due submission, that your Electoral Highness has done
+too much, and should do nothing. For God will not allow of our cares
+and doings; He will have every doing left to himself, to himself and no
+other. May your Electoral Highness act accordingly.
+
+"If your Electoral Highness believes this, you will have security and
+peace; if you do not, I do, and must leave your Electoral Highness in
+your unbelief, to torment yourself with the anxieties which all
+unbelievers deservedly suffer. As, therefore, I will not obey your
+Electoral Highness, you will be excused before God if I should be
+imprisoned or put to death. Towards men your Electoral Highness ought
+thus to conduct yourself. You should as Elector be obedient to the
+supreme authority, and should allow the Imperial majesty to rule in
+your towns and provinces, over persons and property, in conformity with
+the laws of the empire, and should not attempt to prevent or oppose, or
+make any hindrance or resistance to this power if it should seize and
+kill me. For no one should resist authority, he excepted by whom it has
+been established, otherwise it is revolt, and against God. But I hope
+that your Electoral Highness will be reasonable, and perceive that you
+are in too high a position to become my gaoler. If your Electoral
+Highness keeps the door open, and grants a free escort in case my
+enemies themselves or their emissaries should come to seize me, you
+will have done enough for obedience-sake. They cannot indeed demand
+more of your Electoral Highness, than to learn the residence of Luther
+in your Electoral Highness's dominions. And that, they shall do without
+any care, work, or danger on the part of your Electoral Highness; for
+Christ has not yet taught men to be Christians to the injury of others.
+
+"If, however, they should be so unreasonable as to command your
+Electoral Highness to lay hands on me yourself, I will then tell you
+what is to be done: I will secure your Electoral Highness from injury
+and danger to person, property, and soul, in what concerns me. Your
+Electoral Highness may or may not believe this.
+
+"Herewith I commend your Electoral Highness to God's grace; of anything
+further we will speak when it is needful. For I have written this in
+haste, that your Electoral Highness may not be troubled by the report
+of my arrival, for I must comfort and not injure any one if I would be
+a true Christian. I have to deal with quite a different man to Duke
+George: we know each other well. If your Electoral Highness would have
+faith, you would see the glory of God; but because you have not yet
+faith, you have not seen it. Love and praise be to God in eternity.
+Amen. Given at Borna by the messenger, Ash Wednesday, anno 1522.
+
+"Your Electoral Highness's most obedient servant,
+
+                                                  "Martin Luther."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+                  GERMAN PRINCES AT THE IMPERIAL DIET.
+                                (1547.)
+
+
+Luther was dead. Over his grave raged the Smalkaldic war. Charles V.
+made a triumphal progress through humiliated Germany.
+
+Only once did these two men confront each other--these great opponents
+whose spirits are still struggling in the German nation,--the
+Burgundian Hapsburger and the German peasant's son--the Emperor
+and the professor;--the one, who spoke German only to his horse; the
+other, who translated the Bible and formed the new German language of
+literature;--the one, the predecessor of the Jesuit protectors and the
+originator of the Hapsburger family politics; the other, the forerunner
+of Lessing the great German poet, historian, and philosopher.
+
+It was a moment in German history pregnant with fate, when the young
+Emperor, lord of half the world, spoke at Worms the disdainful
+words,--"That man shall not make me a heretic." For then began the
+struggle between his house and the spirit of the German nation. A
+struggle of three centuries; victory and defeat on both sides; its
+final issue not to be doubted.
+
+When the German princes and lords of the Empire, with the envoys from
+the free cities, rode to the Diet, they assembled to transact business
+with the two rulers of Germany. These two rulers were the Pope and the
+Emperor.
+
+The Pope ruled in the holy Roman Empire of the German nation, not only
+as chief bishop in his spiritual capacity, but equally as a political
+power. A third of Germany was under the rule of ecclesiastical princes,
+who had at least to be confirmed by the Pope. The greatest part of his
+income he drew from the Empire; his legates sat at the Imperial Diet,
+among the ecclesiastical and temporal Electors, and could even open it
+without the Emperor.
+
+When the Emperor would not confirm the Count Palatine Frederic the
+Victorious in the Electoral dignity, this temporal prince accepted the
+confirmation of the Pope. The Pope endeavoured to bring every difficult
+political negotiation before his court; indeed, he granted rights of
+custom, he annulled the Imperial ban, and ventured by his own power to
+exact tithes.
+
+The Emperor was still considered the nominal centre of the Empire, and
+the source of all power. All hastened, upon his accession, to obtain
+from him the confirmation of old freedoms and privileges, and he was
+the first judge and first general of the Empire, but could not raise a
+single thaler of money or a single soldier without the consent of the
+Diet. And what was of still greater importance, he could only obtain
+taxes and soldiers from among the vassals, by the consent of their
+feudal lords. Hesitatingly and sparingly did the Diet grant subsidies,
+and so defective was the payment that the grant became a mere farce.
+
+Within the Empire, Electors, princes, nobles, and Imperial cities ruled
+their territories, with many gradations of sovereign rights. The
+greater princes were real sovereigns, their power only restricted by
+their states. Noble families, holding temporal principalities in
+heritable possession, strove incessantly to enlarge their power, to put
+down the smaller lords round them, and to limit the sovereign rights of
+the Emperor. In the fifteenth century they had reduced the Imperial
+power almost to a shadow. It was only by extending the power of his
+house that the Emperor Maximilian was able to maintain himself against
+them.
+
+We may easily perceive that there were two ways of remodelling this
+clumsy state edifice of the middle ages. In one case the power of the
+great princes might rise so high, that the temporal influence of the
+Pope and the supremacy of the Emperor would be overthrown; then Germany
+would be divided into a number of individual states, whose conflicts,
+wars, and destinies might for centuries throw the whole of central
+Europe into weakness and confusion, and which at last, in another state
+of development, might lead to new endeavours to restore unity to the
+Empire. It has been the fate of Germany up to the present time to
+follow this dangerous path.
+
+In the other case, the Emperor might have succeeded in adding to the
+old groundwork of his power, such real strength, that the opposition of
+all the ruling princes would be broken, and Germany gradually changed
+into a modern state, that would either enclose the individual
+governments in perfect unity, or at least concentrate all the highest
+powers of government in the hand of one ruler. To form such a state,
+the Hapsburgers of the sixteenth century, and with more wilful
+obstinacy those of the seventeenth, have striven to the injury of the
+German nation and themselves; yet in the year 1519, when Maximilian
+died, the prospect opened to an able prince was grand, though the power
+of his house was moderate.
+
+The time had arrived when a German Emperor might raise his power above
+the heads of all the princes, and with irresistible strength overthrow
+every opponent; for just at that time a new power arose in Germany,
+imperative in its demands, and capable of the greatest results,--public
+opinion. The Reform movement in the Church combined also within it the
+germ of great political reforms. Had an Emperor arisen who would have
+sympathized with the needs of the German spirit, who would have united
+himself with the Reformation, and known how to raise it for his own
+aims in an exalted spirit, he would have had it in his power to form
+out of the Empire a new state and a united German Church: it was the
+highest prize that ever was offered to an ambitious prince; and how
+favourable would have been his position! The nation was deeply roused
+against the hierarchy and Romish influence, and the Reformation began
+with a struggle against the highest of the ecclesiastical electors.
+Three Electorates, more than seventy Imperial dignities, comprising the
+largest third of the whole country of Germany, were in the hands of
+ecclesiastical lords, who would all have fallen had the Reformation
+been undertaken by the Emperor and people. The Emperor would have found
+in the movement, powers which would have made his Imperial army
+irresistible; the evangelical preachers could not in a moment have
+transformed awkward peasants into skilled soldiers; but they might have
+infused into the armies of the Emperor, much of the enthusiasm and
+reckless daring which the best among them made proof of in their own
+lives; besides which, comprehensive ideas of political reform sprang up
+in the circle of the Huttens and Sickingens; and a German Emperor might
+well have found in such ideas the means of reconciling the conflicting
+interests of peasants, citizens, and knights, at least sufficiently so
+to serve his own purposes. How could the German princes, disunited as
+they always were, have withstood an Emperor with such allies,
+strengthened by a well-established income, and leader of an army which
+for the first time since the Crusades would have been animated by a
+great idea? Good grounds would such an emperor have had to have
+respected old families: it would not have been necessary for him to
+take the Electoral crown from off their heads, but he might have
+reduced them to be dignitaries of one great united empire, in which the
+highest jurisdiction and the power of the army would have been vested
+in him alone: the want of such a man was for centuries the misfortune
+of Germany.
+
+It is difficult to do justice to the German princes of the sixteenth
+century; their position was unfavourable for the formation of their
+character and for the development of elevated political action. They
+were too great to be loyal vassals, but not powerful enough, with only
+moderate abilities, to conduct the affairs of the nation in a liberal
+spirit. They were for the most part pretentious _Junkers_; their
+selfishness appeared to foreigners rapacious, their manners rude, their
+greed insatiable.
+
+The private life of many of them was stained by the blackest crimes; a
+few of them were at heart pious; their religion was, we hope, a
+restraint in the hour of temptation, but it did not contribute to
+enlarge their political views. There was a patriarchal feeling among
+many of them. Such were Frederic the Wise and his next successor; such
+also was the Margrave Ernest of Baden, who used to have condemned
+criminals brought to him before their execution, that he might give
+them comfort from the Gospel, and beg for their forgiveness (as he felt
+obliged to fulfil his duty), and who offered them his hand at parting.
+Besides men of this kind there were others, overbearing, profligate,
+and wicked; such was Duke Ulrich of W�rtemberg, who stabbed Hans Hutten
+in the forest because he wished to obtain possession of his wife. But
+though at most of the courts consideration for wife and children
+compelled a certain degree of moderation, the ecclesiastical princes
+were not even under this restraint. They were in the worst repute, and
+the more athletic preferred the helmet and the hunting-spear to the
+vestments of the Church, which some of them wore very awkwardly. There
+were bishops and archbishops who hardly knew the ritual of their
+Church. Once when a Latin discourse was to be made, it appeared that
+the highest princes of the Church could not speak that language, and
+the Margrave of Brandenburg was obliged to do it.
+
+It was through princes like these that Charles, sovereign of Lower
+Burgundy and the Netherlands, King of Spain and Naples, Duke of Milan,
+and Lord of the new world on the other side of the ocean, became also
+Emperor of Germany. It is well known how long and actively the
+intrigues both for him and the King of France were pursued. There was
+no Electoral house to which money or promises were not proffered by
+both parties, and none which did not negotiate for its own advantage.
+At last Frederic the Wise decided the election, and dear has his
+family paid for this decision. When the young king was crowned at
+Aix-la-Chapelle, where, to the great delight of the assembled
+multitude, he caused his horse to prance joyously before them, and
+when, after the coronation, the heralds proclaimed that the Emperor
+would, by permission of his Holiness the Pope, take the title of "Roman
+Emperor Elect," there were absent from the festive train the Electors
+of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Princes of the two houses which from
+henceforth were to lead the German opposition against the house of
+Hapsburg.
+
+The fate of Germany was decided by the election of Charles V. He was
+not entirely a Burgundian, not always a Spaniard, not an Italian, and
+least of all a German. His position was too high, for him to make it
+the interest of his life to meet the requirements of any one of the
+many nations under his sway. The unfortunate part of his exalted
+position was, that he could only carry out a personal policy,
+subordinating sometimes one, sometimes another country to the course of
+his plans, the ultimate aim of which was the advantage of his own
+family. Had Charles been less able and less moderate, what was
+insupportable in these incongruities would have been felt as a
+grievance by all his states; but seldom has a prince maintained so
+long, a position in itself untenable. At last, however, the catastrophe
+arrived. After thirty years of fame and success, he broke down, and the
+misery of Germany became apparent.
+
+Although he had so little in common with the Germans, still he was not
+unpopular in the Empire. The people of Germany looked upon him as
+Luther himself did. The confiding attachment with which the Germans
+received the grandson of Maximilian was almost touching; his noble,
+reserved, and composed bearing had an imposing effect upon all. In the
+beginning the best was hoped of him, and later also, even the
+Protestants who had experienced his displeasure, rejoiced when he
+encountered the Pope or conquered the French King. Long did the German
+nation continue to feel itself exalted by the glory and splendour of
+his government. Charles did his best; he spared the prejudices of the
+Germans, indulged them more than any of his other people, and even when
+he sided with a party, he knew how to conciliate his opponents by his
+benevolent dignity. At last, however, the time came when his pride and
+pretensions rose so high that the intractable independence of the
+Protestant party became insupportable to him, and then his long
+concealed opposition broke forth into hate. Suddenly, a storm arose
+against him among the people. As in the first years of Luther, a sea of
+small literature again overflowed the country: they fought against him
+in prose and verse, and they depended more on the support of heaven
+than was wise. The successor of Duke George of Saxony, that most
+zealous opponent of the Reformation, the Protestant Maurice, united
+himself with the Emperor against his own family, and the Protestant
+party was defeated.
+
+Now the Emperor Charles had attained the height of his power; the
+battle of M�hlberg was won; the Smalkaldic league had fallen to pieces
+ingloriously. The Protestant princes and cities hastened to make their
+peace with that lord of half Europe, to whom in an evil hour they had
+been so eager to offer the dominion over them. Carrying away with him
+the captive Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, he marched
+from the Saale in triumphant procession to Augsburg, accompanied by his
+army of Spaniards, and Flemings, and German _Landsknechte_. There all
+the most powerful of Germany were gathered together at the Diet to
+obtain pardon or reward, to pay court to the most mighty sovereign that
+for centuries had ruled over Germany, to decide their own future and
+that of their Fatherland, and to seek pleasure and adventures. Amidst
+this crowd of sovereigns and dynasties, courtiers, swindlers, soldiers,
+and deputations of citizens, was one Bartholomew Sastrow, the son of a
+citizen of Greifswald. He was actively employed as agent of the Dukes
+of Pomerania, who were strongly compromised by their Protestant
+alliances, and preferred not to appear in person before the Emperor. In
+his biography (edited 1823) Sastrow has left some, lively descriptions
+of what he experienced after the battle of M�hlberg, during the
+triumphal march of the Emperor to Augsburg and the Diet. The historical
+value of his narrative is not insignificant. He made good observations
+in his subordinate position, and had connections enough to be enabled
+to form a true conception of the character of the great lords; and
+however insignificant some of his anecdotes may be, they help, on the
+whole, to show men and great events in a new light. The following is a
+faithful quotation from his words, but from the lengthiness of his
+narrative parts, only have been given.
+
+"The Pomeranian councillors desired me to remain in the Imperial camp,
+and to put myself under the protection of George von Wedell. This
+Pomeranian nobleman had stabbed his own cousin, and was in disgrace
+with Duke Barnim, but was now serving the Emperor with nine-and-twenty
+horse. Under my guidance he made himself so useful to the Pomeranian
+dukes, that Duke Barnim, at my earnest petition, restored him to
+favour, and reinstated him in his own property. Thus I remained with my
+steed at the Imperial court at Augsburg; how it fared with me on this
+march, and what I saw and heard, is here correctly recorded.
+
+"It is customary in war for comrades to steal each other's horses, and
+they remain unpunished; the process is as follows. If any one likes
+another's horse, he pays a cunning stable-boy six or seven thalers to
+procure it for him; then it is sent away for five or six weeks that it
+may be forgotten; the tail, mane, and other marks are changed, and it
+is brought back to the camp. This was done in the Imperial camp at
+Halle by a German nobleman, who commissioned a boy to steal a Spanish
+steed for him, and having kept him for a few weeks at his home,
+thinking the rumour of it had died away, he had him brought back to the
+camp. Now it happened that about eight or more squadrons of German
+horse, were stationed in a beautiful meadow delightfully situated on
+the Saale; but the Spaniards were encamped on the heights round the
+castle. The stolen steed towards evening was taken to the river to
+drink; a Spanish boy recognizing it said, 'This belongs to my master, I
+will be off with it.' The German boy would not let him go; three or
+four German horsemen came to his assistance, ten or twelve to the
+Spaniard, then twenty or thirty to the German; thus both sides
+continued increasing, and at last they began to fire. The Spaniards
+being on the heights, had greatly the advantage over the Germans who
+were encamped below them; and shooting through their tents, they killed
+some of the noblemen who were sitting at table: the Germans on their
+side did not spare the Spaniards. The Emperor sent out a Spanish lord
+who was riding a splendid charger, and was adorned with glittering
+golden chains, to pacify the German knights, and to quiet the uproar;
+upon which the Germans screamed out, 'Shoot down the Spanish
+miscreant!' When therefore he came on to the bridge to cross the Saale,
+his horse was killed under him, and he of the golden chains falling
+into the river, was drowned. Then the Emperor sent out to them King
+Ferdinand's son, the Archduke Maximilian, afterwards Roman Emperor,
+thinking that they would undoubtedly listen to him and be appeased; but
+they screamed all the same, 'Beat the Spanish miscreant!' whereupon one
+struck him on the right arm, and I saw how for some weeks after he
+carried his arm in a black sling. At last, the Emperor himself came
+out, and said, 'Dear Germans, I know you are not guilty; be satisfied;
+I will repair the damage you have suffered; and by my Imperial honour,
+tomorrow at daybreak I will have the Spaniards hung before your eyes.'
+Thus the uproar was quieted. The following day the Emperor caused an
+examination and valuation to be made of the damage done in both the
+German and Spanish camps; and as it appeared that only eighteen German
+squires and servants, together with seventeen horses, had been killed,
+whilst the Spaniards had lost seventy men, the Emperor sent word to the
+German knights that His Majesty would replace the value of their
+horses, and would not be disinclined to fulfil his promise of the day
+before, of hanging the Spaniards; but the Germans would themselves see
+now that the Spaniards had suffered fourfold, and that thus they had
+been sufficiently revenged; the Emperor therefore hoped, and had
+graciously decided, that the Germans should be satisfied and contented.
+
+"On the evening of the 18th of June, the two Electors, Maurice of
+Saxony, and Brandenburg, took the Landgrave Philip of Hesse between
+them to Halle. On the following day, about six o'clock in the evening,
+he, together with his chancellor who was kneeling beside him,
+prostrated himself in the great hall before the Emperor, in the
+presence of many lords, electors, princes, foreign potentates,
+ambassadors, counts, colonels, generals, and a large number of
+spectators, as many as the room could hold, and as many as could see
+through the window from without. But when the chancellor most humbly
+craved pardon, the Landgrave, who was a satirical gentleman, knelt, but
+laughed deridingly. Then the Emperor pointed his finger at him and said
+with an angry look, 'Truly I will teach you to laugh;' which indeed was
+afterwards done.
+
+"The Emperor proceeded from Halle to Naumburg, and remained there three
+days. When the Imperial army was assembled before Naumburg, and his
+Imperial Majesty was waiting before the gate, he wore a black velvet
+hat and a black mantle bordered with velvet two inches wide, but a
+shower of rain coming on, he sent into the city for a gray felt hat and
+cloak; meanwhile he turned his cloak, and holding his hat under it,
+exposed his bare head to the rain. Poor man! he who had tons of gold to
+spend, would rather expose his bare head to the wet than allow his
+cloak to be spoilt by the rain. The Spaniards always took the Landgrave
+a day's march before the Emperor; they were very disorderly and ill
+conducted, for they left their dead lying on the road which the Emperor
+had to pass, and behaved shamefully to men, women, and children.
+
+"On the 1st of July he arrived at Bamberg. The Emperor made his
+entrance with a great concourse of people about midday; he was mounted
+on a little horse. In the suburb there was a street turning off to the
+right, and in the corner house was lodged the imprisoned Elector of
+Saxony, so that on one side he could look out into the fields, and on
+the other into the city. He was standing above at the window, to watch
+the Imperial procession; and when the Emperor approached the corner, he
+bowed lowly before him: the Emperor kept his eyes fixed on him as long
+as he could see him, and laughed deridingly.
+
+"On the 3rd of July the Emperor fixed the 1st of September for the Diet
+to be held at Augsburg. The Spaniards carried away from the bishopric
+of Bamberg upwards of four hundred women, maidens, and maidservants to
+Nuremberg. From thence they sent them home again; the parents,
+husbands, and brothers had followed them to Nuremberg; fathers seeking
+their daughters, husbands their wives, and brothers their sisters, and
+there each one found his own again. Was not that a wicked nation? thus
+to act when war was over, in a friend's country, and in the presence of
+the Imperial Majesty, who nevertheless keeps very strict rule. Every
+evening where his tent was erected, he caused a gallows to be raised,
+and had them hung unsparingly; yet even that was of no avail.
+
+"When he left Nuremberg, the Duke of Leignitz, who usually passed his
+nights in drunken revelry, for once rose early and rode to the
+Emperor's lodging, where he arrived at six o'clock, but found that the
+Emperor had already been gone two hours. The duke was too much ashamed
+to follow; but sent two of his councillors to Augsburg, and returned to
+his own country, where he continued his disorderly life. Once when he
+was very tipsy he commanded the councillors, at the peril of their
+lives, to put him into a tower and feed him with bread and water; and
+if they disobeyed him, he would have their heads off. They took him to
+a tower wherein there were already prisoners; he was let down into the
+hole where they were, and the keeper received orders not to let him
+out, and to feed him with nothing but bread and water. When he had
+outslept his drunkenness he roused himself, and began to talk with the
+prisoners, and called to the gaoler to set him free. The man told him
+it was strictly forbidden; but he made it known to the councillors, who
+temporized till the third day. The duke meanwhile did not desist from
+ordering the gaoler to beg the councillors to give in and release him.
+Then they went to him in the prison, and heard him begging and
+entreating; but they told him what he had commanded them, on pain of
+having their heads cut off, and they knew that he would not trifle with
+them, and therefore dared not let him out. But as he promised by
+everything that was high and holy not to injure them, they released
+him.
+
+"He continued his mad wild life until he ruined his people and country
+and his own health. He died, leaving his wife, who was a Duchess of
+Mecklenburg, and their children in the greatest poverty. His widow
+complained to the city councils that she was in great need, and knew
+not what to do, nor how to bring up her sons according to their
+position; and begged that they would assist her. So the council of
+Stralsund sent her some thalers by a special messenger.
+
+"At the end of July, his Imperial Majesty arrived with the whole army
+at Augsburg; he had left the Landgrave with a troop of Spaniards at
+Donauw�rth, but had brought the captive Elector along with him to
+Augsburg, and had quartered him in the house of Welser, in the wine
+market; it was separated from the Emperor's palace by two houses and a
+little street, and was close to our inn. The Emperor had a way made
+through the two houses, and a bridge made over the little street, so
+that he could pass from his rooms into those of the Elector. The latter
+kept house himself, and had his chancellor Minkwitz and his own
+attendants with him, so that no Spaniards need enter either his
+sitting, or his sleeping rooms. The Duke of Alva and other great lords
+of the Imperial court had free access to and held friendly intercourse
+with him, and enlivened him by their society. In the courtyard of the
+Elector's dwelling, which was built and furnished in princely style,
+there was a circus, where they threw the spear; he was also allowed to
+ride to any of the places of amusement and ornamental gardens, of which
+there were many at Augsburg; and because from his youth he had always
+taken delight in fencing, and had been an adept at it when younger and
+more active, fencing-schools were erected for his pleasure; but the
+Spanish soldiers guarded him. Besides this, he was allowed to read
+books and so forth up to the end of the Diet, when he refused to accept
+the interim. But with the Landgrave at Donauw�rth it did not fare so
+well; the Spaniards were all day long in his rooms. When he was at his
+window looking into the square, one or two Spaniards were always beside
+him, stretching out their necks as far as his. Armed Spaniards lay all
+night in his room, and when the watch was changed, and the new one came
+in with drums and fifes, those who had kept guard half the night
+uncovered the bed and said, 'See there, we deliver him to you;
+henceforth you must guard him.'
+
+"Methinks that this was indeed keeping the promise made at Halle:
+'Truly I will teach you to laugh.' His Imperial Majesty as soon as he
+arrived at Augsburg, caused a gallows to be erected in the middle of
+the city close to the Town Hall, in order to create terror, and near it
+also a platform on which the bowstring was administered; and directly
+opposite another, about the height of a middle-sized man, whereon
+people were broken on the wheel, beheaded, strangled, quartered, and
+the like.
+
+"It was truly a warlike Diet, for there were already in the garrison
+ten companies of _Landsknechte_, besides the Spanish and German troops
+which the Emperor brought with him to Augsburg, who were encamped in
+the country round the city. But it was also a notable and stately Diet,
+for the Emperor and King were there, all the Electors in person, with
+large bodies of followers; the Elector of Brandenburg with his wife,
+the Cardinal of Trent, Duke Heinrich of Brunswick with his two sons
+Carl Victor and Philip, Margrave Albrecht of Culmbach, Duke Wolfgang,
+Palatine of the Rhine, Duke Augustus of Saxony, Duke Albrecht of
+Bavaria, &c., Frau Maria, the Emperor's sister, and the daughter of his
+sister, the widow of Lorraine; the wives of the Margrave and of the
+Bavarian Duke; item; ambassadors of foreign potentates; besides these
+many bishops and abbots, numberless counts, barons, citizens of the
+Imperial cities, illustrious envoys, and excellent men. I must not
+forget Michael the Jew, who considered himself a great man, and rode
+through the streets on a well-caparisoned horse, splendidly attired,
+his neck covered with gold chains. He was always surrounded by ten or
+twelve of his servants, all Jews, accoutred as troopers. He was a
+distinguished-looking man, and it is said that his true father was a
+Count von Rheinfelden. The hereditary Marshal of Pappenheim, an old
+gentleman who could not see very distinctly, not only took off his hat,
+but also bent his knee to him, as he would to one greater than himself.
+When he found afterwards that it was Michael, he repented that he had
+shown such honour to a Jew, and exclaimed, 'May God confound thee, thou
+old rogue of a Jew.'
+
+"Splendid banquets were held at the Diet, and there were dances almost
+every evening, both foreign and German. King Ferdinand especially was
+seldom without guests; they were always treated magnificently, with all
+kinds of pastimes and splendid dances. He had exceedingly fine music,
+not only instrumental, but also singing. Besides other diversions, he
+had always behind him a witty fool, whose powers he knew how to bring
+out, and to meet his lively sallies with a retort, his tongue was never
+still. I saw one evening at his house a dance, in which a Spanish
+gentleman, attired in a long closed robe, reaching to the ground, so
+that one could not see his feet, led out a young lady, and danced with
+her an _Algarde_ or _Passionesa_ (as they call it, I know nothing about
+it); he sprang about so wonderfully, and she likewise, and they went so
+well together, that it was a pleasure to see them. His brother, the
+Emperor of Rome, on the contrary, gave no banquets, and did not even
+entertain his own attendants; when they accompanied him from the church
+to the chamber in which he dined, giving each of them his hand, he
+dismissed them, and placed himself alone at table. Neither did he talk;
+only once when he came out of the church into his chamber, he looked
+round, and not seeing Carlowitz,[46] he said to Duke Maurice, '_Ubi est
+noster Carlovitius?_' and when the latter answered, 'Most Gracious
+Emperor, he is somewhat unwell,' he called out to his doctor in
+Flemish, 'Vesali, you must go to Carlowitz; he is said to be somewhat
+unwell; see if you cannot restore him.' I have often seen the Emperor
+dine during the Diet, but he never invited his brother, King Ferdinand,
+to dine with him. The dinner was brought up by the young princes and
+counts, and there were always four courses, each consisting of six
+dishes, which were placed on the table before him, and the covers
+removed one by one; he shook his head at those which he did not desire,
+nodded when he wished to partake of one, and drew the dish towards him.
+The fine pies, game, and well-dressed dainties were sent away, and he
+would keep a roast pig, and calf's head, and suchlike: he did not allow
+it to be cut for him, nor did he often himself use the knife, except to
+cut many small pieces of bread as large as he could put into his mouth
+with each bit of meat. He then loosened with his knife, the corner
+which he liked best of the dish he wished to eat; he broke it with his
+fingers, held the dish under his chin, and ate in this primitive manner
+so neatly and cleanly that it was a pleasure to see him. When he wished
+to drink--and he only drank thrice during his meal--he nodded to his
+physicians, who were standing before the table; they went forthwith to
+the treasury, where were kept two silver bottles and a crystal cup
+which held about a pint and a half, and filled the glass out of the two
+bottles; this he drank clean off, so that not a drop remained therein,
+and he had to take breath two or three times before he withdrew it from
+his mouth. He never spoke whilst at table, and though there were fools
+standing behind him, who cut all kinds of jokes, he did not heed them;
+at the utmost he twisted his mouth into a half-smile if they said
+something very amusing. He did not care that many should stand round to
+see an Emperor eating. He had a splendid choir, as well as instrumental
+music, which performed in the churches but never in his own rooms. The
+dinner did not last an hour; then everything was removed, and seats and
+tables put away, so that nothing remained but the four walls, hung on
+all sides with costly tapestry. When grace had been said before him,
+they handed him a little quill for a toothpick; then he washed himself
+and placed himself in a corner of the chamber at the window, and any
+one might come, and either present a written petition or speak
+themselves, and he told them on the spot where they might obtain an
+answer.
+
+"There were fine doings also amongst the princes and lords, both
+spiritual and temporal. I was once looking on when the Margrave
+Albrecht was drinking and playing at the _Peilketafel_,[47] with other
+young princes and young bishops who were not born princes; they did not
+give each other their titles, but called mockingly, 'Shoot away,
+priest; what does it matter? you will never hit the mark;' and the
+bishop replied after an equally vulgar fashion. Young princes lay upon
+the ground with princesses and countesses, for they did not sit upon
+benches or seats, but costly carpets were spread about the rooms,
+whereon they could sit and stretch themselves comfortably. They
+squandered upon extravagant banqueting, not only what was in their
+exchequers and what they had brought to the Diet, which amounted to
+many thousand thalers, but they were obliged, with great difficulty and
+vexation and irreparable loss, to borrow enough to enable them to leave
+Augsburg with becoming style. The subjects of certain princes,
+particularly of the Duke of Bavaria, whose wife was daughter of the
+King of Rome, collected some thousand gulden only for play, which they
+made a present of to their lords, who lost it all.
+
+"I often addressed petitions to the Bishop of Arras, Doctor Marquardt,
+and other councillors; but as I did not of my own accord find out what
+was usual to be done to gain favour in courts and great cities and with
+lords, Doctor John Marquardt cleverly gave me to understand that it
+would give him particular pleasure to possess a pretty little horse,
+whereon he might ride to the council, as was customary at the Imperial
+court; I wrote therefore to Pomerania, and they sent me a fine horse,
+with an order to have suitable riding gear made for it, and then to
+present it to the doctor, together with three large Portuguese pieces
+of gold, which the doctor gladly accepted without any hesitation. A
+great treasure of silver, gold, money, and money's worth of costly and
+rare goods, was presented to Herr von Granvella, whereby the Electors,
+princes, and cities thought to obtain his favour with his Imperial
+Majesty. He carried it on large waggons and strong mules along with him
+on his return home, and when he was asked what was on the waggons and
+mules, he answered, '_Peccata Germani�_.'
+
+"At the earnest entreaties and supplications of the Electors of Saxony
+and Brandenburg, the Emperor fixed a day in December to decide the
+matter concerning the Landgrave of Hesse. Now the Elector Duke Maurice
+was intriguing with the Duchess of Bavaria, and on the Sunday morning
+before the Monday on which the long-desired decision was to be given,
+he placed himself in a sledge, for it had frozen hard, and there was
+snow on the roads. Carlowitz came running to him from the Chancellery,
+and said, 'Whither will your Electoral Grace drive?' The Elector
+answered: 'I drive to Munich.' I was standing outside the gate, so that
+I and others who were near could hear all that passed. Carlowitz then
+said: 'Has your Electoral Grace forgotten that to-morrow his Imperial
+Majesty's decision will be given in the business so important to your
+Electoral Grace and to the Elector of Brandenburg?' The Elector
+replied: 'I will drive to Munich.' Then Carlowitz answered: 'You owe it
+to me that you have become an Elector of note, but you have conducted
+yourself so frivolously at this Diet, that you have brought on yourself
+the contempt of the distinguished persons of all nations, and of their
+Imperial and Royal Majesties.' As he was saying this, Duke Maurice
+touched his horses with the whip, and drove out of the gate. Carlowitz
+called out to him loudly: 'Go your way in the devil's name, and may God
+confound you in your driving and all else.' When the Elector returned
+from Munich, Carlowitz was on the point of starting for Leipzig, as he
+said the new year's fair was at hand, and he must needs be there, or he
+would lose some thousand thalers; so the Elector, wishing to retain
+him, was obliged to present him with that amount. Neither of the
+Electors appeared on the appointed day before his Imperial Majesty, nor
+was a decision come to on the matter of the imprisoned Landgrave. For
+as the drive to Munich, and the conversation betwixt Duke Maurice and
+Carlowitz, which had been held in open day in the streets, and heard by
+many, was not concealed from his Imperial Majesty, he considered the
+many entreaties of this prince more as mockery than earnest, and no
+further day was fixed upon to hear the cause.
+
+"The German Landsknechte of the garrison at Augsburg had not been paid
+for some months, and it was reported that the fine upon the Landgrave
+and the cities, out of which they were to have been paid, had been
+collected, but that the Duke of Alva had lost it at play with the
+imprisoned Landgrave, so they were kept long without their pay: then
+some of them fell upon the ensigns' quarters, seized flags, and marched
+thus with colours flying in battle order to the wine market. When the
+standard bearers were marching along in good order, an arrogant
+Spaniard, desirous of gaining honour, of deserving the favour of his
+Imperial Majesty, and of immortalizing his name, sprang upon the
+ensign, and tore the flag out of his hands. The ensign was followed by
+three men-at-arms, one of them struck this wretch in two like a carrot,
+according to the saying: 'He who seeks danger perishes therein.' When
+the Landsknechte reached the wine market there was a great running to
+and fro of the Spanish soldiers, who beset all the streets leading to
+the wine market, and carried off the imprisoned Elector to the
+Emperor's palace, for they feared he might be taken away: all the
+inhabitants, especially merchants and tradesmen, who had collected
+costly goods, silk stuffs, silver and gold, pearls and precious stones
+on the occasion of the Diet, were greatly afraid lest the city should
+be plundered, which might well have happened had the Landsknechte
+sought to pay themselves. There arose therefore wild cries, uproar, and
+running about; every one armed himself in earnest, citizens and
+strangers kept to their houses and apartments arquebuse in hand and
+their guns ready to fire, and every one did what he could for the
+protection of his own, so that the Diet might indeed have become an
+armed one.
+
+"But the Emperor sent to the Landsknechte to inquire what they wanted,
+and they, holding their guns in the left hand, and in the right,
+burning matches close to the touchhole, answered, 'Either money or
+blood?' Then the Emperor sent them word that they were to rest
+satisfied, as they should certainly be paid the next day. But they
+would not withdraw without the assurance that they would not be
+punished for having assembled in front of the Emperor's lodging. This
+the Emperor promised, so they withdrew, were paid the next day, and
+dismissed. But what happened? Some spies were sent out to mingle
+unperceived and travel for two or three days with the leaders of the
+Landsknechte, to find out whether they spoke ill or mockingly of his
+Imperial Majesty; if so, they were to call assistance and bring the men
+back prisoners to Augsburg. The second or third evening the
+Landsknechte had a jovial bout at an inn, for they had money in their
+pockets, and thought themselves as safe as if they were in the land of
+Prester John, and had no idea that there were traitors sitting with
+them: then they spoke of the Emperor in this fashion: 'Yes indeed! one
+ought to allow this Charles of Ghent to take soldiers and not to pay
+them! But we would have taught him better, and have paid him for it;
+may God confound him.' After these words they were seized, taken back
+to Augsburg, and hanged at Berlach on the gallows, and a tiny little
+flag stuck on the breast of each."--So far Sastrow.
+
+By his account of the revolt of the German Landsknechte it may be seen
+how insecure was then the highest earthly power. A few years later the
+new Elector, Maurice of Saxony, was able in a moment by a sudden
+expedition to overpower the experienced master of foreign politics.
+Neither the Emperor nor any other prince maintained a large standing
+army; even the Imperial power stood on a rotten foundation, and the
+Emperor Charles was in a difficult position with respect to the German
+soldiery. However easy was the conscience of the Landsknechte, and
+however ready they were to sell themselves for money, they were yet not
+entirely without political tendencies. Most of them were well disposed
+towards the Protestants, and even those who had helped to overthrow
+their comrades of the Saxon service at the battle of M�hlberg,
+discovered with vexation after the combat, that they had given a deadly
+blow to the Protestant cause. The memory of Luther was dear to them;
+but far deeper lay their hatred for the Spanish soldiers of Charles,
+that faithful invincible infantry who had bled for their king on the
+battle-fields of half Europe. The Emperor had himself excited the civil
+war in Germany; a few years later, the German soldiers marched
+defiantly against his anointed head. Most of the German princes, even
+the enemies of the Ernestine and Hesse, felt like these soldiers. The
+great Emperor had made an irreparable rent in the loose tissue of the
+German empire; for this had been no exercise of Imperial power, as once
+against the mad W�rtemberger; but it was a civil war in its broadest
+acceptation; it was a personal struggle of the Hapsburger against the
+German princes. Henceforth the German sovereigns knew what they had to
+expect from their Emperor: the last respect for order and duty to the
+Empire vanished, and each had cause to look after his own interests.
+The only safety against the fearful power of the Hapsburger was to be
+found in alliance with foreign sovereigns. More bold became the
+intercourse with France, and whoever opposed the Emperor looked there
+for help. Maurice of Saxony and Albrecht of Brandenburg rose against
+the Emperor in alliance with France. The German general, Sch�rtlin, who
+was in the French pay, assisted in depriving Germany of Metz, Toul, and
+Verdun. The younger princes of Germany went to the courts of the
+Valois, the Guises, and the Bourbon, to acquire refinement and obtain
+money and rank in the army; and this was done not only by the
+Protestant princes, but also by the Roman Catholics and even
+ecclesiastical Electors. The overpowering influence of France on the
+fate of the Fatherland dates not from the time of Richelieu, but from
+the wars of Charles V. The real disruption of the German empire dated
+from the battle of M�hlberg and the Diet of Augsburg; and however
+objectionable the alliance of these German princes with a foreign power
+may appear to us, it must not be forgotten, that it was owing to the
+un-German policy of the Imperial house. The destroyer of German
+self-dependence, the great Emperor, met with his punishment almost
+immediately. A very different man from the scrupulous and irresolute
+John Frederic, had received the electoral crown from Charles; his own
+disciple in self-seeking policy, with an overbearing character, without
+consideration, and secret in his resolves, like the Emperor himself. So
+Charles reaped what he had sown: the Landsknechte of Maurice drove him
+even to the last gorges of the Alps. The naked egotism of the Wettiner
+triumphed over the reckless policy of the great Hapsburger. What the
+lord of half Europe had striven for all his life, slipped out of his
+hands. Germany was not to be governed in his way; he had not been able
+to guide the great movement of the German mind, nor yet could he
+entirely destroy it. He had not succeeded in making the German princes
+serviceable to his house, nor had he been able to destroy their power.
+The far-seeing cautious player threw up his game, and quietly, as was
+his wont, laid down the cards. He himself, with a heavy heart, broke in
+two the power of his house.
+
+This did not render the political position of Germany more hopeful. The
+life of Maurice also passed away like a meteor, and his wild associate
+Albrecht of Brandenburg died an early and miserable death.
+
+Then followed the feuds of Grumbach and Cologne, the disputes of
+J�lich, and the disorders of Bohemia; one quarrel more contemptible
+than the other, and the leaders of both parties equally incapable. The
+end was the Thirty years' war.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                           A BURGHER FAMILY.
+                              (1488-1542.)
+
+
+Our narrative descends from the highest sphere of German life to the
+lower circles, in the individual families of which the characteristic
+life of the time may be traced. A series of examples shall lead us from
+the hardships of the peasant to the life of the privileged classes.
+
+From all times the peasantry have been the great source, from which
+fresh family vigour has ascended into the guilds of the cities and the
+closets of the learned. Therefore the basis of the prosperity of a
+people lies in the simple occupations of the peasant, in that human
+labour in which mind and body, work and rest, joy and sorrow, are
+regulated by Nature herself; whenever such labour is repressed,
+limited, and fettered, the whole nation becomes diseased. The
+destruction of the free peasant has more than once undermined the
+political existence of states, as for example in Poland; and indeed it
+caused the deadly weakness of the great Roman empire and the decay of
+the ancient world. The more abundantly and freely fresh vigour ascends
+from the lower strata into the higher circles, the more powerful and
+energetic will be the political life of the nation. And again, the less
+declining families are prevented, by artificial supports, from falling
+into the great mass of the people, the more rapid and vigorous will be
+the ascent of those who are struggling upwards.
+
+It was by favouring in a remarkable degree the rise of families out of
+this great source of national vigour, that the Reformation revived the
+youth of the nation. The abolition of enforced celibacy was one of the
+greatest steps towards social progress; it secures still the ascendency
+of the Protestant over the Roman Catholic districts. Up to the time of
+Luther, the greatest portion of the German popular strength which arose
+from the cottage of the labourer, was destined to wither beneath the
+consecrating oil. It is true the marriage of priests had never entirely
+ceased during the middle ages. There was even a cardinal who was
+regularly married; his wife established herself with him, in spite of
+the Pope and College of Cardinals, and was able, when weeping by the
+side of the corpse, to relate to the sympathizing Romans the astounding
+fact that her husband had been always true to her. And in Germany, the
+housekeepers of the priests, the _Papemeiers_ of Reineke Fuchs, formed
+a numerous and not unpretending class. But the country priests were
+obliged to buy tolerance for such unions from the bishop and _curie_.
+But however the higher ecclesiastical authorities may have favoured
+such a system, it was considered as immoral by conscientious pastors,
+and some even had scruples as to the propriety of their celebrating the
+mass. But the people looked with hatred and scorn on these profligate
+unions, and one of the greatest evils was, that the children remained
+as long as they lived under the curse of their birth; hardly any branch
+of trade was open to them; even the guilds of artisans would not
+receive them. They became either working men or vagrants. Yet such
+lasting unions of the Roman Catholic priests were generally, in the
+time of Luther, a benefit to their parishes, for we see in hundreds of
+pamphlets how recklessly the roving sensuality of the priests destroyed
+the family life of their parishes. With the Protestants, on the
+contrary, the ecclesiastical order became the medium by which the
+countryman rose to a higher sphere of activity. By his village life and
+little farm, the pastor became closely united with the peasantry, and
+was at the same time the preserver of the highest education of those
+centuries. So important has been the influence of the Protestant clergy
+on the intellectual development of Germany, that the ancestors, even to
+the third and fourth generation, of most of the great poets, artists,
+and learned men, and the intellectual members of the German
+bureaucracy, lived in a Protestant parsonage.
+
+What follows will portray the life of a family which at the end of the
+fifteenth century migrated from the village to the city, and in the
+third generation became the ruling family in a great commercial town.
+It may be seen from this narrative, that though family life was not
+then deficient in hearty and naive cheerfulness, yet the conception of
+life and duty was rough, and the amount of benevolence small, though
+family feeling was strong.
+
+United with violence and robbery, we find the commencement of a very
+modern system of police; the first prosecutions on account of offences
+of the press.
+
+We are to a certain extent aware that three hundred years ago, the life
+of individuals was of less value than now; but we shall yet learn with
+astonishment from the old narrative, how frequently deeds of violence
+and blood disturbed the peace of households. We find that in a quiet
+burgher family the grandfather was the victim of premeditated murder;
+the father killed another in self-defence, and the son was attacked on
+the public road by highwaymen, one of whom he killed, but was mortally
+wounded by the other. Lastly, it will interest many to observe how the
+great theologian who then divided Christendom into two camps, exercised
+an influence as family counsellor even on the shores of the Baltic, and
+how by his word he brought the souls of strangers to obedience and
+reverence.
+
+The following communications are again taken from the comprehensive
+autobiography of Bartholom�us Sastrow, Burgomaster of Stralsund. His
+own life was unusually varied and rich in experiences. He was sent,
+when a young man, with his elder brother to the Imperial Court of
+Justice at Spire, to manage his father's lawsuit and to seek a
+livelihood for himself. He was first in the service of lawyers, then of
+one of the commanders of the Order of St. John, and afterwards found
+his way to Italy, in order to wrest from the hands of the Romish
+ecclesiastics the heritage of his elder brother, who had been crowned
+with laurels and ennobled by the Emperor as an improvisatore in Latin
+poetry, and who afterwards, on account of an unfortunate love affair,
+had gone with a broken heart to Italy and died in the service of a
+cardinal.
+
+The younger brother returned home from Italy in the midst of the
+confusion of the Smalkaldic war, entered into the service of the
+Pomeranian dukes, who sent him as political agent to the Imperial camp,
+and solicitor to the supreme court of judicature of the Diet of
+Augsburg. He then settled himself in Greifswald, and gained, as an
+expert notary, practice and wealth in Pomerania, removed to Stralsund,
+became Burgomaster there, and died at an advanced age in great repute
+as a skilful, cunning, hot-headed, and probably often hard and partial
+man. Thus he begins his narrative:--
+
+"About the year 1488, my father, the son of Hans Sastrow, was born at
+Ranzin at the sign of the Kruge, which lies near the churchyard towards
+Anklam, and belongs to the _Junker_ Osten zu Quilow. Now this Hans
+Sastrow by far surpassed the _Junker_ Horne, who also dwelt at Ranzin,
+in wealth, comeliness, strength, and understanding, so that even before
+his marriage he could compete with them in the extent of their land.
+Whereat the Hornes were sore vexed, and endeavoured to the utmost to
+work him shame, injury, and damage, and even to endanger his health and
+life. When he found that the enmity of the Hornes daily increased, he
+resolved to take himself and his family out of danger; and about the
+year 1487, he, settling his affairs in a friendly manner with his
+Junker, the old Hans Osten zu Quilow obtained the right of citizen at
+Greifswald, and there bought the corner house of Fleischhauerstrasse,
+opposite to Herr Brand Hartmann, and gradually conveyed his property
+from Ranzin to this new house. So that a year before my father's birth,
+he gave up his vassalage to the Ostens, and entered the burgher class.
+
+"See now what happened! Mark well this atrocious murderous deed! In the
+year 1494 there was a christening feast at Gribow, which lies not far
+from Ranzin, to the right in going from Greifswald, and there one of
+the Hornes had a property. To this same christening feast my
+grandfather, Hans Sastrow, being invited as nearest relation, led by
+the hand his little son, my father, then about seven years old, along
+the road passing the church.
+
+"The Hornes of Ranzin did not wish to lose this opportunity of giving
+him a parting valediction; and of putting in action what they had
+planned in their hearts for many years. So they rode to Gribow as if
+they wished to visit their cousin there; and in order to spy out the
+best opportunity, went to the christening feast, and placed themselves
+at the table where my grandfather sat, for they had fallen so low that
+they did not despise peasant fare and society. When the Hornes, late in
+the afternoon, were very drunk, they all got up and staggered to the
+stables. They fancied themselves alone; but one of my grandfather's
+relations standing in the corner of the stable, heard all that they
+were proposing to do: they were to hasten to their horses so soon as
+they should perceive that my grandfather was about to depart, to waylay
+him and to beat him and his little son to death.
+
+"The man came to my grandfather and told him what he had heard in the
+stable, and counselled him to start and go home while it was yet day.
+This my grandfather agreed to; he got up, took his little son, my
+father, by the hand, and proceeded towards Ranzin. But when he came to
+the coppice on the moor, which was overgrown with bushes and brambles,
+and about half way between Ranzin and Gribow, the murderous villains
+intercepted his path, trampled him down under their horses' hoofs, and
+wounded him so badly that they thought he was dead. They were however
+not satisfied therewith, but dragged him to a great stone, which even
+now lies on the moor, chopped off his right hand, and so left him for
+dead. But the boy, my father, had in the mean while crept along the
+moor and hidden himself in some bushes on a grass hill, so that they
+could not come near him with their horses, nor find him in the bushes,
+as it began to be dark.
+
+"The other peasants had ridden after the Hornes, to see what they had
+done: they found the wounded man thus mangled, and fetched the boy from
+the moor: one of these ran to Ranzin and brought quickly a cart and
+horses, on which they placed the wounded man, who showed no signs of
+life, except that on their arrival at Ranzin he gave a last gasp and
+expired.
+
+"The friends of the orphan boy, my father, sold the new house and
+turned everything into money, so that they amassed altogether about two
+thousand gulden. Few of the nobles at that period allowed their
+subjects to possess so much. These friends did their best by the boy,
+had him taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and sent him to
+Antwerp, and afterwards to Amsterdam, that he might be fitted to become
+a merchant. When, having attained a right age, he returned home and
+took possession of his property, he bought at the corner of the high
+street and Hundstrasse, directly opposite to the church of St.
+Nicholas, two houses and two shops. One of the former he turned into a
+dwelling-house, the other into a brewhouse, and one of the shops into a
+gateway, whereon he expended much cost and labour. Now as people were
+well pleased with his comely person, and he had good hopes of having a
+sufficient maintenance, my mother's guardian and nearest relations
+promised her to him in marriage.
+
+"My mother was the daughter of Bartholom�us Smiterlow, the brother of
+the Herr B�rgermeister Nicholaus Smiterlow; she was a truly pretty
+woman, small and delicately formed, amiable and lively, free from
+pride, neat and domestic, and to the end of her life devout and
+God-fearing. In the year 1514 my parents were married, and in 1515 the
+good God gave them a son, whom they called after my paternal
+grandfather Johannes. In 1517 was born my sister Anne, the relict of
+Peter Frubos, Burgomaster of Greifswald. In 1520 I came into the world,
+and was named after my maternal grandfather, Bartholom�us.
+
+"One of my five younger sisters, Catherine, was an excellent, amiable,
+lovely, faithful, and pious maiden. When my brother Johannes came home
+from Wittenberg, where he was a student, she bade him tell her how one
+could say in Latin 'That is truly a beautiful maiden;' he said
+'_Profecto formosa puella._' She asked further how could one say
+'rather so:' he replied, '_sic satis_.' Some time after, three
+students, sons of gentlemen, came from Wittenberg to see the town; they
+had been recommended by Christian Smiterlow to the hospitality of his
+father, the burgomaster Herr Nicolaus Smiterlow, who was desirous to
+entertain them well, and to have good society for them. As he had three
+grown-up daughters, my sister Catherine was invited, besides other
+guests. The students exchanged all kinds of jokes with the maidens, and
+also said to one another in Latin what it would not have been seemly to
+say before maidens in German, as young fellows are wont to do. At last
+one said to the other '_Profecto formosa puella_;' whereupon my sister
+answered '_sic satis_;' then were they much afraid, fancying that she
+had also understood their former amatory talk. In the year 1544 she
+made a most unfortunate marriage with Christoph Meier, a coarse man,
+who wasted, idled away, and dissipated all that he had, even what he
+had received with my sister.
+
+"My mother accustomed her daughters from their youth up, to suitable
+household work. Once when my sister Gertrude, who was about five years
+old, was sitting spinning at her distaff--for spinning-wheels were not
+then in use--my brother Johannes told her that his Imperial Majesty had
+summoned a Diet, where the Emperor, Kings, Electors, princes, counts,
+and great lords would be assembled: she inquired what they would do
+there, and he answered, 'That they would determine and decree what was
+to be done in the world.' Then the little maiden at the distaff gave a
+deep sigh, and said dolefully: 'Oh good God! if they would only decree
+that such little children should not spin.' This sister, together with
+my mother and two other sisters, Magdalen and Catherine, died in peace
+in the year '49, when the plague was raging: my mother went first, and
+as my sisters were weeping bitterly, she said to them when dying: 'Why
+do you weep? pray rather that God would in his mercy shorten my pain.'
+Some days after, my youngest sister Gertrude died: although my eldest
+unmarried sister Magdalen was herself nigh unto death, she rose from
+her bed, and laid out not only Gertrude's shroud and winding-sheet, but
+her own also, and desired that when Gertrude was buried, the grave
+should be left open, being only lightly covered with earth, that she
+might be laid next to her; she then returned to her bed, and lived till
+the next day after Gertrude was buried: so she died, the tallest and
+strongest of all my sisters, an excellent, clever, and industrious
+housekeeper. This was written to me by my sister Catherine two days
+before her own death, who added, that it was even so with herself, that
+she was about to follow her mother and sisters, and that she did yearn
+for it, and she did admonish me not to grieve thereat.
+
+"Now my parents when they were first married were comfortably
+established; their buildings were finished, they were prosperous, and
+possessed plenty of feathers, wool, honey, butter, and corn; they had
+their stately mill and brewery; when suddenly all this happiness
+changed into sorrow and misfortune: for in the same year 1523, George
+Hartmann, the son-in-law of Doctor Stoientin,[48] bought of my father a
+quarter of butter, and they came to angry words thereupon. Hartmann,
+who was going to carry a sword to Herr Peter Korchschwantz, went on his
+way to complain to his mother-in-law: she, who was haughty and very
+rich, had married a doctor, councillor to the prince, and looked down
+upon smaller people; she put an axe into his hand with these words:
+'See, I give you a trifle, go to the market and buy yourself a heart.'
+He then met my father, who was without arms, and had not even his
+bread-knife with him, as he was going to have a pot of honey weighed at
+the weighing-place in the streets where the locksmiths lived. Hartmann,
+armed with sword and axe, fell upon him; my father springing into the
+house of one of the smiths, seized a spit; the boys tore it away from
+him, and also prevented him from using the ladder which was standing
+near the gallery; but he tore from the wall a hunting-spear, and
+running out into the street with it, called out: 'Where is he who wants
+to take my life?' thereupon Hartmann sprang out of the adjoining
+smith's house, having added to his former weapons a hammer from the
+anvil, which he threw at my father, and though he parried the blow with
+the spear, yet the hammer glided along the spear and hit him on the
+breast, so that he spit blood for some days. Immediately after,
+Hartmann struck him with the axe on the shoulder; having now hit him
+with both hammer and axe, and fancying he had the best of it, he
+unsheathed his sword, and rushing at my father, ran on the spear, which
+went into his body up to the handle, so that he fell. This is the true
+account of this lamentable story; I know well that the adversaries
+maintain that my father stabbed Hartmann when he was hiding himself
+behind the stove in the smith's room, but it is a mere fable.
+
+"My father hastened straight to the monastery of the Black Monks, with
+whom he was acquainted, and they took him into the church, up under the
+vaulted roof. Doctor Stoientin with many assistants and servants
+searched every corner of the monastery, and came also into the church.
+My father, thinking they saw him, was on the point of speaking out and
+entreating that they would spare him, as he was innocent and had only
+acted in self-defence; but the merciful God prevented him from
+speaking, and shut the eyes of his adversaries so that they could not
+see him.
+
+"In the night the monks let him down over the wall, so that he
+could walk along the dyke to the village of Neukirchen. There my
+step-grandfather arranged that my father should go to Stralsund, in a
+cart that he had ordered from Leitz, concealed among some sacks of
+barley and fodder. Stoientin met the peasant in the night, and asked
+him where he was going. 'To Stralsund,' he said. He kicked at the sacks
+and inquired what load he was carrying. The other replied: 'Barley and
+fodder.' He then asked whether the peasant had not seen some one riding
+or running; the latter answered: 'He had seen one riding hastily
+towards the village of Horst, who had appeared to him like Sastrow from
+Greifswald; and he had been astonished at his riding so hastily in the
+night.' So Doctor Stoientin left the peasant and rode to Horst; but my
+father arrived at Stralsund and obtained a safe conduct from the
+councillor there.
+
+"But my father could not trust to this, as the deceased had himself
+been under the safe conduct of my gracious sovereign Duke George; and
+Dr. Stoientin, the councillor of his princely grace, made good avail of
+it against my father; besides this, the adversaries were rich, proud,
+and powerful. So he was obliged to wander about in Denmark, going also
+to L�beck, Hamburg, and elsewhere, till he conciliated the reigning
+prince by a considerable sum, which he was obliged to pay in ready
+money.
+
+"And although later, after repeated endeavours, and at the cost of much
+labour and exertion on the part of my step-grandfather, my father
+became reconciled with the offended party, upon the payment of
+blood-money to the amount of one thousand marks, he could not remain
+unmolested at Greifswald, on account of these adversaries residing
+there. But it may be seen how little this blood-money prospered with
+the son and heirs of the deceased, for evil and misfortune to person,
+land, and property pursued both wife and children.
+
+"Thus my mother was left in her youth without a husband, to keep house
+with four uneducated children. One can well imagine how many sad and
+sorrowful thoughts weighed upon her.
+
+"Whilst my mother was dwelling in Greifswald, I went to school there,
+and learnt not only to read, but also to decline, parse, and conjugate
+in the Donat. On Palm-Sunday I had to sing the '_Quantus_,' having sung
+the foregoing years first the lesser and then the great '_Hic
+est._'[49]
+
+"This was a great honour to the boy, and no small pleasure to his
+parents, for the most courageous scholars were always selected for it,
+who were not alarmed at the great multitude of ecclesiastics as well as
+laymen, and could sing the _Quantus_ with a loud and clear voice.
+
+"In the year 1528, when my parents discovered that the Hartmann party
+were not to be mollified, and would not let my father return to the
+town and to his business, they desired, as is becoming an honest
+couple, to bear the burden of housekeeping together, and thus my mother
+must needs follow my father. Therefore my father became a citizen of
+Stralsund, and bought a house there; my mother in the spring quitted
+Greifswald, sold her house, and settled near the Sound. About the same
+time my step-grandfather, who was then chamberlain at Greifswald, took
+me to his house, that I might study there. I however studied very
+little, for I preferred riding and driving with my grandfather to the
+neighbouring villages, so that I made little progress in my studies.
+
+"In the year 1529, my mother being pregnant, wished to have a scouring
+and washing before her confinement, as is customary with women. Now my
+parents had at this time a servant-maid who was possessed with an evil
+spirit; it had hitherto not shown itself, but now, when she had to
+scour the numerous kitchen utensils, and took down the kettle and
+saucepan, she threw them on the ground in a dreadful way, and cried
+out, with a loud voice, 'I will away!' When therefore they found the
+reason of this, her mother, who dwelt in the Patinenmacher Strasse,
+took her home, and she was taken several times in a Riga sledge to the
+church of St. Nicholas. When the sermon was ended, the spirit was
+exorcised; and it appeared from its confession, that her mother having
+bought a fresh sour cheese, and placed it in the cupboard, the maiden
+had gone there in her absence and eaten of the cheese. Now when the
+mother saw that some one had been to the cheese, she had wished that
+person possessed of the evil spirit, and ever since, he had dwelt in
+the maiden. When he was then asked how he could have remained in the
+maiden, as since then she had received the sacrament, he answered, 'A
+rogue may lie under a bridge whilst a good man is passing over;' he had
+meanwhile been under her tongue. He was not only exorcised and
+expelled, but each and every one present in the church knelt down and
+prayed diligently and devoutly. He however, loudly scoffed at the
+exorcism, for when the preacher conjured him to go away, he said he
+would depart, he must forsooth give up the field; but he demanded that
+he might be allowed to take away with him sundry things, and if this
+demand were refused, he would be free to remain. One of those present
+having his hat on whilst praying, the evil spirit begged of the
+preacher to allow him to take off this hat; he would then depart, and
+carry it away with him. I feared that, had it been permitted him by
+God, the hair and scalp would have gone with the hat. At last, when he
+perceived that his time for vexing the maiden was passed, and that our
+Lord God listened mercifully to the prayers of the believers present,
+he demanded mockingly a square of glass from the window over the tower
+clock, and when a pane was granted to him, it loosed itself visibly
+with a great clang, and flew away. After that time nothing evil was
+observed in the maiden. She got a husband in the village, and had
+children.
+
+"I went to school, and learnt as much as my wildness would
+allow me: of intelligence there was sufficient in me, as may be
+observed, but steadiness there was none. In the summer I bathed with my
+companions on the sea-shore; this my uncle saw from his garden behind
+his barn, and told it to my father, who came in the morning with a good
+rod into the room, in front of my bed, whilst I was asleep; he worked
+himself up into a rage, and spoke loud in order to awake me. When I
+awoke, and saw him standing before me, and the rod lying on the
+next bed, I knew well what was in the wind, and began to pray and
+entreat--weeping bitterly. He asked what I had done? I swore I would
+never again, all my life long, bathe in the sea. 'Yes, sir,' he said
+(when he called me 'sir,' I knew well that matters stood badly between
+us), 'if you have bathed, then I must use the mop.' Thereupon he seized
+the rod, threw my clothes over my head, and gave me my deserts. My
+parents brought up their children well. My father was somewhat hasty,
+and when his temper got the upper hand, he knew no moderation. Once
+when he was in a rage with me,--he was standing in the stable, and I in
+the doorway,--he caught hold of the pitchfork and threw it at me. I
+sprang aside, but it had been thrown with such violence, that the
+prongs stuck deep into one of the oaken tubs of the bathroom, and it
+required great strength to draw it out. Thus the merciful God hindered
+the evil designs of the devil against me and my father. But my mother,
+who was exceedingly gentle and tender, sprang forward in such cases,
+saying, 'Strike harder, the good-for-nothing boy has well deserved it!'
+But at the same time she would lay hold of the hand in which he held
+the rod, so that he might not strike too hard.
+
+"My father's house was still very unfinished, and an outhouse was built
+against it, with its entrance close to the well. A miller dwelt therein
+named Lewark-Lark,--who had many naughty children that cried day and
+night. At daybreak these young larks began to chirp, and continued the
+whole day, so that one could neither see nor hear until my father drove
+out the old larks with their young ones, pulled down the outhouse, and
+set to work in earnest to finish the whole house at great cost of
+labour and money. My parents received from Greifswald a considerable
+amount of cash; for my mother had been obliged to turn everything into
+money, so that many called him the rich man of the Vehr Strasse. But in
+a few years this appeared very doubtful, for my parents had great
+anxiety and loss of money, and also hindrance to the hoped-for
+happiness of their children as well as other detriment.
+
+"For there were then in Stralsund two women who might not unjustly be
+called swindlers; the one was named Lubbe Kesske, the other Engeln;
+they both dwelt in the Altb�sser Strasse. They bought divers kinds of
+cloth from my father, which they again sold to others, but it was not
+known to whom. Sometimes they paid part of the money for the cloth; but
+whenever they gave a hundred gulden, they straightway bought to the
+amount of two hundred or more. When, however, his claim upon them
+became very large, the women only being able to pay twenty gulden, he
+inquired what had become of his property; he found that his goods to
+the amount of seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden had gone to the
+wife of the tailor Hermann Bruser, who had a considerable traffic in
+cloth, being able to sell it cheaper in retail than other cloth
+merchants; and that his eight hundred gulden had found their way to the
+mother of Jacob Leweling. When my father called to account the two
+women and the wife of Bruser, the latter and her husband, Hermann
+Bruser, offered to pay: Bruser assured my father under his hand and
+seal that at fixed terms he would make the payment. See what happened!
+The first term was due at the time of the uproar of Burgomaster Herr
+Nicholaus Smiterlow, and Hermann Bruser, who was one of the principal
+ringleaders, thought it was now all over with my father, as well as
+with the burgomaster; so he disclaimed his bond, refused payment, and
+began a lawsuit with my father which lasted more than four-and-thirty
+years; my father came to terms with the heirs of Bruser, who had to pay
+for one and all a thousand gulden. The debt itself had amounted to
+seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden, and my father's costs to
+upwards of a thousand more. Thus my father was deprived of his money
+for forty years; great inconvenience accrued to both parents and
+children. I thereby lost my studies and my brother, Magister Johannes,
+even his life, so that one may in truth say, that Hesiod's words, 'The
+half is more than the whole,' may well be applied to a lawsuit,
+particularly to one at the Imperial court, so that it would be more
+profitable to be satisfied with the half in the beginning than to
+obtain the whole by the sentence of the Imperial court.
+
+"During the lawsuit my brother Johannes became Magister at Wittenberg,
+where he was the first among thirteen, and my parents summoned him
+home. Before his departure from Wittenberg, he begged of Dr. Martin
+Luther to write to my father, as the latter, on account of his lawsuit
+with Hermann Bruser, had abstained for some years from the Lord's
+table.[50] The letter was thus worded:--
+
+
+'To the honourable and discreet Nicholaus Sastrow, burgher of
+Stralsund; my kind and good friend, _Gratia et Pax_.
+
+'Your dear son Magister Johannes has made known to me with touching
+lament, my dear friend, how you have abstained from the Sacrament for
+so many years, giving a scandalous example to others, and he has begged
+me to exhort you to give up such a dangerous practice, as we are not
+sure of life for a moment. So his filial, faithful care for you his
+father has moved me to write to you, and I give you my brotherly and
+Christian exhortation (such as we owe to one another in Christ) to
+desist from such a practice, and to consider that the Son of God
+suffered far more and forgave his crucifiers. And finally, when your
+hour comes, you will have to forgive as does a thief on the gallows. If
+your cause before the court lingers on, let it proceed, and wait for
+your right. Such things do not prevent us from going to the Sacrament,
+else we and also our princes could not attend, as the cause betwixt us
+and the Papists still lingers on. Commit your cause to justice, and
+meanwhile make your conscience free, and say, "Whoever shall be judged
+in the right, let him be considered so, in the mean time I will forgive
+those who have done the wrong, and go to the Sacrament." Thus you will
+go not unworthily, because you desire justice and are willing to suffer
+wrong, however the judge's sentence may fall. Take kindly this
+exhortation which your son has so earnestly begged from me. Herewith I
+commend you to God. Amen. Wednesday, after Miser., A.D. 1540.
+
+                                                'Martinus Luther.'
+
+
+"My children will find the original of this letter in its place with
+other important documents, and will no less carefully than myself
+preserve it as an autograph of that highly enlightened, holy, dear, and
+of the whole world praiseworthy man, and will love, and value, and keep
+it as a pleasant remembrance for their children and children's
+children.
+
+"This letter my brother brought home to my father, and in order that
+his parents might see that their money had not been spent in vain, he
+brought with him also some of his Latin poems which had been printed.
+In the following years he applied himself with industry at home to his
+private studies. For besides other poems at Rostock, he published at
+Lubeck an elegy on the Christian martyr Dr. _Robert Barns_,[51] which
+had a tragical result for both the printer and himself. For the poem
+came to the knowledge of the king of England, who sent an envoy to the
+city of Lubeck with bitter complaints and threatenings, as the poem had
+been published by their printer Johann Balhorn. The dignitaries of
+Lubeck made excuses for the author, although he did not dwell there nor
+belong to their jurisdiction, as he was only a young fellow who wished
+to give proof of his learning; but the publisher, Johann Balhorn, was
+sent out of the city, and had to leave it by break of day. They thereby
+appeased the king's anger, and after some months allowed Balhorn to
+return to the city.
+
+"But my brother, Magister Johann, when he was travelling home from
+Lubeck to Rostock had as companions Herr Heinrich Sonneberg and a
+female, and besides there rode near the carriage Hans Lagebusch and a
+smart young fellow, Hermann Lepper, who had exchanged _boguslawische
+schillinge_ and other money for some hundred gulden coined in
+Gadebusch, and which lay in the carriage. This was discovered by
+certain highwaymen, as thievish miscreants are called. Highway robbery
+was very common in Mecklenburg, as it was never seriously punished, and
+many nobles even of the highest birth were engaged in it; so that one
+may truly say with the poet:--
+
+/*
+           'Nobilis et Nebulo parvo discrimine distant:
+              Sic nebulo magnus nobilis esse potest.'
+*/
+
+Nevertheless the genuine nobility, among whom are many honourable men,
+who are in all ways worthy of esteem, are not spoken of here. Now,
+thank God, there is a careful superintendence exercised in the Duchy of
+Mecklenburg; but then the highwaymen could say, if we give up three
+hundred gulden we place ourselves out of all danger, and can always
+keep the remaining two hundred. When the travellers came to the
+Ribbenitzer heath, those who were sitting in the carriage alighted from
+it, having their arms with them; and the two horsemen, who ought to
+have remained by it in that insecure place, rode forward. Against these
+the highwaymen collected themselves, one of whom joined Lagebusch, and
+talked familiarly with him. When riding so near to him that he could
+reach the stock of his pistol, which was cocked (it was not then the
+custom to carry double barrels in the saddle), he seized it out of the
+holster, and hastened therewith after Hermann Lepper, who was riding
+back to the carriage, and shot him, so that he fell from his nag. Hans
+Lagebusch took to flight, and rode to Ribbenitz; Herr Heinrich
+Sonneberg ran into the wood, and concealed himself among the bushes; my
+brother, who had a hunting-spear, placed himself against the hind
+wheel, that they might not attack him from behind; in front he defended
+himself, and kept off one after another, inflicting wounds on them, for
+he thrust his spear into the side of one of them near his leg, so that
+riding to the bushes he fell from his horse, which escaped, and he
+remained lying there. Another then fiercely attacked my brother, and
+cut a piece from his head the size of a thaler, and even a little bit
+of his skull, at the same time wounded him in the neck with his sword,
+so that he fell and was considered dead. The miscreant plundered the
+carriage, took all that was therein, and also carried off the horse of
+their wounded comrade; as they saw he was so much wounded that there
+was little life remaining in him, and not being able to carry him away,
+they left him lying there. They left the driver his horses, and rode
+away with their booty. Herr Heinrich Sonneberg returned to the
+carriage; they laid my brother in it, and the woman bound up his head
+with her handkerchief, and held it in her lap. The dead body they laid
+at his feet, and thus drove slowly to Ribbenitz. There his wounds were
+dressed, and the surgeon put some plaster on his neck. A rumour of this
+came to Rostock. The councillor sent his servants to the spot, who
+found the wounded highwayman, and took him to Rostock; but, alas! he
+died as soon as they reached the prison, so that they could not learn
+who the others were. It did not, however, remain quite secret, but was
+hushed up by their connections, and the high magistrates did not in
+good earnest investigate the matter. The dead miscreant was however
+brought before the court, and from thence taken to the Landwehr to have
+his head cut off, which was placed on a pole, where it was to be seen
+for many years. Lagebusch brought the tidings to Stralsund, and the
+councillor sent along with my father a close carriage with four of the
+city horses; we took our beds with us, and starting in the evening,
+travelled all night through, so that we reached Ribbenitz early in the
+morning. We found my brother very weak, but we remained there on
+account of the horses; and had the deceased Hermann Lepper christianly
+and honourably buried, after an inquest had been held. Towards evening
+we left Ribbenitz, and drove at a foot's pace through the night, so
+that we reached Stralsund towards noon on the following day. When
+Master Joachim Geelhar, the celebrated surgeon, had properly dressed
+the wounds, the patient was soon thoroughly cured."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                   THE MARRIAGE AND HOUSEKEEPING OF A
+                             YOUNG STUDENT.
+                                (1557.)
+
+
+The chief charm of the life of the olden time consists in the graceful
+manifestation of those feelings which give brightness to our life; the
+passions of lovers, the deep affection of husband and wife, the
+tenderness of parents, and the piety of children. We are enabled in
+each period of the past to distinguish the universal attributes of
+human nature, nay, even the specific German characteristics of love and
+marriage, but these tender relations are precisely those which are
+often enveloped in much that is transitory and enigmatical. We have
+often to seek mild and humane feelings under repulsive forms.
+
+But two things have always been valued in Germany. In the first place
+it was a pre-eminent peculiarity of the Germans that they honoured the
+dignity of the female sex. Their women were the prophetesses of the
+heathen time, and, according to the laws of the people, whosoever
+killed a maiden or widow had to atone for it by the severest
+punishment. In times of strife and war, women enjoyed protection of
+person and property. Whilst Totila, Prince of the Goths, destroyed the
+men in Italy, the honour and life of the women were preserved, and the
+misbehaviour of a Goth to a Neapolitan woman was punished with death.
+It moreover appears from the Sachsenspiegel, that the same laws
+prevailed in the North even during the time of the cruel Hussite wars.
+
+Of all the misdeeds of the Spanish soldiers who accompanied Charles V.
+into Germany in the sixteenth century, their ill-treatment of women
+excited the greatest indignation. The infamous conduct of some Passau
+soldiers of the Archduke Leopold towards the women of Alsace, even in
+1611, was particularly repugnant to the people, and was commented on in
+their news-sheets. It was not till the Thirty years' war that the
+coarseness became universal, and women were looked upon as the booty of
+licentious men.
+
+This respect for women and chaste family life was considered by the
+Romans the highest quality of the Germans. Even Christianity, which
+spread from the Roman to the German countries, could not place women
+and marriage on a higher footing; on the contrary, its ascetic
+tendencies served to lower them. The full enjoyment of the pleasures of
+the world were no longer allowed to man; passionate devotion to a
+beloved husband was easily mistaken for a wrong to heaven and the holy
+Redeemer. On the other hand men fixed their eyes on the heavenly
+Virgin, whose especial favour they might win by despising the women of
+earth. At the time of the Saxon Emperors this tendency of the mind
+reached its highest point. In those days education was confined to the
+cloister; there the daughters of the nobility were educated; there men
+weary of sin retired; and there also, enthusiasm sought for the highest
+enjoyment of love, which seemed unattainable in marriage without danger
+to the salvation of the soul. Secret sensuality mixed even with the
+worship of the highest objects of faith.
+
+But the heart of man could not long rest satisfied with ideal love in
+heaven. When, under the first Hohenstaufen, education, manners, and
+good taste were only to be found among the feudal nobility, they
+hastened to transfer to the women of this world the devotion and
+veneration which had been exclusively confined to the Virgin Mary. The
+courtly worship of woman began, new conventional forms were introduced
+for the intercourse between man and woman, accompanied in Germany with
+a strong intermixture of Italian manners. The man had to give proof of
+his love by heroic deeds and adventures, and his lady-love was
+surrounded by an atmosphere of poetry, and veiled in ideal perfections,
+as we may perceive in the numerous minne-songs of that time. But
+neither the dignity of woman, nor the fundamental morality of marriage,
+was increased by this chivalrous devotion, and it became a cloak for
+reckless profligacy. Sometimes even a married woman had a knight
+devoted to her service; he was invested kneeling before his liege lady,
+and she, laying her hands between his, confirmed his allegiance by a
+kiss. From that time he wore her colours; he was bound to be faithful
+to her, and she to him, and in some cases they lived together as man
+and wife; and there were even instances in which the Church gave its
+sanction to these improper unions.
+
+This knightly service often led men into the greatest follies. For
+instance, Pierre Vidal of Toulouse went about on all-fours in a wolfs
+skin, in honour of his lady, till he was beaten and bitten almost to
+death by the shepherds and sheep dogs; and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who
+rode through the whole country in woman's clothes, challenging all the
+knights, and had his finger and upper lip cut off in honour of his
+lady, drank the water in which she had washed, and when he returned
+from his expeditions, was nursed by his wife. These are not the worst
+examples of the horrible eccentricities to which this knightly devotion
+led. The result was such as might be expected,--the glitter of romance
+soon disappeared, and coarse profligacy remained in its nakedness.
+
+The Church did little to improve this state of things. There were
+individual popular preachers who courageously advocated marriage and
+chastity, but it was at this very time that the celibacy of the secular
+clergy was established, and that the mass of the people were reduced to
+bondage by the feudal lords. The purity of marriage and the happiness
+of families were not promoted either by the position of the village
+priest living in his parish without a legal wife, nor by that of the
+proprietor who had to give his sanction to marriages, received tribute
+on account of them, and even laid shameful claims on the person of the
+bride.
+
+On the other hand there arose in the cities a fresh and vigorous life,
+and from the fourteenth century, the citizens became the best
+representatives of German cultivation and manners, as once the
+ecclesiastics had been, and afterwards the nobles. Owing to the close
+proximity of the dwellings in the city, and the smallness of their
+houses, the intercourse between man and woman became more strictly
+defined, and on the whole a practical sound conception of life took the
+place of chivalrous fancies; citizen habits followed courtly manners;
+ladies were won by cautious wooing instead of by daring heroic deeds;
+maidenly modesty attracted more than haughty assumption; instead of the
+wild knightly life of the nobles, which frequently separated man and
+wife, and violently severed the marriage tie, the woman now obtained a
+quiet sway in the well-regulated house, and the bold courtesy of the
+knight was replaced by a considerate, though strictly regulated and
+sometimes rather formal, expression of heartfelt esteem.
+
+The conception of propriety and purity was different, however, from
+what it is now. At the time of the Council of Constance, the refined
+Poggio relates with great satisfaction how at Baden near Zurich, the
+most fashionable bath of the fifteenth century, he had seen German men
+and women bathing together, and how delightfully na�ve their
+familiarity was. And even a century later Hutten praises this German
+custom in contradistinction to the Italian morals, which would have
+made this practice impossible. So tolerant still were the German
+Humanitarians.
+
+Marriage, however, was considered by our ancestors less as a union of
+two lovers, than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not
+only of married people towards one another, but also towards their
+relatives--as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. The relations of the
+wife became also the friends of the man, and they had claims on him as
+he had on them. Therefore in the olden time, the choice of husband and
+wife was always an affair of importance to the relatives on both sides,
+so that a German wooing, from the oldest times up to the last century,
+had the appearance of a business transaction, which was carried out
+with great regard to suitability. This perhaps takes away from German
+courtship, somewhat of the charm which we expect to find where the
+heart of man beats strongly; but this circumspect method of weighing
+things is a characteristic sign of an earnest and great conception of
+life. If a man desired to ask a woman in marriage he had to go through
+several solemn family negotiations. First the wooing, for which he had
+to employ a mediator; not always the lather or any other head of his
+family, but often some man of consideration in the town or country.
+This ambassador was generally accompanied by the wooer himself with a
+troop of his companions: if it took place in the country, they rode in
+solemn procession. If the family of the maiden was favourably disposed,
+they considered this as the preliminary step, and fixed a time for the
+negotiations between the families to take place. Formerly the man had
+to buy his wife from her family; but when this old custom fell into
+disuse, there still remained the arrangements concerning the dowry
+which the bride had to bring to her husband, and the jointure which he
+had to settle upon her. There were added to this, though not compulsory
+yet as a standing custom, presents of the man to the parents, brothers,
+and sisters of the bride, or from the bride to the family and best-men
+of the bridegroom. After this consultation, followed the betrothal,
+which had to take place in the presence of the rightful guardians:
+amidst the circle of witnesses, both parties had solemnly to declare
+that they would take each other in marriage; after which a ring was
+placed on the finger of the bride by the bridegroom; they embraced and
+kissed, thus showing the passing of the maiden into the family and
+guardianship of the man. After this betrothal, a certain space of time
+having elapsed, the termination of which was in many places legally
+fixed, the solemn fetching home of the bride to the house of the
+bridegroom took place. Again there was a solemn procession to the house
+of the maiden, and even if the bridegroom was present he was obliged to
+have a spokesman, who once more wooed her before the assembled family,
+and gave her over to the bridegroom; then she was taken in procession
+to the house of the latter, where the bridal feast was held. It was a
+bad custom in the middle ages, that this repast was got up with an
+extravagance which far surpassed the means of the bridal couple; and
+there were numerous police regulations endeavouring to limit the luxury
+in music, dishes, and the number of tables[52] and feast days.
+
+Such was the marriage ceremonial of the Germans. The old custom of the
+bridal wreath, which was worn by both bride and bridegroom, was
+introduced into Germany from Rome. The consecration of marriage by the
+Church was only required from the time of the Carlovingians, and was
+seldom neglected by the nobility, but did not become general among the
+people till a later period. The Church had indeed raised marriage to
+the dignity of a sacrament; but a feeling remained among the people
+that Christianity looked coldly and sternly on it. Even in the
+fifteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church was not
+entirely established, nor does it take place to this day in many places
+before the fetching home of the bride.
+
+In this respect also, Luther and the Reformation had a great influence.
+From the sixteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church
+became in the Protestant countries the essential part of the ceremony;
+from that time the old customs of betrothals and of fetching home the
+bride were secondary considerations. It was not till after Luther and
+the Council of Trent, that marriage became intimately connected with
+the Christian faith in the German mind; for then the different
+confessions endeavoured by educating and elevating the people, to make
+them comprehend the moral and domestic significance of marriage.
+
+And how was it with the heart of lovers? The following example will
+show how true love germinated amidst all the various family interests.
+
+Felix Platter, the son of Thomas Platter, burgher, printer,
+schoolmaster, and householder at Basle, was born in 1536. His father by
+unwearied activity had risen from the greatest poverty, and had up to
+an advanced age to struggle with anxieties for his maintenance, and
+with pecuniary embarrassments, in consequence of the constant extension
+of his business. This hard battle with life had exercised its usual
+influence on his mind; he had a restless spirit of enterprise, which
+sometimes hindered him from steadily pursuing a plan; he had no real
+self-confidence, was easily perplexed, irritable, and morose. His son
+Felix, the only child by his first marriage, had on the contrary
+inherited the joyous disposition of his single-minded mother; he was a
+jolly warm-hearted lad, rather vain, passionately fond of music and
+dancing, at the same time clever, open and ingenuous. He was still
+almost a boy when his father sent him from Basle to the celebrated
+medical college of the university of Montpellier. Felix having acquired
+there, not only everything that medical science then offered, but all
+kinds of French refinements, returned to the simple burgher life of his
+native town: at the age of one-and-twenty he took his degree as doctor,
+and married happily a maiden about whom he had been teased when a
+child. He gained a great reputation, became Professor of the
+university, and a man of opulence and consideration, and died at an
+advanced age. He was of the greatest service to the city of Basle, by
+his self-sacrificing activity at the time of the plague, and also to
+the medical faculty of his university by his learning; and he was often
+consulted as a physician of renown by persons of princely rank both in
+Germany and France. He laid out a botanic garden at Basle, and
+possessed a cabinet of physical science worthy of being shown for
+money. Like his father, he wrote an account of part of his life: the
+following fragment is taken from a printed edition of the manuscript,
+entitled 'Thomas and Felix Platter, two Autobiographies, by Dr. D. A.
+Fechter, Basle, 1840.'
+
+The narrative begins with that day on which the young Felix returns
+with all the self-confidence of a scholar to his native town.
+
+"I was welcomed home by all my neighbours, and there was great
+rejoicing; the servant-maid of the midwife, Dorly Becherer, as I learnt
+afterwards, gained the _botenbrot_[53] from my intended, by running to
+her father's house and screaming out the news, which she did so loud as
+quite to frighten her. Supper was prepared, and some of my companions
+who had heard of my arrival, and had forthwith come to visit me, stayed
+for it. After supper we escorted them to the Crown inn, and going down
+the Freienstrasse, my intended saw me passing by in my Spanish cap, and
+she fled. The innkeeper, who had himself been wooing her, bantered me,
+so that I perceived the affair was pretty well known: after that I
+returned home.
+
+"The following morning, Hummel came to me to take me about the town. We
+first passed the Minster close, there Herr Ludwig von Rischach spied me
+out, and was wondering who I was, because I wore a velvet barret cap
+and arms: I made myself known to him; then I saluted Dr. Sulzer, pastor
+of the Minster; afterwards, Dr. Hans Huber, who welcomed me kindly and
+offered me his services; I made him a present of Clemens Marot, which
+had been beautifully bound at Paris.
+
+"After that we went down Martin's Alley, and when we arrived at the
+bottom of it, opposite the school, my intended, who was standing by the
+bench saw me, though I did not see her; she ran into the school and
+home again; and after that she no longer went to the shops of the
+butchers, because they began to tease her. After dinner my father took
+me to his property at Gundeldingen; he talked to me on the road, and
+exhorted me not to speak too fast, as the French are apt to do, and
+gave me an account of his household. I began immediately to prepare my
+cypress lute, and to string the large harp which my father had formerly
+played; and I put my books and manuscripts in order; thus I spent the
+whole week.
+
+"Meanwhile my father arranged matters that I might talk with my
+intended, and she with me; he therefore invited Master Franz and his
+daughter to come out to Gundeldingen the following Sunday afternoon; it
+was the sixteenth of May, a merry spring day. I went out there after
+dinner with Thiebold Sch�nauer; we had sent on our lutes, and when we
+entered the yard at Gundeldingen we saw two maidens standing there; one
+was the cousin of the landlady, and engaged to Daniel the son of Master
+Franz, the other was his daughter Magdalen, my intended, whom I greeted
+cordially, as she did me, not without changing colour. Thus we got into
+converse; her brother Daniel joined us; we walked about the property,
+talking of divers things; my intended was modest, bashful, and quiet.
+At three o'clock we returned to the house, and went up stairs; I and
+Thiebold played the lute, and I danced the gaillarde, as was my custom.
+Meanwhile, Master Franz, her father, arrived and welcomed me; we sat
+down to table and had an evening drink as at supper, till it was late,
+and time for us to return to town. On the road homewards, her father
+and mine went in advance, and I and Daniel followed with the ladies in
+friendly talk, when Dorothy, who was somewhat bold of speech, burst
+forth, saying, 'When two are fond of each other they should make no
+delay, for one knows not how quick a misfortune may come between them.'
+Near the ramparts we separated, Master Franz and his party went home
+through the Stein gate, and my father and his through the Eschemer
+gate. We all went to bed full of curious thoughts about myself.
+
+"My father-in-law and my father took counsel together, to make our
+engagement sure. I began to love her very much, and urged it on. I also
+was not disagreeable to her, which I had partly found out from herself,
+when the wife of the butcher, Burlacher, my mother's cousin, had
+invited us to her meadow before the Spalen gate to eat cherries, where
+we had been able to speak openly. It was determined that Dr. Hans Huber
+should make the proposal for me. When my father asked it of him, he
+readily assented, appointed Master Franz in the forenoon to meet him at
+the Minster, made the proposal, and gained his consent for a family
+marriage counsel. In the evening, when Dr. Hans came to me, he
+announced it to me with exultation, as was his wont, and congratulated
+me; but informed me that my father-in-law wished the affair to be kept
+quiet till my doctorate was over, when matters might proceed. I was
+well satisfied therewith, as my future father-in-law was at last
+inclined to consent. Formerly, he had always held back because he
+feared that my father was greatly in debt, and because he had boarders;
+for, as he said, he did not wish his daughter to be thrown into debts
+and disquietudes. But when he heard from my father that his debts were
+small in comparison with his property in land and houses, and that he
+himself intended to do away with the boarders, he was satisfied; and so
+much the more as Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards burgomaster, who had seen
+me, advised him, and because his son Ludwig told him he ought to thank
+God, as he had good hopes that I should become a renowned doctor, for I
+had shown my skill in curing his wife (who was weak after giving birth
+to two children) by giving her marchpane, which I had ordered when it
+was not yet the custom to do so. So my father-in-law was at last well
+pleased, and did not object to my going to his house to speak with his
+daughter. Yet I did this mostly in his absence, and secretly. I entered
+by the back door in the alley, and talked to her there in the lower
+part of the house, with due propriety and honour. Her father did not
+object, but appeared not to notice it; he also deferred matters as long
+as he could, for he did not like to give away his daughter, who, as he
+boasted, kept house so well for him.
+
+"About this time, Thomas Guerin was engaged to Jungfrau Elizabeth of
+the Falcon. He frequently came to me with Pempelfort, and begged of me
+to arrange a musical serenade, to do homage to his love at the Falcon.
+I promised him this, but under the condition that a serenade should
+also be given at any place that I chose. So we equipped ourselves, and
+went, late after supper, in front of the house of my intended. We had
+two lutes, I and Thiebold Sch�naur played together, afterwards I took
+the harp, and Pempelfort the viola. The goldsmith Hogenbach whistled an
+accompaniment, and it was altogether quite fine music; no one took any
+notice of us, for my future father-in-law was at home. Then we went to
+the Falcon, and there, after we had paid our court, we were admitted,
+and had a splendid night-cup, with all kinds of sweetmeats; when we
+were returning home, the watchmen stopped us at the Green King, but
+they let us go after we had given them satisfactory answers. I often
+took a walk to the house of my intended, but as far as possible,
+secretly, and talked much whimsical nonsense, as lovers do, which she
+answered discreetly. I dressed myself also, according to custom, for
+then we wore only coloured clothes, and not black, except for mourning.
+Certain persons now began to watch me, and once when I left the house
+after supper, two men followed me, and would willingly have beaten me,
+but I escaped, so that nothing happened to me.
+
+"Soon after I had become a doctor my father urged that the marriage
+should be concluded between me and the Jungfrau Magdalen; and
+therefore, towards the end of September, he spoke to her father, and as
+I had honourably and praiseworthily fulfilled everything, and the
+matter had not remained secret, he could not object to settling
+it--thereupon he gave a satisfactory answer, but kept always delaying
+the affair, for, as aforesaid, he was unwilling to part with his
+daughter. Meanwhile I was allowed to go to the house openly; but it
+surprised me that it did not displease him, as it was not yet a settled
+marriage, and, indeed, might never have taken place; our intercourse,
+however, was carried on with all due propriety and honour, and we held
+converse on divers discreet subjects, and had much joking and
+bantering, and often I helped her to make electuaries, and thus we
+passed the time. We had once particularly good fun; when on the eve of
+St. Simon and St. Jude they rang the bells for the fair, I wished to
+get a fairing from her. As her father was absent, I went secretly to
+the back door of her house which was constantly open, and seeing no
+one, as all were in the chamber below, I slipped up the stairs to the
+garret, and looked out of the skylight in order to hear when the bells
+rang in the fair at twelve. I waited for three hours, both cold and
+weary; as soon as the bells began to sound, I slipped down and opened
+the door of the room crying out, 'Give me a fairing,' thinking thereby
+to surprise her. There was no one there, and the maid said, as she had
+been told to do, that she was gone out; but she had hidden herself
+under the staircase, and was waiting; soon after she hastened into the
+room with the usual exclamation, and gained from me the fairing. This I
+gave her handsomely, and she gave me one also. I wished to present her
+with the little chain that I had brought with me from Paris, but she
+begged me to keep it, as it might give occasion for gossip, and she
+might have it at some other time; but she took the little beautifully
+bound Testament which I had also offered her; thus we had our pastime
+for a long period, as is usual with young people.
+
+"After the fair at Basle, my father-in-law, as he could no longer
+delay, began to prepare for the betrothal, and it was fixed for the
+week after St. Martin's day. We came about four o'clock to his house;
+there were assembled on his side Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards
+burgomaster, Martin Fickler, and Master Gregorius Sch�lin, and Batt
+Hug, his friends, and his son Franz Jeckelmann; there were on our side
+Dr. Hans Huber, Matthias Bornhart, and Henricus Petri. They negotiated
+about the dowry, and my future father-in-law announced that his
+daughter would bring with her more than three hundred pounds' worth of
+property; of this there would be one hundred florins of ready money,
+and the rest in clothes and linen. When they asked my father what he
+would give, he replied he could not say; he had no child but me, and
+all would be mine. But when they told him that he must name something,
+as there might be changes (as did, indeed, afterwards happen),[54] he
+answered that he had not reflected upon this, so he would name four
+hundred gulden; but that as he could not give it me we should board
+with him instead, for he had no money to give me, on the contrary he
+was much in debt. Thereupon arose some disputing; my father-in-law
+exclaimed that he would not expose his daughter to the discomfort of
+the boarders, and would rather have us in his house, and censured my
+father for being in debt, so that my father was much grieved, and if
+the honourable company present had not interfered, the matter would
+have remained unsettled. This was the first contretemps that happened
+to me, and was a great grief both to me and to my intended, who had
+heard all in the kitchen, and was in great trouble. However, the affair
+was smoothed, as my father said he would gladly give up the boarders,
+though it could not be done immediately. From that time my father was
+somewhat out of sorts, which embittered the whole pleasure of my
+nuptials. We were betrothed, and I presented my bride with the gold
+chain I had brought from Paris; and my father-in-law gave the banquet,
+with good entertainment and speeches, but there was no music, which I
+should have liked best.
+
+"Great preparations were made for the marriage, which was to take place
+on the following Monday, for my father considering that he had an only
+son, wished, for the satisfaction of my father-in-law, to invite the
+whole of his friends and other well-wishers; so invitations were sent
+out on the Saturday to the relations and neighbours, and our good
+friends the master and councillor of the Guild of the Bear, to some of
+the high school, nobles, councillors, scholars, and also artisans with
+their wives and children.
+
+"On the following Sunday, the 21st of October, our banns were published
+as is customary; the tables, and everything appertaining to the wedding
+were arranged in both my fathers' houses; many helped, and Master Batt
+Oesy, the landlord of the Angel, was cook. In the evening I went to my
+father-in-law's house, watched them making the nosegays, and remained
+with them till after supper. When I returned home I found Herr
+Schreiber Rust, an old acquaintance of my father's, who had come out of
+friendship from Burtolf to the wedding, and had brought with him a
+beautiful Emmenthaler cheese. He was sitting at table with my father,
+who was greatly disquieted, as to how he could feed and treat so large
+a number of people as had been invited; he persuaded himself that it
+would be impossible, and that he would disgrace himself, and he was
+quite cross. Especially, when I came home, he began to scold me very
+roughly for sitting always with my bride, and letting him have all the
+trouble, instead of helping him; and he was so angry with me that Herr
+Rust had enough to do to pacify and comfort him. This third cross and
+embittering of the happiness of my wedding was very disquieting to me,
+as I was not accustomed to be thus scolded, and had hitherto usually
+been praised and well treated; I saw clearly how it would henceforth be
+when there were two of us living at my father's cost, so that
+everything would be rendered unpleasant to me. I went to bed full of
+sorrow, and thought like a fool that I would like to withdraw from my
+present position, if the door were only open to me.
+
+"On the morning of the 22nd of October, St. Cecilia's day, I was still
+dispirited, as I had slept little. I put on my bridegroom's shirt which
+had been sent to me, with a gold embroidered collar and many golden
+spangles on the short breast piece, as was the custom then, and over
+that a red brocaded satin waistcoat and flesh-coloured breeches. Thus I
+came down and found my father no longer so unjust, for when he had
+begun to complain again, although there was a superfluity of
+everything, he got a good chiding from Dorothea Schenkin, who was also
+helping, and was a rough-spoken woman. When the marriage guests were
+assembled, we went in procession to my father-in-law's house, and with
+us Dr. Oswald Berus, who, in spite of his great age, was dressed in an
+open satin waistcoat and a camlet coat, the same as mine, and a velvet
+barret cap, like that which was placed on my head, when in front of my
+bride's house, and this said cap was bordered with pearls and flowers.
+
+"We went about nine o'clock to the Minster, and then the bride arrived
+in a flesh-coloured cloak, led by Herr Heinrich Petri. After the sermon
+they married us; I gave her a twisted ring worth eight dollars; then we
+proceeded to the Jagdhof, where they gave us to drink. I led my bride
+in, and they regaled her splendidly in the upper room.
+
+"There were fifteen tables spread, which were well filled by more than
+one hundred and fifty persons, not counting those who waited upon them,
+and a number of them remained to supper. The entertainment proceeded
+after this fashion: there were four courses in the following order, a
+hash of mutton, soup, meat, fowls, boiled pike, a roast, pigeons,
+capons, geese, rice porridge, salted liver, cheese, and fruit. There
+were divers kinds of wines, amongst others Rangenwein, which was much
+to the taste of the guests. The music consisted of Christelin the
+trumpeter, with his viola; the singers were the scholars, who sang
+among other things the song of the spoon; after the dinner, which did
+not last as long as is now customary, Herr Jacob Meyer, the Councillor
+of the Bear, broke up the party. Dr. Myconius led the bride to the
+house of Dr. Oswald Berus, where there was dancing in the hall; there
+were many persons, and some of them people of consequence. Master
+Laurens played the lute, Christelin accompanied him on his viola, which
+was then less used than now. I wished to do the courteous by my bride,
+as I had been accustomed to do in France in dancing, but she being
+bashful gently admonished me, so I desisted. I danced however, at
+Myconius' suggestion, a gaillard alone.
+
+"After that we returned to my father's house to supper. When it began
+to get late the guests took leave, and that there might not be too much
+noise and joking, I hid myself in my father's room, where my bride also
+had been secretly concealed, whose father wept so at parting with her,
+that I thought they would be quite ill from crying. I led her into my
+father's little room, and some of the women of her acquaintance came to
+comfort her, to whom I gave some claret to drink, which I had kept in a
+small cask behind the stove, and had made very good. When they
+departed, my mother who was always cheerful, came and said that the
+young students were seeking me, therefore we had better conceal
+ourselves and go to bed; so she led us secretly by the back stairs up
+to my room, where we sat for some time, and as it was very cold we were
+half frozen, so we commended ourselves to God and went to bed; and none
+of the students knew what had become of us. After a time we heard my
+mother come up stairs above our room; there she sat and sang with as
+sweet a voice as a young maiden, though she had reached a great age;
+whereat my bride laughed heartily.
+
+"On the Tuesday morning her bridesmaid Kathleen brought her the rest of
+her clothes; we admitted her, and as she was a pleasant maiden, we had
+much fun with her. After that the marriage guests collected again at
+dinner, which took place at eleven o'clock, for then we had not turned
+time topsy-turvy, as is the bad custom now. There were as many tables
+laid as on the first day, and the entertainment was as ample; and there
+was in addition the bridal porridge, which is now replaced by mulled
+wine. After dinner they danced till night, and at supper there were
+still many guests, especially the maidens, who all took leave and went
+home in good time. There were many rich presents given at the marriage;
+but of these I got only a small goblet and two ducats, the rest my
+father took to defray the costs as far as they would, and later, as
+soon as I earned something, I had to pay him for my clothes. My father
+took also the hundred gulden that my wife had brought with her, and
+paid it off likewise. My father-in-law made me no present, because, as
+he afterwards told me, he had paid five gulden for me at the doctor's
+capping feast, and therewith I ought to be content. The household gear
+that my wife brought with her was not very good; an old pan in which
+they had made her porridge, and a large wooden bowl in which her
+mother's dinner had been brought to her during her confinements, and
+other bad utensils, which were placed behind a screen in our room.
+After that, our household arrangements were to be fixed and regulated
+by my wife's advice, which required great consideration. My father
+still continued to have boarders and all kinds of disquiet in the
+house, so that we young married people were much harassed; we had
+rather have kept house by ourselves, but we could not manage it; we
+were obliged for nearly three years to board with my father, and I had
+to make shift with my room, and to see the sick in the lower hall,
+which was cold in winter. There was frequent offence taken because I
+could not help towards the kitchen expenditure, for I had enough to do
+to provide ourselves with clothes, and frequently had to pay what I had
+just earned to the shops where I was still in debt for them; which was
+thrown in my teeth, if I did not do it. Thus there were at times
+quarrels, as often happens when old and young dwell together. Therefore
+my wife would have been glad if we could have dwelt by ourselves, and
+she would willingly have managed with very little; if my father would
+have given the promised dowry and the hundred gulden which she had
+brought to me, we could have subsisted upon that; but my father could
+not do this, as he had no ready money; and I did not wish to anger, but
+rather conciliate him, and so I spoke him fair, saying, we would have
+patience till I got into better practice. All this grieved me because I
+loved her much, and would gladly have maintained her as was meet for a
+doctor's wife; therefore for a long time I treated her with less
+familiarity and more ceremony; my father perceived this with
+displeasure, and thought it ought not to be. I had not much to do
+before the new year.
+
+"There were many doctors at Basle when I came there, both graduates and
+quacks, in the year 1557. Therefore I had to be very skilful to support
+myself, and God has abundantly blessed me therein. From day to day I
+got more practice both among the inhabitants of the town, and also
+among the strangers, some of whom came to me and dwelt a long time
+here, using my remedies, whilst others went away immediately, having
+obtained my advice and prescription. Strangers also sent for me to
+their houses and castles, whither I hastened, not staying long, but
+returning home quickly, that I might attend to those at home as well as
+in distant parts."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+                         OF A PATRICIAN HOUSE.
+                              (1526-1598.)
+
+
+Though the narrative of Sastrow gives us a view of the hard struggle of
+a rising family, and that of Felix Platter shows to what shifts even a
+vigorous life may be reduced, yet one must not forget that the
+intellectual life of Germany was rich and varied in its aims and
+tendencies. Worldly-minded education, opulence, and the pleasures of
+social enjoyment were concentrated in the patrician families of the
+great Imperial cities, who, however, often manifested bad taste in
+their refinement; but at the same time arts and commerce called forth
+all their energies, and whatever sense of beauty then existed, was to
+be found especially in these circles. In the great cities of
+Switzerland, the Low Countries, and the seaports of the German Hanse
+Towns, there was a peculiar development of the patrician order; but it
+was the patrician families of the great commercial cities of South
+Germany, and amongst these more especially those of Nuremberg,
+Augsburg, Ulm, Frankfort on the Maine, and Cologne, that exercised the
+greatest influence on the luxury, industry, and learning of Germany.
+Members of the old families had once governed the cities with
+aristocratic rule; they were still the most influential citizens,
+accustomed to conduct great affairs, and to represent the highest
+interests; they were generally merchants or large landed proprietors.
+Most of the Church benefices were possessed by their families; they
+were the first who used to send their sons into Italy, the land of
+their mercantile friends, to study law, thus making preparation in
+Germany for the rising Humanitarian learning. Many of them were heads
+of mercantile firms, councillors and confidants of German princes; they
+were united together by family alliances, and not less by community of
+commercial interests and had extended themselves everywhere; they
+chiefly determined the German policy of the Imperial cities, and they
+would have exercised a decisive influence on the newly formed German
+life, had they been less conservative in their tendencies, and had they
+not by their self-interest become sometimes un-German.
+
+They represented the moneyed power of Germany; the Emperor and princes
+obtained loans from them, and they were the medium of the greater; part
+of the money and exchange transactions, when these were not in the
+hands of the Jews. The great firms of Fugger and Welser and their
+partners formed a great trading company, which carried on traffic not
+only with Italy and the Levant, but also beyond Antwerp and the
+Atlantic Ocean. Through them, German trade monopolized that of the East
+and West Indies; they bought a whole year's harvest from the King of
+Portugal, they united themselves with Spanish houses in unlimited
+speculations, undertook journeys to Calcutta, and settled on their own
+account the prices of the sugar and spices of the East, which were then
+of greater importance in the German cookery than now.
+
+This command over capital was regarded with great dislike by both
+princes and people. Through these trading companies much ready money
+passed out of the country, and all objects of luxury rose in price;
+complaints were general, for the diminution in the worth of money,
+occasioned by the introduction of the American gold, was mistaken for
+the raising of prices by the merchants. Not only Hutten, who was deeply
+imbued with the prejudices of his own class, but even the Imperial Diet
+was jealous of the power of these great moneyed companies; among the
+people also, the antipathy to them was general, and the Reformers
+shared the opinions of their cotemporaries as to the detriment of such
+domination over capital.
+
+Yet even then, it may be observed that these great merchant princes had
+not all the same tendencies. The Welsers of Augsburg, for example, in
+1512, took an active interest at Rome on behalf of Reuchlin, and that
+great scholar owed his deliverance from the hands of the Dominicans,
+more perhaps to their secret influence than to the refined rhetoric of
+his enthusiastic admirers in Germany. On the other hand, the Fuggers
+were considered by the people as reckless moneyed men and Romanists; as
+enemies of Luther and friends of Eck, who was suspected of being in
+their pay; for they had charge of the money affairs of the Elector
+Albrecht of Mayence, and of the Romish curie, and one of the Fugger's
+clerks accompanied the indulgence chest of Tetzel, and controlled the
+incoming receipts, on which the banking-house of the Archbishop of
+Mayence had made advances. The Emperor, Charles V., received the most
+solid support from these powerful firms, as their interests were
+generally concurrent with his; with the people, however, "_Fuggerei_"
+became the common term for usury. We learn the family tendency for
+outward splendour and intercourse with the great, from the description
+which Hans von Schweinichen gives of their opulence in the year 1575.
+
+When the dissolute Duke Hemrich von Liegnitz with his majordomo was at
+Augsburg, the splendour of this house appeared to the Silesian noblemen
+as quite fabulous. Schweinichen, who was more accurate in specifying
+the sums of money and prices than was necessary considering the endless
+debts of his master, gives the following narrative.[55]
+
+"Herr Max Fugger once invited his Princely Highness to dinner. Such a
+banquet have I never beheld, the Roman Emperor himself could not have
+been entertained better: there was superabundant splendour; the repast
+was spread in a hall where more gold than colour was to be seen; the
+floor was of marble, and as smooth as if one was walking on ice; there
+was a sideboard placed along the whole length of the hall, which was
+set out with drinking-vessels and notably beautiful Venetian glasses;
+there must have been, as one says, the value of more than a ton of
+gold. I waited on his Princely Highness when the drinking began. Now
+Herr Fugger gave to his Princely Highness for a drinking-cup, an
+artistically formed ship of the most beautiful Venetian glass; when I
+took it from the sideboard and was going across the hall, having on my
+new shoes, I slipped up, and fell upon my back in the middle of the
+hall; the wine poured about my neck, the new red brocade dress which I
+had on was quite spoilt, and the beautiful ship was broken into a
+thousand pieces. Though this created great laughter amongst all, yet I
+was told that Herr Fugger said privately he would rather have lost a
+hundred gulden than that ship; it happened, however, without any fault
+on my part, for I had neither eaten nor drunk; but when later I became
+intoxicated I stood firmer, and did not fall a single time even in the
+dance. Meanwhile the lords and all others were very merry. Herr Fugger
+took his Princely Highness a walk through the house, a prodigious great
+house, so great that the Roman Emperor at the Imperial Diet found room
+in it for himself and his whole court. Herr Fugger showed his Princely
+Highness, in a turret, a treasure of chains, jewels, and precious
+stones, and of curious coins and pieces of gold the size of a head, and
+he himself said that they were worth more than a million of gold.
+Afterwards he opened a chest that was full of nothing but ducats and
+crowns up to the brim; these he estimated at two hundred thousand
+gulden, which had been remitted to him in exchange by the King of
+Spain. Then he led his Princely Highness up to the turret, which was
+paved half way down from the top with good thalers; he said there were
+about seventeen thousand. He showed his Princely Highness great honour,
+but also his own power and possessions: it is said that Herr Fugger had
+enough to buy an empire. He gave me, on account of my fall, a beautiful
+new groschen which weighed about nine grains. His Princely Highness
+expected also a good present, but got nothing but a good drinking bout.
+At that time Fugger bestowed the hand of his daughter on a count, and
+gave two hundred thousand thalers, besides jewels, as her dowry.
+
+"As his Princely Highness had very little ready money he sent me to
+Herr Fugger to borrow four thousand thalers; but he decidedly declined
+doing this, excusing himself quite politely; however the following day
+he sent his steward to me to be introduced to my lord, through whom he
+presented to his Princely Highness two hundred crowns, a beautiful
+goblet worth eighty dollars, and besides that a splendid horse with
+black velvet housings."
+
+Together with this taste for display we find in other patrician
+families at the beginning of this century far higher aims in life. The
+firms of Pentinger at Augsburg, and Perkheimer at Nuremberg were the
+focus of the noblest interests of the nation; the heads of these houses
+were men of princely opulence, landed proprietors and merchant princes,
+statesmen and warriors, and at the same time men of learning and
+research. It was for families like these that Albert D�rer painted his
+best pictures; to them the travelling Humanitarians resorted; every
+elegant verse, every manly sentiment or word of genius, were there
+first heartily appreciated. As councillors and patrons in worldly
+concerns, as liberal proprietors of valuable libraries and of
+first-rate cabinets of antiquities, as hospitable masters of rich
+households, they knew how to do honour to all who brought to their
+houses intellect, knowledge, and refinement.[56]
+
+In these families, the women also frequently received an education
+which went further than the knowledge of cooking, spinning, and the
+prayer-book; the daughters of these households gained what was seldom
+to be found in the castles of the princes or in the mansions of the
+landed nobility,--a heartfelt interest in the sciences and arts with
+which the friends of the family were occupied. There is a peculiar
+charm for us in the contemplation of the first female characters who
+were ennobled by the dawn of a new civilization. Constance Peutinger,
+who twined the laurel wreaths for Hutten; Caritas Perkheimer, the
+suffering abbess of Clarenklosters at Nuremberg, and later Philippine
+Welser, the wife of the Emperor's son, all belonged to the class of
+German patricians; they were sensitive natures often oppressed and
+wounded in this rough and thorny period.
+
+It was especially when a woman took part in the literary struggle that
+she was destined to suffer, this however rarely happened; the best
+known instances are those of Caritas Pirkheimer and Argula von
+Grumbach, born at Stauffen; both experienced how bitter it is for women
+to take part in the disputes of men. The Roman Catholic Caritas wrote a
+letter full of reverence to Emser, and had to go through the trial of
+seeing her letter printed by the Lutheran party with contemptuous
+marginal notes. The Lutheran Argula, the friend of Spalatin, sent an
+admonitory letter to the rector of the university at Ingoldstadt, when
+it had compelled Arsatius Seehofer by imprisonment and a threat of the
+stake, to recant seventeen heresies, which he had propounded to the
+students from the writings of Melancthon. Argula bravely took the
+master's part, whom she called a child of eighteen years old, and
+offered to go to Ingoldstadt herself to defend the good cause against
+the university. She was in consequence of this, maliciously assailed in
+verse, against which she valiantly defended herself in counter-rhymes.
+The last years of Caritas and her mild brother were embittered by the
+rude attacks of the Protestant rabble and their teachers. Argula was
+banished from the Bavarian court, and her husband was dismissed in
+disgrace from his court appointment.
+
+The Glauburgs were one of the most distinguished patrician families of
+Frankfort-on-the-Maine; Hutten had been very intimate with some members
+of this family, and had at one time indulged in the charming dream of
+establishing himself at Frankfort and marrying one of them. Even the
+ardent spirit of Hutten was powerfully attracted by their splendid
+opulence and highly refined life. He eagerly disclaimed the suspicion
+that he intended to take away his bride to the rocky home of his
+family. He wooed the maiden with more consideration than was his wont,
+and Arnold of Glauburg was his confidant. But it was a short dream; his
+destiny soon tore him away. The following letters from two ladies will
+introduce us into this patrician family; they are printed in the
+Frankfort archives of J. C. von Fichard, 1811-1815. The first is the
+letter of a mother to her son, in which she recommends to him a maiden
+for his wife, in order to withdraw him from the revolutionaries of
+Wittenberg and the neighbourhood of Luther; a letter which is
+characteristic of the position of women in a family, and written by one
+possessed of energy and a practical understanding, who was accustomed
+to rule, and not without a disposition to intrigue; her son was the
+nephew of that Arnold of Glauburg, the son of Johann, to whom Hutten
+sent with hearty greeting his dialogue _Febris_.
+
+
+
+                                 1526.
+
+        _From Margaret Horng_[57] _at Frankfort, to her son John
+                      von Glauburg at Wittenberg_.
+
+"Having given you first, dear Johann, my friendly greeting, know that
+we are all well in health, praise and thanks be to God, and hope to
+hear the same of you. Dear Johann, after I had last written to you, the
+wife of Johann Knoblauch died, to whom God be merciful. She was my good
+friend, and her death has caused me as great grief as the decease of my
+two blessed husbands, which was however a great calamity to me; but
+what God wills we must bear with patience. She and I came here the same
+year, and lived so friendly together that neither ever angered the
+other with a word. On her death-bed she commended to me her two
+daughters as if I were her sister, and begged that I should take care
+of their dowry, if I should live till they married. One of them is now
+marriageable, an elegant, well-formed maiden; she is in height like
+your step-sister Anna, which is also her name, and she is a clever
+housekeeper, so that he who has her for a portion will not be ruined by
+her; I foresee that her father will soon establish her, for there are
+three who woo her, two of them are noblemen, and the third is Johann
+Wolf Rohrbach, the son of Frau Ursula at the green gate, who is now
+grown up and has been with his mother since Easter. Although he is only
+nineteen years old, yet it is the wish of his mother and his friends to
+establish him whilst she is still alive. For now no one knows what to
+do with their sons, that they may learn and study what is for their
+soul's salvation, and not be led astray: for when they have long
+studied, and spent much money, it is of little advantage to many of
+them, and perhaps it would have been more profitable to them, to have
+retained the innate honesty and simplicity which they have from God,
+than that they should study, and not rightly understand the Scripture,
+and that then the devil should lead them astray through pride, and
+others with them because they are learned and know how to talk well.
+Such men lead the people into great error. I would gladly write much to
+you thereupon, but having promised in my last letter that I would not
+write to you again thereof, I will not do so whilst you are at
+Wittenberg; for you imagine that you are in safe keeping in Wittenberg.
+God grant it may be true, and that you will find it so. Further, dear
+Johann, know wherefore I now write to you thus---- an honourable person
+has just told me that the wife of Johann Knoblauch had desired her
+husband, if you and your belongings should ask his daughter in
+marriage, and the daughter were willing, that he should give her to you
+rather than to any other. To this I answered, that I did not know your
+inclinations, but would write and inform you of this, and whatever
+answer I got from you I would communicate to this person. Therefore,
+dear son, I make known to you that the maiden pleases me well in all
+her ways, better than any other with whom I am acquainted; and the
+mother has always been an honourable steadfast woman. Therefore, I am
+well pleased that she is not of a fickle nature, for whoever has not an
+apt and steadfast wife, be she ever so polished and rich, will become a
+poor miserable man. Therefore, dear Johann, follow my advice, for I
+give you faithful counsel. It is true there are eleven children to
+provide for, some of whom are still little, but possibly may become
+fewer in number, and there is a good fortune, the greater part of it in
+landed property. Therefore bethink you, dear son, I do not wish to
+constrain you to change your condition, but it would be the greatest
+pleasure to me were you to enter this family, for looking into the
+future, I can see no place that would altogether suit you so well as
+this one. Dear Johann, if this idea should please you, and you should
+wish to see her and that she should see you beforehand, come here in
+the first week of Lent with any travelling companions that you like, to
+give you security on the road; but keep your purpose to yourself,
+saying nothing of it to your companions till a day or two before your
+departure, then tell Justinian that you are going home. But do not tell
+him why you wish to go home, but make it appear as if it were on
+account of your property which you wish to regulate, as I had written
+to you so strongly in my last three letters about it, declining to
+administer it any longer, as is indeed my intention, if you will in
+nowise take my advice. There is good reason why you should prevent his
+saying a word, in order that it should remain secret. Dear Johann, I
+beg of you to bethink yourself of how the times are, and that it is not
+fitting for you to remain longer unsettled. Ah! may my brother-in-law
+Herr Hammann find a wife also for Justinian now; it would do him no
+harm, as he leads a life of pleasure; and let it not be with him as it
+was with his deceased cousin Blasius, who had so accustomed himself to
+a profligate life that no one could persuade him to marry till he
+became old and had lost his health; he had no child, and now his wife
+is betrothed again to a nobleman, one Schenk of Schweinsburg. They say
+she will soon celebrate her nuptials: God grant her happiness."
+
+
+Thus far the letter: the wish of the prudent mother was fulfilled; her
+son returned, as she had so cautiously charged him to do, to Frankfort;
+he married the maiden of her choice, and they lived together forty
+years in happy matrimony.
+
+Though we can obtain no other particulars of him and Anna Knoblauch,
+yet we find accounts of members of the same family, towards the end of
+the century, which characterize in a charming way the position of a
+bride with her betrothed. A grandson of the above mentioned, the rich
+patrician Adolf von Glauburg of Frankfort, made acquaintance, when on a
+visit at Nuremberg, with the beautiful Ursula Freher, daughter of the
+city Syndic of Nuremberg, and sister of the renowned scholar and
+statesman, Marquard Freher of Heidelberg. The charms and agreeableness
+of the lady were celebrated throughout Swabia. The following letters
+were written by her to him, from Nuremberg to Frankfort during the time
+of betrothal.
+
+
+
+                                 1598.
+
+                                   I.
+
+"To the noble and honourable Johann Adolf von Glauburg, to the hands of
+my dearly beloved _Junker_.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly beloved _Junker_, I have
+received with heartfelt joy your letter, together with the chain, and
+rejoice to hear you are in health, but learn with regret that your dear
+sister and son are not well; may God Almighty restore them according to
+his holy will. Amen. As regards us, we are, thank God, tolerably well,
+may He thus long preserve us all. Dearly beloved _Junker_, my father
+would gladly have written to you, but your letter arrived too late, and
+the messenger waiting at the gate is in haste, so that he cannot do it
+now, but will take the first opportunity.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, with respect to the chain I have no
+directions to give you; as your wish is, so is my content, what pleases
+you pleases me also. The chain which I have here I will carefully
+preserve, and when God brings you to us I will take the opportunity of
+returning it to you; it is much too splendid for me. As to the picture,
+it is ready all but the dress, at which the painter is still working,
+and thinks it will be quite finished in about ten days. I have great
+fear that when the picture comes to you, it will be said the _Junker_
+need not have gone so far, he might have found the like of her at
+Frankfort.
+
+"As concerns the bracelets, I have not yet got them; there is yet
+plenty of time, but I will send after them.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, I have nothing more to write to you now, I
+beg of you kindly to excuse this miserable letter, which has been
+written in haste; another time I will give you something better.
+
+"No more now than kind greetings to you and your dear ones, from me and
+my honoured mother, and we commend you to the care and protection of
+God Almighty. Given the 12th September.
+
+                       "Your loving and always faithful
+
+                                         "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+                                  II.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, dearly beloved, and much trusted _Junker_, may
+my truth and love, together with my greetings and good wishes, be to
+you beyond all other love and possessions. I received your letter with
+pleasure, and learned from it with heartfelt joy of your well-being. It
+is even so with us, for which we thank the gracious God; may He
+continue his grace to you and all of us. Amen.
+
+"As concerning the marriage, my honoured father and mother have
+deliberated thereon, and have agreed that, please God, it shall take
+place on the 13th of November, as the _Junker_ will find more amply
+detailed in my honoured father's letter.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, I understand thus much from your letter, that
+you would gladly come here once again before the marriage. If that were
+possible, it would certainly be a great joy to me, and would give
+hearty pleasure to all mine without exception. I will not therefore
+this time entreat of you, but will have all hope and confidence that it
+may come to pass, and that the _Junker_ will not fail to pay a visit to
+me the poor forlorn one, to which I look with great longing. Dearly
+beloved _Junker_, know that the packet has not yet arrived. We have
+already sent after it several times, and the answer has been, it was
+expected every hour; as soon as it comes, your desire shall be attended
+to; I believe it will answer well. The wife of Dr. Reiner has already
+written to my honoured mother concerning it, and given it clearly to be
+understood that she is not to be forgotten in the bridal presents;[58]
+however she need not have been in anxiety about it, as she had already
+been thought of.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, with respect to the shirts and collars, you
+must know that we are working zealously thereat, and as many as can be
+got ready shall be distributed.
+
+"I have received the bracelets; accept, my dearly beloved _Junker_, my
+warmest thanks. They are much too pretty for my brown hands, but they
+please me well.
+
+"As regards dress, undoubtedly my honoured father would like to do for
+one daughter the same as for the other, but as that cannot be on this
+occasion, he has consented to do something more. I have three taffety
+dresses; the flesh colour, one gold colour, and one black. We have the
+tailor still in the house, who is making a violet-coloured damask, and
+another dress in which I am to go to church, which is to be either of
+red satin or of black damask. Now I beg you will let me know which you
+would prefer.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, I cannot venture to make further demands on
+my father; for this reason, that none of my sisters have had so much
+done for them, or such splendid things. But as you have so strongly
+admonished me, I will be so unreasonable as to ask somewhat of the
+_Junker_, first begging of you kindly not to take it amiss, as I do it
+at your own desire; and this is my petition, dearly beloved _Junker_: I
+wish you to send me a dress of whatever kind you like, whether flesh
+coloured or silver, that I may have greater change of dress.
+
+"Dearly beloved and well-trusted _Junker_, I have another great request
+to make to you. You know that I have two sisters who love me, and whom
+I equally love well; I should like to give them some little thing as a
+present in your name, if it seems good to you. I have written this to
+you because you have desired me to speak out my wishes, therefore, I
+beg you, _Junker_, not to take it amiss of me. I do not write it with
+the idea that it must be, but that it may be done or left undone by the
+_Junker_ at his pleasure.
+
+"I send you, according to your desire, the measure of my beautiful
+stature; we have added nothing to it, but such as the maiden is, so is
+the measure. I hope that, God willing, they may soon see me tall and
+beautiful as I am.
+
+"We have partaken with pleasure of the grapes you sent us, and kindly
+thank you for the same. If we get anything rare we will impart it to
+you.
+
+"I am delighted that my picture pleases your youngest daughter so well,
+and that she has shown it so much honour; let her boldly kiss it; God
+grant that I may see her, and I will return it to her with
+interest.[59]
+
+"The shoes which I must have for the pulling off,[60] I will have made
+as soon as possible of the best kind, as good as they can be made here,
+although here they are not in fashion. Dearly beloved _Junker_, I have
+one more petition to make in conclusion, namely, that you will make the
+best of my plain, simple, bad letter, for I intend it in all sincerity,
+and write from my open heart; and kindly favour me with an answer,
+which, at the same time, I would rather have by word of mouth, than in
+writing.
+
+"No more from me but what is always pleasing and agreeable to you.
+Herewith I send to the Junker, together with his dearly beloved son and
+daughter, a hundred thousand greetings, and commend you and ourselves
+to God Almighty. Given the 10th October at Nuremberg.
+
+     "Yours true in [Illustration: A Heart] as long as I live,
+
+                              "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+                                  III.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly loved Junker, I send you
+my most kindly greeting, together with my love and truth. I received
+your letter with pleasure, and learned therefrom with heartfelt joy of
+the well-being of you and yours. As regards us, we have also to thank
+our dear and gracious God; may He continue his mercy to us all. Amen.
+
+"I perceive from your letter that it is impossible for you to come to
+us before the marriage. This we are sorry to hear, and I am greatly
+disappointed. I quite thought you would come, and was heartily rejoiced
+thereat, and oft I ran to the window when I heard any sound of riding
+or driving. May our dear Lord God give us all health, and bring us
+together with joy.
+
+"With respect to the wreath, I thank you kindly, dearly beloved Junker,
+that you have informed me about it. I am quite persuaded that we shall
+give occasion for much rude gossip, from not knowing the customs
+amongst you, as they seem quite different to what they are here. I pray
+you to have the wreath made as it ought to be, and to send it to us as
+you propose in your letter. As to the other wreath, Frau N�tzelin has
+instructed me how it ought to be, and I have ordered one with golden
+spangles, which shall be properly made. I am not satisfied about the
+bridal presents, as you have not written to me what I am to take for my
+sisters, and they will not say what they would like; I am fearful of
+taking too much, or too little, and yet wish to do exactly what is
+right; I hoped that you would let me know what, and how much they
+should have. As concerning mine, I hope I shall act so as to deserve
+them.
+
+"Dearly beloved Junker, I have yet a great request to make to you
+concerning the shoes, if I may venture to do it, and you will receive
+it without displeasure. It is, however, a shame that I should trouble
+you with it, but it cannot be helped. I have had shoes made, and shown
+them to Frau N�tzelin, who says they are good for nothing, being much
+too large; that they ought to be quite little, or they would laugh at
+me outright; and she has advised me to write to the Junker, and beg he
+will have them made down there, because being the fashion, they can
+make them better than here, where they are never worn; they could not
+at all understand me, even when I explained it to them fully, still
+they did not comprehend it; however I indeed have never seen one. I
+send you herewith, dearly beloved Junker, two ducats, and pray you to
+let your maid-servant see after it, it is my desire that you should not
+be troubled with it. They need not be very costly, there should be only
+the arms, or perhaps the name upon them, and they should not be large
+or long.
+
+"My honoured mother begs that you will not take it amiss if she does
+not answer your letter now; she has so much to do, she has no leisure,
+but another time she will send you an answer.
+
+"Dearly beloved Junker, I have nothing further to write except that
+yesterday I was at the wedding, I felt much because you were not here,
+and also not coming, and N�tzel brought me home in your place.
+
+"I have nothing further to say, and no leisure, as I must go to the
+wedding party. There remains only to send you and yours a hundred
+thousand kindly greetings from my honoured mother, my brothers and
+sisters, and to commend you to the care and protection of God Almighty.
+
+     "In great haste.
+
+        "Your true and loving brunette, and as long as I live,
+
+                 "Yours in [Illustration: A Heart]
+
+                                         "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+                                  IV.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly beloved Junker, may my
+kindly greeting and good wishes attend you.
+
+"I have received your letter, and learned with heartfelt joy, of the
+well-being of you and yours; as regards us, we are, thanks and praise
+be to God, still well. May God Almighty so keep us all for ever,
+according to his will and pleasure. Amen.
+
+"Concerning your letter, wherein you write that you wish to try my love
+and obedience, I did not long deliberate, because the time is now
+short, and I have taken a good deal out of the purse for myself and
+sisters, yet not with the intention that it should always go on so; and
+thus, dearly beloved Junker, your commands and my obedience are fully
+carried out, and I and my sisters do greatly and kindly thank you, and
+we hope, God willing, to thank you soon by word of mouth. I have also
+seen, after what you wrote, that the horses should be ready.
+
+"I hope that I shall have executed your orders so that you may be
+brought safely through your dangerous journey, for it would assuredly
+be very painful to me, if on my account you were to be exposed to great
+danger.
+
+"Dearly beloved Junker, we have heard with pleasure that you will come
+to us at the last inn, for in truth it will be necessary to instruct us
+as to all the arrangements.[61] May God Almighty give you health and
+happiness, and bring us together in joy. The last inn for sleeping will
+be Stockstadt; my honoured father will also write to you his
+instructions, and by them you will be guided.
+
+"No more at present, than that you, dearly beloved Junker, your son and
+daughter, are heartily greeted by me and mine, and commended to the
+care and protection of God Almighty.
+
+"In great haste.
+
+     "Your true and loving brunette, as long as I live
+
+                 "Yours in [Illustration: A Heart]
+
+                       "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+               GERMAN NOBILITY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+In the beginning of the sixteenth century we find the names of the
+German nobles, Fronsperg, Hutten, and Sickingen, conspicuous in the
+three different ways in which the nobles then employed themselves,--the
+Army, the Church, and State, and the representation and maintenance of
+the rights and interests of the landed proprietors. But it appears
+strange that even up to the middle of the seventeenth century, men like
+these should have had so few of their own class following in their
+footsteps. From the time of Fronsperg to that of the Bohemian Junker
+Albrecht of Waldstein, and the wild cavalry leader Pappenheim, the
+whole of Germany produced no General of more than average skill from
+among the nobility. There were a few Landsknechte leaders of citizen
+extraction like Sch�rtlin, and some German princes, all however with
+more pretension than capacity, and it was principally to Spaniards and
+Italians that the family of the Emperor Charles V. and their opponents
+owed their most important victories. As to the intellectual life of
+Germany, there was still less of that amongst the nobility after the
+time of Hutten. How few noble names do we find in the long list of
+reformers, scholars, poets, architects, and artists! The first occur in
+the seventeenth century, when we find those of the members of the
+_Palmenordens_, the author of the 'Simplicissimus,' and of some noble
+rhymers belonging to the Silesian school of poetry or to the Saxon
+court. One may well ask how it happened that an order so numerous,
+holding such an advantageous position with respect to the people,
+should have accomplished so little in this great field of action, which
+up to the time of the Hohenstaufen was especially in the possession of
+the nobility. And even with the most favourably disposed judgment, it
+would be difficult to ascribe to the landed nobility of the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, any
+beneficial influences on any one of the great currents of life in
+Germany.
+
+In fact the lower nobility--considered as an order--had been, since the
+time of the Hohenstaufen, a misfortune to Germany. It was after the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, when the difference betwixt the
+noblemen and freeholders had been established by the laws, by the
+interests and inclinations of the Emperor, and by the limited ideal,
+which was formed by the aristocratic body, that the nobility gradually
+decayed. In the cities, undoubtedly, the old dominion of the privileged
+freeman was broken in the last period of the middle ages; there, in
+spite of all hindrances, a quicker circulation of popular strength had
+established itself. The labourer could become a citizen, the
+experienced citizen could rise to be the ruler of his city, or of a
+confederation of cities, and be the leader of great interests. But the
+landed nobleman after the beginning of the thirteenth century sank
+gradually into a state of isolation; labour was a disgrace to him, his
+acres were cultivated by dependent vassals, and he naturally
+endeavoured as much as possible to separate himself from them. Ever
+heavier became the oppression by which he kept them down; ever higher
+rose the pretensions which he, as lord of the land and soil, raised
+against his own people.
+
+But the oppression of the agriculturist was not the worst consequence
+of the privileged position of the noble. If he found it to his
+advantage to treat his beast of burden, the peasant, with moderation,
+he was so much the more eager to make use of his landed rights in other
+directions. The highroads, the river that ran by his castle, afforded
+him the opportunity of laying hold of the goods of strangers; he levied
+imposts upon goods and travellers; he obtruded his protecting escort
+upon them, and robbed such as considered this escort unnecessary; he
+built a bridge where there was no river, in order to raise a toll; he
+designedly kept the roads in bad condition, because he chose to
+consider that the goods of travelling merchants, though under the
+Emperor's protection, so long as they were in waggons or in vessels
+afloat; if the waggons were upset or vessels ran aground, belonged,
+according to manorial right, to the possessor of the land. Finally he
+became himself a robber, and with his comrades seized whatever he could
+lay hands on; he took the goods to his house, plundered the travellers,
+and kept them prisoners till they could free themselves by ransom.
+Nevertheless there were certain regulated observances accompanying
+these robberies, according to which the conscientious Junker
+distinguished between honourable and dishonourable plunder. But this
+moral code had very little to justify it. In the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries there were very few noblemen's houses which did not
+deserve the name of robber-holds, and still fewer out of which
+plundering attacks were not made.
+
+But this life was most of all detrimental to the nobles themselves;
+their love of plunder, and their pugnacity, made them turn as much
+against their fellow-nobles as against the cities, and through the
+whole of the middle ages led to innumerable feuds. When the feud was
+notified by letter, some days previous to the beginning of hostilities,
+it was considered honourable. Any trifle was sufficient to occasion a
+feud: never-ending boundary disputes, encroachments on the chase, or
+the flogging of a servant, caused discord, even between old comrades
+and friendly neighbours. Then both parties strengthened themselves by
+the assistance of relations and dependents; they enlisted troopers, and
+endeavoured to learn through the medium of spies how they could gain an
+advantage over the property, house, or person of their adversary. The
+opulence of the cities, and the rancour entertained by the nobles
+against the rising independence of the citizens, gave an agreeable
+excitement to their feuds with the latter. Whoever was unable to
+establish a profitable feud of his own, united himself as an assistant
+to another, and thus old comrades were often by the chapter of
+accidents opposed, and then, in the full consciousness of doing their
+duty, would beat and even stab each other.
+
+This marauding life on the highways, in the woods and caverns, and with
+drunken companions, was neither favourable to their family life nor to
+their higher interests, nor was it even fitted to develop warlike
+capacity except among the subordinates. At the best, it only formed
+leaders of small bodies of mounted troopers for foraging expeditions
+and surprises. Sickingen himself, the most skilful specimen of a Junker
+of the sixteenth century, showed in his great and decisive feud, only
+very moderate talents as a general; and the capacities of G�tz, in a
+military point of view, do not stand higher than those of an
+experienced serjeant of hussars. Thus wild, vicious, and detrimental to
+the community, was the conduct of even the quietest of the lower
+nobility. Their being a privileged order whose members considered
+themselves superior to citizen of peasant, who kept themselves apart
+from others, in marriage, business, law, manners, and ceremonials, made
+them for centuries weak, and their existence a misfortune to the
+people; but at the same time it saved them from the ruin consequent
+upon their disorderly life. On retrospect of the act itself, there is
+little difference to be seen between the robber who now waylays the
+wanderer on the lonely heath, and the country nobleman who about the
+year 1500 dragged the Nuremberger merchant from his horse and kept him
+in a dark prison upon bread and water, whilst the noble's wife made
+coats and mantles out of the stolen cloth. But three hundred and fifty
+years ago, the noble robber practised his evil deeds with the feeling,
+that though his actions were perhaps contrary to the decrees of an
+Imperial Diet, yet they were looked upon by the whole nobility of his
+province, indeed by the highest sovereigns of the country, as pleasant
+or at the worst as daring tricks. Certainly if he was caught by the
+city whose citizens he had injured, he might possibly lose his life, as
+does now a murderer on the high-road, but the law of the city was not
+his law, and if he died, his death would probably be revenged by other
+active comrades. However unreasonable were the laws of honour according
+to which he lived, he felt that these same laws were honoured by
+thousands whom he esteemed as the best upon earth. Thus it was
+possible, that amidst the greatest immorality and perversity, many
+manly virtues might be exhibited by individuals; fidelity to their
+word, devotion to their friends, and kind-hearted friendliness even to
+those whom they had robbed and imprisoned.
+
+It was at this period, under the new Emperor Maximilian, that the
+memorable attempt was begun, to give a new constitution to the
+shattered body of the Empire, and with it the possibility of a new
+life. More than a century elapsed and three generations passed away
+before the lesser nobility could accustom themselves to the restraint
+of the new laws; but the princes and cities, however much they might
+quarrel together, had the greatest interest in enforcing obedience to
+these laws. It is however worthy of note, that while losing a portion
+of their wild straightforward resoluteness, they adopted the faults
+more especially belonging to the new epoch. How the change gradually
+took place, we will demonstrate here by a few examples.
+
+A happy accident has preserved to us three autobiographies of
+well-known German nobles of different periods of the 16th century,
+those of Berlichingen, of Sch�rtlin, and of Schweinichen; one of them,
+so long as the German language lasts, will be intimately associated
+with the name of the greatest German poet. These three men, who
+flourished in the beginning, the middle, and the end of this celebrated
+century, were widely different in character and destiny, but all three
+were landed proprietors, and each of them has recorded the events of
+his life, so as to give an instructive insight into the social
+condition of his circle. The best known is G�tz von Berlichingen; his
+memoirs were first published in 1731. The halo, with which three
+hundred years after his death, Goethe's charming poem has invested him,
+will make it difficult for the reader of his biography to separate the
+ideal delineation of the poet from the figure of the historical G�tz.
+And yet this is necessary. For however modestly and lovingly Goethe has
+portrayed his character, he appears quite different in history. When as
+an old man, in a time to which he was a stranger, he wrote his life, he
+loved to dwell on the knightly exploits of his wild youth. It was not
+his line to enter into political questions; if he found himself in a
+crisis he acted according to the advice of his patrons,--the great
+sovereigns, who employed his strong arm and steadfast will for their
+own objects. When the peasant army broke into his territories, he and
+his kinsmen were utterly at a loss what to do, and wrote for advice.
+The answer was suppressed by his mother-in-law and wife, and he was
+left to his own judgment, and had not sufficient adroitness to withdraw
+himself from the thronging insurgents. Had he been like many of his
+cotemporaries, such as Max Stumpf, he would have abandoned the peasants
+in spite of all his vows. But although not really faithful to them,
+true to the letter of his word, he adhered to them till the four weeks
+were passed, for which he had bound himself though he was not in fact
+their leader but their prisoner. After that he lived some years in
+close imprisonment, then for a long time in strict confinement at his
+castle. He was surrounded by a new generation, engaged in vehement
+strife, and he himself was grieving the while that he had acted in the
+peasant struggle as an honourable knight, and that still true to his
+word, he had even now to count the steps which he was allowed to take
+beyond the gates of his castle. After sixteen years of solitary
+seclusion he was in his old age twice called to take part in the
+warfare of a younger race, which neither brought him adventures nor any
+opportunity to acquire fame or booty. When at last he died in peace at
+his Castle of Hornburg, at the age of eighty-two, Luther had been dead
+sixteen years, and the Emperor Charles V. had been interred in a
+cloister four years before; but the long period from the year 1525
+occupies few pages in his autobiography, although it was written in the
+last year of his life. There will be given here fragments from his
+account of the Nuremberg feud.
+
+
+                         G�tz von Berlichingen.
+
+"1512. Now I will not conceal from any one that I was desirous of
+coming to blows with the Nurembergers; I revolved the thing in my mind,
+and thought that I must pick a quarrel with the priest, the Bishop of
+Bamberg, that I might bring the Nurembergers into play. I waylaid
+ninety-five merchants who were under the safe conduct of the Bishop; I
+was so kind that I did not seize any of their goods, except those
+belonging to the Nurembergers; of these there were about thirty. I
+attacked them on the Monday after Our Lord's Ascension-day, about eight
+or nine in the morning, and rode along with them all Tuesday, that
+night, and Wednesday: I had my good friend Hans von Selbitz with me,
+and altogether our party amounted to thirty. But the other travellers
+were numerous; these I drove away in small bodies to whatever places
+they appeared to belong. My comrade, Hans von Selbitz, also an enemy of
+the Bishop of Bamberg, about a fortnight afterwards burnt his castle
+and a city, called, if I remember it rightly, Vilseck, so that this
+affair bore double fruit.
+
+"In order that every one may know why and wherefore I quarrelled with
+and attacked the men of Nuremberg, I will state the causes. Fritz von
+Littwach, a Margrave's page, with whom I had been brought up as a boy,
+who had been my companion-in-arms, and who was very good to me, once
+disappeared mysteriously in the neighbourhood of Onolzbach, being made
+prisoner and carried off, so that for a long time no one knew where he
+was or who had carried him away. Long afterwards, the Margrave caught a
+man, who gave him and the knights accompanying him many true tidings.
+Then it became known where Fritz von Littwach had been taken to; so I
+begged and prayed of my patron and relation Herr Hans von Seckendorf,
+who was the Margrave's majordomo, that he would procure me the
+confession of the traitor. Thereby it was discovered that those in the
+service of the Nurembergers had done the deed, and it might be assumed
+that he had been taken to one of their houses or a public gaol. This
+was one of my grounds of complaint against the Nurembergers.
+
+"Further, I had hired a servant called Georg von Gaislingen, who had
+promised to enter my service, but who had been, when with his Junker
+Eustach von Lichtenstein, stabbed and severely wounded by the men of
+Nuremberg; his Junker had been so likewise, but survived. Although many
+others besides the Nurembergers were hostile to Fritz von Littwach, yet
+I never perceived any one who had 'belled the cat,' as they say, or had
+taken up the matter, except poor truehearted G�tz von Berlichingen:
+these are the grounds of offence that I have everywhere and in every
+way notified and proved against the Nurembergers, every day in which I
+have negotiated with them before the commissaries of his Imperial
+Majesty, and also before the ecclesiastical and temporal princes.[62]
+
+"I will now show further what happened to me and my relations in the
+Nuremberg feud. The States of the Empire ordered out four hundred
+horsemen against me, amongst whom were counts and lords, knights and
+vassals; their challenges are still in existence. I and my brother were
+put repeatedly under the ban of the Empire, and in certain cities the
+priests and monks fulminated fire and flame at me from the pulpit, and
+gave me up to be eaten by the birds of the air, and everything that we
+had was taken from us, so that we could not possess a foot's breadth of
+anything. There was no time for festivities; we were obliged to conceal
+ourselves, and yet I was able to do my enemies some injury, both to
+their possessions and otherwise, so that his Imperial Majesty several
+times interposed and directed his commissaries to negotiate between us,
+to regulate all things and bring about a reconciliation; thereby his
+Imperial Majesty hindered many of my projects, and occasioned me more
+than two hundred thousand gulden' worth of loss, for I intended to have
+carried off both gold and money from the Nurembergers. It was my
+project then, by God's help, to overthrow, beat, and imprison all the
+Nuremberg soldiers, and even the burgomaster himself, who wore a large
+gold chain about his neck, and held a mace in his hand, and also all
+their horsemen and their standard bearer, when they were on their way
+to Hohenkr�hen; I was already prepared for it with horse and foot, so
+that it was quite certain I should have got them into my hands. But
+there were some good lords and friends of whom I took counsel, whether
+I should on the appointed day appear before his Imperial Majesty, or
+put my project in execution. Their true and faithful counsel was, that
+I should honour his Imperial Majesty with a visit that day, which
+counsel I followed to my great and evident loss.
+
+"I knew when the Frankfort fair was to take place, when the
+Nurembergers were to go on foot from W�rzburg to Frankfort by the
+Spessart. I made a reconnaissance and fell upon five or six; amongst
+them there was a merchant whom I attacked for the third time, having in
+half a year, twice made him prisoner and once deprived him of property;
+the others were mere bale packers of Nuremberg: I made semblance as if
+I would cut off their heads and hands, though I was not in earnest; but
+they were obliged to kneel down and lay their heads upon a block; I
+then gave one of them a kick behind, and a box on the ear to the
+others: this was the way I punished them, and then let them go their
+way. The merchant whom I had so frequently waylaid crossed himself and
+said: 'I should sooner have thought that the heavens would fall in than
+that you should have waylaid me to-day, for only some days ago, about a
+hundred of our merchants were standing in the market-place of
+Nuremberg, the talk turned upon you, and I heard that you were then in
+the forests at Hagenschiess waylaying and seizing property.' I myself
+wondered that in so short a time the rumour of my riding hither and
+thither should have reached Nuremberg. Soon after, his Imperial Majesty
+took the matter in hand, and arranged it at W�rzburg."--Thus far G�tz.
+
+
+                       Sch�rtlin von Burtenbach.
+
+Sebastian Sch�rtlin does not exactly belong to the same class. He was
+not of noble origin, and had to thank his military talents for his
+knighthood. He was born in the year 1498, and studied arms under
+Fronsperg. From 1518 to 1557 he was actively employed in almost all the
+military affairs of Germany, in the service of the Emperor, and in that
+of the city of Augsburg. For a time also he served in the French army,
+as on account of his participation in the Smalkaldic war he had been
+obliged to leave Germany. He had more than once commanded large armies,
+and was in great repute as a bold and experienced general; he is an
+interesting contrast to G�tz. The one the noble cavalier, the other the
+citizen Landsknechte leader; G�tz the jovial companion-at-arms,
+Sch�rtlin the practical man of business. The lives of both were full of
+adventures and not free from inexcusable deeds: both died at a great
+age; but G�tz dissipated his time and property in plundering
+expeditions and knightly deeds, while Sch�rtlin helped to decide the
+fate of Germany. G�tz understood so little his own times and his
+interest, that he, the aristocrat, allowed himself to be made use of by
+the democratic peasants as a man of straw; Sch�rtlin understood his own
+time so well, that after the unfortunate Smalkaldic war he withdrew
+into Switzerland a rich man, and a few years afterwards was reinstated
+triumphantly in all his honours. G�tz had all his life a strong
+hankering after the merchant's gold, yet after all his daring
+plundering expeditions had but little in his coffers; Sch�rtlin made
+money in all his campaigns, bought one property after another, and knew
+how to command the highest price for his services. Both gave proof of
+character and of party fidelity; both were honourable soldiers, and the
+knightly consciences of both were according to our judgment too lax.
+G�tz, at whose want of prudence we sometimes smile, though fond of
+booty, was yet in his way painfully conscientious; Sch�rtlin was the
+cautious but agreeable egotist. All the good qualities of decaying
+knighthood were united in the simple soul of the possessor of Hornburg,
+whilst the Herr von Burtenbach was, on the contrary, thoroughly a son
+of the new time; soldier, negotiator, and diplomat. Both were with the
+Imperial army which invaded France in 1544; Sch�rtlin, in the prime of
+life as a general, G�tz as an old gray-headed knight with a small troop
+of vassals: the same year Sch�rtlin was created Imperial Lord High
+Steward and Captain General, and acquired seven thousand gulden. G�tz
+rode, ill and lonely, in the rear of the returning army back to his
+castle. Both have written their lives in a firm soldier's hand; that of
+G�tz is less skilful and well arranged, but his biography will be read
+with greater sympathy than that of Sch�rtlin: G�tz takes pleasure in
+relating his knightly adventures, as good comrades recall their
+recollections of old times over a glass of good wine; Sch�rtlin gives a
+perspicuous statement in chronological order, and favours the reader
+with many dry but instructive details of great political transactions;
+but respecting himself, he prefers giving an account of his gains and
+his vexatious quarrels with his landed neighbours.
+
+These quarrels, nevertheless, however uniform their course, claim the
+greatest interest here; for it is precisely by them that we discover
+how much the proceedings of the landed nobility had changed since the
+beginning of the century. There is the same love of feuds, as in the
+youthful days of the Berlichingen; deeds of violence still continue to
+abound, and numerous duodecimo wars are planned; but the old feeling of
+self-dependence is broken, the spirit of public tranquillity and of
+courts of justice hovers over the disputants, neighbours and kind
+friends interpose, and the lawless seldom defy the Imperial mandate or
+the will of the reigning princes without punishment. Sudden surprises
+and insidious devices take the place of open feuds; instead of the
+cross-bow and sword, adversaries make use of not less destructive
+weapons--calumny, bribery, and intrigues. Satirical songs had for a
+century been paid for and listened to with pleasure, and the travelling
+singers made themselves feared, as they ridiculed a niggardly host in
+their songs at a hundred firesides.
+
+Sch�rtlin relates as follows:--
+
+"Anno 1557. In this year I, Sebastian Sch�rtlin, bought the territorial
+domain of Hohenburg, together with Bissingen[63] and Hohenstein, from a
+Bohemian Lord, Woldemar von Lobkowitz, and from Hans Stein, for
+fifty-two thousand gulden, and took possession thereof in the presence
+of my son and son-in-law, and many other nobles, on St. Matthew's day,
+and received the homage of the vassals in the marketplace. The same
+summer I restored the castle of Hohenstein, and so repaired it as to
+enable one to reside there. Now about Michaelmas day my son went with
+his wife and children, and took up his residence there; and prepared
+rough and hewn stones, lime, and wood, for repairing the castle of
+Bissingen; and in the winter he caused the well to be put in order; for
+that purpose the neighbouring prelates gave me beautiful oak, and with
+their horses and those of the city of Donauw�rth, and by all the
+neighbouring peasants the carting was done.
+
+"The 18th September, 1560, Count Ludwig von Oettingen caused one of my
+husbandmen of Reutmannshof to be carried prisoner to his office at
+Harburg, where he was kept without bite or sup, because he and his sons
+in defending themselves had had a quarrel with certain peasants of
+Oettingen, who had opened his gate and forcibly driven over his land;
+nevertheless no one had been hurt. On the Monday following, the Count,
+with five hundred peasants and fifty horses, fell with a strong hand
+upon my wood, where he had no territorial rights, caused my acorns to
+be shaken down, and without notice or warning carried off by violence
+women, children, and waggons belonging to me. When I arrived the same
+day at Bissingen, and learned all this, I and my two sons, together
+with our cousin Ludwig Sch�rtlin and Hans Rumpolt von Elrichshausen,
+and a force of two-and-thirty horses, entered his domain, and close to
+his castle of Harburg seized a peasant and two of his vassals, and
+carried them prisoners to Bissingen. As his horsemen and archers had at
+their pleasure passed close to Bissingen under my very nose, with great
+parade and firing off of guns, so did I the like at Harburg with the
+above-mentioned horsemen, in order to excite my adversary to a
+skirmish, but no one would come out against us. Yet at last they shot
+at us with blunderbusses. On the Thursday after, the Count rode to
+Stuttgard for a shooting match, and as he knew well that I would not
+give way to him, he spoke evil of me to their princely highnesses the
+Elector and Count Palatine, and other counts and nobles, screening
+himself so as to get me into disgrace and disfavour. Duke Christoph of
+W�rtemberg especially, who had previously been favourably disposed
+towards me, recalled this year the pension of a hundred gulden which he
+had given me. The Count had besides so excited his brother, Count
+Friedrich, against me, that he also attacked me with violence.
+Afterwards both Counts strengthened themselves with horse and foot,
+against whom we brought into the castle of Bissingen a hundred good
+experienced archers, and the concourse of troops on both sides was
+great. The Counts had brought me and mine into ridicule with the
+people, by songs and other poems, proverbs, and writings, and also with
+His Imperial Majesty, the Electors and other princes, counts, and
+lords. They accused me of being an exciter of tumults, and a
+quarrelsome breaker of the public peace, and gave out everywhere that I
+was their tenant, vassal, and dependent, who was doubly bound to them,
+and had forgotten my feudal duty, and such-like lies, in the hope of
+injuring me and mine by their falsehoods. Now whilst I was preparing
+for being attacked, the Count Palatine, Duke Wolfgang, and Duke
+Albrecht of Bavaria, being the nearest princes, interposed; they wrote
+to both parties to keep the peace, and offered with Duke Christoph to
+bring about an amicable negotiation, so that the prisoners on both
+sides should be freed, and all the hired troops dismissed. This I was
+willing to do; but as Count Ludwig von Oettingen--nicknamed Igel--the
+Hedgehog--had begun all the mischief, I demanded that he should do it
+first. But the Count would not give freedom to the people, but placed
+Ratzebauer, who was my vassal alone, and owed neither fealty nor
+allegiance to Oettingen, before the criminal court. To all eternity it
+will not be shown that I and mine, by this purchase, became lawfully
+vassals, for we bought Hohenburg and Bissingen, together with all that
+appertains to them, as freehold properties, and as territorial domains
+which are independent and have criminal jurisdiction. Yet the princes
+would not leave the settlement to us, but gave us manifold admonitions
+to be peaceable; so I dismissed my hired troops, and in this
+transaction I well perceived that Duke Wolfgang, who before was my
+gracious protector, had also fallen away, and had become inimical to
+me. But in spite of all the princely mediations, Count Ludwig one
+evening advanced with many horsemen and some hundred peasants against
+the castle of Bissingen, and began a skirmish, with our horsemen of
+whom some were in the field and others issued forth, in which none
+received injury. As the enemy could do nothing, they returned again, a
+laughing-stock to all.
+
+"I brought all this business before the Supreme Court of Judicature,
+and made complaint against Count Ludwig for his delinquencies against
+me, hoping, as also happened, that I might bring this matter to a just
+conclusion, though the princes showed such a party feeling.[64]
+Meanwhile, Count Igel meanly cast odium upon my name everywhere by
+printed writings and calumnious songs; and in the presence of the Count
+von Mansfeld, erased from the armorial shield of my son Hans Bastian,
+which was upon the Inn, the prefix 'Herr von Bissingen,' which
+nevertheless had not been placed there by my son himself, but by the
+landlord; and Count Friedrich caused his bailiff publicly to proclaim,
+at the consecration of the church at Buchenhofen, that if one of the
+Sch�rtlingers should go thither, every one should beat him.
+
+"In the year 1561, Count Lothair von Oettingen came during Lent to
+Augsburg; he sent many friendly words to me, as that he and his other
+brothers were quite sorry that his brother Count Ludwig had treated me
+in so unseemly a manner. Besides which, he complained to me of his
+brother, that he would not give him his marriage settlement or any
+residence; it therefore became necessary for him to behave hostilely
+towards him, and he begged of me to yield him knightly service.
+Thereupon I thanked him for his sympathy, and regretted that with him
+also things did not go satisfactorily; but I let him know that there
+was a truce between me and his brother, and that I was engaged with him
+before the Supreme Court, that I did not willingly put my foot between
+the hammer and the anvil, but that if otherwise he wanted any knightly
+service, and would inform me of it, I would be his servant, and would
+not refuse to furnish horse and armour.
+
+"It was the custom annually at Bissingen to go on Holy Ascension Day to
+a fair and dance that was held behind the castle, and there was also
+shooting, whereat, this year, my son Hans Bastian gave his company.
+Then Counts Ludwig and Friedrich sent the bailiff of Unter Bissingen,
+together with other horsemen, to the fair, armed with five
+blunderbusses. They placed themselves there, and wished to hold their
+ground; my sons accosted them, asking why they placed themselves thus
+armed. To whom the bailiff answered that his lords had sent him to
+guard this place, and that the supremacy belonged to the Counts of
+Oettingen; which my son gainsaid, as the parents of the Counts had sold
+it, and it belonged to me, and he bid them take themselves off. Upon
+this the bailiff rode away with these words, that he would soon return
+after another fashion; and presently, from the footpath horsemen and
+infantry were to be seen coming; whereupon my son sent certain servants
+and vassals to the castle and the church tower, to await the enemy.
+Suddenly the Count's people, numbering about forty horsemen and three
+hundred foot, came riding and running at full speed, attacked my son,
+and cousin Ludwig, and their sharpshooters and vassals with spears and
+firearms, pressed quite up to the barrier of the fair, and closed the
+gates by overpowering force. On the other hand my son and his followers
+placed themselves on the defensive, fought them at close quarters, and
+firing at them from the castle and towers, shot two of the Count's
+horses and two of his men, one in the body and the other in the leg;
+thus they kept them at bay, and at last put them to flight, but, thank
+God! no misfortune happened to him or his. Afterwards, however, when my
+son had entered the castle with his people, and was eating his supper
+and taking no further heed, Count Lothar, that honourable man, who had
+before said so many friendly things to me, returned about six o'clock,
+and fired thirty shots at the castle with four powerful guns upon
+wheels, and blew away full twelve bricks. About nine o'clock they
+returned to Unter-Bissingen: both Counts strengthened themselves in the
+night, and came again in the morning with many people. As my son and my
+cousin Ludwig had no expectation of another attack, they came over to
+me early in the morning; then the burgomaster and certain councillors
+went out to the enemy and inquired what their intentions were, as there
+was no one in the castle but women and children, they also said that
+the domain was under process and Imperial neutrality. Thereupon the
+bailiff from Harburg made reply that they had come yesterday and again
+to-day with good and friendly intentions, to claim their lord's rights
+of supremacy, but they had been fired at, whereby great damage had been
+done to them. They desired to occupy the _Platz_ to-day, but if they
+were fired at, it would be seen what they should do in return. Upon
+this the people of Bissingen answered that they were poor people, and
+whatever might be done would have to be answered for. Afterwards the
+Count's people again advanced to the _Platz_, two hundred men strong
+with four guns and a drum, and after performing certain dances, and
+drinking, each one plucked a leaf from the linden trees; after this
+defiance, and firing, they withdrew, leaving behind them an ambuscade
+of two thousand men. All this I notified and complained of to his
+Imperial Majesty and the Supreme Court; thereupon a mandate was sent to
+both parties, that we should under pain of disgrace and outlawry not
+molest each other any further, and together with this a summons to
+appear before the court on the 20th of August, which were both
+delivered to the Counts, who answered in a most unseemly way that it
+was all a falsehood. I besides this protested against the injuries done
+to me.
+
+"On the aforesaid grounds, and because there was no end to their
+hostile behaviour, and also as neither law nor right were of any avail,
+I was compelled for the sake of mine honour and for protection against
+the molestation of the two above-mentioned Counts, to send a statement
+to His Imperial Majesty of the Roman Empire, to the Electors and
+Princes, Counts and States of the Empire, and also to the five
+divisions of nobility and the knighthood generally; I also made a like
+statement by word of mouth to the estates of the country communes, and
+fully apprised them and their governor, my worthy lord of Bavaria, of
+whom I was appointed representative, and further the city of Augsburg,
+whose vassal I am, of the whole transaction, and besought of them all,
+counsel, help, or support. These addressed a threatening document to
+the Counts, admonishing them to leave to me and mine, our rights, in
+peace; adding that if they did not, they would not abandon me. At the
+same time they recommended me to employ nothing but law. Now as so many
+calumnious songs and sayings had been circulated concerning me, one to
+whom I had perhaps done some good composed an admirable pasquinade and
+song upon the Count _Igel_ von Harburg, and cut him up well.
+
+"On the third of October, _Igel_, with fifteen hundred men, horse and
+foot, amongst them certain Landsknechte, together with five pieces of
+heavy artillery, advanced against my cousin Ludwig at Oberringingen,
+having sent before him certain nobles to demand of him to give up his
+house. But Ludwig Sch�rtlin had by my commands, two days before,
+supplied himself with three Landsknechte, certain blunderbusses and
+hand-guns of my son's at Bissingen, and with powder and shot. So he
+awaited the storm, as he hoped for a father's reward from me for his
+knightly truth and faith. He himself went out to these nobles, and
+answered them with threatening words; if Count _Igel_ would come in a
+neighbourly and friendly manner, like his brothers, he should partake
+with him of his sour wine; but coming in such a fashion, he could not
+open his house; he had a house for himself, and not for the Count of
+Oettingen, and the Count would find he had to deal with a soldier. Each
+party withdrew behind his defences, but the Count entrenched himself in
+the outer court, and by the fire of his artillery destroyed the
+battlements of the towers, all the windows, roofs, and chimneys, and
+two persons. On the other hand, Ludwig Sch�rtlin defended himself
+valiantly, shot the master-gunner of the Count's artillery and another
+person, and wounded besides many of the soldiers, of whom some
+afterwards died. Thus they fought from seven o'clock in the morning
+till six in the evening. In the night Ludwig caused the Count great
+alarm and disquiet; meanwhile he fortified himself, and again on the
+morrow defended himself valiantly. But when I, Sebastian Sch�rtlin,
+Knight, learned these things, I hastily sent on to Bissingen,
+according to the advice of Count Albrecht of Bavaria, four hundred
+soldiers, amongst them good marksmen from Augsburg, with powder and
+shot, iron cramps, and good material of war. Then I scraped together
+six-and-twenty thousand gulden, and provided helmets, powder and shot,
+also certain waggons and guns from the city of Memmingen; a great troop
+of Landsknechte and horsemen all appointed to be at Burtenbach on the
+fourth, and I myself came there in the evening, after I had put
+everything in motion. That same night, Count Wolf and Count Lothar came
+to me at Burtenbach in a friendly way, and complained to me that their
+brother, Count Ludwig, had also deprived them of their parental
+inheritance, and they entreated me to unite myself with them. So we
+made a written and sealed compact, that both the Counts and their
+brother Friedrich, with his marksmen, and all their power of horse and
+foot, should unite themselves with us, and I was to provide five
+thousand vassals, or other horsemen, and bear the expense of the war.
+But if I should restore the young Counts to their parental inheritance,
+they should pay two thirds, and I one, of the war expenses. We hoped
+Count _Igel_ would tarry before Oberringingen, and in case he conquered
+it, would proceed to Bissingen to besiege my son. But the Count on the
+fourth of October raised the siege, and withdrew himself disgracefully,
+after he had laid waste and plundered my cousin's fore-court and whole
+village, and carried off all the women and children: yet my cousin was
+very near getting hold of one of his guns. When Count _Igel_ perceived
+that we had come to an accommodation with his own brothers--Count
+Friedrich excepted, who would not act either with or against him--he
+fled the country, and went first to the Count Palatine, Duke Wolfgang,
+and afterwards to Duke Christoph von W�rtemberg, to whom he lied, and
+told many monstrous stories; such as, that I, with the assistance of
+His Imperial Majesty, the Kings of Bavaria, and city of Augsburg, and
+the league of Landsberg, had endeavoured to drive him from his people
+and country.
+
+"Meanwhile I strengthened myself, and at the end of two days I
+determined to make an expedition, and cross the Danube with a force of
+seven thousand men, horse and foot. But as it had been perceived by the
+two Princes, the Palatine, and W�rtemberg, that the Count would be
+driven away, and become a guest in their country, they both of them
+advanced, the Duke of W�rtemberg in person, with his horsemen and some
+guns, with the intention of not allowing me to cross the Danube, or to
+give me battle. The Palatine had before urged me extremely not to have
+recourse to arms, as his Princely Grace could not consent to this
+expedition of mine. His Imperial Majesty, and the Colonel of the
+Suabian troops, had also enjoined me to keep the peace, whereto also
+the Bavarian King and the city of Augsburg had repeatedly admonished
+me, and had offered to accommodate these affairs by negotiation. So
+with the loss of four thousand gulden, and in spite of my having been
+plundered, and my cousin endangered, I consented to sheath my sword and
+keep the peace, to come to an amicable agreement, and to fix a meeting
+at Donauw�rth. Negotiations were carried on there for a fortnight, and
+brought to a conclusion by the arbitrators of Bavaria and the
+Palatinate, to the effect that we should on both sides maintain peace,
+and as there was no other hope of peace between us, and no better way
+of settling matters, I should sell the property to the Count. This I
+would not do, as I wished to have no transactions with the Count. Yet
+at last I gave in so far, to the purport of the settled agreement, that
+I would submit myself respectfully to both Princes, and give up the
+supremacy of Hohenburg and Bissingen, on payment of sixty-two thousand
+gulden; but not withdraw from it till I was paid the last penny in
+peace and security."
+
+Thus far Sch�rtlin. In spite of his complaints of loss, it may be
+assumed that the sale, at least in a pecuniary point of view, was
+advantageous to him, but certain it is, that it did not put an end to
+his quarrels with the Count. For years they both continued to make
+complaints before the Supreme Court of Justice and the Emperor; and to
+make violent and mutual attacks on each other. At last the adversaries
+were obliged to shake hands in presence of the Emperor.
+
+
+
+                         Hans Von Schweinichen.
+
+About the end of the sixteenth century the deeds of violence of the
+noble landed proprietors were less barefaced and less frequent. Most of
+them became peaceful Landjunkers, the ablest and poorest sought shelter
+at the numerous courts. When G�tz was young every Landjunker was a
+soldier, for he was a knight, and the traditions of knighthood had
+influence even in great wars. But it was just then that the great
+change was preparing which made the infantry the nucleus of the new
+army; from that time an experienced Landsknecht who had influence over
+his comrades, or a burgher master-gunner, who understood how to direct
+a carronade, was of more value to a general than a dozen undisciplined
+Junkers with their retainers. The power of the princes had for the most
+part, through the new art of war, mastered that of the lower nobility,
+and had made the descendants of the free knights of the Empire,
+chamberlains and attendants of the great dynasties. The new roads to
+fortune were flattery and cringing. The old martial spirit was lost,
+but the craving for excitement remained. The Germans had always been
+hard drinkers; now drunkenness became the most prominent vice in those
+provinces where the vine was not cultivated. Ruined property,
+prodigious debts, and insupportable lawsuits disturbed the few sober
+hours of the day. The sons of the country nobility attended Latin
+schools and the University, but the number of those who pursued a
+regular course of study was small, for even throughout the whole of the
+next century the higher offices of the state which required knowledge
+and skill in business, as well as the most important posts as
+ambassadors, were generally filled by burghers, and whilst the nobility
+seemed only capable of holding the higher court appointments, it was
+generally found necessary to send the son of a shoemaker, or of a
+village pastor, to a foreign court as the representative of sovereign
+dignity, and to make the noble courtier his subordinate travelling
+chamberlain. Thus the country nobility continued to vegetate--sometimes
+struggling against the new times, at others serving obsequiously, till,
+in the Thirty years' war, those of superior character were drawn into
+the violent struggle, and the weaker sank still lower.
+
+Hans von Schweinichen lived during this period of transition, which was
+about the end of the sixteenth century; he was a Silesian nobleman of
+old family, groom of the bedchamber, chamberlain, and factotum of the
+Quixotic Duke Heinrich XI. of Liegnitz. We see the characters of both,
+in juxta-position in two biographies written by Schweinichen. One is
+the account of his own life, 'Life and Adventures of the Silesian
+Knight, Hans von Schweinichen, published by B�sching, three parts,
+1820;' the other an extract from it, with some alterations and
+additions: 'The Life of Duke Heinrich XI., published in Stenzel;
+Script. Rer. Siles. iv.,' both, works of great value as a history of
+the manners of the sixteenth century.
+
+The old royal house of Silesian Piastens produced, with a few
+exceptions, a set of wild, wrong-headed rulers, with great pretensions
+and small powers.
+
+One of the most remarkable among them is Heinrich XI. von Liegnitz, the
+dissolute son of a worthless father. When the latter, Duke Friedrich
+III. was deposed by the Imperial commissioners in the year 1559, and
+put under arrest as a disturber of the community, the government of the
+principality devolved upon his son, then twenty years of age. After ten
+years of misrule he quarrelled with his brother Friedrich and his
+nobility, and in a fit of despotic humour caused the States of the
+duchy to be all imprisoned. Whilst the indignant members were appealing
+against him to the Emperor, he himself undertook an adventurous
+expedition through Germany, making the round of numerous courts and
+towns as a beggar, during which, the lack of money plunged him into one
+embarrassment after another, and led him into every kind of unworthy
+action. Meanwhile he was suspended, and his brother, who was not much
+better, was established as administrator. Heinrich complained
+querulously, undertook a new begging expedition to the German courts,
+and at last made his solicitations to the Emperor at Prague; he was
+still under the severe pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, but
+finally succeeded in obtaining the restoration of his duchy. Now
+followed fresh recklessness and open opposition to the Imperial
+commissary, a new deposition and strict imprisonment at Breslau. From
+this imprisonment he escaped and wandered about in foreign parts as a
+friendless adventurer; he offered his services to Queen Elizabeth of
+England in her war with Philip of Spain; and at last went to Poland to
+fight against Austria. He died suddenly at Cracow in 1586, probably of
+poison.
+
+If in his shatterbrained character there was anything out of the common
+way, it was his being entirely devoid of all one is accustomed to
+consider as honourable and conscientious. He had not the frivolity of
+his courtiers who cast off all reflection, but he entirely lacked all
+moral feeling. Being a prince, this recklessness for a long time
+answered, for with a pleasing facility he slipped out of all
+difficulties, and with a smile or dignified surprise, made his way out
+of positions that would have brought burning blushes to the cheeks of
+most others. It was indifferent to him how he obtained money; when in
+distress he wrote begging letters to all the world, even to the Romish
+Legate, though himself a Protestant; from every court and city which he
+visited, and where according to the custom of those times he was
+entertained, he endeavoured to borrow money. Generally the host, taken
+by surprise, came to terms with Schweinichen, and instead of the loan,
+a small travelling fee was given, with which the Prince was content. He
+had a wife, an insignificant woman, whom he was sometimes compelled to
+take with him; she had also to make shift and contract debts like him,
+and after having forced herself on the hospitality of the rich Bohemian
+nobles, she sought for loans through Schweinichen, and received their
+courtly refusals with princely demeanour. All this would be simply
+contemptible if there was not something original in it, as Duke
+Heinrich, in spite of all, had a strong feeling of the princely dignity
+which he so often disgraced, and was as far as outward appearance was
+concerned a distinguished man. Not only with his Schweinichen, but also
+in the courts of foreign princes, indeed even in social intercourse
+with the Emperor, he was according to the ideas of those times an
+agreeable companion, well skilled in knightly pursuits, always good
+humoured, amused with every joke made by others, quick at repartee, and
+in serious things he appeared really eloquent. In some matters also he
+showed in his actions traces of a manly understanding. However unseemly
+his tyrannical conduct, as Duke, towards his States, however strange
+his open resistance to the Imperial power, and however childish his
+hope of becoming elective King of Poland, yet the foundation of all
+this was the abiding feeling that his noble origin gave him the right
+to aspire to the highest position. He was always engrossed with
+political interests and plans. Nothing ever prospered to him, for he
+was unstable, reckless, and not to be trusted, but his aims were always
+great, either a king's throne or a field-marshal's staff. It was this,
+and not his drunken follies, that cast him down from his throne, and at
+last into the grave. On one other point he was steadfast,--he was a
+Protestant; although he did not hesitate a moment to demand loans of
+his Catholic opponents in the most shameless way; yet when the Papal
+Legate promised him a considerable revenue, and indeed his
+reinstatement in his principality if he would become a Roman Catholic,
+he rejected this proposal with contempt. If he engaged himself as a
+soldier, it was by preference against the Hapsburgers. Such a
+personage, with his freedom from all principle, his complete
+recklessness, his impracticable and at the same time elastic character,
+and his mind filled with the highest projects, appears to us as a
+representative of the dark side which is developed in the Sclavonic
+nature.
+
+Other princes of his race, above all his brother Friedrich, are
+epitomes of the faults of the German character. Mean, egotistic,
+narrow-minded, and suspicious, without decision or energy, Duke
+Friedrich was his perfect opposite.
+
+Another contrast is to be found in his biographer and companion, the
+Junker Hans von Schweinichen. This comical madcap was a thorough German
+Silesian. When a boy, as page of the imprisoned Duke Friedrich, and as
+whipping-boy of the son, he had early made a thorough acquaintance with
+the wild proceedings of the Liegnitzer court, and been initiated into
+all its intrigues. His father, a landed proprietor, had fallen into
+debt in consequence of having once become security for Duke Heinrich.
+Schweinichen was co-heir to a deeply involved property, and up to an
+advanced age was engaged in endless quarrels with the creditors, and
+also with his relations, who had been surety for him, and for whom he
+had been surety. This was indeed, towards the end of the sixteenth
+century, the usual lot of landed proprietors. But besides this, he for
+many years joined in all the mad pranks of his princely master, which
+were for the most part rather of a lax nature, so he came in for no
+unimportant share of these frivolous proceedings. The moral cultivation
+of those times was undoubtedly on the whole much lower than that of
+ours, and he must only be judged by the standard of his own time. He
+was no man of the sword, and his valour was tempered by a strong degree
+of caution. Always in good humour, and at the same time crafty,
+furnished with great powers of persuasion, he contrived to glide like
+an eel through the most difficult situations with the open bearing of
+an honest man, and the most good humoured countenance in the world.
+Even when most dissolute he still clung to the hope of redeeming the
+future, and whilst living as a wild courtier, he considered himself as
+an honourable country nobleman, who had to preserve the good opinion of
+his fellows. He had always a small degree of conscientiousness in
+domestic matters; his was not however a burdensome or strict
+conscience, and demanded only occasional obedience. He valued himself
+not a little, and gradually began to take less pleasure in his master's
+vagaries. The endless changes, the quarrels with Jews and Christians,
+and the anxieties about the daily wine, made this life at last too
+irregular for him; he had always kept a diary of his own life, and
+seldom forgot to note down that on the previous evening he had been
+tipsy: at the end of each year's diary, which sometimes contained
+nothing but a succession of convivial parties and discreditable money
+transactions, he would commend his soul to God, and after that, note
+the price of corn in the last year. All that he had mortgaged for his
+lord we find marked down in his diary with a statement, as precise as
+superfluous, of the real worth in silver. After he had thus pretty
+nearly mortgaged everything, he experienced the heartfelt grief of
+seeing his Duke in the Imperial prison, there he parted with him, not
+without grief, as one parts from the friend of one's youth; but his
+German understanding told him that this parting was fortunate for
+himself. Then followed years in which he drank with his neighbours,
+reconciled himself with Duke Friedrich, to whom he even became
+chamberlain, married, leased a small property, and half as landlord,
+half as courtier, lived respectably like others. Afterwards, when
+another prince ruled the country, Schweinichen became a royal
+councillor, and an active member of the government; he had the gout,
+lost his wife and married another. He still continued to move
+restlessly about the country, adjusted the differences of the noblemen
+and peasants, occasionally got tipsy with good comrades, discharged
+debts, acquired landed property, increased in respectability as in age,
+and died highly esteemed. His escutcheon, emblazoned with eight
+quarterings, shone conspicuously upon the black mourning horses at his
+funeral, as it had done when arranged by himself for his deceased
+father; his effigy was cut in stone upon his tomb in the village
+church, and his banner hung above it, whilst the coffin of his unhappy
+prince was still above ground unconsecrated, walled up in a ruined
+chapel by zealous monks, as that of a heretic.
+
+The following episode is taken from the biography of Schweinichen. It
+occurred in 1578, the time in which Duke Heinrich was suspended in his
+government by Imperial mandate and lived in Hainau on a fixed income
+under the sovereignty of his younger brother. Schweinichen was then
+six-and-twenty; Sch�rtlin had died two months before at the advanced
+age of eighty-two.
+
+"Duke Heinrich found that it was no longer possible to hold a court in
+Hainau, and notified to his Imperial Majesty, that as Duke Friedrich
+would no longer give him an allowance, his Princely Grace would take it
+himself where he could. To this the Emperor gave no answer, but allowed
+things to take their course, as neither party would conform to his
+Imperial Majesty's commands, 'as the one prince broke jugs and the
+other pitchers.' Now his Princely Grace knew that the States had a
+great store of corn at Gr�ditzberg, so the Duke took counsel with me
+how he should capture Gr�ditzberg, and there keep house till he learned
+the Imperial determination. I could by no means approve of this affair
+nor give counsel thereto, for many serious reasons which I laid before
+his Princely Grace's consideration. For his Imperial Majesty would
+interpret it as a breach of the peace, and his Princely Grace would
+thereby make matters worse rather than better. Because I thus discussed
+it with the Duke, his Princely Grace was ill-content with me, and said
+I was good for nothing in such affairs; for he had in his own mind,
+determined to march out and try whether he could not take the fortress;
+so he commanded me to prepare twelve troopers, and to tell the Junkers
+that they were to ride with him, yet not to inform them where his
+Princely Grace was going.
+
+"Although I still continued to entreat of his Princely Grace not to do
+this, as he would bring the whole country upon him, and I therefore
+wished to dissuade him from it, yet I could not prevail with him, but
+he went forth, and commanded me meanwhile not to move from the house at
+Hainau till he called me away. But if his Princely Grace should capture
+the fortress in the night, he would immediately send back a mounted
+messenger, and if I heard a shot I should at once admit him, and obey
+the commands that he brought. Thus my lord marched from Hainau the 18th
+of August, about two o'clock, to Gr�ditzberg. When his Princely Grace
+came into the wood under the hill, he sent up two horsemen as if to
+examine the place; these were to bring information who were there, and
+if they found that my lord could advance, they were to fire a shot. As
+they found only two men there, they fired the shot. His Princely Grace
+speedily rode up, took the castle, and about three o'clock in the
+night, according to agreement, sent a mounted messenger to me. Now when
+I heard the shot before the door at Hainau, I was greatly terrified,
+and said to those who were with me in the room: 'This shot will rouse
+all the country against my lord.' They did not understand this, but
+suspected that my lord had carried off Duke Friedrich. I forthwith
+ordered the gates of the castle to be opened. His Princely Grace had
+sent me notice through Ulrich Rausch, that he had taken possession of
+Gr�ditzberg and did not think of returning; but to send forthwith up to
+that place, his remaining horses, servants, and other things.
+
+"Two days afterwards, two Polish lords, Johann and Georg
+Rasserschafsky, announced themselves as visitors to his Princely Grace
+at Hainau, of which I speedily informed the Duke, and inquired what I
+should do. Thereupon his Princely Grace replied, that I should receive
+and entertain them a few days at Hainau; and he sent me six dollars for
+the charges. As the Polish lords had sixteen horsemen with them, the
+whole six dollars went for wine at the first sitting; so I had to
+consider how with care and by borrowing I might provide for those lords
+who were to abide there for a fortnight. Thereupon my lord wrote to me
+to bring them to Gr�ditzberg, and to accompany them myself. There the
+Duke had already established a guard of twenty men, armed with long
+carabines, having become a warrior; and at the reception of the two
+lords, caused six trumpets and kettledrums to be sounded. As soon as I
+came up to the castle, his Princely Grace charged me with the care of
+the household.
+
+"His Princely Grace wished to have the house supplied with provisions,
+and commanded me to get in a store of four-and-twenty malters of flour,
+which I did; and I also bought at his desire, eight malters of salt.
+The enormous piles of preserved mushrooms and bilberries is not to be
+told; great vats full, whereby much money was wasted. Twelve pigs also
+were fattened at the castle upon corn alone, and the Duke himself was
+wont to feed them. Everything was prepared for the siege of the castle.
+Now there were carriers at Modelsdorf who had to convey lead from
+Breslau to Leipzig; when therefore his Princely Grace learnt this, he
+commanded that two carriers should bring this lead up to the castle,
+the value of which amounted to more than two hundred and fifty thalers.
+It was conveyed into the house and remained lying there. The merchants
+hearing this, complained to the Bishop, who called upon my lord to
+deliver up the lead forthwith; this, however, his Princely Grace would
+not do, but offered some day to pay for the lead from his allowance. In
+the end it remained unpaid; and the carriers got into great trouble on
+this account. Then Bishop Martin[65] sent commissaries to Gr�ditzberg;
+and his Princely Grace kept them two days with him and gave them good
+entertainment, but allowed them to depart again with the affair
+unsettled.
+
+"Meanwhile Frau von Herrnsdorf invited me to a wedding; without doubt
+to please her daughter, to whom I was not averse, and whom I was
+courting. I therefore asked his Princely Grace for leave of absence,
+and also to lend me three horses, which he did most willingly; and as
+his servants were just then being newly dressed in gray cloth, I
+requested that those who were to accompany me might be clothed first. I
+then had my sword and dagger sharpened, and adorned myself as I best
+could. Thus I rode with three horsemen to Herrnsdorf, where the young
+lady received me with great pleasure. I helped to fetch the bride to
+Herrnsdorf, making my appearance with my trumpeter. We continued
+together after the wedding till the Saturday, full of jollity; and
+although I was in the mean time recalled by the Duke, I remained late,
+that it might not be perceived that I had the Duke's horsemen. On
+Saturday, however, I rode forth again, and when I arrived at
+Gr�ditzberg, I desired the trumpeter to blow; but when I dismounted at
+the castle, a good friend of mine came and informed me that his
+Princely Grace was very angry with me, and had sworn that he would put
+me in arrest in one of the rooms in the courtyard: I did not, however,
+trouble myself about it, but entered the castle so that my lord might
+see me from the corridor. Now his Princely Grace had some Polish guests
+with him; but there was no provision either in kitchen or cellar; so
+for more than an hour after the trumpeter had summoned to table, there
+was nothing served up. His Princely Grace sent to me to desire that I
+would cause dinner to be served up, and would be in attendance. In
+answer, I let the Duke know that I had learned his Princely Grace was
+angry with me; I had therefore hesitated to appear before him, but when
+his Princely Grace should hear the cause of my prolonged absence he
+would be well content. But the Duke returned for answer, that I must be
+in attendance; that he already knew the cause of my prolonged absence,
+that I loved the maiden better than him. When therefore, at table, I
+presented the water to his Princely Grace, he looked very sour, but I
+pretended not to perceive it. His Princely Grace began a carouse, but
+when it was at its highest, the wine failed. Thereupon his Princely
+Grace sent to inform me that there was no more wine, and that I had
+brought him to shame by not returning at the right time. I returned for
+answer to the Duke that it was no fault of mine; and why had not his
+Princely Grace sent for wine in proper time? Then his Princely Grace
+informed me he had no money, but that I was to send quickly for some
+wine.
+
+"I desired then to be informed what I was to do, adding that if he was
+angry with me, he should tell me so himself. I had meanwhile a little
+cask of wine, containing about six firkins, lying concealed in the
+cellar. When a glass of this wine was poured out for the Duke, he cried
+out, 'My steward, I drink to you on your return!' called me to him, and
+said, 'I have been very angry with you, but it is now past; see to it
+that you get me provisions, and above all, wine.' I answered, 'Your
+Princely Grace may now be merry; there will be no lack of wine; other
+things also shall not be wanting; but your Princely Grace had no cause
+to look so askance at me, for I had been with a fair lady whom you
+would gladly have seen.' Whereupon the Duke said, 'I like you, and am
+well pleased with you; I was sure that you would have something in
+store.' So we became again master and servant, and all ungraciousness
+was at an end; and thus after my gaieties I was obliged to return to my
+cares, and consider how I could provide for the kitchen and cellar,
+which, after my pleasuring, was very distasteful to me. I learnt from
+various sources that endeavours had been made to blacken my character
+with the Duke, by representing me as a traitor, and as having dealings
+with Duke Friedrich, with whom I had made so long a stay; which was not
+the case, as I was too honourable to do the like. But it is usual to
+find many backbiters at princes' courts. I was desirous to learn from
+the Duke who my detractor was; but his Princely Grace would not tell
+me, and answered that he had not believed it.
+
+"As the supply of corn and other things were nearly at an end, and
+there was nothing more in store, I was obliged to seek after
+provisions. Now Heinrich Schweinichen von Thomaswaldau had a number of
+old sheep which no one else would buy, and I could not buy any other
+cattle for want of money, as we had none; so his Grace bade me to
+traffic with my cousin for the old sheep, and I made a bargain with him
+to pay twenty silver groschen apiece for the sheep, and there were
+three hundred and twenty-five of them. But when we had agreed upon the
+bargain, he would not deliver them to me without receiving either money
+or security, and he would not take me as surety; so I had to return to
+my lord to inform him of this, and he was sore displeased that no one
+would trust him. He wrote a letter, therefore, with his own hands to
+Schweinichen, desiring that he would deliver the sheep according to the
+agreement. But it could not be arranged, and Schweinichen excused
+himself. This irritated the Duke still more; and as we had nothing but
+mushrooms and bilberries to eat, his Princely Grace desired me to think
+of some means of giving security. As I had before asked for a loan of
+three hundred thalers for his Princely Grace from the council at
+L�wenberg, and had received fair promises, I went again to the
+councillors, and begged of them to settle the affair; but they refused.
+I persevered, and at last they consented to be security for the sheep,
+provided I were responsible for any damage or loss. This, however, I
+objected to, but begged that they would trust his Princely Grace, for
+they should not be the worse for it. So I persuaded the council to
+become security with their seal to the old higgler for half a year, and
+we obtained provision again from the old sheep. These were frequently
+dressed in eight different ways, also the mushrooms in three different
+ways, and the bilberries in two ways. With this his Princely Grace and
+we all were obliged to be content, and to drink bad Goldberger beer.
+Meanwhile autumn drew on, and we were able to obtain birds. But when I
+went to set gins in the wood, I had great difficulty with the retinue,
+who all wished to scour the wood and get birds for themselves. Although
+his Princely Grace himself forbad it, no one would desist therefrom, so
+that I was obliged to put the Junkers under arrest in the room in the
+courtyard, and the common people in the tower. I became thereby very
+unpopular, yet it could not be helped. His Princely Grace went every
+morning himself to catch birds, and that was also my pastime. Otherwise
+the time passed very tediously; although I had not much rest, as I had
+to procure provisions, which was a source of great trouble to me.
+
+"Now his Princely Grace perceiving that it was difficult for him to
+maintain himself at the Gr�ditzberg, and that no allowance could be
+obtained from Duke Friedrich, hearing likewise that the Arnsdorf pond
+had been fished at an earlier period than heretofore, and that when
+drawn, a certain quantity of carp had been caught and placed in
+reservoirs, he ordered me to provide some waggons, and rode himself
+with fifteen horsemen to Arnsdorf. As it was almost evening, and there
+was no one near the reservoir but the pond watchman, his Princely Grace
+had a large number of the fish taken out, as many as the five waggons
+could carry, and returned therewith to Gr�ditzberg.
+
+"Whilst the Duke was having the waggons loaded with fish, the alarm was
+given at Liegnitz; thereupon the Burgrave Kessel and Hans Tschammer,
+the master of the horse, galloped off with five horsemen, to prevent
+any fish from being carried away; but they were too late, for the
+greater part of the waggons laden with fish were gone, besides which,
+they perceived that his Princely Grace was there in person, and
+stronger than themselves. His Princely Grace did not give them a kind
+greeting, but gave Kessel a blow on the back, saying, that if he
+allowed a word to pass his lips that was not seemly, he should be his
+prisoner, and would find that the Duke would treat him as a rebel. So
+these five were obliged to let the matter pass, and thank God that they
+had got so well out of it.
+
+"On the following day the pond was again to be drawn for fish, and Duke
+Friedrich expected that Duke Heinrich would return and seize more of
+them; so he proceeded thither himself, taking with him five-and-twenty
+horsemen, and likewise fifty arquebusiers, who were concealed among the
+bushes under the bank. His Princely Grace however remained at home, but
+sent me and a foreigner, Hans Fuchs, a captain of Landsknechts,
+together with six horsemen to Arnsdorf, with directions to greet Duke
+Friedrich kindly, and say that my lord had been compelled by necessity
+to carry off the fish on the preceding day, and he begged he would not
+take it amiss; that Duke Friedrich was to consider it as the provision
+due to him, and his Princely Grace entreated him in a friendly way to
+send him yet another supply of fish for provision.
+
+"But Duke Friedrich looked black, knit his brows, and answered thus:
+'As for this greeting of his Princely Grace, if he sent it with a true
+brother's heart, he thanked him for it; but two days ago the fish had
+been carried off from the reservoir, which greatly annoyed him, and if
+he had come there in person no good would have arisen from it.' He was
+quite unfriendly, and said that no more fish should be sent, and if an
+attempt should be made to take them away by force, he would guard them.
+Thus I departed from Duke Friedrich, and asked Kessel for a dish of
+fish, as we wished to breakfast at Perschdorf, whereupon Duke Friedrich
+ordered them to give me what I wanted.
+
+"Now when I came with such an answer to my lord, he was sore
+displeased, and made all kinds of projects, and wished to take the fish
+by force. Meanwhile there came intelligence that Duke Friedrich was
+again going to fish the next day, and would have a guard with him. Then
+my lord said to me: 'Hans, we'll have some sport; reckon how many
+horsemen we can muster; we will go and frighten Duke Friedrich a little
+at the Arnsdorf pond.' But I would not consent to this, and objected to
+any such plan, as their hearts would have been much embittered thereby
+towards each other. Duke Friedrich had also many Poles, servants of the
+nobility, with him, and they were powerful. His Princely Grace however
+would not give it up, but promised me he would not speak an angry word
+to any one, and I should see how he would drive away Duke Friedrich and
+his followers; thereupon I made a reckoning, and found that we could
+bring together a force of nineteen horsemen, three trumpeters, six
+arquebusiers, and two lackeys, wherewith Duke Heinrich was well
+content, and commanded me to take with us one waggon with fish barrels,
+as Duke Friedrich would not be so uncourteous as to refuse to present
+us with some fish.
+
+"Early in the morning his Princely Grace left his castle for
+Perschdorf. There he received information that Duke Friedrich had gone
+in a little boat on the pond. On hearing this, his Princely Grace said
+to me: 'Hans, now is the time, advance.' Now Duke Friedrich had placed
+a sentinel at the end of the dam, who as soon as he observed anything,
+was to fire a shot as a signal. As soon therefore as this shot was
+fired by the Duke's sentinel, I caused one of the trumpeters to blow,
+and then another, and afterwards all three together. Then, as I was
+afterwards told, a great tumult arose, and Duke Friedrich and his
+attendants called out for their armour, and Duke Friedrich was in so
+great terror on the pond, that they could hardly prevent his fainting.
+At last he sprang out of the boat and waded in the mud, so that he lost
+his breath. When the arquebusiers whom Duke Friedrich had with him,
+heard the trumpeters, they ran among the bushes on the meadow; so that
+there was no one to be seen when he called for his guard, and some
+shots that fell on the lappets of Duke Friedrich's coat, and on his
+steed, were the only answer, and he made off to Liegnitz with all
+speed. As soon as the others saw that their lord was riding away, they
+followed his example, and only nine horsemen remained by the
+reservoirs; among them Leuthold von der Saale, Balthasar Rostitz, and
+Muschelwitz. So when his Princely Grace approached them, they took off
+their hats, and my lord greeted them graciously, and inquired where
+their master was; to which they replied that they did not know.
+Whereupon my lord replied, that he had not come as an enemy, but as a
+brother, and added: 'I have brought with me a fish-barrel, hoping that
+my brother would hold friendly intercourse with me, and not be
+uncourteous, but make me a present of a dish of fish. And as I am
+expecting foreign guests, I will take twenty large pike, sixty of round
+pike, and a score of large carp.' Those who were to have fished
+withdrew, and von Saale protested that his Princely Grace should not
+take away the fish. My lord, however, did not enter into parley about
+it, but compelled the peasants who had run away to descend to the
+reservoir and catch the fish. And his Princely Grace packed the fish
+himself in the barrel, and commanded the Junkers to tell Duke Friedrich
+that he should not have fled from him and his troopers, as he had come
+with friendly intentions; but it was clear that a bad conscience could
+not conceal itself. Also that Duke Friedrich might come the next
+morning and help him eat the fish; and he added: 'But if your Lord will
+not come, do so yourselves if you are honest men, and be not afraid as
+you have been to-day.' After this his Princely Grace said to me: 'Hans,
+did I not tell you beforehand that I would drive away my brother? Are
+you content? I will in like manner drive him from Liegnitz, you will
+see: it will not take long.' Thus we returned to Gr�ditzberg in good
+spirits."
+
+Thus far Schweinichen. The reader will have no difficulty in
+discovering that no one thought of attacking the Duke in his castle.
+When winter drew on he himself became weary of this caprice, and
+determined to make another expedition through Germany, which
+Schweinichen very wisely opposed, but for which he afterwards exerted
+his wits to procure money.
+
+In the year 1675, a century after Duke Heinrich and his faithful Hans
+had undertaken their first wild expedition through Germany, there
+appeared in Silesia on the great heath of Kolzenau, which since the war
+had lain waste and desolate, a strange and monstrous animal, such as in
+the grim time of yore had rent the Silesian thickets with its horns,
+when the first Piastens ranged through the woods with the hunting-spear
+and arrow. And above in the royal castle at Liegnitz, the last Piasten
+Duke, the young Georg Friedrich celebrated his birthday with his
+nobles. As the rare venison was placed on his table, the joyful sounds
+of the trumpet rang through the city, and the cannons thundered as
+often as the health of the new Duke was drunk. But thoughtful people in
+the country, trembled on account of the wild monster that had come into
+their woods and to their young lord, as an ill omen from the olden
+time; and they shook their heads and prophesied misfortune. The last
+elk that was slain in Silesia was for the last joyous repast of the
+last of the Piasten. A few days after he died; and when his coffin was
+borne in the evening through the streets of Liegnitz, pitch wreaths
+were burnt at every corner, and hundreds of boys dressed in black,
+carried white wax tapers before their deceased lord. The German
+Silesians grieved over the fall of the great Sclavonic dynasty, which
+had once led their fathers into this land, and had first shown through
+them to the world, that the union of men in a free community is more
+beneficial to a country, than despotic government over slaves. But this
+truth had afforded no safeguard for the lives of the lords of this
+country.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+                  THE GERMAN IDEAS OF THE DEVIL IN THE
+                           SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+The phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and
+develop themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence
+it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had more weight
+than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development
+which we there see, and to it is due the last place in the
+characteristic features of the period of the Reformation.
+
+In the most ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention of the
+devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan was
+considered by the Jews as the great tempter of mankind, and as having
+the power to enter into men and animals, out of which he could be
+driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated the power
+of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil.
+When the Christian faith spread over the western empire, the Greek and
+Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the
+superstition of many who yet clung to the later worship of Rome, made
+the devil the centre of their mythology.
+
+But the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person
+and power of the devil, were still more changed when the German tribes
+overthrew the government of the Roman empire and adopted Christianity.
+In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their
+own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology.
+It is true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was
+obviously contrary to the new faith was at last set aside by the zeal
+of the priests, by force, and by pious artifices; but innumerable
+familiar shapes and figures, customs and ideas, were kept alive, nay,
+they not only were kept alive, but they entwined themselves in a
+peculiar manner with Christianity. As Christian churches were erected
+on the very spots where the heathen worship had been held, and as the
+figure of the crucified Saviour, or the name of an apostle was attached
+to sacred places like Donar's oak; thus the Christian saints and their
+traditions took the place of the old gods. The people transferred their
+recollections of their ancient heathen deities to the saints and
+apostles of the Church, and even to Christ himself, and as there was a
+realm in their mythology which was ruled by the mysterious powers of
+darkness, this was assigned to the devil. The name devil, derived from
+the Greek (diabolos), was changed into Fol, from the northern god
+Voland, his ravens and the raging nightly host were transferred to him
+from Wuotan, his hammer from Donar; but his black colour, his wolves or
+goat's form, his grandmother, the chains wherewith he was bound, and
+many other traditions, he inherited from the evil powers of heathendom
+which had ever been inimical to the benevolent ruling gods. These
+powerful demons, amongst whom was the dark god of death, belonged
+according to the heathen mythology to the primeval race of giants,
+which as long as the world lasted were to wage a deadly struggle with
+the powers of light. They formed a dark realm of shapeless primordial
+powers, where the deepest science of magic was cultivated. To them
+belonged the sea-serpent, which coiled round the earth in mighty
+circles, lay at the bottom of the ocean, the giant wolves which lay
+fettered in the interior of the earth or pursued the sun and moon, by
+which, at the last day, they were to be destroyed; the ice demons which
+from the north sent over the land snow-storms and devastating floods;
+and worse than all, the fiendish Helia, goddess of the dead. Besides
+the worship of the _Aseng�tter_, there was in heathen Germany a gloomy
+service for these demons, and we learn from early Christian witnesses
+that even before the introduction of Christianity, the priestesses and
+sorcerers of these dark deities were feared and hated. They were able
+by their incantations to the goddess of death, to bring storms upon the
+corn-fields and to destroy the cattle, and it was probably they who
+were supposed to make the bodies and weapons of warriors invulnerable.
+They carried on this worship by night, and sacrificed mysterious
+animals to the goddess of death and to the race of giants. It was these
+priestesses more especially--so at least we may conclude--who, as
+_Hazusen_ or _Hegissen_, or _Hexen_ (witches), were handed down by
+tradition to a late period in the middle ages.
+
+The remembrance of these heathen beings became mixed with a wild chaos
+of foreign superstitions, which had been brought from all the nations
+of antiquity into heathen Rome, that great nursery of every
+superstition, and from that ancient world had penetrated into
+Christianity. The _Strigen_ and _Lamien_, evil spirits of ancient Rome,
+which like vampires consumed the inward life of men, sorceresses who
+flew through the air, and assembled nightly to celebrate disgraceful
+orgies, were also handed down to the Germans, who mingled them with
+similar conceptions, having perhaps a like origin. It is not always
+possible to discover which of these notions were originally German or
+which were derived from other nations.
+
+The western Church in the beginning of the middle ages kept itself pure
+from this chaos of gloomy conceptions; it condemned them as devilish,
+but punished them on the whole with mildness and humanity, when they
+did not lead to social crimes. But when the Church itself was frozen
+into the rigidity of a hierarchical system, when strong hearts were
+driven into heresy by the worldly claims of the papacy, and the people
+became degraded under the nomination of begging monks, these
+superstitions gradually produced in the Church a narrow-minded system.
+Whatever was considered to be connected with the devil was put an end
+to by bloody persecution. After the thirteenth century, about the
+period when great masses of the people poured into the Sclave countries
+from the interior of Germany, fanatical monks disseminated the odious
+notion that the devil, as ruler of the witches, held intercourse with
+them at nightly meetings, and that there was a formal ritual for the
+worship of Satan, by accursed men and women, who had abjured the
+Christian faith; and for this a countless number of suspected persons,
+in France, in the first instance, were punished with torture and the
+stake, by delegated inquisitors. In Germany itself, these persecutions
+of the devil's associates first became prevalent after the funeral pile
+of Huss. The more vehement the opposition of reason to these
+persecutions, the more violent became the fury of the Church. After the
+fatal bull of Innocent VIII., from the year 1484, the burning of
+witches in masses began to a great extent in Germany, and continued,
+with some interruptions, till late in the eighteenth century. Whoever
+owned to being a witch was considered for ever doomed to hell, and the
+Church hardly made an effort to convert them.
+
+According to popular belief, the connection of man with the devil was
+of three kinds. Either they renounced the worship of God for that of
+the devil, swearing allegiance to him, and doing him homage, like the
+witches and their associates; or they were possessed by him, a belief
+derived by the Germans from Holy Scripture; or men might conclude a
+compact with the devil binding both parties under mutual obligations.
+In the latter case men signed away their souls in a deed written with
+their own blood, and in return the devil was to grant to them the
+fulfilment of all their wishes upon earth, success, money, and
+invulnerability. Although the oldest example known is that of the Roman
+Theophilus--a tradition of the sixth century--and although the written
+compact originated at a time when the Roman forms of law had been
+introduced among the western nations, yet it appears that the source of
+this tradition concerning the devil was German. These transactions were
+based upon a deep feeling of mutual moral obligation, and on a
+foolhardy feeling, which liked to rest the decision of the whole of the
+future upon the deed of a moment. There is much similarity between the
+German who in gambling stakes his freedom on the throw of the dice, and
+he who vows his soul to the devil. These alliances were not looked upon
+by the old Church with mortal hatred; these wicked and foolhardy
+beings, like Theophilus himself, might be saved by the intercession of
+the saints, and the devil compelled to give up his rights. It is also
+peculiar to German traditions, that the devil endeavours to fulfil
+zealously and honestly his part of the compact, the deceiver is man.
+
+Through these additions the popular mind invested the devil with new
+terrors, yet it strove at the same time to think of him in a more
+agreeable point of view. The race of giants of the ancient mythology
+had had two aspects for the people; they took pleasure in seeing
+something harmless, and indeed burlesque about them, besides the
+terrors of their demoniacal nature. On one hand, the deformity of their
+great bodies, their strength, and clumsy wit, and on the other, their
+supposed knowledge of magic and technical dexterity, had already been
+in heathen times an inexhaustible source of comic stories, by which the
+people poetically explained to themselves, among other things, all
+striking phenomena of nature. But besides the giants there was in the
+heathen times a numerous host, of smaller spirits in nature, who
+hovered around men. The hairy _Schrate_ dwelt in the woods, the _Nix_
+sang on the banks of the brooks, a numerous race of dwarfs hammered in
+the mountains, elves and _Idisien_, the German fairies, played on the
+dew in the meadows, and the fighting maidens of Wuotan flew through the
+air in the form of swans or on magic horses. In house and courtyard, in
+barn, cow-house, and dairy, dwelt household spirits of various kinds,
+sprites sat under the hearth, hobgoblins glided in the form of tom-cats
+over the rafters, brown and gray mannikins, and sometimes white ladies
+surrounded the family, as guardian spirits of their domestic comfort
+and welfare. The repose of sleepers was disturbed by nightmares, the
+rye-mume sat in the ears of corn, and the little wood fairy on the
+felled timber, the will-o'-the-wisp in the marsh fluttered about
+restlessly, and endeavoured to entice men out of the right track. These
+lesser spirits maintained their place in Christendom, but became timid
+and averse to men. It may be observed in the old traditions, with what
+sorrow the new convert regarded the disturbance of his relations with
+his old friends; in some, the little sprites lamented that they also
+could not become blessed; in others, they are disturbed by the sound of
+a clock, and depart secretly out of the country. Many of their dark and
+malicious traits of character were also transferred to the devil,
+especially those of the giants. He became an architect like them, he
+was obliged to carry great masses of rock through the air, which he
+lost on his journey, or cast down in anger; he had to raise prodigious
+walls, and build bridges, castles, mills, and even churches. And in
+these works, he was almost always the person cheated, as were the
+giants in the olden traditions; being deprived of the reward for which
+he had worked. He had to guard treasures beneath the earth, in the form
+of a wolf or dog with fiery eyes, or to fly as a fiery dragon, and
+throw treasures down the chimney on to the hearth. He was obliged to
+appear in person at popular festivals, and act the part of the buffoon
+and much belaboured opponent of the heavenly powers, in a half
+ludicrous, half terrific dress. Among the Germans he had his disguises;
+the horns, the goats' or horses' foot, the halting gait, the tail, and
+the black colour. It is possible that the details of his costume may be
+taken from recollections of the ancient satyrs, but similar strange
+animal figures are to be found in the festive processions of German
+heathendom, and in the rising cities of the middle ages, the dress of
+the chimney sweeper was an inestimable help.
+
+Such were the notions which prevailed about the devil in Germany for
+about a thousand years. They were influenced by all the great
+excitements and changes of the popular mind. In times of great
+religious zeal, they bore a wild misanthropic aspect; but in days when
+the people were engrossed with worldly pleasures, they assumed a more
+comic and harmless form.
+
+Then came Luther and the Reformation. Together with every one else in
+Germany, the devil also was brought into the great struggle of the
+century. The Roman Catholics looked upon him as the head of the whole
+body of heretics; while the Protestants took the popular view of him as
+a figure standing with a bellows behind the pope and cardinals,
+inflating them with attacks on the reformed doctrines. He was mixed up
+in all theological and political transactions; he sat on Tetzel's box
+of indulgences, visited Luther at the Wartburg, made intrigues between
+the Emperor and Pope, humbled the Protestants by the Smalkaldic war,
+and the Roman Catholic party by the apostacy of the Elector Maurice;
+and in all the concerns, small and great, of the people he appeared,
+and was busy everywhere.
+
+This enlargement in his powers of action would probably have taken
+place at any period of zealous faith; but in the person and teaching of
+the great character who gave to the whole of the sixteenth century its
+impress and colour, there was something peculiar by which even the
+reverse of all that was holy was remoulded.
+
+First of all, Luther was the son of a German peasant. In the
+recollections of his childhood, as revived by him amid the circle of
+his companions at Wittenberg, the devil wore a very old-fashioned, nay,
+heathenish, aspect; he brought devastating storms, while the angels
+brought the good winds, as once upon a time the gigantic eagles did
+from the furthest corners of the world by the stroke of their
+wings;[66]  he sat as a water-god under the bridges, drawing maidens
+down into the water, whom he made his wives; he served in the cloister
+as household spirit; blew the fire as a goblin; as a dwarf laid his
+changelings in the cradles; as a nightmare deluded the sleepers into
+ascending the roof of the house, and bustled about the rooms as a
+hobgoblin. By this last species of activity he sometimes disturbed
+Luther. It is true that the ink-spot at the Wartburg is not
+sufficiently verified, but Luther could tell of a disagreeable noise
+which the devil had made there nightly with a sack of hazel nuts. In
+the monastery of Wittenberg also, where Luther was studying Rempter one
+night, the devil made such a noise, for so long a time in the crypt of
+the church underneath him, that he at last snatched up his book and
+went to bed. Afterwards he was provoked with himself for not having
+defied the Jackpudding.
+
+Thus deeply was Luther imbued with the popular superstition. But to
+this kind of devilry he did not attach much importance; the bad spirits
+who employed themselves after this fashion, he very properly called
+poor devils. His opinion was that devils were countless. "They are not
+all," he says, "insignificant devils, but country devils and princes'
+devils, who for a long period, above five thousand years, have been
+busy, tempting men, and are thoroughly clever and cunning. We have
+great devils who are _doctores theologi�_; then the Turks and papists
+have bad insignificant devils who are not theological but juridical."
+From them he thought came everything bad upon earth, as for instance
+illnesses; he had a strong suspicion that the dizziness he had long
+suffered from was not natural; also conflagrations:--"Wherever a fire
+breaks out a little devil sits behind blowing the flame;" likewise
+famine and war:--"If God did not send us the holy and dear angels as
+guards and arquebusiers, who encamp round us like a bulwark, it would
+soon be over with us." Expert as Luther was in describing his own
+characteristics, he was equally so with the devil; he declared that he
+was haughty, and could not bear to be treated contemptuously. Therefore
+he advised that he should be driven away by scorn, and jeering
+questions. He thought, also, that Satan was a melancholy spirit, and
+could not endure gay music.[67]
+
+But it was not in vain that Luther had spiritualized the Church
+teaching; it was owing to him that the struggle for eternal salvation
+began in the souls of individuals, and that the destiny of man was made
+to depend on his own conscience and faith in God. Through this, Satan's
+sphere of activity was changed, and the strife of men with the evil
+spirit became more especially an inward one. It was not the outward
+appearance and clatter of the devil that was peculiarly terrible, but
+his whisperings to the souls of men. The preservatives against this
+danger were, constant inward repentance, frequent prayer, and an
+enduring and loving remembrance of God. Luther's temptations have
+already been mentioned; he spoke openly and honestly to his
+cotemporaries concerning them, and the race of men who listened with
+faith to his discourse were infected by him; inward temptations were
+commonly recognized by the Protestants, and on this point also he
+became the comforter and confidant of many.
+
+The difference between the old and new Church was first shown in the
+conception of the free contract which man concluded with hell. In the
+old Church it had been made comparatively easy to believers to escape
+from the devil. By certain pious outward observances the Christian
+could in the worst case, even when deeply engaged with Satan, free
+himself from him in the last hour. Therefore, in the contracts made
+between men and the devil before the Reformation, the latter was almost
+always the person defrauded; this business-like and immoral method of
+reaching the kingdom of heaven excited the deepest indignation of
+Luther. He strongly proclaimed the doctrine of St. Augustine; that man
+being corrupt through original sin is a prey to the devil, and can only
+be put in the way of salvation by continual inward repentance, and that
+therefore unrepentant sinners cannot be saved from hell. The result of
+this was, that after the sixteenth century, those men who had concluded
+a compact with hell were generally supposed to be carried off by the
+devil. The sorrowful end of the traditional Dr. Faust is well known; he
+was not Satan's only prey. It was generally believed, and published in
+hundreds of tracts, that men of profligate character, reckless
+drunkards, gamblers, swearers, or enemies against whom a bitter hatred
+was entertained, were carried off into the nether regions. And the hand
+of the devil was thought to be distinctly perceptible in the twisted
+neck of the dying sinner. Luther himself had once to interfere in such
+a case. A young student at Wittenberg, an ill-disposed youth, had
+invoked the devil, and had offered himself up to him. Luther took the
+affair in hand with great earnestness and dignity; he first crushed the
+culprit by severe admonitions, then he knelt down with him in the
+church, laid his hands on him, prayed with fervour, and caused the
+youth finally to repeat after him a penitent confession; thus was the
+business settled. Even historical personages did not escape the
+melancholy fate of being possessed by the devil. The belief in this
+continued beyond the Thirty years' war.
+
+In the last century the compact which the Duke of Luxemburg, the
+opponent of Prince William of Orange, had made with the devil, was
+imparted to the public with all kinds of details and comments; and it
+is characteristic of that fastidious period, that the Duke imposed upon
+the devil, among other conditions, that he should only appear to him
+under an agreeable, not in a terrible form.[68] Following the examples
+given in the Bible, the new Church treated more kindly those that were
+possessed. Luther and his followers assumed that these, through sins
+which might be forgiven, and sometimes through small errors, had fallen
+into the power of the devil, and that it was a duty and a merit in
+believers to drive out the evil spirit by prayers and adjurations. It
+was not all lunatics or epileptic persons who were considered to be
+possessed of the devil, but as he was supposed to be at work
+everywhere, they often had the satisfaction of finding him. The most
+wonderful indications of his activity were watched with credulous zeal.
+Weak-minded women principally were impressed with the belief that they
+were tormented by the devil; and it was the natural result of this
+imagination that in their sickly condition they expressed the most
+violent repugnance against ecclesiastics, and the pious ceremonies with
+which they were favoured. But how far preconceived opinions can confuse
+the senses, not only of the sick, but also of the healthy, and falsify
+the witness of their own eyes and ears, we discover with astonishment
+in numerous accounts of eye-witnesses, who are fully worthy of credit,
+but who perceive and believe in the most impossible things in those
+possessed. To mention a very absurd instance supposed to have happened
+in the time of Luther, at Frankfort on the Oder; a maiden who had
+always been weak in mind was possessed by Satan in the following way:
+"When the suspected maid seized any one by the coat or beard, or
+otherwise, she always found money instead in her hand, which she
+instantly put into her mouth, crunched, and at last swallowed. This
+money one could only get out of her hand by force. In the same way she
+everywhere found needles. Sometimes she handed over to the people who
+stood around her this devil's money, which she had caught from the
+walls, tables, benches, stones, and ground. It was good coin, groschen
+and pfennige, but there were some bad red ones among it." This
+extraordinary occurrence is related in a pamphlet by Dr. Andreas Ebert,
+an ecclesiastic; and his account is confirmed by Theodore D�rrkragen,
+the president of the city council. Luther, as with hundreds of other
+critical questions, was asked his opinion about this: he was
+distrustful, desired to know whether it was good money; and at last
+advised that the maiden should be sedulously taken to church and
+prayers made for her to God. There were some difficulties about this
+cure, for the devil in the maiden insulted the clergyman during his
+sermon, and gave him the lie. In vain also did a Roman Catholic priest
+endeavour to conjure the devil from her, who treated him with scorn and
+despised his holy exorcism. The power, however, of evangelical prayer
+compelled Satan to depart; the maiden became vigorous and sound, after
+her recovery knew nothing of the past, but continued to be, as servant
+maid, a useful member of the community.[69]
+
+Such were the ideas of German Catholics and Protestants. Nothing shows
+more strikingly the power which Luther personally exercised, than the
+influence he gained over his bitterest opponents. The Roman Catholic
+dogmas, it is true, withstood his assaults, and between the new
+bulwarks of faith which he had thrown up, and the closed fortress of
+the old Church, there raged for a century a furious war. But his mode
+of thought, his language, and above all the special character of his
+spiritual life, influenced the German Catholic Church of his day as
+well as the Protestant, in a way which was both peculiar and one-sided.
+The rude formalism of her indulgence trade and pious brotherhoods, did
+not entirely disappear; but he gave a new tendency to her inward
+spirit. Earnest study, acute thought, dialectic skill, and what was of
+more value, a greater moral depth, became the necessary requisites of
+the Roman Catholic champions. They learnt to preach and compose their
+controversial writings in Luther's language and method, even
+appropriated the strong abusive expressions of the great heretic, and
+sought to imitate felicitously the popular humour to which Luther owed
+not a little of his success. The words of the evangelical songs, the
+titles and contents of Lutheran works were always parodied. Perhaps the
+internal resemblance is nowhere more striking than among the most
+talented of the Ingoldstadt University. Andrea, Scherer, and their
+friends might but for the difference of their dogmas, and above all
+personal, hate, as well be Lutherans as Roman Catholics. Thus there
+arose between the ecclesiastics of both confessions a sometimes
+laughable, but frequently a disgusting contention to drive the devil
+out of the possessed. If a possessed person became in question where
+the two Churches were in collision, each endeavoured to show the power
+of their faith by healing the patient; the evangelical by the prayers
+of the clergy and parishioners, the Roman Catholics by exorcism; the
+soul which was saved brought glory on the fortunate Church. Among the
+numerous accounts which we find of suchlike exorcisms, the following,
+which proceeds from the Roman Catholic camp in the neighbourhood of
+Ingoldstadt, is remarkable from its detailed narration and interesting
+psychological features. It was published shortly after the event, in a
+pamphlet, with the title, 'A terrible but quite true history, which
+took place between Hans Geisslbrecht, citizen at Spalt, and his wife
+Apollonia, in the bishopric of Eyst�tter. By M. Sixtus Agricolas.
+Ingolstadt, 1587.' The narrative begins as follows:--
+
+"Hans Geisslbrecht, citizen at Spalt, after the death of his first
+wife, married Apollonia, widow of the late Hans Francke of
+Lautershausen, in the Margravate of Brandenburg; here he continued
+after his marriage, and lived with her more than a year; at last,
+however, the miserable marriage devil entered in, so that there was
+between them both, nothing from morning to night but scolding,
+quarrelling, strife, crying, chiding, and nagging; besides which, what
+was altogether most terrible, great blaspheming of God and wicked
+swearing. The said Geisslbrecht came home quite drunk on Friday the
+nineteenth October of the past year '82, and began according to his old
+custom to quarrel and swear at his wife; and they carried this on, as
+most of their neighbours heard, almost throughout the night. On
+Saturday morning Apollonia came to Anna Stadlerin, her neighbour, and
+said: 'Dear Stadlerin, have you not heard how rudely and shamefully my
+husband has behaved during the whole night?' 'Yes,' answered the other,
+'I and my Stadler have, alas! but too well heard what caterwauling and
+blaspheming has been going on between you; the neighbourhood can have
+no peace whilst you live in so unchristian a way.' To this the said
+Apollonia answered with grim anger: 'Ah me! if our Lord God will not
+deliver me from this violent man, I shall call upon the devil to come
+to my help.' Now mark what followed! On the said Saturday evening, when
+Geisslbrecht's cows came home from the meadow, and she was about to
+milk them, as was her wont, there came two birds like swallows, of
+which at that time of year none are to be seen in the country; and they
+flew swiftly round about her head. Before she could look up from under
+the cow there appeared near her a tall man (but, alas! it was the devil
+in human form), who said to her: 'Ah, my dear Appel, how much do I
+sympathize with you, that you are in such trouble; your life is so hard
+and wretched, and you have such a bad husband, who behaves so ill to
+you, and who intends to make away with everything, so that nothing may
+remain to you after his death. Do one thing, promise that you will be
+mine, and behold I in return, will promise to convey you in this very
+hour to a beautiful enjoyable place, where you shall for ever and ever
+do nothing but eat, drink, sing, jump, and dance; in short, where you
+will spend such days of pleasure as you have never seen all your life
+long, for the kingdom of heaven is not such as your priests say; I will
+teach you better.'
+
+"These great promises of the embodied Satan induced the wretched woman
+thoughtlessly to give him her hand, and say that she would become his;
+instantaneously the said Apollonia became possessed by him, and
+forthwith he suggested to her that she should hasten with him to the
+loft; in the hope that she would there hang herself. Now when the
+aforesaid wife of Geisslbrecht sprang up from the cows and hastened to
+the house, the before-mentioned neighbours perceived her condition, and
+called out to her husband: 'Oh, Ulrich, come! the old shepherdess (her
+husband used to be called the shepherd) has lost her senses.' After
+that, they ran towards her, and before they could reach her she laid
+herself in the pond before the cottage door, with the intention of
+drowning herself therein. When she had been taken out, many other
+neighbours came to her, and brought the poor possessed woman into the
+house again; she desired directly to be carried up to the loft, and
+cried out: 'Oh let me go! Do you not see how luxuriously I live, that I
+do nothing but eat, drink, jump, and dance, and lead an enjoyable
+life?' When Apollonia was brought into her room, it required first two
+and afterwards four men to hold her. Meanwhile a messenger was sent at
+midnight on Saturday to the venerable and learned Dean and pastor, Herr
+Wolfgang Agricola, to beg that his reverence would hasten to the old
+shepherdess, as she had that evening lost her wits. But the prudent
+Dean thought the affair was by no means so urgent as they represented
+it, and did not wish to go out so late on this holy night, but he
+apprized them, that he had always feared that these continual godless
+quarrels and disputes would at last come to this conclusion; he bade
+them, in case the woman became so refractory that they could not hold
+or restrain her, to fasten her meanwhile with two chains, which was
+done.
+
+"In the evening after he had performed matins, the Dean, like a man who
+had been accustomed to deal with the like cases, provided himself with
+a small reliquary, wherein was a piece of the holy cross, and of the
+pillar on which the Lord Christ was scourged; further, an Agnus Dei of
+the year of the Jubilee; and lastly a piece of white wax, which had
+been consecrated by _summus pontifex_; all these he carried upon his
+own person. When he went to the house of Geisslbrecht and was perceived
+by Apollonia with her deceitful indweller, who so evil treated her, it
+would be impossible for any one who had not been there, to believe how
+she began to rage, rave, and gnash her teeth; for although she lay
+bound by two chains, yet four men had enough to do to hold her. The
+reverend Dean began, and said: 'Ah, Appel! may God in Heaven hear me;
+this great calamity grieves me to the heart; Christ bless thee; what
+has happened to thee?' Then the poor woman began with a strong manly
+voice, such as was not her wont before: 'Hui, _Pfaff_, begone with you,
+what do I want with you and your Christ? I have enough for my whole
+life, do you not see how well I live? I need your heaven no more.'
+Thereupon the Dean answered: 'I see, alas! how well you live; I would
+not wish your pleasant life to a dog, let alone a man.' In order to
+prove whether she was possessed or naturally crazy, the Dean took the
+above-mentioned relics, and as she turned her back to him, placed them
+with his hand upon her head without her knowledge: what a lamentation,
+complaining, and whining she set up from that hour! how she raged in
+her chains, foaming at the mouth like a champing horse, and snapped at
+the Dean; concerning all this, those who held her, and the many people
+in the room will give a better report than his reverence. Her constant
+cry was, 'Oh, _Pfaff_, _Pfaff_![70] take away that thing from my head,
+if not, behold I swear to you that I will tear you to pieces with my
+teeth; I will trample on you, tear you limb from limb, and so kill you:
+Oh! take that thing off, and lay upon me instead six large sacks full
+of stones, they will not be so heavy.' 'Tell me,' said the Dean, 'what
+it is? I will then directly take it off.' The evil one answered: 'I
+know well what it is, but I would do anything--_cum venia_--rather than
+tell you.' 'What?' said the Dean earnestly, 'you will not come out with
+the words? quickly bring me a white cap, with it I will fasten this
+small article upon your head.' 'Yes,' answered the evil one,' you may
+well say a small article; if it were so small, it would not scorch so
+much.' 'I conjure thee, by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob, to
+tell me what it is.' But he gave no answer. Meanwhile, the poor
+tormented woman thirsted much, and with all her imaginary costly good
+living, would gladly have had something to drink; at a sign from the
+Dean the women presented her first with some consecrated water; but
+this was no drink for the evil one, he wished to have other water: the
+Dean asked why he would not drink this, as it was only water. He
+answered, '_Pfaff_, you lie, it is consecrated water.' Thereupon the
+women gave her to drink from the great holy well, which was consecrated
+every year on the golden Trinity Sunday; but little as the former was
+to her taste, still less would she have to say to this; it was
+necessary to withdraw it quickly, for she knew well what it was. Then
+the Dean said that it was only water; but the evil one answered him
+furiously: 'You always say that I lie, but I see that you can lie also;
+it is your holy water.' When therefore they gave her the common water
+she said, or rather he in her, although there was not the slightest
+apparent difference in the vessel or the water, 'That is the right
+kind.' Thereupon they mixed the three waters together, opened her mouth
+with a spoon, and had much to do to pour it in and to make her swallow
+it, thereupon she, or rather he through her, began thus: 'Oh, _Pfaff_!
+how you deal with me.' The Dean answered: 'As you have tasted one you
+may taste the other also; I know well what a bad guest you are, I and
+you must have a better understanding before we separate.' 'What
+_Pfaff_, do you wish to drive me away? I will sooner tear you to
+atoms.' The Dean replied: 'You desperate villain! I think you hanker
+after me, the smallest of little popish priests, therefore you shall,
+before all the world, be permitted to enter into me as your pride
+impels you; I will open my mouth wide enough, and make no sign of the
+cross before it.' Then the evil one answered: 'Yes, enter, enter I
+would, if I could only catch and bite your tongue and your fingers.'
+'That I fully believe,' said the Dean, 'if it were in your power to
+destroy me and every Christian man in his mother's womb, I hold it
+certain you would spare no pains to do so; and listen to me, Satan, I
+hold this head fast till you tell me what is in this little reliquary.'
+'Then,' he answered, 'it is a holy thing.' 'What holy thing?' inquired
+the Dean. 'That of Jerusalem,' said the evil one. The Dean replied:
+'What of Jerusalem? make short of it, and be not so ceremonious.' To
+which Satan exclaimed: 'Oh, leave me in peace; you know that I cannot
+name it.' 'Then,' said the Dean, 'these are rotten, lame excuses; you
+can very well name it if you will, therefore I conjure you, by the
+death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you publicly declare what it is.'
+'Oh,' said he, 'it is indeed a piece of the holy cross, and a bit of
+the pillar at which He was scourged.' The Dean replied: 'Do you then
+believe that Christ died for us?' To which he said: 'Why should I not
+believe it? I was not far off.' Upon that the Dean took down the
+reliquary, and laid the above-mentioned Agnus Dei upon her head without
+her perceiving it. She complained, wept, and cried out, even more than
+before. On perceiving this strange agitation, the Dean wished again to
+hear what it was that so discomposed her. Then the bad spirit called
+out: 'Ho! ho! you shall make me tell you that again.' Then there was
+much talk on both sides, till at last the evil spirit was constrained
+by the hand of God to say, 'It is truly an Agnus Dei.' The Dean then
+asked: 'Where was it consecrated?' To which the evil one said: 'If the
+whole world stood by, they should not compel me to name the city.' The
+Dean said: 'Indeed there is no place in all the world where you and
+yours do meet with so much damage and opposition, therefore make not so
+much ado, but say what is the name of the city?' As the Dean pressed
+him so hard, and would not let him rest, he began: 'It is called R! R!
+R!' To which the Dean said: 'Hui! Hui! young scholar, still better.'
+Then the evil one, 'O! O! O!' To which the Dean said: 'Oh, what a
+hopeful scholar! you desperate miscreant, you mortal enemy of the holy
+true faith; add the M! M! M! thereto, and God will have imparted to you
+a threefold truth.'
+
+"Now when the Dean found that he had but too well ascertained the
+condition of the unhappy woman, and that all the means which had
+formerly been of use to others, were of no avail against an enemy so
+powerful and well entrenched, he deferred the matter, till by God's
+grace a better time and opportunity should occur. He commanded that
+they should watch assiduously day and night, that she should not get
+hold of anything wherewith she might cause bodily injury either to
+herself or others; he also begged the neighbours and her appointed
+watchmen to look after her, which they did day and night out of
+brotherly and sisterly compassion.
+
+"The following days the aforesaid Dean made preparation with all
+diligence as far as possible for the great work, and had enough to do
+to provide what was necessary for such a thorny and dangerous business.
+
+"Meanwhile, it came to pass that a young Lutheran, a queer preaching
+fellow, Johannas B�uerlein, son of a furrier of this place, came here
+fresh from his examination, and imagined he had already received full
+power for this work; like the poet in his wretched tragedy, who in the
+year 1545 in the parish sacristy at Wittenberg, drove the devil in and
+out of a possessed person. This preacher had heard from his mother, who
+dwelt in a house opposite to Geisslbrecht, of this lamentable affair,
+had seen us many times go in and out, and had even stood among the
+people in the room; but on account of his great beard wherein, like
+Samson's strength, lay all his science, we did not recognize him. He
+went there several times in our absence, and saw how pitifully and
+miserably the poor woman was plagued and tormented by the evil spirit.
+He spoke to it; but ah, dear God! at his weak lifeless words, the old
+dog would not come out, but only carried on his monkey tricks with him.
+At last he called the husband of the unhappy woman to him, and accosted
+him thus: 'My dear Hans Geisslbrecht, that your wife should be
+delivered from this miserable Satan, by whom she is so severely
+tortured, will never take place by the aid of your popish priests; it
+is beyond their power. But I,' said the sharp blade, 'will take with me
+another servant of the altar, and we will drive him out by the pure
+word of God.' This was revealed to us by the aforesaid Geisslbrecht. It
+grieved all the ecclesiastics, and not unreasonably, coming from one
+who had been born, baptized, brought up, and confirmed, and had
+communicated here, and whose father, mother, and sisters had lived, and
+most of them already died, good Catholics; he alone having apostatized.
+So that we all came to a determination that during the act of exorcism,
+which was fixed to take place with all secresy on the Thursday, he
+should be in the church even were we to bind him like the poor woman,
+and drag him in. Not that we wished any harm to him, but only that he
+might see what an anxious, great, and dangerous work this was, and not
+such a thing as when one enticeth the tom-cat from behind the stove.
+However he smelt fire, was warned, and went off.
+
+"On Wednesday, after vespers, the suffering of the sick person became
+so great, that they hastened to fetch the Dean, for if she did not
+obtain help, she would be torn to a thousand pieces by the evil one.
+When the said Dean, and some of us arrived, we found such a wretched
+state of things as will be present to us all our lives; for although
+the more than miserable woman was extended on the ground, on a wretched
+little bed, fastened by two chains so that she could not move hand or
+foot, and had also two men holding her arms whilst her brother sat
+astride on her legs, and some women on her body, thinking thus
+effectually to hold her down, yet all was of no avail. The evil spirit
+reared himself up, and raised all that were over him in such a manner,
+that any one could have slipped under her back. But the most horrible
+of all was, that the evil spirit raised himself up between the skin and
+the flesh, in the form of a great adder or serpent, so that we could
+see and lay hold of him. Swiftly as by nature they glide along the
+earth, so did he glide backwards and forwards in the body; at one
+moment into the head, afterwards into one arm, then into the other, or
+suddenly into the feet; and when in the body, it became hot, as if
+burning with pure fire; finally the evil one glided into the heart,
+which swelled up like a twopenny loaf, and crept and coiled himself
+round it, just as a viper does round a tree; he shook and squeezed her
+heart together, so that it began to crack, and we one and all thought
+that the fierce and infuriated spirit would have entirely suffocated
+and destroyed her, for in her whole body not the smallest vein could
+stir. The Dean cried out and called continually upon God in heaven.
+Meanwhile they opened her mouth with a spoon, but for a long time she
+showed no signs of life, till they poured something down her throat;
+then her heart began to beat again. That was a great comfort to us, and
+we all did our best to revive her, till she came a little to herself.
+Then the Dean commanded that they should cut her hair clean off her
+head, for it was all overrun with blood; he ordered also that the women
+should wash her clean with lye, and said he would return again
+forthwith.
+
+"Thereupon the Dean returned home, and desired me, his brother Magister
+Sixtus, Herr Georg Wittmeier, his confessor, Herr Bernhardt Eisen, who
+was then deacon, Wilibald Plettelius the student, who had lately come
+from the German college at Rome, and Leonhard Agricola, the student, to
+come to him; and told us with great grief that it was certain that if
+the poor woman could not be relieved this evening, the evil one would
+destroy her even if she were of the worth of a thousand men. 'Therefore
+come quickly with me,' said the Dean; 'have a good heart, be undaunted
+and fear not, no harm shall happen to you; and if it should be
+requisite that in the exorcism you should reply to me _et cum spiritu
+tuo_, or Amen, pay the closest attention, especially you priests.' Then
+he gave to one of the students to place under his dress, what was
+necessary for this ceremony, and taking us first to the church,
+admonished us all there to pray with faith, opened the Sacrarium, took
+from the viaticum a holy host, laid it in a small napkin on his body,
+put off the cope again, and went in form and appearance as before with
+us to the house. Then he commanded him who bore his other vestments to
+wait in the barn till further orders. He went into the room, knelt down
+on the ground by the poor woman, laid his hand, as he was always wont
+to do, on her head, and spoke to her; but the former old insults were
+beginning again, when the Dean without any one perceiving it, put his
+hand in his bosom and drew out the napkin with the ever-blessed host,
+and placed it under his hand on her head. As soon as she perceived it,
+she made in her bed three great bounds. Then said the Dean: 'Appel, do
+I hurt you with my hand? How does it happen that at one time you can
+bear it and at another time not?' 'Oh, yes,' said she, 'I can bear the
+hand well, but take away what you have under your hand, otherwise you
+will destroy me.' 'God forbid!' said the Dean; 'but tell me what is on
+your head?' Then answered the evil one: 'Look you, wait a little!'
+(here followed an examination as before), and at last the evil spirit
+said what it was. Thereupon the Dean proceeded: 'But I wish to know yet
+one thing, whether you are alone, or have any companions with you?' 'I
+am alone,' said the evil one. 'What is your name?' 'I am called
+_Spielfleck_,' said the evil one. 'Oh, that is nothing, you have never
+in the beginning told me the truth; I must bring it out of you
+perforce, you shall acquaint me with your right name, for I must and
+shall know it.' Then the exorcism began again, till the evil one was
+constrained to say, _Schwamm_.[71] Thereupon the watchers and nurses
+exclaimed: 'Oh that is truly his right name, it is what she has always
+called him.' Then the Dean answered: 'Well-a-day! God grant we may soon
+lay hold of Schwamm, and send him down to Lucifer in hell, that he may
+wipe his shoes with him.' The evil one: 'Oh no, no, spare me.' Upon
+this my brother called on me, Herr Magister Sixtus, to draw near and
+hold the napkin, containing the most holy and revered sacrament, on her
+head, and commanded at the same time that all her chains should be
+unloosed and done away with; whereupon many were much afeared. He
+himself had his cope, stole, and books brought to him, and having thus
+dressed and prepared himself, when the poor woman was loosened from all
+her shackles, he took an old red stole in his hand and said: 'Behold,
+_Schwamm_! I now come to thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and
+the Holy Ghost. This threefold, indissoluble, godly bond shall now bind
+thee down in the abyss of hell, so that you shall never more throughout
+all eternity do any detriment or injury, either to persons, or cattle,
+or any other creature.' He took both her hands, wound the stole three
+times round her, and commanded the evil one, by the great power and
+dignity of that which lay on the poor woman's head, to give up all
+further struggle. Thereupon the Dean turned himself towards the people,
+of whom there was such a multitude, that the room, windows, barn, and
+streets were all quite full, and spoke to them:--
+
+"At the conclusion of the holy prayer, the Dean gave directions to us
+students whom alone he had employed as assistants, to place ourselves
+round the miserable woman; gave to one the book, to another the candle,
+to each one what he would need for this ceremonial, and then began in
+the name of God a _modus conjurationis_ so lofty and so exceeding well
+grounded on the holy, godly Scripture, and with such assiduity and
+earnestness, (as he had in this a pure, strong, and undaunted Hon
+heart) that our hearts began to tremble and the hairs of our heads to
+stand erect. During this noble exorcism, which lasted some time, the
+evil spirit did not make any especial blustering, only, perceiving a
+boy showing his teeth in at the window, he desired to be allowed to
+break them; but this his desire could not be granted. During the
+ceremony the surrounding people, who could better observe, than one of
+us who had more to do, saw distinctly that the eyes of the woman, which
+were naturally dark, but in this misery had become gray and fiery like
+cats' eyes, gradually recovered their natural colour; that her limbs
+which were all distorted, returned to their right position, and that
+her colour, form, and whole nature, which had been totally altered, was
+restored delicate, fresh, and vigorous. Some who were standing by,
+testified and confirmed by oath, that they had seen during the process
+a black bird in the form of a thrush fly out of the mouth of the woman.
+We do not publish this as a truth, because we none of us saw it, for we
+do not wish to report anything but what we could in case of necessity
+confirm with a good conscience, and by our priestly dignity and the
+highest oath.
+
+"This ceremony, God be praised, was throughout successfully performed,
+and the aforesaid Apollonia clasped her hands together. Then the Dean
+bent down towards her, took the stole out of her hands and asked her:
+'Dear Apollonia, how are you now? do you now know me and the other
+people?' Then the restored one tried to spring up for joy in her little
+bed and throw her arms round the Dean's neck. This moistened many eyes.
+But her limbs and whole body were so much torn that she had not
+sufficient strength, so she clasped her hands over her head, looked up
+to heaven and exclaimed three times: 'Oh Almighty and Eternal God, to
+Thee be praise, honour, and glory, for ever and ever! Oh God, forgive
+and pardon me for I have sinned against Thee so grievously! Oh Lord,
+now will I gladly die!'"
+
+Here concludes our extract from the pamphlet. The end of it is
+edifying; the valiant Dean reaped the reward of his dangerous work by
+winning the soul of Apollonia to his Church. She exhorted her husband,
+and vowed a pilgrimage; and it appears that after that, the quarrelsome
+couple lived together peaceably. What the religious zeal of the
+narrator has added to the spiritual examination of the devil, is more
+harmless than it is in many similar cases.
+
+The tender care of both Churches for those possessed, and the pious
+interest with which they regarded these victims of the devil, made
+similar cases become a matter of speculation. Thus in Thuringia in
+1560, a herdsman, Hans the father of Mellingen, made a great sensation.
+He pretended that he had been compelled by a man of ill repute, to eat
+some food which had brought him into the power of the devil; that he
+had been severely handled and beaten by the devil, and showed his
+stripes. He was on this account commended in pamphlets to the prayers
+of Christendom. But once when he made his appearance at Nuremberg with
+a bleeding ear, his hands tied behind his back with a three-coloured
+cord, and there praying and begging, related his old story, that the
+devil himself had thus fastened his hands, the Nurembergers, took the
+matter up in earnest, and the audacity of the man sank before the
+pressing cross-examination of the ecclesiastical and temporal
+authorities; he acknowledged that he was a deceiver; he was placed in
+the pillory, and then driven out of the town. The Nurembergers did not
+fail to make known their discovery in a pamphlet.
+
+But fierce indeed was the hatred with which was regarded, in the last
+half of the century, that other connection with hell,--the old
+witchcraft. Even Luther believed in witches; he mentions incidentally
+that such a woman had injured his mother; and in another place was
+angry with the lawyers who did not punish similar sorceresses when
+they injured their fellow-creatures. But these expressions were not
+intended to be very severe; he on the whole troubled himself little
+with this phase of superstition. He, the copious writer, never
+considered it necessary to discourse to his people concerning it; in
+his sermons he only occasionally mentions witchcraft, and his whole
+nature was repugnant to the application of violence. But if happily
+for us, Luther's pure spirit preserved him from bitterness against
+the devil's helpmates, his scholars and successors had little of his
+high-mindedness. Young Protestantism was on this point little better
+than the old belief. In Protestant countries the ministers of God were
+by no means the only persecutors; the civil authorities were also
+willing to follow the example of the ecclesiastical courts of the Roman
+Catholics, and above all of the Jesuits. The victims were countless;
+they amount without doubt to hundreds of thousands. It was first in the
+domains of the ecclesiastical princes, that the contagion burst forth,
+which devastated whole provinces as in Eichst�dt, W�rtsburg and
+Cologne. In twenty villages in the vicinity of Treves, three hundred
+and sixty-eight persons were executed in seven years, besides many who
+were burnt in the city itself; in Brunswick the burnt stakes stood like
+a little forest on the place of execution. In every province hundreds
+and thousands might be counted. Every kind of baseness was practised by
+the ecclesiastical and temporal judges; the most contemptible grounds
+of suspicion sufficed to depopulate whole villages. No position and no
+age was a security; children and the aged, learned men and even
+councillors, were bound to the stake, but the greater part were
+women;--we shudder when we look at the method of these condemnations.
+It is not impossible, although it cannot be spoken of with certainty,
+that a victim here and there did live in the mad delusion that they
+were in union with the devil through magic arts; it is not impossible,
+although this cannot be certified, that hurtful mediums, intoxicating
+beverages and superstitious medicaments were in some cases used for the
+detriment of others. But it is the strongest proof of the infamy of the
+whole proceeding, that amidst the monstrous mass of old records
+concerning witches, we find no ground of belief that in any case the
+judgment was justified by the real misdeeds of the accused, though they
+were made the excuse for it; for so great was the degree of fanaticism,
+narrow-mindedness, or malice, that the mere accusation was almost
+certain to be fatal. Torture was applied on the most frivolous charges;
+the capability even of bearing pain was taken as evidence against those
+who held out under torture; and every kind of accidental symptom,
+disease of the body, outward appearance, or countless fortuitous
+circumstances, were also considered as evidence. The possessions of the
+condemned were confiscated; the greediness and covetousness of the
+judges were united with brutality and stupidity. This fearful disorder
+did not end with that century: through the whole of the sixteenth and
+up to the middle of the eighteenth century these horrible judicial
+murders continued. It was not till the time of the great Frederick that
+they ceased.
+
+The literary activity of the few enlightened men who ventured to speak
+out in the interests of humanity against these trials for witchcraft,
+was pregnant with danger. They themselves had to fear imprisonment and
+the stake, and at least they incurred the hatred and the malice with
+which believing fanatics assailed their opponents. One name belongs to
+the sixteenth century which should ever be named with gratitude; that
+of the Protestant physician _Johann Weier_, physician in ordinary to
+Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, who in 1593 wrote his three volumes--'_De
+pr�stigiis D�monum_.' Even he believed in necromancers, who, by the
+help of the devil, wrought mischief, in which case they were to fall
+under the punishment of the laws; but the witches he considered as poor
+miserable beldames, who, in the worst cases, only imagined themselves
+to be doing the work of the devil, but were for the most part quite
+innocent. His warm heart for the oppressed, and his noble indignation
+against the brutality of the judges in the cases of witchcraft, made an
+immense sensation. Within his limited sphere of action Weier appears to
+us as a supplement to Luther. Against him also the raging orthodox crew
+upraised themselves. The good effect produced by Weier's book was in a
+great manner counteracted by a flood of opposition writings. But again
+amidst the horrors of the Thirty years' war, Friedrich Spee, the best
+of the German Jesuits, wrote secretly his '_Cautio Criminalis_,'
+against the burning of heretics; he published this anonymously in a
+Protestant printing-press.
+
+The various popular transformations of the devil did not end with the
+century in which Luther taught, and Weier endeavoured to banish the
+stake from the place of execution. The Thirty years' war brought
+forward another set of gloomy fantasies concerning him. Satan was
+considered by the wild troopers as a demon who made fortresses, and
+cast magic balls which could penetrate every kind of armour.
+
+When the peace came, the war-devil withdrew into the woods, where he
+taught his arts to the wild huntsmen; and when there remained nothing
+in the land but an impoverished population devoid of faith and hope,
+the devil was sought after in his ancient and quiet occupation--only
+disturbed by the covetousness of men--as the guardian of hidden
+treasures. Much money and property had been buried during the long war,
+and was discovered by lucky accidents after the peace.
+
+The poverty-stricken people lusting after gold, and unused to quiet
+labour, were powerfully excited by these treasure-troves, and the hopes
+of still greater. There had always been, from ancient times, treasure
+seekers, and magicians who were to conjure away the evil one from the
+treasure; and it is probable that this superstition had been imported
+into Germany from Rome.
+
+Gradually the popular conception of the form and working of the devil
+became less vivid. In a more enlightened age it was thought wrong to
+speak mockingly of him, and the greatest poet of Germany gracefully
+idealized his image as it had been handed down from antiquity. Some of
+the musical composers also introduced him into their operas.
+
+Thus did the German people seek earnestly after their God at the
+commencement of this great sixteenth century, and thus powerful was the
+devil at the close of it. Lofty exaltation was followed by enfeebling
+relaxation, and the striving after Christ, by the fear of hell; and the
+opponent of the Holy One pressed himself as a spectre into the whole
+life of man. Other countries were infected with these superstitions;
+but in Germany, for many years, the burning of witches was almost the
+only public action in which the deluded people showed a strong
+spiritual interest. The want of unity, public spirit and great
+political aims, was the destruction of the nation.
+
+By the disputes of priests, the selfishness of princes, and the unhappy
+political position of Germany, the course of Protestantism was checked
+and the Roman Catholic reaction with fresh vigour raised its head.
+Throughout the country, in politics, in the pulpit, and in the closets
+of the ecclesiastics, there was more hatred than love. The minds of men
+languished under a spiritless dogmatism, and the hearts of believers
+were oppressed by gloomy forebodings. The wisest felt deep anxiety for
+the unhappy condition of the German Fatherland, and the devout were
+kept by the ecclesiastics and countless calendar-makers in continued
+anxiety, and fear that the end of the world was at hand, and the
+frequent interference of the devil appeared to many as an additional
+sign of its approach. Meanwhile the mass of the people of all ranks
+lived in a state of refined enjoyment in the then opulent country.
+Luxury was great, and every kind of excess was general. Those who did
+not fear the devil did not concern themselves much either about God or
+his saints. It was under such aspects that the fearful century of wars
+began.
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: It was not till after the fifteenth century that glass
+became common in windows in towns; and about the same time they began
+to find out the comfort of separate rooms. And it is thought worthy of
+mention, that in 1546, Luther's bedroom at the palace of Eisleben was
+protected by windows that closed.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Little Hans of Sweinichen was deprived of his post as
+gooseherd because he had tried to keep the geese quiet by gagging them
+with small pieces of wood.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Thirty years' war.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Georg von Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, died 1471.]
+
+[Footnote 5: A town of Silesia, near Riesenberge.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The word house, standing alone, denotes a fortified
+building in the cities of the mayoralty, in the territory of some
+nobleman; in such cases it was of stone, the walls very thick, but
+without foundations, and therefore easily undermined; the windows were
+provided with iron gratings, and a passage ran under the roof within
+the walls; sometimes there was a large empty hall between the upper
+floor and the roof, in the walls of which loop-holes of different kinds
+were made for arrows, or at a later period for fire-arms, and in the
+fifteenth century, for light guns. These houses, especially when
+situated in the country, were often surrounded by an outer wall, which
+also enclosed the farm buildings. They were often inhabited by many
+families of noble descent all crowded together, some were husbandmen,
+others freebooters, all however had a strong feeling of aristocratic
+privileges.]
+
+[Footnote 7: A linen covering, such as would be spread over the wooden
+hoops of a waggon.]
+
+[Footnote 8: K�nig's 'Gr�tz in Bohemia.']
+
+[Footnote 9: This journal, as also the whole account of Marcus
+Kintsch von Zobten, is unfortunately in bad handwriting, and very much
+defaced; but no one could read the fragment without emotion. There
+cannot possibly be a more simple or striking description than the
+following:--"As we are unjustly denied the Holy Sacrament, we hereby
+testify before all, who hear, see, or read this writing, that we die in
+the holy Christian faith, innocent of all that has been publicly laid
+to our charge by our sovereign lord. And in making us suffer, he wrongs
+us: this we testify before our God, and desire that Duke Hans, our
+merciless master, may answer for it before the righteous tribunal of
+God. For every one will observe, that had he any just ground of
+complaint or accusation against us, he would not have condemned us so
+cruelly in a dark corner; had he brought us in the light of day before
+the people, his violence would have been apparent. As God Almighty, on
+account of our sins, has brought this upon us, we will accept it, and
+suffer patiently, and beg Him of his mercy to give us a happy end.
+Amen. Written in great distress and affliction."
+
+"Be it known, good people, that we died more from thirst than hunger."
+
+"I, Hans Keppel, have written this, amidst all my distress and
+suffering, and have my ink from the black of the burnt wick of the
+light that is burning above. What God will further do with me, depends
+on his grace and mercy. But if they give us no more food, we shall not
+last long. May God help and support us. Amen. Hactenus Keppel."
+
+On the day that Keppel wrote this, two of them died; and he and the
+others later. This diary is given most accurately in 'Stenzel Script.
+Rer.' Siles. iv.]
+
+[Footnote 10: In 1526.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The famous royal castle of Vissegrad on a bend of the
+Danube four leagues north of Buda--Pesth.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Ban Ladislaus von Gara was cousin to Queen Elizabeth.]
+
+[Footnote 13: He was cousin to the queen and Ladislaus von Gara.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The name is destroyed in the old manuscript.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Maria Zell in Styria.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The princess Elizabeth.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Pfaff, a contemptuous name for a priest.]
+
+[Footnote 18: A large stove used chiefly in Germany and Switzerland: it
+was built of brown-glazed tiles cemented together; the door of it was
+outside the room; it was heated by large logs of wood, and was
+sometimes large enough to have beds made on it.]
+
+[Footnote 19: For this see the 'Theologia Te�tsch,' the best work of
+the time previous to the Reformation, by an unknown writer of Tanler's
+school, which was in fact the main source from which Luther drew his
+opinions; an admirable work even for us.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Exhortation to the ecclesiastics collected at the Diet at
+Augsburg.]
+
+[Footnote 21: It is thus represented in the woodcut on the title-page
+of a work entitled, 'Complaint of a Layman, called Hans Schwall, of the
+vile abuse of Christian Life,' 521, 4.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The similarity of his Latinized name with that of Oswald
+Myconius, of Geissha�ser, teacher of Thomas Platter, is not owing to
+any relationship.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Luther writes in 1541:--"So I desire and beg of our dear
+God to allow me to be sick, and to lay aside this mortal coil in your
+stead; therefore I beg and admonish you in all earnestness to pray to
+God together with us, that He may preserve you in life for the service
+and improvement of his church, and to the confusion of the devil.
+
+"_May the Lord never allow me to hear, as long as I live, that you are
+dead, but ordain that you shall outlive me. This I earnestly pray for,
+and being certified of it, will have it so, and my will shall come to
+pass. Amen._"]
+
+[Footnote 24: See 'Dr. Martin Luther's Passion,' written by Marcellus;
+the author is probably the marshal of Strasbourg.]
+
+[Footnote 25: It was the evening of the 4th March, 1522.]
+
+[Footnote 26: A spirit supposed to haunt certain parts of Germany in
+those days.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Compare with this the beautiful passage from the 'Table
+Talk:'--"If, when I first began to write, I had known what I do now, I
+should never have been so bold as to attack and anger the Pope, and
+almost all men. I thought they sinned only from ignorance and human
+frailty; but God led me on like a horse with its eyes blinded. Good
+works are seldom undertaken from wisdom or foresight; they are all
+brought about unconsciously." To this Philip Melancthon answered, that
+having carefully studied history, he had observed that no great or
+remarkable deeds had been done by old people, but at the age when
+Alexander the Great and St. Augustine did them; later, men became too
+wise and circumspect. Dr. Martinus said: "Young companions, if you had
+wisdom the devil could not deal with you; but because you have not, you
+need ours also, who are now old. Ah, if the old were but strong, and
+the young wise! Behold these factious spirits--vain young people,
+Icaruses, Pha�tons, who flutter in the air; chamois hunters, everywhere
+and nowhere, who wish to knock down twelve ninepins when there are only
+nine standing."]
+
+[Footnote 28: Ecclesiam Romanam _pure_ colant. The double meaning
+appears intentional, and seems a cunning device of Miltitz.]
+
+[Footnote 29: That this happened designedly is betrayed in Luther's
+letter to Melancthon, 13th July, 1521: "I conjure you to be beforehand
+with the court, and not to follow its counsels. I have done this
+hitherto; I should not have effected half that I have done had I made
+myself dependent on its wishes."]
+
+[Footnote 30: 'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 31: Geek is the German for coxcomb.]
+
+[Footnote 32: German for tom-cat.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Cat's head and claws.]
+
+[Footnote 34: The buck.]
+
+[Footnote 35: A little brat.]
+
+[Footnote 36: With what satisfaction he thought of his death appears
+from many passages in his writings--we give one--at the time of his
+residence at Wartburg, from the dedication of 'The Gospel of Ten
+Lepers,' the 17th September, 1521: "I, a poor brother, have again
+lighted up a new fire, and have bitten a great hole in the Pope's
+pocket, because I have attacked confession. Where can I now remain, and
+where will they find brimstone, pitch, fire, and wood enough to
+pulverize the poisonous heretic? They must assuredly break open the
+church windows, for some holy fathers and ecclesiastical princes say
+that they must have air to proclaim the gospels, that is, to revile
+Luther, and to call out murder. What else can they preach to the poor
+people? every one must preach what he can. Only death, death, death to
+the heretic! they scream out--as ho would overturn all things, and
+overthrow the whole ecclesiastical order, upon which rests the
+foundation of Christendom. Now I hope, if I be accounted worthy, that
+they may kill me, and so fill up the measure of their forefather's
+sins; but it is not yet time, my hour is not yet come; I must first
+anger the serpent brood still more, and justly deserve death from them,
+that they may have cause to perform in me a great service to God."]
+
+[Footnote 37: "I thank God, that I feel assured my doctrines are the
+word of God and that I have been enabled to overcome grievous thoughts
+and temptations, when my heart tempted by Satan has said, 'Art thou the
+only one who holdest the word of God in truth and purity, and are
+others altogether without it?' 'Then again, when the devil finds me
+idle, and I am not thinking of the word of God, he troubles my
+conscience by the thought that I have disturbed the governments, and
+have occasioned much scandal and uproar; but when I lay hold of the
+word of God I win the game.'" Passages like this are to be found in
+many other places of the 'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 38: 'An Account of how God helped an Honourable Nun,' 1524,
+p. 4.]
+
+[Footnote 39: We find a mild judgment of the Saxon court in his 'Table
+Talk,' 4: "I have again preached a sharp sermon at court against
+drinking, but it does no good. Taubenheim and Minkwitz say that it
+cannot be otherwise at court; for music and all knightly amusements
+have passed away, and nothing is thought of now but drinking. And truly
+our most gracious sovereign and Elector, John Frederic, is a gentleman
+of much strength, who can well stand a good drink; what he can bear
+would make another drunk. But when I return to him I will only beg of
+him to command his subjects and courtiers, on pain of severe
+punishment, to get very drunk; perhaps when it is commanded, they may
+do the contrary."]
+
+[Footnote 40: The passage following the one just quoted is remarkable:
+"The nobles wish to govern, but have not the power, and understand
+nothing about it; but the Pope not only understands how, but has the
+power to govern: the weakest pope has more power to govern than ten
+nobles of the court."]
+
+[Footnote 41: Luther's 'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 42: For instance, in the year 1527, Luther could not lend
+eight gulden to his old prior and friend Briesger. He writes to him
+sorrowfully: "Three silver cups, marriage presents, have been mortgaged
+for fifty gulden, the fourth has been sold, and the year has produced a
+hundred gulden of debts. Lucas Cranach will no longer accept my
+security, that I may not be quite ruined."
+
+Luther often refused presents, even such as were offered to him by his
+sovereign; but it appears that consideration for wife or children gave
+him in later times somewhat more of a household feeling. What he left
+at his death amounted to about eight or nine thousand gulden; it
+consisted partly of a small landed property, a large garden and two
+houses, which undoubtedly he must chiefly have owed to Frau Kate.]
+
+[Footnote 43: It is in Timothy v. 11, and has no reference to this
+question.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Thus he speaks in many parts of the 'Table Talk.' His
+last conversation at the supper-table of Mansfelder, in Eisleben, a few
+hours before his death, was on the subject of meeting again with
+father, mother, and friends in the next life.]
+
+[Footnote 45: This discourse was spoken in Latin, and immediately
+afterwards translated into German by Gasper Creutzinger.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Christopher von Carlowitz, the confidant of the Elector
+Maurice of Saxony, whose counsels he secretly guided, was at that time,
+with good reason, the favourite of the Emperor, for it was he who
+directed the politics of his master.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Peilketafel, a long narrow board with a rim all round,
+and two little gutters on the sides; on it they played with little
+ironstones smoothed at the bottom.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Valentin Stoientin, who had been the intimate of Ulrich
+von Hutten in their youth, was then ducal councillor, and an
+influential promoter of the Reformation.]
+
+[Footnote 49: On Palm-Sunday it was the custom of the Catholics to draw
+to the churchyard a large wooden ass on wheels, with a figure of Christ
+as large as life upon it. After the consecration of palms the people
+streamed thither. The choir of scholars sang the words of the
+Evangelist, _Cum audisset populus, quia Jesus venit Hierosolymam,
+acceperunt ramos palmarum_, &c. Then eight of the scholars stepped
+forth, pointed to the ass, and sang aloud, _Hic est, qui venturus est_
+(the lesser _Hic est_); to this the choir responded, _In salutem
+populi_. Then eight other scholars pointed to the ass and sang, _Hic
+est salus nostra et redemtio Israel_ (the great _Hic est_). Then eight
+other scholars knelt before the ass, clasped their hands over their
+heads, and sang, _Quantus est iste ad throni et dominationes occurrunt?
+Noli timere, filia Sion, ecce Rex tuus._ This already was a very grand
+performance for the scholars; but afterwards there came six other
+scholars who knelt down, their faces to the earth, clasped their hands
+of one accord over their heads, and sang the _Salve_; and when they had
+finished it they went forward three steps, knelt down again, and sang
+thrice, _Salve Rex, fabricator mundi_, &c. Then they drew the ass
+forwards, and so on. Faithfully given from a description of the
+solemnity, in the archives of St. Gallen, printed in Kessler's 'Life of
+J. J. Bernet.']
+
+[Footnote 50: The father Sastrow did not go to the communion from a
+conscientious feeling, because he would not fulfil the condition of
+forgiving his enemies.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Querela de ecclesia. Epicedion Martyrus Christi, D.
+Roberti Barns, Angli. Authore Joanne Sastroviano._ Lubec�, 1542, 8;
+directed against Henry VIII. of England, who in tolerable distichs was
+compared to Busiris and similar ancient characters.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The guests were counted by tables, twelve persons being
+generally reckoned to each table.]
+
+[Footnote 53: The reward to the first bearer of good news. It was the
+universal custom in Germany, in the middle ages, to demand and give the
+"botenbrot."]
+
+[Footnote 54: Thomas Platter, the father, married again later, and had
+six children by his second wife.]
+
+[Footnote 55: 'Biography of Hans von Schweinichen,' v., B�sching, 1 S.
+157. The host is the same Marcus Fugger who wrote the best work on the
+training of horses in the sixteenth century. He himself had a large
+stud, first in Hungary, and then at the foot of the Allganer Alps.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Compare with this the beautiful characteristic of
+Wilibald Pirkheimer in D Strauss Hutten, 1.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Margaret Horng of Ernstkirchen was twice married, first
+to Dr. Johann von Glauburg at Lichtenstein, then to Weicker Frosch,
+both of Frankfort families.]
+
+[Footnote 58: This refers to the presents of the bridegroom to the
+female relation of the bride.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The bridegroom was a widower.]
+
+[Footnote 60: After the marriage feast the shoes are taken from the
+feet of the bride and given to the best-man.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Of the ceremonial of fetching home the bride, and the
+festive entrance into the city of Frankfort. This fetching home took
+place with a splendour which made an epoch in the patrician circles of
+Frankfort. 1598.]
+
+[Footnote 62: G�tz's method of acting is characteristic: he enters into
+a quarrel with the rich Nurembergers, seeks for causes of quarrel, and
+waylays their merchants. The supposition that the Nurembergers hold a
+good comrade of his in durance is sufficient for him; of a like
+character is the ground of offence, that they had stabbed in another
+quarrel a servant whom he had wished to take into his service. There is
+nothing further said of Fitz von Littwach, than that G�tz was obliged
+to reconcile himself with the Nurembergers. The grounds upon which G�tz
+broke bounds are in themselves remarkable, as will be perceived in the
+following narrative.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Hohenburg and Bissingen lay in the territory of
+Oettingen. The Counts of Oettingen claimed to be lords paramount over
+these properties.]
+
+[Footnote 64: The princes stood by the members of their own order; and
+this family, as we know, belonged to the higher nobility. Their
+struggle for seigniorial rights over property occasioned many battles
+in the sixteenth century; and the claims of Sch�rtlin appeared to them
+particularly arrogant, as his nobility by birth was more than
+doubtful.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Bishop of Breslau, the crown commissary of Bohemia, under
+the supremacy of which Silesia was then incorporated.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Winds are nothing but good and bad spirits.--'Table
+Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 67: At one time Luther was inclined to think that he himself
+had one or two especial devils as opponents, who lurked about him and
+accompanied him to the dormitory in the cloister.--'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 68: 'The compact alliance of the world-famed Duke of
+Luxemburg--General and Court-Marshal to the King of France--with Satan,
+and the terrible catastrophe that followed.' Frankfort and Leipzig,
+1716.]
+
+[Footnote 69: The title of the manuscript is, 'Wonderful Tidings of a
+Money Devil; a strange, incredible, yet true story. Published at
+Frankfort on the Oder, where it took place, 1538, 4.']
+
+[Footnote 70: Pfaff was the nickname of the Roman Catholic priests in
+those days.]
+
+[Footnote 71: This does not mean mushroom, still less bath sponge, as
+the Dean understood it; it is the Bavarian word _Schwaim_, pronounced
+_Schwam_, "The Floating Shadow."]
+
+
+                             END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of German Life in the XVth
+XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I., by Gustav Freytag
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+<title>Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries. Vol. I.</title>
+<meta name="Author" content="Gustav Freytag">
+<meta name="Publisher" content="Chapman and Hall">
+<meta name="Date" content="1862">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth
+and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I., by Gustav Freytag
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I.
+
+Author: Gustav Freytag
+
+Translator: Georgiana Malcolm
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2010 [EBook #33794]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE, VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="hang1">Transcriber's Note:<br>
+
+1. Page scan source: Google Books
+http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA315&amp;dq=editions:52ZfIxnPQ6cC&amp;id=52Zf
+IxnPQ6cC</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE</h1>
+
+<h4>IN THE</h4>
+
+<h3>FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.</h3>
+
+<br>
+
+<hr class="W20">
+<br>
+
+<h2>VOL. I.</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>PICTURES</h1>
+<br>
+<h4>OF</h4>
+<br>
+<h1>GERMAN LIFE</h1>
+<br>
+
+<h3>In the XV<sup>th</sup> XVI<sup>th</sup> and XVII<sup>th</sup> Centuries.</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>GUSTAV FREYTAG</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>Translated from the Original by</h3>
+<h2>MRS. MALCOLM.</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3><i>COPYRIGHT EDITION.--IN TWO VOLUMES</i>.</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>VOL. I.</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>LONDON:</h3>
+<h2>CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.<br>
+1862.</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4>LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<h2>TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The great interest which these graphic Pictures of Life in Germany have
+created in that country, has induced me to translate them. The object
+of the distinguished author seems to have been, to convey a lesson, a
+warning, and at the same time an encouragement to his countrymen,
+derived from the experience of the past; whilst he demonstrates to
+other nations how it is, that a people so superior in intellectual
+power, has remained so far behind in social and political development.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">I have also felt as an additional reason, that at the present moment,
+the British public must take a deep interest in everything connected
+with the past, and future, of the country in which the daughter of our
+beloved Queen has cast her lot, and which was the Fatherland of the
+revered Prince, who has been a source of blessing to England for so
+many years, and whose irreparable loss we now so deeply deplore.</p>
+
+<p class="right">GEORGIANA MALCOLM.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<h3>FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.</h3>
+
+<p class="hang1">Introduction.--Life of a German proprietor, 300, 200, and 100 years
+ago--In what respect the life of the past appears alien to us--Greater
+repression of the individual mind--Significance of the last four
+centuries</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">Scenes From The Hussite War (1425)--Emigration of Germans to
+the east after the thirteenth century--Silesia and its Sclave
+Princes--Colonization, the blessing of free labour recognized--
+Character and fate of the German Silesians--Contrast of the
+Bohemians--Narrative by Martin von Bolkenhain--Consequences of the
+Hussite war and subsequent fate of the Silesians</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">A German Lady Of The Royal Court (1440)--Development of the
+popular mind in the Hussite time--Life at Court--The last of
+the Luxemburgers--The Hungarian Crown--Narration of Helen
+Kottanner--Struggles of conscience in the fifteenth century</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">A Travelling Student (1509)--Characteristics of the fifteenth
+century--Introductions in the sixteenth century--Excitement in
+the people, wandering propensities, exciting news, Landsknechte,
+art of printing--German learning; the Humanitarians--The Latin
+schools, the children of the people as scholars--Narrative Of Thomas
+Platter--Influence of the Latin schools upon the people</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">The Mental Struggles of a Youth, and his Entrance into a Monastery
+(1510)--The wants of the popular mind--The church--Brotherhoods;
+Indulgences--Opposition to them--Narrative Of Friedrich Myconius</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">Out of the Cloister into the Struggle (1522)--The storm among the
+people--Luther's popularity--Narration of Ambrosius Blaurer--The knight
+from the Wartburg--Narrative of Johann Kessler</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">Doctor Luther (1517 to 1546)--His importance to us--The tragic in his
+life--Distinct periods in it--His father--Mental struggle in the
+monastery, and how he delivered himself from it--His character in
+1519--Three letters to the Pope--An inward struggle--Luther as a
+writer--At the Wartburg--Adherence to Scripture, and defects in his
+method--The marriage of priests--Return to Wittenberg--His political
+position--The crisis--How he married--Activity of his latter years--His
+spirit, his family, his God, his temptations, and ideas of the end of
+the world--From the funeral discourse of Melancthon--Letter of Luther
+to the Elector Friedrich the Wise, March, 1522</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">German Princes At The Imperial Diet (1547)--Luther and Charles
+V.--The Roman Empire--Possibility of a new confirmation--The man
+wanting--Princes of the sixteenth century--Charles V.--Narrative of
+Bartholom�us Sastrow--Weakness of the Imperial power--Alliance of the
+German opposition with France--Internal disorganization of the empire</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">A Burgher Family (1488)--Insight into the lower circles of German
+life--Increasing popular strength--Social superiority of the Protestant
+provinces (1542)--Insecurity of life--Family History Of Bartholom�us
+Sastrow</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p class="hang1">The Marriage and Housekeeping of a Young Student (1557)--The female sex
+among the Germans--Position of women in the middle ages--Marriage
+considered as an alliance between families--The betrothal--Narrative of
+Felix Platter</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">Of a Patrician House (1526 to 1598)--The patricians rich and
+educated--Hans Schweinichen's account of the riches of the
+Fuggers--Their women--Clara Pirkheimer and Argula von Grumbach--Letters
+of a Lady of the Glauburg Family</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">German Nobility In The Sixteenth Century (1500)--False position
+in the nation--Unproductiveness--Gradual change--Character of G�tz
+von Berlichingen--Extract from his Autobiography--Character of
+Sch�rtlin--Narrative Of Sch�rtlin--Hans von Schweinichen and Duke
+Heinrich von Liegnitz--Narrative Of Schweinichen--Transition to modern
+life</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">German Ideas of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century (1500)--The
+introduction of German traditions concerning him; change in the middle
+ages--Luther spiritualizes the ideas regarding the devil--Activity of
+the devil in the new Church--Compacts with the devil after Luther's
+time--Favourable position of the possessed--The money devil at
+Frankfort--Satan exorcised from one possessed--Witches--Dreadful
+persecutions--Gloomy state of men's minds at the end of the sixteenth
+century</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>DEDICATION.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal"><span class="sc">To my dear Friend Solomon Hertzel</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without your knowledge I dedicate this work to you, who have taken so
+kind an interest in it, whose excellent library has so often helped
+when other sources failed, and where, as industrious collectors, we
+have examined so many old flying sheets and manuscripts.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To you also these records of the olden times, in which the private life
+and feelings of the writers are portrayed, are especially valuable, for
+by them a clear light is thrown on events in our political history
+which till now have been only occasionally noticed, and we may discover
+from them how the German people have felt, suffered, and lived.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">If these records of individuals can be judiciously arranged according
+to periods and their position in life, it appears to me that an
+instructive insight may be obtained into the gradual development of the
+mind of the German people.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">I have endeavoured to carry this out from the middle ages to the
+beginning of the present era.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What I have added of my own is simple explanation: I have avoided
+saying anything where it could be given in the original; only where the
+old records fail to give a complete picture have I supplied the
+deficiency.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As there are very few who can read the language of the fifteenth, or
+even the seventeenth, century with ease, I have thought it necessary to
+translate the records into modern German, but at the same time to
+preserve something of the old style.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Accept kindly then, my friend, what of right belongs to you, for your
+flag waves on every vessel that I launch; and I trust that the freight
+that I have this time prepared, may meet with your hearty approbation.</p>
+
+<p class="right">GUSTAV FREYTAG.</p>
+
+<p class="continue"><i>Siebleben, 8th October</i>, 1859.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">In vain does the German seek for &quot;the good old times.&quot; If even the
+pious zealot who condemns Hegel and Humboldt as the greatest of
+Atheists, or the conservative proprietor who is struggling for the
+privileges of his order, were to be thrown back into one of the last
+centuries, he would feel first unmitigated astonishment, then horror,
+at the position in which he would find himself placed. What now appears
+to him so desirable would make him miserable, and he would be driven to
+despair at the loss of all the advantages of that civilization which he
+at present so little appreciates.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Let a German proprietor endeavour to realize to himself the position
+of one of his ancestors in the year 1559. Instead of the house he
+has now, built in the old German style, surrounded by its English
+pleasure-grounds, he would find himself shut up in a gloomy, dirty, and
+comfortless building, placed either on a height destitute of water, and
+exposed to the cutting blasts of the wind, or else surrounded by the
+f&#339;tid smells of stagnant ditches. It is true that three generations
+back dim panes had been added to the small windows,<a name="div2_01" href="#div2Ref_01"><sup>[1]</sup></a> and large stoves
+of Dutch tiles, which were fed with logs from the neighbouring forest,
+kept the cold out of the sitting-rooms; but the accommodation was
+limited, as it was occasionally necessary to defend the house against
+attacks from the citizens of the nearest town, roving bands of
+marauders, or reckless soldiers bent on revenge because they had been
+cheated of half their pay by the neighbouring prince.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Comfortless and dirty is the house, for it is occupied by many others
+beside the family of the owner: younger brothers and cousins, with
+their wives and children, numberless servants, amongst them many of
+doubtful character, men-at-arms, labourers, and in 1559, mercenaries,
+may be added. In the court-yard, from the dung-heap is heard the cry of
+children quarrelling, and from round the kitchen fire the no less
+inharmonious sound of wrangling women. The children of the house grow
+up amongst horses, dogs, and servants; they receive scanty instruction
+in the village school; the boys keep the geese<a name="div2_02" href="#div2Ref_02"><sup>[2]</sup></a> and poultry for their
+mother, or they go with the village people to the wood to collect wild
+pears and mushrooms, which are dried for the winter meal; the lady of
+the castle is housekeeper, head cook, and doctor of the establishment,
+and is well accustomed to intercourse with lawless men and to the
+ill-treatment of her drunken husband. She is faithful, a thorough
+manager, proud of her escutcheon, of the gold chains and brocades
+belonging to the family; she looks suspiciously on the dress and finery
+of the wives of the counsellors of the town, who she considers have no
+right to wear sable and ermine, velvet dresses, pearls in their hair,
+and precious stones round their necks. The love and tenderness of her
+nature frequently gave elevation to her countenance and manners; but in
+those days, both in the homes of the nobles and in the courts of
+princes, much was considered decorous and was permitted to women of the
+highest character in familiar conversation which now would be condemned
+as unseemly in the wife of a common labourer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The daily life of the landed proprietor is one of idleness or wild
+excitement. The hunting is certainly excellent. Where the forest has
+not been laid waste by the reckless stroke of the axe, grow the stately
+trees of the primeval wood; the howl of the wolf is still heard in the
+winter nights; the hunters sally forth on horseback, with spear and
+cross-bow, against beasts of prey, stags, roedeer, and the wild boar,
+and all adopt the habits of the rough hunters. But whilst hunting, even
+in his own wood, every one must be provided with weapons against other
+foes than the wolf and the boar. There are few hunting-grounds
+concerning which there is not some quarrel with a neighbour or feudal
+lord, who often claims the right of following the chase up to the
+squire's castle; the squire is also set at defiance by the peasants of
+the nearest village, whose crops have been laid waste by the stag and
+the boar, and who hates the master of the castle for having beaten or
+thrown him into prison for crossing the path of the chase; and not
+unfrequently an arrow whistles through the darkness of the wood with
+other aim than a wild animal; or an armed band breaks through a
+clearing, and then begins a race for freedom and life. We will suppose
+the game to be brought home and cut up in the castle yard; then follows
+the banquet, with endless drinking of healths and wild revelry, and
+seldom a night passes without the whole party breaking up in a state of
+intoxication. Drunkenness was at this time a national evil, prostrating
+alike the powers of princes, nobles, and people. The guests at the hunt
+and the banquet are of the same rank as their host--some are old
+cavaliers, constantly swearing, and relating anecdotes of the knightly
+feats they have performed in the greenwood against the traders and
+townspeople; others a younger race, hangers-on of the great feudal
+lords, who proudly wear the gold-laced caps given by these lords to
+their vassals.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus the week passes away. On Sunday it is considered a duty to attend
+the village church, and listen to the preacher's endless sermon, which
+generally breathes hatred to Calvinists or Papists, and denounces the
+factious Schwenkfeld or the apostate Melancthon. There is but little
+intercourse with foreign countries: the country gentleman gratifies his
+curiosity by buying from the itinerant pedler what was then called a
+newspaper, being a few quarto sheets published at intervals in the
+towns, containing very doubtful intelligence, such as a horrible fight
+having taken place between the sons of the Turkish sultan, a young
+maiden being possessed by the devil, or the French king having been
+struck on the head by one of his nobles. Sometimes the young squire
+listens to the songs of ballad singers, who recite similar news to old
+popular tunes, or, what is still more welcome, satirical verses on some
+neighbour, which the singer has been paid to propagate far and wide
+through the country. The reading which gives most pleasure at home, is
+either some astrological absurdity, such as a prophecy of old Wilhelm
+Friese or Gottfried Phyllers, or a description of the funeral festival
+of the Emperor Charles V. at Augsburg; besides these, theological
+writings find their way into the castle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This life, which in spite of all its excitement is so meagre and
+monotonous, is sometimes varied by the discovery of a murdered man in
+the fields, or by some old woman of the village being accused of
+witchcraft. These incidents give rise to judicial proceedings, in the
+first case tardy and of little interest, in the latter fierce and
+bloodthirsty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There are other annoyances in these times from which the landed
+proprietor is seldom free,--lawsuits and many difficulties. His father
+had sought to obtain money for the payment of his debts on the highway
+in his breastplate and saddle, and thus revenged himself for his
+injured rights. But now a new age has begun, and law asserts its
+supremacy over the self-will and independence of individuals; it is
+however an uncertain, dilatory, distorted law, which overlooks the
+powerful, and too often favours the wealthy. The young squire still
+rides his charger, armed with lance and pistol, but he is no longer
+eager to obtain fame and booty in war. The foot-soldier with pike and
+musket, and light-horseman of the town have outstripped him. Even at
+the tournament he prefers running at the ring; and if perchance he
+should encounter in the lists any person of distinction, he finds it
+more advantageous to allow himself to be unhorsed, than to contend
+manfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The condition of his peasantry is wretched: they have sunk from freemen
+to slaves; the rent they have to pay in labour, corn, and money,
+swallows up their earnings, yet he benefits little by it. The roads
+being bad and unsafe, it is impossible to export his produce: he is
+just able to keep himself and his household, for his income is small;
+everything has become dear; the new gold which has been brought to
+Europe from America is amassed in the great commercial towns, and is of
+little advantage to him, and he is unable to maintain the state
+suitable to his position.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He holds obstinately to all he considers his right, and supports or
+resists his feudal lord according to his personal advantage;
+occasionally he follows him to the Imperial Diet. But in the Provincial
+States, he eagerly resists the impost of new taxes; he has no real love
+of his country, and only feels himself German in opposition to Italians
+and Spaniards, whom he hates; but looks with a selfish interest on
+France, whose King burns cursed Calvinists and engages German Lutherans
+at high salaries. The province in which he lives has no political
+unity; the sovereignty of his feudal lord is no longer a firm edifice,
+and his attachment is therefore only occasional. His egotism alone is
+firm and lasting, a miserable hateful egotism, which has scarce power
+to excite him to deeds of daring, not even to bind him to others of his
+own class. Rarely does the feeling of his own social position ennoble
+his conversation or actions; his education and knowledge of the world
+are not greater than those of a horsedealer of the present day.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A century has passed, it is the year 1659--ten years since the
+conclusion of the great German war. The walls of the old castles have
+been shattered, foreign soldiers have encamped within them, whose fires
+have blackened the ruins, and whose fury has emptied the granaries and
+destroyed all the household goods. The squire has now erected a new
+building with the stones of the old one; it is a bare house, with thick
+walls, and without ornament; the windows look on a miserable village,
+which is only partly built, and on a field which, for the first time
+for many years, is prepared for cultivation; the flock of sheep has
+been replenished, but there are no horses, and the peasants have
+learned to plough with oxen. The owner of the house has no longer to
+provide for the horses of troopers and knights; a coach stands in a
+hovel,--a kind of lumbering chest on leather straps, but nevertheless
+the pride of the family. The house is surrounded by walls and moats
+with drawbridges; massive locks and strong iron work defend the
+entrances, for the country is still insecure. Gipsies and bands of
+marauders lurk in the neighbourhood, and the daily conversation is of
+robberies and horrible murders. There is great regularity both in house
+and village, and strict order is kept by the squire amongst his
+children, servants, and retainers; but many wild figures may be still
+seen about the court-yard,--disbanded soldiers who have taken service
+as messengers, foresters, halberdiers, &amp;c. The village school is in sad
+decay, but the squire's children receive instruction from a poor
+scholar. The squire wears a wig with flowing curls; instead of the
+knightly sword, a slender rapier hangs at his side; in society his
+movements and conversation are stiff and formal; the townspeople call
+him your honour, and his daughter has become &quot;fraulein&quot; and
+&quot;damoiselle;&quot; the lady of the house wears a bunch of keys at her side;
+she is great in receipts and superstitious remedies, and her repose is
+troubled by ghostly apparitions in the old tower of the castle. When a
+visitor approaches, the spinning-wheel is hidden, an embroidered dress
+is quickly put on, the scanty family treasures of silver goblets and
+tankards laid out on the sideboard, a groom, who is just capable of
+making a bow, is hastily put into livery, and perfumes are burnt in
+the room. The young squire when he visits appears as a gallant � la
+mode,--in lace coat and wig, and pays the most fulsome compliments to
+the lady of the house; he is her most devoted slave, he extols the
+daughter as a heart-enslaver, and declares that she is quite angelic in
+her appearance; but these finely turned compliments are bad sauce to
+coarse manners, and are generally interspersed with stable language and
+oaths. When conversation begins to flow more freely, it is directed by
+preference to subjects which are no longer ambiguous, and women listen,
+not with the na�vet� of former times, but with secret pleasure, to the
+boldness of such language, for it is the fashion to relate improper
+anecdotes, and by enigmatical questions to produce a pretty affected
+embarrassment in the ladies. But even such conversation soon wearies,
+and the wine begins to circulate, the hilarity becomes noisy, and they
+finish by getting very drunk, after the old German fashion. They smoke
+clay pipes, and cavaliers of high breeding take snuff from silver
+boxes. The chase is again the amusement of the country gentleman: he
+tries to exterminate the wolves, which during the late war have become
+numerous and insolent; he exhibits rifles among his hunting gear, but
+no longer mounts his steed as an armed knight; his armour is rusty, his
+independence is gone, war is carried on by the soldiers of the Prince,
+and he appears at court only as the obsequious servant of his
+illustrious lord.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He is still firm in his faith, and adheres to the rites of the Church;
+but he holds in contempt the theological controversies of the clergy,
+and does not object to holding intercourse with unbelievers, though he
+prefers Jesuits to zealous sectarians. The pastor of his village is
+poor and devout, and from living amongst lawless men, has lost much of
+his priestly pride; he strives to support himself by agriculture, and
+considers it an honour to dine at the squire's table, and has in return
+to laugh at his patron's jokes, and retail the news of the day. When it
+is a f�te day at the castle he presents a pompous poem, in which he
+calls on Venus, the Muses and Graces, to celebrate in Olympus the
+birthday of the lady of the house. On such days there is music at the
+castle, and the viola da gamba is the fashionable instrument. Once a
+week the newspaper is brought to the castle, from thence it is sent to
+the parsonage, then to the schoolmaster and forester: the chief reading
+besides this consists of tedious novels and histories of adventures, or
+anecdotes of ghostly apparitions and discoveries of treasure; sometimes
+also dissertations on the phenomena of nature, the first glimmering of
+a more intellectual literature. The squire interests himself in
+politics; he distrusts Sweden, and abhors the regicide tendencies of
+England, but admires everything French, and whosoever can give him news
+of Paris is a welcome guest. He attends the Diet, but it is only for
+the sake of maintaining the privileges of his order; he lounges in
+antechambers, and by bribery endeavours to secure for his relations
+some appointment about the court. He unwillingly allows his son to
+study law, with the hope that he may, as royal counsellor, advance the
+interests of his family; in short, he looks upon the court and the
+government as wine vats to be tapped, so as to afford him a good
+draught. Germany is to him a mere geographical spot, which he neither
+loves nor hates; his family or his order are all that he serves or
+cares for, and if one abstracts from him his high pretensions, and
+compares the remains of the kernel with the men of our own time, we
+should find more sense and rectitude in the stubborn head of a
+corporation of the smallest town than in him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Again a century has passed, a time of little energy or national
+strength, and yet great changes have taken place. The year 1759 is in
+the youth of our grandfathers; numberless remembrances cling to our
+hearts; it will be sufficient to recall a few. The squire's house has
+no longer a bare front: a porch has been added, supported by stone
+pillars; the staircase is ornamented with vases; over the hall door a
+rudely carved angel holds the family arms emblazoned on a spiral shell.
+On one side of the building lies the farm-yard, on the other the
+garden, laid out with trim beech hedges and obelisks of yew. The old
+whitewashed walls are almost all covered with plaster-of-paris, and
+some are highly ornamented. There is an abundance of household
+furniture beautifully carved in oak or walnut; near the ancient family
+portraits hang modern pastil pictures, amongst them perhaps the
+daughter of the house as a shepherdess with a crook in her hand. In the
+apartments of the lady of the house there is a porcelain table with
+coloured tankards, small cups, pug-dogs, and Cupids of this newly
+discovered material. Propriety reigns everywhere with a strict stern
+rule; women and servants speak low, children kiss their parents' hands,
+the master of the house calls his wife &quot;ma ch�re,&quot; and uses other
+French phrases. The hair is powdered, and the ladies wear stiff gowns
+and high head-dresses; violent emotions or strong passions seldom
+disturb the stiff formality of their carriage or the tranquillity of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The squire has become economist, and looks a little after the farming;
+he tries by selecting choice breeds to improve the wool of his flocks,
+and raises carefully the new bulb called the potato, which is to be a
+source of unfailing nourishment to man and beast. The mode of life is
+quiet, simple, and formal. The mother shakes her head about Gellert's
+'Life of the Swedish Countess;' the daughter is delighted with Kleist's
+'Spring,' and sings to the harpsichord of violets and lambs; and the
+father carries in his pocket the 'Songs of a Grenadier.' Coffee is
+placed before the visitors, and on high holidays chocolate makes its
+appearance. Everything is managed by government officials, and much is
+required of the country gentleman, who has to pay taxes without being
+consulted: he is a person of more consideration than the citizen, but
+is now far removed from the prince. The great noble looks with
+contempt on him, and it is well for him if he does not feel the
+weight of his stick: the officials of the capital interfere with his
+farming; they order him to dig a drain, to build a mill, even to plant
+mulberry-trees, and send him the eggs of silkworms, insisting upon his
+rearing them. It is a weary time; the third, or Seven years', war is
+raging between the king and emperor; the squire is walking about his
+room, wringing his hands and weeping. How is it that this hard man has
+so completely lost his composure? The letter on the table has informed
+him that his son, an officer in the king's army, has come unscathed out
+of the fight at Cunnersdorf; why then does he weep and wring his hands?
+His King is in distress; the state to which he belongs is in danger of
+destruction, and it is for this that he grieves. He is greater, richer,
+and better than any of his ancestors, for he has a fatherland; the
+training of his generation is rough, manners coarse, and government
+despotic; his knowledge of the world is not greater than that of a
+subordinate official of the present day, but this feeling within him,
+either in life or death, makes him a man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Life in every period of the German past was much rougher than now; but
+it is not the hardships of individuals which make the old time appear
+so strange to us, it is that the whole mode of life, in every thought
+and feeling, is so essentially different. The reason of this difference
+is, that at all periods of the past the mind of the individual was less
+free and more subordinate to the spirit of the nation; we may see this
+especially in the middle ages, but it may still be observed in the last
+century.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There was no such thing as public opinion. The individual submitted his
+conscience to the approbation of those with whom he lived; he committed
+to them his honour, interests, and safety, and only felt that he
+existed as a member of the society, thus rendering the necessity of
+union more urgent. How strikingly this tendency of the old times was
+exemplified in the clubs of Hanseatic stations! The constraint within
+their closed walls was almost monkish. Every word and gesture at the
+dinner-table was regulated, and this rule was maintained by severe
+punishments. The soldiers who roamed about together in troops from all
+parts of Germany, made laws for themselves, by which they kept the
+strictest discipline, each being accuser and judge of the other. Upon a
+sea voyage the passengers selected from amongst themselves a
+magistrate, judge, and police-officer, who declared the law, imposed
+fines, and awarded even bodily punishment; and if at the conclusion of
+the journey any individual wished to free himself from this control, he
+had to take an oath that he would not revenge himself for any annoyance
+or injury he might have suffered under the ship's law; and it was the
+same with pilgrimages to the Holy Land, especially where it was
+question of any dangerous enterprise. For instance, when, in the year
+1535, five-and-twenty men from Amberg undertook to explore the cavern
+of the &quot;awful&quot; mountains, their first act at the entrance to the
+caverns was to choose two leaders, and take an oath of obedience to
+stand by one another in life or death.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The same feature is to be found amongst the artists of the middle ages:
+thus did the life of individuals first find its full expression, in
+association with others.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One peculiar charm which we find in the national character of those
+early ages, is the union of a strong love of freedom with a spirit of
+obedience. To this characteristic of the old times may be added
+another. All, from the emperor to the wandering beggar, from their
+birth to their death, from morning till night, were fenced in by
+customs, forms, and ceremonies. A wonderful creative genius produced
+endless pictures and symbols, by which everything on earth was
+idealized. By these means was expressed the way in which the people
+understood their relations with God, and the right direction of all
+human energy; there were also many mysterious rituals which served as
+means of defence against the supposed influence of unearthly powers.
+Even in law mimic and figurative proceedings were laid down. Whoever
+sought revenge before a court of justice for the murder of a relative,
+had everything as to garments and gestures, the very words of the
+accusation, and even their complaints, prescribed to them. Every
+transfer of property, every investiture and contract, had its
+significant forms and precise words, on which its legality depended.
+The knights were summoned to the lists by the herald; the bride was
+claimed and the guests invited to the wedding by fixed forms of speech;
+it was considered of importance which foot was placed first on the
+ground in the morning, which shoe was first put on, and what stranger
+was first met on going out; also, how the bread was laid on the table
+at each meal, and where the salt-cellar was placed. All that concerned
+the body, the cutting of the hair, baths, and bleeding, had their
+appointed time and appropriate regulations. When the agriculturist
+turned up the first clod, when he brought in the last sheaf, leaving a
+truss of corn in the field, in short, all the incidents of labour had
+their peculiar usages; there were customs for every important day of
+the year, and they abounded at every festival. Many relics of these
+remain to our day; we maintain some for our amusement, but most of them
+appear to us useless, senseless, and superstitious.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Many of these practices had been derived in Germany from the heathen
+faith and ancient laws and customs. The Church of the middle ages
+followed in the same track, idealizing life. The services became more
+frequent, the ceremonials more artificial. In the same way that it had
+sanctified the great epochs of life by the mystery of its sacraments,
+it tried, rivalling the heathen traditions, to influence even the
+trifling actions of every-day life. It consecrated fountains and
+animals, and professed that it could stop the effusion of blood and
+turn away the enemy's shot by its blessing. Its endeavours to make the
+spiritual perceptible to the senses of the multitude, produced many
+proverbs and symbolical actings, which gave rise to the dramas of the
+middle ages. But whilst it thus met the imaginative tendencies of the
+people, its own spiritual and moral character was injured by all these
+outward observances; and when Luther accused the Church of thirty-seven
+errors, from the sale of indulgences, to the consecrated salt, and the
+baptism of bells with their two hundred godfathers, he was not in a
+position to perceive that the old Church had given growth to these
+excrescences, by having yielded too much to the imaginative disposition
+of the German popular mind.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The artisans liked to reproduce the formulas of their religion and
+guilds for their amusement: dialogue and gesture were interchanged, and
+thus dramatic representations arose. The initiated and best informed of
+every class became known by this; they had an opportunity of showing
+their nature under the traditional form. In such a way every young
+nation tries to represent life, and among the Germans, this
+inclination, together with the love of mystery, worked most powerfully
+in the same direction. It gave much opportunity for dramatic acting,
+though it was a peculiarly undramatic period in the life of the people,
+for words and characteristic gestures do not flow from the inward man;
+they come with imposing power from external circumstances, leading,
+forming, and restraining the individual.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such union of order and discipline belongs to the epic time of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How the German mind outgrew these bonds we shall learn from the
+following stories of the olden time. In the course of four centuries
+the great change was accomplished--a powerful action of the mind
+brought freedom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a fearful
+political catastrophe brought destruction in the seventeenth.<a name="div2_03" href="#div2Ref_03"><sup>[3]</sup></a> After
+a long deathlike sleep the modern spirit of the people awoke in the
+eighteenth century.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE.</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>SCENES FROM THE HUSSITE WAR.</h3>
+<h4>(<span class="sc">about</span> 1425.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Among the events of the thirteenth century, the wonderfully rapid
+colonization of the Sclave country east of the Elbe has never been
+sufficiently appreciated. In the course of one century a numerous body
+of German emigrants of all classes, almost as many as now go to
+America, spread themselves over a large tract of country, established
+hundreds of cities and villages, and united it for the most part firmly
+to Germany. Nearly the whole of the eastern part of Prussia extends
+over a portion of the territory that was thus colonized.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The time however of this outpouring of national strength was not the
+heroic period of Germany. The enthusiasm of the Crusades, the splendour
+of the Hohenstaufen, the short reign of German chivalry, and the
+greatest elevation of German art, were at the end of the twelfth and
+beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the colonization of the
+Sclave frontier was carried on with most energy towards the close of
+it. This was the period when Neumark and Prussia were conquered, and
+Lausitz, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Rugen, and Silesia colonized. But
+there was a striking difference in the case of Silesia; for whilst in
+the other Sclave countries the people were crushed by the iron hand of
+the conqueror, and were compelled to adopt German habits of life,
+Silesia became the centre of a quiet, peaceful colonization, which
+spread itself far and wide over, the frontier towards the east.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German
+people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon.
+The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the
+Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and
+eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in
+Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks,
+enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at
+the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers
+to follow them to Poland. But little is known concerning this
+emigration; we do not even know from what province the great stream of
+Silesian wanderers flowed. There are grounds for thinking that most of
+them came from Magdeburg, Thuringia, and perhaps Franconia. There is no
+mention of it in the ancient manuscripts or chronicles; the only
+evidence concerning it might perhaps be found in the Silesian and
+Thuringian dialects, but even these have not been sufficiently
+investigated. We have however more knowledge as to who invited the
+Germans into the country of the Oder. It was the Sclavonian dukes of
+the Piasten family, who were then rulers of the country.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the end of the twelfth century a race of ancient Polish princes
+resided on their paternal inheritance in Silesia; inferior to these
+were numerous Sclave nobles, and below them again a much oppressed and
+enslaved people. The country was thinly populated, and poor both in
+capital and labour. The heights of the Riesenberge and the plains of
+the Oder were clothed with wood; between them stretched out miles of
+desolate heath. Herds of wild boars laired in the swamps, bears picked
+the wild honey from the hollow trunks of the trees, and the elks fed on
+the branches of the pine; the beaver made its home beside the rivers,
+the fish eagle hovered about the ponds, and above him soared the noble
+falcon. The beaver and falcon were more valuable in the eyes of the
+princes than their serfs. The peasants looked from their miserable huts
+with horror on the lords of the water and air, for the preservation of
+which they had to pay exorbitant penalties. What the earth yielded
+freely they had to collect for their rigorous masters and the Church.
+They had to pay tribute from the water and the heath of fish and honey,
+and heavy imposts on their arable land, sheaves of corn, grain and
+money; and a certain amount of service was required of them. The
+greater part were serfs; few were free. And not only the peasants, but
+also the artisans and tradesmen of all kinds lived in every gradation
+of servitude, ground down by oppression without hope or pleasure in
+their work. The Sclave cities only differed from the villages in being
+a larger collection of bare huts, surrounded by a moat and wooden
+palisades, and usually situated in the vicinity of a nobleman's castle,
+under whose protection they lived. In peaceable times markets were held
+in the towns. Even till the end of the twelfth century the merchants
+often made their payments, as in Poland, with the tails of martins and
+skins of squirrels instead of money. But the Silesian mines were
+already being worked; they yielded silver and gold, copper and lead,
+and mining, which was considered the nobleman's right, was carried on
+actively. Mints were erected in all the great market towns, and, as in
+Poland, the coinage was changed three times a year; and the princes
+derived some of their income from tolls on the market-places, butchers'
+stalls, and public-houses.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such was the country that was then ruled by the royal Piasten families
+under the Polish sovereignty, which, however, was often disputed, and
+sometimes entirely thrown off. A great dissimilarity might however be
+discerned in the different branches of the family. The Piastens of
+Upper Silesia united themselves closely with Poland, and kept up the
+Sclave habits in their country, so that even at the present day a
+Sclave population is to be found there; but the rulers of Lower Silesia
+adhered to the Germans. It was their policy to marry the daughters of
+the German princes: they set the highest value upon everything German,
+and German manners were introduced into the court; their children were
+sent to travel in Germany, and often brought up there, so that in the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, the Piasten family was held in
+great consideration throughout that country; they sought for knighthood
+from their relations in the west, and out of courtesy to them dressed
+their followers in their colours. They knighted their own nobles with
+the German straight sword, instead of using the crooked Sclave sabre;
+they preferred getting drunk on malmsey and Rhine wines, instead of the
+old mead. The German dances were in great request among the ladies of
+the court.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In this way a numerous German nobility was established in the country,
+for these courtiers or adventurers and their relations soon became
+landed proprietors, and the Sclavonian institution of the Castellan was
+replaced by the German feudal tenure. But an influx of priests and
+monks tended still more to the promotion of German habits; a stream of
+them poured incessantly from the west into the half-civilized country.
+Monasteries, cloisters, and other pious establishments sprang up
+rapidly, and became as it were the strongholds of German life; for the
+brotherhoods of the west sent their best and most distinguished
+members, and continued to furnish them with learning, books, and
+spiritual energy. The princes, nobles, and clergy soon became aware of
+the difference between German and Sclave labour; under the latter,
+large tracts of country yielded little produce, except wood from the
+forest and honey from the heath. The landed proprietors therefore, with
+due regard to their own interests, introduced everywhere German labour.
+Thus in Silesia the great truth first dawned upon men, on which rests
+the whole system of modern life, that the labour of free men, can alone
+give stability to a nation and make it powerful and prosperous. The
+landed proprietors gave up the greater part of the claims which,
+according to the Polish law, they had upon men who dwelt on their
+property, and which were so exorbitant that they derived but little
+benefit from them. The princes granted the inhabitants as a favour, the
+right of founding cities and villages in accordance with German law,
+that is to say, free communities, and this privilege was eagerly sought
+after, especially by the ecclesiastical bodies, such as Cistertians,
+Augustines, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A regular method was pursued in founding these communities; but the
+fate of the villages was very different from that of the cities in the
+latter part of the middle ages. In the cities, as the body politic
+continually gained fresh strength, their rights and independence
+increased; the burgesses acquired by purchase the mayoralty, with its
+rights and jurisdiction; whilst, on the other hand, the villages were
+unable to protect themselves from the exactions of the landed
+proprietors and the burdens laid upon them by their princes; they lost
+much of their freedom, and many rights they had possessed at their
+foundation in the thirteenth century were only restored to them in the
+beginning of this present one.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was thus that after the beginning of the thirteenth century a new
+German race sprang up with a surprising rapidity, bordering on the
+Oder, between the Reisenberge and the plains of Poland. The emigration
+continued for a considerable period, and the quiet struggle between the
+German and Polish races lasted long after the former had gained the
+predominance; indeed, in some districts it has not yet ceased. But for
+the most part the pliant Sclave race of Silesia peaceably adopted the
+new customs, as it was very advantageous to put themselves under German
+law. And thus the new race showed in its dialect, manners, and
+education a new phase of the German popular character which one may
+perceive has arisen from the union of the German and Sclave races.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The people who thus sprang up were not destined to an easy life, and it
+required all the excitability they derived from the Sclaves, together
+with the higher capacity they inherited from the Germans, to preserve
+them from annihilation. Driven in like a wedge between Bohemia and
+Poland quite to the vicinity of Hungary, they contended with all these
+nations, dispensing blows and receiving them from their stronger
+neighbours. They were never able to attain to the independence of a
+united people. However strong particular communities and confederations
+became when it was a question of external enemies, the Silesians were
+almost always divided.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the fifteenth century the country was visited by that terrible
+scourge the Hussite war. It is in that fearful time, when the fanatical
+warriors of the chalice burnt the Silesian villages and cloisters, and
+threw everything ecclesiastical into the flames, when the land was
+devastated for nearly a century by the horrors of war, that the
+peculiar Silesian character may be traced in contradistinction to that
+of the races dwelling in the adjoining country.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whilst in the regions adjoining the Oder, and still farther off by the
+shores of the Baltic, the German race, proud of their recent conquest
+over the Sclaves, desired to improve themselves by union with Germany,
+a great Sclave population had arisen in the middle of the German
+states, the toughest and most stable of all that family: it was firmly
+incorporated in the Empire, and had long been under the influence of
+German culture. Prague in the beginning of the fifteenth century might
+have passed for a German city, for not only in its laws and commerce,
+but also in science and art it exhibited all the vigour and
+independence of German life. About 1289 the King of Bohemia rode as a
+German elector to the election of the Emperor, and waved the golden
+glass at the coronation; the Bohemian minstrels and chroniclers wrote
+in the Swabian language and style, and Bohemian artists painted
+pictures of saints and windows for the German churches. Under the
+Luxemburgers Bohemia became the centre of the empire. The Bohemian
+throne was adorned with the German Imperial eagle and crown, and the
+flower of Germany's youth flocked to the many-turreted Moldavian city,
+in order to win in the first German university a nobler patent of
+nobility than the sword could give. It seemed then for a considerable
+period as if this fine compact Sclave country, lying with its mountain
+ramparts in the midst of Germany like a gigantic fortress, was likely
+to become the kernel of a great united empire, spreading far beyond the
+Rhine on the west, and to the Vistula on the east, or even perhaps to
+the swamps of the Theis. But just at this time an energetic reaction of
+Sclave popular feeling was roused in Bohemia against the Germans, and a
+long struggle ensued which fearfully shook the political, religious,
+and social life of Germany, rent the unity of the Roman Catholic
+Church, weakened the empire and threw it into confusion, depopulated
+large districts by a war full of cruelty, and amidst the flames of
+burning cities and the waning of millions, gave the death-blow to the
+Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages. It was the peculiar destiny of
+Germany that this great struggle should first break out among the
+teachers and scholars in the halls of the universities, and that the
+funeral pile of a Bohemian professor should give a new direction to the
+policy of German princes and people.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The auto-da-f� of Huss did not appear to the Germans a very striking or
+blamable occurrence; people in those days were hastily condemned to
+death, and there hardly passed a year that the torch was not laid to
+the stake in every large city. However great the grief and indignation
+of the national party of Bohemia might be at these proceedings, the
+wild fanaticism of the people was first roused by another, and greater
+crime of the reckless Emperor Sigismund, who, at the head of the
+orthodox German fanatics, began the strife by the great massacre in
+1420; this outrage gave the Bohemians the strength of despair, and was
+the beginning of the wars which raged between the Germans and the
+Sclaves to the end of that century. Even after dissensions had broken
+out amongst the Bohemians themselves, and after the death of Georg von
+Podiebrad, feuds continued, and predatory bands spread themselves over
+the neighbouring lands, the people and nobility of Bohemia as well as
+those of the suffering frontier lands became lawless, and a hatred of
+races, less passionate but more savage and more enduring, took the
+place of fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">No land suffered more from the terrors of the Hussite time than
+Silesia, and it must be confessed that the Silesians showed to less
+advantage in this century than at any other period of their history; by
+the division of their country they were politically weak, and quite
+unfitted to withstand by their own strength the attacks of powerful
+enemies; when danger approached a feeling of the helplessness of their
+position came over them and disheartened them; but whenever they could
+breathe more freely, they became overbearing and full of high-flown
+plans which generally ended in nothing. As neighbours they were bitter
+enemies of the Bohemians, and from hatred to them, zealous in their
+orthodoxy; they were actively engaged in the first disgraceful
+devastation of Bohemia, and thus, by breach of faith, brought down on
+themselves the vengeance of the Bohemians. As in the Roman time the
+truth of a Carthaginian was a byword, so now in Silesia was that of a
+Bohemian; but the Silesians had no right to reproach the Bohemians with
+breach of faith. Their dangerous position did not make them more
+careful, and they allowed their possessions and cities to be destroyed
+from the want of timely succour; they were always irritating their
+enemies and causing fresh attacks by their insolent witticisms and
+small perfidies. Their vigour and elasticity, however, were most
+enduring; as often as the Bohemians burnt down their cities and
+villages, they rebuilt them, and patched up whatever would hold
+together; they never tired of irritating the heretical Girsik, as they
+called Georg von Podiebrad.<a name="div2_04" href="#div2Ref_04"><sup>[4]</sup></a> If, however, they were in need of his
+assistance, they tried to appease him by a present of a hundred oxen.
+After a time, however, their hatred became more manly; they took up
+arms and fought him valiantly; and when at last he sank into the grave,
+they had the satisfaction of feeling that they had embittered the life
+and thwarted the ambitious plans of this determined character by their
+perpetual opposition.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is the beginning of this unhappy period which is described in the
+following narrative. It is taken from the report of a merchant in
+Bolkenhain,<a name="div2_05" href="#div2Ref_05"><sup>[5]</sup></a> named Martin, the fragment of his notes which we
+possess, published by Heinrick Hoffman (in Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum
+I., 1839).</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the year of our Lord 1425, the Hussites appeared one Saturday
+evening before the town of W�nschelburg. On Sunday, about the time of
+vespers, they made breaches in the walls, and by their overwhelming
+force gained an entrance. The people flew to the house of the mayor,<a name="div2_06" href="#div2Ref_06"><sup>[6]</sup></a>
+which was a high stone building. When all the men and women had arrived
+there, they set fire to the city from the mayor's house, and thought
+thereby to save themselves; but the Bohemians waited till the fire had
+burnt out, then rushed in a powerful body against the stone house,
+endeavouring to storm and undermine it. Then followed a parley: the
+mayor let himself down to the Hussites by means of a coarse tilt,<a name="div2_07" href="#div2Ref_07"><sup>[7]</sup></a>
+that he might negotiate with them whether the citizens should be
+allowed to go free. He was so long absent in the town that the people
+began greatly to fear, especially the pastor of the town, who was
+godfather to the mayor; he called out to them, asking whether the mayor
+was still below, requiring him to show and report himself, and come
+back to them; whereupon the mayor returned to the house and was again
+drawn up. When he had come up, his godfather the pastor asked how it
+had gone with him, and whether he had obtained from the enemy freedom
+for himself and his chaplain. Then spake the mayor: 'No, godfather;
+they give no mercy to priests!' Then the pastor and his chaplain were
+sore troubled, and said, 'How miserably you abandon and betray me, be
+God Almighty your judge. When aforetime I wished to fly, you bade me
+remain with you, saying you would abide by me for good or for evil,
+even unto death; and you said, Shall the shepherd fly from his sheep?
+And now, alack, evil is the day, the sheep fly from the shepherd.' Then
+spake the women and the citizens' wives to him, weeping, 'We will
+disguise you and your chaplains, and will bring you down with us
+safely.' Then spoke the pastor Herr Megerlein, 'That, please God, will
+I never do. I must not disavow my office and dignity, for I am a priest
+and not a woman; but look to it well, you men; see in what a pitiful
+way you deliver me over to death to save yourselves.' No one heeded
+these complaints; but the two chaplains allowed themselves to be
+disguised, and carried children on their shoulders--not so the pastor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Whilst they thus held converse together, the mayor agreed with the
+citizens on what terms they would surrender. They then went down, one
+after the other, and the Bohemians and Hussites were there in front of
+the building, and made prisoners of them all; they allowed only the
+women and children to go free. But many of the women, maidens, and
+children had been in such fear that they had taken refuge in the
+cellars; so when the fire reached them they were suffocated and
+perished. Now when all in the house had surrendered, there remained
+only the pastor, with a few journeymen and artisans who had been unable
+to purchase their liberty, and who feared death and imprisonment; these
+the pastor exhorted as follows: 'Dear companions, look well after your
+necks, and be firm, for if they make you prisoners they will torment
+and martyrize you.' Then they replied they would do as he advised. But
+when they saw that the citizens had all surrendered, great fear came
+over them, and they went down and submitted themselves; but the pastor
+remained there with an old village priest to the last. Then the
+Hussites went up to them and brought them down, and led them into the
+midst of the army and the multitude. Then Master Ambrosius, a heretic
+of Gr�tz, being present, spoke to these gentlemen in Latin: 'Pastor,
+wilt thou gainsay and retract what thou hast preached? thus thou mayst
+preserve thy life; but if thou wilt not do this, thou must be burnt.'
+Then answered Herr Megerlein the pastor, and said, 'God forbid that I
+should deny the truth of our holy Christian faith on account of this
+short pain. I have taught and preached the truth at Prague, at G�rlitz,
+and at Gr�tz,<a name="div2_08" href="#div2Ref_08"><sup>[8]</sup></a> and for this truth will I gladly die.' Then one of
+them ran and fetched a truss of straw, which they bound round about his
+body so that he could not be seen; they then set fire to the straw, and
+made him, thus surrounded by flames, run and dance about in the midst
+of the multitude, till he was suffocated. Then they took him as a
+corpse and threw him into a brewer's vat of boiling water; they also
+threw in the old village priest, and let them boil therein; thus they
+were both martyred; but the two chaplains of whom I have before spoken,
+came out with the women concealed in women's clothes, and the child
+that one of these priests bore on his arm began to weep and to cry
+after its mother, and the priest tried to comfort and quiet it. So the
+Hussites discovered by the voice that it was a man, and one of them
+took the veil off him; then he let fall the child, took to flight, and
+ran with all his might; they followed after and killed him. The other
+came away with the women and children. This happened at W�nschelburg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;1429. Soon after this the Hussites returned home, but remained there
+scarcely six weeks; they called out for another campaign, collected
+again in great strength, and passed into the land of Meissen. The
+Meisseners, however, were strong in the field, with others such as
+Brunswickers, Saxons, and people from the marshes, also some from the
+Imperial cities. The Hussites entered the country with fire and sword,
+killing and taking prisoners and living lawlessly. Now when the
+Hussites had advanced to where a large army of Meisseners and people
+from the Imperial cities were collected together, they encamped
+opposite to them, and threw up a barricade of waggons. When the armies
+were thus lying opposite each other they exchanged letters. The
+Meisseners wrote thus:--'Oh! you apostates from the faith, and cursed
+heretics, we shall, God willing, fight you to-morrow, and make you food
+for the dogs.' To which the Hussites thus replied:--'Oh! you hounds,
+we shall, God willing, make you food for the dogs, only wait for us
+to-morrow.' When it was still quite early on the following morning, the
+Hussites prepared themselves for the fight; they first heard mass, than
+ate and drank their fill, and when they moved forward to begin the
+fight, they received intelligence that the Meisseners had fled. When
+they heard this, they hastened onward and chased them two whole days.
+When they found they could not catch them, they deliberated, and
+dividing themselves spread all over the country, burning, killing, and
+making prisoners, and entering the towns from which the people had
+retired.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;1443. The country armed and prepared itself, and raised a troop of
+four hundred horse. It was known that the Bohemians and Hussites
+intended making an inroad upon the country, therefore the States
+encamped themselves some miles from Schweidnitz by B�gendorf, in order
+to watch the enemy, as they knew not at what point they would enter.
+But Hein von Czirnan had a presentiment that they would come to
+Bolkenhain (where he had settled), as did indeed happen; therefore he
+sent a horseman in all haste to Bolkenhain, to inform the burgomaster,
+and beg him to set a strong and vigilant watch, as he had certain
+intelligence that the enemy would enter the country in that quarter.
+The burgomaster sent warning to the villagers, but Hein von Czirnan's
+messenger arriving only in the evening, the watch not being well
+established in the city, the enemy appeared on the walls at the dawn of
+morning; for they had approached the city early in the evening and
+concealed themselves behind the hills and among the rocks, and had in
+the night quite at their leisure prepared ladders. The ladders were
+short, each of four rundles, so that four of these ladders could hardly
+reach up the wall; but the first piece of ladder had in front a little
+wheel; when this was placed, not being fixed, it advanced up the wall.
+The other ladders were so contrived that one fitted into the other, and
+fastened together by an iron band. With such cunning and malice had
+they so early set to work against us. They had placed these same
+ladders in the night by the walls where the city and hill were highest,
+the ladders were so broad and wide that two of the enemy could mount at
+a time. As now at daybreak they had placed many of the ladders, they
+began to ascend four at once, but when they arrived at the top of the
+wall they found no passage on it towards the city, and were obliged for
+some distance to slide and creep along till they came to a watch-house,
+where they found some steps; so, alas! they came upon us in the city.
+And when in this way many of them had assembled, they began to cry and
+to holloa out most terribly, like devils. This took place the last
+Thursday before Bartlemy-tide. When we heard this terrible noise and
+tumult, we were woefully frightened, and every one that was able fled
+to the towers of the gate, church, or any other tower that was
+accessible; but we could not get into the stronghold, as the enemy had
+surrounded it, and whoever attempted to enter it was slain. As the
+people of the city thus concealed themselves, the Hussites went in
+great troops about the town; some rushed to the churches, others to the
+best houses; about eight came to my house and forced themselves up into
+the shop, and placed two of their number with naked swords at the door,
+and let no one enter the house till they had plundered and divided the
+whole of my shop and goods. My wife was at that time in the midst of
+her confinement, God be merciful to her, and she had in her room many
+valuable things, such as her bed-linen and her clothes; they treated
+her however with such respect, that no one entered her room. But two of
+them who were well known to her, and to whom she had shown great
+kindness, went to the door of her room, told her how they pitied her,
+and brought her secretly a coverlet and bed-cover, and said, 'Good
+woman, they will soon set fire to the city, therefore lose no time in
+being carried to the cellar with all that you desire to save, for we
+shall be off immediately.' When they had pillaged all the houses they
+would gladly have left the town, but could not, for the inhabitants who
+had taken refuge in the towers and gate-houses, threw down stones upon
+them, so that they could not pass through the gates, however much they
+wished it. At last they found an old gate which for many years had been
+walled up; this they broke open, and carried through it all their
+plunder, with which they loaded their waggons, and intended to return
+to Bohemia; they fired the city, and marched off to Landshut. When the
+troops of the provincial states assembled at B�gendorf beheld such a
+great smoke and fire, they said to one another, 'It is indeed at
+Bolkenhain, or in its neighbourhood;' then they started off at full
+speed for Landshut, and overtook their enemies. When therefore the
+Bohemians and Hussites began to retrace their steps, they perceived a
+great host of our town-people coming towards them over the Galgenberg;
+so they in great fear took to flight. Then our people fell upon them,
+and the men who had charge of the waggons loaded with our goods,
+abandoned them and fled for refuge into the woods; thus we deprived
+them of their plunder, and made many prisoners, both horse and foot,
+who were distributed among the cities.&quot;--So writes Martin of
+Bolkenhain.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This endless war ruined German Silesia: the plains lay waste and
+desolate, and most of the German peasantry in this century of fire and
+sword sank into a state little removed from that of the Sclave serfs.
+The smaller cities were burnt down and impoverished, and only a few of
+the larger ones have since attained any degree of importance. The
+Silesian nobles became rude and predatory; they learnt from the
+Bohemians to steal cattle, to seize merchants and traders, and to levy
+contributions on the cities. The princes in their endless disputes with
+one another allied themselves sometimes with the Bohemians, and shared
+their booty with them; indeed, some of them took pleasure in a wild
+robber life, carrying it on even in their own country. These deeds of
+violence and lamentable struggles continued quite into the sixteenth
+century, till the Reformation gave a new bent to this lively and
+impressible race, and brought with it new sufferings.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Through all these times the Silesians retained their love of orderly
+arrangements, even in the most desperate situations. When, for example,
+in the year 1488, Duke Hans of Sagen, one of the lawless characters who
+figured in the border wars, imprisoned seven honourable counsellors of
+his own city, Glogau, in a tower, and starved them to death because
+they had refused to act contrary to a solemn engagement; these seven
+martyrs, in a truly German manner, punctually and conscientiously kept
+a diary of their sufferings, and left in writing, prayers to the
+Almighty for mercy and a happy death; but it is a truly Silesian and
+almost modern trait, that the writer of this fearful journal had a
+certain gloomy pleasure in reflecting on his painful fate, and in the
+last lines he wrote before his death, he endeavoured to depict the
+destitution of his situation by mentioning that he had been obliged to
+use the black of the burnt wick as ink.<a name="div2_09" href="#div2Ref_09"><sup>[9]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the century of the reformation, the Silesians, as might be expected
+of a people of such quick susceptibilities, were for the most part
+zealous for the new teaching. They had been bound by strong ties to the
+old Church, like most of the other races; for it was partly at the call
+of the Church that their ancestors had come into that country;
+notwithstanding which, almost the whole people freed themselves from
+Rome, and manfully ventured life and property for their convictions.
+And most severely was their constancy tried; for the supreme power,
+which had been in Polish and Bohemian hands, had now fallen into those
+of the House of Austria.<a name="div2_10" href="#div2Ref_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> Of all the countries under the power of
+the House of Hapsburg, Silesia is the only one which did not make a
+sacrifice of the new faith to the iron hand of reaction, but maintained
+a desperate resistance even into the eighteenth century. These were
+indeed two most unhappy centuries; the Thirty years' war laid the
+country waste, and not a third part of the former population escaped
+from the brutality of the soldiers, or from pestilence, or famine. But
+just at this time, when the whole of Germany had become one vast
+burial-ground, in which not even the loud wail of sorrow was heard, the
+genius of Silesia, as the representative of Germany, entered on the
+only domain in which advance was possible. Whilst they were still
+exchanging blows with the Imperial soldiers, they took pleasure in
+poetry and songs. Already the delicate and polished writings of the
+vapid Opitz gave pleasure amidst the coarse language of the camp; but
+truly refreshing to the heart was the short; humorous laugh of Logau,
+at a period when nothing was to be seen save sad or angry faces. The
+whole of the educated Silesians were eager to sympathize with Opitz,
+Logau, Gryphius, and G�nther, and to vie with them in making heroic
+verses. Their songs have few charms for us, but we must always feel
+thankful to them that they had the power of giving expression to the
+ideal feelings of Germany. It was a great thing to be able to show at
+such a time, when the coarse and the commonplace overlaid the German
+life, that there was still something beautiful on earth, and a more
+intellectual enjoyment than could be found in dissolute revelry, and
+also that behind the grey and colourless sky which overspread the land,
+there was another world, full of brilliant colours, and of nobler and
+more refined feelings.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But whilst the songs of the Silesian &quot;Swans and Nightingales&quot; were held
+in honour by the other German races, and the fame of the Silesian poets
+rose high, the worldly position of the Silesians themselves was
+lamentable. The Thirty years' war was followed by a century of
+persecution and oppression, which so diminished their energies, that at
+last it appeared as if they would fall into the same condition as that
+in which they had found the Sclaves,--a death-like apathy, and a future
+without hope. The Silesians never became utterly downcast, for they
+took every opportunity of enjoying themselves, but it was only in
+feasting and revelry. When, however, the misery of the country was at
+the highest, the Prussian drum sounded on the frontier from M�ncheberg,
+and the trumpets of the Ziethen hussars pealed along the same roads on
+which five hundred years before the first song of the German colonists
+had resounded with the good words, &quot;We come in God's name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Germanizing of the country was not thoroughly accomplished till it
+was conquered by Prussia; it is only since that time that the Silesians
+have become conscious of being an integral part of the German nation.
+What was begun by the Sclave Piastens of the thirteenth, was concluded
+by the German Hohenzollern of the eighteenth, century.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>A GERMAN LADY OF THE ROYAL COURT.</h3>
+<h4>(<span class="sc">about</span> 1440.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Many incidents may be found in the descriptions of the struggles
+between the Silesians and Hussites, which are characteristic of the
+minds and manners of the people in their epic period. We are made
+sensible of the great dissimilarity between the past and present by the
+style of Martin's narration. In his scanty yet graphic description he
+gives us the facts, but makes no reflections on them. The writer
+undoubtedly feels how noble and manly was the death of the Pastor
+Megerlein; but he does not consider it necessary, and, indeed, seems to
+want the facility and confidence requisite, to give expression to his
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Decisions hastily taken were on the impulses of the moment as hastily
+given up. The pastor, even when abandoned by his flock, still advised
+resistance to the young men that remained, though there was little hope
+of saving himself; but he rejected the proposal of his Hussite friend,
+and met death like a man. Little value was set upon human life: hard
+hearted and cruel, the people murdered each other without compunction;
+yet the infuriated Bohemians kept respectfully out of the sick woman's
+room, and the plunderers with touching zeal requited past kindness. We
+find unbridled egotism together with heroic self-denial, rude levity
+with the deepest religious convictions: the minds of individuals moved
+in a narrow circle, but with firmness and decision.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">An insight into the mental struggles of the fifteenth century may be
+supplied by another narrative, in which the life and feelings of a
+clever and strong-minded woman are made known. The circle in which she
+moved was the court of the German emperor's daughter. Few of our court
+officials are aware, how much their office has increased in comfort,
+honour, and decorum since the days of their predecessors, at whose
+heads the Emperor Wenzel threw his boots, or on whom Margaret Maltash
+used to inflict blows with her clenched fist. It was necessary for the
+men and women of a court in former centuries to have strong nerves and
+good health, to bear heat and cold, to endure in winter the draughts of
+badly constructed dwellings, and in summer whole days of riding on
+rough hacks: men had to drink deep and yet keep sober longer than their
+worthy masters, if they would not be blackened with coals, and trodden
+under foot by them and other drunken princely guests; the women of the
+court had to jest with crowds of drunken men with rough manners, or to
+have their nights' rest disturbed by the clashing of naked swords, or
+by the cries of an excited multitude. It actually happened once at the
+Imperial court, that there was no money in the chest for the purchase
+of new shoes, and frequently the honest citizens declined to furnish
+the court with the necessary supplies of bread and meat. Most of the
+great courts led a wandering life, and on their journeys, bad inns,
+worse roads, and scanty fare were by no means their greatest
+discomforts: the roads were unsafe, and the reception at the end of the
+journey was often doubtful.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The scenes we are about to portray are of a Hungarian court, but the
+royal family and the narrator are German. It is the court of Queen
+Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Sigismund, widow of Albrecht of
+Austria, king of Hungary, who died in the year 1439. The German
+Imperial race of Luxemburg was, after Charles IV., the least worthy of
+renown of all who have ruled over central Europe, and the Emperor
+Sigismund was one of the worst of his race. His daughter Elizabeth
+suffered under the curse of her house: it was her fate to throw Hungary
+into confusion and weakness; but as she must be judged from history, it
+appears she was somewhat better than her father or her reprobate
+mother: she had a feeling of her own dignity, and was, unlike her
+parents, a person of distinguished manners. This did not hinder her
+committing, for political purposes, unworthy actions, which every age
+has stigmatized as mean; but she attached people to her by that
+fascination of manner which often takes the place of better qualities.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was thus that one of her attendants, Helen Kottenner, was devoted to
+her with the most unshaken fidelity; she was bed-chamberwoman and
+governess to the young princess, a child of four years old, and at the
+same time she was confidante and counsellor of her mistress. Her ardent
+loyalty and motherly love for the little king Ladislaus made her the
+most zealous partisan of his family. She secretly stole for her
+sovereign the Hungarian crown, and she carried the little Ladislaus
+through the swamps of Hungary and the rebellious magnates to his
+coronation, and became his instructress when fate separated him from
+his mother. It was remarkable that this woman, in a stirring time, when
+writing was troublesome and difficult even to men, recorded the
+important events of her life and her share in politics in the shape of
+a memoir. Our surprise at so unusual a circumstance increases, when we
+examine closely the fragment of her memoirs which is preserved to us.
+Her narrative is strikingly detailed, clear, and graphic.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There is no doubt that the fragment is genuine: it was published at
+Leipzig, 1846, with some explanatory remarks by Stephen Endlisher, from
+the manuscript still preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna (No.
+2920), under the title, 'From the Memoirs of Helen Kottenner, 1439,
+1440.' The principal event recorded is the theft of the Hungarian
+crown, by which the coronation of the child Ladislaus was effected.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To enable the reader to understand this, we must mention that up to the
+present time a mysterious importance has been attached by the
+Hungarians to the crown of the Holy Stephen, &quot;<i>die heilige</i>,&quot; without
+which no one could become rightful King of Hungary; and this mysterious
+importance has, as is well known, added many romantic adventures to the
+long and sorrowful history of this crown. When King Albrecht died, his
+widow Elizabeth had not given birth to the heir who was to secure the
+succession of the throne of Hungary. Amid the fierce and egotistical
+quarrels of the nobles who then decided the fate of the country, two
+large parties may be distinguished,--the national and the German. The
+national party was desirous of giving the throne to the King Wladislaus
+of Poland, whilst the Germans sought every means of preserving it to
+the royal family of Germany. Helen Kottenner writes as follows:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Her highness the noble Queen came to reside at Plintenburg,<a name="div2_11" href="#div2Ref_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> and
+many Hungarian lords with her. These went down to the vaults and
+brought up from thence a chest in which was kept the holy crown, which
+they took out with its case: there were many seals to this, which they
+broke open, and looked to see that it was all right. I was present.
+Then they placed the holy crown in a small chest. This was standing
+near a bed in which lay the noble Queen, about to be confined, and in
+the same room with her were two maidens, one called Barbara, the
+daughter of a Hungarian lord, the other called Ironacherin, and there
+was a wax taper for a nightlight, as is the custom amongst princesses.
+One of these maidens got up in the night, and upset the light without
+perceiving it; and a fire broke out in the room, and was burning so
+near the chest that it was singed, and a hole as large as a hand's
+breadth was burnt in a blue velvet cushion that layover the chest. Now
+observe this wonder: the King who was to wear the holy crown was yet
+within his mother's womb, and they were scarcely two fathoms apart from
+the chest, and the evil one would gladly have injured them by the fire;
+but God was their protector, and caused the Queen to awake at the right
+time. I was then with the young princess. Then came the maidens and
+bade me quickly rise up, as there was fire in the chamber wherein lay
+my honoured lady. I was sore afraid, rose up hastily, and went into the
+room, which was full of smoke: having extinguished the fire, I let in
+fresh air to clear away the smoke, so that the noble Queen might be
+able to remain there. In the morning the Hungarian lords waited on my
+honoured lady. Her highness told them what had happened in the night,
+and how nearly both she and the holy crown had been burnt. Then the
+lords were much amazed, and they advised that the holy crown should be
+replaced in its chest, and carried again down to the vault from whence
+it had been taken; which was done at once. The door was sealed again as
+before, but with fewer seals. And the Hungarian lords desired that the
+castle might be given over to her cousin, Lassla Wan von Gara,<a name="div2_12" href="#div2Ref_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a>
+which was also done. Herr Lassla Wan took possession of the castle, and
+placed it under the superintendence of a Burgrave.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After all this had happened, the noble widow, my honoured lady,
+departed for Ofen, in great anxiety of mind, because the Hungarian
+lords wished her to take another husband; and the King of Poland was
+the one whom her cousin Lassla Wan was desirous she should choose.
+This, however, she would not do, as her doctors had assured her she
+would bear a son: she hoped that this might prove true, but not having
+any certainty thereof, she was undecided how to act. Then the noble
+Queen had begun to consider and devise how she could get the holy crown
+from the Hungarian lords. These Hungarian lords would have been glad
+for the confinement of the noble Queen to have taken place at the
+Plintenburg; but that did not please her highness, and she would not
+return to the castle; for having weighed the matter well, she had
+reason to fear that were she there, she and her child might be forcibly
+detained; still less could she think of going there now, as she was
+endeavouring to obtain possession of the holy crown. The noble Queen
+had taken her youngest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, with her from the
+castle, as also myself and two young maidens, and left all the others
+there. Every one was astonished that her highness should leave the
+remainder of the court up at the castle; the reason was known only to
+God, her highness, and myself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The noble Queen went with her youngest daughter, Princess Elizabeth,
+to Komorn. Here Count Ulric von Eily<a name="div2_13" href="#div2Ref_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> came to visit her highness,--a
+faithful friend, with whom she consulted by what means she could bring
+away the holy crown from the Plintenburg. Then came my honoured lady to
+me, desiring that I should undertake it, as there was no one else she
+could trust, or who knew so well the locality. This sorely troubled me;
+for it was a dangerous venture for me and my little children, and I
+turned it over in my mind what I should do, for I had no one to take
+counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did it not, and evil arose
+therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the world. So I consented
+to risk my life on this difficult undertaking, but desired to have some
+one to help me. Then I was asked whom I should consider fit for this: I
+proposed a Croat whom I thought faithfully devoted to my lady. He was
+called into secret council, and we laid before him what we desired of
+him: the man was so terrified that he changed colour, and became as
+one, half dead: he would not consent, and went forthwith to the stable
+for his horse. I know not whether it came to pass through his own
+awkwardness, or if it was the will of God, but an account was received
+at court that he had had a bad fall from his horse, and as soon as he
+recovered he made the best of his way to Croatia; so the plan was
+delayed, and my honoured lady was very sorrowful that one who was so
+weak hearted should know of the affair, and I also was in great
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When the time came that the Almighty had ordained that this great work
+should be done, He sent us a Hungarian who was willing to undertake to
+obtain the holy crown; his name was the....<a name="div2_14" href="#div2Ref_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a>; he set about it in a
+wise and manly manner. We arranged what we should require, and took
+certain keys and two files. This man who was about to venture
+his life--as I was mine--in this affair, put on a black velvet
+dressing-gown and a pair of felt shoes, and in each shoe he placed a
+file, and he hid the keys under his dress. I took my honoured lady's
+little seal and the keys of the front door; at the side of the door
+there was a chain and hook; we had before we left put on a lock, so as
+to prevent any one else from putting another. When we were ready, my
+honoured lady sent forward a messenger to the Plintenburg, to let the
+Burgrave and the maidens know that the latter were to prepare
+themselves to join her highness at Komorn, as soon as the carriage
+arrived. When the carriage which was to be sent for the maidens, and
+also the sledge which was to convey me and my confederate were ready,
+two Hungarian noblemen were directed to accompany me. We proceeded, and
+information was given to the Burgrave, that I had arrived for the
+maidens. He and the other courtiers were surprised that I had left my
+young mistress, because she was so little, and they all knew well that
+I was rarely allowed to do so. The Burgrave was ill, and had intended
+to place his bed near the first door of the place where the holy crown
+was kept; but God ordained that his illness should increase, and he was
+unable to sleep there, and he could not place servants there, it being
+in the women's apartment; therefore he placed a cloth over the padlock,
+which we had placed on the chain, and sealed it up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When we arrived at the Plintenburg, the maidens were right glad to
+find they were to rejoin my honoured lady: they immediately made
+preparations, and had a trunk made for their clothes; this occupied a
+long time, even up to the eighth hour. My confederate came also into
+the apartment of the women, and jested with the maidens. Now there was
+a little heap of fire-wood lying near the stove, under which he hid the
+files; but the servants who waited on the maidens observed this, and
+began to whisper among themselves. I heard them, and forthwith told
+him; this frightened him so much that he changed colour, but he took
+the files away and concealed them elsewhere, and said to me, 'Woman,
+take care that we have a light.' And I begged of the old woman to give
+me some tapers, because I had many prayers to say, for it was the first
+Saturday night after the carnival. I took the tapers and hid them near
+me. When the maidens and every one else slept, there remained in the
+small room besides myself, only the old woman whom I had brought with
+me, who did not know a word of German, nor anything about my business;
+she had also no knowledge of the house, and lay there sleeping soundly.
+At the right time my confederate came through the chapel and knocked at
+the door, which I opened and closed again after him. He had brought a
+servant with him to help him, who was called by the same Christian name
+as himself, and was bound to him by oath. I then intended to give him
+the tapers, but they had disappeared. I was in such terror that I knew
+not what to do, and the business had well-nigh miscarried only for want
+of the lights. Then I bethought me that I would go and quietly awake
+the woman who had given me the tapers; and I told her the tapers were
+lost, and I had yet some time to pray; so she gave me more. Then I was
+glad, and gave them to him with the keys and the little seal of my
+honoured lady, that he might fasten and seal everything up again. I
+gave him also the three keys which belonged to the first door. He took
+off the cloth with the seal of the castle, which had been placed on it
+by the Burgrave, opened the door and went in with his servant, and
+worked so hard at the other locks that the noise of the knocking and
+filing became alarming. But though the watchers and the Burgrave's
+people were more than usually vigilant that night in the care of the
+crown, yet Almighty God stopped their ears, so that they did not hear
+the noise. I however heard it all, and kept watch in great trouble and
+anxiety. And I devoutly prayed to God and the Holy Virgin that they
+would support and help me; yet I was in greater anxiety for my soul
+than for my life, and I prayed to God that He would be merciful to my
+soul, and let me die at once there, rather than that anything should
+happen against his will, or that should bring misfortune on my country
+and people. Whilst I was thus praying, I heard a loud noise and
+rustling, as if many armed men were at the door through which I had
+admitted my confederate, and it appeared to me as if they desired to
+break open the door. In great fear I rose from my knees, and was about
+to warn him to desist from his work, when it occurred to me to go first
+to the door, which I did; when I came to the door, the noise was at an
+end, and no one seemed to be there; then I bethought me that it was a
+spirit, and went again to my prayers; and I vowed to our dear lady a
+pilgrimage to Zell<a name="div2_15" href="#div2Ref_15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> barefooted, and until I could fulfil it, I would
+every Saturday night forego my feather bed, and also as long as I lived
+would make an especial prayer to the Holy Virgin, thanking her for her
+favour, and begging her to express my gratitude to our dear Lord Jesus
+Christ, for the great mercy which out of his compassion He had shown
+me. Whilst I was still at my prayers, I thought again that there was a
+great noise and rustling of armour at the other door, which was the
+special entrance into the women's room; and this frightened me so much
+that I trembled and perspired all over, and thought it was surely not a
+spirit, but that they had gone round to this door whilst I was still
+standing at that of the chapel. I knew not what to do, and listened to
+find out whether the maidens had heard anything. But I heard no one,
+then I went slowly down the small stairs through the chamber of the
+maidens, to the door which was the usual entrance into the women's
+apartments; when I came to the door there was no one. Then was I glad,
+and thanked God, and went again to my prayers, and bethought me it was
+the devil who wished to hinder our business.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When I had ended my prayer I got up, and determined to go to the vault
+and see what they were doing: the man met me, and told me to rejoice,
+as it was all accomplished. They had filed away the locks of the doors,
+but that on the case was so fast they could not file it, and were
+obliged to burn the wood. From this arose a great smoke, and I was
+again in much anxiety lest inquiry should be made about it; but God
+averted this danger. As we had now got the holy crown we closed the
+doors again, and fixed on other locks instead of those we had broken,
+and put on them again the seal of my honoured lady: we made fast the
+outer door, and replaced on it the cloth with the seal of the castle,
+as had been done by the Burgrave, and as we had found it. And I threw
+the file into the privy that was in the women's apartments; and if it
+were broken open, the file would be found in evidence of the truth of
+all this. The holy crown we carried out through the chapel, wherein
+rest in God the remains of St. Elizabeth; and I, Helen Kottenner, owe
+to this chapel a priestly garment for the mass, and an altar cloth,
+which shall be paid by my honoured lord, King Lassla. My confederate
+took a red velvet cushion which he opened, and taking a portion of the
+feathers out, placed the holy crown therein, and then sewed it up
+again.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the meanwhile it was almost daylight, the maidens and every one had
+arisen, and we were to depart: now the maidens had in their service an
+old woman, who my honoured lady had commanded should have her wages
+paid, and be left behind, that she might return home to Ofen. When she
+had received her wages she came to me, and told me that she had seen a
+curious thing lying before the stove, and did not know what it might
+be. I was much alarmed at this, for I saw plainly that it was part of
+the case in which the holy crown had been kept; and I did my best to
+persuade her not to believe her own eyes; but I went secretly to the
+stove, and threw the fragments that I found into the fire, that they
+might be entirely burnt; and I took the woman with me on the journey.
+Every one was surprised at my doing this; but I said that I intended
+asking my honoured lady for a benefice at St. Martins at Vienna for
+her, which I afterwards did.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When the maidens and the retinue were ready to depart, my confederate
+took the cushion in which the holy crown was concealed, and commanded
+his servant to carry it from the house to the sledge on which he and I
+were to sit. Then the good fellow took the cushion on his shoulders,
+and threw over it an old cowhide with the tail on, which hung down
+behind, and every one who saw it began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When we arrived in the market-place we would gladly have had something
+to eat, but could find nothing except herrings. When we had eaten a
+little, and assisted at the usual mass in the Church, the day was far
+advanced, and we had to go that day from the Plintenburg to Komorn,
+which was full twelve German miles off. On mounting the sledge I took
+great care not to sit on the corner of the cushion in which the holy
+crown was concealed, and thanked God Almighty for all his mercies; yet
+I often turned round to see if any one followed us; and there was no
+end to my anxiety, for my thoughts troubled me much.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On arriving at the inn where we intended to dine, the faithful servant
+to whom the care of the cushion was intrusted carried it into the
+chamber, and laid it on a table before me, so that it was under my eye
+the whole time that we were eating; and before starting, the cushion
+was replaced. We journeyed onwards, and about dark arrived at the
+Danube, which was still frozen over, but the ice in some places was
+very thin. When we were half way across the river the ice gave way
+under the carriage in which the maidens were, and it was upset; they
+raised a great cry, for it was so dark they could not see each other. I
+was in great fear that we, with the holy crown, should be lost in the
+Danube; but God was our help, so that no one got under the ice, but
+many things from the carriage fell into the water under the ice. Then I
+took the Duchess of Silesia and the principal maidens into the sledge
+with me, and we, with all the others, got safe over the river. When we
+arrived at the castle of Komorn, my confederate took the cushion with
+the holy crown, and carried it to a place of safety, and I went to my
+honoured lady the noble Queen, who received me graciously, and said,
+'That with God's help, I had been a good messenger.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The noble Queen received me in bed, and told me how she had suffered
+during the day. Two widow ladies had come from Ofen to her highness,
+bringing with them two nurses, one was the midwife, the other the
+wet-nurse; and the latter had brought her child with her, which was a
+son, for the wise people think that the milk which comes with a son is
+better than that which comes with a daughter. These women were to have
+gone with her highness to Presburg, where she was to have been
+confined, for according to their reckoning her highness had yet another
+week to go; but either the reckoning was wrong, or, as I said to the
+noble Queen, it was God's will: her grace told me that the women from
+Ofen had given her a bath, after which her pains had come on. I
+discovered from this that the birth was now approaching. The women from
+Ofen were staying in the market-place, but we had a midwife with us,
+called Margaret, who had been sent to my honoured lady by the Countess
+Hans von Schaumberg, as being particularly good, which she was. Then I
+said, 'Honoured lady, it seems to me that you will not go to-morrow to
+Presburg;' so her highness got up and began to prepare herself for the
+event. Then I sent for the Hungarian housekeeper who was called Aessem
+Margit, who came immediately, and also the maiden called Ironacherin,
+and I hastened to call the midwife whom the Countess von Schaumberg had
+sent. She was in the room with my young lady,<a name="div2_16" href="#div2Ref_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> and I said,
+'Margaret, rise quickly, for the hour of my honoured lady is come;' the
+woman being heavy with sleep answered, 'By the holy cross, if the child
+is born to-night we shall hardly go to Presburg to-morrow;' and she
+would not get up. The contest between us appeared to me so long that I
+hastened back to my honoured lady, lest anything should go wrong, as
+those who were with her did not understand such things; and she
+inquired, 'Where is Margaret?' and I gave her the foolish answer of the
+woman; and her highness said, 'Go again quickly, and bid her come, for
+this is no jesting matter.' I hurried back in great anger, and brought
+the woman with me; and in less than half an hour after she came to my
+honoured lady, Almighty God sent us a young King. The same hour that
+the holy crown came from the Plintenburg to Komorn, the King Lassla was
+born. The midwife was sharp-witted, and exclaimed, 'Honoured lady,
+grant me my wish, and I will tell you what I have in my arms.' The
+noble Queen answered, 'Yes, dear mother;' and the nurse said, 'I have a
+young King in my arms.' This made the noble Queen very happy: she
+raised her hands to God, and thanked Him for his mercy. When she had
+been arranged comfortably in her bed, and no one was with her save I
+alone, I knelt down and said to the Queen, 'Honoured lady, your
+Highness must thank God as long as you live for his great mercy, and
+for the miracle which He has wrought in bringing the crown and the King
+together in the same hour.' The noble Queen replied, 'It is indeed a
+great miracle of God Almighty, the like of which has never happened
+before.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When the noble and faithful Count Ulric von Eily heard that a King and
+friend was born to him, who was both his lord and cousin, he was
+overjoyed, as were also the Croats, and all the lords and attendants on
+the court. The noble Count von Eily had bonfires made, and they had a
+procession on the water with torches, and amused themselves till after
+midnight. Early in the morning they sent for the Bishop of Gran to come
+and christen the young King: he came, accompanied by the pastor of
+Ofen, Master Franz. And my honoured lady desired that I should be
+godmother; but I answered, 'Honoured madam, I am bound to obey your
+Highness always, but I beg of you to take the Aessem Margit instead of
+me,' which her Highness did. When the noble King was to be baptized, we
+took off the black dress from the young princess, which she had worn
+for the great and dear prince, King Albrecht, and put on her a golden
+dress woven with red; and the maidens were all gaily dressed to the
+honour and praise of God, who had given an hereditary King to the
+people and country.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not long after, there came certain intelligence that the King of
+Poland was approaching, and had designs upon Ofen, which proved true.
+It became therefore necessary to make secret and hasty preparations for
+the coronation; and my honoured lady sent to Ofen to get cloth of gold
+for the coronation dress of the little King Lassla; but this took so
+long a time that we feared it would be too late, for the coronation
+must take place on a high festival, and Pentecost, which was the first,
+was near at hand, so that it was necessary to make haste. Now there was
+a rich and beautiful vestment for the mass which had belonged to the
+Emperor Sigismund; it was red and gold, with silver spots worked on it;
+this was cut up and formed into the first dress of the young King that
+he was to wear with the holy crown. I sewed together the small pieces,
+the surplice and the humeral, the stole and the banner, the gloves and
+the shoes; and I was obliged to make these secretly in the chapel with
+bolted doors.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the evening, when every one had gone to rest, my honoured lady sent
+for me to come to her immediately; this made me fear that something had
+gone wrong. The noble Queen's thoughts had been wandering to and fro,
+and she said to me, 'What would you advise? our affairs are not going
+on well; they desire to stop us on our way; where shall we conceal the
+holy crown? It will be a great misfortune if it falls into the hands of
+the enemy.' I stepped aside for a little while, wishing to reflect and
+to pray to the mother of all mercy to intercede with her Son, that we
+might manage our business so that no evil should accrue from it. Then I
+returned to the noble Queen and said, 'Honoured lady, with deference to
+your wisdom, I will advise what seems good to me: your Highness knows
+well that the King is of more importance than the holy crown; let us
+lay the holy crown in the cradle under the King, so that wherever God
+leads the King there will the crown be also.' This counsel pleased her
+Highness, who answered: 'We will do so, and thus let him take care of
+the crown himself.' In the morning I took the holy crown and packed it
+carefully in a cloth, and laid it in the mattress of the cradle, for
+his Highness did not yet lie on a feather-bed; and laid there also a
+long spoon, such as we use for mixing the child's pap. This I did to
+make any one who felt in the cradle, believe that what lay therein was
+the vessel in which the pap for the noble King was prepared.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the Tuesday afternoon before Whitsunday the noble Queen set out
+with the young King, the noble Count von Eily, the Croatian counts, and
+the Dukes of Lindbach. A large boat had been prepared for the noble
+Queen, her son, and daughter; and many good people went on board with
+them, so that the boat being heavy laden was scarce a hand's breadth
+above the water: there was much fear and danger, especially as the wind
+was high; but God took us prosperously over the river. The young King
+was carried in the cradle by four men, most of them armed, and I myself
+rode by the side of it. He had not been carried far when he began to
+cry violently, and would not remain in the cradle; so I descended from
+my horse and carried him in my arms: and the roads were bad, for there
+had been much rain; but there was a pious knight there, Herr Hans of
+Pilach, who conducted me through the swampy ground.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We went on in great anxiety, for all the peasants had fled from their
+villages into the wood, and most of them were vassals of the lords who
+were our enemies; therefore, when we came to the mountains, I
+dismounted from my horse and took the noble King out of his cradle, and
+placed him in the carriage, wherein sat the noble Queen and her young
+daughter Elizabeth; and we women and maidens formed a circle round the
+noble family, so that if any one fired at the carriage we should
+receive the shots. And there were many foot-soldiers who went on both
+sides of the carriage, and searched in the underwood, lest there should
+be any enemies there who might injure us. Thus, with God's help, we
+crossed the mountain without hurt. Then I took the noble King again out
+of the carriage, and placed him in his cradle, riding by the side of
+it: we had not gone far when he began again to cry; he would not remain
+in the cradle or carriage, and the nurse could not quiet him. Then I
+took him up in my arms and carried him a good bit of the way; the nurse
+also carried him till we were both tired, when I laid him again in his
+cradle; thus we continued to change during the whole of our journey.
+Sometimes it rained so that the noble King was quite wet. I had brought
+a fur pelisse with me for my own wear, but when the rain was very heavy
+I covered the cradle with it, till it was wet through, I then had it
+wrung out, and again covered the cradle with it as long as it was
+wanted. The wind also was so high that it blew the dust into the
+cradle, so that the King could hardly open his eyes; and at times it
+was so hot that he perspired all over, and from that a rash broke out
+upon him afterwards. It was almost night when we arrived at the inn;
+and when every one had eaten, the gentlemen placed themselves round the
+house in which the royal family were, and made a fire, keeping watch
+all night, as is the custom in the kingdom of Hungary. The next day we
+journeyed to Weissenburg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When we arrived near Weissenburg, Miklosch Weida of the free city rode
+to meet us, accompanied by full five hundred horse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When we went through the marshy ground the young King began again to
+cry, and would not remain in the cradle or carriage; and I was again
+obliged to carry his Highness in my arms, till we arrived in the city
+of Weissenburg. Then the gentlemen sprang from their horses, and formed
+themselves into a wide circle of armed men, holding naked swords in
+their hands, and I, Helen Kottenner, had to carry the young King in the
+midst of this circle; and Count Bartholom� of Croatia went on one side
+of me, and another on the other side, to do honour to the noble King;
+thus we went through the city till we arrived at the inn. This was on
+Whitsun eve.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On our arrival my honoured lady sent for the elders of the city; she
+showed them the holy crown, and gave directions to prepare everything
+that was meet for the coronation, according to the old usages. And
+there were certain burghers there, who remembered the coronation of the
+Emperor Sigismund, having been present at it. On Whitsun morning I got
+up early, bathed the young King, and dressed him as well as I could;
+then they carried him to the church, where all the Kings were crowned,
+and there were many good people there, both ecclesiastics and laymen.
+When we arrived at the church they carried the young King to the choir,
+but the door of the choir was closed; the citizens were within, and my
+honoured lady was outside the door with her son, the noble King. My
+honoured lady spoke Hungarian with them, and the burghers answered her
+Highness in the same language: her Highness took the oath instead of
+her son, for his Highness was only twelve weeks old that day. When all
+this was accomplished according to the old customs, they opened the
+door and let in their rightful lord and lady, and all the others who
+were summoned, both ecclesiastics and laymen. And the young Princess
+Elizabeth stood up by the organ, that her Highness might not be injured
+in the throng, as she was only just four years old. When the service
+was about to begin, I had to raise up the young King that his Highness
+might be confirmed. Now Miklosch Weida had been appointed to knight the
+young King, because he was a genuine Hungarian knight. The noble Count
+von Eily had a sword which was thickly ornamented with silver and gold,
+and on it was a motto that ran thus: 'Indestructible.' This sword he
+gave to the young King that his Highness might be knighted with it.
+Then I, Helen Kottenner, raised the young King in my arms, and the
+knight of the free city took the sword; and he gave the King such a
+blow that I felt it on my arm. This the noble Queen, who stood near me,
+remarked, and said to the knight of the free city: 'Istemere nem
+misertem!' that is to say, 'For God's sake do not hurt him!' to which
+he replied: 'Nem;' that is to say, 'No,' and laughed. Then the right
+reverend prelate, the Archbishop of Gran, took the holy oil, and
+anointed the noble child, King; and the dress of cloth of gold, such as
+is worn by kings, was put on the noble child; and the archbishop took
+the holy crown and placed it on his head; and thus he, King Albrecht's
+son, grandson of the Emperor Sigismund, who throughout all holy
+Christendom is recognized as King Lassla, was crowned at Weissenburg by
+the Archbishop of Gran, with the holy crown, on Whitsunday. For there
+are three laws in the kingdom of Hungary which must not be departed
+from, as without them no king is deemed legally crowned. One of these
+is, that a king of Hungary must be crowned with the holy crown; another
+that it must be done by the Archbishop of Gran; and the third, that it
+shall take place at Weissenburg. When the archbishop placed the crown
+on the head of the noble King Lassla, he held his head quite upright
+with the strength of a child of a year old, which is seldom to be seen
+in children of twelve weeks. After the noble King, seated in my arms,
+had been crowned at the altar of St. Stephen, I carried him up a small
+staircase to a high gallery, according to custom, and the prescribed
+ritual for the festival was read; but there being no golden cloth for
+the King to sit on, after the old usage, I took for the purpose a red
+and gold cover lined with ermine from his cradle; and whilst the noble
+King was held upon the golden cloth, Count Ulric von Eily held the
+crown over his head during the chanting of the office.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The noble King had little pleasure in his coronation, for he wept
+aloud, so that all in church heard him; and the common people were
+astonished, and said, 'It was not the voice of a child of twelve weeks;
+it might be taken for that of a child of a year old, which, however, he
+was not. Then knighthood was conferred by Miklosch Weida on behalf of
+the noble King Lassla. When the office was completed I carried the
+noble King down again, and laid him in the cradle, for he was very
+tired from sitting so long upright. Then he was borne to St. Peter's
+church, where I was again obliged to take him out of his cradle and
+place him on a chair, as it is the custom for every king when crowned
+to be seated there. Again I carried his Highness down and laid him in
+his cradle; and he was taken from St. Peter's church, followed by his
+noble family on foot, back to the inn. The only one who rode was Count
+von Eily, for he had to hold the holy crown over the head of the noble
+King, that every one might see it was the holy crown which had been
+placed on the head of the holy St. Stephen and other Hungarian Kings.
+Count Bartholom� carried the orb, and the Duke von Lindbach the
+sceptre; a legate's staff was borne before the noble King, because he
+did not hold any part of Hungary on feudal tenure from the holy Roman
+Empire; and the sword with which his Highness had been knighted was
+also carried before him, and pence were scattered among the people. The
+noble Queen was so humble and showed such respect to her son, that I,
+poor woman, had to walk before her, next to the noble King, because I
+had held his Highness in my arms at the anointing and coronation. When
+the noble King had arrived at the inn, he was put to rest, as his
+Highness was very tired. The lords and all others went away, and the
+noble Queen remained alone with her son. Then I knelt down before her,
+and reminded her of the service which I had rendered to her Highness
+and the noble King; and also to her other children and members of the
+royal family. Thereupon the noble Queen gave me her hand and said,
+'Rise up, and if please God our affairs prosper, I will exalt you and
+your whole race. You have well deserved it, for you have done for me
+and my children what I myself could not have done.' Then I inclined
+myself humbly, and thanked her Highness for her kind encouragement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far Helen Kottenner. History tells us in what consternation the
+party of King Wladislaus of Poland was placed by the robbery of the
+crown, and also how the crown itself was mortgaged by the Queen to the
+Emperor Frederick III., but of the after life of Helen Kottenner we
+know nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What interests us most in this narrative is the night scene in which
+the holy crown of Hungary is purloined, and the mental struggles of a
+strong female character. But these inward struggles and scruples of
+conscience assume to the daughter of the fifteenth century a palpable
+form: they become to her an outward reality that mysteriously assails
+her. Her soul is not tormented with thoughts alone that accuse and
+excuse each other, but with delusive appearances that strike her with
+terror.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This activity of the senses, which clothes with an appearance of
+outward life all that rises in the soul, of the fearful and
+incomprehensible, is generally and peculiarly characteristic of the
+early life of every people. The souls of individuals are not
+sufficiently free to enable them to understand the inward struggles of
+their own minds: they begin by contending against what torments them,
+as if it were an outward form or enemy. Such were the noble struggles
+of Luther; and when the incomparable English poet of the sixteenth
+century caused his tragic hero to struggle with the apparitions of
+murdered men, and with the dagger which was the implement of his crime,
+this conception, which we consider as a highly poetical and spiritual
+creation, had a far deeper truth for him and his spectators.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TRAVELLING STUDENT.</h3>
+<h4>(1509, <span class="sc">and following years</span>.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The fifteenth century passed away. To us Germans it appears an
+introduction to the great events of the following one,--a period of
+earnest but imperfect striving towards improvement. The excitement of
+the masses in the great half-Sclave population of the Roman empire had
+brought death and destruction over the German provinces, and the
+fanaticism of the Hussites had appeared to exhaust itself in the
+burning ruins of hundreds of cities and villages; but the same feeling
+had stirred the hearts of two generations, and in the next century the
+flame again blazed forth, more powerful and unquenchable, a pillar of
+fire to all Europe. The house of Luxemburg had passed away; its last
+heirs had mortgaged the Hungarian crown to the Austrian Hapsburgers,
+and bequeathed to them their claims to the wide and insecure
+acquisitions of their race. In the next century Charles V. made them
+the greatest dynasty of the world. It was a century of strife and
+reckless egotism, and on all sides arose knightly associations and
+confederacies; but it was also a time when the German mind, having
+become more practical in its tendencies, arrived at the greatest of all
+new discoveries,--the art of printing; when, in spite of fighting on
+the highways and bloody quarrels within the cities, commerce and trade
+began to flourish; when citizens and peasants acquired the habits of
+regular soldiers; when the German merchant established his supremacy on
+the northern seas, while the Italian navigator pressed on through the
+mists of boundless oceans, to unknown regions of the earth; finally, it
+was the time in which the Alpine mules bore, together with the spices
+of the East and the papal bulls, the manuscripts of a foreign nation,
+by means of which a new enlightenment was spread over Germany,--the
+early dawn of modern life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With the sixteenth century began the greatest spiritual movement that
+ever roused a nation. This century has for ever impressed its seal on
+the spirit and temper of the German people. A wonderful time, in which
+a great nation anxiously yearning after its God, sought peace for the
+burdened soul, and a moral and mental aim for a life hitherto so poor
+and joyless.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This effort of the popular mind to found a new collective life by a
+deep apprehension of the eternal, produced a political development in
+Germany which is strikingly distinct from that of other nations. The
+whole powers of the nation were so engrossed in this passionate
+struggle, that it sank into a state of extreme exhaustion: the
+political concentration of Germany was delayed for centuries; most
+fearful civil wars were followed by a deathlike lassitude; German was
+divided from German, and a deep chasm was formed between the new and
+the middle ages. The result was, that a large portion of the German
+people, who might carry back their history in uninterrupted continuity
+up to the struggles of Arius and Arminus, now regard the time of the
+Hohenstaufen, and even the imperial government of the first Maximilian,
+as a dark tradition; for their state polity, their rights, and their
+municipal laws are hardly as old as those of the free states of North
+America. The oldest of the proud nations that arose from the ruins of
+the Roman empire, is now in many respects the youngest member of the
+European family. But whatever may have been the influence of the
+sixteenth century on the political formation of the fatherland, every
+German should look back to it with respect, for we owe to it all which
+now is our hope and pride; our power of self-sacrifice, our morality
+and freedom of mind, an irresistible impulse for truth, our art, and
+our unrivalled system of science, and lastly, the great obligation
+which our ancestors have imposed upon us of accomplishing what they
+failed in. It is especially now, in the midst of a political struggle
+for German national life, that it would be useful to us to consider how
+this struggle began three centuries and a half ago.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whoever attempts to examine the German mind at the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, will observe a secret restlessness, something like
+that of migratory birds when spring approaches; this indefinite impulse
+reproduced frequently the old German love of wandering. Many causes
+combined to make the poor restless and desirous of novelty. The number
+of vagrants, young and old, such as pedlers, pilgrims, beggars, and
+travelling students, was very great; many of the adventurers went to
+France, but the greater part to Italy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Wonderful reports came from distant lands. Beyond the Mediterranean,
+in the countries contiguous to Jerusalem (which was annually visited by
+the German pilgrims), a new race and a new and obnoxious religion had
+spread itself. Every pilgrim who came from the south related in the
+hostelries tales of the warlike power of the Turks, of their polygamy,
+of the Christian children whom they stole and brought up as slaves,
+and of danger to the Christian islands and seaports. On the other hand
+the fancy was led from the terrors of endless seas to the new gold
+lands,--countries like paradise, coloured tribes who knew nothing of
+God, and endless booty and dominion for believing Christians. To this
+was added the news from Italy itself,--how discontented the inhabitants
+were with the pope, how wanton the simony, and how wicked the princes
+of the Church.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And those who brought these tidings into the city and country were no
+longer timid traders or poor pilgrims, but sunburnt hardy troopers,
+bold in aspect, and well accoutred; children of neighbours, and
+trustworthy men, who had accompanied the Emperor as mercenaries to
+Italy, where they had fought with Italians, Spaniards, and Swiss, and
+now returned home with all kinds of booty, gold in their purses, and
+the golden chains of knighthood round their necks. The youths of the
+village gazed with respect on the warrior who thrust his halberd into
+the ground before the inn, and took possession of the rooms for himself
+and his guests, as if he were a nobleman or a prince; for he, the
+peasant's son, had trodden under foot Italian knights, and dipped deep
+into the money coffers of Italian princes; had obtained full
+dispensation from the Pope for his deeds, and, it was even whispered, a
+secret blessing which made him invulnerable. The lower orders began for
+the first time to have an idea of their own strength and capacities;
+they felt that they also were men; the hunting-spear hung in their
+huts, and they carried the long knife in their belt. But what was their
+position at home? The use of their hands and their teams was required
+by the landed nobleman for his fields; to him belonged the forest and
+the game within it, and the fish in their waters; and when the peasant
+died, his heir was obliged to give up the best of his herd, or its
+worth in money. In every feud in which the nobleman was engaged they
+were the victims: the enemy's soldiers fell upon their cattle, and they
+themselves were shot down with arrows, and imprisoned in dark dungeons
+till they were able to pay ransom. The Church also sought after their
+sheaves and concealed money. Dishonest, cunning, and voluptuous were
+the deans, who rode through their villages, falcon on hand, with
+troopers and damsels; the priests, whom the peasants could neither
+choose nor dismiss, seduced their wives, or lived scandalously at home.
+The mendicant monks forced their way into their kitchens, and demanded
+the smoked meats from their chimneys, and the eggs from their baskets.
+All the communities throughout Southern Germany were in a state of
+silent fermentation, and already, at the end of the fifteenth century,
+local risings had begun, the forerunners of the Peasant war.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But more wonderful still was the influence of the new art, through
+which the poorest might acquire knowledge and learning. The method of
+multiplying written words by thousands was discovered on the banks of
+the Rhine in the middle of the fifteenth century. The printing of
+patterns by means of wooden blocks had been practised for many
+centuries, and frequently single pages of writing had in this way been
+struck off; at last it occurred to a citizen that whole books might be
+printed with cast metal type. Its first effect was to give intelligence
+to the industry of the artisan, and a way was thus opened to the people
+of turning their mental acquirements to profit.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The learning of the middle ages still occupied the professors' chairs
+at the German universities, but it was without soul, and consisted in
+dry forms and scholastic subtleties. There was little acquaintance with
+the ancient languages, Hebrew and Greek were almost unknown; the solid
+learning of the olden times was taught in bad monkish Latin; the Bible
+and Fathers of the Church, the Roman historians, institutes and
+pandects, the Greek text of Aristotle, and the writers upon natural
+philosophy and medicine, were found only in dusty manuscripts; nothing
+but the commentators and systematizers of the middle ages were ever
+expounded or learnt by heart. Such was the state of things in Germany.
+But in Italy, for more than a century, mental cultivation had begun,
+from the study of Roman and Greek poets, historians, and philosophers.
+The men of high intellect on the other side of the Alps rejoiced in the
+beauty of the Latin language and poetry, admired the acute logic of
+Cicero, and regarded with astonishment the powerful life of the Roman
+people. Their whole literature entwined itself, like the tendrils of a
+creeper, round the antique stem. It was soon after the invention of
+printing, and during the war carried on by the Germans in the
+Peninsula, that this new Humanitarian learning was gradually introduced
+into Germany. The Latin language, which appeared to the Germans like a
+new discovery, was industriously studied in the classical schools, and
+disseminated through the means of manuals. The close attention and long
+labour necessary in Germany to acquire the foreign grammar, acted as
+discipline to the mind. Acuteness and memory were strongly exercised;
+the logical construction of the language was more attended to than the
+phonetic; the grandeur and wisdom of the subject, more than the beauty
+and elegance of the style: the German mind required more exercise,
+therefore the result was more lasting, because the mastery had to be
+gained over two languages of different roots. A number of earnest
+teachers first spread the new learning; among these were Jacob
+Wimpfeling and Alexander Hegius, Crato of Udenheim, Sapidus, and
+Michael Hilspach. To these may be added the poets Henry Bebel and
+Conrade Celtes, Ulrich Zasius the lawyer, and others; in close union
+with them were to be found all the men of powerful talent in Germany;
+Sebastian Brand, author of Narrenschiffs, and also the great preacher
+John Geiler of Kaisersberg, although he had been brought up in the
+scholastic teaching.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They were sometimes led by their knowledge of ancient philosophy into
+secret speculations upon the being of God, and all were opposed to the
+corruptions of the Romish Church; but their opposition differed from
+that of Italy in this respect, that the German mind gave it more
+elevation. It is true that many of the Humanitarian teachers considered
+the German language as barbarous; they Latinized their names, and in
+their confidential letters took the liberty of calling their countrymen
+unpolished; they hated the despotic arrogance with which the Romish
+priests looked down upon them and their nation; yet they did not cease
+to be good Christians. Besides their unceasing attacks on the vices of
+the Italian priesthood, they ventured, though with hesitation and
+caution, upon an historical critique on the foundation of the claims of
+the Papacy. They were united in bonds of friendship, and formed one
+large community. Bitterly persecuted by the representatives of the old
+scholastic school, they nevertheless gained allies everywhere,--in the
+burgher houses of the Imperial cities, in the courts of the Princes, in
+the entourage of the Emperor, and even in the cathedral chapters and on
+the Episcopal thrones.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The mental culture of these men, however, could not keep a lasting hold
+on German life; its groundwork was too foreign to the real needs of the
+mental life of the people; its ideal, which it had gathered from
+antiquity, was too vague and arbitrary; its fantastical occupation with
+a bygone world, of whose real meaning they knew so little, was not
+favourable to the development of their character. Some indeed became
+forerunners in the struggle of faith, but others, offended by the
+roughness and narrowness of the new teaching, fell back to the old
+Church which they had before so severely judged. One of this school,
+the enthusiastic and high-minded Ulrich von Hutten, who was
+passionately German, and attached to the teaching of Luther, suffered
+for his devotion to the popular cause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the beginning of the century, however, the Humanitarians carried on
+almost alone the struggle against the oppression under which the nation
+groaned. They exercised a powerful influence on the minds of the
+multitude; even what they wrote in Latin was not lost upon them, and
+the rhymesters of the cities were never weary of propagating the
+witticisms and bitter attacks of the Humanitarians in the form of
+proverbs, jocose stories, and plays.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The desire for learning became powerful amongst the people. Children
+and half-grown boys rushed from the most distant valleys into the
+unknown world to seek for knowledge; wherever there was a Latin school
+established, there the children of the people congregated, often
+undergoing the greatest sufferings and hardships, demoralized by the
+uncertainty of their daily life; for though the founders and managers
+of the schools, or the burghers of the cities, gave these strangers
+sometimes a roof over their heads, and beds to lie on, they were
+obliged for the most part to beg for their daily subsistence.
+Little control was exercised over them; only one thing was strictly
+enjoined,--that there should be some method in the lawlessness of their
+life; it was only under appointed forms, and in certain districts of
+the city, that they were allowed to beg. When the travelling scholar
+came to a place where there was a Latin school, he was bound to join
+the association of scholars, that he might not make claims on the
+benevolence of the inhabitants, to the prejudice of the schoolmaster or
+of those already there. An organization was formed among these
+scholars, as was always the case where Germans assembled together in
+the middle ages, and a code was established, containing many customs
+and demoralizing laws, with which every one was obliged to comply;
+besides this there was the rough poetry of an adventurous life, which
+few could go through without injury to their characters in after life.
+The younger scholars, called Sch�tzen, were, like the apprentices of
+artisans, bound to perform the most humiliating offices for their older
+comrades, the Bacchanten: they had to beg and even to steal for their
+tyrants, who in return gave them the protection of their strength. It
+was considered honourable and advantageous for a Bacchant to have many
+Sch�tzen, who obtained gifts from the benevolent, on which he lived;
+but when the rough Bacchant rose to the university, he was paid off for
+all the tyrannical injustice he had practised towards the younger
+scholars: he had to lay aside his school dress and rude manners, was
+received into the distinguished society of students with humiliating
+ceremonies, and was obliged in his turn to render service and to bear
+rude jests like a slave. The scholars were perpetually changing their
+schools, for with many the loitering on the high roads was the main
+object; their youth was passed in wild roving from school to school, in
+begging, theft, and dissoluteness. Whilst we rejoice in finding a few
+individuals who, by strength of mind and ability, rose through all this
+to intellectual preeminence, we must bear in mind how many a pet child
+died miserably under some hedge, or in the lazar-house of a foreign
+city, whose youthful minds had looked forward with hope to reaching the
+same goal.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The instruction in the Latin schools was very deficient, for a book was
+a rare treasure: the boys had often to copy the text for themselves,
+and the old grammar of Donat still served as the groundwork by which
+they learned to read Latin. There was still much useless scholastic
+pedantry, and what was then admired as elegant Latin, has somewhat of a
+monkish flavour. But the great teacher Wimpfeling took every
+opportunity of selecting examples which might excite the boys to
+honesty, integrity, and the fear of God; he endeavoured to impart not
+merely the knowledge of forms, or the subtle distinctions of words, but
+the spirit that flows from the ancients. The mind was to be ennobled;
+intellect and faith were to be advanced; learning was to act as a
+preservative against war, to promote peace, the greatness of states,
+and the reformation of the Catholic Church, for its object was
+knowledge of the truth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Some idea of the life of a travelling student has been preserved to us
+in the description of Thomas Platter, the poor shepherd boy from
+Visperthale, in the Valais, later a renowned printer and schoolmaster
+at Basle; his autobiography has been published by Dr. Fechter, Basle,
+1840. In those days no travellers in search of the picturesque had
+begun to roam in the wild mountain valley from which the Visp rushes
+towards the Rhone, nor to visit Zermatt, the Matterhorn, and the
+glaciers of Monte Rosa. The shepherd boy grew up amidst the rocks, with
+no companions but his goats; his herd straying into a corn-field, or an
+eagle hovering threateningly above him, his climbing a steep rock, or
+being punished by his severe master, were the only events of his
+childhood; how he was cast out into the wide world from his solitude he
+shall himself relate.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When I was with the farmer, one of my aunts, named Frances, came to
+see me; she wished me, she said, to go to my cousin, Herr Anthony
+Platter, to learn the Scriptures; thus they speak when they want one to
+go to school. The farmer was not well pleased at this; he told her I
+should learn nothing: he placed the forefinger of his right hand in the
+middle of the left, and went on to say, 'The lad will learn about as
+much, as I can push my finger through there.' This I saw and heard.
+Then said my aunt: 'Who knows? God has not denied him gifts; he may yet
+become a pious priest.' So she took me to that gentleman. I was, if I
+remember right, about nine or ten years old. First it fared ill with
+me, for he was a choleric man, and I but an unapt peasant lad. He beat
+me cruelly, and ofttimes dragged me by the ears out of the house, which
+made me scream like a goat into which the knife had been stuck; so that
+the neighbours oft talked of him as if he wished to murder me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was not long with him, for just at that time my cousin came, who had
+been to the schools at Ulm and Munich, in Bavaria; the name of this
+student was Paulus of Summermatten. My relations had told him of me,
+and he promised that he would take me with him to the schools in
+Germany. When I heard this I fell on my knees, and prayed God Almighty
+that He would preserve me from the 'Pfaffs,'<a name="div2_17" href="#div2Ref_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> who taught me almost
+nothing and beat me lamentably, for I had learned only to sing a little
+of the Salve, and to beg for eggs with the other scholars, who were
+with the Pfaff in the village.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When Paulus was to begin his wanderings again, I was to go to him at
+Stalden. Simon, my mother's brother, dwelt at Summermatten, on the road
+to Stalden: he gave me a gold florin, which I carried in my little hand
+to Stalden. I looked often on the way to see that I still had it, and
+gave it to Paulus. Then we departed into the country, and I had to beg
+for myself, and to give of what I got to my Bacchant Paulus: on account
+of my simplicity and countrified language, much was given to me. At
+night going over the Grimsel Mountain we came to an inn; I had never
+seen a <i>kachelofen</i>,<a name="div2_18" href="#div2Ref_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> and as the moon shone on the tiles, I imagined
+it was a great calf: I saw only two tiles shining, which were, I
+imagined, the eyes. In the morning I saw geese. I had never seen any
+before, and when they hissed at me I thought they were devils, and
+would eat me; so I cried out and ran away. At Lucerne I saw the first
+tiled roofs.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Afterwards we went to Meissen: it was a long journey for me, as I was
+not accustomed to travel so far and to obtain food on the road. There
+were eight or nine of us travelling together; three small Sch�tzen, the
+others great Bacchanten, as they are called; amongst all these I was
+the smallest and youngest. When I could not keep up well, my cousin
+Paulus came behind me with a rod, or little stick, and switched me on
+my bare legs, for I had no stockings, and bad shoes. I do not remember
+all that happened to us on the road. Once when we were talking together
+on the journey, the Bacchanten said it was the custom in Meissen and
+Silesia for the scholars to steal geese and ducks, and other such food;
+and nothing was done to them on that account, if they could escape from
+those to whom the things belonged. One day, when not far from a
+village, we saw a large flock of geese, and the herdsman was not with
+them; then I inquired of my fellow-Sch�tzen when we should be in
+Meissen; as then I thought I might venture to kill the geese; they
+answered, 'Now we are there.' So I took a stone, threw it at one of the
+geese, and hit it on the leg; the others flew away, but the lamed one
+could not rise. I took another stone, and hit it on the head, so that
+it fell down. I ran up and caught the goose by the neck, carried it
+under my coat, and went along the road through the village. Then came
+the gooseherd running after me, and called aloud in the village, 'The
+boy has stolen my goose!' I and my fellow-Sch�tzen fled away, and the
+feet of the goose hung out behind my coat. The peasants came out with
+spears to throw at us, and ran after us. When I saw that I could not
+escape with the goose, I let it fall, and sprang out of the road into
+the bushes; but two of my fellows ran along the street, and were
+overtaken by two peasants. Then they fell down on their knees, and
+asked for mercy, as they had done them no harm; and when the peasants
+saw that it was not they who had killed the goose, they returned to the
+village, taking the goose with them. But when I saw how they hastened
+after my fellows, I was in great trouble, and said to myself: 'Ah, my
+God! I think I have not blessed myself this day.' (For I had been
+taught to bless myself every morning.) When the peasants returned to
+the village, they found our Bacchanten in the public-house, for these
+had gone forward; and the peasants desired that they would pay for the
+goose: it would have been about two batzen; but I know not whether or
+no they paid. When they joined us again, they laughed, and asked how it
+had happened. I excused myself, as I had imagined it was the custom of
+the country; to which they said it was not yet the right moment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Another time a murderer came to us in the wood, eleven miles on this
+side of Nuremberg, who wished to play with our Bacchanten, that he
+might delay us till his fellows joined him; but we had an honest fellow
+amongst us called Anthony Schallbether, who warned the murderer to
+leave us, which he did. Now it was so late that we could hardly get to
+the village; there were very few houses, but there were two taverns.
+When we came to one of these the murderer was there before us, and
+others besides, without doubt his comrades; so we would not remain
+there, and went to the other public-house. As they themselves had
+already that night had their food, every one was so busy in the house,
+they would not give anything to us little lads; for we never sat at
+table to our meals; neither would they take us to a bedroom; but we
+were obliged to lie in the stable. But when they were taking the bigger
+ones to their bedroom, Anthony said to the host: 'Host, methinks you
+have strange guests, and are not much better yourself. I tell you what,
+place us in safety, or we will treat you in such a way that you will
+find your house too narrow for you.' When they had taken them to rest
+(I and the other little boys were lying in the stable without supper),
+some persons came in the night to their room, perhaps among them the
+host himself, and would have opened the door; but Anthony had put a
+screw before the lock inside, placed his bed before the door and struck
+a light; for he had always wax tapers and a tinder-box by him, and he
+quickly woke up the other fellows. When the rogues heard that, they
+made off. In the morning we found neither host nor servants. When they
+told us boys about it, we were all glad that nothing had happened to us
+in the stable. After we had gone from thence about a mile, we met with
+people, who when they heard where we had passed the night, were
+surprised that we had not all been murdered; for almost all the
+villagers were suspected of being murderers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Our Bacchanten treated us so badly that some of us told my cousin
+Paulus we should escape from them; so we went to Dresden; but here
+there was no good school, and the sleeping apartments for strange
+scholars were full of lice, so that we heard them at night crawl on the
+straw. We then left and went on to Breslau: we suffered much from
+hunger on the road, having nothing for some days to eat but raw onions
+and salt, or roasted acorns and crabs. Many nights we lay in the open
+air; for no one would receive us into their houses or at the inns, and
+often they set the dogs upon us. But when we arrived at Breslau,
+everything was in abundance; indeed so cheap that we poor scholars
+overate ourselves, and frequently made ourselves ill. We went at first
+to the chapter school of the Holy Cross, but when we found that there
+were some Swiss in the parsonage house at St. Elizabeth, we went there.
+The city of Breslau has seven parishes, and each its separate school:
+no scholar ventured to sing in another parish; if he did the cry of 'Ad
+idem, ad idem,' was raised, and the Sch�tzen collected together and
+fought. It is said that there were at one time some thousands of
+Bacchanten and Sch�tzen who all lived on alms; it is also said that
+some of them who were twenty or thirty years old, or even more, had
+their Sch�tzen who supported them. I have often of an evening carried
+home to the school where they lived, for my Bacchanten, five or six
+meals. People gave to me willingly because I was little, and a Swiss,
+for they loved the Swiss.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There I remained for some time, as I was very ill that winter, and
+they were obliged to take me to the hospital; the scholars had their
+own especial hospital and doctors, and sixteen hellers a week are given
+at the town hall for the use of the sick, which provided for us well.
+We were well nursed and had good beds, but there were lice therein,
+beyond belief, as big as hempseed, so that I and others would much
+rather have lain on the floor than in the beds. It is hardly possible
+to believe how the scholars and Bacchanten were covered with lice. I
+have ofttimes, especially in the summer, gone to wash my shirt in the
+water of the Oder, and hung it on a bush to dry; and in the mean time
+cleared my coat of the lice, buried the heap, and placed a cross over
+the spot. In the winter the Sch�tzen used to lie on the hearth in the
+school; but the Bacchanten lived in small rooms, of which there were
+some hundreds at St. Elizabeth; but during the summer, when it was hot,
+we lay in the churchyard, like pigs in straw, on grass which we
+collected from before the houses of the principal streets, where it was
+spread on Sundays; but when it rained we ran into the school, and if
+there was a storm we chanted almost all night the responsoria and other
+things with the succentor. We often went in summer after supper to the
+beerhouses to beg for beer: they gave us the strong Polish peasant
+beer, which, before I was aware of it, made me so drunk that even when
+within a stone's throw from the school I could not find my way to it.
+In short, we got sufficient nourishment, but little study.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the school of St. Elizabeth, nine bachelors always read together at
+the same hour in one room, for there were no printed Greek books in the
+country at that time; the preceptor alone had a printed Terence: what
+was read, therefore, had first to be dictated, then parsed and
+construed, and lastly explained; so that the Bacchanten when they went
+away carried with them large sheets of writing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;From thence our eight went off again to Dresden, and fell into great
+want. We determined therefore one day to divide ourselves; some were to
+look out for geese, some for turnips and onions, and one for a kitchen
+pot; but we little ones went to the town of Neumarkt, to get bread and
+salt, and we were to meet together in the evening outside the town,
+where we were to camp out, and then cook what we had. There was a well
+about a stone's throw from the town, near which we wished to pass the
+night; but when they saw our fire in the town, they began to shoot at
+us, yet did not hit us. Then we retired behind a bank to a little
+stream and grove; the big fellows lopped off branches and made a kind
+of hut, some plucked the geese, of which we had two; others put the
+heads and feet and the giblets into the pot, in which they had shred
+the turnips, others made two wooden spits and roasted the meat; when it
+had become a little brown, we ate it with the turnips. In the night we
+heard a kind of flapping: we found there was a pond near us which had
+been drained in the day, and the fish were struggling in the mud; then
+we took as many of them as we could, in a shirt fastened on a stick,
+and went away to a village, where we gave some of them to a peasant,
+that he might cook the others for us in beer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Soon after we went again from thence to Ulm, there Paulus took with
+him another lad called Hildebrand Kalbermatter, son of a Pfaff: he was
+quite young, and had some cloth given to him, such as is made in that
+country, for a little coat. When we came to Ulm, Paul desired me to go
+about with the cloth begging for money to pay for its making up; in
+this way I got much money, for I was well accustomed to begging in
+God's name, for the Bacchanten had constantly employed me in this, so
+that I had hardly ever been taken to school, and not once taught to
+read. Going thus seldom to the school, and having to give up to the
+Bacchanten all I got by going round with the cloth, I suffered much
+from hunger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But I must not omit to mention that there was at Ulm a pious widow,
+who had two grown-up daughters; this widow had often, when I came in
+the winter, wrapped up my feet in a warm fur, which she had laid behind
+the stove on purpose to warm them, and gave me a dish of porridge and
+sent me home. I was sometimes so hungry that I drove the dogs in the
+streets away from their bones, and gnawed them; item, searched for the
+crumbs out of the bag, which I ate. After that we returned again to
+Munich: there also I had to beg for money to make up the cloth, which
+nevertheless was not mine. The year following we went once more to Ulm,
+and I brought the cloth with me, and again begged on account of it; and
+I remember well that some one said to me, 'Botz Marter! is not the coat
+made yet? I believe you are employed in knavish work.' We went from
+thence, and I know not what happened to the cloth, or whether or no the
+coat was ever made up. One Sunday, when we came to Munich, the
+Bacchanten had got a lodging, but we three little Sch�tzen had none; we
+intended therefore to go at night to the corn market, in order to lie
+on the corn sacks; and certain women were sitting in the street by the
+salt magazine, who inquired where we were going. When they heard that
+we had no lodging, a butcher's wife who was near, when she saw that we
+were Swiss, said to her maid, 'Run and hang up the boiler with the
+remains of the soup and meat; they shall stay with me over the night; I
+like all Swiss. I served once at an inn in Innspruck, when the Emperor
+Maximilian held his court there: the Swiss had much business to arrange
+with him; and they were so friendly that I shall always be kind to them
+as long as I live.' The woman gave us good lodging, and plenty to eat
+and drink. In the morning she said to us, 'If one of you would like to
+remain with me, I would give him food and lodging.' We were all willing
+to do so, and inquired which she wished to have: when she had inspected
+us, as I looked more bold than the others, she took me, and I had
+nothing to do but to get the beer, to fetch the meat from the shambles,
+and to go with her sometimes to the field; but still I had to provide
+for the Bacchant. This the woman did not like, and said to me, 'Botz
+Marter! let the Bacchant go, and remain with me; you shall not beg any
+more.' So for a whole week I did not return to my Bacchant, nor the
+school; then he came to the house of the butcher's wife, and knocked at
+the door; and she said to me, 'Your Bacchant is there; say that you are
+ill.' She let him in, and said to him, 'You are truly a fine gentleman;
+you should have looked after Thomas, for he has been ill, and is so
+still.' Then he said to me, 'I am sorry for it, lad: when you can go
+out again, come to me.' Some time after, one Sunday, I went to vespers,
+and when they were over, my Bacchant came up to me and said, 'You
+Sch�tz, if you do not come to me, I will trample you under foot.' This
+I determined he should not do, and made up my mind to run away. That
+Sunday I said to the butcher's wife, 'I will go to the school and wash
+my shirt.' I dared not tell her of my intention, for I feared she would
+speak of it. So I left Munich with a sorrowful heart, partly because I
+was leaving my cousin, with whom I had gone so far (though he had been
+so hard and unmerciful to me), and also on account of the butcher's
+wife, who had treated me so kindly. I journeyed on over the river Isar,
+for I feared if I went to Switzerland, Paulus would follow me, and beat
+me, as he had often threatened. On the other side of the Isar there is
+a hill. I seated myself on the top, looked upon the town, and wept
+bitterly, because I had no longer any one to take an interest in me,
+and I thought of going to Saltzburg, or Vienna, in Austria. Whilst I
+was sitting there a peasant came with a waggon, which had carried salt
+to Munich: he was already drunk, though the sun had only just risen. I
+begged him to let me sit in it, and I went with him till he unharnessed
+the horses in order to give them and himself food; meanwhile I begged
+through the village, and waiting for him not far from it, fell asleep.
+When I awoke I again wept bitterly, for I thought the peasant had gone
+on, and it appeared to me as if I had lost a father. Soon, however, he
+came, and was still drunk, but called to me to sit in the cart, and
+asked me where I wished to go; I replied, 'To Saltzburg.' When it was
+evening, he turned off from the road, and said, 'Get down, there is the
+road to Saltzburg.' We had gone eight miles that day. I came to a
+village, and when I got up in the morning everything was white with
+rime, as if it had snowed, and I had no shoes, only torn stockings, no
+cap, and a scanty jacket. Thus I travelled to Passau, and intended to
+get on the Danube and go to Vienna, but when I came to Passau they
+would not admit me. Then I thought of going to Switzerland, and I asked
+the guard at the gate the nearest way to Switzerland: he answered by
+Munich. I said, 'I will not go by Munich, I had rather travel ten
+miles, or even more, out of the way to avoid it.' Then he pointed out
+the way by Friesingen. There was a high school there, and I found some
+Swiss, who inquired of me from whence I came? In the course of a few
+days Paulus arrived: the Sch�tzen told me that the Bacchant from Munich
+was looking for me. I ran out of the gate as if he had been behind me,
+and travelled to Ulm, where I went to the widow's house, who had so
+kindly warmed my feet, and she received me, and I was to guard the
+turnips in the field, and did not go to school. Some weeks after, a
+companion of Paul's came to me, and said, 'Your cousin is here, and is
+seeking for you.' He had followed me for eighteen miles, as he had lost
+in me a good provider, I having supported him for some years. When I
+heard this, although it was night, I ran out of the gate towards
+Constance. I again wept bitterly, for I was sorry to leave the kind
+widow.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I crossed the lake, and arrived at Constance; and as I went over the
+bridge I saw some of the Swiss peasant girls with their white
+petticoats. Oh my God, how glad I was! I thought I was in heaven. When
+I came to Zurich I saw there some people from the Valais, big
+Bacchanten, to whom I offered my services for getting food, if they in
+return would teach me; but I learned no more with them than with the
+others. After some months Paulus sent his Sch�tz Hildebrand from
+Munich, to desire me to return to him, and said he would forgive me;
+but I would not go back, and remained at Zurich, where however I
+studied little.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;One Antonius Venetz from Visp in the Valais persuaded me to go with
+him to Strasburg. When we arrived there we found many poor scholars,
+but no good school; there was however a very good one at Schlettstadt,
+so we went there. In the city we took a lodging with an old couple, one
+of whom was stone blind; then we went to my dear preceptor, the late
+Johannes Sapidus, and begged him to receive us. He asked from whence we
+came, and when we said out of Switzerland, from the Valais, he
+answered, 'The peasants there are bad, for they drive all their Bishops
+out of the country; if, however, you study industriously, I will take
+little from you, if not, you must pay me, or I will take the coat off
+your back.' That was the first school in which it appeared to me that
+things went on well. At that time learning, especially that of
+languages, was gaining ground--it was the year of the Diet at Worms.
+Sapidus had once nine hundred students, some of them fine scholars, who
+afterwards became doctors and men of renown.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When I came to this school I knew little, could not even read the
+Donat. Though I was eighteen years old, I was placed among the little
+children, and looked like a hen amidst her small chickens. One day when
+Sapidus called over the list of the scholars, he said, 'I find many
+barbarous names, I must try to Latinize them.' He then called over the
+new names: he had turned me into Thomas Platterus, and my fellow,
+Anthony Venetz into Antonius Venetus, and said, 'Which are the two?' We
+stood up and he exclaimed, 'Poof! what measly Sch�tzen to have such
+fine names!' this was partly true, especially of my companion, for I
+was more accustomed to the change of air and food.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When we had stayed there from autumn to the following Whitsuntide, a
+great many fresh scholars arrived, so that there was not sufficient to
+support us all; and we went off to Solothurn, where there was a
+tolerably good school, and more food; but we were obliged to be so
+constantly in church that we lost all our time; therefore we returned
+home.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The following spring I went off again with my two brothers. When we
+took leave of our mother, she wept and said, 'Am I not to be pitied, to
+have three sons going to lead this miserable life?' It was the only
+time I ever saw my mother cry, for she was a brave, strong-minded
+woman, respected by every one as honourable, upright, and pious.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I came to Zurich, and went to the school of the monastery of our Lady.
+About this time it was reported that a thoroughly good and learned but
+severe schoolmaster was coming from Einsiedeln. I seated myself in a
+corner not far from the schoolmaster's chair, and I thought to myself,
+in this corner will I study or die. When he (Father Myconius) entered,
+he said, 'This is a fine school (it had only just been built); but
+methinks you are a set of ignorant boys: but I will have patience with
+you, if you will only be industrious.' I knew that if it had cost me my
+life I could not have declined a word, even of the first declension;
+but I could repeat the Donat by heart from beginning to end, for when I
+was in Schlettstadt, Sapidus had a bachelor who plagued the Bacchanten
+so grievously with the Donat, that I thought it must be such a good
+book, I had better learn it by heart. I got on well with Father
+Myconius: he read Terence to us, and we had to conjugate and decline
+every word of a whole play; and it often happened that my shirt became
+quite wet, and my sight seemed to fail me with fear; and yet he had
+never given me a blow, except once with the back of his hand on my
+cheek. He read also the Holy Scriptures, and to these readings many of
+the laity came, for it was the time when the light of the holy Gospel
+was beginning to dawn. If at any time he was severe with me, he would
+take me home and give me something to eat, and he liked to hear me
+relate how I had gone all through Germany, and how it had fared with
+me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Myconius was obliged to go with his pupils to church at the monastery
+of our Lady, to sing at vespers, matins, and mass, and conduct the
+chanting. He said to me once, 'Custos (for I was his custos), I would
+rather hold four lectures than sing one mass. Dear son, if you would
+sometimes chant the easy masses for me, requiems, and the like, I will
+requite it to you.' I was well content with this, for I had been
+accustomed to it, and everything was still regulated in the popish
+manner. As custos, I had often not enough wood to burn in the school,
+so I observed which of the laymen who came to it had piles of wood in
+front of their houses: there I went about midnight and secretly carried
+off wood to the school. One morning I had no wood; Zwinglius was to
+preach at the monastery early that morning, and when they were ringing
+the bells, I said to myself, 'Thou hast no wood, and there are so many
+images in the church that no one cares about them.' So I went to the
+nearest altar in the church, and carried off a St. John, and took him
+to the stove in the school, and said to him, '<i>J�gli</i>, now thou must
+bend and go into the stove.' When he began to burn, the paint made a
+great hissing and crackling, and I told him to keep quiet, and said,
+'If thou movest, which however thou wilt not do, I will close the door
+of the stove: thou shalt not get out unless the devil carry thee away.'
+In the mean time came Myconius' wife; she was going to hear the sermon
+in the church, and in passing by the door, said, 'God be with you, my
+child, have you heated the stove?' I closed the door of the stove, and
+answered, 'Yes, mother, I have already warmed it;' but I would not tell
+her how, for she might have tattled about it, and had it been known, it
+would have cost me my life. Myconius said to me in the course of the
+lesson, 'Custos, you have had good wood to-day.' When we were beginning
+to chant the mass, two Pfaffs were disputing together in the church;
+the one to whom the St. John belonged said to the other, 'You rogue,
+you have stolen my St. John;' and this dispute they carried on for some
+time.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Although it appeared to me that there was something not quite right
+about Popery, I still intended to become a priest. I wished to be
+pious, to administer my office faithfully, and to ornament my altar. I
+prayed much, and fasted more than was good for me. I had also my saints
+and patrons, and prayed to each for something especial; to our Lady,
+that she would be my intercessor with her child; to St. Catherine, that
+she would help me to learning; to St. Barbara, that I might not die
+without the sacrament; and to St. Peter, that he would open the door of
+heaven to me; and I wrote down in a little book what prayers I had
+neglected. When I had leave of absence from the school on Thursdays or
+Saturdays, I went into a confessional chair in the monastery, and wrote
+the omitted prayers on a chair, and counted out every sin one after
+another; then rubbed them out, and thought I had done my duty. I went
+six times from Zurich with processions to Einsiedeln, and was diligent
+in confession. I often contended with my associates for the Papacy,
+till one day M. Ulrich Zwinglius preached on this text from the gospel
+of St. John:--'I am the good shepherd.' He explained it so forcibly,
+that I felt as if my hair stood on end; and he showed how God will
+demand the souls of the lost sheep at the hands of those shepherds who
+caused their perdition. I thought, if that is the true meaning, then
+adieu to priestcraft, I will never be a Pfaff. I continued my studies,
+began to dispute with my companions, listened assiduously to the
+sermons and to my preceptor Myconius. There still continued to be mass
+and images at Zurich.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far Thomas Platter. His struggle in life lasted some time longer:
+he had to learn rope-making in order to support himself; he studied at
+night, and when Andreas Kratander, the printer at Basle, had sent him a
+Plautus, he fastened the separate sheets on the rope by means of a
+wooden prong, and read whilst he was working. Later he became a
+corrector of the press, then citizen and printer, and lastly rector of
+the Latin school at Basle. The unsettled life of his childhood was not
+without its influence on the character of the man; for however great
+his capacities, he displayed neither energy nor perseverance in his
+undertakings.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was among the thousands who, like the boy Thomas, thronged to the
+Latin schools, that the new movement won its most zealous followers.
+These children of the people carried from house to house with unwearied
+activity their new ideas and information. Many of them never arrived at
+the university; they endeavoured to support themselves by private
+tuition, or as correctors of the press. Most of the city, and in later
+times the village schools were occupied by those who could read Virgil,
+and understand the bitter humour of the Klagebriefes, <i>de miseria
+plebenorum</i>. So great were their numbers that the reformers soon urged
+them to learn, however late, some trade, in order to maintain
+themselves honestly. Many members of guilds in the German cities were
+qualified to furnish commentaries to the papal bulls, and translate
+them to their fellow-citizens; and subtle theological questions were
+eagerly discussed in the drinking-rooms. Great was the influence
+exercised by these men on the small circles around them. Some years
+afterwards they, together with the poor students of divinity who spread
+themselves as preachers over all Germany, became a great society; and
+it was these democrats of the new teaching who represented the Pope as
+antichrist in the popular plays, harangued the armed multitudes of
+insurgent peasants, and made war on the old Church in printed
+discourses, popular songs, and coarse dialogues.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In this way they made preparation for what was coming. But however
+clearly it had been shown by the Humanitarians that the Church had in
+many places falsified the Holy Scriptures, however humorously they had
+derided the tool of the Inquisition--the baptized Jew Pfefferkorn, with
+his pretty little wife--and however zealously the small school teachers
+had carried among the people the colloquies of Erasmus on fasting, &amp;c.,
+and his work on the education of children, yet it was not their new
+learning alone that gave birth to the Reformation and the spiritual
+freedom of Germany. Deeper lay the sources of this mighty stream; it
+sprang from the foundation of the German mind, and was brought to light
+by the secret longings of the heart, that it might, by the work of
+destruction and renovation, transform the life of the nation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MENTAL STRUGGLES OF A YOUTH, AND HIS<br>
+ENTRANCE INTO A MONASTERY.</h3>
+<h4>(1510.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Great was the wickedness of the world, heavy the oppression under which
+the poor suffered, coarse the greed after enjoyment, boundless the
+covetousness both of ecclesiastics and laymen. Who was there to punish
+the young nobleman who maltreated the peasants? who to defend the poor
+citizen against the powerful family unions of the rich counsellors?
+Hard was the labour of the German peasant from morning till evening,
+through summer and winter; pestilence was quickly followed by famine
+and hunger: the whole system of the world seemed in confusion, and
+earthly life devoid of love. The only hope of deliverance from misery,
+was in God; before Him all earthly power, whether of Emperor or Pope,
+was weak and insignificant, and the wisdom of man was transitory as the
+flower of the field. By his mercy men might be delivered from the
+miseries of this life, and compensated by eternal happiness for what
+they had suffered here; but how were they to obtain this mercy? by what
+virtues could weak men hope to gain the endless treasure of God's
+favour? Man had been doomed from the time of Adam to will the good and
+do the evil. Vain were his highest virtues; inherited sin was his
+curse; and if he obtained mercy from God, it was not by his own
+merits.<a name="div2_19" href="#div2Ref_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">These were the questions that then struggled within the agonized hearts
+of men. But from the holy records of Scripture, which had only been a
+dark tradition to the people, went forth the words; Christ is love. The
+ruling Church knew little of this love; in it God was kept far from the
+hearts of men: the image of the Crucified One was concealed behind
+countless saints, who were all made necessary as intercessors with a
+wrathful God. But the great craving of the German nature was to find
+itself in close connection with the Almighty, and the longing for the
+love of God was unquenchable. But the Pope maintained that he was the
+only administrator of the inexhaustible merits of Christ; and the
+Church also taught, that by the intercession of saints for the sins of
+men, an endless treasure of good works, prayers, fasts, and penances
+were made available for the blessing of others; and all these treasures
+were at the disposition of the Pope, who could dispense them to whom he
+chose, as a deliverance from their sins. Thus, when believers united
+together in a pious community, the Pope was able to confer on such a
+brotherhood the privilege of passing over from one to the other, the
+merits of the saints, the surplus of prayers and masses, as well as of
+good works done for the Church.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the year 1530, Luther complained that the number of these
+communities was countless.<a name="div2_20" href="#div2Ref_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> An example will show how rough and
+miserable their mechanism was, and the &quot;Brotherhood of the Eleven
+Thousand Virgins,&quot; called &quot;St. Ursula's Schifflein,&quot; is selected,
+because the Elector, Frederick the Wise, was one of the founders and
+brothers. The collection of spiritual treasures given by statute to
+enable the brotherhood to obtain eternal happiness, amounted to 6,455
+masses, 3,550 entire psalters, 200,000 rosaries, 200,000 <i>Te Deum
+Laudamus</i>, 1,600 <i>Gloria in excelsis Deo</i>. Besides this, 11,000 prayers
+for the patroness St. Ursula, and 630 times 11,000 Paternosters and Ave
+Marias; also 50 times 10,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias for 10,000
+knights, &amp;c.; and the whole redeeming power of these treasures was for
+the benefit of the members of the brotherhood. Many spiritual
+foundations and private persons had gained to themselves especial merit
+by their great contributions to the prayer treasures. At the revival of
+the society, the Elector Frederick had presented a beautiful silver
+Ursula. A layman was entitled to become a member of the brotherhood if
+he once in his life had repeated 11,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias: if
+he repeated daily thirty-two, he gained it in a year, if sixteen, in
+two, and if eight, in four years: if any one was hindered by marriage,
+sickness, or business, from completing this number of prayers, he was
+enabled to enter by having eleven masses read for him; and so on. Yet
+this brotherhood was one of the best, for the members had not to pay
+money; it was to be a brotherhood of poor people who wished only to
+assist each other to heaven by mutual prayer; and we maintain that
+these brotherhoods were the most spiritual part of the declining Church
+of the middle ages.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The indulgences, on the other hand, were the foulest spot in its
+diseased body. The Pope, as administrator of the inexhaustible treasure
+of the merits of Christ, sold to believers, drafts on this store in
+exchange for money. It is true that the Church itself had not entirely
+lost the idea that the Pope could not himself forgive sins, but only
+remit the penances the Church prescribed; those, however, who held
+these views, individuals of the university and worthy village priests,
+were obliged to be careful that their teaching should not come into
+open collision with the business of the seller of indulgences. For what
+did the right teaching of their own Church signify to the papists of
+the sixteenth century? It was money that they craved for their women
+and children, their relatives, and princely houses. There was a fearful
+community of interests between the bishops and the fanatical members of
+the mendicant orders. Nothing had made Huss and his tenets so
+insupportable to them as the struggle against the sale of indulgences:
+the great Wessel had been driven out of Paris into misery for teaching
+repentance and grace; and it was the sellers of indulgences who caused
+the venerable Johannes Vesalia to die in the prison of a monastery at
+Mayence, he who first spoke the noble words, &quot;Why should I believe what
+I know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is known how prevalent the traffic in indulgences became in Germany
+in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and how impudently the
+reckless cheating was carried on. When Tetzel, a well-fed haughty
+Dominican, rode into a city with his box of indulgences, he was
+accompanied by a large body of monks and priests: the bells were rung;
+ecclesiastics and laymen met him, and reverentially conducted him to
+the church; his great crucifix, with the holes of the nails, and the
+crown of thorns, was erected in the nave, and sometimes the believers
+were allowed to see the blood of the Crucified One trickling down the
+cross. Church banners, on which were the arms of the Pope with the
+triple crown, were placed by the cross; in front of it the cursed box,
+strongly clamped with iron, and near these on one side, a pulpit from
+which the monk set forth with rough eloquence the wonderful powers of
+his indulgences, and showed a large parchment of the Pope's with many
+seals appended to it. On the other side was the pay table, with
+indulgence tickets, writing materials, and money baskets; there the
+ecclesiastical coadjutors sold to the thronging people everlasting
+salvation.<a name="div2_21" href="#div2Ref_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countless were the crimes of the Church, against which all the wounded
+moral feelings of the Germans were roused. The opposition spread all
+over Germany; but the man had not yet appeared, who, by a fearful
+inward struggle, discerning all the griefs and longings of the people,
+was preparing to become the leader of his nation, which would in his
+determined character, see with enthusiasm its own mind embodied. For
+two years he had been teacher of natural philosophy and dialects in the
+new university of Wittenberg, and was still lying in the dust of the
+Roman plains, looking with pious enthusiasm at the towers of the holy
+city appearing on the verge of the horizon. In the mean while we may
+learn from the experiences of a Latin scholar, what was working in the
+souls of the people.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Frederick Mecum (Latinized into Myconius<a name="div2_22" href="#div2Ref_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a>) was the son of honest
+citizens of Lichtenfelds, in Upper Franconia, and was born in 1491.
+When thirteen years of age, he went to the Latin school of the then
+flourishing city of Annaberg, where he experienced what we propose
+giving in his own words. In 1510 he went into a monastery, and as a
+Franciscan he was one of the first, most zealous, and faithful
+followers of the Wittenberg professors. He left his order, became a
+preacher at the new church in Thuringia, and finally pastor and
+superintendent at Gotha, where he established the Reformation, and died
+in 1546. The connecting link between him and Luther was of a very
+peculiar nature; he was not only his most intimate friend in many
+relations of private life, but there was a poetry in his connection
+with him which spread a halo round his whole life. Seven years before
+Luther began the Reformation, Myconius saw in a dream the vision of
+that great man, who calmed the doubts of his excited heart; enlightened
+by his dream, the faithful, pious German discovered in him the great
+friend of every future hour. But another circumstance gives us an
+interest in the narrator. However unlike, this gentle, delicately
+organized man may appear to his daring friend, there was a striking
+similarity in the youthful life of both, and much which is unknown to
+us of Luther's youth may be explained in what Myconius relates of his
+own. Both were poor scholars from a Latin school; both were driven by
+their inward struggles and youthful enthusiasm into a monastery, and
+found there only new doubts, greater struggles, and years of torment
+and anxious uncertainty instead of that peace for which they so
+passionately longed. To both was the shameless Tetzel the rock of
+offence, which stirred up their minds, and determined the whole course
+of their future life: finally, both died in the same year,--Myconius
+seven weeks after Luther, having five years before, been restored to
+life from a mortal illness by Luther's letter of invocation.<a name="div2_23" href="#div2Ref_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> Few of
+Frederick Myconius' works have been printed: besides theological
+essays, he wrote a chronicle of his own time in German, in which he
+describes with the greatest detail his own labours and the state of
+Gotha. &quot;The dream&quot; which he had the first night after he entered the
+monastery is well known, and has often been printed. In the dream the
+Apostle Paul presents himself to him as his leader, and, as Myconius in
+after years fancied, had the form, face, and voice of Luther. This long
+dream was written in Latin, but we find a German translation of the
+introduction, in a manuscript of the same date, in the Duke's library
+at Gotha, from which we give the following extracts:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Johannis Tetzel of Pyrna in Meissen, a Dominican monk, was a powerful
+preacher of the papal indulgences. He tarried two years in the then new
+city of Annaberg for this object, and so deluded the people that they
+all believed there was no other way to obtain forgiveness of sins and
+eternal life, than by the sufficiency of our own works, which
+sufficiency he added was impossible. But there was one way remaining,
+namely, to obtain it by money from the Pope: so we bought the papal
+indulgence, which he called forgiveness of sins and a certain entrance
+into eternal life. Here I could relate wonder upon wonder, and many
+incredible things which I heard preached by Tetzel for two years at
+Annaberg, for he preached every day, and I listened to him assiduously.
+I even repeated his sermons by heart to others; imitating his delivery
+and gestures; not that I did it to ridicule him, but from my great
+earnestness, for I considered it all as <i>oracular</i>, and the word of
+God, which ought to be believed; and what ever came from the Pope I
+considered as if it were from Christ himself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At last, about Whitsuntide, 1510, he threatened to take down the red
+cross, close the door of heaven, and extinguish the sun, adding, that
+we should never more have the opportunity of obtaining remissions of
+sins and eternal life for so little money, as it could not be hoped
+that this benevolent mission from the Pope would return again as long
+as the world lasted. He admonished every one to take care of his soul,
+and those of his friends, both living and dead, for that now was the
+accepted time, now was the day of salvation. And he said, 'Let no one
+neglect his own eternal happiness, for if ye have not the papal letter,
+ye cannot be absolved from many sins, nor, <i>casibus reservatis</i>, by any
+man.' Printed letters were publicly affixed to the walls and doors of
+the church, in which it was promised that, as a token of thanks to the
+German people for their piety, from henceforth till the close of the
+sale, the indulgence letters and the full power of remission should be
+sold at a less price; at the end of the letter, underneath, was
+written, <i>pauperibus dentur gratis</i>,--to the poor who have nothing, the
+letters of indulgence shall be given without money, for God's sake.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then I began to deal with this commissary of indulgence wares; but in
+truth I was led and encouraged hereto by the Holy Spirit, although I
+myself knew not at the time what I did.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dear father had taught me in my childhood the Ten Commandments, the
+Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, and insisted upon my continually praying;
+for, said he, all that we have is from God alone, and He gives it us
+gratis, and He will lead and direct us if we pray to Him diligently. Of
+the papal indulgences, he said, they were only nets with which money
+was fished out of the pockets of the simple, and one could not
+assuredly obtain for money the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
+But the priests became angry when such things were said. When,
+therefore, I daily heard in the sermons nothing but praise of the
+indulgences, I doubted whom I should most believe, my dear father, or
+the priests as teachers of the Church. But though I had doubts, I
+believed more the instructions of the priests than those of my father.
+The only thing I could not, however, allow, was, that the forgiveness
+of sins could only be obtained by money, especially when it was
+question of the poor. Therefore, the <i>clausula</i> at the end of the papal
+letter, <i>pauperibus gratis dentur propter Deum</i>, pleased me
+wonderfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As at the end of three days, the cross, together with the steps and
+ladder to heaven, were to be taken down with extraordinary solemnity,
+the spirit led me to go to the commissary, and beg of him letters of
+remission out of charity to the poor. I declared that I was a sinner,
+and poor, and needed forgiveness of my sins, which I ought to receive
+gratis. The second day, at the time of vespers, I entered the house of
+Hans Pflock, where Tetzel with the confessors and crowd of priests were
+assembled together. I accosted them in the Latin language, and
+entreated that they would, according to the command in the Pope's
+letter, allow me, a poor lad, to obtain the absolution of all my sins
+gratis, and for God's sake, '<i>Etiam nullo casu reservato</i>,'--without
+reserve, and thereupon they should give me the '<i>literas
+testimoniales</i>,'--written testimony, of the Pope. The priests were much
+astonished at my Latin speech, for it was at this time a rare thing,
+especially with young boys; and they went speedily out of the room into
+the next apartment, where was Herr Commissary Tetzel. They laid before
+him my request, and begged of him to give me gratis the letter of
+indulgence. At last, after holding long counsel, they came again, and
+brought me this answer: 'Dear son, we have carefully laid your petition
+before the Herr Commissary, and he bids us say he would gladly grant
+it, but he cannot; and if he were to do so, this concession would
+become powerless, and of no avail. For he has shown us that it is clear
+from the Pope's letter, it is those only <i>qui porrigent manum
+adjutricem</i>,--those who help with the hand, that is, those who give
+money, that will certainly partake of the merciful indulgences and
+treasures of the Church, and of the merits of Christ.' And this they
+told me all in German, for there was not one among them who could speak
+three words of Latin rightly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But I again renewed my petition, and showed them, how in the papal
+letter the holy father had commanded that these indulgences should be
+freely given to the poor, for God's sake, more especially as it was
+therein written: <i>ad mandatum Domini pap� proprium</i>, that is, by his
+highness the Pope's own commands.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then they went again to the proud, haughty monk, and begged him to
+grant my petition, for I was a deep-thinking and eloquent youth, who
+deserved that more should be bestowed upon him than upon others. But
+they brought back the same answer. I remained firm, however, and said
+that they did great injustice to me, a poor boy whom neither God nor
+the Pope would shut out from grace, and whom they wanted to discard for
+the sake of a few pence, which I had not. Then followed a dispute. They
+said I must give something, however little, if it was only a few
+groschen, that the helping hand might not be wanting. I answered, 'I
+have it not, I am poor.' At last it came to this, I was to give six
+<i>pfennige</i>, to which I replied again, 'I have not a single <i>pfennig</i>.'
+They tried to persuade me, and conferred together. At last I heard them
+say that they were in anxiety on two points; first, they must on no
+account let me go without the indulgence, as this might be a concerted
+plan, and lead to mischief hereafter, for it was clearly written in the
+Pope's letter that indulgences were to be given free to the poor; but
+on the other hand, it was necessary to take something from me, that
+others might not hear that they were given away gratis, in which case a
+whole crowd of poor scholars and beggars would come and demand them.
+They need not have had any anxiety on this account, for the poor
+beggars would rather seek for bread to drive away their hunger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After they had taken counsel they came again to me, and offered me six
+<i>pfennige</i>, that I might give it to the commissary; by this
+contribution they said that I should become one of the builders of the
+church of St. Peters at Rome, a slayer of the Turks, and partaker of
+the indulgence and grace of Christ. But I spoke out freely, stirred by
+the Holy Spirit, and said that if I was to buy indulgence and remission
+of sins, I could sell one of my books, and obtain it with my own money;
+but I wished to have it given me freely for God's sake, or they would
+have to answer before God, for having trifled with the happiness of my
+soul for the sake of six <i>pfennige</i>, when both God and the Pope desired
+that I should be partaker of the forgiveness of sins for charity sake.
+I said this, but truly did not know how it stood with the letters of
+indulgence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After this speech the priests inquired of me from whence I had been
+sent, and who had instructed me to deal with them about this matter.
+Then I told them the simple truth, how it was that I had not been told
+or sent by any one, or induced to come by other men's counsel, but had
+of myself made this request, in full trust and confidence in the free
+and charitable gift of forgiveness of sins; and I had never before in
+my life spoken to, or dealt with such great people, for I was by nature
+modest; and if I had not been constrained by my great thirst for the
+mercy of God, I should not have ventured on so high an undertaking.
+Then they again offered me the indulgence, but in this way: I was to
+buy it with six <i>pfennige</i>, and these <i>pfennige</i> were to be returned to
+me for myself. But I remained firm that he who had the power should
+give me the indulgence free; and if he would not, I would commend the
+affair to my dear God, and resign myself into his hands; and so they
+dismissed me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The holy thieves were however sorrowful over this affair. I too was
+somewhat troubled that I had not got my indulgence; yet I also rejoiced
+that in spite of them there was one in heaven who would forgive the
+sins of the penitent sinner, without money and without price, according
+to the text which I had often repeated in church: 'As I live, saith the
+Lord God, I would not the death of a sinner, but that he should be
+converted and live.' Ah, dear Lord God, thou knowest that I have not
+lied or invented.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was so overcome by all this, that whilst I was going home to my
+lodging, I was dissolved in tears. When I arrived there, I went into my
+room and took the crucifix, that always lay on the table in my study,
+placed it on the bench, and fell down before it on the ground. I cannot
+here describe it, but I then felt the spirit of prayer and grace, which
+thou, my God and Lord, pouredst out upon me. The purport of my prayer
+was this, I beg that thou, dear God, wouldst be my father, and wouldst
+forgive me my sins. I resign myself to thee altogether and entirely;
+thou mayest do with me what thou pleasest, and though the priests will
+not be merciful to me without money, be thou my merciful God and
+Father.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then I found that my whole heart was changed: I felt vexed with all
+worldly things, and imagined that I was quite wearied with this life.
+Only one thing I desired, which was, to live for God and to please Him.
+But who was there that could teach me, and how was I to effect this?
+For the Word, the light and life of men, was throughout the whole world
+buried in the darkness of human traditions and the mad idea of 'good
+works.' Of Christ nothing was said, nothing was known of Him; or if He
+was mentioned, He was represented to us as an angry and terrible judge,
+whom his mother and all the saints in heaven could hardly appease, or
+persuade to be merciful even by tears of blood; and it was said that
+He, Christ, would cast those men who repented, for seven years into
+purgatory for every mortal sin: there was no difference between the
+pains of purgatory and those of hell, except that they were not
+eternal. But now the Holy Spirit gave me the hope that God would be
+merciful unto me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After this I began to consider how I was to enter upon a new course of
+life. I saw the sinfulness of the whole world, and of the whole human
+race. I saw my own manifold sins which were so very great. I had heard
+somewhat of the great holiness and of the pure and innocent life of
+monks; how they served God day and night, were separated from all the
+wickedness of the world, and lived a temperate, pious, and chaste life,
+performed masses, sang psalms, and were always fasting and praying. I
+had also seen something of this plausible life, but I did not know that
+it was the greatest idolatry and hypocrisy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I consulted with my preceptor, the master Andreas Staffeltstein, who
+was rector of the school; he advised me to enter the newly built
+Franciscan monastery, and for fear I should change my mind through any
+long delay, he went himself with me to the monks, praised my talents
+and intellect, and boasted that in me alone amongst all his scholars he
+had perfect confidence, that I should become a truly godly man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I desired, however, beforehand to mention my undertaking to my
+parents, and to hear their opinion upon it, as I was their only son and
+heir; but the monks showed me out of St. Jerome that I ought not to
+regard father or mother, but leave them, and take up the cross of
+Christ. And they quoted the saying of Christ: 'No man, having put his
+hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God;'
+and thus they pressed me to become a monk. I will not here speak of the
+many bonds and fetters with which they bound and shackled my
+conscience. They told me I could never henceforth be happy if I did not
+at once accept the offered grace of God; and as I would rather have
+died than have been deprived of the grace of God and eternal life, I at
+once consented, and promised that I would in three days return to the
+monastery, and commence my year of probation, as it is called; that is,
+I would become a pious, devout, and God-fearing monk.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the 14th of July, in the year 1510, about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, I entered the monastery, accompanied by my preceptor, some
+of my schoolfellows, and certain devout matrons, to whom I had partly
+explained why I entered the ecclesiastical order. I then gave my
+blessing to all who had thus accompanied me, who with many tears
+implored for me God's grace and blessing. And so it came to pass that I
+went into a monastery. Dear God, thou knowest that this is all true. It
+was not a life of idleness nor good living that I sought, nor yet the
+odour of sanctity, but I wished to please thee, and to serve thee well.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thus for a time I groped on in great darkness.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>OUT OF THE MONASTERY INTO THE CONFLICT.</h3>
+<h4>(<span class="sc">about</span> 1522.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The storm broke loose; it convulsed the whole nation as with electric
+fire: the words of the Augustine of Wittenburg rolled through the land
+like peals of thunder, and every clap betokened an advance and a
+victory. Even now, after three centuries and a half, this prodigious
+movement has an irresistible fascination for the German people. Never,
+from its first existence, had the nation revealed its innermost being
+so touchingly and grandly. All the fine qualities of the German mind
+and character burst forth at this time; enthusiasm, self-devotion, a
+deep moral indignation, an intense pleasure in systematic thought, and
+an inward seeking after the highest. Every individual took his share in
+the strife. The travelling trader over the fire at night contended for
+or against the indulgences, the countryman in the most remote villages
+heard with astonishment of the new heretic whom his spiritual father
+cursed in every sermon, and the women of the villages no longer gave
+willingly to the mendicant monks. A sea of small literature overflowed
+the country, a hundred printing-presses were in activity, spreading
+abroad the numerous controversial writings, both learned and popular;
+parties raged in every cathedral and parish church; everywhere men of
+resolute character amongst the ecclesiastics declared themselves for
+the new doctrines, whilst the weaker ones struggled with timid doubts;
+the doors of the monasteries were opened, and the cells soon became
+empty. Every month brought to the people something new and unheard of.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was no longer a quarrel between priests, as Hutten had in the
+beginning contemptuously called the dispute between the Wittenberger
+and Tetzel; it had become a war of the nation against the Romish
+supremacy and its supporters. Ever more powerfully rose the image of
+Luther before his cotemporaries. Banished, cursed, persecuted by Pope
+and Emperor, by princes and high ecclesiastics, he became in four short
+years the idolized hero of the people. His journey to Worms was
+described in the style of the Holy Scriptures, and the over-zealous
+placed him on a footing with the martyrs of the New Testament.<a name="div2_24" href="#div2Ref_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> The
+learned also felt themselves irresistibly drawn into the struggle; even
+Erasmus smiled approbation, and Hutten's soul fired up in the cause of
+the new teacher, he no longer wrote in Latin, but broke forth in
+German, more stormy and wild than the Wittenberger, with a fire that
+consumed himself, the knight fought his last fight for the peasant's
+son.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The man on whom for half a generation the highest feelings of his
+nation were concentrated, now enters upon the scene. Yet before we
+endeavour to understand his mind, it is well to point out, shortly, how
+his peculiar character worked upon impartial cotemporaries. We first
+take the witness of a moderate and truthful mind, who never personally
+knew Luther, and who later, in a middle position between the
+Wittenberger and the Swiss reformer, had reason to be dissatisfied with
+Luther's stubbornness. Ambrosius Blaurer, born in Constance, of noble
+family, was a brother of the old Benedictine monastery of Alpirsbach,
+in the wildest part of the Black Forest; he was afterwards a writer of
+sacred poetry, and at the time we are speaking of, thirty years old. He
+had left the cloister in 1523, and fled to his family. At the
+instigation of his Abbot, the Stadtholder of the principality of
+W�rtemberg demanded that he should be sent back to the monastery by the
+Burgomaster and council of Constance. Blaurer published a defence, from
+which the following is taken. He became shortly after a preacher in
+Constance, and on the restoration of Duke Ulrich, one of the reformers
+of W�rtemberg, and died at a great age at Winterthur. What he praises
+and blames in Luther may be considered as the general view of his
+character taken at that time by earnest minds.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I call God and my own conscience to witness that no wilfulness or
+frivolous motive drove me out of the monastery, or excited me to
+abandon it. Vulgar rumour reports, that monks and nuns have left their
+convents on account of their aversion to its tranquil life, and that
+they might live in carnal freedom, and give vent to their wilfulness
+and worldly desires. But I was actuated by honourable and weighty
+reasons, and great troubles and urgings of conscience, on account of
+the word of God. I hope that all the circumstances of my departure will
+show neither levity, wantonness, nor unseemly purpose? I laid aside
+neither cowl nor capouch except for a few days after my departure for
+my greater security, till I had reached my place of refuge. I neither
+left to fight, nor to carry away a pretty wife, but I went forthwith as
+quickly as I could to my much loved mother and relations, who are
+undoubted Christians, and are held in such honour and esteem in the
+city of Constance, that it is certain they would never counsel or help
+me in any unworthy undertaking.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Therefore I trust that my previous conduct and course of life will
+relieve me from any suspicion of unseemly or wilful intentions; for
+although I may not boast myself before God, yet I may before men glory
+in the Lord, that I, whether in the cloister or the school, here, and
+wherever I have been, have retained a good repute and esteem, with much
+love and favour, on account of my uprightness. You yourselves have
+heard the messengers from W�rtemberg acknowledge that there was no
+complaint or evil report of my conduct or manner of life at the
+monastery of Alpirsbach, but that I have behaved myself well and
+piously; all they can say against me is, that I have concerned myself
+too much with what they call the seductive and cursed teaching of
+Martin Luther, whose writings I have read and adhered to, and preached
+them, contrary to the command of the abbot, publicly to the laity in
+the monastery; and when this was forbidden me, I yet continued
+secretly, and as it were in a corner, to infuse them into the souls of
+some of the young gentlemen there. With such praise from my fathers and
+brethren I am well content, and can justify myself for this one
+misdeed, as a Christian, from the word of God, and I hope that my
+defence will serve to remove false and ungrounded suspicions, not only
+from me, but also from others.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When in the course of the last year, the works and opinions of Martin
+Luther were spread abroad and became known, they came into my hands
+before they had been condemned and forbidden by the ecclesiastical and
+lay authorities; and like other newly printed works, I saw and read
+them. In the beginning, these doctrines appeared to me somewhat strange
+and objectionable, and contrary to the long-established theology and
+clever teaching of the schools, in opposition also to the papal and
+ecclesiastical rights, and to the old, and, as I then considered them,
+praiseworthy customs and usages of our forefathers. But it was not less
+evident to me that this man interspersed everywhere in his teaching
+clear and distinct passages from the Holy Scriptures, according to
+which all human teaching ought to be guided and judged, accepted or
+rejected. I was much amazed, and stirred up to read these doctrines,
+not once or twice, but frequently, with much industry and earnest
+attention, and to weigh and compare them with the evangelical writings
+to which they constantly appealed. The longer I did this, the more I
+perceived with what great dignity the Holy Scriptures were treated by
+this learned and enlightened man,--how purely and delicately he handled
+them, how cleverly and well he everywhere brought them forward, how
+skilfully he compared and weighed them one with the other, and how he
+explained the dark and difficult texts, by bringing forward others that
+were clearer and more comprehensible. I saw also that there was great
+mastership in his treatment of the Scriptures, and that it afforded the
+most substantial aid to a right understanding of them, so that every
+intelligent layman who industriously studied his books, could
+distinctly perceive that these doctrines were true and Christian, and
+had the firmest foundation. On that account they impressed themselves
+on my mind, and deeply touched my heart: it was to me as if a veil had
+fallen from before my eyes; I felt they were in no wise to be
+distrusted, like those of so many other school teachers that I had
+formerly read, because their aim was neither dominion, fame, nor
+worldly enjoyment, but to place before us, only the poor, despised, and
+crucified Christ, and to teach us to live a pure, moderate, and sober
+life, conformable in all things to the doctrine of Christ; and they
+were therefore too hard and self-denying for the ambitious and many
+beneficed priests and doctors, puffed up with pride and vain glory, who
+sought in the Scriptures their own honour and fame, more than the
+Spirit of God. Therefore would I rather give up all my worldly means
+and life itself, than be deprived of them, not for the sake of Luther,
+who, except as he appears in his writings, is unknown to me, and being
+only a man, may, like other men, be in error; but for the sake of the
+word of God, which he holds so clearly and distinctly, and explains so
+victoriously and triumphantly from the fullness of his undaunted
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The enemy endeavoured to embitter this honey to us by representing
+that Luther was testy and irritable, aggressive and sarcastic; that he
+attacked his opponents the great princes and ecclesiastical and lay
+lords, with audacity; had recourse to abuse and slander, and forgot all
+brotherly love and Christian moderation. He had, it is true, often
+displeased me by this, and I would not desire any one to do the like;
+but I could not on that account reject and cast aside his good
+Christian teaching, nor even condemn him in these respects; and for
+this reason, that I could not read his mind, nor the secret counsels of
+God, as perhaps it might be the means of drawing people from his
+teaching. And as it was not his own cause, but the divine word that he
+defended, much allowance should be made for him, and all should be
+attributed to zealous indignation for God. Even Christ, the source and
+pattern of all meekness, severely rebuked before others the stubborn
+and stony-hearted Pharisees, and called them false hypocrites, painted
+sepulchres, sons of harlots, blind leaders of the blind, and also the
+children of the devil, as may be seen in the gospels. (Matt. xii. 15,
+23; John viii.) Perhaps Luther would gladly speak well of many if he
+could do so with truth; he may not think it fitting to call those who
+are in darkness, enlightened; nor rapacious wolves, good shepherds; nor
+the unmerciful, merciful; for without doubt, had God not been more
+merciful to him than they have been, he would not now be upon earth.
+But however this may be, I will not defend him in this place, but
+laying aside his expressions of contempt and abuse, accept with
+thankfulness the earnestness of his valiant Christian writings for our
+amendment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As I openly persevered in what I had undertaken advisedly, and would
+not desist at the bidding of any one, being bound as a Christian not to
+do so, the displeasure of my superior at Alpirsbach, and certain others
+of the monastery, greatly increased, and the sword of God's anger began
+to cause division and discord between the brothers. I was peremptorily
+ordered to abstain from my undertaking, and also not to speak of these
+matters with others; but as I could not do this, being bound to yield
+obedience to God's commands, rather than to those of man, I earnestly
+begged of my Abbot and monastery, that they would graciously give me
+leave of absence. I wished for a year or two to support myself at some
+school or elsewhere, without being any expense to the monastery, and
+perhaps in the mean while, by a godly examination of the cause of our
+discord, it might be brought to a peaceable end.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This being however refused by them, I resolved, after having taken
+counsel with many wise, learned, and God-fearing men and friends, to
+leave the monastery.&quot; So far Ambrosius Blaurer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whilst brother Ambrosius was yet looking anxiously from the windows of
+his cell, over the pines of the Black Forest into the free expanse,
+another was riding out of the gate of a princely castle near the
+woodclad mountains of Thuringia. Behind him lay the dark
+<i>Drachenschlucht</i>; before him the long ridge of the magic H�rselberges,
+wherein dwelt an enchantress, to whom the Pope, that wicked forgiver of
+sins, had once driven back the repentant Tannh�user. But the dry stick
+which the Pope had then thrust into the ground, brought forth green
+foliage during the night; God himself confuted the Pope. The poor
+penitent man no longer required the Bishop of Rome to enable him to
+find mercy and grace from his heavenly Father; but the wicked Pope
+himself would descend into the jaws of the old dragon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The exterior of the man who was riding down from Wartburg to
+Wittenberg, shall be described by a young student who was travelling
+with a friend from Switzerland to Saxony. His narrative is well known,
+yet we must not omit it here.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His name was John Kessler; he was born at St. Gallen, in 1502; his
+parents were poor citizens; he attended the school of the monastery
+there, studied theology at Basle, and went early in the spring of 1522
+with a companion to Wittenberg, to continue his studies under the
+Reformers. In the autumn of 1523, he returned to his native town, and
+as the new doctrines had not yet taken root there, being very poor he
+determined to learn a trade, and became a saddler. He soon collected a
+small community round him, taught and preached, laboured in his
+workshop, wrote books, and became at last schoolmaster, librarian and
+member of a council of education. He had an unpretending, pure nature,
+with a heart full of love and gentle warmth, but he took no active part
+in the theological controversies of his time. His narrative begins as
+follows:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When we were travelling to Wittenberg to study the Holy Scriptures, we
+arrived at Jena in Thuringia, in, God knows how wild a storm; and after
+many inquiries in the city for a lodging wherein we might pass the
+night, we could not find any; everywhere lodging was denied us, for it
+was Shrovetide,<a name="div2_25" href="#div2Ref_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> when pilgrims and strangers were little cared for.
+So we determined to leave the town, and endeavour to reach a village
+where they would lodge us. In the mean while we met at the gate an
+honest man, who spoke kindly to us, and inquired where we were going so
+late, as there was neither house nor farm that we could reach before
+night; besides which, it was a road that was difficult to find;
+therefore he advised us to remain there.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We answered: 'Dear father, we have tried all the inns to which we have
+been directed, and having everywhere been refused a lodging, we are
+obliged to proceed further.' Then he asked us whether we had made
+inquiry at the Black Bear; and we replied: 'It has never been mentioned
+to us; tell us, dear father, where we shall find it.' He then showed us
+a little way out of the town, and when we came to the Black Bear,
+behold, the landlord, instead of refusing us, as all the others had
+done, came to meet us at the door, and not only received us, but kindly
+begged of us to lodge there, and took us into a room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There we found a man sitting alone at a table, and before him lay a
+book; he greeted us kindly, and bid us approach and sit by him at the
+table; for we were seating ourselves quietly on a bench close to the
+door, as our shoes (if one may be allowed to write it) were so covered
+with mud and dirt, that we were ashamed to enter the room on account of
+our dirty footmarks. He invited us to drink, which we could not refuse,
+and as we found him so kind and cordial, we seated ourselves by him at
+his table as he had asked us, and called for a quart of wine, that we
+might return his civility by asking him to drink. We supposed him
+however to be a knight, as he was dressed in hosen and jerkin, with a
+red leather cap, and without armour, and sat, according to the custom
+of his country, with a sword at his side, with one hand resting on the
+pommel and the other clasping the hilt. His eyes were black and deep
+set, flashing and sparkling like stars, so that one could hardly bear
+to look at them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shortly after, he asked where we were born, but answered himself: 'You
+are Swiss; from what part of Switzerland do you come?' We replied,
+'From St. Gallen.' He then said, 'If you are going, as I hear, to
+Wittenberg, you will find there some good countrymen of yours, Dr.
+Jerome Schurf and his brother Dr. Augustin.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We said, 'We have letters to them;' and we proceeded to inquire: 'Can
+you inform us, sir, whether Martin Luther is now at Wittenberg; or if
+not, where he is?'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He answered, 'I know for certain that Luther is not now at Wittenberg,
+but will return soon. Philip Melancthon is however there, who teaches
+Greek, and others who teach Hebrew. In truth I would advise you to
+study both, as they are needful for the right understanding of the Holy
+Scriptures.' We replied, 'So help us God! as long as He grants us life,
+we will not desist till we have seen and heard this man; for on his
+account we have undertaken this journey, as we learn that he will
+overthrow the priesthood, together with the mass, that being a service
+founded on error. As we have been brought up by our parents, and
+destined from our youth to be priests, we are anxious to hear what his
+teaching is, and what authority he can bring forward for such
+propositions.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After we had thus spoken, he inquired: 'Where have you studied
+hitherto?'--Answer: 'At Basle.'--Then he said: 'How are things going on
+at Basle? Is Erasmus of Rotterdam still there, and what is he doing?'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We replied: 'We only know, sir, that all is going on well, and that
+Erasmus is there; but what he is about is unknown to and concealed from
+every one, as he keeps himself quite quiet and private.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This manner of talk appeared to us very strange in the knight; how
+could he know everything relative to the two Schurfs, of Philip, and
+Erasmus, and also be aware of the necessity of learning Greek and
+Hebrew? He introduced occasionally Latin words, so that we bethought us
+he must be more than a common knight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Dear sons,' he said, 'what do they think in Switzerland about
+Luther?'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We answered: 'Sir, there, as everywhere, opinions vary. Many cannot
+exalt him sufficiently, and thank God who has manifested his truth
+through him, and exposed error; but many condemn him as a cursed
+heretic, especially all the ecclesiastics.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He answered: 'I can well imagine it of the priests.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thus holding converse, we became quite at home with him, so that my
+companion took up the book that was lying before him and opened it. It
+was the Hebrew Psalter; he put it down again quickly and the knight
+drew it towards him. Then my companion said: 'I would give one of my
+fingers to be able to understand this language.' He answered, 'You will
+have no difficulty in comprehending it, providing you devote yourself
+to it industriously; I also desire to know more of it, and study it
+daily.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the mean while evening drew on, and it became quite dark. The
+landlord came to the table, and when he learned our longing desire to
+know Martin Luther, he said, 'Dear comrades, if you had been here two
+days ago, you would have succeeded, for he was here, and sat at this
+table, and,' pointing with his finger, 'in that very place.' We were
+much vexed and provoked that we had missed him, and laid the blame of
+it on the muddy bad road which had delayed us; but we said, 'We
+rejoice, however, that we are in the same house and sitting at the same
+table at which he sat.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At this the landlord laughed and went away. After a little while the
+landlord called to me to come to him outside the door of the room. I
+was frightened, and thought that perhaps without intending it I had
+done something that was unbecoming.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then he said to me, 'As I know that you wish to hear and see Luther;
+it is he who sits by you.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I took this for a joke, and said, 'I see indeed, good sir, that you
+wish to banter me by imposing upon me a false Luther.' He answered, 'It
+is he most assuredly; but do not show that you think so, or that you
+recognize him.' I assented, but did not believe him. I went again into
+the room, and placed myself at the table; and was anxious to tell my
+companion what the landlord had said. At last I turned to him and
+whispered secretly, 'The landlord has told me that this is Luther.' He
+would not believe it any more than I, and said, 'He perhaps told you
+that it was Hutten, and you did not rightly understand him.' As the
+dress and bearing reminded me more of Hutten than a monk like Luther, I
+was persuaded that he had said it was Hutten, as the beginning of both
+names sounded so much alike: what I further said, was as if spoken to
+the knight, Herr Ulrich von Hutten.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the mean while there arrived two merchants, who intended to remain
+there all night: after they had taken off their travelling dresses and
+spurs, one of them laid down near him an unbound book. Then Martinus
+asked what kind of book it was; and he answered, 'It is Dr. Luther's
+exposition of some of the gospels and epistles, just printed and
+published; have you not yet seen it?' Martinus said, 'I shall soon get
+it.' The host now desired us to arrange ourselves at table, as it was
+time to eat; we begged of him to have consideration for us and give us
+something separate, but he replied, 'Dear comrades, place yourselves by
+these gentlemen at table, I will charge you moderately.' When Martinus
+heard this, he said, 'Come here, I will settle for you with the
+landlord.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;During the meal, Martinus spoke many kind and godly words, so that the
+merchants as well as ourselves were mute before him; attending more to
+his words than to the viands before us. Amongst other things, he
+lamented with a sigh that the princes and lords just then assembled at
+the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg, on account of the troubles of the
+German nation, and for the sake of the pending proceedings concerning
+God's word, were only inclined to waste their time in costly
+tournaments, sledge drives, vanity, and dissipation, when fear of God
+and Christian prayer would be of more avail. 'But such are our
+<i>Christian</i> princes.' He further said, 'There was hope that evangelical
+truth would bear more fruit among the children and descendants who were
+not poisoned by papal errors, and might yet be grounded in pure truth
+and the word of God, than among the parents in whom error was so deeply
+rooted that it could hardly be eradicated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then the merchants gave their opinions freely, and one of them said,
+'I am a simple layman, and understand little of these disputes, but I
+must speak of things as I find them; Luther must either be an angel
+from heaven, or a devil out of hell. I would gladly, however, give ten
+gulden to confess to him, for I believe he could and would give me good
+instruction.' Then the landlord came to us, and said secretly,
+'Martinus has paid for your supper:' that gave us much pleasure, not
+for the sake of the money and food, but for the hospitality shown us by
+this man. After supper the merchants rose and went to the stable to
+look after their horses; in the mean while Martinus remained alone with
+us in the room; we thanked him for the honour he had done us, as well
+as for the gift, and as we did so we showed him that we took him for
+Ulrich von Hutten; but he said, 'I am not Hutten.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then the landlord coming in, Martinus said, 'I have become a nobleman
+to-night, for these Swiss have taken me for Ulrich von Hutten.' The
+landlord replied, 'You are not him, but Martinus Luther.' Then Martinus
+laughing as if it were a joke, said, 'These take me for Hutten, you for
+Luther, soon I shall become a Markolfus.'<a name="div2_26" href="#div2Ref_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> After this talk he took a
+long glass of beer, and said, according to the custom of the country,
+'Drink with me a friendly glass with God's blessing;' and when I was
+going to take the glass from him, he changed it, and offered instead a
+glass with wine, saying, 'The beer is foreign to you, and you are
+unaccustomed to it, drink the wine.' Meanwhile he rose and threw his
+tabard over his shoulders, and took leave. He held out his hand to us,
+and said, 'If you go to Wittenberg, greet Dr. Jerome Schurf for me.' We
+replied, 'We will do that with pleasure, but how must we designate you,
+that he may understand your greeting?' He answered, 'Say nothing
+further than that he who is coming sends you greeting; he will
+immediately understand these words.' So he departed from us and went to
+rest.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Afterwards the merchants returned into the room, and called to the
+landlord to bring them something to drink; in the mean while they had
+much talk about the guest, and wondered who he could be. The landlord
+declared it was Luther, and the merchants were soon convinced of it,
+and regretted that they had spoken so unbecomingly before him, and
+said, 'They would rise at an early hour in the morning, that they might
+see him before he started; and would beg of him not to be angry with
+them, as they had not known who he was.' This they did, and found him
+in the morning in the stable; but Martinus answered them, 'You said
+last night at supper that you would give ten gulden to confess yourself
+to Luther; when you do so, you will see and learn if I am Martinus
+Luther.' He did not make himself further known, but mounted his horse
+and rode off to Wittenberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the following Saturday, the day before the first Sunday in Lent, we
+presented ourselves at Dr. Jerome Schurf's house to deliver our
+letters. When we entered the room, behold we found there the knight
+Martinus just as we had seen him at Jena, and with him were Philippus
+Melancthon, Justus Jodocus Jonas, Nicholas Amsdorf, and Dr. Augustin
+Schurf, who were telling him what had happened during his absence from
+Wittenberg: he greeted us, and laughing, pointed with his finger, and
+said, 'This is the Philip Melancthon of whom I told you.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There is nothing more remarkable in the truthlike narrative of Kessler,
+than the cheerful tranquillity of the great man whilst riding through
+Thuringia under ban and interdict, his heart filled with anxious care,
+on account of the great danger with which his doctrines were threatened
+by the fanaticism of his own partisans.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DR. LUTHER.</h3>
+<h4>(1517-1546.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Even the most enlightened Roman Catholics look with horror upon Luther
+and Zwinglius as originators of the schism in their old Church. It is
+to be hoped that such views may disappear in Germany. All sects have
+reason to thank Luther for whatever depth and spirituality now remains
+in their faith: The heretic of Wittenberg was as much the reformer of
+German Roman Catholics as of Protestants; not only, because in the
+struggle with him the teachers of the Roman Catholic Church were
+obliged to erect at Trent a firmer building on the ruins of the Church
+of the middle ages, but because he left the impress of his mind on the
+character of the people, in which we all equally partake. Some things
+for which the obstinate and pugnacious Luther contended, against both
+Reformers and Catholics, have been condemned by the free judgment of
+modern times. His doctrines, vehement and high strained, wrung from a
+soul full of reverence, were in some weighty points erroneous, and he
+was sometimes bitter, unjust, indeed harsh to his opponents; but such
+things should not lead Germans astray, for all the deficiencies of his
+nature and education disappear in the fullness of blessing, which
+streamed from his great heart into the life of his nation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To few mortals has it been granted to exercise such an influence on his
+cotemporaries and on after times, as has fallen to the lot of Luther:
+his life may be divided into three periods. In the first, the character
+of the man was formed; it was powerfully influenced by the surrounding
+world, but from the depths of human nature, under the pressure of
+individual character, thoughts and convictions were gradually
+strengthened into resolutions which broke forth into action, and the
+individual commenced a struggle with the world. Then followed another
+period, one of more energetic action, of more rapid development and of
+greater triumph. Ever greater became the influence of the individual on
+the world; powerfully did he draw the whole nation along with him; he
+became their hero and model; the inward life of millions seemed
+concentrated in one man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But a single individual, however powerful in character, however great
+his aims, could not long dominate over the spirit of a nation, the
+life, strength, and wants of which are manifold. The man is under the
+constraint of the logical consequences of his thoughts and actions; all
+the spirits of his own deeds force him into a fixed limited path; but
+the soul of a people requires for its life, incessant working with the
+most varied aims. Much that an individual cannot bring himself to
+receive, is taken up by others in opposition to him. The reaction of
+the world begins: it is first weak, and from many quarters, with
+various tendencies and little authority; then it becomes stronger and
+more victorious. Finally, the inward spirit of the individual life
+confines itself within its own system, and becomes only a single
+element in the formation of the people. The end of a great life is
+always full of secret resignation, mixed with bitterness and quiet
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods ended with the
+day on which he affixed his Theses; the second continued till his
+return from the castle of Wartburg; the third till the beginning of the
+Smalkaldic war and his death. It is not our intention to give his life
+here, but only to describe shortly how he became what he was. There was
+much in him which, only viewed from a distance, appears strange and
+unpleasing, but the more closely we examine his character, the greater
+and more amiable we find it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther rose from the peasant class; his father left M�hra, a place amid
+the forests of the Thuringian mountains, which was half peopled by his
+kindred, to engage in mining in the district of Mansfeld; thus the boy
+was born in a cottage, where the terrors inspired by the spirits of the
+pine woods, and dark fissures which served as entrances to the mine in
+the mountains, were still strong and vivid. His mind was no doubt often
+occupied with the dark traditions of the heathen mythology; he was
+accustomed to perceive in the terrors of nature, as well as in the life
+of man, the work of the powers of darkness. When he became a monk,
+these recollections of his childhood blended themselves with the figure
+of the devil, and the busy tempter always wore the same aspect to his
+imagination as the mischievous hobgoblins that frequent the hearth and
+stable of the countryman.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His father was a man of concentrated and energetic character, firm and
+decided, and gifted with a full measure of strong common sense: he
+struggled hard to attain wealth; he kept strict discipline in his
+house, and in later years Luther remembered with grief the severe
+punishment he had received as a boy, and the sorrow it had inflicted on
+his childish heart. The influence of the old Hans Luther on the life of
+his son lasted till his death in 1530. When Martin went secretly into a
+monastery at the age of twenty-two, the old man was violently angry, as
+he had intended to provide for his son by a good marriage. At last
+friends succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between them, and
+when the supplicating son approached his father, confessing that he had
+been driven by a fearful apparition to take the monastic vows, he
+replied to him in the following words: &quot;God grant that it may not have
+been a delusion of the devil.&quot; He agitated still more the heart of the
+monk by the angry question: &quot;You thought you were listening to the
+command of God when you went into the cloister; have you never heard
+that it is a duty to be obedient to parents?&quot; This made a deep
+impression on the son, and when, many years afterwards, he was residing
+at Wartburg, cast out of the Church, and proscribed by the Emperor, he
+wrote to his father these touching words: &quot;Do you still wish to
+withdraw me from the thraldom of the monastery? You are still my
+father, I your son; you have on your side the power and commands of
+God; on my side there is only human error. Behold, that you may not
+boast yourself before God, He has anticipated you, and taken me out
+himself.&quot; From that time he was as it were restored to the old man.
+Hans had once reckoned upon having a grandson for whom he would work,
+and to this idea he stubbornly returned, regardless as to what the rest
+of world thought; he soon therefore admonished him earnestly, to marry,
+and his persuasions had a great share in determining Luther to do so.
+When the father, who at a great age had become councillor of Mansfeld,
+was about to draw his last breath, and the priest bending over him
+asked him whether he died in the pure faith of Christ and the Holy
+Gospel, old Hans collected himself once more, and said shortly: &quot;He is
+a rogue who does not believe in it.&quot; When, afterwards, Luther was
+relating this, he added admiringly: &quot;That was indeed a man of the olden
+time.&quot; The son received the account of his father's death, in the
+fortress of Coburg; and when he read the letter, which his wife had
+conveyed to him with the portrait of his youngest daughter, Magdalen,
+he spoke only these words to his companions: &quot;God's will be done, my
+father is dead.&quot; He arose, took his psalter, went into his room, where
+he wept and prayed, and returned with a composed mind. The same day he
+wrote to Melancthon with deep emotion, of the heartfelt love of his
+father, and of the entire confidence that existed between them. &quot;Never
+did I despise death so much as I do now: how often do we suffer death
+by anticipation before we really die! I am now the eldest of my race,
+and I have a right to follow him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such was the father from whom the son derived the groundwork of his
+character, veracity, a steadfast will, an honest understanding, and
+circumspection in the management of business and in his dealings with
+men. His childhood was full of hardships, and he had much that was
+disagreeable to endure at his Latin school, and as a chorister; but he
+experienced also much good-will and love, and he retained, what is more
+easily kept in the smaller circles of life, a heart full of trust in
+the goodness of human nature, and respect for the great people of the
+world. His father was able to support him comfortably at the university
+of Erfurt; he was then full of youthful vigour, and took great delight
+in joining his companions in vocal and instrumental music. Of his
+mental life at that time we know but little, only that when in peril of
+death, in a storm, &quot;a fearful apparition called to him from heaven.&quot; In
+his terror he vowed to go to a monastery, and quickly and secretly
+carried out his resolution.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is here that our accounts of the state of his mind begin. At
+variance with his father, full of terror at an incomprehensible
+eternity, frightened by the anger of God, he began, in a convulsive
+struggle, a life of self-denial, penance, and devotion. He found no
+peace. All the highest questions of life stormed with fearful power
+over his distracted soul, which had no anchor to rest on. Strongly did
+he feel the need of being in harmony with God and the world, and all
+that he derived from his faith was unintelligible and repulsive. The
+mysteries of the moral government of the world were to his mind matters
+of the deepest import. That the good should be tormented and the wicked
+made happy, that God should condemn the whole human race with the
+monstrous curse of sin, because an inexperienced woman had eaten an
+apple, and that on the other hand the same God should bear with our
+sins, in love and patience; that Christ should sometimes repel upright
+people with severity, and at others receive adulterers, publicans, and
+murderers,--about all this, the wisdom of man becomes foolishness. He
+complained in these words to his ghostly counsellor, Staupitz: &quot;Dear
+doctor, our Lord God does indeed deal terribly with us; who can serve
+Him when He deals such blows on all?&quot; To which the answer was: &quot;How
+could He otherwise bow down the stiff-necked?&quot; This ingenious argument
+was of no comfort to the youth. In his earnest strivings to find the
+incomprehensible God, he tormented himself in searching out all his
+thoughts and dreams. Every ebullition of youthful blood, every earthly
+thought, appeared to him a shocking iniquity; he began to despair, and
+wrestled with himself in endless prayer, fasting, and mortification. On
+one occasion the brothers were obliged to break into his cell, where he
+had been lying the whole day in a state not far removed from insanity.
+Staupitz observed with warm sympathy the agitation and torments of his
+soul, and endeavoured, though only by rough consolation, to give it
+rest. Once when Luther had written to him, &quot;Oh my sins! my sins! my
+sins!&quot; his ghostly counsellor answered him: &quot;You wish to be without
+sin, and yet have no real sins. Christ is the forgiver of mortal sins,
+such as the murder of parents, &amp;c., &amp;c. If you would have the help of
+Christ, you must have mortal sins to record, and not come to Him with
+such trifles and peccadilloes, making a sin out of every little
+infirmity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The way in which Luther raised himself out of this despair decided the
+whole tenour of his life. The God whom he served appeared then as a God
+of terror, whose anger was only to be appeased by the means of grace
+given by the old Church, especially by continual confession, for which
+endless forms and directions were given, which were but cold and empty
+to the spirit. By the prescriptions of the Church and the practice of
+so-called good works, young Luther had not attained the feeling of true
+reconciliation and inward peace. At last a sentence from his spiritual
+adviser pierced him like an arrow: &quot;There is no true repentance that
+does not begin by the love of God; the love of God, and the reception
+of it in the soul, does not follow, but precedes the means of grace
+enjoined by the Church.&quot; This teaching which came from Tauler's school
+became for him the foundation of a new, genial, and moral relation with
+God; it was a holy discovery to him. The change in his own spirit was
+the main point for which he must labour; repentance, penance, and
+expiation must proceed from the inward feelings of the heart. It was by
+his own efforts alone that man could raise himself to God. For the
+first time he experienced what direct prayer was. In the place of a
+distant God, whom hitherto he had sought in vain, by hundreds of forms
+and childish confessions, he beheld the image of an all-loving
+protector, with whom he could hold communion at every hour, whether in
+joy or sorrow, before whom he could lay every grief and doubt, who
+incessantly sympathized with, and cared for him, and, like a good
+father, either granted or denied the requests of his heart. Thus he
+learned to pray, and how ardent his prayers became! Now he was able to
+live in tranquillity, being daily and hourly in communion with his God,
+whom he had at last found; his intercourse with the Highest became more
+confidential than with those dearest to him on earth. When he poured
+out his whole soul before Him, he obtained rest, holy peace, and a
+feeling of inexpressible happiness; he felt himself a portion of God,
+and this sense of intimate communion with Him he preserved during the
+whole remainder of his life. He needed no longer the distant paths of
+the old Church; with his God in his heart he could defy the whole
+world. He already ventured to believe, that teaching must be false
+which laid such great weight on works of penance; that besides these
+there remained only cold satisfaction and ceremonious confession; and
+when later he learned from Melancthon that the Greek word for penance,
+&quot;<i>Metanoia</i>,&quot; denotes literally &quot;a change of heart,&quot; it appeared to him
+as a wonderful revelation. On this foundation was built that confidence
+of faith, with which he brought forward the words of Scripture in
+opposition to the prescriptions of the Church.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was in this way that Luther, whilst still in the monastery, attained
+to inward freedom. The whole of his later teaching, his struggle
+against the indulgences, his unshaken firmness, and his method of
+scriptural exposition, all rest on the inward process by which as a
+monk he had found his God; and one may truly say that the new period of
+German history began with Luther's cloister prayers. Life soon placed
+him under its hammer, to harden the pure metal of his soul.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther unwillingly took the Professorship of Dialectics in the new
+university of Wittenberg, in 1508; he would rather have taught that new
+theology which he already began to consider the truth. It is known that
+in the year 1510 he went to Rome on the business of his order; how
+devoutly and piously he lingered in the holy city, and with what dismay
+he was seized on observing the heathenish character of the people of
+Rome, and the worldliness and corrupt morals of the ecclesiastics. But
+deeply as he was shaken by the depravity of the hierarchy, he felt that
+his whole life was still enclosed in it; out of it there was nothing:
+The exalted idea of the Roman Catholic Church, and its triumphant reign
+of 1500 years, fettered even the most powerful minds; and when the
+German in the dress of a Romish priest, and in danger of his life,
+contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome, and stood in amazement before
+the gigantic pillars of the temples, which, according to tradition, had
+once been destroyed by the Goths little did the valiant man from the
+mountains of the old Hermunduren then think, that it would be his own
+fate to destroy the temples of the Rome of the middle ages, more
+completely than the brethren of his ancestors had done in the olden
+time. Luther returned from Rome still a faithful son of the great
+Mother, holding all heretical proceedings, as for example those of the
+Bohemians, in detestation. He sympathized warmly in Reuchlin's dispute
+with the Cologne inquisitor, and about 1512 had sided with the
+Humanitarians. But even then he began to find something in their
+teaching which separated him from them. When some years later he was at
+Gotha, he did not visit the worthy Mutianus Rufus, though he wrote him
+a very civil letter of excuse. Soon after, he was much wounded by the
+coldness and worldly tone of Erasmus's dialogues, in which theological
+sinners are turned into ridicule. The profane worldliness of the
+Humanitarians did not suit the earnest faith of Luther; it aroused that
+pride which had already taken root in his soul, and caused him
+afterwards to wound the sensitive Erasmus in a letter intended to be
+conciliatory. Even the form of literary moderation adopted by Luther at
+this time, gives us the impression of being wrung by the pressure of
+Christian humility from a stubborn spirit.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He felt himself already strong and secure in his faith: in 1506 he
+wrote to Spalatinus, who was the connecting link between him and the
+Elector, Frederic the Wise, that the Elector was of all men most
+knowing in secular wisdom, but in things pertaining to God and the
+salvation of souls, he was struck with sevenfold blindness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther had reason for the opinion here expressed, for the domestic
+disposition of this sober-minded prince showed itself in his anxiety to
+provide for his home the means of grace bestowed by the old Church.
+Amongst other things he had a particular fancy for relics, and
+Staupitz, vicar-general of the Augustine monks in Germany, was at that
+time engaged in collecting these treasures for the Elector. This
+absence of his superior was very important to Luther, for he had to
+fill his place. He was already a man of high repute in his order; but
+though a professor at Wittenberg, he continued to reside in his
+monastery, and generally wore his monk's dress. He visited the thirty
+monasteries of his congregation, deposed priors, delivered strong
+rebukes on account of lax discipline, severely admonished criminal
+monks, and had become in 1517 a man of fully developed character and
+commanding powers; yet he still preserved somewhat of the trusting
+simplicity of the monastic brother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus, when he had affixed the Theses against Tetzel to the church door,
+he writes confidingly to the Archbishop Albrecht of Maintz, the
+protector of the trader in indulgences. Full of the popular faith in
+the good sense and the good will of the governing powers, Luther
+thought--he often said so later--nothing was necessary but to represent
+straightforwardly to the princes of the Church the injurious effects
+and immorality of these malpractices.<a name="div2_27" href="#div2Ref_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> But how childish did this
+zeal of the monk appear to the smooth and worldly prince of the Church!
+That which had roused such deep indignation in the upright man, had
+from the archbishop's point of view long been a settled question. The
+sale of indulgences was a much lamented evil in the Church, but
+unavoidable, as are to politicians many regulations not good in
+themselves, but necessary to preserve some great interests. The
+greatest interest of the archbishops and the guardians of the Romish
+Church was their dominion, which was to be won and maintained by such
+means of acquiring money. The greatest interest of Luther and the
+people was truth; here, therefore, their paths separated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus Luther entered into the struggle, full of faith, still a true son
+of the Church, and with all the German devotedness to authority; but
+yet his firm connection with his God worked in him strongly against
+this authority. He was then thirty-four years of age, in the full
+vigour of his strength, of middle size, thin, but strongly made, so
+that he appeared tall by the side of the small delicate boyish figure
+of Melancthon. Fiery eyes, whose intense brilliancy was almost
+overpowering, glowed in a face in which one could perceive the effects
+of night watches and inward struggles. Though a man of great repute,
+not only in his order, but in the university, he was no great scholar;
+he first began to learn Greek with Melancthon, and soon afterwards
+Hebrew; he possessed no great compass of book learning, and never had
+any ambition to shine as a Latin poet. But he was astonishingly well
+read in the Holy Scriptures and some of the Fathers, and whatever he
+took up he worked out profoundly. He was unwearied in his care for the
+souls of his congregation, a zealous preacher, and a warm friend; he
+had a certain frank gaiety, together with a self-possessed demeanour,
+and much courteous tact; the certainty of his convictions appeared in
+his social intercourse, and gave a cheerful radiance to his
+countenance. He was irritable, and easily moved to tears; the trifling
+events of the day excited and disturbed him; but when he was called
+upon for any great effort, and had subdued the first agitation of his
+nerves--which, for instance, had overcome him on his first entrance at
+the Imperial Diet at Worms--he then attained a wonderful composure and
+confidence. He did not know what fear was; indeed, his lion nature took
+pleasure in the most dangerous situations. The malicious snares of his
+enemies, and the dangers to which his life was occasionally exposed, he
+seemed to consider hardly worth speaking about. The foundation of this
+more than human heroism--if one may venture to call it so--was the firm
+personal union between him and his God. For a long period, with smiles
+and inward gladness, he desired to serve truth and God by becoming a
+martyr. A fearful struggle still lay before him, but it was not caused
+by the opposition of men; he had to contend constantly for years
+against the devil himself; he overcame also the terror of hell, which
+threatened to obscure his reason. Such a man might be destroyed, but
+could hardly be conquered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The period of struggle which now follows, from the beginning of the
+dispute about indulgences to his departure from Wartburg, the time of
+his greatest triumph and greatest popularity, is that of which perhaps
+most is known, and yet it appears to us that his character even then is
+not rightly judged.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Nothing in this period is more remarkable than the way in which Luther
+gradually became estranged from the Romish Church. He was sober-minded
+and without ambition, and clung with deep reverence to the high idea of
+the Church, that community of believers fifteen hundred years old; yet
+in four short years he departed from the faith of his fathers, and
+shook himself free of the soil in which he had been so firmly rooted.
+During this whole time he had to maintain the struggle alone, or at
+least with very few faithful confederates: after 1518 Melancthon was
+united with him. He overcame all the dangers of fierce encounters, not
+only against enemies, but against the anxious dissuasions of honest
+friends and patrons. Three times did the Romish party try to silence
+him by the authority of Cajetan, the persuasive eloquence of Miltitz,
+and the unseasonable assiduity of the pugnacious Eckius; three times he
+addressed the Pope in letters which are among the most valuable
+documents of that century. Then came the separation: he was
+anathematized and excommunicated; he burnt--according to the old
+university custom--the enemy's challenge, and with it the possibility
+of return. With joyful confidence he went to Worms, where the princes
+of his nation were to decide whether he should die, or henceforth live
+amongst them, without Pope or Church, by the precepts of the Holy
+Scriptures alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When first he published in print the &quot;Theses against Tetzel,&quot; he was
+astounded at the prodigious effect they produced in Germany, at the
+venomous hatred of his enemies, and at the tokens of friendly
+approbation which he received from all sides. Had he done anything so
+very unprecedented? The opinions he expressed were entertained by all
+the best men in the Church. When the Bishop of Brandenburg sent the
+Abbot of Lehnin to him, with a request that he would withdraw from the
+press his German sermon upon indulgences and grace, however right its
+contents might be, the poor Augustine friar was deeply moved that so
+great a man should hold such friendly and cordial intercourse with him,
+and he felt inclined to give up the publication rather than make
+himself a lion disturbing the Church. He zealously endeavoured to
+refute the report that the Elector had induced him to engage in the
+dispute with Tetzel. &quot;They wish to involve the innocent Prince in the
+odium that belongs to me only.&quot; He desired as much as possible to
+preserve peace with Miltitz before Cajetan; only one thing he would not
+do: he would not retract what he had said against the unchristian sale
+of indulgences. But this retraction was the only thing that the
+hierarchy required of him. Long did he continue to wish for peace,
+reconciliation, and a return to the peaceful occupations of his cell;
+but some false assertion of his opponents always reinflamed his blood,
+and every contradiction was followed by a new and sharper stroke of his
+weapons.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The heroic confidence of Luther is striking; even in his first letter
+to Leo X., dated the 30th May, 1518, he is still the faithful son of
+the Church; he still concludes by laying himself at the feet of the
+Pope; offers him his whole life and being, and promises to respect his
+voice as the voice of Christ, whose representative he is as sovereign
+of the Church. But in the midst of all this submission, which became
+him as a monastic brother, these impassioned words burst forth: &quot;If I
+have deserved death, I do not refuse to die.&quot; And in the letter itself,
+how strong are the expressions with which he describes the insolence of
+the indulgence vendors! Honest, too, are his expressions of surprise at
+the effect of his Theses, which were difficult to understand, being,
+according to the old custom, composed of enigmatical and involved
+propositions. Good humour pervades the manly words, &quot;What shall I do? I
+cannot retract. I am only an unlearned man, of narrow capacity, not
+highly cultivated, in a century full of intellect and taste, which
+might even put Cicero into a corner. But necessity has no law; the
+goose must cackle among the swans.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The following year all who esteemed Luther endeavoured to bring about a
+reconciliation. Staupitz, Spalatinus, and the Elector scolded,
+entreated, and urged. Even the Pope's chamberlain, Miltitz, praised his
+opinions, whispered to him that he was quite right, entreated, drank
+with, and kissed him; though Luther indeed had reason to believe that
+the courtier had a secret commission to take him if possible a prisoner
+to Rome. The mediators happily hit on a point in which the refractory
+man heartily agreed with them; it was, that respect for the Church must
+be maintained and its unity not destroyed; Luther therefore promised to
+keep quiet and to leave the disputed points to the decision of three
+eminent bishops. Under these circumstances he was pressed to write a
+letter of apology to the Pope; but this letter of the 3rd of March,
+1519, though undoubtedly approved by the mediators and wrung from the
+writer, shows the advance that Luther had already made. Of the humility
+which our theologians discover in it, there is little; it is, however,
+thoroughly cautious and diplomatic in its style. Luther regrets that
+what he has done to defend the honour of the Romish Church has been
+attributed to him as a want of respect; he promises henceforth to be
+silent on the subject of indulgences,--provided his opponents would be
+the same, and to address a letter to the people admonishing them
+loyally to obey the Church,<a name="div2_28" href="#div2Ref_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> and not estrange themselves from it,
+because his opponents had been insolent and he himself harsh. But all
+these submissive words could not conceal the chasm which already
+separated his spirit from that of the Romish Church. With what cold
+irony he writes: &quot;What shall I do, most holy father? All counsel fails
+me; I cannot bear your anger, and yet know not how to avoid it. It is
+desired that I should retract; if by this what they aim at could be
+effected, I would do so without delay, but the opposition of my
+opponents has spread my writings further than I had ever hoped, and
+they have laid too deep hold on the souls of men. There is now much
+talent, education, and free judgment in our Germany: were I to retract,
+I should, in the opinions of my Germans, cover the Church with still
+greater shame; but it is my opponents who have brought disgrace in
+Germany upon the Romish Church.&quot; He concludes his letter politely. &quot;Do
+not doubt my readiness to do more, if it should be in my power. May
+Christ preserve your Holiness. M. Luther.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There is much concealed behind this measured reserve. Even if the
+conceited Eckius had not immediately after stirred up the indignation
+of the whole university of Wittenberg, this letter could hardly have
+availed at Rome as a sign of repentant submission.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The thunderbolt of excommunication was launched; Rome had spoken.
+Luther, now restored to himself, wrote once more to the Pope; it was
+the celebrated letter, which, at the request of the indefatigable
+Miltitz, he antedated, the 6th of September, 1520, in order to ignore
+the bull of excommunication. It is the noble expression of a determined
+spirit which contemplates its opponent from its elevated position,
+grand in its uprightness and noble in its sentiments! He speaks with
+sincere sympathy of the Pope, and of his difficult position; but it is
+the sympathy of a stranger: he still mourns over the Church, but it is
+evident that he has already passed out of it. It is a parting letter
+written with cutting sharpness and confidence, but in a tone of quiet
+sorrow, as of a man separating himself from one whom he had once loved,
+but found unworthy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther had in the course of these years become quite another man; he
+had acquired caution and confidence in intercourse with the great, and
+had gained a dear-bought insight into the political and private
+character of the governing powers. To the peaceful nature of his own
+sovereign nothing could be more painful than this bitter theological
+strife, which, though sometimes advantageous to him politically, always
+disquieted his spirit. Continual endeavours were made at court to
+restrain the Wittenbergers, but Luther was always beforehand with them.
+Whenever the faithful Spalatinus warned him against the publication of
+some new aggressive writing, he received for answer, that it could not
+be helped; that the sheets were already printed, already in many hands,
+and could not be withdrawn.<a name="div2_29" href="#div2Ref_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> In intercourse also with his opponents
+Luther acquired the confidence of an experienced combatant. He was very
+indignant when in the spring of 1518, Jerome Emser had inveigled him at
+Dresden to a supper, at which he was obliged to contend with angry
+enemies; and still more when he heard that a begging Dominican had
+listened at the door, and had the following day reported all over the
+town that Luther had been put down by the number of his opponents, and
+that the listener had with difficulty restrained himself from springing
+into the room and spitting in his face. At the first interview with
+Cajetan, he placed himself humbly at the feet of the Prince of the
+Church; but after the second, he permitted himself to say that the
+Cardinal was as well suited to his business as an ass to play on the
+harp. He treated the polite Miltitz with corresponding civility; the
+Romanist had hoped to tame the German Bear, but the courtier himself
+was soon put in his proper position, and was made use of by Luther; in
+the disputation at Leipsic with Eckius, the favourable impression
+produced by Luther's unembarrassed, honest, and self-composed
+demeanour, was the best counterbalance to the self-sufficient
+confidence of his dexterous opponent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But Luther's inward life demands a higher sympathy. It was a fearful
+period for him; he experienced together with a sense of elevation and
+victory, mortal anguish, tormenting doubts, and terrible temptations.
+He, with a few others, stood against the whole of Christendom, always
+opposed by the most powerful and implacable enemies; and these
+comprised all that he had from his youth considered most holy. What if
+he should be in error? He was answerable for every soul that he carried
+away with him. And whither was he taking them? What was there beyond
+the pale of the Church?--Destruction, temporal and eternal ruin.
+Opponents and timid friends cut his heart with reproaches and warnings,
+but incomparably greater was one pain, that secret gnawing and
+uncertainty which he dared not confess to any one. In prayer, indeed,
+he found peace; when his glowing soul soared up to God, he received
+abundance of strength, rest, and cheerfulness; but in his hours of
+relaxation, when his irritable spirit writhed under any obnoxious
+impressions, he felt himself embarrassed, torn asunder, and under the
+interdict of another power which was inimical to his God. From his
+childhood he had known how busily evil spirits hover around men, and
+from the Scriptures he had learned that the devil labours to injure
+even the purest. On his own path lurked busy devils seeking to weaken
+and entice him, and to make countless numbers miserable through him. He
+saw them working in the angry mien of the Cardinal, the sneering
+countenance of Eckius, and indeed in his own soul; and he knew how
+powerful they were in Rome. In his youth he had been tormented by
+apparitions, and now they had returned to him. Out of the dark shadows
+of his study rose the tempter as a spectre, clutching at his reason,
+and when praying, the devil approached him, even under the form of the
+Saviour, radiant as king of heaven, with his five wounds as the old
+Church represented him. But Luther knew that Christ only approaches
+weak man in his word, or in humble form, as He hung upon the cross; so
+by a violent effort he collected himself and cried out to the
+apparition: &quot;Away with thee, thou vile devil!&quot; then the spectre
+vanished.<a name="div2_30" href="#div2Ref_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> Thus again and again for years did the stout heart of the
+man struggle with wild excitement. It was a gloomy conflict between
+reason and delusion; he always came out as conqueror, the primitive
+strength of his healthy character gained the victory. In long hours of
+prayer the stormy waves of excitement were calmed; his solid
+understanding and his conscience led him always from doubt to security,
+and he felt this expansion of his soul as a gracious inspiration from
+his God. It was after such experiences, that he, who had been so
+anxious and timid, became firm as steel, indifferent to the judgment of
+men, intrepid and inexorable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He appeared quite another person in his conflicts with earthly enemies;
+in these he almost always showed the confidence of superiority, and
+especially in his literary disputes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The activity he displayed from this period as a writer was gigantic. Up
+to the year 1517, he had published little; but after that he became not
+only the most copious, but the most popular writer of Germany. By the
+energy of his style, the power of his arguments, the fire and vehemence
+of his convictions, he carried all before him. No one had as yet spoken
+with such power to the people. His language adapted itself to every
+voice and every key; sometimes brief, terse, and sharp as steel; at
+others, with the rich fullness of a mighty stream his words flowed upon
+the people; and a figurative expression or a striking comparison made
+the most difficult things comprehensible. He had a wonderful creative
+power, and pre-eminent facility in the use of language; when he took
+his pen, his spirit seemed to emancipate itself: one perceives in his
+sentences the cheerful warmth that animated him, and they overflow with
+the magic creations of the heart. This power is very visible in his
+attacks upon individual opponents, and was closely allied to rudeness,
+which caused much perplexity to his admiring cotemporaries. He liked
+also to play with his opponents: his fancy clothed them in a grotesque
+mask, and he rallied, derided, and hit at this fantastic figure, in
+expressions by no means measured, and not always very becoming. But the
+good humour which shone out from the midst of these insults had
+generally a conciliatory effect, though not upon those whom they
+touched. Scarcely ever do we perceive any small enmities, but
+frequently inexhaustible kindness of heart. Sometimes forgetting the
+dignity of the reformer, he played antics like a German peasant child,
+or rather like a mischievous hobgoblin. How he buffeted his
+adversaries! now with the blows of an angry giant's club, now with the
+rod of a buffoon. He delighted in transforming their names into
+something ridiculous; thus they were known in the Wittenberger's circle
+by the names of beasts and fools: Eckius became Dr. Geek,<a name="div2_31" href="#div2Ref_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a>
+Murner<a name="div2_32" href="#div2Ref_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> was called Katerkopf<a name="div2_33" href="#div2Ref_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> and Krallen; Emser, who had his
+crest (the head of a horned goat) engraved on every controversial
+writing, was insulted by being changed into Bock;<a name="div2_34" href="#div2Ref_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> the Latin name of
+the apostate Humanitarian, Cochl�us, was translated back into German,
+and Luther greeted him as Schnecke (the snail) with impenetrable
+armour, and--it grieves one to say--sometimes as Rotzl�ffel.<a name="div2_35" href="#div2Ref_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> Still
+more annoying, and even shocking in the eyes of his cotemporaries, was
+the vehement recklessness with which he broke forth against hostile
+princes; the Duke George of Saxony, cousin to his own sovereign, was
+the only one he was occasionally obliged to spare. The profligate
+despotism of Henry VIII. of England was abhorrent to the soul of the
+German reformer, who abused him terribly, and he dealt with Henry of
+Brunswick as a naughty school-boy. It cannot, we fear, be denied that
+it was this alloy to the moral dignity of his character that acted as
+the salt, which made his writings so irresistible to the earnest
+Germans of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the autumn of 1517, he had a controversy with the reprobate
+Dominican; in the winter of 1520, he burnt the papal bull; in the
+spring of 1518, he still laid himself at the feet of the Pope as the
+vicegerent of Christ; but in the spring of 1521, he declared before the
+Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios at the Imperial Diet at Worms, that
+he did not trust either in the Pope or the councils alone, but only in
+the witness of the Holy Scripture and the convictions of his own
+reason. He had now become a free man, but the papal interdict and the
+ban of the empire hung over him; he was inwardly free, but he was free
+like the wild beast of the forest, with the bloodthirsty hounds giving
+tongue after him. He had now arrived at the acme of his life: the
+powers against which he had revolted, and even the thoughts which he
+had excited in the people, began now to work against his life and
+doctrines.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It appears that already at Worms, Luther was warned that he must
+disappear for a time. The habits of the Franconian knights, among whom
+he had many faithful adherents, gave rise to the idea of carrying him
+off by armed men. The Elector Frederic planned the abduction with his
+confidential advisers; yet it was quite in the style of this Prince to
+arrange that he himself should not know the place of his confinement,
+that in case of necessity he might be able to affirm his ignorance. It
+was not easy to make this plan acceptable to Luther, for his valiant
+heart had long overcome all earthly fear, and with ecstatic pleasure,
+in which there was much enthusiasm and some humour, he watched the
+attempts of the Romanists who wished to take away his life; this,
+however, was under the disposal of another and higher power, which
+spoke through his mouth.<a name="div2_36" href="#div2Ref_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> He unwillingly submitted; but however
+cleverly the abduction was arranged, it was not easy to keep the
+secret. In the beginning, Melancthon was the only one of the
+Wittenbergers who knew the place of Luther's concealment; but Luther
+was not the man to accommodate himself, even to the most well-meaning
+intrigue, and soon messengers were actively passing to and fro between
+the Wartburg and Wittenberg, so that whatever circumspection was
+employed in the care of the letters, it was difficult to prevent the
+spreading of reports. Luther in the castle, learned what was going on
+in the great world sooner than the Wittenbergers; he received accounts
+of all the news of his university, and endeavoured to raise the courage
+of his friends and to guide their politics. It is touching to see how
+he tried to strengthen Melancthon, whose unpractical nature caused him
+to feel bitterly the absence of his stronger friend. &quot;Things must go on
+without me,&quot; Luther writes to him. &quot;Only take courage and you will no
+longer need me; if, when I come out, I cannot return to Wittenberg, I
+must go out into the world. You are the men to maintain, without me,
+the cause of the Lord against the devil.&quot; His letters are dated from
+the &quot;aerial regions,&quot; from &quot;Patmos,&quot; from the &quot;wilderness,&quot; &quot;from among
+the birds who sing sweetly among the branches, and praise God day and
+night with all their powers.&quot; Once he endeavoured to be cunning:
+writing to Spalatinus, he enclosed a crafty letter, saying, that it was
+believed without foundation that he was at Wartburg. That he was living
+among faithful brothers, and that it was remarkable no one thought of
+Bohemia; it concluded with a not ill-natured thrust at Duke George of
+Saxony, his keenest enemy. This letter, Spalatinus, with pretended
+negligence, was to lose, that it might come into the hands of his
+enemies; but in such diplomacy Luther was by no means consistent, for
+no sooner was his lion nature roused by any intelligence, than he made
+a hasty decision to burst forth to Erfurt or Wittenberg. He bore with
+difficulty the tedium of his residence; he was treated with the
+greatest consideration by the commander of the castle, and this care
+showed itself chiefly, as was then the custom, in providing him with
+the best food and drink. The good living, the absence of excitement,
+the fresh air on horseback, which the theologian enjoyed, worked both
+on soul and body. He had brought with him from Worms, a bodily ailment
+from which arose hours of dark despondency, which made him incapable of
+work.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two days successively he went out hunting; but his heart was with the
+poor hares and partridges, which were hunted by a host of men and dogs
+into a net. &quot;Innocent little creatures! thus do the papists hunt.&quot; To
+preserve the life of a little hare he concealed it in the sleeve of his
+coat; then came the hounds and broke the limbs of the little animal
+within the protecting coat. &quot;Thus does Satan gnash his teeth against
+the souls I seek to save.&quot; Luther had enough to do to defend himself
+and his from Satan; he had thrown off all the authorities of the
+Church, and now stood shuddering alone, only one thing remained to him,
+the Scriptures. The old Church had been continually expounding
+Christianity; traditions which were concurrent with the Scriptures,
+councils and decrees of the Pope, had kept the faith in constant
+agitation. Luther placed in its stead the word of Scripture, which
+while it brought deliverance from a wilderness of erroneous soulless
+conceptions, gave threatenings of other dangers. What was the Bible?
+There were about two centuries between the oldest and the newest
+writings of the holy book. The New Testament itself was not written by
+Christ, nor even always by those who had received his holy teaching
+from himself; it had been compiled long after his death, portions of it
+might have been delivered incorrectly; all was written in a foreign
+language that Germans could with difficulty understand. Expounders of
+the greatest discernment were in danger of interpreting falsely if not
+enlightened by the grace of God as the Apostles had been. The old
+Church had brought to its assistance that sacrament which gave to the
+priest's office this enlightenment; indeed the holy father assumed so
+much of the omnipotence of God, that he considered himself in the right
+even where his will was contrary to the Scripture. The reformer had
+nothing but his weak human understanding and his prayers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was indeed imperative that Luther should use his reason, for a
+certain degree of criticism upon the Holy Scriptures was necessary. He
+did not set an equal value upon all the books of the New Testament: it
+is known that he had doubts about the Revelations of St. John, and he
+did not much value the Epistle of St. James; but objections to
+particular parts never disturbed his faith in the whole; his belief in
+the verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures (with the exception of a
+few books) could not be shaken; they were to him what was dearest on
+earth, the groundwork of his whole knowledge; he was so thoroughly
+imbued with their spirit, that he lived as it were under their shadow.
+The more deeply he felt his responsibility, the more intense was the
+ardour with which he clung to the Scriptures.<a name="div2_37" href="#div2Ref_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> A powerful instinct
+for what was rational and judicious helped him over many dangers; his
+penetration had nothing of the hair-splitting sophistry of the old
+teachers; he despised unnecessary subtleties, and with admirable tact
+he left undecided what appeared to him not essential. But if he was not
+to become a frantic or godless man, nothing remained to him but to
+ground his new doctrines on the words which were spoken and written
+fifteen hundred years before him, and he fell in some case into what
+his opponent Eckius called &quot;Black-letter style.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Under these restraints his method was formed. If he had a question to
+solve, he collected all the passages in Scripture which appeared to him
+to contain an answer; he examined each passage to understand their
+mutual bearing, and thus arrived at his conclusions. By this mode of
+proceeding, he brought the Scriptures within the compass of an ordinary
+understanding; for example, in the year 1522, he undertook, out of the
+Holy Scriptures, to place marriage on a new moral foundation; he
+severely criticised the eighteen reasons given by ecclesiastical law,
+forbidding and dissolving marriages, and condemned the unworthy
+favouring of the rich in preference to the poor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was this same system which made him so pertinacious in his
+transactions with the Reformers in the year 1529, when he wrote on the
+table before him: &quot;This <i>is</i> my body;&quot; and looked gloomily on the tears
+and outstretched hands of Zwinglius. Never had that formidable man
+shown more powerful convictions, convictions won in vehement wrestling
+with his doubts and the devil. It may be considered by some as an
+imperfect system; but there was a genial strength in it, that made his
+own view more available to the cultivation and heart-cravings of his
+time, than even he himself anticipated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Besides these great trials, the proscribed monk at the Wartburg was
+exposed to smaller temptations: he had long, by almost superhuman
+spiritual activity, overcome, what great self-distrust led him to
+consider as merely sensual inclinations; still nature stirred
+powerfully in him, and he many times begged of his dear Melancthon to
+pray for him concerning this.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It happened providentially, that just at this time at Wittenberg the
+restless spirit of Karlstadt took up the subject of the marriage of
+priests, in a pamphlet in which he decided that vows of celibacy were
+not binding upon priests and monks. The Wittenbergers were in general
+agreed on this question, especially Melancthon, who was perfectly
+unbiassed, as he himself had never entered into holy orders, and had
+been married two years.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus a web of thoughts and moral problems was cast from the outer world
+upon Luther's soul, the threads of which enclosed the whole of his
+later life. Whatever joy of heart and earthly happiness was vouchsafed
+to him henceforth, rested on the answer to this question. It was the
+happiness of his home that made it possible for him to bear the trials
+of his later years; by that the full blossom of his rich heart was
+first unfolded. So graciously did Providence send to him, just in the
+time of his loneliness, the message which was to bind him anew, and
+more firmly than ever to his people. Again, the way in which Luther
+treated this problem is quite characteristic; his pious spirit and the
+conservative tendency of his character strove against the hasty and
+superficial way in which Karlstadt reasoned. It may be assumed, that
+his own feelings made him suspicious as to whether this critical
+question was not made use of by the devil, to tempt the children of
+God; and yet the constraint upon the poor monks in the monasteries
+grieved him much. He examined the Scriptures, and easily made up his
+mind as to the marriage of priests; but there was nothing in the Bible
+about monks: &quot;Where the Scripture is silent, man is unsafe.&quot; It
+appeared to him, withal, a laughable idea that his friends could marry,
+and he wrote to the cautious Spalatinus: &quot;Good God, our Wittenbergers
+wish also to give wives to the monks! now they shall not so encumber
+me;&quot; and he warns him ironically: &quot;Have a care that you also do not get
+married;&quot; yet this problem occupied him incessantly. Men live fast in
+great times. Gradually, by Melancthon's reasoning, and we may add by
+fervent prayer, he arrived at certainty. What, almost unknown to
+himself, brought about the decision, was the perception that it had
+become wise and necessary for the moral foundation of social life, that
+the monasteries should be opened. For nearly three months this question
+had been struggling in his mind; on the 1st November, 1521, he wrote
+the afore-mentioned letter to his father.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Unbounded was the effect of his words on the people; they produced a
+general excitement: out of almost all the cloister doors monks and nuns
+slipped away; it was at first singly and by stealth, but soon whole
+monasteries and convents dissolved themselves. When Luther in the
+following spring returned to Wittenberg, his heart full of anxious
+cares, the fugitive monks and nuns caused him a great deal of trouble.
+Secret letters were forwarded to him from all quarters, chiefly from
+excited nuns who had been placed as children in convents by harsh
+parents, and being now without money or protection, looked to the great
+Reformer for help; it was not unnatural that they should throng to
+Wittenberg. Nine nuns came from the foundation for noble ladies at
+Nimpschen, amongst them were a Staupitz, two Zeschau, and Catherine von
+Bora; besides these there were sixteen other nuns to take care of, and
+so forth. He was much grieved for these poor people, and hastened to
+place them under the protection of worthy families. Sometimes, indeed,
+it became too much of a good thing, and the crowd of runaway monks
+especially annoyed him. He complains: &quot;They desire immediately to
+marry, and are unfit for every kind of work.&quot; He gave great scandal by
+his bold solution of this difficult question; and there was much that
+was very painful to his feelings; for amongst those who now returned in
+tumult to social life, though there were some high-minded men, others
+were coarse and dissolute. Yet all this did not for one moment make him
+turn aside; he became, according to his nature, more decided from
+opposition. When, in 1524, he published the history of the sufferings
+of a nun, Florentina von Oberweimar, he repeated in the dedication what
+he had so often preached: &quot;God often testifies in the Scriptures that
+He desires no compulsory service, and no one can become his, who is not
+so in heart and soul. God help us! Is there nothing in this that speaks
+to us? Have we not ears and understanding? I say it again, God will not
+have compulsory service; I say it a third time, I say it a hundred
+thousand times, God will have no compulsory service.&quot;<a name="div2_38" href="#div2Ref_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus Luther entered the last period of his life. His disappearance in
+the Thuringian forest had made an immense sensation. His opponents, who
+were accused of his murder, trembled before the indignation which was
+roused against them, both in city and country. The interruption,
+however, of his public activity was pregnant with evil to him; as long
+as he was at Wittenberg, the centre of the struggle, his word and his
+pen could dominate the great spiritual movement both in the north and
+south, but in his absence it worked arbitrarily in different
+directions, and in many heads. One of Luther's oldest associates began
+the confusion, and Wittenberg itself was the scene of action of a wild
+commotion. Luther could no longer bear to remain at the Wartburg; he
+had already been once secretly to Wittenberg; he now returned there
+publicly, against the will of the Elector. Then began an heroic
+struggle against old friends, and against conclusions drawn from his
+own doctrines. His activity was superhuman; he thundered incessantly
+from the pulpit, and his pen flew over the pages, in his cell. But he
+was not able to bring back all the erring minds, neither could he
+prevent the excitement of the people from gathering into a political
+storm. What was more, he could not hinder the spiritual freedom which
+he had won for the Germans, from producing, even in pious and learned
+men, an independent judgment upon faith and life, which was often
+opposed to his own convictions. Then came the dark years of the
+Iconoclastic and Anabaptist struggle, the Peasant war; and the sad
+dispute about the Sacrament. How often at this time did the figure of
+Luther arise gloomy and powerful above the disputants! how often did
+the perversity of men and his own secret doubts, fill him with anxious
+cares about the future of Germany!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In this wild time of fire and sword, the spiritual struggle was carried
+on more nobly and purely by him than by any one else. Every
+interference of earthly power was hateful to him; he did not choose to
+be protected even by his own sovereign, and would not have any human
+support for his teaching. He fought with a sharp pen, alone against his
+enemies; the only pile that he lighted was for a paper: he hated the
+Pope as he did the devil, but he had always preached toleration and
+Christian forbearance towards papists; he suspected many of having a
+secret compact with the devil, but he never burnt a witch. In all the
+Roman Catholic countries the stake was lighted for the confessors of
+the new faith, and even Hutten was strongly suspected of having cut off
+the ears of some monks; but so benevolent were Luther's feelings, that
+he had heartfelt compassion for the humbled Tetzel, and wrote him a
+consolatory letter. His highest political principle was obedience to
+the authorities ordained by God, and he never rose in opposition to
+them except when necessary for the service of God. On his departure
+from Worms, although on the point of being declared free from
+interdict, he was forbidden to preach; he did not, however, desist from
+doing so, but suffered great anxiety lest it should be imputed to him
+as disobedience. His conception of the unity of the Empire was quite
+primitive and popular; the reigning princes and electors, according to
+the laws of the Empire, owed the same obedience to the Emperor that
+their own subjects did to them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">During the whole course of his life he took a heartfelt interest in
+Charles V., not only in that early period when he greeted him as the
+&quot;Dear youth,&quot; but even later, when he knew well, the Spanish Burgundian
+only tolerated the German reformation for political reasons: he said of
+him, &quot;He is good and quiet; he does not speak as much in one year as I
+do in a day; he is the favourite of fortune:&quot; he had pleasure in
+extolling the Emperor's moderation, discretion, and long sufferance;
+and after he had begun to condemn his policy, and to distrust his
+character, he still insisted upon his companions talking with reverence
+of the sovereign of Germany; for he said, apologetically, &quot;A politician
+cannot be as candid as we ecclesiastics.&quot; In 1530 he gave it as his
+opinion, that it would be wrong in the Elector to arm in opposition to
+the Emperor: it was not till 1537 that he unwillingly adopted a more
+enlarged view; but even then, the threatened Prince was not to take up
+arms first. So strongly in this man of the people still dwelt the
+honourable tradition of a firm well-ordered state, at a time when the
+proud edifice of that old Saxon and Frank empire was crumbling into
+ruin; but there was no trace of servile feeling in this loyalty: when
+the Elector on one occasion desired him to write a plausible letter,
+his truthful feeling revolted against the Emperor's title of &quot;Most
+Gracious Sovereign,&quot; for the Emperor was not graciously disposed
+towards him; and in his intercourse with people of rank he showed a
+careless frankness that shocked the courtiers. To his own sovereign he
+had with all submission spoken truths as only a great character can
+speak, and to which only a good heart will listen. He had in general a
+poor opinion of the German princes, though he esteemed individuals
+among them; frequent and just are his complaints of their incapacity,
+licentiousness, and other vices:<a name="div2_39" href="#div2Ref_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> the nobles too he treated with
+irony; the coarseness of most of them displeased him extremely.<a name="div2_40" href="#div2Ref_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> He
+felt a democratic aversion to the hard and selfish lawyers who
+conducted the affairs of the princes, courted favour, and tormented the
+poor; to the best of them he allowed only a doubtful prospect of the
+grace of God: his whole heart, on the other hand, was with the
+oppressed: he blamed the peasants sometimes for their obduracy and
+their usuriousness, but he commended their class, regarded their vices
+with heartfelt compassion, and remembered that he sprang from them.
+These were his views on worldly government, but he served the
+spiritual: he held firmly the popular idea, that there should be two
+ruling powers,--the Church, and the princes, and he thought he was
+justified in proudly placing the domination of the former above that of
+worldly politics. He strove indignantly to prevent the governing powers
+from assuming the control in matters pertaining to the care of souls
+and to the autonomy of his communities. He estimated all politics with
+reference to the interests of his faith and according to the laws of
+his Bible. When the Scripture seemed to be endangered by worldly
+politics, he raised his voice, indifferent where it hit: it was not his
+fault that he was strong and the princes weak, and it ought to be no
+reproach to him, the monk, the professor, and the shepherd of souls, if
+the allied Protestant princes withstood the cunning statesmancraft of
+the Emperor, like a herd of deer; he himself was so conscious that
+politics were not his business, that when on one occasion the active
+Landgrave of Hesse would not follow ecclesiastical advice, he was the
+more esteemed for it by Luther: &quot;He has a good head of his own; he will
+be successful; he thoroughly understands the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Since Luther's return to Wittenberg a democratic agitation had been
+fermenting amongst the people. Luther had opened the cloisters, and now
+people desired to be delivered from many other social evils, such as
+the destitution of the peasants, the ecclesiastical imposts, the
+malversation of the benefices, and the bad administration of justice.
+The honest heart of Luther sympathized with this movement, and he
+exhorted and reproved the landed proprietors and princes; but when the
+wild waves of the Peasant war poured over his own country, when deeds
+of bloody violence wounded his spirit, and he found that factious men
+and enthusiasts exercised a dominion over the multitudes which
+threatened his doctrines with destruction, he threw himself with the
+deepest indignation into the struggle against the rough masses. Wild
+and warlike was his appeal to the princes; he was horrified at what had
+taken place: the gospel of love had been disgraced by the headstrong
+wilfulness of those who had called themselves its followers. His policy
+was right; there was in Germany, unfortunately, no better power than
+that of the princes; on them, in spite of everything, rested the future
+of the father-land, for which neither the peasant serfs, nor the
+rapacious noblemen, nor the dispersed cities of the empire, which stood
+like islands in the midst of the surging sea, could give a guarantee:
+he was entirely in the right; but in the same headstrong unbending way,
+which had hitherto made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular,
+he now turned against the people. A cry of dismay and horror was raised
+among the masses. He was a traitor. He, who for eight years had been
+their hero and darling, suddenly became the most unpopular of men:
+again his life and liberty were threatened; even five years afterwards
+it was dangerous for him to visit his sick father at Mansfeld, on
+account of the peasants. The anger of the multitude worked also against
+his teaching; the field preachers and new apostles treated him as a
+lost, corrupt man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was excommunicated and outlawed by the higher powers, and cursed by
+the people; even many well-meaning men had been displeased with his
+attack on celibacy and monastic life. The nobility of the country
+threatened to waylay the outlaw on the high-roads, because he had
+destroyed the convents in which, as in foundling hospitals, the
+respectable daughters of poor nobles were thrown in early childhood.
+The Romish party triumphed; the new heresy was deprived of that which
+had hitherto made it powerful; Luther's life and doctrines seemed
+doomed to destruction.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was at this time that Luther determined to marry. Catherine von Bora
+had lived at Wittenberg for two years in the house of Reichenbach, the
+town clerk, afterwards burgomaster. She was a fine young woman of
+stately manners, the deserted daughter of a noble family of Meissen.
+Twice had Luther endeavoured to obtain a husband for her, as with
+fatherly care he had already done for many of her companions; at last
+Catherine declared that she would not marry any man, unless it were
+Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf. Luther was astonished, but he
+came to a rapid decision. Accompanied by Lucas Kranach, he went to woo
+her, and was married to her on the spot. He then invited his friends to
+his marriage feast, begged for venison from the court, which it was the
+habit of the prince to present to the professors on their wedding days,
+and received from the city of Wittenberg, as a bridal present, wine for
+the feast. We would fain understand what passed through Luther's soul
+at that time; his whole being was strained to the uttermost; his strong
+and wild primitive nature was excited on all sides; he was deeply
+shaken by the evils arising up everywhere around him, the burning
+villages and slaughtered men. If he had been a mere fanatic he would
+have ended in despair; but above the stormy disquiet, which is
+perceptible in him up to his marriage, a bright light shone; the
+conviction that he was the guardian of the divine law amongst the
+Germans, and that in order to protect social order and morals, he was
+bound to guide and not to follow the opinions of men. However eagerly
+and warmly he might declaim in individual cases, he appears now
+decidedly conservative and more firmly self-contained than ever. He
+had, moreover, the impression that it was ordained that he should not
+live much longer, and many were the hours in which he looked forward
+with a longing to martyrdom. He concluded his marriage in full harmony
+with his convictions. He had entered fully into the necessity of
+marriage and its conformity with Scripture, and he had for some years
+pressed all his acquaintances to marry, at last even his own opponent
+the Archbishop of Mentz. He himself gives two reasons for his decision.
+He had robbed his father for many years of his son; it would be to him
+a kind of expiation, in case he should die first, to leave old Hans a
+grandson. Besides this, it was also an act of defiance; his opponents
+triumphed that Luther was humbled, all the world was offended with him,
+and by this he would give them still more offence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was a man of strong passions, but there was no trace of coarse
+sensuality; and we may assume that the best reason, which he did not,
+however, avow to any of his friends, was yet the most decisive, and
+that was, that there had long been gossip amongst people, and he
+himself knew that Catherine was favourably disposed towards him. &quot;I am
+not passionately in love, but am very fond of her,&quot; he writes to one of
+his dearest friends. And this marriage, concluded contrary to the
+opinion of his cotemporaries, and amidst the derision of his opponents,
+was an act to which we Germans owe as much, as we do to all the years
+in which, as an ecclesiastic of the old Church, he had by deeds
+supported his theology. For from henceforth the father, husband, and
+citizen became also the reformer of the domestic life of his nation;
+and that which was the blessing of his earthly life, in which Roman
+Catholics and Protestants to this day have an equal interest, arose
+from a marriage contracted between an outcast monk and a fugitive nun.
+He had still, for one-and-twenty laborious years, to carry out the
+moulding of his nation. His greatest work, the translation of the
+Bible, which he had now brought to a conclusion, in union with his
+Wittenberger friends, gave him an entire mastery over the language of
+the people, a language, the richness and power of which first became
+practically known by this book. We know in how noble a spirit he
+undertook the work: he wished to produce a book for the people, for
+that purpose he studied assiduously the forms of speech, proverbs, and
+technical expressions used by them. The Humanitarians still continued
+to write clumsy and involved German, a bad resemblance to the Latin
+style. The nation now obtained for its daily reading a work which in
+simple words and short sentences gave expression to the deepest wisdom
+and the highest spiritual treasures. The German Bible, together with
+Luther's other writings, became the groundwork of the new German
+language; and this language, in which our whole literature and
+spiritual life have found expression, is an indestructible possession,
+which, though marred and spoilt, has even in the worst times reminded
+the different branches of the German race that they belong to one
+family. Individuals are now discarding their native dialects, and the
+language of education, poetry, and science which was created by Luther
+is the bond by which the souls of all Germans are united. Not less was
+done by this same man for the social life of Germany. Private devotion,
+marriage, the education of children, corporate life, school life,
+manners, amusements, all feelings of the heart, all social pleasures
+were consecrated by his teachings and writings; everywhere he
+endeavoured to place new boundary stones and to dig deeper foundations.
+There was no sphere of human duty over which he did not constrain his
+countrymen to meditate. By his numerous sermons and essays he worked on
+the public; by countless letters in which he gave counsel and comfort
+to inquirers he worked on individuals. He urged incessantly upon all
+the necessity of self-examination, and the duty of being well assured
+what was owing from the father to the child, from the subject to the
+sovereign, and from the chief magistrate to his community; the progress
+he thus made was important in this respect, that he freed the
+consciences of people; and in the place of outward pressure, against
+which egotism had haughtily rebelled, he substituted everywhere a
+genial self-control. How beautifully he comprehended the necessity of
+cultivating the minds of children by school instruction, especially in
+the old languages! How he recommended his beloved music to be
+introduced into the schools! How great his views were when he advised
+the magistrates to establish city libraries; and, again, how
+conscientiously he endeavoured to secure freedom of choice in
+matrimony! He had overthrown the old sacrament of marriage; but higher,
+nobler, and freer, he established the inward relation of man and wife.
+He had attacked the unwieldy monastic schools; everywhere in village
+and city, as far as his influence reached, flourished better
+institutions for the education of youth; he had removed the mass and
+the Latin chantings; he gave instead, to both disciples and opponents,
+regular preaching and the German chorale.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His desire to find something divine in all that was lovely, good, and
+amiable, which the world presented to him, always kept increasing. With
+this feeling he was ever pious and wise, whether in the fields, or in
+decorous gaiety among his companions, in his playfulness with his wife,
+or when holding his children in his arms. He rejoiced when standing
+before a fruit tree at the splendour of the fruit: &quot;If Adam had not
+fallen, we might thus have admired all trees.&quot; He would take a large
+pear admiringly in his hands, and exclaim: &quot;See, six months ago it was
+deeper under the earth than its own length and breadth, and has come
+from the extreme end of the roots; these smallest, and least thought of
+things are the most wonderful of God's works. He is in the smallest of
+his creations, even to the leaf of a tree or a blade of grass.&quot; Two
+little birds had made a nest in his garden, and flew about in the
+evening, being frightened by the passersby: he thus addressed them:
+&quot;Ah, you dear little birds, do not fly away. I wish you well from my
+heart, if you could only trust me--though I own we do not thus trust
+our God.&quot; He had great pleasure in the companionship of true-hearted
+men; he enjoyed drinking wine with them, and conversation flowed
+pleasantly on both great and small matters; he sang, or played the
+lute, and arranged singing-classes. He delighted in the art of music,
+as it yielded innocent enjoyment. He was lenient in his judgment about
+dancing, and spoke with indulgence--fifty years before Shakespeare--of
+plays: &quot;For they teach,&quot; said he, &quot;like a mirror how every one should
+behave himself.&quot;<a name="div2_41" href="#div2Ref_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">Once when sitting with Melancthon, the mild and learned master Philip
+prudently moderated the too bold assertions of his vehement friend.
+Rich people were the subject of conversation, and Frau Kate could not
+resist remarking, eagerly, &quot;If my husband had held such opinions he
+would have become very rich.&quot; Then Melancthon replied decidedly: &quot;That
+is impossible, for those who thus strive after the good of the
+community cannot attend to their own interest.&quot; There was one subject,
+however, on which both men liked to argue. Melancthon was a great lover
+of astrology; Luther looked on this science with sovereign contempt; on
+the other hand, by his method of Biblical exegesis, and also by his
+secret political views, he had come to the conviction that the end of
+the world was near; and that appeared very doubtful to the sagacious
+Melancthon. When therefore the latter began with his signs and aspects
+of the heavens, and explained that Luther's success was owing to his
+having been born under the sign of the sun, Luther exclaimed: &quot;I have
+no faith in your Sol. I am the son of a peasant; my father,
+grandfather, and ancestors have all been thorough peasants.&quot; &quot;Yes,&quot;
+answered Melancthon, &quot;but even in a village you would have become the
+leader, the magistrate, or the head labourer over all others.&quot; &quot;But,&quot;
+exclaimed Luther, triumphantly, &quot;I became a Baccalaureus, a master, and
+a monk; that was not written in the stars: after that, I quarrelled
+with the Pope, and he with me. I have taken a nun for my wife, and
+have had children by her; who has seen that in the stars?&quot; Again
+Melancthon--continuing his astrological exposition--began to explain
+about the Emperor Charles; how he was destined to die in the year 1584.
+Then Luther broke out vehemently: &quot;The world will not last so long, for
+when we have driven away the Turks, the prophecy of Daniel will be
+fulfilled, and the end of all things come, then assuredly the last day
+is at hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How amiable he was as the father of a family! When his little children
+were standing at the table watching eagerly the peaches and other
+fruit, he said, &quot;Whoever wishes to see a picture of one who rejoices in
+hope, will see it truly portrayed here. Oh, that we could look as
+joyfully for the last day. Adam and Eve must have had far better
+fruits: ours are in comparison only like crabs. The serpent was then, I
+have no doubt, the most beautiful of creatures, amiable and lovely; it
+still has its crest, but after the curse it lost its feet and beautiful
+body.&quot; Looking at his little son, just three years old, who was playing
+and talking to himself, he said, &quot;This child is like a drunken man; he
+does not know that he lives, and yet he enjoys life in security,
+jumping and skipping about.&quot; He drew the child towards him, and thus
+addressed him: &quot;Thou art our Lord's little innocent, not under the law,
+but under the covenant of grace and forgiveness of sins; thou fearest
+nothing, but art secure and without cares, and what thou doest is
+pure.&quot; He then continued: &quot;Parents always love their youngest children
+best; my little Martin is my dearest treasure: the little ones have
+most need of care and love, therefore the love of parents naturally
+descends. What must have been the feeling of Abraham when he had to
+sacrifice his youngest and dearest son? he could not have told Sarah
+about it; this journey must have been a bitter one to him.&quot; His beloved
+daughter Magdalen lay dying; he laments thus: &quot;I love her very much,
+but, dear Lord, as it is thy will to take her to thee, I am content to
+know that she is with thee. Magdalen, my little daughter, thou wouldst
+willingly remain with thy father here, yet gladly goest to thy Father
+yonder.&quot; The child then said, &quot;Yes, dear father, as God wills it.&quot; As
+she was dying, he fell on his knees by the bed, weeping bitterly, and
+praying that God would redeem her. She then passed away in her father's
+arms. When the people came to bury her, he addressed them as was usual,
+saying, &quot;I am joyful in spirit, but the flesh is weak; parting is
+beyond measure grievous. It is a wonderful thing, that, though feeling
+assured of all being well with her, and that she is at peace, one
+should yet feel so sorrowful.&quot; His <i>dominus</i>, or Herr Kate, as he used
+to call his wife in his letters to his friends, had soon become an apt
+and thrifty housewife. She had great troubles; many children, her
+husband frequently an invalid, a number of boarders (masters and poor
+students), always open house--as it seldom happened that they were
+without learned or distinguished guests, and in addition to all, a
+scanty income and a husband who preferred giving to taking; and who
+once during his wife's confinement got hold in his zeal of the baby's
+christening plate to give in alms.<a name="div2_42" href="#div2Ref_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> From the way in which Luther
+treated her, we see how happy his family life was, and when he made
+allusions to the glib chattering of women, he had no right to do so,
+for he was by no means a man who was himself scanty in words. Once,
+when his wife appeared much delighted at being able to serve up
+different kinds of fish from the pond in their little garden, the
+doctor was heartily pleased to see her joy, and did not fail to take
+the opportunity of making a pleasant remark upon the happiness of
+contentment. Another time, when he had been reading to her too long in
+the Psalter, and she said that she heard enough upon sacred subjects,
+that she read much daily, and could talk about them, &quot;God only grant
+that she might live accordingly,&quot; the doctor sighed at this sensible
+answer, and said, &quot;Thus begins a weariness of the word of God; new
+trifling books will come in the place of the Scriptures, which will
+again be thrown into a corner.&quot; But this close union between these two
+excellent persons was still for many years disturbed by a secret
+sorrow. We only learn what was gnawing at the soul of the wife, by
+finding, that when as late as the year 1527, Luther, being dangerously
+ill, took a last leave of her, he spoke these words:--&quot;You are my true
+wedded wife, of that you may feel certain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther's spiritual life was as much a reality to him as his earthly
+one. All the holy personages of the Bible were to him as true friends;
+through his lively imagination he saw them in familiar forms, and with
+the simplicity of a child he liked to picture to himself the various
+circumstances of their life. When Veit Dietrich asked him what kind of
+person he thought the Apostle Paul was, Luther answered quickly, &quot;He
+was an insignificant, lean little man, like Philip Melancthon.&quot; He
+formed a pleasing image of the Virgin Mary: he used to say, admiringly,
+&quot;She was a pretty, delicate maiden, and must have had a charming
+voice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He preferred thinking of the Redeemer as a child with his parents; how
+he took his father's dinner to the timber-yard, and how when he had
+been absent too long, Mary asked him, &quot;Where have you been so long,
+little one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Saviour should be thought of, not as in his glory, nor as the
+fulfiller of the law, conceptions too high and terrible for man; but
+only as a poor sufferer, who lived among and died for sinners.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His God was to him entirely as father and head of the family. He liked
+to meditate on the economy of nature: he was filled with astonishment
+at the quantity of wood which God must always be creating. &quot;No one can
+reckon what God requires to nourish merely sparrows and useless birds:
+in one single year they cost Him more than the income of the King of
+France; and then think of all that remains.&quot; &quot;God understands all
+trades: as a tailor He can make a coat for the deer, which might last a
+hundred years; as a shoemaker He gives him shoes to his feet, and by
+means of the dear sun He is a cook. He could become rich indeed, if He
+chose, if He were to withhold the sun and air, and threatened the Pope,
+Emperor, bishops, and doctors with death, if they did not pay Him a
+hundred thousand gulden on the spot. He does not do this, yet we are
+thankless miscreants.&quot; He seriously reflected whence came the means of
+nourishment for so many men. Old Hans Luther had maintained that there
+were more men than sheaves of corn; the doctor indeed thought that
+there were more sheaves than men, but that there were more men than
+shocks. &quot;A shock of corn, however, hardly yields a bushel, and that
+will not nourish one man a whole year.&quot; Even a dung-heap was a subject
+of pleasant reflection to him. &quot;God is obliged to clear away as well as
+to create; if He had not continually done so, the world would long ago
+have become too full.&quot; &quot;When God chastises the godly more severely than
+the godless, He deals with him as a strict father of a family with his
+son, whom he more frequently punishes than the bad servant: but he
+secretly collects treasures as an inheritance for his son, whilst he
+finally casts the servant off.&quot; Luther comes joyfully to this
+conclusion: &quot;If God can forgive me for having during twenty years
+offended Him by saying mass, He can also excuse my having sometimes had
+a good drink to his honour--let the world think what it will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It surprised him much that God should be so very wrath with the Jews.
+&quot;For fifteen hundred years they have prayed fervently with great zeal
+and earnestness, as their little prayer-books show; and He has not
+revealed himself to them during the whole time by the smallest word. I
+would give two hundred florins' worth of books if I could pray as they
+do. It must be a great and unspeakable anger. Ah! dear Lord, punish me
+with pestilence, rather than be thus silent!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther prayed like a child morning and evening, and often during the
+day, even indeed, during his meals. He repeated again and again with
+fervent devotion those prayers which he knew by heart. His favourite
+was the Lord's Prayer, and then he repeated the short catechism; he
+always carried the Psalter with him as a little prayer-book. When he
+was in extreme trouble his prayer became like a storm, a wrestling with
+God, the power, the greatness, and the holy simplicity of which can
+hardly be compared with any other human emotion. He was then the son
+who despairingly lies at the feet of his father, or the faithful
+servant who supplicates his prince. For nothing could shake his
+conviction that we may influence God's decisions by prayer and
+supplication. Thus overflowing feelings alternated in his prayers with
+complaints and even remonstrances. It is often related how, in the year
+1540, he restored to life the dying Melancthon at Weimar. When Luther
+arrived he found &quot;<i>Magister Philippus</i>&quot; at the point of death,
+unconscious and with closed eyes. Luther, struck with terror, said,
+&quot;God forbid! how has this organ of God been marred by the devil!&quot; Then
+he turned his back on those assembled, and went to the window as he was
+wont to do when he prayed. &quot;Now,&quot; said Luther, &quot;must the Lord God
+stretch forth his hand to me, for I have brought the matter home to
+Him, and dinned in his ears all his promises as to the efficacy of
+prayer, which I could repeat from the Holy Scripture, so that He must
+hearken to me if I am to trust his promises.&quot; Then he took Melancthon
+by the hand, saying, &quot;Be comforted, Philip, you will not die:&quot; and
+Melancthon, under the spell of his powerful friend, began at once to
+breathe again, and recovered his consciousness. He was restored.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As God was to Luther the source of all good, so was the devil the
+producer of all evil and wickedness. He considered that the devil
+interfered destructively with the course of nature by illness or
+pestilence, deformity and famine. All that this deep-thinking man
+preached so firmly and joyfully had formerly pressed with fearful
+weight upon his conscience; especially when awaking in the night, the
+devil stood full of malice by his bed, whispering horrors in his ear;
+then his spirit wrestled for freedom, often for a length of time in
+vain. It is extraordinary what this son of the sixteenth century went
+through in these inward struggles. Every fresh inquiry into the
+Scriptures, every important sermon upon a new theme, threw him again
+into this strife of conscience: then he reached such a state of
+excitement that his soul became incapable of systematic thought, and
+for whole days he trembled with anguish. When he was occupied with the
+question of monks and nuns, a text of the Bible startled him, which he
+thought, in his excitement, placed him in the wrong: his heart died
+within him, and he was nearly strangled by the devil. At this time
+Bugenhagen visited Luther, who showed him the threatening text.<a name="div2_43" href="#div2Ref_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a>
+Bugenhagen, probably infected by the eagerness of his friend, began
+also to doubt, unconscious of the greatness of the misery which it
+occasioned Luther. Now was Luther indeed terrified, and again passed a
+fearful night. The next morning Bugenhagen came back. &quot;I am very
+angry,&quot; he said; &quot;I have now, for the first time, understood the text
+rightly; it has quite another sense.&quot; &quot;And it is true,&quot; said Luther
+later, &quot;it was a ridiculous argument; ridiculous indeed for one who is
+in his right mind, and not under temptation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He often lamented to his friends, over the terrors which these
+struggles with the devil occasioned him. &quot;He has never been from the
+beginning so fierce and raging as now, at the end of the world. I feel
+him well. He sleeps much nearer to me than my Kate; that is to say, he
+gives me more disquiet than she does pleasure.&quot; Luther never ceased to
+abuse the Pope as antichrist, or the papal system as devilish. But
+whoever observes more accurately, will perceive behind this hatred of
+the devil, the indestructible reverence by which the loyal spirit of
+the man was bound to the old Church. What became to him temptations,
+were often only the pious recollections of his youth, which stood in
+striking contrast to the changes he had gone through as a man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Indeed, no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds
+of his manhood. We ourselves do not become new through new actions; our
+inward life consists of the sum of all the thoughts and feelings which
+we have ever had. He who has been chosen by fate to create the new by
+the destruction of the old, shatters in pieces at the same time a
+portion of his own life: he must violate lesser duties to fulfil
+greater ones. The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels
+the rent which he has made in the order of the world, and also in his
+own inward nature. This is the secret sorrow, and even the regret, of
+every great historical character. Few mortals have felt this grief so
+deeply as Luther; and that which was so great in him, was his never
+being prevented by this feeling from acting with the utmost boldness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This appears to us a tragical moment in his inward life; and equally so
+was the effect of his teaching upon the life of the nation. He had laid
+the foundation of a new Church upon the pure Gospel, and had given
+greater depth and substance to the minds and conscience of the people.
+Around him burst forth a new life, greater general prosperity, many new
+arts, improvements in painting and music, comfortable enjoyment, and
+more refined cultivation in the middle classes. Yet there was a
+something gloomy and ominous which pervaded the German atmosphere.
+Fierce discord raged amongst princes and governors. Foreign powers were
+arrayed against the people, the Emperor from Spain, the Pope from Rome,
+and the Turks from the Mediterranean; enthusiasts and factious spirits
+were powerful, the hierarchy had not yet fallen. Had his gospel given
+greater unity and power to the nation? The discord had become only
+greater, and the future of his Church seemed dependent on the worldly
+interests of individual German princes. And well he knew what even the
+best among them were. Something terrible seemed approaching, the
+Scripture would be fulfilled, the last day was at hand. But afterwards
+God would raise up a new world, more beautiful, more splendid, and more
+pure, full of peace and blessing; a world in which there would be no
+devil; where the soul of man would find more enjoyment in the flowers
+and fruit of the new heavenly trees, than the present race do in gold
+and silver; where music, the most beautiful of all arts, would give
+birth to tones more entrancing than the most splendid song of the best
+singers of this world; and where good men would find again all that
+they had loved and lost.<a name="div2_44" href="#div2Ref_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ever more powerful became in him the longing of the creature after an
+ideal purity of existence. If he expected the end of the world, it was
+the dim traditions of the German people from the distant past which
+still veiled the heaven of the new Reformer; and yet it was at the same
+time a prophetic presentiment of what was at hand. It was not the end
+of the world which was approaching, but the Thirty years' war.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So he died. As the hearse bearing his corpse passed through the country
+of Thuringia, the bells tolled in every village and town, and the
+people pressed sobbing round his coffin. A large share of German
+popular strength was buried with this one man. Philip Melancthon, in
+the church of the castle at Wittenberg, standing before the corpse of
+Luther, said: &quot;Every one who has known him well must bear witness that
+he was a truly good man; gracious in speech, friendly and lovable; not
+in the least insolent, violent, obstinate, or quarrelsome; and yet
+there was an earnestness and boldness in his words and bearing
+befitting such a man. His heart was true, and without guile; the
+harshness which appeared in his writings against the enemies of his
+doctrine, did not arise from a quarrelsome or bad spirit, but from his
+great earnestness and zeal for the truth. He showed great courage and
+manliness, and did not allow himself to be easily frightened. He was
+not dispirited by threatenings and danger. He possessed such a lofty
+and clear understanding, that in confused, dark, and difficult
+circumstances, he could see sooner than others what was to be
+counselled and done. He was not, as some perhaps have thought, so
+heedless as not to have remarked how it fared everywhere with the
+governments. He knew right well in what government consists, and paid
+assiduous attention to the opinions and will of the people with whom he
+had to do. Let us have a constant and undying remembrance of this our
+beloved father, and keep him ever in our hearts.&quot;<a name="div2_45" href="#div2Ref_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such was Luther, a superhuman nature; his mind was ponderous and
+sharply defined, his will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, and
+his heart full of love. As besides him no other powerful spirit arose
+strong enough to become the leader of the nation, the German people
+have lost for centuries the supremacy over the world; their supremacy
+in the realm of mind rests however upon Luther. That he may in
+conclusion speak for himself, we will give a letter to the Elector
+Frederic the Wise, written at the time when Luther's whole powers were
+most strongly developed. The prudent prince had commanded him to remain
+at Wartburg, because he could not protect him at Wittenberg, as the
+anger of the Duke George of Saxony would lead him to insist immediately
+upon the carrying out of the ban of the empire against Luther. Luther
+then writes to his sovereign:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Most Serene Highness, Illustrious Elector, and Gracious Sovereign!
+Your Electoral Highness's letter and gracious remembrance of me,
+reached me on Friday evening, when I was preparing to leave on Sunday
+morning. I need truly neither proof nor witness that your Electoral
+Highness's intentions are for the best, for I am as fully convinced
+thereof as any human being can be.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet in this matter, Gracious Sovereign, I must answer thus: your
+Electoral Highness knows, or if you do not know, permit me hereby to
+make you acquainted with it, that I have not received the gospel from
+man, but from heaven alone, through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I
+may, and indeed from henceforth will, boast and sign myself a servant
+and evangelist. If I have presented myself for trial and judgment, it
+was not because I doubted the truth, but from overflowing humility, and
+to persuade others. I have done enough for your Electoral Highness in
+leaving my place vacant for a whole year for the sake of your Electoral
+Highness. The devil knows well that I have not done it from fear. He
+saw what a heart I had when I came to Worms; for if I had known that as
+many devils were lying in wait for me as there were tiles on the roofs,
+yet I would have rushed into the midst of them with joy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now the Duke George is very unlike even a single devil. And since our
+Father, in his unfathomable mercy, has, by his gospel made us joyful
+lords over death and all devils, and has given us such a fullness of
+assurance that we may call Him 'Dearly beloved Father,' your Electoral
+Highness can yourself judge that it would be the greatest offence to
+such a Father if we did not so trust Him as to be above the anger of
+Duke George. For my part I know well, I would gladly ride into his own
+Leipzig--I hope your Electoral Highness will forgive my foolish
+jesting--even though it should rain, proud Duke Georges during nine
+following days, and every one should be ninefold more furious than this
+one. He considers my Lord Christ only a man of straw; this my Lord and
+I can well bear with for a time. But I will not conceal from your
+Electoral Highness that I have not once only, but often prayed and wept
+for Duke George, that God would enlighten him. I will still once more
+pray and weep for him, but after that never more. And I beg of your
+Electoral Highness to help and pray also that we may turn from him the
+evil, which, God help him, weighs incessantly upon him. I would at once
+strangle Duke George with a word if it could be thus removed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have written thus to your Electoral Highness, with the intention of
+making known to you that I come to Wittenberg under a far higher
+protection than that of the Elector. I also do not intend to request
+the protection of your Electoral Highness, for indeed, I think I could
+better protect your Electoral Highness than you could protect me. So
+much so, that if I knew your Electoral Highness could protect me, and
+would do so, I would not come. It is not the sword which can counsel or
+help in this business; it is God alone who can act, without any human
+assistance; therefore he who has most faith will have most power to
+protect.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As I therefore perceive that your Electoral Highness is as yet weak in
+faith, I can in no wise regard your Electoral Highness as the man to
+protect or deliver me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As your Electoral Highness desires to know what you shall do in this
+business, especially as you think that you have done too little, I
+answer, with all due submission, that your Electoral Highness has done
+too much, and should do nothing. For God will not allow of our cares
+and doings; He will have every doing left to himself, to himself and no
+other. May your Electoral Highness act accordingly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If your Electoral Highness believes this, you will have security and
+peace; if you do not, I do, and must leave your Electoral Highness in
+your unbelief, to torment yourself with the anxieties which all
+unbelievers deservedly suffer. As, therefore, I will not obey your
+Electoral Highness, you will be excused before God if I should be
+imprisoned or put to death. Towards men your Electoral Highness ought
+thus to conduct yourself. You should as Elector be obedient to the
+supreme authority, and should allow the Imperial majesty to rule in
+your towns and provinces, over persons and property, in conformity with
+the laws of the empire, and should not attempt to prevent or oppose, or
+make any hindrance or resistance to this power if it should seize and
+kill me. For no one should resist authority, he excepted by whom it has
+been established, otherwise it is revolt, and against God. But I hope
+that your Electoral Highness will be reasonable, and perceive that you
+are in too high a position to become my gaoler. If your Electoral
+Highness keeps the door open, and grants a free escort in case my
+enemies themselves or their emissaries should come to seize me, you
+will have done enough for obedience-sake. They cannot indeed demand
+more of your Electoral Highness, than to learn the residence of Luther
+in your Electoral Highness's dominions. And that, they shall do without
+any care, work, or danger on the part of your Electoral Highness; for
+Christ has not yet taught men to be Christians to the injury of others.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If, however, they should be so unreasonable as to command your
+Electoral Highness to lay hands on me yourself, I will then tell you
+what is to be done: I will secure your Electoral Highness from injury
+and danger to person, property, and soul, in what concerns me. Your
+Electoral Highness may or may not believe this.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Herewith I commend your Electoral Highness to God's grace; of anything
+further we will speak when it is needful. For I have written this in
+haste, that your Electoral Highness may not be troubled by the report
+of my arrival, for I must comfort and not injure any one if I would be
+a true Christian. I have to deal with quite a different man to Duke
+George: we know each other well. If your Electoral Highness would have
+faith, you would see the glory of God; but because you have not yet
+faith, you have not seen it. Love and praise be to God in eternity.
+Amen. Given at Borna by the messenger, Ash Wednesday, anno 1522.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your Electoral Highness's most obedient servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">Martin Luther</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>GERMAN PRINCES AT THE IMPERIAL DIET.</h3>
+<h4>(1547.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Luther was dead. Over his grave raged the Smalkaldic war. Charles V.
+made a triumphal progress through humiliated Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Only once did these two men confront each other--these great opponents
+whose spirits are still struggling in the German nation,--the
+Burgundian Hapsburger and the German peasant's son--the Emperor
+and the professor;--the one, who spoke German only to his horse; the
+other, who translated the Bible and formed the new German language of
+literature;--the one, the predecessor of the Jesuit protectors and the
+originator of the Hapsburger family politics; the other, the forerunner
+of Lessing the great German poet, historian, and philosopher.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was a moment in German history pregnant with fate, when the young
+Emperor, lord of half the world, spoke at Worms the disdainful
+words,--&quot;That man shall not make me a heretic.&quot; For then began the
+struggle between his house and the spirit of the German nation. A
+struggle of three centuries; victory and defeat on both sides; its
+final issue not to be doubted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When the German princes and lords of the Empire, with the envoys from
+the free cities, rode to the Diet, they assembled to transact business
+with the two rulers of Germany. These two rulers were the Pope and the
+Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Pope ruled in the holy Roman Empire of the German nation, not only
+as chief bishop in his spiritual capacity, but equally as a political
+power. A third of Germany was under the rule of ecclesiastical princes,
+who had at least to be confirmed by the Pope. The greatest part of his
+income he drew from the Empire; his legates sat at the Imperial Diet,
+among the ecclesiastical and temporal Electors, and could even open it
+without the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When the Emperor would not confirm the Count Palatine Frederic the
+Victorious in the Electoral dignity, this temporal prince accepted the
+confirmation of the Pope. The Pope endeavoured to bring every difficult
+political negotiation before his court; indeed, he granted rights of
+custom, he annulled the Imperial ban, and ventured by his own power to
+exact tithes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Emperor was still considered the nominal centre of the Empire, and
+the source of all power. All hastened, upon his accession, to obtain
+from him the confirmation of old freedoms and privileges, and he was
+the first judge and first general of the Empire, but could not raise a
+single thaler of money or a single soldier without the consent of the
+Diet. And what was of still greater importance, he could only obtain
+taxes and soldiers from among the vassals, by the consent of their
+feudal lords. Hesitatingly and sparingly did the Diet grant subsidies,
+and so defective was the payment that the grant became a mere farce.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Within the Empire, Electors, princes, nobles, and Imperial cities ruled
+their territories, with many gradations of sovereign rights. The
+greater princes were real sovereigns, their power only restricted by
+their states. Noble families, holding temporal principalities in
+heritable possession, strove incessantly to enlarge their power, to put
+down the smaller lords round them, and to limit the sovereign rights of
+the Emperor. In the fifteenth century they had reduced the Imperial
+power almost to a shadow. It was only by extending the power of his
+house that the Emperor Maximilian was able to maintain himself against
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">We may easily perceive that there were two ways of remodelling this
+clumsy state edifice of the middle ages. In one case the power of the
+great princes might rise so high, that the temporal influence of the
+Pope and the supremacy of the Emperor would be overthrown; then Germany
+would be divided into a number of individual states, whose conflicts,
+wars, and destinies might for centuries throw the whole of central
+Europe into weakness and confusion, and which at last, in another state
+of development, might lead to new endeavours to restore unity to the
+Empire. It has been the fate of Germany up to the present time to
+follow this dangerous path.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the other case, the Emperor might have succeeded in adding to the
+old groundwork of his power, such real strength, that the opposition of
+all the ruling princes would be broken, and Germany gradually changed
+into a modern state, that would either enclose the individual
+governments in perfect unity, or at least concentrate all the highest
+powers of government in the hand of one ruler. To form such a state,
+the Hapsburgers of the sixteenth century, and with more wilful
+obstinacy those of the seventeenth, have striven to the injury of the
+German nation and themselves; yet in the year 1519, when Maximilian
+died, the prospect opened to an able prince was grand, though the power
+of his house was moderate.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The time had arrived when a German Emperor might raise his power above
+the heads of all the princes, and with irresistible strength overthrow
+every opponent; for just at that time a new power arose in Germany,
+imperative in its demands, and capable of the greatest results,--public
+opinion. The Reform movement in the Church combined also within it the
+germ of great political reforms. Had an Emperor arisen who would have
+sympathized with the needs of the German spirit, who would have united
+himself with the Reformation, and known how to raise it for his own
+aims in an exalted spirit, he would have had it in his power to form
+out of the Empire a new state and a united German Church: it was the
+highest prize that ever was offered to an ambitious prince; and how
+favourable would have been his position! The nation was deeply roused
+against the hierarchy and Romish influence, and the Reformation began
+with a struggle against the highest of the ecclesiastical electors.
+Three Electorates, more than seventy Imperial dignities, comprising the
+largest third of the whole country of Germany, were in the hands of
+ecclesiastical lords, who would all have fallen had the Reformation
+been undertaken by the Emperor and people. The Emperor would have found
+in the movement, powers which would have made his Imperial army
+irresistible; the evangelical preachers could not in a moment have
+transformed awkward peasants into skilled soldiers; but they might have
+infused into the armies of the Emperor, much of the enthusiasm and
+reckless daring which the best among them made proof of in their own
+lives; besides which, comprehensive ideas of political reform sprang up
+in the circle of the Huttens and Sickingens; and a German Emperor might
+well have found in such ideas the means of reconciling the conflicting
+interests of peasants, citizens, and knights, at least sufficiently so
+to serve his own purposes. How could the German princes, disunited as
+they always were, have withstood an Emperor with such allies,
+strengthened by a well-established income, and leader of an army which
+for the first time since the Crusades would have been animated by a
+great idea? Good grounds would such an emperor have had to have
+respected old families: it would not have been necessary for him to
+take the Electoral crown from off their heads, but he might have
+reduced them to be dignitaries of one great united empire, in which the
+highest jurisdiction and the power of the army would have been vested
+in him alone: the want of such a man was for centuries the misfortune
+of Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is difficult to do justice to the German princes of the sixteenth
+century; their position was unfavourable for the formation of their
+character and for the development of elevated political action. They
+were too great to be loyal vassals, but not powerful enough, with only
+moderate abilities, to conduct the affairs of the nation in a liberal
+spirit. They were for the most part pretentious <i>Junkers</i>; their
+selfishness appeared to foreigners rapacious, their manners rude, their
+greed insatiable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The private life of many of them was stained by the blackest crimes; a
+few of them were at heart pious; their religion was, we hope, a
+restraint in the hour of temptation, but it did not contribute to
+enlarge their political views. There was a patriarchal feeling among
+many of them. Such were Frederic the Wise and his next successor; such
+also was the Margrave Ernest of Baden, who used to have condemned
+criminals brought to him before their execution, that he might give
+them comfort from the Gospel, and beg for their forgiveness (as he felt
+obliged to fulfil his duty), and who offered them his hand at parting.
+Besides men of this kind there were others, overbearing, profligate,
+and wicked; such was Duke Ulrich of W�rtemberg, who stabbed Hans Hutten
+in the forest because he wished to obtain possession of his wife. But
+though at most of the courts consideration for wife and children
+compelled a certain degree of moderation, the ecclesiastical princes
+were not even under this restraint. They were in the worst repute, and
+the more athletic preferred the helmet and the hunting-spear to the
+vestments of the Church, which some of them wore very awkwardly. There
+were bishops and archbishops who hardly knew the ritual of their
+Church. Once when a Latin discourse was to be made, it appeared that
+the highest princes of the Church could not speak that language, and
+the Margrave of Brandenburg was obliged to do it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was through princes like these that Charles, sovereign of Lower
+Burgundy and the Netherlands, King of Spain and Naples, Duke of Milan,
+and Lord of the new world on the other side of the ocean, became also
+Emperor of Germany. It is well known how long and actively the
+intrigues both for him and the King of France were pursued. There was
+no Electoral house to which money or promises were not proffered by
+both parties, and none which did not negotiate for its own advantage.
+At last Frederic the Wise decided the election, and dear has his
+family paid for this decision. When the young king was crowned at
+Aix-la-Chapelle, where, to the great delight of the assembled
+multitude, he caused his horse to prance joyously before them, and
+when, after the coronation, the heralds proclaimed that the Emperor
+would, by permission of his Holiness the Pope, take the title of &quot;Roman
+Emperor Elect,&quot; there were absent from the festive train the Electors
+of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Princes of the two houses which from
+henceforth were to lead the German opposition against the house of
+Hapsburg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The fate of Germany was decided by the election of Charles V. He was
+not entirely a Burgundian, not always a Spaniard, not an Italian, and
+least of all a German. His position was too high, for him to make it
+the interest of his life to meet the requirements of any one of the
+many nations under his sway. The unfortunate part of his exalted
+position was, that he could only carry out a personal policy,
+subordinating sometimes one, sometimes another country to the course of
+his plans, the ultimate aim of which was the advantage of his own
+family. Had Charles been less able and less moderate, what was
+insupportable in these incongruities would have been felt as a
+grievance by all his states; but seldom has a prince maintained so
+long, a position in itself untenable. At last, however, the catastrophe
+arrived. After thirty years of fame and success, he broke down, and the
+misery of Germany became apparent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Although he had so little in common with the Germans, still he was not
+unpopular in the Empire. The people of Germany looked upon him as
+Luther himself did. The confiding attachment with which the Germans
+received the grandson of Maximilian was almost touching; his noble,
+reserved, and composed bearing had an imposing effect upon all. In the
+beginning the best was hoped of him, and later also, even the
+Protestants who had experienced his displeasure, rejoiced when he
+encountered the Pope or conquered the French King. Long did the German
+nation continue to feel itself exalted by the glory and splendour of
+his government. Charles did his best; he spared the prejudices of the
+Germans, indulged them more than any of his other people, and even when
+he sided with a party, he knew how to conciliate his opponents by his
+benevolent dignity. At last, however, the time came when his pride and
+pretensions rose so high that the intractable independence of the
+Protestant party became insupportable to him, and then his long
+concealed opposition broke forth into hate. Suddenly, a storm arose
+against him among the people. As in the first years of Luther, a sea of
+small literature again overflowed the country: they fought against him
+in prose and verse, and they depended more on the support of heaven
+than was wise. The successor of Duke George of Saxony, that most
+zealous opponent of the Reformation, the Protestant Maurice, united
+himself with the Emperor against his own family, and the Protestant
+party was defeated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Now the Emperor Charles had attained the height of his power; the
+battle of M�hlberg was won; the Smalkaldic league had fallen to pieces
+ingloriously. The Protestant princes and cities hastened to make their
+peace with that lord of half Europe, to whom in an evil hour they had
+been so eager to offer the dominion over them. Carrying away with him
+the captive Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, he marched
+from the Saale in triumphant procession to Augsburg, accompanied by his
+army of Spaniards, and Flemings, and German <i>Landsknechte</i>. There all
+the most powerful of Germany were gathered together at the Diet to
+obtain pardon or reward, to pay court to the most mighty sovereign that
+for centuries had ruled over Germany, to decide their own future and
+that of their Fatherland, and to seek pleasure and adventures. Amidst
+this crowd of sovereigns and dynasties, courtiers, swindlers, soldiers,
+and deputations of citizens, was one Bartholomew Sastrow, the son of a
+citizen of Greifswald. He was actively employed as agent of the Dukes
+of Pomerania, who were strongly compromised by their Protestant
+alliances, and preferred not to appear in person before the Emperor. In
+his biography (edited 1823) Sastrow has left some, lively descriptions
+of what he experienced after the battle of M�hlberg, during the
+triumphal march of the Emperor to Augsburg and the Diet. The historical
+value of his narrative is not insignificant. He made good observations
+in his subordinate position, and had connections enough to be enabled
+to form a true conception of the character of the great lords; and
+however insignificant some of his anecdotes may be, they help, on the
+whole, to show men and great events in a new light. The following is a
+faithful quotation from his words, but from the lengthiness of his
+narrative parts, only have been given.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The Pomeranian councillors desired me to remain in the Imperial camp,
+and to put myself under the protection of George von Wedell. This
+Pomeranian nobleman had stabbed his own cousin, and was in disgrace
+with Duke Barnim, but was now serving the Emperor with nine-and-twenty
+horse. Under my guidance he made himself so useful to the Pomeranian
+dukes, that Duke Barnim, at my earnest petition, restored him to
+favour, and reinstated him in his own property. Thus I remained with my
+steed at the Imperial court at Augsburg; how it fared with me on this
+march, and what I saw and heard, is here correctly recorded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is customary in war for comrades to steal each other's horses, and
+they remain unpunished; the process is as follows. If any one likes
+another's horse, he pays a cunning stable-boy six or seven thalers to
+procure it for him; then it is sent away for five or six weeks that it
+may be forgotten; the tail, mane, and other marks are changed, and it
+is brought back to the camp. This was done in the Imperial camp at
+Halle by a German nobleman, who commissioned a boy to steal a Spanish
+steed for him, and having kept him for a few weeks at his home,
+thinking the rumour of it had died away, he had him brought back to the
+camp. Now it happened that about eight or more squadrons of German
+horse, were stationed in a beautiful meadow delightfully situated on
+the Saale; but the Spaniards were encamped on the heights round the
+castle. The stolen steed towards evening was taken to the river to
+drink; a Spanish boy recognizing it said, 'This belongs to my master, I
+will be off with it.' The German boy would not let him go; three or
+four German horsemen came to his assistance, ten or twelve to the
+Spaniard, then twenty or thirty to the German; thus both sides
+continued increasing, and at last they began to fire. The Spaniards
+being on the heights, had greatly the advantage over the Germans who
+were encamped below them; and shooting through their tents, they killed
+some of the noblemen who were sitting at table: the Germans on their
+side did not spare the Spaniards. The Emperor sent out a Spanish lord
+who was riding a splendid charger, and was adorned with glittering
+golden chains, to pacify the German knights, and to quiet the uproar;
+upon which the Germans screamed out, 'Shoot down the Spanish
+miscreant!' When therefore he came on to the bridge to cross the Saale,
+his horse was killed under him, and he of the golden chains falling
+into the river, was drowned. Then the Emperor sent out to them King
+Ferdinand's son, the Archduke Maximilian, afterwards Roman Emperor,
+thinking that they would undoubtedly listen to him and be appeased; but
+they screamed all the same, 'Beat the Spanish miscreant!' whereupon one
+struck him on the right arm, and I saw how for some weeks after he
+carried his arm in a black sling. At last, the Emperor himself came
+out, and said, 'Dear Germans, I know you are not guilty; be satisfied;
+I will repair the damage you have suffered; and by my Imperial honour,
+tomorrow at daybreak I will have the Spaniards hung before your eyes.'
+Thus the uproar was quieted. The following day the Emperor caused an
+examination and valuation to be made of the damage done in both the
+German and Spanish camps; and as it appeared that only eighteen German
+squires and servants, together with seventeen horses, had been killed,
+whilst the Spaniards had lost seventy men, the Emperor sent word to the
+German knights that His Majesty would replace the value of their
+horses, and would not be disinclined to fulfil his promise of the day
+before, of hanging the Spaniards; but the Germans would themselves see
+now that the Spaniards had suffered fourfold, and that thus they had
+been sufficiently revenged; the Emperor therefore hoped, and had
+graciously decided, that the Germans should be satisfied and contented.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the evening of the 18th of June, the two Electors, Maurice of
+Saxony, and Brandenburg, took the Landgrave Philip of Hesse between
+them to Halle. On the following day, about six o'clock in the evening,
+he, together with his chancellor who was kneeling beside him,
+prostrated himself in the great hall before the Emperor, in the
+presence of many lords, electors, princes, foreign potentates,
+ambassadors, counts, colonels, generals, and a large number of
+spectators, as many as the room could hold, and as many as could see
+through the window from without. But when the chancellor most humbly
+craved pardon, the Landgrave, who was a satirical gentleman, knelt, but
+laughed deridingly. Then the Emperor pointed his finger at him and said
+with an angry look, 'Truly I will teach you to laugh;' which indeed was
+afterwards done.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The Emperor proceeded from Halle to Naumburg, and remained there three
+days. When the Imperial army was assembled before Naumburg, and his
+Imperial Majesty was waiting before the gate, he wore a black velvet
+hat and a black mantle bordered with velvet two inches wide, but a
+shower of rain coming on, he sent into the city for a gray felt hat and
+cloak; meanwhile he turned his cloak, and holding his hat under it,
+exposed his bare head to the rain. Poor man! he who had tons of gold to
+spend, would rather expose his bare head to the wet than allow his
+cloak to be spoilt by the rain. The Spaniards always took the Landgrave
+a day's march before the Emperor; they were very disorderly and ill
+conducted, for they left their dead lying on the road which the Emperor
+had to pass, and behaved shamefully to men, women, and children.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the 1st of July he arrived at Bamberg. The Emperor made his
+entrance with a great concourse of people about midday; he was mounted
+on a little horse. In the suburb there was a street turning off to the
+right, and in the corner house was lodged the imprisoned Elector of
+Saxony, so that on one side he could look out into the fields, and on
+the other into the city. He was standing above at the window, to watch
+the Imperial procession; and when the Emperor approached the corner, he
+bowed lowly before him: the Emperor kept his eyes fixed on him as long
+as he could see him, and laughed deridingly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the 3rd of July the Emperor fixed the 1st of September for the Diet
+to be held at Augsburg. The Spaniards carried away from the bishopric
+of Bamberg upwards of four hundred women, maidens, and maidservants to
+Nuremberg. From thence they sent them home again; the parents,
+husbands, and brothers had followed them to Nuremberg; fathers seeking
+their daughters, husbands their wives, and brothers their sisters, and
+there each one found his own again. Was not that a wicked nation? thus
+to act when war was over, in a friend's country, and in the presence of
+the Imperial Majesty, who nevertheless keeps very strict rule. Every
+evening where his tent was erected, he caused a gallows to be raised,
+and had them hung unsparingly; yet even that was of no avail.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When he left Nuremberg, the Duke of Leignitz, who usually passed his
+nights in drunken revelry, for once rose early and rode to the
+Emperor's lodging, where he arrived at six o'clock, but found that the
+Emperor had already been gone two hours. The duke was too much ashamed
+to follow; but sent two of his councillors to Augsburg, and returned to
+his own country, where he continued his disorderly life. Once when he
+was very tipsy he commanded the councillors, at the peril of their
+lives, to put him into a tower and feed him with bread and water; and
+if they disobeyed him, he would have their heads off. They took him to
+a tower wherein there were already prisoners; he was let down into the
+hole where they were, and the keeper received orders not to let him
+out, and to feed him with nothing but bread and water. When he had
+outslept his drunkenness he roused himself, and began to talk with the
+prisoners, and called to the gaoler to set him free. The man told him
+it was strictly forbidden; but he made it known to the councillors, who
+temporized till the third day. The duke meanwhile did not desist from
+ordering the gaoler to beg the councillors to give in and release him.
+Then they went to him in the prison, and heard him begging and
+entreating; but they told him what he had commanded them, on pain of
+having their heads cut off, and they knew that he would not trifle with
+them, and therefore dared not let him out. But as he promised by
+everything that was high and holy not to injure them, they released
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He continued his mad wild life until he ruined his people and country
+and his own health. He died, leaving his wife, who was a Duchess of
+Mecklenburg, and their children in the greatest poverty. His widow
+complained to the city councils that she was in great need, and knew
+not what to do, nor how to bring up her sons according to their
+position; and begged that they would assist her. So the council of
+Stralsund sent her some thalers by a special messenger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At the end of July, his Imperial Majesty arrived with the whole army
+at Augsburg; he had left the Landgrave with a troop of Spaniards at
+Donauw�rth, but had brought the captive Elector along with him to
+Augsburg, and had quartered him in the house of Welser, in the wine
+market; it was separated from the Emperor's palace by two houses and a
+little street, and was close to our inn. The Emperor had a way made
+through the two houses, and a bridge made over the little street, so
+that he could pass from his rooms into those of the Elector. The latter
+kept house himself, and had his chancellor Minkwitz and his own
+attendants with him, so that no Spaniards need enter either his
+sitting, or his sleeping rooms. The Duke of Alva and other great lords
+of the Imperial court had free access to and held friendly intercourse
+with him, and enlivened him by their society. In the courtyard of the
+Elector's dwelling, which was built and furnished in princely style,
+there was a circus, where they threw the spear; he was also allowed to
+ride to any of the places of amusement and ornamental gardens, of which
+there were many at Augsburg; and because from his youth he had always
+taken delight in fencing, and had been an adept at it when younger and
+more active, fencing-schools were erected for his pleasure; but the
+Spanish soldiers guarded him. Besides this, he was allowed to read
+books and so forth up to the end of the Diet, when he refused to accept
+the interim. But with the Landgrave at Donauw�rth it did not fare so
+well; the Spaniards were all day long in his rooms. When he was at his
+window looking into the square, one or two Spaniards were always beside
+him, stretching out their necks as far as his. Armed Spaniards lay all
+night in his room, and when the watch was changed, and the new one came
+in with drums and fifes, those who had kept guard half the night
+uncovered the bed and said, 'See there, we deliver him to you;
+henceforth you must guard him.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Methinks that this was indeed keeping the promise made at Halle:
+'Truly I will teach you to laugh.' His Imperial Majesty as soon as he
+arrived at Augsburg, caused a gallows to be erected in the middle of
+the city close to the Town Hall, in order to create terror, and near it
+also a platform on which the bowstring was administered; and directly
+opposite another, about the height of a middle-sized man, whereon
+people were broken on the wheel, beheaded, strangled, quartered, and
+the like.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was truly a warlike Diet, for there were already in the garrison
+ten companies of <i>Landsknechte</i>, besides the Spanish and German troops
+which the Emperor brought with him to Augsburg, who were encamped in
+the country round the city. But it was also a notable and stately Diet,
+for the Emperor and King were there, all the Electors in person, with
+large bodies of followers; the Elector of Brandenburg with his wife,
+the Cardinal of Trent, Duke Heinrich of Brunswick with his two sons
+Carl Victor and Philip, Margrave Albrecht of Culmbach, Duke Wolfgang,
+Palatine of the Rhine, Duke Augustus of Saxony, Duke Albrecht of
+Bavaria, &amp;c., Frau Maria, the Emperor's sister, and the daughter of his
+sister, the widow of Lorraine; the wives of the Margrave and of the
+Bavarian Duke; item; ambassadors of foreign potentates; besides these
+many bishops and abbots, numberless counts, barons, citizens of the
+Imperial cities, illustrious envoys, and excellent men. I must not
+forget Michael the Jew, who considered himself a great man, and rode
+through the streets on a well-caparisoned horse, splendidly attired,
+his neck covered with gold chains. He was always surrounded by ten or
+twelve of his servants, all Jews, accoutred as troopers. He was a
+distinguished-looking man, and it is said that his true father was a
+Count von Rheinfelden. The hereditary Marshal of Pappenheim, an old
+gentleman who could not see very distinctly, not only took off his hat,
+but also bent his knee to him, as he would to one greater than himself.
+When he found afterwards that it was Michael, he repented that he had
+shown such honour to a Jew, and exclaimed, 'May God confound thee, thou
+old rogue of a Jew.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Splendid banquets were held at the Diet, and there were dances almost
+every evening, both foreign and German. King Ferdinand especially was
+seldom without guests; they were always treated magnificently, with all
+kinds of pastimes and splendid dances. He had exceedingly fine music,
+not only instrumental, but also singing. Besides other diversions, he
+had always behind him a witty fool, whose powers he knew how to bring
+out, and to meet his lively sallies with a retort, his tongue was never
+still. I saw one evening at his house a dance, in which a Spanish
+gentleman, attired in a long closed robe, reaching to the ground, so
+that one could not see his feet, led out a young lady, and danced with
+her an <i>Algarde</i> or <i>Passionesa</i> (as they call it, I know nothing about
+it); he sprang about so wonderfully, and she likewise, and they went so
+well together, that it was a pleasure to see them. His brother, the
+Emperor of Rome, on the contrary, gave no banquets, and did not even
+entertain his own attendants; when they accompanied him from the church
+to the chamber in which he dined, giving each of them his hand, he
+dismissed them, and placed himself alone at table. Neither did he talk;
+only once when he came out of the church into his chamber, he looked
+round, and not seeing Carlowitz,<a name="div2_46" href="#div2Ref_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> he said to Duke Maurice, '<i>Ubi est
+noster Carlovitius?</i>' and when the latter answered, 'Most Gracious
+Emperor, he is somewhat unwell,' he called out to his doctor in
+Flemish, 'Vesali, you must go to Carlowitz; he is said to be somewhat
+unwell; see if you cannot restore him.' I have often seen the Emperor
+dine during the Diet, but he never invited his brother, King Ferdinand,
+to dine with him. The dinner was brought up by the young princes and
+counts, and there were always four courses, each consisting of six
+dishes, which were placed on the table before him, and the covers
+removed one by one; he shook his head at those which he did not desire,
+nodded when he wished to partake of one, and drew the dish towards him.
+The fine pies, game, and well-dressed dainties were sent away, and he
+would keep a roast pig, and calf's head, and suchlike: he did not allow
+it to be cut for him, nor did he often himself use the knife, except to
+cut many small pieces of bread as large as he could put into his mouth
+with each bit of meat. He then loosened with his knife, the corner
+which he liked best of the dish he wished to eat; he broke it with his
+fingers, held the dish under his chin, and ate in this primitive manner
+so neatly and cleanly that it was a pleasure to see him. When he wished
+to drink--and he only drank thrice during his meal--he nodded to his
+physicians, who were standing before the table; they went forthwith to
+the treasury, where were kept two silver bottles and a crystal cup
+which held about a pint and a half, and filled the glass out of the two
+bottles; this he drank clean off, so that not a drop remained therein,
+and he had to take breath two or three times before he withdrew it from
+his mouth. He never spoke whilst at table, and though there were fools
+standing behind him, who cut all kinds of jokes, he did not heed them;
+at the utmost he twisted his mouth into a half-smile if they said
+something very amusing. He did not care that many should stand round to
+see an Emperor eating. He had a splendid choir, as well as instrumental
+music, which performed in the churches but never in his own rooms. The
+dinner did not last an hour; then everything was removed, and seats and
+tables put away, so that nothing remained but the four walls, hung on
+all sides with costly tapestry. When grace had been said before him,
+they handed him a little quill for a toothpick; then he washed himself
+and placed himself in a corner of the chamber at the window, and any
+one might come, and either present a written petition or speak
+themselves, and he told them on the spot where they might obtain an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There were fine doings also amongst the princes and lords, both
+spiritual and temporal. I was once looking on when the Margrave
+Albrecht was drinking and playing at the <i>Peilketafel</i>,<a name="div2_47" href="#div2Ref_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> with other
+young princes and young bishops who were not born princes; they did not
+give each other their titles, but called mockingly, 'Shoot away,
+priest; what does it matter? you will never hit the mark;' and the
+bishop replied after an equally vulgar fashion. Young princes lay upon
+the ground with princesses and countesses, for they did not sit upon
+benches or seats, but costly carpets were spread about the rooms,
+whereon they could sit and stretch themselves comfortably. They
+squandered upon extravagant banqueting, not only what was in their
+exchequers and what they had brought to the Diet, which amounted to
+many thousand thalers, but they were obliged, with great difficulty and
+vexation and irreparable loss, to borrow enough to enable them to leave
+Augsburg with becoming style. The subjects of certain princes,
+particularly of the Duke of Bavaria, whose wife was daughter of the
+King of Rome, collected some thousand gulden only for play, which they
+made a present of to their lords, who lost it all.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I often addressed petitions to the Bishop of Arras, Doctor Marquardt,
+and other councillors; but as I did not of my own accord find out what
+was usual to be done to gain favour in courts and great cities and with
+lords, Doctor John Marquardt cleverly gave me to understand that it
+would give him particular pleasure to possess a pretty little horse,
+whereon he might ride to the council, as was customary at the Imperial
+court; I wrote therefore to Pomerania, and they sent me a fine horse,
+with an order to have suitable riding gear made for it, and then to
+present it to the doctor, together with three large Portuguese pieces
+of gold, which the doctor gladly accepted without any hesitation. A
+great treasure of silver, gold, money, and money's worth of costly and
+rare goods, was presented to Herr von Granvella, whereby the Electors,
+princes, and cities thought to obtain his favour with his Imperial
+Majesty. He carried it on large waggons and strong mules along with him
+on his return home, and when he was asked what was on the waggons and
+mules, he answered, '<i>Peccata Germani�</i>.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At the earnest entreaties and supplications of the Electors of Saxony
+and Brandenburg, the Emperor fixed a day in December to decide the
+matter concerning the Landgrave of Hesse. Now the Elector Duke Maurice
+was intriguing with the Duchess of Bavaria, and on the Sunday morning
+before the Monday on which the long-desired decision was to be given,
+he placed himself in a sledge, for it had frozen hard, and there was
+snow on the roads. Carlowitz came running to him from the Chancellery,
+and said, 'Whither will your Electoral Grace drive?' The Elector
+answered: 'I drive to Munich.' I was standing outside the gate, so that
+I and others who were near could hear all that passed. Carlowitz then
+said: 'Has your Electoral Grace forgotten that to-morrow his Imperial
+Majesty's decision will be given in the business so important to your
+Electoral Grace and to the Elector of Brandenburg?' The Elector
+replied: 'I will drive to Munich.' Then Carlowitz answered: 'You owe it
+to me that you have become an Elector of note, but you have conducted
+yourself so frivolously at this Diet, that you have brought on yourself
+the contempt of the distinguished persons of all nations, and of their
+Imperial and Royal Majesties.' As he was saying this, Duke Maurice
+touched his horses with the whip, and drove out of the gate. Carlowitz
+called out to him loudly: 'Go your way in the devil's name, and may God
+confound you in your driving and all else.' When the Elector returned
+from Munich, Carlowitz was on the point of starting for Leipzig, as he
+said the new year's fair was at hand, and he must needs be there, or he
+would lose some thousand thalers; so the Elector, wishing to retain
+him, was obliged to present him with that amount. Neither of the
+Electors appeared on the appointed day before his Imperial Majesty, nor
+was a decision come to on the matter of the imprisoned Landgrave. For
+as the drive to Munich, and the conversation betwixt Duke Maurice and
+Carlowitz, which had been held in open day in the streets, and heard by
+many, was not concealed from his Imperial Majesty, he considered the
+many entreaties of this prince more as mockery than earnest, and no
+further day was fixed upon to hear the cause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The German Landsknechte of the garrison at Augsburg had not been paid
+for some months, and it was reported that the fine upon the Landgrave
+and the cities, out of which they were to have been paid, had been
+collected, but that the Duke of Alva had lost it at play with the
+imprisoned Landgrave, so they were kept long without their pay: then
+some of them fell upon the ensigns' quarters, seized flags, and marched
+thus with colours flying in battle order to the wine market. When the
+standard bearers were marching along in good order, an arrogant
+Spaniard, desirous of gaining honour, of deserving the favour of his
+Imperial Majesty, and of immortalizing his name, sprang upon the
+ensign, and tore the flag out of his hands. The ensign was followed by
+three men-at-arms, one of them struck this wretch in two like a carrot,
+according to the saying: 'He who seeks danger perishes therein.' When
+the Landsknechte reached the wine market there was a great running to
+and fro of the Spanish soldiers, who beset all the streets leading to
+the wine market, and carried off the imprisoned Elector to the
+Emperor's palace, for they feared he might be taken away: all the
+inhabitants, especially merchants and tradesmen, who had collected
+costly goods, silk stuffs, silver and gold, pearls and precious stones
+on the occasion of the Diet, were greatly afraid lest the city should
+be plundered, which might well have happened had the Landsknechte
+sought to pay themselves. There arose therefore wild cries, uproar, and
+running about; every one armed himself in earnest, citizens and
+strangers kept to their houses and apartments arquebuse in hand and
+their guns ready to fire, and every one did what he could for the
+protection of his own, so that the Diet might indeed have become an
+armed one.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But the Emperor sent to the Landsknechte to inquire what they wanted,
+and they, holding their guns in the left hand, and in the right,
+burning matches close to the touchhole, answered, 'Either money or
+blood?' Then the Emperor sent them word that they were to rest
+satisfied, as they should certainly be paid the next day. But they
+would not withdraw without the assurance that they would not be
+punished for having assembled in front of the Emperor's lodging. This
+the Emperor promised, so they withdrew, were paid the next day, and
+dismissed. But what happened? Some spies were sent out to mingle
+unperceived and travel for two or three days with the leaders of the
+Landsknechte, to find out whether they spoke ill or mockingly of his
+Imperial Majesty; if so, they were to call assistance and bring the men
+back prisoners to Augsburg. The second or third evening the
+Landsknechte had a jovial bout at an inn, for they had money in their
+pockets, and thought themselves as safe as if they were in the land of
+Prester John, and had no idea that there were traitors sitting with
+them: then they spoke of the Emperor in this fashion: 'Yes indeed! one
+ought to allow this Charles of Ghent to take soldiers and not to pay
+them! But we would have taught him better, and have paid him for it;
+may God confound him.' After these words they were seized, taken back
+to Augsburg, and hanged at Berlach on the gallows, and a tiny little
+flag stuck on the breast of each.&quot;--So far Sastrow.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">By his account of the revolt of the German Landsknechte it may be seen
+how insecure was then the highest earthly power. A few years later the
+new Elector, Maurice of Saxony, was able in a moment by a sudden
+expedition to overpower the experienced master of foreign politics.
+Neither the Emperor nor any other prince maintained a large standing
+army; even the Imperial power stood on a rotten foundation, and the
+Emperor Charles was in a difficult position with respect to the German
+soldiery. However easy was the conscience of the Landsknechte, and
+however ready they were to sell themselves for money, they were yet not
+entirely without political tendencies. Most of them were well disposed
+towards the Protestants, and even those who had helped to overthrow
+their comrades of the Saxon service at the battle of M�hlberg,
+discovered with vexation after the combat, that they had given a deadly
+blow to the Protestant cause. The memory of Luther was dear to them;
+but far deeper lay their hatred for the Spanish soldiers of Charles,
+that faithful invincible infantry who had bled for their king on the
+battle-fields of half Europe. The Emperor had himself excited the civil
+war in Germany; a few years later, the German soldiers marched
+defiantly against his anointed head. Most of the German princes, even
+the enemies of the Ernestine and Hesse, felt like these soldiers. The
+great Emperor had made an irreparable rent in the loose tissue of the
+German empire; for this had been no exercise of Imperial power, as once
+against the mad W�rtemberger; but it was a civil war in its broadest
+acceptation; it was a personal struggle of the Hapsburger against the
+German princes. Henceforth the German sovereigns knew what they had to
+expect from their Emperor: the last respect for order and duty to the
+Empire vanished, and each had cause to look after his own interests.
+The only safety against the fearful power of the Hapsburger was to be
+found in alliance with foreign sovereigns. More bold became the
+intercourse with France, and whoever opposed the Emperor looked there
+for help. Maurice of Saxony and Albrecht of Brandenburg rose against
+the Emperor in alliance with France. The German general, Sch�rtlin, who
+was in the French pay, assisted in depriving Germany of Metz, Toul, and
+Verdun. The younger princes of Germany went to the courts of the
+Valois, the Guises, and the Bourbon, to acquire refinement and obtain
+money and rank in the army; and this was done not only by the
+Protestant princes, but also by the Roman Catholics and even
+ecclesiastical Electors. The overpowering influence of France on the
+fate of the Fatherland dates not from the time of Richelieu, but from
+the wars of Charles V. The real disruption of the German empire dated
+from the battle of M�hlberg and the Diet of Augsburg; and however
+objectionable the alliance of these German princes with a foreign power
+may appear to us, it must not be forgotten, that it was owing to the
+un-German policy of the Imperial house. The destroyer of German
+self-dependence, the great Emperor, met with his punishment almost
+immediately. A very different man from the scrupulous and irresolute
+John Frederic, had received the electoral crown from Charles; his own
+disciple in self-seeking policy, with an overbearing character, without
+consideration, and secret in his resolves, like the Emperor himself. So
+Charles reaped what he had sown: the Landsknechte of Maurice drove him
+even to the last gorges of the Alps. The naked egotism of the Wettiner
+triumphed over the reckless policy of the great Hapsburger. What the
+lord of half Europe had striven for all his life, slipped out of his
+hands. Germany was not to be governed in his way; he had not been able
+to guide the great movement of the German mind, nor yet could he
+entirely destroy it. He had not succeeded in making the German princes
+serviceable to his house, nor had he been able to destroy their power.
+The far-seeing cautious player threw up his game, and quietly, as was
+his wont, laid down the cards. He himself, with a heavy heart, broke in
+two the power of his house.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This did not render the political position of Germany more hopeful. The
+life of Maurice also passed away like a meteor, and his wild associate
+Albrecht of Brandenburg died an early and miserable death.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then followed the feuds of Grumbach and Cologne, the disputes of
+J�lich, and the disorders of Bohemia; one quarrel more contemptible
+than the other, and the leaders of both parties equally incapable. The
+end was the Thirty years' war.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A BURGHER FAMILY.</h3>
+<h4>(1488-1542.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Our narrative descends from the highest sphere of German life to the
+lower circles, in the individual families of which the characteristic
+life of the time may be traced. A series of examples shall lead us from
+the hardships of the peasant to the life of the privileged classes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">From all times the peasantry have been the great source, from which
+fresh family vigour has ascended into the guilds of the cities and the
+closets of the learned. Therefore the basis of the prosperity of a
+people lies in the simple occupations of the peasant, in that human
+labour in which mind and body, work and rest, joy and sorrow, are
+regulated by Nature herself; whenever such labour is repressed,
+limited, and fettered, the whole nation becomes diseased. The
+destruction of the free peasant has more than once undermined the
+political existence of states, as for example in Poland; and indeed it
+caused the deadly weakness of the great Roman empire and the decay of
+the ancient world. The more abundantly and freely fresh vigour ascends
+from the lower strata into the higher circles, the more powerful and
+energetic will be the political life of the nation. And again, the less
+declining families are prevented, by artificial supports, from falling
+into the great mass of the people, the more rapid and vigorous will be
+the ascent of those who are struggling upwards.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was by favouring in a remarkable degree the rise of families out of
+this great source of national vigour, that the Reformation revived the
+youth of the nation. The abolition of enforced celibacy was one of the
+greatest steps towards social progress; it secures still the ascendency
+of the Protestant over the Roman Catholic districts. Up to the time of
+Luther, the greatest portion of the German popular strength which arose
+from the cottage of the labourer, was destined to wither beneath the
+consecrating oil. It is true the marriage of priests had never entirely
+ceased during the middle ages. There was even a cardinal who was
+regularly married; his wife established herself with him, in spite of
+the Pope and College of Cardinals, and was able, when weeping by the
+side of the corpse, to relate to the sympathizing Romans the astounding
+fact that her husband had been always true to her. And in Germany, the
+housekeepers of the priests, the <i>Papemeiers</i> of Reineke Fuchs, formed
+a numerous and not unpretending class. But the country priests were
+obliged to buy tolerance for such unions from the bishop and <i>curie</i>.
+But however the higher ecclesiastical authorities may have favoured
+such a system, it was considered as immoral by conscientious pastors,
+and some even had scruples as to the propriety of their celebrating the
+mass. But the people looked with hatred and scorn on these profligate
+unions, and one of the greatest evils was, that the children remained
+as long as they lived under the curse of their birth; hardly any branch
+of trade was open to them; even the guilds of artisans would not
+receive them. They became either working men or vagrants. Yet such
+lasting unions of the Roman Catholic priests were generally, in the
+time of Luther, a benefit to their parishes, for we see in hundreds of
+pamphlets how recklessly the roving sensuality of the priests destroyed
+the family life of their parishes. With the Protestants, on the
+contrary, the ecclesiastical order became the medium by which the
+countryman rose to a higher sphere of activity. By his village life and
+little farm, the pastor became closely united with the peasantry, and
+was at the same time the preserver of the highest education of those
+centuries. So important has been the influence of the Protestant clergy
+on the intellectual development of Germany, that the ancestors, even to
+the third and fourth generation, of most of the great poets, artists,
+and learned men, and the intellectual members of the German
+bureaucracy, lived in a Protestant parsonage.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What follows will portray the life of a family which at the end of the
+fifteenth century migrated from the village to the city, and in the
+third generation became the ruling family in a great commercial town.
+It may be seen from this narrative, that though family life was not
+then deficient in hearty and naive cheerfulness, yet the conception of
+life and duty was rough, and the amount of benevolence small, though
+family feeling was strong.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">United with violence and robbery, we find the commencement of a very
+modern system of police; the first prosecutions on account of offences
+of the press.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">We are to a certain extent aware that three hundred years ago, the life
+of individuals was of less value than now; but we shall yet learn with
+astonishment from the old narrative, how frequently deeds of violence
+and blood disturbed the peace of households. We find that in a quiet
+burgher family the grandfather was the victim of premeditated murder;
+the father killed another in self-defence, and the son was attacked on
+the public road by highwaymen, one of whom he killed, but was mortally
+wounded by the other. Lastly, it will interest many to observe how the
+great theologian who then divided Christendom into two camps, exercised
+an influence as family counsellor even on the shores of the Baltic, and
+how by his word he brought the souls of strangers to obedience and
+reverence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The following communications are again taken from the comprehensive
+autobiography of Bartholom�us Sastrow, Burgomaster of Stralsund. His
+own life was unusually varied and rich in experiences. He was sent,
+when a young man, with his elder brother to the Imperial Court of
+Justice at Spire, to manage his father's lawsuit and to seek a
+livelihood for himself. He was first in the service of lawyers, then of
+one of the commanders of the Order of St. John, and afterwards found
+his way to Italy, in order to wrest from the hands of the Romish
+ecclesiastics the heritage of his elder brother, who had been crowned
+with laurels and ennobled by the Emperor as an improvisatore in Latin
+poetry, and who afterwards, on account of an unfortunate love affair,
+had gone with a broken heart to Italy and died in the service of a
+cardinal.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The younger brother returned home from Italy in the midst of the
+confusion of the Smalkaldic war, entered into the service of the
+Pomeranian dukes, who sent him as political agent to the Imperial camp,
+and solicitor to the supreme court of judicature of the Diet of
+Augsburg. He then settled himself in Greifswald, and gained, as an
+expert notary, practice and wealth in Pomerania, removed to Stralsund,
+became Burgomaster there, and died at an advanced age in great repute
+as a skilful, cunning, hot-headed, and probably often hard and partial
+man. Thus he begins his narrative:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;About the year 1488, my father, the son of Hans Sastrow, was born at
+Ranzin at the sign of the Kruge, which lies near the churchyard towards
+Anklam, and belongs to the <i>Junker</i> Osten zu Quilow. Now this Hans
+Sastrow by far surpassed the <i>Junker</i> Horne, who also dwelt at Ranzin,
+in wealth, comeliness, strength, and understanding, so that even before
+his marriage he could compete with them in the extent of their land.
+Whereat the Hornes were sore vexed, and endeavoured to the utmost to
+work him shame, injury, and damage, and even to endanger his health and
+life. When he found that the enmity of the Hornes daily increased, he
+resolved to take himself and his family out of danger; and about the
+year 1487, he, settling his affairs in a friendly manner with his
+Junker, the old Hans Osten zu Quilow obtained the right of citizen at
+Greifswald, and there bought the corner house of Fleischhauerstrasse,
+opposite to Herr Brand Hartmann, and gradually conveyed his property
+from Ranzin to this new house. So that a year before my father's birth,
+he gave up his vassalage to the Ostens, and entered the burgher class.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;See now what happened! Mark well this atrocious murderous deed! In the
+year 1494 there was a christening feast at Gribow, which lies not far
+from Ranzin, to the right in going from Greifswald, and there one of
+the Hornes had a property. To this same christening feast my
+grandfather, Hans Sastrow, being invited as nearest relation, led by
+the hand his little son, my father, then about seven years old, along
+the road passing the church.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The Hornes of Ranzin did not wish to lose this opportunity of giving
+him a parting valediction; and of putting in action what they had
+planned in their hearts for many years. So they rode to Gribow as if
+they wished to visit their cousin there; and in order to spy out the
+best opportunity, went to the christening feast, and placed themselves
+at the table where my grandfather sat, for they had fallen so low that
+they did not despise peasant fare and society. When the Hornes, late in
+the afternoon, were very drunk, they all got up and staggered to the
+stables. They fancied themselves alone; but one of my grandfather's
+relations standing in the corner of the stable, heard all that they
+were proposing to do: they were to hasten to their horses so soon as
+they should perceive that my grandfather was about to depart, to waylay
+him and to beat him and his little son to death.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The man came to my grandfather and told him what he had heard in the
+stable, and counselled him to start and go home while it was yet day.
+This my grandfather agreed to; he got up, took his little son, my
+father, by the hand, and proceeded towards Ranzin. But when he came to
+the coppice on the moor, which was overgrown with bushes and brambles,
+and about half way between Ranzin and Gribow, the murderous villains
+intercepted his path, trampled him down under their horses' hoofs, and
+wounded him so badly that they thought he was dead. They were however
+not satisfied therewith, but dragged him to a great stone, which even
+now lies on the moor, chopped off his right hand, and so left him for
+dead. But the boy, my father, had in the mean while crept along the
+moor and hidden himself in some bushes on a grass hill, so that they
+could not come near him with their horses, nor find him in the bushes,
+as it began to be dark.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The other peasants had ridden after the Hornes, to see what they had
+done: they found the wounded man thus mangled, and fetched the boy from
+the moor: one of these ran to Ranzin and brought quickly a cart and
+horses, on which they placed the wounded man, who showed no signs of
+life, except that on their arrival at Ranzin he gave a last gasp and
+expired.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The friends of the orphan boy, my father, sold the new house and
+turned everything into money, so that they amassed altogether about two
+thousand gulden. Few of the nobles at that period allowed their
+subjects to possess so much. These friends did their best by the boy,
+had him taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and sent him to
+Antwerp, and afterwards to Amsterdam, that he might be fitted to become
+a merchant. When, having attained a right age, he returned home and
+took possession of his property, he bought at the corner of the high
+street and Hundstrasse, directly opposite to the church of St.
+Nicholas, two houses and two shops. One of the former he turned into a
+dwelling-house, the other into a brewhouse, and one of the shops into a
+gateway, whereon he expended much cost and labour. Now as people were
+well pleased with his comely person, and he had good hopes of having a
+sufficient maintenance, my mother's guardian and nearest relations
+promised her to him in marriage.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My mother was the daughter of Bartholom�us Smiterlow, the brother of
+the Herr B�rgermeister Nicholaus Smiterlow; she was a truly pretty
+woman, small and delicately formed, amiable and lively, free from
+pride, neat and domestic, and to the end of her life devout and
+God-fearing. In the year 1514 my parents were married, and in 1515 the
+good God gave them a son, whom they called after my paternal
+grandfather Johannes. In 1517 was born my sister Anne, the relict of
+Peter Frubos, Burgomaster of Greifswald. In 1520 I came into the world,
+and was named after my maternal grandfather, Bartholom�us.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;One of my five younger sisters, Catherine, was an excellent, amiable,
+lovely, faithful, and pious maiden. When my brother Johannes came home
+from Wittenberg, where he was a student, she bade him tell her how one
+could say in Latin 'That is truly a beautiful maiden;' he said
+'<i>Profecto formosa puella.</i>' She asked further how could one say
+'rather so:' he replied, '<i>sic satis</i>.' Some time after, three
+students, sons of gentlemen, came from Wittenberg to see the town; they
+had been recommended by Christian Smiterlow to the hospitality of his
+father, the burgomaster Herr Nicolaus Smiterlow, who was desirous to
+entertain them well, and to have good society for them. As he had three
+grown-up daughters, my sister Catherine was invited, besides other
+guests. The students exchanged all kinds of jokes with the maidens, and
+also said to one another in Latin what it would not have been seemly to
+say before maidens in German, as young fellows are wont to do. At last
+one said to the other '<i>Profecto formosa puella</i>;' whereupon my sister
+answered '<i>sic satis</i>;' then were they much afraid, fancying that she
+had also understood their former amatory talk. In the year 1544 she
+made a most unfortunate marriage with Christoph Meier, a coarse man,
+who wasted, idled away, and dissipated all that he had, even what he
+had received with my sister.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My mother accustomed her daughters from their youth up, to suitable
+household work. Once when my sister Gertrude, who was about five years
+old, was sitting spinning at her distaff--for spinning-wheels were not
+then in use--my brother Johannes told her that his Imperial Majesty had
+summoned a Diet, where the Emperor, Kings, Electors, princes, counts,
+and great lords would be assembled: she inquired what they would do
+there, and he answered, 'That they would determine and decree what was
+to be done in the world.' Then the little maiden at the distaff gave a
+deep sigh, and said dolefully: 'Oh good God! if they would only decree
+that such little children should not spin.' This sister, together with
+my mother and two other sisters, Magdalen and Catherine, died in peace
+in the year '49, when the plague was raging: my mother went first, and
+as my sisters were weeping bitterly, she said to them when dying: 'Why
+do you weep? pray rather that God would in his mercy shorten my pain.'
+Some days after, my youngest sister Gertrude died: although my eldest
+unmarried sister Magdalen was herself nigh unto death, she rose from
+her bed, and laid out not only Gertrude's shroud and winding-sheet, but
+her own also, and desired that when Gertrude was buried, the grave
+should be left open, being only lightly covered with earth, that she
+might be laid next to her; she then returned to her bed, and lived till
+the next day after Gertrude was buried: so she died, the tallest and
+strongest of all my sisters, an excellent, clever, and industrious
+housekeeper. This was written to me by my sister Catherine two days
+before her own death, who added, that it was even so with herself, that
+she was about to follow her mother and sisters, and that she did yearn
+for it, and she did admonish me not to grieve thereat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now my parents when they were first married were comfortably
+established; their buildings were finished, they were prosperous, and
+possessed plenty of feathers, wool, honey, butter, and corn; they had
+their stately mill and brewery; when suddenly all this happiness
+changed into sorrow and misfortune: for in the same year 1523, George
+Hartmann, the son-in-law of Doctor Stoientin,<a name="div2_48" href="#div2Ref_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a> bought of my father a
+quarter of butter, and they came to angry words thereupon. Hartmann,
+who was going to carry a sword to Herr Peter Korchschwantz, went on his
+way to complain to his mother-in-law: she, who was haughty and very
+rich, had married a doctor, councillor to the prince, and looked down
+upon smaller people; she put an axe into his hand with these words:
+'See, I give you a trifle, go to the market and buy yourself a heart.'
+He then met my father, who was without arms, and had not even his
+bread-knife with him, as he was going to have a pot of honey weighed at
+the weighing-place in the streets where the locksmiths lived. Hartmann,
+armed with sword and axe, fell upon him; my father springing into the
+house of one of the smiths, seized a spit; the boys tore it away from
+him, and also prevented him from using the ladder which was standing
+near the gallery; but he tore from the wall a hunting-spear, and
+running out into the street with it, called out: 'Where is he who wants
+to take my life?' thereupon Hartmann sprang out of the adjoining
+smith's house, having added to his former weapons a hammer from the
+anvil, which he threw at my father, and though he parried the blow with
+the spear, yet the hammer glided along the spear and hit him on the
+breast, so that he spit blood for some days. Immediately after,
+Hartmann struck him with the axe on the shoulder; having now hit him
+with both hammer and axe, and fancying he had the best of it, he
+unsheathed his sword, and rushing at my father, ran on the spear, which
+went into his body up to the handle, so that he fell. This is the true
+account of this lamentable story; I know well that the adversaries
+maintain that my father stabbed Hartmann when he was hiding himself
+behind the stove in the smith's room, but it is a mere fable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My father hastened straight to the monastery of the Black Monks, with
+whom he was acquainted, and they took him into the church, up under the
+vaulted roof. Doctor Stoientin with many assistants and servants
+searched every corner of the monastery, and came also into the church.
+My father, thinking they saw him, was on the point of speaking out and
+entreating that they would spare him, as he was innocent and had only
+acted in self-defence; but the merciful God prevented him from
+speaking, and shut the eyes of his adversaries so that they could not
+see him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the night the monks let him down over the wall, so that he
+could walk along the dyke to the village of Neukirchen. There my
+step-grandfather arranged that my father should go to Stralsund, in a
+cart that he had ordered from Leitz, concealed among some sacks of
+barley and fodder. Stoientin met the peasant in the night, and asked
+him where he was going. 'To Stralsund,' he said. He kicked at the sacks
+and inquired what load he was carrying. The other replied: 'Barley and
+fodder.' He then asked whether the peasant had not seen some one riding
+or running; the latter answered: 'He had seen one riding hastily
+towards the village of Horst, who had appeared to him like Sastrow from
+Greifswald; and he had been astonished at his riding so hastily in the
+night.' So Doctor Stoientin left the peasant and rode to Horst; but my
+father arrived at Stralsund and obtained a safe conduct from the
+councillor there.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But my father could not trust to this, as the deceased had himself
+been under the safe conduct of my gracious sovereign Duke George; and
+Dr. Stoientin, the councillor of his princely grace, made good avail of
+it against my father; besides this, the adversaries were rich, proud,
+and powerful. So he was obliged to wander about in Denmark, going also
+to L�beck, Hamburg, and elsewhere, till he conciliated the reigning
+prince by a considerable sum, which he was obliged to pay in ready
+money.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And although later, after repeated endeavours, and at the cost of much
+labour and exertion on the part of my step-grandfather, my father
+became reconciled with the offended party, upon the payment of
+blood-money to the amount of one thousand marks, he could not remain
+unmolested at Greifswald, on account of these adversaries residing
+there. But it may be seen how little this blood-money prospered with
+the son and heirs of the deceased, for evil and misfortune to person,
+land, and property pursued both wife and children.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thus my mother was left in her youth without a husband, to keep house
+with four uneducated children. One can well imagine how many sad and
+sorrowful thoughts weighed upon her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Whilst my mother was dwelling in Greifswald, I went to school there,
+and learnt not only to read, but also to decline, parse, and conjugate
+in the Donat. On Palm-Sunday I had to sing the '<i>Quantus</i>,' having sung
+the foregoing years first the lesser and then the great '<i>Hic
+est.</i>'<a name="div2_49" href="#div2Ref_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This was a great honour to the boy, and no small pleasure to his
+parents, for the most courageous scholars were always selected for it,
+who were not alarmed at the great multitude of ecclesiastics as well as
+laymen, and could sing the <i>Quantus</i> with a loud and clear voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the year 1528, when my parents discovered that the Hartmann party
+were not to be mollified, and would not let my father return to the
+town and to his business, they desired, as is becoming an honest
+couple, to bear the burden of housekeeping together, and thus my mother
+must needs follow my father. Therefore my father became a citizen of
+Stralsund, and bought a house there; my mother in the spring quitted
+Greifswald, sold her house, and settled near the Sound. About the same
+time my step-grandfather, who was then chamberlain at Greifswald, took
+me to his house, that I might study there. I however studied very
+little, for I preferred riding and driving with my grandfather to the
+neighbouring villages, so that I made little progress in my studies.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the year 1529, my mother being pregnant, wished to have a scouring
+and washing before her confinement, as is customary with women. Now my
+parents had at this time a servant-maid who was possessed with an evil
+spirit; it had hitherto not shown itself, but now, when she had to
+scour the numerous kitchen utensils, and took down the kettle and
+saucepan, she threw them on the ground in a dreadful way, and cried
+out, with a loud voice, 'I will away!' When therefore they found the
+reason of this, her mother, who dwelt in the Patinenmacher Strasse,
+took her home, and she was taken several times in a Riga sledge to the
+church of St. Nicholas. When the sermon was ended, the spirit was
+exorcised; and it appeared from its confession, that her mother having
+bought a fresh sour cheese, and placed it in the cupboard, the maiden
+had gone there in her absence and eaten of the cheese. Now when the
+mother saw that some one had been to the cheese, she had wished that
+person possessed of the evil spirit, and ever since, he had dwelt in
+the maiden. When he was then asked how he could have remained in the
+maiden, as since then she had received the sacrament, he answered, 'A
+rogue may lie under a bridge whilst a good man is passing over;' he had
+meanwhile been under her tongue. He was not only exorcised and
+expelled, but each and every one present in the church knelt down and
+prayed diligently and devoutly. He however, loudly scoffed at the
+exorcism, for when the preacher conjured him to go away, he said he
+would depart, he must forsooth give up the field; but he demanded that
+he might be allowed to take away with him sundry things, and if this
+demand were refused, he would be free to remain. One of those present
+having his hat on whilst praying, the evil spirit begged of the
+preacher to allow him to take off this hat; he would then depart, and
+carry it away with him. I feared that, had it been permitted him by
+God, the hair and scalp would have gone with the hat. At last, when he
+perceived that his time for vexing the maiden was passed, and that our
+Lord God listened mercifully to the prayers of the believers present,
+he demanded mockingly a square of glass from the window over the tower
+clock, and when a pane was granted to him, it loosed itself visibly
+with a great clang, and flew away. After that time nothing evil was
+observed in the maiden. She got a husband in the village, and had
+children.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I went to school, and learnt as much as my wildness would
+allow me: of intelligence there was sufficient in me, as may be
+observed, but steadiness there was none. In the summer I bathed with my
+companions on the sea-shore; this my uncle saw from his garden behind
+his barn, and told it to my father, who came in the morning with a good
+rod into the room, in front of my bed, whilst I was asleep; he worked
+himself up into a rage, and spoke loud in order to awake me. When I
+awoke, and saw him standing before me, and the rod lying on the
+next bed, I knew well what was in the wind, and began to pray and
+entreat--weeping bitterly. He asked what I had done? I swore I would
+never again, all my life long, bathe in the sea. 'Yes, sir,' he said
+(when he called me 'sir,' I knew well that matters stood badly between
+us), 'if you have bathed, then I must use the mop.' Thereupon he seized
+the rod, threw my clothes over my head, and gave me my deserts. My
+parents brought up their children well. My father was somewhat hasty,
+and when his temper got the upper hand, he knew no moderation. Once
+when he was in a rage with me,--he was standing in the stable, and I in
+the doorway,--he caught hold of the pitchfork and threw it at me. I
+sprang aside, but it had been thrown with such violence, that the
+prongs stuck deep into one of the oaken tubs of the bathroom, and it
+required great strength to draw it out. Thus the merciful God hindered
+the evil designs of the devil against me and my father. But my mother,
+who was exceedingly gentle and tender, sprang forward in such cases,
+saying, 'Strike harder, the good-for-nothing boy has well deserved it!'
+But at the same time she would lay hold of the hand in which he held
+the rod, so that he might not strike too hard.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My father's house was still very unfinished, and an outhouse was built
+against it, with its entrance close to the well. A miller dwelt therein
+named Lewark-Lark,--who had many naughty children that cried day and
+night. At daybreak these young larks began to chirp, and continued the
+whole day, so that one could neither see nor hear until my father drove
+out the old larks with their young ones, pulled down the outhouse, and
+set to work in earnest to finish the whole house at great cost of
+labour and money. My parents received from Greifswald a considerable
+amount of cash; for my mother had been obliged to turn everything into
+money, so that many called him the rich man of the Vehr Strasse. But in
+a few years this appeared very doubtful, for my parents had great
+anxiety and loss of money, and also hindrance to the hoped-for
+happiness of their children as well as other detriment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For there were then in Stralsund two women who might not unjustly be
+called swindlers; the one was named Lubbe Kesske, the other Engeln;
+they both dwelt in the Altb�sser Strasse. They bought divers kinds of
+cloth from my father, which they again sold to others, but it was not
+known to whom. Sometimes they paid part of the money for the cloth; but
+whenever they gave a hundred gulden, they straightway bought to the
+amount of two hundred or more. When, however, his claim upon them
+became very large, the women only being able to pay twenty gulden, he
+inquired what had become of his property; he found that his goods to
+the amount of seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden had gone to the
+wife of the tailor Hermann Bruser, who had a considerable traffic in
+cloth, being able to sell it cheaper in retail than other cloth
+merchants; and that his eight hundred gulden had found their way to the
+mother of Jacob Leweling. When my father called to account the two
+women and the wife of Bruser, the latter and her husband, Hermann
+Bruser, offered to pay: Bruser assured my father under his hand and
+seal that at fixed terms he would make the payment. See what happened!
+The first term was due at the time of the uproar of Burgomaster Herr
+Nicholaus Smiterlow, and Hermann Bruser, who was one of the principal
+ringleaders, thought it was now all over with my father, as well as
+with the burgomaster; so he disclaimed his bond, refused payment, and
+began a lawsuit with my father which lasted more than four-and-thirty
+years; my father came to terms with the heirs of Bruser, who had to pay
+for one and all a thousand gulden. The debt itself had amounted to
+seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden, and my father's costs to
+upwards of a thousand more. Thus my father was deprived of his money
+for forty years; great inconvenience accrued to both parents and
+children. I thereby lost my studies and my brother, Magister Johannes,
+even his life, so that one may in truth say, that Hesiod's words, 'The
+half is more than the whole,' may well be applied to a lawsuit,
+particularly to one at the Imperial court, so that it would be more
+profitable to be satisfied with the half in the beginning than to
+obtain the whole by the sentence of the Imperial court.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;During the lawsuit my brother Johannes became Magister at Wittenberg,
+where he was the first among thirteen, and my parents summoned him
+home. Before his departure from Wittenberg, he begged of Dr. Martin
+Luther to write to my father, as the latter, on account of his lawsuit
+with Hermann Bruser, had abstained for some years from the Lord's
+table.<a name="div2_50" href="#div2Ref_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> The letter was thus worded:--</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">'To the honourable and discreet Nicholaus Sastrow, burgher of
+Stralsund; my kind and good friend, <i>Gratia et Pax</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">'Your dear son Magister Johannes has made known to me with touching
+lament, my dear friend, how you have abstained from the Sacrament for
+so many years, giving a scandalous example to others, and he has begged
+me to exhort you to give up such a dangerous practice, as we are not
+sure of life for a moment. So his filial, faithful care for you his
+father has moved me to write to you, and I give you my brotherly and
+Christian exhortation (such as we owe to one another in Christ) to
+desist from such a practice, and to consider that the Son of God
+suffered far more and forgave his crucifiers. And finally, when your
+hour comes, you will have to forgive as does a thief on the gallows. If
+your cause before the court lingers on, let it proceed, and wait for
+your right. Such things do not prevent us from going to the Sacrament,
+else we and also our princes could not attend, as the cause betwixt us
+and the Papists still lingers on. Commit your cause to justice, and
+meanwhile make your conscience free, and say, &quot;Whoever shall be judged
+in the right, let him be considered so, in the mean time I will forgive
+those who have done the wrong, and go to the Sacrament.&quot; Thus you will
+go not unworthily, because you desire justice and are willing to suffer
+wrong, however the judge's sentence may fall. Take kindly this
+exhortation which your son has so earnestly begged from me. Herewith I
+commend you to God. Amen. Wednesday, after Miser., A.D. 1540.</p>
+
+<p class="right">'<span class="sc">Martinus Luther</span>.'</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My children will find the original of this letter in its place with
+other important documents, and will no less carefully than myself
+preserve it as an autograph of that highly enlightened, holy, dear, and
+of the whole world praiseworthy man, and will love, and value, and keep
+it as a pleasant remembrance for their children and children's
+children.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This letter my brother brought home to my father, and in order that
+his parents might see that their money had not been spent in vain, he
+brought with him also some of his Latin poems which had been printed.
+In the following years he applied himself with industry at home to his
+private studies. For besides other poems at Rostock, he published at
+Lubeck an elegy on the Christian martyr Dr. <i>Robert Barns</i>,<a name="div2_51" href="#div2Ref_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a> which
+had a tragical result for both the printer and himself. For the poem
+came to the knowledge of the king of England, who sent an envoy to the
+city of Lubeck with bitter complaints and threatenings, as the poem had
+been published by their printer Johann Balhorn. The dignitaries of
+Lubeck made excuses for the author, although he did not dwell there nor
+belong to their jurisdiction, as he was only a young fellow who wished
+to give proof of his learning; but the publisher, Johann Balhorn, was
+sent out of the city, and had to leave it by break of day. They thereby
+appeased the king's anger, and after some months allowed Balhorn to
+return to the city.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But my brother, Magister Johann, when he was travelling home from
+Lubeck to Rostock had as companions Herr Heinrich Sonneberg and a
+female, and besides there rode near the carriage Hans Lagebusch and a
+smart young fellow, Hermann Lepper, who had exchanged <i>boguslawische
+schillinge</i> and other money for some hundred gulden coined in
+Gadebusch, and which lay in the carriage. This was discovered by
+certain highwaymen, as thievish miscreants are called. Highway robbery
+was very common in Mecklenburg, as it was never seriously punished, and
+many nobles even of the highest birth were engaged in it; so that one
+may truly say with the poet:--</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t4">'Nobilis et Nebulo parvo discrimine distant:</p>
+<p class="t6">Sic nebulo magnus nobilis esse potest.'</p>
+</div>
+<p class="continue">Nevertheless the genuine nobility, among whom are many honourable men,
+who are in all ways worthy of esteem, are not spoken of here. Now,
+thank God, there is a careful superintendence exercised in the Duchy of
+Mecklenburg; but then the highwaymen could say, if we give up three
+hundred gulden we place ourselves out of all danger, and can always
+keep the remaining two hundred. When the travellers came to the
+Ribbenitzer heath, those who were sitting in the carriage alighted from
+it, having their arms with them; and the two horsemen, who ought to
+have remained by it in that insecure place, rode forward. Against these
+the highwaymen collected themselves, one of whom joined Lagebusch, and
+talked familiarly with him. When riding so near to him that he could
+reach the stock of his pistol, which was cocked (it was not then the
+custom to carry double barrels in the saddle), he seized it out of the
+holster, and hastened therewith after Hermann Lepper, who was riding
+back to the carriage, and shot him, so that he fell from his nag. Hans
+Lagebusch took to flight, and rode to Ribbenitz; Herr Heinrich
+Sonneberg ran into the wood, and concealed himself among the bushes; my
+brother, who had a hunting-spear, placed himself against the hind
+wheel, that they might not attack him from behind; in front he defended
+himself, and kept off one after another, inflicting wounds on them, for
+he thrust his spear into the side of one of them near his leg, so that
+riding to the bushes he fell from his horse, which escaped, and he
+remained lying there. Another then fiercely attacked my brother, and
+cut a piece from his head the size of a thaler, and even a little bit
+of his skull, at the same time wounded him in the neck with his sword,
+so that he fell and was considered dead. The miscreant plundered the
+carriage, took all that was therein, and also carried off the horse of
+their wounded comrade; as they saw he was so much wounded that there
+was little life remaining in him, and not being able to carry him away,
+they left him lying there. They left the driver his horses, and rode
+away with their booty. Herr Heinrich Sonneberg returned to the
+carriage; they laid my brother in it, and the woman bound up his head
+with her handkerchief, and held it in her lap. The dead body they laid
+at his feet, and thus drove slowly to Ribbenitz. There his wounds were
+dressed, and the surgeon put some plaster on his neck. A rumour of this
+came to Rostock. The councillor sent his servants to the spot, who
+found the wounded highwayman, and took him to Rostock; but, alas! he
+died as soon as they reached the prison, so that they could not learn
+who the others were. It did not, however, remain quite secret, but was
+hushed up by their connections, and the high magistrates did not in
+good earnest investigate the matter. The dead miscreant was however
+brought before the court, and from thence taken to the Landwehr to have
+his head cut off, which was placed on a pole, where it was to be seen
+for many years. Lagebusch brought the tidings to Stralsund, and the
+councillor sent along with my father a close carriage with four of the
+city horses; we took our beds with us, and starting in the evening,
+travelled all night through, so that we reached Ribbenitz early in the
+morning. We found my brother very weak, but we remained there on
+account of the horses; and had the deceased Hermann Lepper christianly
+and honourably buried, after an inquest had been held. Towards evening
+we left Ribbenitz, and drove at a foot's pace through the night, so
+that we reached Stralsund towards noon on the following day. When
+Master Joachim Geelhar, the celebrated surgeon, had properly dressed
+the wounds, the patient was soon thoroughly cured.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MARRIAGE AND HOUSEKEEPING OF A<br>
+YOUNG STUDENT.</h3>
+<h4>(1557.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The chief charm of the life of the olden time consists in the graceful
+manifestation of those feelings which give brightness to our life; the
+passions of lovers, the deep affection of husband and wife, the
+tenderness of parents, and the piety of children. We are enabled in
+each period of the past to distinguish the universal attributes of
+human nature, nay, even the specific German characteristics of love and
+marriage, but these tender relations are precisely those which are
+often enveloped in much that is transitory and enigmatical. We have
+often to seek mild and humane feelings under repulsive forms.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But two things have always been valued in Germany. In the first place
+it was a pre-eminent peculiarity of the Germans that they honoured the
+dignity of the female sex. Their women were the prophetesses of the
+heathen time, and, according to the laws of the people, whosoever
+killed a maiden or widow had to atone for it by the severest
+punishment. In times of strife and war, women enjoyed protection of
+person and property. Whilst Totila, Prince of the Goths, destroyed the
+men in Italy, the honour and life of the women were preserved, and the
+misbehaviour of a Goth to a Neapolitan woman was punished with death.
+It moreover appears from the Sachsenspiegel, that the same laws
+prevailed in the North even during the time of the cruel Hussite wars.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of all the misdeeds of the Spanish soldiers who accompanied Charles V.
+into Germany in the sixteenth century, their ill-treatment of women
+excited the greatest indignation. The infamous conduct of some Passau
+soldiers of the Archduke Leopold towards the women of Alsace, even in
+1611, was particularly repugnant to the people, and was commented on in
+their news-sheets. It was not till the Thirty years' war that the
+coarseness became universal, and women were looked upon as the booty of
+licentious men.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This respect for women and chaste family life was considered by the
+Romans the highest quality of the Germans. Even Christianity, which
+spread from the Roman to the German countries, could not place women
+and marriage on a higher footing; on the contrary, its ascetic
+tendencies served to lower them. The full enjoyment of the pleasures of
+the world were no longer allowed to man; passionate devotion to a
+beloved husband was easily mistaken for a wrong to heaven and the holy
+Redeemer. On the other hand men fixed their eyes on the heavenly
+Virgin, whose especial favour they might win by despising the women of
+earth. At the time of the Saxon Emperors this tendency of the mind
+reached its highest point. In those days education was confined to the
+cloister; there the daughters of the nobility were educated; there men
+weary of sin retired; and there also, enthusiasm sought for the highest
+enjoyment of love, which seemed unattainable in marriage without danger
+to the salvation of the soul. Secret sensuality mixed even with the
+worship of the highest objects of faith.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But the heart of man could not long rest satisfied with ideal love in
+heaven. When, under the first Hohenstaufen, education, manners, and
+good taste were only to be found among the feudal nobility, they
+hastened to transfer to the women of this world the devotion and
+veneration which had been exclusively confined to the Virgin Mary. The
+courtly worship of woman began, new conventional forms were introduced
+for the intercourse between man and woman, accompanied in Germany with
+a strong intermixture of Italian manners. The man had to give proof of
+his love by heroic deeds and adventures, and his lady-love was
+surrounded by an atmosphere of poetry, and veiled in ideal perfections,
+as we may perceive in the numerous minne-songs of that time. But
+neither the dignity of woman, nor the fundamental morality of marriage,
+was increased by this chivalrous devotion, and it became a cloak for
+reckless profligacy. Sometimes even a married woman had a knight
+devoted to her service; he was invested kneeling before his liege lady,
+and she, laying her hands between his, confirmed his allegiance by a
+kiss. From that time he wore her colours; he was bound to be faithful
+to her, and she to him, and in some cases they lived together as man
+and wife; and there were even instances in which the Church gave its
+sanction to these improper unions.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This knightly service often led men into the greatest follies. For
+instance, Pierre Vidal of Toulouse went about on all-fours in a wolfs
+skin, in honour of his lady, till he was beaten and bitten almost to
+death by the shepherds and sheep dogs; and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who
+rode through the whole country in woman's clothes, challenging all the
+knights, and had his finger and upper lip cut off in honour of his
+lady, drank the water in which she had washed, and when he returned
+from his expeditions, was nursed by his wife. These are not the worst
+examples of the horrible eccentricities to which this knightly devotion
+led. The result was such as might be expected,--the glitter of romance
+soon disappeared, and coarse profligacy remained in its nakedness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Church did little to improve this state of things. There were
+individual popular preachers who courageously advocated marriage and
+chastity, but it was at this very time that the celibacy of the secular
+clergy was established, and that the mass of the people were reduced to
+bondage by the feudal lords. The purity of marriage and the happiness
+of families were not promoted either by the position of the village
+priest living in his parish without a legal wife, nor by that of the
+proprietor who had to give his sanction to marriages, received tribute
+on account of them, and even laid shameful claims on the person of the
+bride.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the other hand there arose in the cities a fresh and vigorous life,
+and from the fourteenth century, the citizens became the best
+representatives of German cultivation and manners, as once the
+ecclesiastics had been, and afterwards the nobles. Owing to the close
+proximity of the dwellings in the city, and the smallness of their
+houses, the intercourse between man and woman became more strictly
+defined, and on the whole a practical sound conception of life took the
+place of chivalrous fancies; citizen habits followed courtly manners;
+ladies were won by cautious wooing instead of by daring heroic deeds;
+maidenly modesty attracted more than haughty assumption; instead of the
+wild knightly life of the nobles, which frequently separated man and
+wife, and violently severed the marriage tie, the woman now obtained a
+quiet sway in the well-regulated house, and the bold courtesy of the
+knight was replaced by a considerate, though strictly regulated and
+sometimes rather formal, expression of heartfelt esteem.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The conception of propriety and purity was different, however, from
+what it is now. At the time of the Council of Constance, the refined
+Poggio relates with great satisfaction how at Baden near Zurich, the
+most fashionable bath of the fifteenth century, he had seen German men
+and women bathing together, and how delightfully na�ve their
+familiarity was. And even a century later Hutten praises this German
+custom in contradistinction to the Italian morals, which would have
+made this practice impossible. So tolerant still were the German
+Humanitarians.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Marriage, however, was considered by our ancestors less as a union of
+two lovers, than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not
+only of married people towards one another, but also towards their
+relatives--as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. The relations of the
+wife became also the friends of the man, and they had claims on him as
+he had on them. Therefore in the olden time, the choice of husband and
+wife was always an affair of importance to the relatives on both sides,
+so that a German wooing, from the oldest times up to the last century,
+had the appearance of a business transaction, which was carried out
+with great regard to suitability. This perhaps takes away from German
+courtship, somewhat of the charm which we expect to find where the
+heart of man beats strongly; but this circumspect method of weighing
+things is a characteristic sign of an earnest and great conception of
+life. If a man desired to ask a woman in marriage he had to go through
+several solemn family negotiations. First the wooing, for which he had
+to employ a mediator; not always the lather or any other head of his
+family, but often some man of consideration in the town or country.
+This ambassador was generally accompanied by the wooer himself with a
+troop of his companions: if it took place in the country, they rode in
+solemn procession. If the family of the maiden was favourably disposed,
+they considered this as the preliminary step, and fixed a time for the
+negotiations between the families to take place. Formerly the man had
+to buy his wife from her family; but when this old custom fell into
+disuse, there still remained the arrangements concerning the dowry
+which the bride had to bring to her husband, and the jointure which he
+had to settle upon her. There were added to this, though not compulsory
+yet as a standing custom, presents of the man to the parents, brothers,
+and sisters of the bride, or from the bride to the family and best-men
+of the bridegroom. After this consultation, followed the betrothal,
+which had to take place in the presence of the rightful guardians:
+amidst the circle of witnesses, both parties had solemnly to declare
+that they would take each other in marriage; after which a ring was
+placed on the finger of the bride by the bridegroom; they embraced and
+kissed, thus showing the passing of the maiden into the family and
+guardianship of the man. After this betrothal, a certain space of time
+having elapsed, the termination of which was in many places legally
+fixed, the solemn fetching home of the bride to the house of the
+bridegroom took place. Again there was a solemn procession to the house
+of the maiden, and even if the bridegroom was present he was obliged to
+have a spokesman, who once more wooed her before the assembled family,
+and gave her over to the bridegroom; then she was taken in procession
+to the house of the latter, where the bridal feast was held. It was a
+bad custom in the middle ages, that this repast was got up with an
+extravagance which far surpassed the means of the bridal couple; and
+there were numerous police regulations endeavouring to limit the luxury
+in music, dishes, and the number of tables<a name="div2_52" href="#div2Ref_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a> and feast days.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such was the marriage ceremonial of the Germans. The old custom of the
+bridal wreath, which was worn by both bride and bridegroom, was
+introduced into Germany from Rome. The consecration of marriage by the
+Church was only required from the time of the Carlovingians, and was
+seldom neglected by the nobility, but did not become general among the
+people till a later period. The Church had indeed raised marriage to
+the dignity of a sacrament; but a feeling remained among the people
+that Christianity looked coldly and sternly on it. Even in the
+fifteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church was not
+entirely established, nor does it take place to this day in many places
+before the fetching home of the bride.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In this respect also, Luther and the Reformation had a great influence.
+From the sixteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church
+became in the Protestant countries the essential part of the ceremony;
+from that time the old customs of betrothals and of fetching home the
+bride were secondary considerations. It was not till after Luther and
+the Council of Trent, that marriage became intimately connected with
+the Christian faith in the German mind; for then the different
+confessions endeavoured by educating and elevating the people, to make
+them comprehend the moral and domestic significance of marriage.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And how was it with the heart of lovers? The following example will
+show how true love germinated amidst all the various family interests.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Felix Platter, the son of Thomas Platter, burgher, printer,
+schoolmaster, and householder at Basle, was born in 1536. His father by
+unwearied activity had risen from the greatest poverty, and had up to
+an advanced age to struggle with anxieties for his maintenance, and
+with pecuniary embarrassments, in consequence of the constant extension
+of his business. This hard battle with life had exercised its usual
+influence on his mind; he had a restless spirit of enterprise, which
+sometimes hindered him from steadily pursuing a plan; he had no real
+self-confidence, was easily perplexed, irritable, and morose. His son
+Felix, the only child by his first marriage, had on the contrary
+inherited the joyous disposition of his single-minded mother; he was a
+jolly warm-hearted lad, rather vain, passionately fond of music and
+dancing, at the same time clever, open and ingenuous. He was still
+almost a boy when his father sent him from Basle to the celebrated
+medical college of the university of Montpellier. Felix having acquired
+there, not only everything that medical science then offered, but all
+kinds of French refinements, returned to the simple burgher life of his
+native town: at the age of one-and-twenty he took his degree as doctor,
+and married happily a maiden about whom he had been teased when a
+child. He gained a great reputation, became Professor of the
+university, and a man of opulence and consideration, and died at an
+advanced age. He was of the greatest service to the city of Basle, by
+his self-sacrificing activity at the time of the plague, and also to
+the medical faculty of his university by his learning; and he was often
+consulted as a physician of renown by persons of princely rank both in
+Germany and France. He laid out a botanic garden at Basle, and
+possessed a cabinet of physical science worthy of being shown for
+money. Like his father, he wrote an account of part of his life: the
+following fragment is taken from a printed edition of the manuscript,
+entitled 'Thomas and Felix Platter, two Autobiographies, by Dr. D. A.
+Fechter, Basle, 1840.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The narrative begins with that day on which the young Felix returns
+with all the self-confidence of a scholar to his native town.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was welcomed home by all my neighbours, and there was great
+rejoicing; the servant-maid of the midwife, Dorly Becherer, as I learnt
+afterwards, gained the <i>botenbrot</i><a name="div2_53" href="#div2Ref_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> from my intended, by running to
+her father's house and screaming out the news, which she did so loud as
+quite to frighten her. Supper was prepared, and some of my companions
+who had heard of my arrival, and had forthwith come to visit me, stayed
+for it. After supper we escorted them to the Crown inn, and going down
+the Freienstrasse, my intended saw me passing by in my Spanish cap, and
+she fled. The innkeeper, who had himself been wooing her, bantered me,
+so that I perceived the affair was pretty well known: after that I
+returned home.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The following morning, Hummel came to me to take me about the town. We
+first passed the Minster close, there Herr Ludwig von Rischach spied me
+out, and was wondering who I was, because I wore a velvet barret cap
+and arms: I made myself known to him; then I saluted Dr. Sulzer, pastor
+of the Minster; afterwards, Dr. Hans Huber, who welcomed me kindly and
+offered me his services; I made him a present of Clemens Marot, which
+had been beautifully bound at Paris.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After that we went down Martin's Alley, and when we arrived at the
+bottom of it, opposite the school, my intended, who was standing by the
+bench saw me, though I did not see her; she ran into the school and
+home again; and after that she no longer went to the shops of the
+butchers, because they began to tease her. After dinner my father took
+me to his property at Gundeldingen; he talked to me on the road, and
+exhorted me not to speak too fast, as the French are apt to do, and
+gave me an account of his household. I began immediately to prepare my
+cypress lute, and to string the large harp which my father had formerly
+played; and I put my books and manuscripts in order; thus I spent the
+whole week.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Meanwhile my father arranged matters that I might talk with my
+intended, and she with me; he therefore invited Master Franz and his
+daughter to come out to Gundeldingen the following Sunday afternoon; it
+was the sixteenth of May, a merry spring day. I went out there after
+dinner with Thiebold Sch�nauer; we had sent on our lutes, and when we
+entered the yard at Gundeldingen we saw two maidens standing there; one
+was the cousin of the landlady, and engaged to Daniel the son of Master
+Franz, the other was his daughter Magdalen, my intended, whom I greeted
+cordially, as she did me, not without changing colour. Thus we got into
+converse; her brother Daniel joined us; we walked about the property,
+talking of divers things; my intended was modest, bashful, and quiet.
+At three o'clock we returned to the house, and went up stairs; I and
+Thiebold played the lute, and I danced the gaillarde, as was my custom.
+Meanwhile, Master Franz, her father, arrived and welcomed me; we sat
+down to table and had an evening drink as at supper, till it was late,
+and time for us to return to town. On the road homewards, her father
+and mine went in advance, and I and Daniel followed with the ladies in
+friendly talk, when Dorothy, who was somewhat bold of speech, burst
+forth, saying, 'When two are fond of each other they should make no
+delay, for one knows not how quick a misfortune may come between them.'
+Near the ramparts we separated, Master Franz and his party went home
+through the Stein gate, and my father and his through the Eschemer
+gate. We all went to bed full of curious thoughts about myself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My father-in-law and my father took counsel together, to make our
+engagement sure. I began to love her very much, and urged it on. I also
+was not disagreeable to her, which I had partly found out from herself,
+when the wife of the butcher, Burlacher, my mother's cousin, had
+invited us to her meadow before the Spalen gate to eat cherries, where
+we had been able to speak openly. It was determined that Dr. Hans Huber
+should make the proposal for me. When my father asked it of him, he
+readily assented, appointed Master Franz in the forenoon to meet him at
+the Minster, made the proposal, and gained his consent for a family
+marriage counsel. In the evening, when Dr. Hans came to me, he
+announced it to me with exultation, as was his wont, and congratulated
+me; but informed me that my father-in-law wished the affair to be kept
+quiet till my doctorate was over, when matters might proceed. I was
+well satisfied therewith, as my future father-in-law was at last
+inclined to consent. Formerly, he had always held back because he
+feared that my father was greatly in debt, and because he had boarders;
+for, as he said, he did not wish his daughter to be thrown into debts
+and disquietudes. But when he heard from my father that his debts were
+small in comparison with his property in land and houses, and that he
+himself intended to do away with the boarders, he was satisfied; and so
+much the more as Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards burgomaster, who had seen
+me, advised him, and because his son Ludwig told him he ought to thank
+God, as he had good hopes that I should become a renowned doctor, for I
+had shown my skill in curing his wife (who was weak after giving birth
+to two children) by giving her marchpane, which I had ordered when it
+was not yet the custom to do so. So my father-in-law was at last well
+pleased, and did not object to my going to his house to speak with his
+daughter. Yet I did this mostly in his absence, and secretly. I entered
+by the back door in the alley, and talked to her there in the lower
+part of the house, with due propriety and honour. Her father did not
+object, but appeared not to notice it; he also deferred matters as long
+as he could, for he did not like to give away his daughter, who, as he
+boasted, kept house so well for him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;About this time, Thomas Guerin was engaged to Jungfrau Elizabeth of
+the Falcon. He frequently came to me with Pempelfort, and begged of me
+to arrange a musical serenade, to do homage to his love at the Falcon.
+I promised him this, but under the condition that a serenade should
+also be given at any place that I chose. So we equipped ourselves, and
+went, late after supper, in front of the house of my intended. We had
+two lutes, I and Thiebold Sch�naur played together, afterwards I took
+the harp, and Pempelfort the viola. The goldsmith Hogenbach whistled an
+accompaniment, and it was altogether quite fine music; no one took any
+notice of us, for my future father-in-law was at home. Then we went to
+the Falcon, and there, after we had paid our court, we were admitted,
+and had a splendid night-cup, with all kinds of sweetmeats; when we
+were returning home, the watchmen stopped us at the Green King, but
+they let us go after we had given them satisfactory answers. I often
+took a walk to the house of my intended, but as far as possible,
+secretly, and talked much whimsical nonsense, as lovers do, which she
+answered discreetly. I dressed myself also, according to custom, for
+then we wore only coloured clothes, and not black, except for mourning.
+Certain persons now began to watch me, and once when I left the house
+after supper, two men followed me, and would willingly have beaten me,
+but I escaped, so that nothing happened to me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Soon after I had become a doctor my father urged that the marriage
+should be concluded between me and the Jungfrau Magdalen; and
+therefore, towards the end of September, he spoke to her father, and as
+I had honourably and praiseworthily fulfilled everything, and the
+matter had not remained secret, he could not object to settling
+it--thereupon he gave a satisfactory answer, but kept always delaying
+the affair, for, as aforesaid, he was unwilling to part with his
+daughter. Meanwhile I was allowed to go to the house openly; but it
+surprised me that it did not displease him, as it was not yet a settled
+marriage, and, indeed, might never have taken place; our intercourse,
+however, was carried on with all due propriety and honour, and we held
+converse on divers discreet subjects, and had much joking and
+bantering, and often I helped her to make electuaries, and thus we
+passed the time. We had once particularly good fun; when on the eve of
+St. Simon and St. Jude they rang the bells for the fair, I wished to
+get a fairing from her. As her father was absent, I went secretly to
+the back door of her house which was constantly open, and seeing no
+one, as all were in the chamber below, I slipped up the stairs to the
+garret, and looked out of the skylight in order to hear when the bells
+rang in the fair at twelve. I waited for three hours, both cold and
+weary; as soon as the bells began to sound, I slipped down and opened
+the door of the room crying out, 'Give me a fairing,' thinking thereby
+to surprise her. There was no one there, and the maid said, as she had
+been told to do, that she was gone out; but she had hidden herself
+under the staircase, and was waiting; soon after she hastened into the
+room with the usual exclamation, and gained from me the fairing. This I
+gave her handsomely, and she gave me one also. I wished to present her
+with the little chain that I had brought with me from Paris, but she
+begged me to keep it, as it might give occasion for gossip, and she
+might have it at some other time; but she took the little beautifully
+bound Testament which I had also offered her; thus we had our pastime
+for a long period, as is usual with young people.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After the fair at Basle, my father-in-law, as he could no longer
+delay, began to prepare for the betrothal, and it was fixed for the
+week after St. Martin's day. We came about four o'clock to his house;
+there were assembled on his side Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards
+burgomaster, Martin Fickler, and Master Gregorius Sch�lin, and Batt
+Hug, his friends, and his son Franz Jeckelmann; there were on our side
+Dr. Hans Huber, Matthias Bornhart, and Henricus Petri. They negotiated
+about the dowry, and my future father-in-law announced that his
+daughter would bring with her more than three hundred pounds' worth of
+property; of this there would be one hundred florins of ready money,
+and the rest in clothes and linen. When they asked my father what he
+would give, he replied he could not say; he had no child but me, and
+all would be mine. But when they told him that he must name something,
+as there might be changes (as did, indeed, afterwards happen),<a name="div2_54" href="#div2Ref_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> he
+answered that he had not reflected upon this, so he would name four
+hundred gulden; but that as he could not give it me we should board
+with him instead, for he had no money to give me, on the contrary he
+was much in debt. Thereupon arose some disputing; my father-in-law
+exclaimed that he would not expose his daughter to the discomfort of
+the boarders, and would rather have us in his house, and censured my
+father for being in debt, so that my father was much grieved, and if
+the honourable company present had not interfered, the matter would
+have remained unsettled. This was the first contretemps that happened
+to me, and was a great grief both to me and to my intended, who had
+heard all in the kitchen, and was in great trouble. However, the affair
+was smoothed, as my father said he would gladly give up the boarders,
+though it could not be done immediately. From that time my father was
+somewhat out of sorts, which embittered the whole pleasure of my
+nuptials. We were betrothed, and I presented my bride with the gold
+chain I had brought from Paris; and my father-in-law gave the banquet,
+with good entertainment and speeches, but there was no music, which I
+should have liked best.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Great preparations were made for the marriage, which was to take place
+on the following Monday, for my father considering that he had an only
+son, wished, for the satisfaction of my father-in-law, to invite the
+whole of his friends and other well-wishers; so invitations were sent
+out on the Saturday to the relations and neighbours, and our good
+friends the master and councillor of the Guild of the Bear, to some of
+the high school, nobles, councillors, scholars, and also artisans with
+their wives and children.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the following Sunday, the 21st of October, our banns were published
+as is customary; the tables, and everything appertaining to the wedding
+were arranged in both my fathers' houses; many helped, and Master Batt
+Oesy, the landlord of the Angel, was cook. In the evening I went to my
+father-in-law's house, watched them making the nosegays, and remained
+with them till after supper. When I returned home I found Herr
+Schreiber Rust, an old acquaintance of my father's, who had come out of
+friendship from Burtolf to the wedding, and had brought with him a
+beautiful Emmenthaler cheese. He was sitting at table with my father,
+who was greatly disquieted, as to how he could feed and treat so large
+a number of people as had been invited; he persuaded himself that it
+would be impossible, and that he would disgrace himself, and he was
+quite cross. Especially, when I came home, he began to scold me very
+roughly for sitting always with my bride, and letting him have all the
+trouble, instead of helping him; and he was so angry with me that Herr
+Rust had enough to do to pacify and comfort him. This third cross and
+embittering of the happiness of my wedding was very disquieting to me,
+as I was not accustomed to be thus scolded, and had hitherto usually
+been praised and well treated; I saw clearly how it would henceforth be
+when there were two of us living at my father's cost, so that
+everything would be rendered unpleasant to me. I went to bed full of
+sorrow, and thought like a fool that I would like to withdraw from my
+present position, if the door were only open to me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the morning of the 22nd of October, St. Cecilia's day, I was still
+dispirited, as I had slept little. I put on my bridegroom's shirt which
+had been sent to me, with a gold embroidered collar and many golden
+spangles on the short breast piece, as was the custom then, and over
+that a red brocaded satin waistcoat and flesh-coloured breeches. Thus I
+came down and found my father no longer so unjust, for when he had
+begun to complain again, although there was a superfluity of
+everything, he got a good chiding from Dorothea Schenkin, who was also
+helping, and was a rough-spoken woman. When the marriage guests were
+assembled, we went in procession to my father-in-law's house, and with
+us Dr. Oswald Berus, who, in spite of his great age, was dressed in an
+open satin waistcoat and a camlet coat, the same as mine, and a velvet
+barret cap, like that which was placed on my head, when in front of my
+bride's house, and this said cap was bordered with pearls and flowers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We went about nine o'clock to the Minster, and then the bride arrived
+in a flesh-coloured cloak, led by Herr Heinrich Petri. After the sermon
+they married us; I gave her a twisted ring worth eight dollars; then we
+proceeded to the Jagdhof, where they gave us to drink. I led my bride
+in, and they regaled her splendidly in the upper room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There were fifteen tables spread, which were well filled by more than
+one hundred and fifty persons, not counting those who waited upon them,
+and a number of them remained to supper. The entertainment proceeded
+after this fashion: there were four courses in the following order, a
+hash of mutton, soup, meat, fowls, boiled pike, a roast, pigeons,
+capons, geese, rice porridge, salted liver, cheese, and fruit. There
+were divers kinds of wines, amongst others Rangenwein, which was much
+to the taste of the guests. The music consisted of Christelin the
+trumpeter, with his viola; the singers were the scholars, who sang
+among other things the song of the spoon; after the dinner, which did
+not last as long as is now customary, Herr Jacob Meyer, the Councillor
+of the Bear, broke up the party. Dr. Myconius led the bride to the
+house of Dr. Oswald Berus, where there was dancing in the hall; there
+were many persons, and some of them people of consequence. Master
+Laurens played the lute, Christelin accompanied him on his viola, which
+was then less used than now. I wished to do the courteous by my bride,
+as I had been accustomed to do in France in dancing, but she being
+bashful gently admonished me, so I desisted. I danced however, at
+Myconius' suggestion, a gaillard alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After that we returned to my father's house to supper. When it began
+to get late the guests took leave, and that there might not be too much
+noise and joking, I hid myself in my father's room, where my bride also
+had been secretly concealed, whose father wept so at parting with her,
+that I thought they would be quite ill from crying. I led her into my
+father's little room, and some of the women of her acquaintance came to
+comfort her, to whom I gave some claret to drink, which I had kept in a
+small cask behind the stove, and had made very good. When they
+departed, my mother who was always cheerful, came and said that the
+young students were seeking me, therefore we had better conceal
+ourselves and go to bed; so she led us secretly by the back stairs up
+to my room, where we sat for some time, and as it was very cold we were
+half frozen, so we commended ourselves to God and went to bed; and none
+of the students knew what had become of us. After a time we heard my
+mother come up stairs above our room; there she sat and sang with as
+sweet a voice as a young maiden, though she had reached a great age;
+whereat my bride laughed heartily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the Tuesday morning her bridesmaid Kathleen brought her the rest of
+her clothes; we admitted her, and as she was a pleasant maiden, we had
+much fun with her. After that the marriage guests collected again at
+dinner, which took place at eleven o'clock, for then we had not turned
+time topsy-turvy, as is the bad custom now. There were as many tables
+laid as on the first day, and the entertainment was as ample; and there
+was in addition the bridal porridge, which is now replaced by mulled
+wine. After dinner they danced till night, and at supper there were
+still many guests, especially the maidens, who all took leave and went
+home in good time. There were many rich presents given at the marriage;
+but of these I got only a small goblet and two ducats, the rest my
+father took to defray the costs as far as they would, and later, as
+soon as I earned something, I had to pay him for my clothes. My father
+took also the hundred gulden that my wife had brought with her, and
+paid it off likewise. My father-in-law made me no present, because, as
+he afterwards told me, he had paid five gulden for me at the doctor's
+capping feast, and therewith I ought to be content. The household gear
+that my wife brought with her was not very good; an old pan in which
+they had made her porridge, and a large wooden bowl in which her
+mother's dinner had been brought to her during her confinements, and
+other bad utensils, which were placed behind a screen in our room.
+After that, our household arrangements were to be fixed and regulated
+by my wife's advice, which required great consideration. My father
+still continued to have boarders and all kinds of disquiet in the
+house, so that we young married people were much harassed; we had
+rather have kept house by ourselves, but we could not manage it; we
+were obliged for nearly three years to board with my father, and I had
+to make shift with my room, and to see the sick in the lower hall,
+which was cold in winter. There was frequent offence taken because I
+could not help towards the kitchen expenditure, for I had enough to do
+to provide ourselves with clothes, and frequently had to pay what I had
+just earned to the shops where I was still in debt for them; which was
+thrown in my teeth, if I did not do it. Thus there were at times
+quarrels, as often happens when old and young dwell together. Therefore
+my wife would have been glad if we could have dwelt by ourselves, and
+she would willingly have managed with very little; if my father would
+have given the promised dowry and the hundred gulden which she had
+brought to me, we could have subsisted upon that; but my father could
+not do this, as he had no ready money; and I did not wish to anger, but
+rather conciliate him, and so I spoke him fair, saying, we would have
+patience till I got into better practice. All this grieved me because I
+loved her much, and would gladly have maintained her as was meet for a
+doctor's wife; therefore for a long time I treated her with less
+familiarity and more ceremony; my father perceived this with
+displeasure, and thought it ought not to be. I had not much to do
+before the new year.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There were many doctors at Basle when I came there, both graduates and
+quacks, in the year 1557. Therefore I had to be very skilful to support
+myself, and God has abundantly blessed me therein. From day to day I
+got more practice both among the inhabitants of the town, and also
+among the strangers, some of whom came to me and dwelt a long time
+here, using my remedies, whilst others went away immediately, having
+obtained my advice and prescription. Strangers also sent for me to
+their houses and castles, whither I hastened, not staying long, but
+returning home quickly, that I might attend to those at home as well as
+in distant parts.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF A PATRICIAN HOUSE.</h3>
+<h4>(1526-1598.)</h4>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Though the narrative of Sastrow gives us a view of the hard struggle of
+a rising family, and that of Felix Platter shows to what shifts even a
+vigorous life may be reduced, yet one must not forget that the
+intellectual life of Germany was rich and varied in its aims and
+tendencies. Worldly-minded education, opulence, and the pleasures of
+social enjoyment were concentrated in the patrician families of the
+great Imperial cities, who, however, often manifested bad taste in
+their refinement; but at the same time arts and commerce called forth
+all their energies, and whatever sense of beauty then existed, was to
+be found especially in these circles. In the great cities of
+Switzerland, the Low Countries, and the seaports of the German Hanse
+Towns, there was a peculiar development of the patrician order; but it
+was the patrician families of the great commercial cities of South
+Germany, and amongst these more especially those of Nuremberg,
+Augsburg, Ulm, Frankfort on the Maine, and Cologne, that exercised the
+greatest influence on the luxury, industry, and learning of Germany.
+Members of the old families had once governed the cities with
+aristocratic rule; they were still the most influential citizens,
+accustomed to conduct great affairs, and to represent the highest
+interests; they were generally merchants or large landed proprietors.
+Most of the Church benefices were possessed by their families; they
+were the first who used to send their sons into Italy, the land of
+their mercantile friends, to study law, thus making preparation in
+Germany for the rising Humanitarian learning. Many of them were heads
+of mercantile firms, councillors and confidants of German princes; they
+were united together by family alliances, and not less by community of
+commercial interests and had extended themselves everywhere; they
+chiefly determined the German policy of the Imperial cities, and they
+would have exercised a decisive influence on the newly formed German
+life, had they been less conservative in their tendencies, and had they
+not by their self-interest become sometimes un-German.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They represented the moneyed power of Germany; the Emperor and princes
+obtained loans from them, and they were the medium of the greater; part
+of the money and exchange transactions, when these were not in the
+hands of the Jews. The great firms of Fugger and Welser and their
+partners formed a great trading company, which carried on traffic not
+only with Italy and the Levant, but also beyond Antwerp and the
+Atlantic Ocean. Through them, German trade monopolized that of the East
+and West Indies; they bought a whole year's harvest from the King of
+Portugal, they united themselves with Spanish houses in unlimited
+speculations, undertook journeys to Calcutta, and settled on their own
+account the prices of the sugar and spices of the East, which were then
+of greater importance in the German cookery than now.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This command over capital was regarded with great dislike by both
+princes and people. Through these trading companies much ready money
+passed out of the country, and all objects of luxury rose in price;
+complaints were general, for the diminution in the worth of money,
+occasioned by the introduction of the American gold, was mistaken for
+the raising of prices by the merchants. Not only Hutten, who was deeply
+imbued with the prejudices of his own class, but even the Imperial Diet
+was jealous of the power of these great moneyed companies; among the
+people also, the antipathy to them was general, and the Reformers
+shared the opinions of their cotemporaries as to the detriment of such
+domination over capital.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Yet even then, it may be observed that these great merchant princes had
+not all the same tendencies. The Welsers of Augsburg, for example, in
+1512, took an active interest at Rome on behalf of Reuchlin, and that
+great scholar owed his deliverance from the hands of the Dominicans,
+more perhaps to their secret influence than to the refined rhetoric of
+his enthusiastic admirers in Germany. On the other hand, the Fuggers
+were considered by the people as reckless moneyed men and Romanists; as
+enemies of Luther and friends of Eck, who was suspected of being in
+their pay; for they had charge of the money affairs of the Elector
+Albrecht of Mayence, and of the Romish curie, and one of the Fugger's
+clerks accompanied the indulgence chest of Tetzel, and controlled the
+incoming receipts, on which the banking-house of the Archbishop of
+Mayence had made advances. The Emperor, Charles V., received the most
+solid support from these powerful firms, as their interests were
+generally concurrent with his; with the people, however, &quot;<i>Fuggerei</i>&quot;
+became the common term for usury. We learn the family tendency for
+outward splendour and intercourse with the great, from the description
+which Hans von Schweinichen gives of their opulence in the year 1575.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When the dissolute Duke Hemrich von Liegnitz with his majordomo was at
+Augsburg, the splendour of this house appeared to the Silesian noblemen
+as quite fabulous. Schweinichen, who was more accurate in specifying
+the sums of money and prices than was necessary considering the endless
+debts of his master, gives the following narrative.<a name="div2_55" href="#div2Ref_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Herr Max Fugger once invited his Princely Highness to dinner. Such a
+banquet have I never beheld, the Roman Emperor himself could not have
+been entertained better: there was superabundant splendour; the repast
+was spread in a hall where more gold than colour was to be seen; the
+floor was of marble, and as smooth as if one was walking on ice; there
+was a sideboard placed along the whole length of the hall, which was
+set out with drinking-vessels and notably beautiful Venetian glasses;
+there must have been, as one says, the value of more than a ton of
+gold. I waited on his Princely Highness when the drinking began. Now
+Herr Fugger gave to his Princely Highness for a drinking-cup, an
+artistically formed ship of the most beautiful Venetian glass; when I
+took it from the sideboard and was going across the hall, having on my
+new shoes, I slipped up, and fell upon my back in the middle of the
+hall; the wine poured about my neck, the new red brocade dress which I
+had on was quite spoilt, and the beautiful ship was broken into a
+thousand pieces. Though this created great laughter amongst all, yet I
+was told that Herr Fugger said privately he would rather have lost a
+hundred gulden than that ship; it happened, however, without any fault
+on my part, for I had neither eaten nor drunk; but when later I became
+intoxicated I stood firmer, and did not fall a single time even in the
+dance. Meanwhile the lords and all others were very merry. Herr Fugger
+took his Princely Highness a walk through the house, a prodigious great
+house, so great that the Roman Emperor at the Imperial Diet found room
+in it for himself and his whole court. Herr Fugger showed his Princely
+Highness, in a turret, a treasure of chains, jewels, and precious
+stones, and of curious coins and pieces of gold the size of a head, and
+he himself said that they were worth more than a million of gold.
+Afterwards he opened a chest that was full of nothing but ducats and
+crowns up to the brim; these he estimated at two hundred thousand
+gulden, which had been remitted to him in exchange by the King of
+Spain. Then he led his Princely Highness up to the turret, which was
+paved half way down from the top with good thalers; he said there were
+about seventeen thousand. He showed his Princely Highness great honour,
+but also his own power and possessions: it is said that Herr Fugger had
+enough to buy an empire. He gave me, on account of my fall, a beautiful
+new groschen which weighed about nine grains. His Princely Highness
+expected also a good present, but got nothing but a good drinking bout.
+At that time Fugger bestowed the hand of his daughter on a count, and
+gave two hundred thousand thalers, besides jewels, as her dowry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As his Princely Highness had very little ready money he sent me to
+Herr Fugger to borrow four thousand thalers; but he decidedly declined
+doing this, excusing himself quite politely; however the following day
+he sent his steward to me to be introduced to my lord, through whom he
+presented to his Princely Highness two hundred crowns, a beautiful
+goblet worth eighty dollars, and besides that a splendid horse with
+black velvet housings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Together with this taste for display we find in other patrician
+families at the beginning of this century far higher aims in life. The
+firms of Pentinger at Augsburg, and Perkheimer at Nuremberg were the
+focus of the noblest interests of the nation; the heads of these houses
+were men of princely opulence, landed proprietors and merchant princes,
+statesmen and warriors, and at the same time men of learning and
+research. It was for families like these that Albert D�rer painted his
+best pictures; to them the travelling Humanitarians resorted; every
+elegant verse, every manly sentiment or word of genius, were there
+first heartily appreciated. As councillors and patrons in worldly
+concerns, as liberal proprietors of valuable libraries and of
+first-rate cabinets of antiquities, as hospitable masters of rich
+households, they knew how to do honour to all who brought to their
+houses intellect, knowledge, and refinement.<a name="div2_56" href="#div2Ref_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">In these families, the women also frequently received an education
+which went further than the knowledge of cooking, spinning, and the
+prayer-book; the daughters of these households gained what was seldom
+to be found in the castles of the princes or in the mansions of the
+landed nobility,--a heartfelt interest in the sciences and arts with
+which the friends of the family were occupied. There is a peculiar
+charm for us in the contemplation of the first female characters who
+were ennobled by the dawn of a new civilization. Constance Peutinger,
+who twined the laurel wreaths for Hutten; Caritas Perkheimer, the
+suffering abbess of Clarenklosters at Nuremberg, and later Philippine
+Welser, the wife of the Emperor's son, all belonged to the class of
+German patricians; they were sensitive natures often oppressed and
+wounded in this rough and thorny period.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was especially when a woman took part in the literary struggle that
+she was destined to suffer, this however rarely happened; the best
+known instances are those of Caritas Pirkheimer and Argula von
+Grumbach, born at Stauffen; both experienced how bitter it is for women
+to take part in the disputes of men. The Roman Catholic Caritas wrote a
+letter full of reverence to Emser, and had to go through the trial of
+seeing her letter printed by the Lutheran party with contemptuous
+marginal notes. The Lutheran Argula, the friend of Spalatin, sent an
+admonitory letter to the rector of the university at Ingoldstadt, when
+it had compelled Arsatius Seehofer by imprisonment and a threat of the
+stake, to recant seventeen heresies, which he had propounded to the
+students from the writings of Melancthon. Argula bravely took the
+master's part, whom she called a child of eighteen years old, and
+offered to go to Ingoldstadt herself to defend the good cause against
+the university. She was in consequence of this, maliciously assailed in
+verse, against which she valiantly defended herself in counter-rhymes.
+The last years of Caritas and her mild brother were embittered by the
+rude attacks of the Protestant rabble and their teachers. Argula was
+banished from the Bavarian court, and her husband was dismissed in
+disgrace from his court appointment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Glauburgs were one of the most distinguished patrician families of
+Frankfort-on-the-Maine; Hutten had been very intimate with some members
+of this family, and had at one time indulged in the charming dream of
+establishing himself at Frankfort and marrying one of them. Even the
+ardent spirit of Hutten was powerfully attracted by their splendid
+opulence and highly refined life. He eagerly disclaimed the suspicion
+that he intended to take away his bride to the rocky home of his
+family. He wooed the maiden with more consideration than was his wont,
+and Arnold of Glauburg was his confidant. But it was a short dream; his
+destiny soon tore him away. The following letters from two ladies will
+introduce us into this patrician family; they are printed in the
+Frankfort archives of J. C. von Fichard, 1811-1815. The first is the
+letter of a mother to her son, in which she recommends to him a maiden
+for his wife, in order to withdraw him from the revolutionaries of
+Wittenberg and the neighbourhood of Luther; a letter which is
+characteristic of the position of women in a family, and written by one
+possessed of energy and a practical understanding, who was accustomed
+to rule, and not without a disposition to intrigue; her son was the
+nephew of that Arnold of Glauburg, the son of Johann, to whom Hutten
+sent with hearty greeting his dialogue <i>Febris</i>.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center">1526.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="center"><i>From Margaret Horng</i><a name="div2_57" href="#div2Ref_57"><sup>[57]</sup> </a><i>at Frankfort, to her son John<br>
+von Glauburg at Wittenberg</i>.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">&quot;Having given you first, dear Johann, my friendly greeting, know that
+we are all well in health, praise and thanks be to God, and hope to
+hear the same of you. Dear Johann, after I had last written to you, the
+wife of Johann Knoblauch died, to whom God be merciful. She was my good
+friend, and her death has caused me as great grief as the decease of my
+two blessed husbands, which was however a great calamity to me; but
+what God wills we must bear with patience. She and I came here the same
+year, and lived so friendly together that neither ever angered the
+other with a word. On her death-bed she commended to me her two
+daughters as if I were her sister, and begged that I should take care
+of their dowry, if I should live till they married. One of them is now
+marriageable, an elegant, well-formed maiden; she is in height like
+your step-sister Anna, which is also her name, and she is a clever
+housekeeper, so that he who has her for a portion will not be ruined by
+her; I foresee that her father will soon establish her, for there are
+three who woo her, two of them are noblemen, and the third is Johann
+Wolf Rohrbach, the son of Frau Ursula at the green gate, who is now
+grown up and has been with his mother since Easter. Although he is only
+nineteen years old, yet it is the wish of his mother and his friends to
+establish him whilst she is still alive. For now no one knows what to
+do with their sons, that they may learn and study what is for their
+soul's salvation, and not be led astray: for when they have long
+studied, and spent much money, it is of little advantage to many of
+them, and perhaps it would have been more profitable to them, to have
+retained the innate honesty and simplicity which they have from God,
+than that they should study, and not rightly understand the Scripture,
+and that then the devil should lead them astray through pride, and
+others with them because they are learned and know how to talk well.
+Such men lead the people into great error. I would gladly write much to
+you thereupon, but having promised in my last letter that I would not
+write to you again thereof, I will not do so whilst you are at
+Wittenberg; for you imagine that you are in safe keeping in Wittenberg.
+God grant it may be true, and that you will find it so. Further, dear
+Johann, know wherefore I now write to you thus---- an honourable person
+has just told me that the wife of Johann Knoblauch had desired her
+husband, if you and your belongings should ask his daughter in
+marriage, and the daughter were willing, that he should give her to you
+rather than to any other. To this I answered, that I did not know your
+inclinations, but would write and inform you of this, and whatever
+answer I got from you I would communicate to this person. Therefore,
+dear son, I make known to you that the maiden pleases me well in all
+her ways, better than any other with whom I am acquainted; and the
+mother has always been an honourable steadfast woman. Therefore, I am
+well pleased that she is not of a fickle nature, for whoever has not an
+apt and steadfast wife, be she ever so polished and rich, will become a
+poor miserable man. Therefore, dear Johann, follow my advice, for I
+give you faithful counsel. It is true there are eleven children to
+provide for, some of whom are still little, but possibly may become
+fewer in number, and there is a good fortune, the greater part of it in
+landed property. Therefore bethink you, dear son, I do not wish to
+constrain you to change your condition, but it would be the greatest
+pleasure to me were you to enter this family, for looking into the
+future, I can see no place that would altogether suit you so well as
+this one. Dear Johann, if this idea should please you, and you should
+wish to see her and that she should see you beforehand, come here in
+the first week of Lent with any travelling companions that you like, to
+give you security on the road; but keep your purpose to yourself,
+saying nothing of it to your companions till a day or two before your
+departure, then tell Justinian that you are going home. But do not tell
+him why you wish to go home, but make it appear as if it were on
+account of your property which you wish to regulate, as I had written
+to you so strongly in my last three letters about it, declining to
+administer it any longer, as is indeed my intention, if you will in
+nowise take my advice. There is good reason why you should prevent his
+saying a word, in order that it should remain secret. Dear Johann, I
+beg of you to bethink yourself of how the times are, and that it is not
+fitting for you to remain longer unsettled. Ah! may my brother-in-law
+Herr Hammann find a wife also for Justinian now; it would do him no
+harm, as he leads a life of pleasure; and let it not be with him as it
+was with his deceased cousin Blasius, who had so accustomed himself to
+a profligate life that no one could persuade him to marry till he
+became old and had lost his health; he had no child, and now his wife
+is betrothed again to a nobleman, one Schenk of Schweinsburg. They say
+she will soon celebrate her nuptials: God grant her happiness.&quot;
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far the letter: the wish of the prudent mother was fulfilled; her
+son returned, as she had so cautiously charged him to do, to Frankfort;
+he married the maiden of her choice, and they lived together forty
+years in happy matrimony.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Though we can obtain no other particulars of him and Anna Knoblauch,
+yet we find accounts of members of the same family, towards the end of
+the century, which characterize in a charming way the position of a
+bride with her betrothed. A grandson of the above mentioned, the rich
+patrician Adolf von Glauburg of Frankfort, made acquaintance, when on a
+visit at Nuremberg, with the beautiful Ursula Freher, daughter of the
+city Syndic of Nuremberg, and sister of the renowned scholar and
+statesman, Marquard Freher of Heidelberg. The charms and agreeableness
+of the lady were celebrated throughout Swabia. The following letters
+were written by her to him, from Nuremberg to Frankfort during the time
+of betrothal.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center">1598.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1">&quot;To the noble and honourable Johann Adolf von Glauburg, to the hands of
+my dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, I have
+received with heartfelt joy your letter, together with the chain, and
+rejoice to hear you are in health, but learn with regret that your dear
+sister and son are not well; may God Almighty restore them according to
+his holy will. Amen. As regards us, we are, thank God, tolerably well,
+may He thus long preserve us all. Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, my father
+would gladly have written to you, but your letter arrived too late, and
+the messenger waiting at the gate is in haste, so that he cannot do it
+now, but will take the first opportunity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, with respect to the chain I have no
+directions to give you; as your wish is, so is my content, what pleases
+you pleases me also. The chain which I have here I will carefully
+preserve, and when God brings you to us I will take the opportunity of
+returning it to you; it is much too splendid for me. As to the picture,
+it is ready all but the dress, at which the painter is still working,
+and thinks it will be quite finished in about ten days. I have great
+fear that when the picture comes to you, it will be said the <i>Junker</i>
+need not have gone so far, he might have found the like of her at
+Frankfort.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As concerns the bracelets, I have not yet got them; there is yet
+plenty of time, but I will send after them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, I have nothing more to write to you now, I
+beg of you kindly to excuse this miserable letter, which has been
+written in haste; another time I will give you something better.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No more now than kind greetings to you and your dear ones, from me and
+my honoured mother, and we commend you to the care and protection of
+God Almighty. Given the 12th September.</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="margin-right:20%">&quot;Your loving and always faithful</p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">Ursula Freherin</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">&quot;Most noble, honourable, dearly beloved, and much trusted <i>Junker</i>, may
+my truth and love, together with my greetings and good wishes, be to
+you beyond all other love and possessions. I received your letter with
+pleasure, and learned from it with heartfelt joy of your well-being. It
+is even so with us, for which we thank the gracious God; may He
+continue his grace to you and all of us. Amen.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As concerning the marriage, my honoured father and mother have
+deliberated thereon, and have agreed that, please God, it shall take
+place on the 13th of November, as the <i>Junker</i> will find more amply
+detailed in my honoured father's letter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, I understand thus much from your letter, that
+you would gladly come here once again before the marriage. If that were
+possible, it would certainly be a great joy to me, and would give
+hearty pleasure to all mine without exception. I will not therefore
+this time entreat of you, but will have all hope and confidence that it
+may come to pass, and that the <i>Junker</i> will not fail to pay a visit to
+me the poor forlorn one, to which I look with great longing. Dearly
+beloved <i>Junker</i>, know that the packet has not yet arrived. We have
+already sent after it several times, and the answer has been, it was
+expected every hour; as soon as it comes, your desire shall be attended
+to; I believe it will answer well. The wife of Dr. Reiner has already
+written to my honoured mother concerning it, and given it clearly to be
+understood that she is not to be forgotten in the bridal presents;<a name="div2_58" href="#div2Ref_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a>
+however she need not have been in anxiety about it, as she had already
+been thought of.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, with respect to the shirts and collars, you
+must know that we are working zealously thereat, and as many as can be
+got ready shall be distributed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have received the bracelets; accept, my dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, my
+warmest thanks. They are much too pretty for my brown hands, but they
+please me well.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As regards dress, undoubtedly my honoured father would like to do for
+one daughter the same as for the other, but as that cannot be on this
+occasion, he has consented to do something more. I have three taffety
+dresses; the flesh colour, one gold colour, and one black. We have the
+tailor still in the house, who is making a violet-coloured damask, and
+another dress in which I am to go to church, which is to be either of
+red satin or of black damask. Now I beg you will let me know which you
+would prefer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, I cannot venture to make further demands on
+my father; for this reason, that none of my sisters have had so much
+done for them, or such splendid things. But as you have so strongly
+admonished me, I will be so unreasonable as to ask somewhat of the
+<i>Junker</i>, first begging of you kindly not to take it amiss, as I do it
+at your own desire; and this is my petition, dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>: I
+wish you to send me a dress of whatever kind you like, whether flesh
+coloured or silver, that I may have greater change of dress.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved and well-trusted <i>Junker</i>, I have another great request
+to make to you. You know that I have two sisters who love me, and whom
+I equally love well; I should like to give them some little thing as a
+present in your name, if it seems good to you. I have written this to
+you because you have desired me to speak out my wishes, therefore, I
+beg you, <i>Junker</i>, not to take it amiss of me. I do not write it with
+the idea that it must be, but that it may be done or left undone by the
+<i>Junker</i> at his pleasure.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I send you, according to your desire, the measure of my beautiful
+stature; we have added nothing to it, but such as the maiden is, so is
+the measure. I hope that, God willing, they may soon see me tall and
+beautiful as I am.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We have partaken with pleasure of the grapes you sent us, and kindly
+thank you for the same. If we get anything rare we will impart it to
+you.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am delighted that my picture pleases your youngest daughter so well,
+and that she has shown it so much honour; let her boldly kiss it; God
+grant that I may see her, and I will return it to her with
+interest.<a name="div2_59" href="#div2Ref_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The shoes which I must have for the pulling off,<a name="div2_60" href="#div2Ref_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> I will have made
+as soon as possible of the best kind, as good as they can be made here,
+although here they are not in fashion. Dearly beloved <i>Junker</i>, I have
+one more petition to make in conclusion, namely, that you will make the
+best of my plain, simple, bad letter, for I intend it in all sincerity,
+and write from my open heart; and kindly favour me with an answer,
+which, at the same time, I would rather have by word of mouth, than in
+writing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No more from me but what is always pleasing and agreeable to you.
+Herewith I send to the Junker, together with his dearly beloved son and
+daughter, a hundred thousand greetings, and commend you and ourselves
+to God Almighty. Given the 10th October at Nuremberg.</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="margin-right:20%">&quot;Yours true in
+<sub><img border="0" src="images/heart.png" alt="heart"></sub> as long as I live,</p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">Ursula Freherin</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">&quot;Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly loved Junker, I send you
+my most kindly greeting, together with my love and truth. I received
+your letter with pleasure, and learned therefrom with heartfelt joy of
+the well-being of you and yours. As regards us, we have also to thank
+our dear and gracious God; may He continue his mercy to us all. Amen.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I perceive from your letter that it is impossible for you to come to
+us before the marriage. This we are sorry to hear, and I am greatly
+disappointed. I quite thought you would come, and was heartily rejoiced
+thereat, and oft I ran to the window when I heard any sound of riding
+or driving. May our dear Lord God give us all health, and bring us
+together with joy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;With respect to the wreath, I thank you kindly, dearly beloved Junker,
+that you have informed me about it. I am quite persuaded that we shall
+give occasion for much rude gossip, from not knowing the customs
+amongst you, as they seem quite different to what they are here. I pray
+you to have the wreath made as it ought to be, and to send it to us as
+you propose in your letter. As to the other wreath, Frau N�tzelin has
+instructed me how it ought to be, and I have ordered one with golden
+spangles, which shall be properly made. I am not satisfied about the
+bridal presents, as you have not written to me what I am to take for my
+sisters, and they will not say what they would like; I am fearful of
+taking too much, or too little, and yet wish to do exactly what is
+right; I hoped that you would let me know what, and how much they
+should have. As concerning mine, I hope I shall act so as to deserve
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved Junker, I have yet a great request to make to you
+concerning the shoes, if I may venture to do it, and you will receive
+it without displeasure. It is, however, a shame that I should trouble
+you with it, but it cannot be helped. I have had shoes made, and shown
+them to Frau N�tzelin, who says they are good for nothing, being much
+too large; that they ought to be quite little, or they would laugh at
+me outright; and she has advised me to write to the Junker, and beg he
+will have them made down there, because being the fashion, they can
+make them better than here, where they are never worn; they could not
+at all understand me, even when I explained it to them fully, still
+they did not comprehend it; however I indeed have never seen one. I
+send you herewith, dearly beloved Junker, two ducats, and pray you to
+let your maid-servant see after it, it is my desire that you should not
+be troubled with it. They need not be very costly, there should be only
+the arms, or perhaps the name upon them, and they should not be large
+or long.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My honoured mother begs that you will not take it amiss if she does
+not answer your letter now; she has so much to do, she has no leisure,
+but another time she will send you an answer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved Junker, I have nothing further to write except that
+yesterday I was at the wedding, I felt much because you were not here,
+and also not coming, and N�tzel brought me home in your place.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have nothing further to say, and no leisure, as I must go to the
+wedding party. There remains only to send you and yours a hundred
+thousand kindly greetings from my honoured mother, my brothers and
+sisters, and to commend you to the care and protection of God Almighty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In great haste.</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="margin-right:20%">&quot;Your true and loving brunette, and as long as I live,</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="margin-right:30%">&quot;Yours in <sub><img border="0" src="images/heart.png" alt="heart"></sub></p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">Ursula Freherin</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">&quot;Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly beloved Junker, may my
+kindly greeting and good wishes attend you.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have received your letter, and learned with heartfelt joy, of the
+well-being of you and yours; as regards us, we are, thanks and praise
+be to God, still well. May God Almighty so keep us all for ever,
+according to his will and pleasure. Amen.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Concerning your letter, wherein you write that you wish to try my love
+and obedience, I did not long deliberate, because the time is now
+short, and I have taken a good deal out of the purse for myself and
+sisters, yet not with the intention that it should always go on so; and
+thus, dearly beloved Junker, your commands and my obedience are fully
+carried out, and I and my sisters do greatly and kindly thank you, and
+we hope, God willing, to thank you soon by word of mouth. I have also
+seen, after what you wrote, that the horses should be ready.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I hope that I shall have executed your orders so that you may be
+brought safely through your dangerous journey, for it would assuredly
+be very painful to me, if on my account you were to be exposed to great
+danger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Dearly beloved Junker, we have heard with pleasure that you will come
+to us at the last inn, for in truth it will be necessary to instruct us
+as to all the arrangements.<a name="div2_61" href="#div2Ref_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> May God Almighty give you health and
+happiness, and bring us together in joy. The last inn for sleeping will
+be Stockstadt; my honoured father will also write to you his
+instructions, and by them you will be guided.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No more at present, than that you, dearly beloved Junker, your son and
+daughter, are heartily greeted by me and mine, and commended to the
+care and protection of God Almighty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In great haste.</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="margin-right:20%">&quot;Your true and loving brunette, as long as I live</p>
+<p class="right" style="margin-right:20%">&quot;Yours in <sub><img border="0" src="images/heart.png" alt="heart"></sub></p>
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">Ursula Freherin</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>GERMAN NOBILITY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">In the beginning of the sixteenth century we find the names of the
+German nobles, Fronsperg, Hutten, and Sickingen, conspicuous in the
+three different ways in which the nobles then employed themselves,--the
+Army, the Church, and State, and the representation and maintenance of
+the rights and interests of the landed proprietors. But it appears
+strange that even up to the middle of the seventeenth century, men like
+these should have had so few of their own class following in their
+footsteps. From the time of Fronsperg to that of the Bohemian Junker
+Albrecht of Waldstein, and the wild cavalry leader Pappenheim, the
+whole of Germany produced no General of more than average skill from
+among the nobility. There were a few Landsknechte leaders of citizen
+extraction like Sch�rtlin, and some German princes, all however with
+more pretension than capacity, and it was principally to Spaniards and
+Italians that the family of the Emperor Charles V. and their opponents
+owed their most important victories. As to the intellectual life of
+Germany, there was still less of that amongst the nobility after the
+time of Hutten. How few noble names do we find in the long list of
+reformers, scholars, poets, architects, and artists! The first occur in
+the seventeenth century, when we find those of the members of the
+<i>Palmenordens</i>, the author of the 'Simplicissimus,' and of some noble
+rhymers belonging to the Silesian school of poetry or to the Saxon
+court. One may well ask how it happened that an order so numerous,
+holding such an advantageous position with respect to the people,
+should have accomplished so little in this great field of action, which
+up to the time of the Hohenstaufen was especially in the possession of
+the nobility. And even with the most favourably disposed judgment, it
+would be difficult to ascribe to the landed nobility of the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, any
+beneficial influences on any one of the great currents of life in
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In fact the lower nobility--considered as an order--had been, since the
+time of the Hohenstaufen, a misfortune to Germany. It was after the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, when the difference betwixt the
+noblemen and freeholders had been established by the laws, by the
+interests and inclinations of the Emperor, and by the limited ideal,
+which was formed by the aristocratic body, that the nobility gradually
+decayed. In the cities, undoubtedly, the old dominion of the privileged
+freeman was broken in the last period of the middle ages; there, in
+spite of all hindrances, a quicker circulation of popular strength had
+established itself. The labourer could become a citizen, the
+experienced citizen could rise to be the ruler of his city, or of a
+confederation of cities, and be the leader of great interests. But the
+landed nobleman after the beginning of the thirteenth century sank
+gradually into a state of isolation; labour was a disgrace to him, his
+acres were cultivated by dependent vassals, and he naturally
+endeavoured as much as possible to separate himself from them. Ever
+heavier became the oppression by which he kept them down; ever higher
+rose the pretensions which he, as lord of the land and soil, raised
+against his own people.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But the oppression of the agriculturist was not the worst consequence
+of the privileged position of the noble. If he found it to his
+advantage to treat his beast of burden, the peasant, with moderation,
+he was so much the more eager to make use of his landed rights in other
+directions. The highroads, the river that ran by his castle, afforded
+him the opportunity of laying hold of the goods of strangers; he levied
+imposts upon goods and travellers; he obtruded his protecting escort
+upon them, and robbed such as considered this escort unnecessary; he
+built a bridge where there was no river, in order to raise a toll; he
+designedly kept the roads in bad condition, because he chose to
+consider that the goods of travelling merchants, though under the
+Emperor's protection, so long as they were in waggons or in vessels
+afloat; if the waggons were upset or vessels ran aground, belonged,
+according to manorial right, to the possessor of the land. Finally he
+became himself a robber, and with his comrades seized whatever he could
+lay hands on; he took the goods to his house, plundered the travellers,
+and kept them prisoners till they could free themselves by ransom.
+Nevertheless there were certain regulated observances accompanying
+these robberies, according to which the conscientious Junker
+distinguished between honourable and dishonourable plunder. But this
+moral code had very little to justify it. In the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries there were very few noblemen's houses which did not
+deserve the name of robber-holds, and still fewer out of which
+plundering attacks were not made.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But this life was most of all detrimental to the nobles themselves;
+their love of plunder, and their pugnacity, made them turn as much
+against their fellow-nobles as against the cities, and through the
+whole of the middle ages led to innumerable feuds. When the feud was
+notified by letter, some days previous to the beginning of hostilities,
+it was considered honourable. Any trifle was sufficient to occasion a
+feud: never-ending boundary disputes, encroachments on the chase, or
+the flogging of a servant, caused discord, even between old comrades
+and friendly neighbours. Then both parties strengthened themselves by
+the assistance of relations and dependents; they enlisted troopers, and
+endeavoured to learn through the medium of spies how they could gain an
+advantage over the property, house, or person of their adversary. The
+opulence of the cities, and the rancour entertained by the nobles
+against the rising independence of the citizens, gave an agreeable
+excitement to their feuds with the latter. Whoever was unable to
+establish a profitable feud of his own, united himself as an assistant
+to another, and thus old comrades were often by the chapter of
+accidents opposed, and then, in the full consciousness of doing their
+duty, would beat and even stab each other.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This marauding life on the highways, in the woods and caverns, and with
+drunken companions, was neither favourable to their family life nor to
+their higher interests, nor was it even fitted to develop warlike
+capacity except among the subordinates. At the best, it only formed
+leaders of small bodies of mounted troopers for foraging expeditions
+and surprises. Sickingen himself, the most skilful specimen of a Junker
+of the sixteenth century, showed in his great and decisive feud, only
+very moderate talents as a general; and the capacities of G�tz, in a
+military point of view, do not stand higher than those of an
+experienced serjeant of hussars. Thus wild, vicious, and detrimental to
+the community, was the conduct of even the quietest of the lower
+nobility. Their being a privileged order whose members considered
+themselves superior to citizen of peasant, who kept themselves apart
+from others, in marriage, business, law, manners, and ceremonials, made
+them for centuries weak, and their existence a misfortune to the
+people; but at the same time it saved them from the ruin consequent
+upon their disorderly life. On retrospect of the act itself, there is
+little difference to be seen between the robber who now waylays the
+wanderer on the lonely heath, and the country nobleman who about the
+year 1500 dragged the Nuremberger merchant from his horse and kept him
+in a dark prison upon bread and water, whilst the noble's wife made
+coats and mantles out of the stolen cloth. But three hundred and fifty
+years ago, the noble robber practised his evil deeds with the feeling,
+that though his actions were perhaps contrary to the decrees of an
+Imperial Diet, yet they were looked upon by the whole nobility of his
+province, indeed by the highest sovereigns of the country, as pleasant
+or at the worst as daring tricks. Certainly if he was caught by the
+city whose citizens he had injured, he might possibly lose his life, as
+does now a murderer on the high-road, but the law of the city was not
+his law, and if he died, his death would probably be revenged by other
+active comrades. However unreasonable were the laws of honour according
+to which he lived, he felt that these same laws were honoured by
+thousands whom he esteemed as the best upon earth. Thus it was
+possible, that amidst the greatest immorality and perversity, many
+manly virtues might be exhibited by individuals; fidelity to their
+word, devotion to their friends, and kind-hearted friendliness even to
+those whom they had robbed and imprisoned.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was at this period, under the new Emperor Maximilian, that the
+memorable attempt was begun, to give a new constitution to the
+shattered body of the Empire, and with it the possibility of a new
+life. More than a century elapsed and three generations passed away
+before the lesser nobility could accustom themselves to the restraint
+of the new laws; but the princes and cities, however much they might
+quarrel together, had the greatest interest in enforcing obedience to
+these laws. It is however worthy of note, that while losing a portion
+of their wild straightforward resoluteness, they adopted the faults
+more especially belonging to the new epoch. How the change gradually
+took place, we will demonstrate here by a few examples.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A happy accident has preserved to us three autobiographies of
+well-known German nobles of different periods of the 16th century,
+those of Berlichingen, of Sch�rtlin, and of Schweinichen; one of them,
+so long as the German language lasts, will be intimately associated
+with the name of the greatest German poet. These three men, who
+flourished in the beginning, the middle, and the end of this celebrated
+century, were widely different in character and destiny, but all three
+were landed proprietors, and each of them has recorded the events of
+his life, so as to give an instructive insight into the social
+condition of his circle. The best known is G�tz von Berlichingen; his
+memoirs were first published in 1731. The halo, with which three
+hundred years after his death, Goethe's charming poem has invested him,
+will make it difficult for the reader of his biography to separate the
+ideal delineation of the poet from the figure of the historical G�tz.
+And yet this is necessary. For however modestly and lovingly Goethe has
+portrayed his character, he appears quite different in history. When as
+an old man, in a time to which he was a stranger, he wrote his life, he
+loved to dwell on the knightly exploits of his wild youth. It was not
+his line to enter into political questions; if he found himself in a
+crisis he acted according to the advice of his patrons,--the great
+sovereigns, who employed his strong arm and steadfast will for their
+own objects. When the peasant army broke into his territories, he and
+his kinsmen were utterly at a loss what to do, and wrote for advice.
+The answer was suppressed by his mother-in-law and wife, and he was
+left to his own judgment, and had not sufficient adroitness to withdraw
+himself from the thronging insurgents. Had he been like many of his
+cotemporaries, such as Max Stumpf, he would have abandoned the peasants
+in spite of all his vows. But although not really faithful to them,
+true to the letter of his word, he adhered to them till the four weeks
+were passed, for which he had bound himself though he was not in fact
+their leader but their prisoner. After that he lived some years in
+close imprisonment, then for a long time in strict confinement at his
+castle. He was surrounded by a new generation, engaged in vehement
+strife, and he himself was grieving the while that he had acted in the
+peasant struggle as an honourable knight, and that still true to his
+word, he had even now to count the steps which he was allowed to take
+beyond the gates of his castle. After sixteen years of solitary
+seclusion he was in his old age twice called to take part in the
+warfare of a younger race, which neither brought him adventures nor any
+opportunity to acquire fame or booty. When at last he died in peace at
+his Castle of Hornburg, at the age of eighty-two, Luther had been dead
+sixteen years, and the Emperor Charles V. had been interred in a
+cloister four years before; but the long period from the year 1525
+occupies few pages in his autobiography, although it was written in the
+last year of his life. There will be given here fragments from his
+account of the Nuremberg feud.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">G�tz von Berlichingen</span>.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">&quot;1512. Now I will not conceal from any one that I was desirous of
+coming to blows with the Nurembergers; I revolved the thing in my mind,
+and thought that I must pick a quarrel with the priest, the Bishop of
+Bamberg, that I might bring the Nurembergers into play. I waylaid
+ninety-five merchants who were under the safe conduct of the Bishop; I
+was so kind that I did not seize any of their goods, except those
+belonging to the Nurembergers; of these there were about thirty. I
+attacked them on the Monday after Our Lord's Ascension-day, about eight
+or nine in the morning, and rode along with them all Tuesday, that
+night, and Wednesday: I had my good friend Hans von Selbitz with me,
+and altogether our party amounted to thirty. But the other travellers
+were numerous; these I drove away in small bodies to whatever places
+they appeared to belong. My comrade, Hans von Selbitz, also an enemy of
+the Bishop of Bamberg, about a fortnight afterwards burnt his castle
+and a city, called, if I remember it rightly, Vilseck, so that this
+affair bore double fruit.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In order that every one may know why and wherefore I quarrelled with
+and attacked the men of Nuremberg, I will state the causes. Fritz von
+Littwach, a Margrave's page, with whom I had been brought up as a boy,
+who had been my companion-in-arms, and who was very good to me, once
+disappeared mysteriously in the neighbourhood of Onolzbach, being made
+prisoner and carried off, so that for a long time no one knew where he
+was or who had carried him away. Long afterwards, the Margrave caught a
+man, who gave him and the knights accompanying him many true tidings.
+Then it became known where Fritz von Littwach had been taken to; so I
+begged and prayed of my patron and relation Herr Hans von Seckendorf,
+who was the Margrave's majordomo, that he would procure me the
+confession of the traitor. Thereby it was discovered that those in the
+service of the Nurembergers had done the deed, and it might be assumed
+that he had been taken to one of their houses or a public gaol. This
+was one of my grounds of complaint against the Nurembergers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Further, I had hired a servant called Georg von Gaislingen, who had
+promised to enter my service, but who had been, when with his Junker
+Eustach von Lichtenstein, stabbed and severely wounded by the men of
+Nuremberg; his Junker had been so likewise, but survived. Although many
+others besides the Nurembergers were hostile to Fritz von Littwach, yet
+I never perceived any one who had 'belled the cat,' as they say, or had
+taken up the matter, except poor truehearted G�tz von Berlichingen:
+these are the grounds of offence that I have everywhere and in every
+way notified and proved against the Nurembergers, every day in which I
+have negotiated with them before the commissaries of his Imperial
+Majesty, and also before the ecclesiastical and temporal princes.<a name="div2_62" href="#div2Ref_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will now show further what happened to me and my relations in the
+Nuremberg feud. The States of the Empire ordered out four hundred
+horsemen against me, amongst whom were counts and lords, knights and
+vassals; their challenges are still in existence. I and my brother were
+put repeatedly under the ban of the Empire, and in certain cities the
+priests and monks fulminated fire and flame at me from the pulpit, and
+gave me up to be eaten by the birds of the air, and everything that we
+had was taken from us, so that we could not possess a foot's breadth of
+anything. There was no time for festivities; we were obliged to conceal
+ourselves, and yet I was able to do my enemies some injury, both to
+their possessions and otherwise, so that his Imperial Majesty several
+times interposed and directed his commissaries to negotiate between us,
+to regulate all things and bring about a reconciliation; thereby his
+Imperial Majesty hindered many of my projects, and occasioned me more
+than two hundred thousand gulden' worth of loss, for I intended to have
+carried off both gold and money from the Nurembergers. It was my
+project then, by God's help, to overthrow, beat, and imprison all the
+Nuremberg soldiers, and even the burgomaster himself, who wore a large
+gold chain about his neck, and held a mace in his hand, and also all
+their horsemen and their standard bearer, when they were on their way
+to Hohenkr�hen; I was already prepared for it with horse and foot, so
+that it was quite certain I should have got them into my hands. But
+there were some good lords and friends of whom I took counsel, whether
+I should on the appointed day appear before his Imperial Majesty, or
+put my project in execution. Their true and faithful counsel was, that
+I should honour his Imperial Majesty with a visit that day, which
+counsel I followed to my great and evident loss.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I knew when the Frankfort fair was to take place, when the
+Nurembergers were to go on foot from W�rzburg to Frankfort by the
+Spessart. I made a reconnaissance and fell upon five or six; amongst
+them there was a merchant whom I attacked for the third time, having in
+half a year, twice made him prisoner and once deprived him of property;
+the others were mere bale packers of Nuremberg: I made semblance as if
+I would cut off their heads and hands, though I was not in earnest; but
+they were obliged to kneel down and lay their heads upon a block; I
+then gave one of them a kick behind, and a box on the ear to the
+others: this was the way I punished them, and then let them go their
+way. The merchant whom I had so frequently waylaid crossed himself and
+said: 'I should sooner have thought that the heavens would fall in than
+that you should have waylaid me to-day, for only some days ago, about a
+hundred of our merchants were standing in the market-place of
+Nuremberg, the talk turned upon you, and I heard that you were then in
+the forests at Hagenschiess waylaying and seizing property.' I myself
+wondered that in so short a time the rumour of my riding hither and
+thither should have reached Nuremberg. Soon after, his Imperial Majesty
+took the matter in hand, and arranged it at W�rzburg.&quot;--Thus far G�tz.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">Sch�rtlin von Burtenbach</span>.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">Sebastian Sch�rtlin does not exactly belong to the same class. He was
+not of noble origin, and had to thank his military talents for his
+knighthood. He was born in the year 1498, and studied arms under
+Fronsperg. From 1518 to 1557 he was actively employed in almost all the
+military affairs of Germany, in the service of the Emperor, and in that
+of the city of Augsburg. For a time also he served in the French army,
+as on account of his participation in the Smalkaldic war he had been
+obliged to leave Germany. He had more than once commanded large armies,
+and was in great repute as a bold and experienced general; he is an
+interesting contrast to G�tz. The one the noble cavalier, the other the
+citizen Landsknechte leader; G�tz the jovial companion-at-arms,
+Sch�rtlin the practical man of business. The lives of both were full of
+adventures and not free from inexcusable deeds: both died at a great
+age; but G�tz dissipated his time and property in plundering
+expeditions and knightly deeds, while Sch�rtlin helped to decide the
+fate of Germany. G�tz understood so little his own times and his
+interest, that he, the aristocrat, allowed himself to be made use of by
+the democratic peasants as a man of straw; Sch�rtlin understood his own
+time so well, that after the unfortunate Smalkaldic war he withdrew
+into Switzerland a rich man, and a few years afterwards was reinstated
+triumphantly in all his honours. G�tz had all his life a strong
+hankering after the merchant's gold, yet after all his daring
+plundering expeditions had but little in his coffers; Sch�rtlin made
+money in all his campaigns, bought one property after another, and knew
+how to command the highest price for his services. Both gave proof of
+character and of party fidelity; both were honourable soldiers, and the
+knightly consciences of both were according to our judgment too lax.
+G�tz, at whose want of prudence we sometimes smile, though fond of
+booty, was yet in his way painfully conscientious; Sch�rtlin was the
+cautious but agreeable egotist. All the good qualities of decaying
+knighthood were united in the simple soul of the possessor of Hornburg,
+whilst the Herr von Burtenbach was, on the contrary, thoroughly a son
+of the new time; soldier, negotiator, and diplomat. Both were with the
+Imperial army which invaded France in 1544; Sch�rtlin, in the prime of
+life as a general, G�tz as an old gray-headed knight with a small troop
+of vassals: the same year Sch�rtlin was created Imperial Lord High
+Steward and Captain General, and acquired seven thousand gulden. G�tz
+rode, ill and lonely, in the rear of the returning army back to his
+castle. Both have written their lives in a firm soldier's hand; that of
+G�tz is less skilful and well arranged, but his biography will be read
+with greater sympathy than that of Sch�rtlin: G�tz takes pleasure in
+relating his knightly adventures, as good comrades recall their
+recollections of old times over a glass of good wine; Sch�rtlin gives a
+perspicuous statement in chronological order, and favours the reader
+with many dry but instructive details of great political transactions;
+but respecting himself, he prefers giving an account of his gains and
+his vexatious quarrels with his landed neighbours.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">These quarrels, nevertheless, however uniform their course, claim the
+greatest interest here; for it is precisely by them that we discover
+how much the proceedings of the landed nobility had changed since the
+beginning of the century. There is the same love of feuds, as in the
+youthful days of the Berlichingen; deeds of violence still continue to
+abound, and numerous duodecimo wars are planned; but the old feeling of
+self-dependence is broken, the spirit of public tranquillity and of
+courts of justice hovers over the disputants, neighbours and kind
+friends interpose, and the lawless seldom defy the Imperial mandate or
+the will of the reigning princes without punishment. Sudden surprises
+and insidious devices take the place of open feuds; instead of the
+cross-bow and sword, adversaries make use of not less destructive
+weapons--calumny, bribery, and intrigues. Satirical songs had for a
+century been paid for and listened to with pleasure, and the travelling
+singers made themselves feared, as they ridiculed a niggardly host in
+their songs at a hundred firesides.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Sch�rtlin relates as follows:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Anno 1557. In this year I, Sebastian Sch�rtlin, bought the territorial
+domain of Hohenburg, together with Bissingen<a name="div2_63" href="#div2Ref_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> and Hohenstein, from a
+Bohemian Lord, Woldemar von Lobkowitz, and from Hans Stein, for
+fifty-two thousand gulden, and took possession thereof in the presence
+of my son and son-in-law, and many other nobles, on St. Matthew's day,
+and received the homage of the vassals in the marketplace. The same
+summer I restored the castle of Hohenstein, and so repaired it as to
+enable one to reside there. Now about Michaelmas day my son went with
+his wife and children, and took up his residence there; and prepared
+rough and hewn stones, lime, and wood, for repairing the castle of
+Bissingen; and in the winter he caused the well to be put in order; for
+that purpose the neighbouring prelates gave me beautiful oak, and with
+their horses and those of the city of Donauw�rth, and by all the
+neighbouring peasants the carting was done.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The 18th September, 1560, Count Ludwig von Oettingen caused one of my
+husbandmen of Reutmannshof to be carried prisoner to his office at
+Harburg, where he was kept without bite or sup, because he and his sons
+in defending themselves had had a quarrel with certain peasants of
+Oettingen, who had opened his gate and forcibly driven over his land;
+nevertheless no one had been hurt. On the Monday following, the Count,
+with five hundred peasants and fifty horses, fell with a strong hand
+upon my wood, where he had no territorial rights, caused my acorns to
+be shaken down, and without notice or warning carried off by violence
+women, children, and waggons belonging to me. When I arrived the same
+day at Bissingen, and learned all this, I and my two sons, together
+with our cousin Ludwig Sch�rtlin and Hans Rumpolt von Elrichshausen,
+and a force of two-and-thirty horses, entered his domain, and close to
+his castle of Harburg seized a peasant and two of his vassals, and
+carried them prisoners to Bissingen. As his horsemen and archers had at
+their pleasure passed close to Bissingen under my very nose, with great
+parade and firing off of guns, so did I the like at Harburg with the
+above-mentioned horsemen, in order to excite my adversary to a
+skirmish, but no one would come out against us. Yet at last they shot
+at us with blunderbusses. On the Thursday after, the Count rode to
+Stuttgard for a shooting match, and as he knew well that I would not
+give way to him, he spoke evil of me to their princely highnesses the
+Elector and Count Palatine, and other counts and nobles, screening
+himself so as to get me into disgrace and disfavour. Duke Christoph of
+W�rtemberg especially, who had previously been favourably disposed
+towards me, recalled this year the pension of a hundred gulden which he
+had given me. The Count had besides so excited his brother, Count
+Friedrich, against me, that he also attacked me with violence.
+Afterwards both Counts strengthened themselves with horse and foot,
+against whom we brought into the castle of Bissingen a hundred good
+experienced archers, and the concourse of troops on both sides was
+great. The Counts had brought me and mine into ridicule with the
+people, by songs and other poems, proverbs, and writings, and also with
+His Imperial Majesty, the Electors and other princes, counts, and
+lords. They accused me of being an exciter of tumults, and a
+quarrelsome breaker of the public peace, and gave out everywhere that I
+was their tenant, vassal, and dependent, who was doubly bound to them,
+and had forgotten my feudal duty, and such-like lies, in the hope of
+injuring me and mine by their falsehoods. Now whilst I was preparing
+for being attacked, the Count Palatine, Duke Wolfgang, and Duke
+Albrecht of Bavaria, being the nearest princes, interposed; they wrote
+to both parties to keep the peace, and offered with Duke Christoph to
+bring about an amicable negotiation, so that the prisoners on both
+sides should be freed, and all the hired troops dismissed. This I was
+willing to do; but as Count Ludwig von Oettingen--nicknamed Igel--the
+Hedgehog--had begun all the mischief, I demanded that he should do it
+first. But the Count would not give freedom to the people, but placed
+Ratzebauer, who was my vassal alone, and owed neither fealty nor
+allegiance to Oettingen, before the criminal court. To all eternity it
+will not be shown that I and mine, by this purchase, became lawfully
+vassals, for we bought Hohenburg and Bissingen, together with all that
+appertains to them, as freehold properties, and as territorial domains
+which are independent and have criminal jurisdiction. Yet the princes
+would not leave the settlement to us, but gave us manifold admonitions
+to be peaceable; so I dismissed my hired troops, and in this
+transaction I well perceived that Duke Wolfgang, who before was my
+gracious protector, had also fallen away, and had become inimical to
+me. But in spite of all the princely mediations, Count Ludwig one
+evening advanced with many horsemen and some hundred peasants against
+the castle of Bissingen, and began a skirmish, with our horsemen of
+whom some were in the field and others issued forth, in which none
+received injury. As the enemy could do nothing, they returned again, a
+laughing-stock to all.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I brought all this business before the Supreme Court of Judicature,
+and made complaint against Count Ludwig for his delinquencies against
+me, hoping, as also happened, that I might bring this matter to a just
+conclusion, though the princes showed such a party feeling.<a name="div2_64" href="#div2Ref_64"><sup>[64]</sup></a>
+Meanwhile, Count Igel meanly cast odium upon my name everywhere by
+printed writings and calumnious songs; and in the presence of the Count
+von Mansfeld, erased from the armorial shield of my son Hans Bastian,
+which was upon the Inn, the prefix 'Herr von Bissingen,' which
+nevertheless had not been placed there by my son himself, but by the
+landlord; and Count Friedrich caused his bailiff publicly to proclaim,
+at the consecration of the church at Buchenhofen, that if one of the
+Sch�rtlingers should go thither, every one should beat him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the year 1561, Count Lothair von Oettingen came during Lent to
+Augsburg; he sent many friendly words to me, as that he and his other
+brothers were quite sorry that his brother Count Ludwig had treated me
+in so unseemly a manner. Besides which, he complained to me of his
+brother, that he would not give him his marriage settlement or any
+residence; it therefore became necessary for him to behave hostilely
+towards him, and he begged of me to yield him knightly service.
+Thereupon I thanked him for his sympathy, and regretted that with him
+also things did not go satisfactorily; but I let him know that there
+was a truce between me and his brother, and that I was engaged with him
+before the Supreme Court, that I did not willingly put my foot between
+the hammer and the anvil, but that if otherwise he wanted any knightly
+service, and would inform me of it, I would be his servant, and would
+not refuse to furnish horse and armour.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was the custom annually at Bissingen to go on Holy Ascension Day to
+a fair and dance that was held behind the castle, and there was also
+shooting, whereat, this year, my son Hans Bastian gave his company.
+Then Counts Ludwig and Friedrich sent the bailiff of Unter Bissingen,
+together with other horsemen, to the fair, armed with five
+blunderbusses. They placed themselves there, and wished to hold their
+ground; my sons accosted them, asking why they placed themselves thus
+armed. To whom the bailiff answered that his lords had sent him to
+guard this place, and that the supremacy belonged to the Counts of
+Oettingen; which my son gainsaid, as the parents of the Counts had sold
+it, and it belonged to me, and he bid them take themselves off. Upon
+this the bailiff rode away with these words, that he would soon return
+after another fashion; and presently, from the footpath horsemen and
+infantry were to be seen coming; whereupon my son sent certain servants
+and vassals to the castle and the church tower, to await the enemy.
+Suddenly the Count's people, numbering about forty horsemen and three
+hundred foot, came riding and running at full speed, attacked my son,
+and cousin Ludwig, and their sharpshooters and vassals with spears and
+firearms, pressed quite up to the barrier of the fair, and closed the
+gates by overpowering force. On the other hand my son and his followers
+placed themselves on the defensive, fought them at close quarters, and
+firing at them from the castle and towers, shot two of the Count's
+horses and two of his men, one in the body and the other in the leg;
+thus they kept them at bay, and at last put them to flight, but, thank
+God! no misfortune happened to him or his. Afterwards, however, when my
+son had entered the castle with his people, and was eating his supper
+and taking no further heed, Count Lothar, that honourable man, who had
+before said so many friendly things to me, returned about six o'clock,
+and fired thirty shots at the castle with four powerful guns upon
+wheels, and blew away full twelve bricks. About nine o'clock they
+returned to Unter-Bissingen: both Counts strengthened themselves in the
+night, and came again in the morning with many people. As my son and my
+cousin Ludwig had no expectation of another attack, they came over to
+me early in the morning; then the burgomaster and certain councillors
+went out to the enemy and inquired what their intentions were, as there
+was no one in the castle but women and children, they also said that
+the domain was under process and Imperial neutrality. Thereupon the
+bailiff from Harburg made reply that they had come yesterday and again
+to-day with good and friendly intentions, to claim their lord's rights
+of supremacy, but they had been fired at, whereby great damage had been
+done to them. They desired to occupy the <i>Platz</i> to-day, but if they
+were fired at, it would be seen what they should do in return. Upon
+this the people of Bissingen answered that they were poor people, and
+whatever might be done would have to be answered for. Afterwards the
+Count's people again advanced to the <i>Platz</i>, two hundred men strong
+with four guns and a drum, and after performing certain dances, and
+drinking, each one plucked a leaf from the linden trees; after this
+defiance, and firing, they withdrew, leaving behind them an ambuscade
+of two thousand men. All this I notified and complained of to his
+Imperial Majesty and the Supreme Court; thereupon a mandate was sent to
+both parties, that we should under pain of disgrace and outlawry not
+molest each other any further, and together with this a summons to
+appear before the court on the 20th of August, which were both
+delivered to the Counts, who answered in a most unseemly way that it
+was all a falsehood. I besides this protested against the injuries done
+to me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the aforesaid grounds, and because there was no end to their
+hostile behaviour, and also as neither law nor right were of any avail,
+I was compelled for the sake of mine honour and for protection against
+the molestation of the two above-mentioned Counts, to send a statement
+to His Imperial Majesty of the Roman Empire, to the Electors and
+Princes, Counts and States of the Empire, and also to the five
+divisions of nobility and the knighthood generally; I also made a like
+statement by word of mouth to the estates of the country communes, and
+fully apprised them and their governor, my worthy lord of Bavaria, of
+whom I was appointed representative, and further the city of Augsburg,
+whose vassal I am, of the whole transaction, and besought of them all,
+counsel, help, or support. These addressed a threatening document to
+the Counts, admonishing them to leave to me and mine, our rights, in
+peace; adding that if they did not, they would not abandon me. At the
+same time they recommended me to employ nothing but law. Now as so many
+calumnious songs and sayings had been circulated concerning me, one to
+whom I had perhaps done some good composed an admirable pasquinade and
+song upon the Count <i>Igel</i> von Harburg, and cut him up well.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the third of October, <i>Igel</i>, with fifteen hundred men, horse and
+foot, amongst them certain Landsknechte, together with five pieces of
+heavy artillery, advanced against my cousin Ludwig at Oberringingen,
+having sent before him certain nobles to demand of him to give up his
+house. But Ludwig Sch�rtlin had by my commands, two days before,
+supplied himself with three Landsknechte, certain blunderbusses and
+hand-guns of my son's at Bissingen, and with powder and shot. So he
+awaited the storm, as he hoped for a father's reward from me for his
+knightly truth and faith. He himself went out to these nobles, and
+answered them with threatening words; if Count <i>Igel</i> would come in a
+neighbourly and friendly manner, like his brothers, he should partake
+with him of his sour wine; but coming in such a fashion, he could not
+open his house; he had a house for himself, and not for the Count of
+Oettingen, and the Count would find he had to deal with a soldier. Each
+party withdrew behind his defences, but the Count entrenched himself in
+the outer court, and by the fire of his artillery destroyed the
+battlements of the towers, all the windows, roofs, and chimneys, and
+two persons. On the other hand, Ludwig Sch�rtlin defended himself
+valiantly, shot the master-gunner of the Count's artillery and another
+person, and wounded besides many of the soldiers, of whom some
+afterwards died. Thus they fought from seven o'clock in the morning
+till six in the evening. In the night Ludwig caused the Count great
+alarm and disquiet; meanwhile he fortified himself, and again on the
+morrow defended himself valiantly. But when I, Sebastian Sch�rtlin,
+Knight, learned these things, I hastily sent on to Bissingen,
+according to the advice of Count Albrecht of Bavaria, four hundred
+soldiers, amongst them good marksmen from Augsburg, with powder and
+shot, iron cramps, and good material of war. Then I scraped together
+six-and-twenty thousand gulden, and provided helmets, powder and shot,
+also certain waggons and guns from the city of Memmingen; a great troop
+of Landsknechte and horsemen all appointed to be at Burtenbach on the
+fourth, and I myself came there in the evening, after I had put
+everything in motion. That same night, Count Wolf and Count Lothar came
+to me at Burtenbach in a friendly way, and complained to me that their
+brother, Count Ludwig, had also deprived them of their parental
+inheritance, and they entreated me to unite myself with them. So we
+made a written and sealed compact, that both the Counts and their
+brother Friedrich, with his marksmen, and all their power of horse and
+foot, should unite themselves with us, and I was to provide five
+thousand vassals, or other horsemen, and bear the expense of the war.
+But if I should restore the young Counts to their parental inheritance,
+they should pay two thirds, and I one, of the war expenses. We hoped
+Count <i>Igel</i> would tarry before Oberringingen, and in case he conquered
+it, would proceed to Bissingen to besiege my son. But the Count on the
+fourth of October raised the siege, and withdrew himself disgracefully,
+after he had laid waste and plundered my cousin's fore-court and whole
+village, and carried off all the women and children: yet my cousin was
+very near getting hold of one of his guns. When Count <i>Igel</i> perceived
+that we had come to an accommodation with his own brothers--Count
+Friedrich excepted, who would not act either with or against him--he
+fled the country, and went first to the Count Palatine, Duke Wolfgang,
+and afterwards to Duke Christoph von W�rtemberg, to whom he lied, and
+told many monstrous stories; such as, that I, with the assistance of
+His Imperial Majesty, the Kings of Bavaria, and city of Augsburg, and
+the league of Landsberg, had endeavoured to drive him from his people
+and country.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Meanwhile I strengthened myself, and at the end of two days I
+determined to make an expedition, and cross the Danube with a force of
+seven thousand men, horse and foot. But as it had been perceived by the
+two Princes, the Palatine, and W�rtemberg, that the Count would be
+driven away, and become a guest in their country, they both of them
+advanced, the Duke of W�rtemberg in person, with his horsemen and some
+guns, with the intention of not allowing me to cross the Danube, or to
+give me battle. The Palatine had before urged me extremely not to have
+recourse to arms, as his Princely Grace could not consent to this
+expedition of mine. His Imperial Majesty, and the Colonel of the
+Suabian troops, had also enjoined me to keep the peace, whereto also
+the Bavarian King and the city of Augsburg had repeatedly admonished
+me, and had offered to accommodate these affairs by negotiation. So
+with the loss of four thousand gulden, and in spite of my having been
+plundered, and my cousin endangered, I consented to sheath my sword and
+keep the peace, to come to an amicable agreement, and to fix a meeting
+at Donauw�rth. Negotiations were carried on there for a fortnight, and
+brought to a conclusion by the arbitrators of Bavaria and the
+Palatinate, to the effect that we should on both sides maintain peace,
+and as there was no other hope of peace between us, and no better way
+of settling matters, I should sell the property to the Count. This I
+would not do, as I wished to have no transactions with the Count. Yet
+at last I gave in so far, to the purport of the settled agreement, that
+I would submit myself respectfully to both Princes, and give up the
+supremacy of Hohenburg and Bissingen, on payment of sixty-two thousand
+gulden; but not withdraw from it till I was paid the last penny in
+peace and security.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far Sch�rtlin. In spite of his complaints of loss, it may be
+assumed that the sale, at least in a pecuniary point of view, was
+advantageous to him, but certain it is, that it did not put an end to
+his quarrels with the Count. For years they both continued to make
+complaints before the Supreme Court of Justice and the Emperor; and to
+make violent and mutual attacks on each other. At last the adversaries
+were obliged to shake hands in presence of the Emperor.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">Hans Von Schweinichen</span>.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">About the end of the sixteenth century the deeds of violence of the
+noble landed proprietors were less barefaced and less frequent. Most of
+them became peaceful Landjunkers, the ablest and poorest sought shelter
+at the numerous courts. When G�tz was young every Landjunker was a
+soldier, for he was a knight, and the traditions of knighthood had
+influence even in great wars. But it was just then that the great
+change was preparing which made the infantry the nucleus of the new
+army; from that time an experienced Landsknecht who had influence over
+his comrades, or a burgher master-gunner, who understood how to direct
+a carronade, was of more value to a general than a dozen undisciplined
+Junkers with their retainers. The power of the princes had for the most
+part, through the new art of war, mastered that of the lower nobility,
+and had made the descendants of the free knights of the Empire,
+chamberlains and attendants of the great dynasties. The new roads to
+fortune were flattery and cringing. The old martial spirit was lost,
+but the craving for excitement remained. The Germans had always been
+hard drinkers; now drunkenness became the most prominent vice in those
+provinces where the vine was not cultivated. Ruined property,
+prodigious debts, and insupportable lawsuits disturbed the few sober
+hours of the day. The sons of the country nobility attended Latin
+schools and the University, but the number of those who pursued a
+regular course of study was small, for even throughout the whole of the
+next century the higher offices of the state which required knowledge
+and skill in business, as well as the most important posts as
+ambassadors, were generally filled by burghers, and whilst the nobility
+seemed only capable of holding the higher court appointments, it was
+generally found necessary to send the son of a shoemaker, or of a
+village pastor, to a foreign court as the representative of sovereign
+dignity, and to make the noble courtier his subordinate travelling
+chamberlain. Thus the country nobility continued to vegetate--sometimes
+struggling against the new times, at others serving obsequiously, till,
+in the Thirty years' war, those of superior character were drawn into
+the violent struggle, and the weaker sank still lower.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hans von Schweinichen lived during this period of transition, which was
+about the end of the sixteenth century; he was a Silesian nobleman of
+old family, groom of the bedchamber, chamberlain, and factotum of the
+Quixotic Duke Heinrich XI. of Liegnitz. We see the characters of both,
+in juxta-position in two biographies written by Schweinichen. One is
+the account of his own life, 'Life and Adventures of the Silesian
+Knight, Hans von Schweinichen, published by B�sching, three parts,
+1820;' the other an extract from it, with some alterations and
+additions: 'The Life of Duke Heinrich XI., published in Stenzel;
+Script. Rer. Siles. iv.,' both, works of great value as a history of
+the manners of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old royal house of Silesian Piastens produced, with a few
+exceptions, a set of wild, wrong-headed rulers, with great pretensions
+and small powers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One of the most remarkable among them is Heinrich XI. von Liegnitz, the
+dissolute son of a worthless father. When the latter, Duke Friedrich
+III. was deposed by the Imperial commissioners in the year 1559, and
+put under arrest as a disturber of the community, the government of the
+principality devolved upon his son, then twenty years of age. After ten
+years of misrule he quarrelled with his brother Friedrich and his
+nobility, and in a fit of despotic humour caused the States of the
+duchy to be all imprisoned. Whilst the indignant members were appealing
+against him to the Emperor, he himself undertook an adventurous
+expedition through Germany, making the round of numerous courts and
+towns as a beggar, during which, the lack of money plunged him into one
+embarrassment after another, and led him into every kind of unworthy
+action. Meanwhile he was suspended, and his brother, who was not much
+better, was established as administrator. Heinrich complained
+querulously, undertook a new begging expedition to the German courts,
+and at last made his solicitations to the Emperor at Prague; he was
+still under the severe pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, but
+finally succeeded in obtaining the restoration of his duchy. Now
+followed fresh recklessness and open opposition to the Imperial
+commissary, a new deposition and strict imprisonment at Breslau. From
+this imprisonment he escaped and wandered about in foreign parts as a
+friendless adventurer; he offered his services to Queen Elizabeth of
+England in her war with Philip of Spain; and at last went to Poland to
+fight against Austria. He died suddenly at Cracow in 1586, probably of
+poison.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">If in his shatterbrained character there was anything out of the common
+way, it was his being entirely devoid of all one is accustomed to
+consider as honourable and conscientious. He had not the frivolity of
+his courtiers who cast off all reflection, but he entirely lacked all
+moral feeling. Being a prince, this recklessness for a long time
+answered, for with a pleasing facility he slipped out of all
+difficulties, and with a smile or dignified surprise, made his way out
+of positions that would have brought burning blushes to the cheeks of
+most others. It was indifferent to him how he obtained money; when in
+distress he wrote begging letters to all the world, even to the Romish
+Legate, though himself a Protestant; from every court and city which he
+visited, and where according to the custom of those times he was
+entertained, he endeavoured to borrow money. Generally the host, taken
+by surprise, came to terms with Schweinichen, and instead of the loan,
+a small travelling fee was given, with which the Prince was content. He
+had a wife, an insignificant woman, whom he was sometimes compelled to
+take with him; she had also to make shift and contract debts like him,
+and after having forced herself on the hospitality of the rich Bohemian
+nobles, she sought for loans through Schweinichen, and received their
+courtly refusals with princely demeanour. All this would be simply
+contemptible if there was not something original in it, as Duke
+Heinrich, in spite of all, had a strong feeling of the princely dignity
+which he so often disgraced, and was as far as outward appearance was
+concerned a distinguished man. Not only with his Schweinichen, but also
+in the courts of foreign princes, indeed even in social intercourse
+with the Emperor, he was according to the ideas of those times an
+agreeable companion, well skilled in knightly pursuits, always good
+humoured, amused with every joke made by others, quick at repartee, and
+in serious things he appeared really eloquent. In some matters also he
+showed in his actions traces of a manly understanding. However unseemly
+his tyrannical conduct, as Duke, towards his States, however strange
+his open resistance to the Imperial power, and however childish his
+hope of becoming elective King of Poland, yet the foundation of all
+this was the abiding feeling that his noble origin gave him the right
+to aspire to the highest position. He was always engrossed with
+political interests and plans. Nothing ever prospered to him, for he
+was unstable, reckless, and not to be trusted, but his aims were always
+great, either a king's throne or a field-marshal's staff. It was this,
+and not his drunken follies, that cast him down from his throne, and at
+last into the grave. On one other point he was steadfast,--he was a
+Protestant; although he did not hesitate a moment to demand loans of
+his Catholic opponents in the most shameless way; yet when the Papal
+Legate promised him a considerable revenue, and indeed his
+reinstatement in his principality if he would become a Roman Catholic,
+he rejected this proposal with contempt. If he engaged himself as a
+soldier, it was by preference against the Hapsburgers. Such a
+personage, with his freedom from all principle, his complete
+recklessness, his impracticable and at the same time elastic character,
+and his mind filled with the highest projects, appears to us as a
+representative of the dark side which is developed in the Sclavonic
+nature.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Other princes of his race, above all his brother Friedrich, are
+epitomes of the faults of the German character. Mean, egotistic,
+narrow-minded, and suspicious, without decision or energy, Duke
+Friedrich was his perfect opposite.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Another contrast is to be found in his biographer and companion, the
+Junker Hans von Schweinichen. This comical madcap was a thorough German
+Silesian. When a boy, as page of the imprisoned Duke Friedrich, and as
+whipping-boy of the son, he had early made a thorough acquaintance with
+the wild proceedings of the Liegnitzer court, and been initiated into
+all its intrigues. His father, a landed proprietor, had fallen into
+debt in consequence of having once become security for Duke Heinrich.
+Schweinichen was co-heir to a deeply involved property, and up to an
+advanced age was engaged in endless quarrels with the creditors, and
+also with his relations, who had been surety for him, and for whom he
+had been surety. This was indeed, towards the end of the sixteenth
+century, the usual lot of landed proprietors. But besides this, he for
+many years joined in all the mad pranks of his princely master, which
+were for the most part rather of a lax nature, so he came in for no
+unimportant share of these frivolous proceedings. The moral cultivation
+of those times was undoubtedly on the whole much lower than that of
+ours, and he must only be judged by the standard of his own time. He
+was no man of the sword, and his valour was tempered by a strong degree
+of caution. Always in good humour, and at the same time crafty,
+furnished with great powers of persuasion, he contrived to glide like
+an eel through the most difficult situations with the open bearing of
+an honest man, and the most good humoured countenance in the world.
+Even when most dissolute he still clung to the hope of redeeming the
+future, and whilst living as a wild courtier, he considered himself as
+an honourable country nobleman, who had to preserve the good opinion of
+his fellows. He had always a small degree of conscientiousness in
+domestic matters; his was not however a burdensome or strict
+conscience, and demanded only occasional obedience. He valued himself
+not a little, and gradually began to take less pleasure in his master's
+vagaries. The endless changes, the quarrels with Jews and Christians,
+and the anxieties about the daily wine, made this life at last too
+irregular for him; he had always kept a diary of his own life, and
+seldom forgot to note down that on the previous evening he had been
+tipsy: at the end of each year's diary, which sometimes contained
+nothing but a succession of convivial parties and discreditable money
+transactions, he would commend his soul to God, and after that, note
+the price of corn in the last year. All that he had mortgaged for his
+lord we find marked down in his diary with a statement, as precise as
+superfluous, of the real worth in silver. After he had thus pretty
+nearly mortgaged everything, he experienced the heartfelt grief of
+seeing his Duke in the Imperial prison, there he parted with him, not
+without grief, as one parts from the friend of one's youth; but his
+German understanding told him that this parting was fortunate for
+himself. Then followed years in which he drank with his neighbours,
+reconciled himself with Duke Friedrich, to whom he even became
+chamberlain, married, leased a small property, and half as landlord,
+half as courtier, lived respectably like others. Afterwards, when
+another prince ruled the country, Schweinichen became a royal
+councillor, and an active member of the government; he had the gout,
+lost his wife and married another. He still continued to move
+restlessly about the country, adjusted the differences of the noblemen
+and peasants, occasionally got tipsy with good comrades, discharged
+debts, acquired landed property, increased in respectability as in age,
+and died highly esteemed. His escutcheon, emblazoned with eight
+quarterings, shone conspicuously upon the black mourning horses at his
+funeral, as it had done when arranged by himself for his deceased
+father; his effigy was cut in stone upon his tomb in the village
+church, and his banner hung above it, whilst the coffin of his unhappy
+prince was still above ground unconsecrated, walled up in a ruined
+chapel by zealous monks, as that of a heretic.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The following episode is taken from the biography of Schweinichen. It
+occurred in 1578, the time in which Duke Heinrich was suspended in his
+government by Imperial mandate and lived in Hainau on a fixed income
+under the sovereignty of his younger brother. Schweinichen was then
+six-and-twenty; Sch�rtlin had died two months before at the advanced
+age of eighty-two.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Duke Heinrich found that it was no longer possible to hold a court in
+Hainau, and notified to his Imperial Majesty, that as Duke Friedrich
+would no longer give him an allowance, his Princely Grace would take it
+himself where he could. To this the Emperor gave no answer, but allowed
+things to take their course, as neither party would conform to his
+Imperial Majesty's commands, 'as the one prince broke jugs and the
+other pitchers.' Now his Princely Grace knew that the States had a
+great store of corn at Gr�ditzberg, so the Duke took counsel with me
+how he should capture Gr�ditzberg, and there keep house till he learned
+the Imperial determination. I could by no means approve of this affair
+nor give counsel thereto, for many serious reasons which I laid before
+his Princely Grace's consideration. For his Imperial Majesty would
+interpret it as a breach of the peace, and his Princely Grace would
+thereby make matters worse rather than better. Because I thus discussed
+it with the Duke, his Princely Grace was ill-content with me, and said
+I was good for nothing in such affairs; for he had in his own mind,
+determined to march out and try whether he could not take the fortress;
+so he commanded me to prepare twelve troopers, and to tell the Junkers
+that they were to ride with him, yet not to inform them where his
+Princely Grace was going.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Although I still continued to entreat of his Princely Grace not to do
+this, as he would bring the whole country upon him, and I therefore
+wished to dissuade him from it, yet I could not prevail with him, but
+he went forth, and commanded me meanwhile not to move from the house at
+Hainau till he called me away. But if his Princely Grace should capture
+the fortress in the night, he would immediately send back a mounted
+messenger, and if I heard a shot I should at once admit him, and obey
+the commands that he brought. Thus my lord marched from Hainau the 18th
+of August, about two o'clock, to Gr�ditzberg. When his Princely Grace
+came into the wood under the hill, he sent up two horsemen as if to
+examine the place; these were to bring information who were there, and
+if they found that my lord could advance, they were to fire a shot. As
+they found only two men there, they fired the shot. His Princely Grace
+speedily rode up, took the castle, and about three o'clock in the
+night, according to agreement, sent a mounted messenger to me. Now when
+I heard the shot before the door at Hainau, I was greatly terrified,
+and said to those who were with me in the room: 'This shot will rouse
+all the country against my lord.' They did not understand this, but
+suspected that my lord had carried off Duke Friedrich. I forthwith
+ordered the gates of the castle to be opened. His Princely Grace had
+sent me notice through Ulrich Rausch, that he had taken possession of
+Gr�ditzberg and did not think of returning; but to send forthwith up to
+that place, his remaining horses, servants, and other things.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Two days afterwards, two Polish lords, Johann and Georg
+Rasserschafsky, announced themselves as visitors to his Princely Grace
+at Hainau, of which I speedily informed the Duke, and inquired what I
+should do. Thereupon his Princely Grace replied, that I should receive
+and entertain them a few days at Hainau; and he sent me six dollars for
+the charges. As the Polish lords had sixteen horsemen with them, the
+whole six dollars went for wine at the first sitting; so I had to
+consider how with care and by borrowing I might provide for those lords
+who were to abide there for a fortnight. Thereupon my lord wrote to me
+to bring them to Gr�ditzberg, and to accompany them myself. There the
+Duke had already established a guard of twenty men, armed with long
+carabines, having become a warrior; and at the reception of the two
+lords, caused six trumpets and kettledrums to be sounded. As soon as I
+came up to the castle, his Princely Grace charged me with the care of
+the household.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;His Princely Grace wished to have the house supplied with provisions,
+and commanded me to get in a store of four-and-twenty malters of flour,
+which I did; and I also bought at his desire, eight malters of salt.
+The enormous piles of preserved mushrooms and bilberries is not to be
+told; great vats full, whereby much money was wasted. Twelve pigs also
+were fattened at the castle upon corn alone, and the Duke himself was
+wont to feed them. Everything was prepared for the siege of the castle.
+Now there were carriers at Modelsdorf who had to convey lead from
+Breslau to Leipzig; when therefore his Princely Grace learnt this, he
+commanded that two carriers should bring this lead up to the castle,
+the value of which amounted to more than two hundred and fifty thalers.
+It was conveyed into the house and remained lying there. The merchants
+hearing this, complained to the Bishop, who called upon my lord to
+deliver up the lead forthwith; this, however, his Princely Grace would
+not do, but offered some day to pay for the lead from his allowance. In
+the end it remained unpaid; and the carriers got into great trouble on
+this account. Then Bishop Martin<a name="div2_65" href="#div2Ref_65"><sup>[65]</sup></a> sent commissaries to Gr�ditzberg;
+and his Princely Grace kept them two days with him and gave them good
+entertainment, but allowed them to depart again with the affair
+unsettled.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Meanwhile Frau von Herrnsdorf invited me to a wedding; without doubt
+to please her daughter, to whom I was not averse, and whom I was
+courting. I therefore asked his Princely Grace for leave of absence,
+and also to lend me three horses, which he did most willingly; and as
+his servants were just then being newly dressed in gray cloth, I
+requested that those who were to accompany me might be clothed first. I
+then had my sword and dagger sharpened, and adorned myself as I best
+could. Thus I rode with three horsemen to Herrnsdorf, where the young
+lady received me with great pleasure. I helped to fetch the bride to
+Herrnsdorf, making my appearance with my trumpeter. We continued
+together after the wedding till the Saturday, full of jollity; and
+although I was in the mean time recalled by the Duke, I remained late,
+that it might not be perceived that I had the Duke's horsemen. On
+Saturday, however, I rode forth again, and when I arrived at
+Gr�ditzberg, I desired the trumpeter to blow; but when I dismounted at
+the castle, a good friend of mine came and informed me that his
+Princely Grace was very angry with me, and had sworn that he would put
+me in arrest in one of the rooms in the courtyard: I did not, however,
+trouble myself about it, but entered the castle so that my lord might
+see me from the corridor. Now his Princely Grace had some Polish guests
+with him; but there was no provision either in kitchen or cellar; so
+for more than an hour after the trumpeter had summoned to table, there
+was nothing served up. His Princely Grace sent to me to desire that I
+would cause dinner to be served up, and would be in attendance. In
+answer, I let the Duke know that I had learned his Princely Grace was
+angry with me; I had therefore hesitated to appear before him, but when
+his Princely Grace should hear the cause of my prolonged absence he
+would be well content. But the Duke returned for answer, that I must be
+in attendance; that he already knew the cause of my prolonged absence,
+that I loved the maiden better than him. When therefore, at table, I
+presented the water to his Princely Grace, he looked very sour, but I
+pretended not to perceive it. His Princely Grace began a carouse, but
+when it was at its highest, the wine failed. Thereupon his Princely
+Grace sent to inform me that there was no more wine, and that I had
+brought him to shame by not returning at the right time. I returned for
+answer to the Duke that it was no fault of mine; and why had not his
+Princely Grace sent for wine in proper time? Then his Princely Grace
+informed me he had no money, but that I was to send quickly for some
+wine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I desired then to be informed what I was to do, adding that if he was
+angry with me, he should tell me so himself. I had meanwhile a little
+cask of wine, containing about six firkins, lying concealed in the
+cellar. When a glass of this wine was poured out for the Duke, he cried
+out, 'My steward, I drink to you on your return!' called me to him, and
+said, 'I have been very angry with you, but it is now past; see to it
+that you get me provisions, and above all, wine.' I answered, 'Your
+Princely Grace may now be merry; there will be no lack of wine; other
+things also shall not be wanting; but your Princely Grace had no cause
+to look so askance at me, for I had been with a fair lady whom you
+would gladly have seen.' Whereupon the Duke said, 'I like you, and am
+well pleased with you; I was sure that you would have something in
+store.' So we became again master and servant, and all ungraciousness
+was at an end; and thus after my gaieties I was obliged to return to my
+cares, and consider how I could provide for the kitchen and cellar,
+which, after my pleasuring, was very distasteful to me. I learnt from
+various sources that endeavours had been made to blacken my character
+with the Duke, by representing me as a traitor, and as having dealings
+with Duke Friedrich, with whom I had made so long a stay; which was not
+the case, as I was too honourable to do the like. But it is usual to
+find many backbiters at princes' courts. I was desirous to learn from
+the Duke who my detractor was; but his Princely Grace would not tell
+me, and answered that he had not believed it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As the supply of corn and other things were nearly at an end, and
+there was nothing more in store, I was obliged to seek after
+provisions. Now Heinrich Schweinichen von Thomaswaldau had a number of
+old sheep which no one else would buy, and I could not buy any other
+cattle for want of money, as we had none; so his Grace bade me to
+traffic with my cousin for the old sheep, and I made a bargain with him
+to pay twenty silver groschen apiece for the sheep, and there were
+three hundred and twenty-five of them. But when we had agreed upon the
+bargain, he would not deliver them to me without receiving either money
+or security, and he would not take me as surety; so I had to return to
+my lord to inform him of this, and he was sore displeased that no one
+would trust him. He wrote a letter, therefore, with his own hands to
+Schweinichen, desiring that he would deliver the sheep according to the
+agreement. But it could not be arranged, and Schweinichen excused
+himself. This irritated the Duke still more; and as we had nothing but
+mushrooms and bilberries to eat, his Princely Grace desired me to think
+of some means of giving security. As I had before asked for a loan of
+three hundred thalers for his Princely Grace from the council at
+L�wenberg, and had received fair promises, I went again to the
+councillors, and begged of them to settle the affair; but they refused.
+I persevered, and at last they consented to be security for the sheep,
+provided I were responsible for any damage or loss. This, however, I
+objected to, but begged that they would trust his Princely Grace, for
+they should not be the worse for it. So I persuaded the council to
+become security with their seal to the old higgler for half a year, and
+we obtained provision again from the old sheep. These were frequently
+dressed in eight different ways, also the mushrooms in three different
+ways, and the bilberries in two ways. With this his Princely Grace and
+we all were obliged to be content, and to drink bad Goldberger beer.
+Meanwhile autumn drew on, and we were able to obtain birds. But when I
+went to set gins in the wood, I had great difficulty with the retinue,
+who all wished to scour the wood and get birds for themselves. Although
+his Princely Grace himself forbad it, no one would desist therefrom, so
+that I was obliged to put the Junkers under arrest in the room in the
+courtyard, and the common people in the tower. I became thereby very
+unpopular, yet it could not be helped. His Princely Grace went every
+morning himself to catch birds, and that was also my pastime. Otherwise
+the time passed very tediously; although I had not much rest, as I had
+to procure provisions, which was a source of great trouble to me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now his Princely Grace perceiving that it was difficult for him to
+maintain himself at the Gr�ditzberg, and that no allowance could be
+obtained from Duke Friedrich, hearing likewise that the Arnsdorf pond
+had been fished at an earlier period than heretofore, and that when
+drawn, a certain quantity of carp had been caught and placed in
+reservoirs, he ordered me to provide some waggons, and rode himself
+with fifteen horsemen to Arnsdorf. As it was almost evening, and there
+was no one near the reservoir but the pond watchman, his Princely Grace
+had a large number of the fish taken out, as many as the five waggons
+could carry, and returned therewith to Gr�ditzberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Whilst the Duke was having the waggons loaded with fish, the alarm was
+given at Liegnitz; thereupon the Burgrave Kessel and Hans Tschammer,
+the master of the horse, galloped off with five horsemen, to prevent
+any fish from being carried away; but they were too late, for the
+greater part of the waggons laden with fish were gone, besides which,
+they perceived that his Princely Grace was there in person, and
+stronger than themselves. His Princely Grace did not give them a kind
+greeting, but gave Kessel a blow on the back, saying, that if he
+allowed a word to pass his lips that was not seemly, he should be his
+prisoner, and would find that the Duke would treat him as a rebel. So
+these five were obliged to let the matter pass, and thank God that they
+had got so well out of it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the following day the pond was again to be drawn for fish, and Duke
+Friedrich expected that Duke Heinrich would return and seize more of
+them; so he proceeded thither himself, taking with him five-and-twenty
+horsemen, and likewise fifty arquebusiers, who were concealed among the
+bushes under the bank. His Princely Grace however remained at home, but
+sent me and a foreigner, Hans Fuchs, a captain of Landsknechts,
+together with six horsemen to Arnsdorf, with directions to greet Duke
+Friedrich kindly, and say that my lord had been compelled by necessity
+to carry off the fish on the preceding day, and he begged he would not
+take it amiss; that Duke Friedrich was to consider it as the provision
+due to him, and his Princely Grace entreated him in a friendly way to
+send him yet another supply of fish for provision.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But Duke Friedrich looked black, knit his brows, and answered thus:
+'As for this greeting of his Princely Grace, if he sent it with a true
+brother's heart, he thanked him for it; but two days ago the fish had
+been carried off from the reservoir, which greatly annoyed him, and if
+he had come there in person no good would have arisen from it.' He was
+quite unfriendly, and said that no more fish should be sent, and if an
+attempt should be made to take them away by force, he would guard them.
+Thus I departed from Duke Friedrich, and asked Kessel for a dish of
+fish, as we wished to breakfast at Perschdorf, whereupon Duke Friedrich
+ordered them to give me what I wanted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now when I came with such an answer to my lord, he was sore
+displeased, and made all kinds of projects, and wished to take the fish
+by force. Meanwhile there came intelligence that Duke Friedrich was
+again going to fish the next day, and would have a guard with him. Then
+my lord said to me: 'Hans, we'll have some sport; reckon how many
+horsemen we can muster; we will go and frighten Duke Friedrich a little
+at the Arnsdorf pond.' But I would not consent to this, and objected to
+any such plan, as their hearts would have been much embittered thereby
+towards each other. Duke Friedrich had also many Poles, servants of the
+nobility, with him, and they were powerful. His Princely Grace however
+would not give it up, but promised me he would not speak an angry word
+to any one, and I should see how he would drive away Duke Friedrich and
+his followers; thereupon I made a reckoning, and found that we could
+bring together a force of nineteen horsemen, three trumpeters, six
+arquebusiers, and two lackeys, wherewith Duke Heinrich was well
+content, and commanded me to take with us one waggon with fish barrels,
+as Duke Friedrich would not be so uncourteous as to refuse to present
+us with some fish.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Early in the morning his Princely Grace left his castle for
+Perschdorf. There he received information that Duke Friedrich had gone
+in a little boat on the pond. On hearing this, his Princely Grace said
+to me: 'Hans, now is the time, advance.' Now Duke Friedrich had placed
+a sentinel at the end of the dam, who as soon as he observed anything,
+was to fire a shot as a signal. As soon therefore as this shot was
+fired by the Duke's sentinel, I caused one of the trumpeters to blow,
+and then another, and afterwards all three together. Then, as I was
+afterwards told, a great tumult arose, and Duke Friedrich and his
+attendants called out for their armour, and Duke Friedrich was in so
+great terror on the pond, that they could hardly prevent his fainting.
+At last he sprang out of the boat and waded in the mud, so that he lost
+his breath. When the arquebusiers whom Duke Friedrich had with him,
+heard the trumpeters, they ran among the bushes on the meadow; so that
+there was no one to be seen when he called for his guard, and some
+shots that fell on the lappets of Duke Friedrich's coat, and on his
+steed, were the only answer, and he made off to Liegnitz with all
+speed. As soon as the others saw that their lord was riding away, they
+followed his example, and only nine horsemen remained by the
+reservoirs; among them Leuthold von der Saale, Balthasar Rostitz, and
+Muschelwitz. So when his Princely Grace approached them, they took off
+their hats, and my lord greeted them graciously, and inquired where
+their master was; to which they replied that they did not know.
+Whereupon my lord replied, that he had not come as an enemy, but as a
+brother, and added: 'I have brought with me a fish-barrel, hoping that
+my brother would hold friendly intercourse with me, and not be
+uncourteous, but make me a present of a dish of fish. And as I am
+expecting foreign guests, I will take twenty large pike, sixty of round
+pike, and a score of large carp.' Those who were to have fished
+withdrew, and von Saale protested that his Princely Grace should not
+take away the fish. My lord, however, did not enter into parley about
+it, but compelled the peasants who had run away to descend to the
+reservoir and catch the fish. And his Princely Grace packed the fish
+himself in the barrel, and commanded the Junkers to tell Duke Friedrich
+that he should not have fled from him and his troopers, as he had come
+with friendly intentions; but it was clear that a bad conscience could
+not conceal itself. Also that Duke Friedrich might come the next
+morning and help him eat the fish; and he added: 'But if your Lord will
+not come, do so yourselves if you are honest men, and be not afraid as
+you have been to-day.' After this his Princely Grace said to me: 'Hans,
+did I not tell you beforehand that I would drive away my brother? Are
+you content? I will in like manner drive him from Liegnitz, you will
+see: it will not take long.' Thus we returned to Gr�ditzberg in good
+spirits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far Schweinichen. The reader will have no difficulty in
+discovering that no one thought of attacking the Duke in his castle.
+When winter drew on he himself became weary of this caprice, and
+determined to make another expedition through Germany, which
+Schweinichen very wisely opposed, but for which he afterwards exerted
+his wits to procure money.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the year 1675, a century after Duke Heinrich and his faithful Hans
+had undertaken their first wild expedition through Germany, there
+appeared in Silesia on the great heath of Kolzenau, which since the war
+had lain waste and desolate, a strange and monstrous animal, such as in
+the grim time of yore had rent the Silesian thickets with its horns,
+when the first Piastens ranged through the woods with the hunting-spear
+and arrow. And above in the royal castle at Liegnitz, the last Piasten
+Duke, the young Georg Friedrich celebrated his birthday with his
+nobles. As the rare venison was placed on his table, the joyful sounds
+of the trumpet rang through the city, and the cannons thundered as
+often as the health of the new Duke was drunk. But thoughtful people in
+the country, trembled on account of the wild monster that had come into
+their woods and to their young lord, as an ill omen from the olden
+time; and they shook their heads and prophesied misfortune. The last
+elk that was slain in Silesia was for the last joyous repast of the
+last of the Piasten. A few days after he died; and when his coffin was
+borne in the evening through the streets of Liegnitz, pitch wreaths
+were burnt at every corner, and hundreds of boys dressed in black,
+carried white wax tapers before their deceased lord. The German
+Silesians grieved over the fall of the great Sclavonic dynasty, which
+had once led their fathers into this land, and had first shown through
+them to the world, that the union of men in a free community is more
+beneficial to a country, than despotic government over slaves. But this
+truth had afforded no safeguard for the lives of the lords of this
+country.</p>
+<br>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GERMAN IDEAS OF THE DEVIL IN THE<br>
+SIXTEENTH CENTURY.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and
+develop themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence
+it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had more weight
+than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development
+which we there see, and to it is due the last place in the
+characteristic features of the period of the Reformation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the most ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention of the
+devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan was
+considered by the Jews as the great tempter of mankind, and as having
+the power to enter into men and animals, out of which he could be
+driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated the power
+of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil.
+When the Christian faith spread over the western empire, the Greek and
+Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the
+superstition of many who yet clung to the later worship of Rome, made
+the devil the centre of their mythology.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person
+and power of the devil, were still more changed when the German tribes
+overthrew the government of the Roman empire and adopted Christianity.
+In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their
+own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology.
+It is true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was
+obviously contrary to the new faith was at last set aside by the zeal
+of the priests, by force, and by pious artifices; but innumerable
+familiar shapes and figures, customs and ideas, were kept alive, nay,
+they not only were kept alive, but they entwined themselves in a
+peculiar manner with Christianity. As Christian churches were erected
+on the very spots where the heathen worship had been held, and as the
+figure of the crucified Saviour, or the name of an apostle was attached
+to sacred places like Donar's oak; thus the Christian saints and their
+traditions took the place of the old gods. The people transferred their
+recollections of their ancient heathen deities to the saints and
+apostles of the Church, and even to Christ himself, and as there was a
+realm in their mythology which was ruled by the mysterious powers of
+darkness, this was assigned to the devil. The name devil, derived from
+the Greek (diabolos), was changed into Fol, from the northern god
+Voland, his ravens and the raging nightly host were transferred to him
+from Wuotan, his hammer from Donar; but his black colour, his wolves or
+goat's form, his grandmother, the chains wherewith he was bound, and
+many other traditions, he inherited from the evil powers of heathendom
+which had ever been inimical to the benevolent ruling gods. These
+powerful demons, amongst whom was the dark god of death, belonged
+according to the heathen mythology to the primeval race of giants,
+which as long as the world lasted were to wage a deadly struggle with
+the powers of light. They formed a dark realm of shapeless primordial
+powers, where the deepest science of magic was cultivated. To them
+belonged the sea-serpent, which coiled round the earth in mighty
+circles, lay at the bottom of the ocean, the giant wolves which lay
+fettered in the interior of the earth or pursued the sun and moon, by
+which, at the last day, they were to be destroyed; the ice demons which
+from the north sent over the land snow-storms and devastating floods;
+and worse than all, the fiendish Helia, goddess of the dead. Besides
+the worship of the <i>Aseng�tter</i>, there was in heathen Germany a gloomy
+service for these demons, and we learn from early Christian witnesses
+that even before the introduction of Christianity, the priestesses and
+sorcerers of these dark deities were feared and hated. They were able
+by their incantations to the goddess of death, to bring storms upon the
+corn-fields and to destroy the cattle, and it was probably they who
+were supposed to make the bodies and weapons of warriors invulnerable.
+They carried on this worship by night, and sacrificed mysterious
+animals to the goddess of death and to the race of giants. It was these
+priestesses more especially--so at least we may conclude--who, as
+<i>Hazusen</i> or <i>Hegissen</i>, or <i>Hexen</i> (witches), were handed down by
+tradition to a late period in the middle ages.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The remembrance of these heathen beings became mixed with a wild chaos
+of foreign superstitions, which had been brought from all the nations
+of antiquity into heathen Rome, that great nursery of every
+superstition, and from that ancient world had penetrated into
+Christianity. The <i>Strigen</i> and <i>Lamien</i>, evil spirits of ancient Rome,
+which like vampires consumed the inward life of men, sorceresses who
+flew through the air, and assembled nightly to celebrate disgraceful
+orgies, were also handed down to the Germans, who mingled them with
+similar conceptions, having perhaps a like origin. It is not always
+possible to discover which of these notions were originally German or
+which were derived from other nations.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The western Church in the beginning of the middle ages kept itself pure
+from this chaos of gloomy conceptions; it condemned them as devilish,
+but punished them on the whole with mildness and humanity, when they
+did not lead to social crimes. But when the Church itself was frozen
+into the rigidity of a hierarchical system, when strong hearts were
+driven into heresy by the worldly claims of the papacy, and the people
+became degraded under the nomination of begging monks, these
+superstitions gradually produced in the Church a narrow-minded system.
+Whatever was considered to be connected with the devil was put an end
+to by bloody persecution. After the thirteenth century, about the
+period when great masses of the people poured into the Sclave countries
+from the interior of Germany, fanatical monks disseminated the odious
+notion that the devil, as ruler of the witches, held intercourse with
+them at nightly meetings, and that there was a formal ritual for the
+worship of Satan, by accursed men and women, who had abjured the
+Christian faith; and for this a countless number of suspected persons,
+in France, in the first instance, were punished with torture and the
+stake, by delegated inquisitors. In Germany itself, these persecutions
+of the devil's associates first became prevalent after the funeral pile
+of Huss. The more vehement the opposition of reason to these
+persecutions, the more violent became the fury of the Church. After the
+fatal bull of Innocent VIII., from the year 1484, the burning of
+witches in masses began to a great extent in Germany, and continued,
+with some interruptions, till late in the eighteenth century. Whoever
+owned to being a witch was considered for ever doomed to hell, and the
+Church hardly made an effort to convert them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">According to popular belief, the connection of man with the devil was
+of three kinds. Either they renounced the worship of God for that of
+the devil, swearing allegiance to him, and doing him homage, like the
+witches and their associates; or they were possessed by him, a belief
+derived by the Germans from Holy Scripture; or men might conclude a
+compact with the devil binding both parties under mutual obligations.
+In the latter case men signed away their souls in a deed written with
+their own blood, and in return the devil was to grant to them the
+fulfilment of all their wishes upon earth, success, money, and
+invulnerability. Although the oldest example known is that of the Roman
+Theophilus--a tradition of the sixth century--and although the written
+compact originated at a time when the Roman forms of law had been
+introduced among the western nations, yet it appears that the source of
+this tradition concerning the devil was German. These transactions were
+based upon a deep feeling of mutual moral obligation, and on a
+foolhardy feeling, which liked to rest the decision of the whole of the
+future upon the deed of a moment. There is much similarity between the
+German who in gambling stakes his freedom on the throw of the dice, and
+he who vows his soul to the devil. These alliances were not looked upon
+by the old Church with mortal hatred; these wicked and foolhardy
+beings, like Theophilus himself, might be saved by the intercession of
+the saints, and the devil compelled to give up his rights. It is also
+peculiar to German traditions, that the devil endeavours to fulfil
+zealously and honestly his part of the compact, the deceiver is man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Through these additions the popular mind invested the devil with new
+terrors, yet it strove at the same time to think of him in a more
+agreeable point of view. The race of giants of the ancient mythology
+had had two aspects for the people; they took pleasure in seeing
+something harmless, and indeed burlesque about them, besides the
+terrors of their demoniacal nature. On one hand, the deformity of their
+great bodies, their strength, and clumsy wit, and on the other, their
+supposed knowledge of magic and technical dexterity, had already been
+in heathen times an inexhaustible source of comic stories, by which the
+people poetically explained to themselves, among other things, all
+striking phenomena of nature. But besides the giants there was in the
+heathen times a numerous host, of smaller spirits in nature, who
+hovered around men. The hairy <i>Schrate</i> dwelt in the woods, the <i>Nix</i>
+sang on the banks of the brooks, a numerous race of dwarfs hammered in
+the mountains, elves and <i>Idisien</i>, the German fairies, played on the
+dew in the meadows, and the fighting maidens of Wuotan flew through the
+air in the form of swans or on magic horses. In house and courtyard, in
+barn, cow-house, and dairy, dwelt household spirits of various kinds,
+sprites sat under the hearth, hobgoblins glided in the form of tom-cats
+over the rafters, brown and gray mannikins, and sometimes white ladies
+surrounded the family, as guardian spirits of their domestic comfort
+and welfare. The repose of sleepers was disturbed by nightmares, the
+rye-mume sat in the ears of corn, and the little wood fairy on the
+felled timber, the will-o'-the-wisp in the marsh fluttered about
+restlessly, and endeavoured to entice men out of the right track. These
+lesser spirits maintained their place in Christendom, but became timid
+and averse to men. It may be observed in the old traditions, with what
+sorrow the new convert regarded the disturbance of his relations with
+his old friends; in some, the little sprites lamented that they also
+could not become blessed; in others, they are disturbed by the sound of
+a clock, and depart secretly out of the country. Many of their dark and
+malicious traits of character were also transferred to the devil,
+especially those of the giants. He became an architect like them, he
+was obliged to carry great masses of rock through the air, which he
+lost on his journey, or cast down in anger; he had to raise prodigious
+walls, and build bridges, castles, mills, and even churches. And in
+these works, he was almost always the person cheated, as were the
+giants in the olden traditions; being deprived of the reward for which
+he had worked. He had to guard treasures beneath the earth, in the form
+of a wolf or dog with fiery eyes, or to fly as a fiery dragon, and
+throw treasures down the chimney on to the hearth. He was obliged to
+appear in person at popular festivals, and act the part of the buffoon
+and much belaboured opponent of the heavenly powers, in a half
+ludicrous, half terrific dress. Among the Germans he had his disguises;
+the horns, the goats' or horses' foot, the halting gait, the tail, and
+the black colour. It is possible that the details of his costume may be
+taken from recollections of the ancient satyrs, but similar strange
+animal figures are to be found in the festive processions of German
+heathendom, and in the rising cities of the middle ages, the dress of
+the chimney sweeper was an inestimable help.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such were the notions which prevailed about the devil in Germany for
+about a thousand years. They were influenced by all the great
+excitements and changes of the popular mind. In times of great
+religious zeal, they bore a wild misanthropic aspect; but in days when
+the people were engrossed with worldly pleasures, they assumed a more
+comic and harmless form.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then came Luther and the Reformation. Together with every one else in
+Germany, the devil also was brought into the great struggle of the
+century. The Roman Catholics looked upon him as the head of the whole
+body of heretics; while the Protestants took the popular view of him as
+a figure standing with a bellows behind the pope and cardinals,
+inflating them with attacks on the reformed doctrines. He was mixed up
+in all theological and political transactions; he sat on Tetzel's box
+of indulgences, visited Luther at the Wartburg, made intrigues between
+the Emperor and Pope, humbled the Protestants by the Smalkaldic war,
+and the Roman Catholic party by the apostacy of the Elector Maurice;
+and in all the concerns, small and great, of the people he appeared,
+and was busy everywhere.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This enlargement in his powers of action would probably have taken
+place at any period of zealous faith; but in the person and teaching of
+the great character who gave to the whole of the sixteenth century its
+impress and colour, there was something peculiar by which even the
+reverse of all that was holy was remoulded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">First of all, Luther was the son of a German peasant. In the
+recollections of his childhood, as revived by him amid the circle of
+his companions at Wittenberg, the devil wore a very old-fashioned, nay,
+heathenish, aspect; he brought devastating storms, while the angels
+brought the good winds, as once upon a time the gigantic eagles did
+from the furthest corners of the world by the stroke of their
+wings;<a name="div2_66" href="#div2Ref_66"><sup>[66]</sup></a> he sat as a water-god under the bridges, drawing maidens
+down into the water, whom he made his wives; he served in the cloister
+as household spirit; blew the fire as a goblin; as a dwarf laid his
+changelings in the cradles; as a nightmare deluded the sleepers into
+ascending the roof of the house, and bustled about the rooms as a
+hobgoblin. By this last species of activity he sometimes disturbed
+Luther. It is true that the ink-spot at the Wartburg is not
+sufficiently verified, but Luther could tell of a disagreeable noise
+which the devil had made there nightly with a sack of hazel nuts. In
+the monastery of Wittenberg also, where Luther was studying Rempter one
+night, the devil made such a noise, for so long a time in the crypt of
+the church underneath him, that he at last snatched up his book and
+went to bed. Afterwards he was provoked with himself for not having
+defied the Jackpudding.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus deeply was Luther imbued with the popular superstition. But to
+this kind of devilry he did not attach much importance; the bad spirits
+who employed themselves after this fashion, he very properly called
+poor devils. His opinion was that devils were countless. &quot;They are not
+all,&quot; he says, &quot;insignificant devils, but country devils and princes'
+devils, who for a long period, above five thousand years, have been
+busy, tempting men, and are thoroughly clever and cunning. We have
+great devils who are <i>doctores theologi�</i>; then the Turks and papists
+have bad insignificant devils who are not theological but juridical.&quot;
+From them he thought came everything bad upon earth, as for instance
+illnesses; he had a strong suspicion that the dizziness he had long
+suffered from was not natural; also conflagrations:--&quot;Wherever a fire
+breaks out a little devil sits behind blowing the flame;&quot; likewise
+famine and war:--&quot;If God did not send us the holy and dear angels as
+guards and arquebusiers, who encamp round us like a bulwark, it would
+soon be over with us.&quot; Expert as Luther was in describing his own
+characteristics, he was equally so with the devil; he declared that he
+was haughty, and could not bear to be treated contemptuously. Therefore
+he advised that he should be driven away by scorn, and jeering
+questions. He thought, also, that Satan was a melancholy spirit, and
+could not endure gay music.<a name="div2_67" href="#div2Ref_67"><sup>[67]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">But it was not in vain that Luther had spiritualized the Church
+teaching; it was owing to him that the struggle for eternal salvation
+began in the souls of individuals, and that the destiny of man was made
+to depend on his own conscience and faith in God. Through this, Satan's
+sphere of activity was changed, and the strife of men with the evil
+spirit became more especially an inward one. It was not the outward
+appearance and clatter of the devil that was peculiarly terrible, but
+his whisperings to the souls of men. The preservatives against this
+danger were, constant inward repentance, frequent prayer, and an
+enduring and loving remembrance of God. Luther's temptations have
+already been mentioned; he spoke openly and honestly to his
+cotemporaries concerning them, and the race of men who listened with
+faith to his discourse were infected by him; inward temptations were
+commonly recognized by the Protestants, and on this point also he
+became the comforter and confidant of many.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The difference between the old and new Church was first shown in the
+conception of the free contract which man concluded with hell. In the
+old Church it had been made comparatively easy to believers to escape
+from the devil. By certain pious outward observances the Christian
+could in the worst case, even when deeply engaged with Satan, free
+himself from him in the last hour. Therefore, in the contracts made
+between men and the devil before the Reformation, the latter was almost
+always the person defrauded; this business-like and immoral method of
+reaching the kingdom of heaven excited the deepest indignation of
+Luther. He strongly proclaimed the doctrine of St. Augustine; that man
+being corrupt through original sin is a prey to the devil, and can only
+be put in the way of salvation by continual inward repentance, and that
+therefore unrepentant sinners cannot be saved from hell. The result of
+this was, that after the sixteenth century, those men who had concluded
+a compact with hell were generally supposed to be carried off by the
+devil. The sorrowful end of the traditional Dr. Faust is well known; he
+was not Satan's only prey. It was generally believed, and published in
+hundreds of tracts, that men of profligate character, reckless
+drunkards, gamblers, swearers, or enemies against whom a bitter hatred
+was entertained, were carried off into the nether regions. And the hand
+of the devil was thought to be distinctly perceptible in the twisted
+neck of the dying sinner. Luther himself had once to interfere in such
+a case. A young student at Wittenberg, an ill-disposed youth, had
+invoked the devil, and had offered himself up to him. Luther took the
+affair in hand with great earnestness and dignity; he first crushed the
+culprit by severe admonitions, then he knelt down with him in the
+church, laid his hands on him, prayed with fervour, and caused the
+youth finally to repeat after him a penitent confession; thus was the
+business settled. Even historical personages did not escape the
+melancholy fate of being possessed by the devil. The belief in this
+continued beyond the Thirty years' war.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the last century the compact which the Duke of Luxemburg, the
+opponent of Prince William of Orange, had made with the devil, was
+imparted to the public with all kinds of details and comments; and it
+is characteristic of that fastidious period, that the Duke imposed upon
+the devil, among other conditions, that he should only appear to him
+under an agreeable, not in a terrible form.<a name="div2_68" href="#div2Ref_68"><sup>[68]</sup></a> Following the examples
+given in the Bible, the new Church treated more kindly those that were
+possessed. Luther and his followers assumed that these, through sins
+which might be forgiven, and sometimes through small errors, had fallen
+into the power of the devil, and that it was a duty and a merit in
+believers to drive out the evil spirit by prayers and adjurations. It
+was not all lunatics or epileptic persons who were considered to be
+possessed of the devil, but as he was supposed to be at work
+everywhere, they often had the satisfaction of finding him. The most
+wonderful indications of his activity were watched with credulous zeal.
+Weak-minded women principally were impressed with the belief that they
+were tormented by the devil; and it was the natural result of this
+imagination that in their sickly condition they expressed the most
+violent repugnance against ecclesiastics, and the pious ceremonies with
+which they were favoured. But how far preconceived opinions can confuse
+the senses, not only of the sick, but also of the healthy, and falsify
+the witness of their own eyes and ears, we discover with astonishment
+in numerous accounts of eye-witnesses, who are fully worthy of credit,
+but who perceive and believe in the most impossible things in those
+possessed. To mention a very absurd instance supposed to have happened
+in the time of Luther, at Frankfort on the Oder; a maiden who had
+always been weak in mind was possessed by Satan in the following way:
+&quot;When the suspected maid seized any one by the coat or beard, or
+otherwise, she always found money instead in her hand, which she
+instantly put into her mouth, crunched, and at last swallowed. This
+money one could only get out of her hand by force. In the same way she
+everywhere found needles. Sometimes she handed over to the people who
+stood around her this devil's money, which she had caught from the
+walls, tables, benches, stones, and ground. It was good coin, groschen
+and pfennige, but there were some bad red ones among it.&quot; This
+extraordinary occurrence is related in a pamphlet by Dr. Andreas Ebert,
+an ecclesiastic; and his account is confirmed by Theodore D�rrkragen,
+the president of the city council. Luther, as with hundreds of other
+critical questions, was asked his opinion about this: he was
+distrustful, desired to know whether it was good money; and at last
+advised that the maiden should be sedulously taken to church and
+prayers made for her to God. There were some difficulties about this
+cure, for the devil in the maiden insulted the clergyman during his
+sermon, and gave him the lie. In vain also did a Roman Catholic priest
+endeavour to conjure the devil from her, who treated him with scorn and
+despised his holy exorcism. The power, however, of evangelical prayer
+compelled Satan to depart; the maiden became vigorous and sound, after
+her recovery knew nothing of the past, but continued to be, as servant
+maid, a useful member of the community.<a name="div2_69" href="#div2Ref_69"><sup>[69]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such were the ideas of German Catholics and Protestants. Nothing shows
+more strikingly the power which Luther personally exercised, than the
+influence he gained over his bitterest opponents. The Roman Catholic
+dogmas, it is true, withstood his assaults, and between the new
+bulwarks of faith which he had thrown up, and the closed fortress of
+the old Church, there raged for a century a furious war. But his mode
+of thought, his language, and above all the special character of his
+spiritual life, influenced the German Catholic Church of his day as
+well as the Protestant, in a way which was both peculiar and one-sided.
+The rude formalism of her indulgence trade and pious brotherhoods, did
+not entirely disappear; but he gave a new tendency to her inward
+spirit. Earnest study, acute thought, dialectic skill, and what was of
+more value, a greater moral depth, became the necessary requisites of
+the Roman Catholic champions. They learnt to preach and compose their
+controversial writings in Luther's language and method, even
+appropriated the strong abusive expressions of the great heretic, and
+sought to imitate felicitously the popular humour to which Luther owed
+not a little of his success. The words of the evangelical songs, the
+titles and contents of Lutheran works were always parodied. Perhaps the
+internal resemblance is nowhere more striking than among the most
+talented of the Ingoldstadt University. Andrea, Scherer, and their
+friends might but for the difference of their dogmas, and above all
+personal, hate, as well be Lutherans as Roman Catholics. Thus there
+arose between the ecclesiastics of both confessions a sometimes
+laughable, but frequently a disgusting contention to drive the devil
+out of the possessed. If a possessed person became in question where
+the two Churches were in collision, each endeavoured to show the power
+of their faith by healing the patient; the evangelical by the prayers
+of the clergy and parishioners, the Roman Catholics by exorcism; the
+soul which was saved brought glory on the fortunate Church. Among the
+numerous accounts which we find of suchlike exorcisms, the following,
+which proceeds from the Roman Catholic camp in the neighbourhood of
+Ingoldstadt, is remarkable from its detailed narration and interesting
+psychological features. It was published shortly after the event, in a
+pamphlet, with the title, 'A terrible but quite true history, which
+took place between Hans Geisslbrecht, citizen at Spalt, and his wife
+Apollonia, in the bishopric of Eyst�tter. By M. Sixtus Agricolas.
+Ingolstadt, 1587.' The narrative begins as follows:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Hans Geisslbrecht, citizen at Spalt, after the death of his first
+wife, married Apollonia, widow of the late Hans Francke of
+Lautershausen, in the Margravate of Brandenburg; here he continued
+after his marriage, and lived with her more than a year; at last,
+however, the miserable marriage devil entered in, so that there was
+between them both, nothing from morning to night but scolding,
+quarrelling, strife, crying, chiding, and nagging; besides which, what
+was altogether most terrible, great blaspheming of God and wicked
+swearing. The said Geisslbrecht came home quite drunk on Friday the
+nineteenth October of the past year '82, and began according to his old
+custom to quarrel and swear at his wife; and they carried this on, as
+most of their neighbours heard, almost throughout the night. On
+Saturday morning Apollonia came to Anna Stadlerin, her neighbour, and
+said: 'Dear Stadlerin, have you not heard how rudely and shamefully my
+husband has behaved during the whole night?' 'Yes,' answered the other,
+'I and my Stadler have, alas! but too well heard what caterwauling and
+blaspheming has been going on between you; the neighbourhood can have
+no peace whilst you live in so unchristian a way.' To this the said
+Apollonia answered with grim anger: 'Ah me! if our Lord God will not
+deliver me from this violent man, I shall call upon the devil to come
+to my help.' Now mark what followed! On the said Saturday evening, when
+Geisslbrecht's cows came home from the meadow, and she was about to
+milk them, as was her wont, there came two birds like swallows, of
+which at that time of year none are to be seen in the country; and they
+flew swiftly round about her head. Before she could look up from under
+the cow there appeared near her a tall man (but, alas! it was the devil
+in human form), who said to her: 'Ah, my dear Appel, how much do I
+sympathize with you, that you are in such trouble; your life is so hard
+and wretched, and you have such a bad husband, who behaves so ill to
+you, and who intends to make away with everything, so that nothing may
+remain to you after his death. Do one thing, promise that you will be
+mine, and behold I in return, will promise to convey you in this very
+hour to a beautiful enjoyable place, where you shall for ever and ever
+do nothing but eat, drink, sing, jump, and dance; in short, where you
+will spend such days of pleasure as you have never seen all your life
+long, for the kingdom of heaven is not such as your priests say; I will
+teach you better.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;These great promises of the embodied Satan induced the wretched woman
+thoughtlessly to give him her hand, and say that she would become his;
+instantaneously the said Apollonia became possessed by him, and
+forthwith he suggested to her that she should hasten with him to the
+loft; in the hope that she would there hang herself. Now when the
+aforesaid wife of Geisslbrecht sprang up from the cows and hastened to
+the house, the before-mentioned neighbours perceived her condition, and
+called out to her husband: 'Oh, Ulrich, come! the old shepherdess (her
+husband used to be called the shepherd) has lost her senses.' After
+that, they ran towards her, and before they could reach her she laid
+herself in the pond before the cottage door, with the intention of
+drowning herself therein. When she had been taken out, many other
+neighbours came to her, and brought the poor possessed woman into the
+house again; she desired directly to be carried up to the loft, and
+cried out: 'Oh let me go! Do you not see how luxuriously I live, that I
+do nothing but eat, drink, jump, and dance, and lead an enjoyable
+life?' When Apollonia was brought into her room, it required first two
+and afterwards four men to hold her. Meanwhile a messenger was sent at
+midnight on Saturday to the venerable and learned Dean and pastor, Herr
+Wolfgang Agricola, to beg that his reverence would hasten to the old
+shepherdess, as she had that evening lost her wits. But the prudent
+Dean thought the affair was by no means so urgent as they represented
+it, and did not wish to go out so late on this holy night, but he
+apprized them, that he had always feared that these continual godless
+quarrels and disputes would at last come to this conclusion; he bade
+them, in case the woman became so refractory that they could not hold
+or restrain her, to fasten her meanwhile with two chains, which was
+done.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the evening after he had performed matins, the Dean, like a man who
+had been accustomed to deal with the like cases, provided himself with
+a small reliquary, wherein was a piece of the holy cross, and of the
+pillar on which the Lord Christ was scourged; further, an Agnus Dei of
+the year of the Jubilee; and lastly a piece of white wax, which had
+been consecrated by <i>summus pontifex</i>; all these he carried upon his
+own person. When he went to the house of Geisslbrecht and was perceived
+by Apollonia with her deceitful indweller, who so evil treated her, it
+would be impossible for any one who had not been there, to believe how
+she began to rage, rave, and gnash her teeth; for although she lay
+bound by two chains, yet four men had enough to do to hold her. The
+reverend Dean began, and said: 'Ah, Appel! may God in Heaven hear me;
+this great calamity grieves me to the heart; Christ bless thee; what
+has happened to thee?' Then the poor woman began with a strong manly
+voice, such as was not her wont before: 'Hui, <i>Pfaff</i>, begone with you,
+what do I want with you and your Christ? I have enough for my whole
+life, do you not see how well I live? I need your heaven no more.'
+Thereupon the Dean answered: 'I see, alas! how well you live; I would
+not wish your pleasant life to a dog, let alone a man.' In order to
+prove whether she was possessed or naturally crazy, the Dean took the
+above-mentioned relics, and as she turned her back to him, placed them
+with his hand upon her head without her knowledge: what a lamentation,
+complaining, and whining she set up from that hour! how she raged in
+her chains, foaming at the mouth like a champing horse, and snapped at
+the Dean; concerning all this, those who held her, and the many people
+in the room will give a better report than his reverence. Her constant
+cry was, 'Oh, <i>Pfaff</i>, <i>Pfaff</i>!<a name="div2_70" href="#div2Ref_70"><sup>[70]</sup></a> take away that thing from my head,
+if not, behold I swear to you that I will tear you to pieces with my
+teeth; I will trample on you, tear you limb from limb, and so kill you:
+Oh! take that thing off, and lay upon me instead six large sacks full
+of stones, they will not be so heavy.' 'Tell me,' said the Dean, 'what
+it is? I will then directly take it off.' The evil one answered: 'I
+know well what it is, but I would do anything--<i>cum venia</i>--rather than
+tell you.' 'What?' said the Dean earnestly, 'you will not come out with
+the words? quickly bring me a white cap, with it I will fasten this
+small article upon your head.' 'Yes,' answered the evil one,' you may
+well say a small article; if it were so small, it would not scorch so
+much.' 'I conjure thee, by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob, to
+tell me what it is.' But he gave no answer. Meanwhile, the poor
+tormented woman thirsted much, and with all her imaginary costly good
+living, would gladly have had something to drink; at a sign from the
+Dean the women presented her first with some consecrated water; but
+this was no drink for the evil one, he wished to have other water: the
+Dean asked why he would not drink this, as it was only water. He
+answered, '<i>Pfaff</i>, you lie, it is consecrated water.' Thereupon the
+women gave her to drink from the great holy well, which was consecrated
+every year on the golden Trinity Sunday; but little as the former was
+to her taste, still less would she have to say to this; it was
+necessary to withdraw it quickly, for she knew well what it was. Then
+the Dean said that it was only water; but the evil one answered him
+furiously: 'You always say that I lie, but I see that you can lie also;
+it is your holy water.' When therefore they gave her the common water
+she said, or rather he in her, although there was not the slightest
+apparent difference in the vessel or the water, 'That is the right
+kind.' Thereupon they mixed the three waters together, opened her mouth
+with a spoon, and had much to do to pour it in and to make her swallow
+it, thereupon she, or rather he through her, began thus: 'Oh, <i>Pfaff</i>!
+how you deal with me.' The Dean answered: 'As you have tasted one you
+may taste the other also; I know well what a bad guest you are, I and
+you must have a better understanding before we separate.' 'What
+<i>Pfaff</i>, do you wish to drive me away? I will sooner tear you to
+atoms.' The Dean replied: 'You desperate villain! I think you hanker
+after me, the smallest of little popish priests, therefore you shall,
+before all the world, be permitted to enter into me as your pride
+impels you; I will open my mouth wide enough, and make no sign of the
+cross before it.' Then the evil one answered: 'Yes, enter, enter I
+would, if I could only catch and bite your tongue and your fingers.'
+'That I fully believe,' said the Dean, 'if it were in your power to
+destroy me and every Christian man in his mother's womb, I hold it
+certain you would spare no pains to do so; and listen to me, Satan, I
+hold this head fast till you tell me what is in this little reliquary.'
+'Then,' he answered, 'it is a holy thing.' 'What holy thing?' inquired
+the Dean. 'That of Jerusalem,' said the evil one. The Dean replied:
+'What of Jerusalem? make short of it, and be not so ceremonious.' To
+which Satan exclaimed: 'Oh, leave me in peace; you know that I cannot
+name it.' 'Then,' said the Dean, 'these are rotten, lame excuses; you
+can very well name it if you will, therefore I conjure you, by the
+death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you publicly declare what it is.'
+'Oh,' said he, 'it is indeed a piece of the holy cross, and a bit of
+the pillar at which He was scourged.' The Dean replied: 'Do you then
+believe that Christ died for us?' To which he said: 'Why should I not
+believe it? I was not far off.' Upon that the Dean took down the
+reliquary, and laid the above-mentioned Agnus Dei upon her head without
+her perceiving it. She complained, wept, and cried out, even more than
+before. On perceiving this strange agitation, the Dean wished again to
+hear what it was that so discomposed her. Then the bad spirit called
+out: 'Ho! ho! you shall make me tell you that again.' Then there was
+much talk on both sides, till at last the evil spirit was constrained
+by the hand of God to say, 'It is truly an Agnus Dei.' The Dean then
+asked: 'Where was it consecrated?' To which the evil one said: 'If the
+whole world stood by, they should not compel me to name the city.' The
+Dean said: 'Indeed there is no place in all the world where you and
+yours do meet with so much damage and opposition, therefore make not so
+much ado, but say what is the name of the city?' As the Dean pressed
+him so hard, and would not let him rest, he began: 'It is called R! R!
+R!' To which the Dean said: 'Hui! Hui! young scholar, still better.'
+Then the evil one, 'O! O! O!' To which the Dean said: 'Oh, what a
+hopeful scholar! you desperate miscreant, you mortal enemy of the holy
+true faith; add the M! M! M! thereto, and God will have imparted to you
+a threefold truth.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now when the Dean found that he had but too well ascertained the
+condition of the unhappy woman, and that all the means which had
+formerly been of use to others, were of no avail against an enemy so
+powerful and well entrenched, he deferred the matter, till by God's
+grace a better time and opportunity should occur. He commanded that
+they should watch assiduously day and night, that she should not get
+hold of anything wherewith she might cause bodily injury either to
+herself or others; he also begged the neighbours and her appointed
+watchmen to look after her, which they did day and night out of
+brotherly and sisterly compassion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The following days the aforesaid Dean made preparation with all
+diligence as far as possible for the great work, and had enough to do
+to provide what was necessary for such a thorny and dangerous business.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Meanwhile, it came to pass that a young Lutheran, a queer preaching
+fellow, Johannas B�uerlein, son of a furrier of this place, came here
+fresh from his examination, and imagined he had already received full
+power for this work; like the poet in his wretched tragedy, who in the
+year 1545 in the parish sacristy at Wittenberg, drove the devil in and
+out of a possessed person. This preacher had heard from his mother, who
+dwelt in a house opposite to Geisslbrecht, of this lamentable affair,
+had seen us many times go in and out, and had even stood among the
+people in the room; but on account of his great beard wherein, like
+Samson's strength, lay all his science, we did not recognize him. He
+went there several times in our absence, and saw how pitifully and
+miserably the poor woman was plagued and tormented by the evil spirit.
+He spoke to it; but ah, dear God! at his weak lifeless words, the old
+dog would not come out, but only carried on his monkey tricks with him.
+At last he called the husband of the unhappy woman to him, and accosted
+him thus: 'My dear Hans Geisslbrecht, that your wife should be
+delivered from this miserable Satan, by whom she is so severely
+tortured, will never take place by the aid of your popish priests; it
+is beyond their power. But I,' said the sharp blade, 'will take with me
+another servant of the altar, and we will drive him out by the pure
+word of God.' This was revealed to us by the aforesaid Geisslbrecht. It
+grieved all the ecclesiastics, and not unreasonably, coming from one
+who had been born, baptized, brought up, and confirmed, and had
+communicated here, and whose father, mother, and sisters had lived, and
+most of them already died, good Catholics; he alone having apostatized.
+So that we all came to a determination that during the act of exorcism,
+which was fixed to take place with all secresy on the Thursday, he
+should be in the church even were we to bind him like the poor woman,
+and drag him in. Not that we wished any harm to him, but only that he
+might see what an anxious, great, and dangerous work this was, and not
+such a thing as when one enticeth the tom-cat from behind the stove.
+However he smelt fire, was warned, and went off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On Wednesday, after vespers, the suffering of the sick person became
+so great, that they hastened to fetch the Dean, for if she did not
+obtain help, she would be torn to a thousand pieces by the evil one.
+When the said Dean, and some of us arrived, we found such a wretched
+state of things as will be present to us all our lives; for although
+the more than miserable woman was extended on the ground, on a wretched
+little bed, fastened by two chains so that she could not move hand or
+foot, and had also two men holding her arms whilst her brother sat
+astride on her legs, and some women on her body, thinking thus
+effectually to hold her down, yet all was of no avail. The evil spirit
+reared himself up, and raised all that were over him in such a manner,
+that any one could have slipped under her back. But the most horrible
+of all was, that the evil spirit raised himself up between the skin and
+the flesh, in the form of a great adder or serpent, so that we could
+see and lay hold of him. Swiftly as by nature they glide along the
+earth, so did he glide backwards and forwards in the body; at one
+moment into the head, afterwards into one arm, then into the other, or
+suddenly into the feet; and when in the body, it became hot, as if
+burning with pure fire; finally the evil one glided into the heart,
+which swelled up like a twopenny loaf, and crept and coiled himself
+round it, just as a viper does round a tree; he shook and squeezed her
+heart together, so that it began to crack, and we one and all thought
+that the fierce and infuriated spirit would have entirely suffocated
+and destroyed her, for in her whole body not the smallest vein could
+stir. The Dean cried out and called continually upon God in heaven.
+Meanwhile they opened her mouth with a spoon, but for a long time she
+showed no signs of life, till they poured something down her throat;
+then her heart began to beat again. That was a great comfort to us, and
+we all did our best to revive her, till she came a little to herself.
+Then the Dean commanded that they should cut her hair clean off her
+head, for it was all overrun with blood; he ordered also that the women
+should wash her clean with lye, and said he would return again
+forthwith.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thereupon the Dean returned home, and desired me, his brother Magister
+Sixtus, Herr Georg Wittmeier, his confessor, Herr Bernhardt Eisen, who
+was then deacon, Wilibald Plettelius the student, who had lately come
+from the German college at Rome, and Leonhard Agricola, the student, to
+come to him; and told us with great grief that it was certain that if
+the poor woman could not be relieved this evening, the evil one would
+destroy her even if she were of the worth of a thousand men. 'Therefore
+come quickly with me,' said the Dean; 'have a good heart, be undaunted
+and fear not, no harm shall happen to you; and if it should be
+requisite that in the exorcism you should reply to me <i>et cum spiritu
+tuo</i>, or Amen, pay the closest attention, especially you priests.' Then
+he gave to one of the students to place under his dress, what was
+necessary for this ceremony, and taking us first to the church,
+admonished us all there to pray with faith, opened the Sacrarium, took
+from the viaticum a holy host, laid it in a small napkin on his body,
+put off the cope again, and went in form and appearance as before with
+us to the house. Then he commanded him who bore his other vestments to
+wait in the barn till further orders. He went into the room, knelt down
+on the ground by the poor woman, laid his hand, as he was always wont
+to do, on her head, and spoke to her; but the former old insults were
+beginning again, when the Dean without any one perceiving it, put his
+hand in his bosom and drew out the napkin with the ever-blessed host,
+and placed it under his hand on her head. As soon as she perceived it,
+she made in her bed three great bounds. Then said the Dean: 'Appel, do
+I hurt you with my hand? How does it happen that at one time you can
+bear it and at another time not?' 'Oh, yes,' said she, 'I can bear the
+hand well, but take away what you have under your hand, otherwise you
+will destroy me.' 'God forbid!' said the Dean; 'but tell me what is on
+your head?' Then answered the evil one: 'Look you, wait a little!'
+(here followed an examination as before), and at last the evil spirit
+said what it was. Thereupon the Dean proceeded: 'But I wish to know yet
+one thing, whether you are alone, or have any companions with you?' 'I
+am alone,' said the evil one. 'What is your name?' 'I am called
+<i>Spielfleck</i>,' said the evil one. 'Oh, that is nothing, you have never
+in the beginning told me the truth; I must bring it out of you
+perforce, you shall acquaint me with your right name, for I must and
+shall know it.' Then the exorcism began again, till the evil one was
+constrained to say, <i>Schwamm</i>.<a name="div2_71" href="#div2Ref_71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> Thereupon the watchers and nurses
+exclaimed: 'Oh that is truly his right name, it is what she has always
+called him.' Then the Dean answered: 'Well-a-day! God grant we may soon
+lay hold of Schwamm, and send him down to Lucifer in hell, that he may
+wipe his shoes with him.' The evil one: 'Oh no, no, spare me.' Upon
+this my brother called on me, Herr Magister Sixtus, to draw near and
+hold the napkin, containing the most holy and revered sacrament, on her
+head, and commanded at the same time that all her chains should be
+unloosed and done away with; whereupon many were much afeared. He
+himself had his cope, stole, and books brought to him, and having thus
+dressed and prepared himself, when the poor woman was loosened from all
+her shackles, he took an old red stole in his hand and said: 'Behold,
+<i>Schwamm</i>! I now come to thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and
+the Holy Ghost. This threefold, indissoluble, godly bond shall now bind
+thee down in the abyss of hell, so that you shall never more throughout
+all eternity do any detriment or injury, either to persons, or cattle,
+or any other creature.' He took both her hands, wound the stole three
+times round her, and commanded the evil one, by the great power and
+dignity of that which lay on the poor woman's head, to give up all
+further struggle. Thereupon the Dean turned himself towards the people,
+of whom there was such a multitude, that the room, windows, barn, and
+streets were all quite full, and spoke to them:--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At the conclusion of the holy prayer, the Dean gave directions to us
+students whom alone he had employed as assistants, to place ourselves
+round the miserable woman; gave to one the book, to another the candle,
+to each one what he would need for this ceremonial, and then began in
+the name of God a <i>modus conjurationis</i> so lofty and so exceeding well
+grounded on the holy, godly Scripture, and with such assiduity and
+earnestness, (as he had in this a pure, strong, and undaunted Hon
+heart) that our hearts began to tremble and the hairs of our heads to
+stand erect. During this noble exorcism, which lasted some time, the
+evil spirit did not make any especial blustering, only, perceiving a
+boy showing his teeth in at the window, he desired to be allowed to
+break them; but this his desire could not be granted. During the
+ceremony the surrounding people, who could better observe, than one of
+us who had more to do, saw distinctly that the eyes of the woman, which
+were naturally dark, but in this misery had become gray and fiery like
+cats' eyes, gradually recovered their natural colour; that her limbs
+which were all distorted, returned to their right position, and that
+her colour, form, and whole nature, which had been totally altered, was
+restored delicate, fresh, and vigorous. Some who were standing by,
+testified and confirmed by oath, that they had seen during the process
+a black bird in the form of a thrush fly out of the mouth of the woman.
+We do not publish this as a truth, because we none of us saw it, for we
+do not wish to report anything but what we could in case of necessity
+confirm with a good conscience, and by our priestly dignity and the
+highest oath.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This ceremony, God be praised, was throughout successfully performed,
+and the aforesaid Apollonia clasped her hands together. Then the Dean
+bent down towards her, took the stole out of her hands and asked her:
+'Dear Apollonia, how are you now? do you now know me and the other
+people?' Then the restored one tried to spring up for joy in her little
+bed and throw her arms round the Dean's neck. This moistened many eyes.
+But her limbs and whole body were so much torn that she had not
+sufficient strength, so she clasped her hands over her head, looked up
+to heaven and exclaimed three times: 'Oh Almighty and Eternal God, to
+Thee be praise, honour, and glory, for ever and ever! Oh God, forgive
+and pardon me for I have sinned against Thee so grievously! Oh Lord,
+now will I gladly die!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Here concludes our extract from the pamphlet. The end of it is
+edifying; the valiant Dean reaped the reward of his dangerous work by
+winning the soul of Apollonia to his Church. She exhorted her husband,
+and vowed a pilgrimage; and it appears that after that, the quarrelsome
+couple lived together peaceably. What the religious zeal of the
+narrator has added to the spiritual examination of the devil, is more
+harmless than it is in many similar cases.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The tender care of both Churches for those possessed, and the pious
+interest with which they regarded these victims of the devil, made
+similar cases become a matter of speculation. Thus in Thuringia in
+1560, a herdsman, Hans the father of Mellingen, made a great sensation.
+He pretended that he had been compelled by a man of ill repute, to eat
+some food which had brought him into the power of the devil; that he
+had been severely handled and beaten by the devil, and showed his
+stripes. He was on this account commended in pamphlets to the prayers
+of Christendom. But once when he made his appearance at Nuremberg with
+a bleeding ear, his hands tied behind his back with a three-coloured
+cord, and there praying and begging, related his old story, that the
+devil himself had thus fastened his hands, the Nurembergers, took the
+matter up in earnest, and the audacity of the man sank before the
+pressing cross-examination of the ecclesiastical and temporal
+authorities; he acknowledged that he was a deceiver; he was placed in
+the pillory, and then driven out of the town. The Nurembergers did not
+fail to make known their discovery in a pamphlet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But fierce indeed was the hatred with which was regarded, in the last
+half of the century, that other connection with hell,--the old
+witchcraft. Even Luther believed in witches; he mentions incidentally
+that such a woman had injured his mother; and in another place was
+angry with the lawyers who did not punish similar sorceresses when
+they injured their fellow-creatures. But these expressions were not
+intended to be very severe; he on the whole troubled himself little
+with this phase of superstition. He, the copious writer, never
+considered it necessary to discourse to his people concerning it; in
+his sermons he only occasionally mentions witchcraft, and his whole
+nature was repugnant to the application of violence. But if happily
+for us, Luther's pure spirit preserved him from bitterness against
+the devil's helpmates, his scholars and successors had little of his
+high-mindedness. Young Protestantism was on this point little better
+than the old belief. In Protestant countries the ministers of God were
+by no means the only persecutors; the civil authorities were also
+willing to follow the example of the ecclesiastical courts of the Roman
+Catholics, and above all of the Jesuits. The victims were countless;
+they amount without doubt to hundreds of thousands. It was first in the
+domains of the ecclesiastical princes, that the contagion burst forth,
+which devastated whole provinces as in Eichst�dt, W�rtsburg and
+Cologne. In twenty villages in the vicinity of Treves, three hundred
+and sixty-eight persons were executed in seven years, besides many who
+were burnt in the city itself; in Brunswick the burnt stakes stood like
+a little forest on the place of execution. In every province hundreds
+and thousands might be counted. Every kind of baseness was practised by
+the ecclesiastical and temporal judges; the most contemptible grounds
+of suspicion sufficed to depopulate whole villages. No position and no
+age was a security; children and the aged, learned men and even
+councillors, were bound to the stake, but the greater part were
+women;--we shudder when we look at the method of these condemnations.
+It is not impossible, although it cannot be spoken of with certainty,
+that a victim here and there did live in the mad delusion that they
+were in union with the devil through magic arts; it is not impossible,
+although this cannot be certified, that hurtful mediums, intoxicating
+beverages and superstitious medicaments were in some cases used for the
+detriment of others. But it is the strongest proof of the infamy of the
+whole proceeding, that amidst the monstrous mass of old records
+concerning witches, we find no ground of belief that in any case the
+judgment was justified by the real misdeeds of the accused, though they
+were made the excuse for it; for so great was the degree of fanaticism,
+narrow-mindedness, or malice, that the mere accusation was almost
+certain to be fatal. Torture was applied on the most frivolous charges;
+the capability even of bearing pain was taken as evidence against those
+who held out under torture; and every kind of accidental symptom,
+disease of the body, outward appearance, or countless fortuitous
+circumstances, were also considered as evidence. The possessions of the
+condemned were confiscated; the greediness and covetousness of the
+judges were united with brutality and stupidity. This fearful disorder
+did not end with that century: through the whole of the sixteenth and
+up to the middle of the eighteenth century these horrible judicial
+murders continued. It was not till the time of the great Frederick that
+they ceased.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The literary activity of the few enlightened men who ventured to speak
+out in the interests of humanity against these trials for witchcraft,
+was pregnant with danger. They themselves had to fear imprisonment and
+the stake, and at least they incurred the hatred and the malice with
+which believing fanatics assailed their opponents. One name belongs to
+the sixteenth century which should ever be named with gratitude; that
+of the Protestant physician <i>Johann Weier</i>, physician in ordinary to
+Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, who in 1593 wrote his three volumes--'<i>De
+pr�stigiis D�monum</i>.' Even he believed in necromancers, who, by the
+help of the devil, wrought mischief, in which case they were to fall
+under the punishment of the laws; but the witches he considered as poor
+miserable beldames, who, in the worst cases, only imagined themselves
+to be doing the work of the devil, but were for the most part quite
+innocent. His warm heart for the oppressed, and his noble indignation
+against the brutality of the judges in the cases of witchcraft, made an
+immense sensation. Within his limited sphere of action Weier appears to
+us as a supplement to Luther. Against him also the raging orthodox crew
+upraised themselves. The good effect produced by Weier's book was in a
+great manner counteracted by a flood of opposition writings. But again
+amidst the horrors of the Thirty years' war, Friedrich Spee, the best
+of the German Jesuits, wrote secretly his '<i>Cautio Criminalis</i>,'
+against the burning of heretics; he published this anonymously in a
+Protestant printing-press.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The various popular transformations of the devil did not end with the
+century in which Luther taught, and Weier endeavoured to banish the
+stake from the place of execution. The Thirty years' war brought
+forward another set of gloomy fantasies concerning him. Satan was
+considered by the wild troopers as a demon who made fortresses, and
+cast magic balls which could penetrate every kind of armour.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When the peace came, the war-devil withdrew into the woods, where he
+taught his arts to the wild huntsmen; and when there remained nothing
+in the land but an impoverished population devoid of faith and hope,
+the devil was sought after in his ancient and quiet occupation--only
+disturbed by the covetousness of men--as the guardian of hidden
+treasures. Much money and property had been buried during the long war,
+and was discovered by lucky accidents after the peace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The poverty-stricken people lusting after gold, and unused to quiet
+labour, were powerfully excited by these treasure-troves, and the hopes
+of still greater. There had always been, from ancient times, treasure
+seekers, and magicians who were to conjure away the evil one from the
+treasure; and it is probable that this superstition had been imported
+into Germany from Rome.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Gradually the popular conception of the form and working of the devil
+became less vivid. In a more enlightened age it was thought wrong to
+speak mockingly of him, and the greatest poet of Germany gracefully
+idealized his image as it had been handed down from antiquity. Some of
+the musical composers also introduced him into their operas.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus did the German people seek earnestly after their God at the
+commencement of this great sixteenth century, and thus powerful was the
+devil at the close of it. Lofty exaltation was followed by enfeebling
+relaxation, and the striving after Christ, by the fear of hell; and the
+opponent of the Holy One pressed himself as a spectre into the whole
+life of man. Other countries were infected with these superstitions;
+but in Germany, for many years, the burning of witches was almost the
+only public action in which the deluded people showed a strong
+spiritual interest. The want of unity, public spirit and great
+political aims, was the destruction of the nation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">By the disputes of priests, the selfishness of princes, and the unhappy
+political position of Germany, the course of Protestantism was checked
+and the Roman Catholic reaction with fresh vigour raised its head.
+Throughout the country, in politics, in the pulpit, and in the closets
+of the ecclesiastics, there was more hatred than love. The minds of men
+languished under a spiritless dogmatism, and the hearts of believers
+were oppressed by gloomy forebodings. The wisest felt deep anxiety for
+the unhappy condition of the German Fatherland, and the devout were
+kept by the ecclesiastics and countless calendar-makers in continued
+anxiety, and fear that the end of the world was at hand, and the
+frequent interference of the devil appeared to many as an additional
+sign of its approach. Meanwhile the mass of the people of all ranks
+lived in a state of refined enjoyment in the then opulent country.
+Luxury was great, and every kind of excess was general. Those who did
+not fear the devil did not concern themselves much either about God or
+his saints. It was under such aspects that the fearful century of wars
+began.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_01" href="#div2_01">Footnote 1</a>: It was not till after the fifteenth century that glass
+became common in windows in towns; and about the same time they began
+to find out the comfort of separate rooms. And it is thought worthy of
+mention, that in 1546, Luther's bedroom at the palace of Eisleben was
+protected by windows that closed.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_02" href="#div2_02">Footnote 2</a>: Little Hans of Sweinichen was deprived of his post as
+gooseherd because he had tried to keep the geese quiet by gagging them
+with small pieces of wood.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_03" href="#div2_03">Footnote 3</a>: The Thirty years' war.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_04" href="#div2_04">Footnote 4</a>: Georg von Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, died 1471.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_05" href="#div2_05">Footnote 5</a>: A town of Silesia, near Riesenberge.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_06" href="#div2_06">Footnote 6</a>: The word house, standing alone, denotes a fortified
+building in the cities of the mayoralty, in the territory of some
+nobleman; in such cases it was of stone, the walls very thick, but
+without foundations, and therefore easily undermined; the windows were
+provided with iron gratings, and a passage ran under the roof within
+the walls; sometimes there was a large empty hall between the upper
+floor and the roof, in the walls of which loop-holes of different kinds
+were made for arrows, or at a later period for fire-arms, and in the
+fifteenth century, for light guns. These houses, especially when
+situated in the country, were often surrounded by an outer wall, which
+also enclosed the farm buildings. They were often inhabited by many
+families of noble descent all crowded together, some were husbandmen,
+others freebooters, all however had a strong feeling of aristocratic
+privileges.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_07" href="#div2_07">Footnote 7</a>: A linen covering, such as would be spread over the wooden
+hoops of a waggon.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_08" href="#div2_08">Footnote 8</a>: K�nig's 'Gr�tz in Bohemia.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_09" href="#div2_09">Footnote 9</a>: This journal, as also the whole account of Marcus
+Kintsch von Zobten, is unfortunately in bad handwriting, and very much
+defaced; but no one could read the fragment without emotion. There
+cannot possibly be a more simple or striking description than the
+following:--&quot;As we are unjustly denied the Holy Sacrament, we hereby
+testify before all, who hear, see, or read this writing, that we die in
+the holy Christian faith, innocent of all that has been publicly laid
+to our charge by our sovereign lord. And in making us suffer, he wrongs
+us: this we testify before our God, and desire that Duke Hans, our
+merciless master, may answer for it before the righteous tribunal of
+God. For every one will observe, that had he any just ground of
+complaint or accusation against us, he would not have condemned us so
+cruelly in a dark corner; had he brought us in the light of day before
+the people, his violence would have been apparent. As God Almighty, on
+account of our sins, has brought this upon us, we will accept it, and
+suffer patiently, and beg Him of his mercy to give us a happy end.
+Amen. Written in great distress and affliction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:.5in">&quot;Be it known, good people, that we died more from thirst than hunger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:.5in">&quot;I, Hans Keppel, have written this, amidst all my distress and
+suffering, and have my ink from the black of the burnt wick of the
+light that is burning above. What God will further do with me, depends
+on his grace and mercy. But if they give us no more food, we shall not
+last long. May God help and support us. Amen. Hactenus Keppel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:.5in">On the day that Keppel wrote this, two of them died; and he and the
+others later. This diary is given most accurately in 'Stenzel Script.
+Rer.' Siles. iv.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_10" href="#div2_10">Footnote 10</a>: In 1526.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_11" href="#div2_11">Footnote 11</a>: The famous royal castle of Vissegrad on a bend of the
+Danube four leagues north of Buda--Pesth.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_12" href="#div2_12">Footnote 12</a>: Ban Ladislaus von Gara was cousin to Queen Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_13" href="#div2_13">Footnote 13</a>: He was cousin to the queen and Ladislaus von Gara.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_14" href="#div2_14">Footnote 14</a>: The name is destroyed in the old manuscript.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_15" href="#div2_15">Footnote 15</a>: Maria Zell in Styria.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_16" href="#div2_16">Footnote 16</a>: The princess Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_17" href="#div2_17">Footnote 17</a>: Pfaff, a contemptuous name for a priest.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_18" href="#div2_18">Footnote 18</a>: A large stove used chiefly in Germany and Switzerland: it
+was built of brown-glazed tiles cemented together; the door of it was
+outside the room; it was heated by large logs of wood, and was
+sometimes large enough to have beds made on it.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_19" href="#div2_19">Footnote 19</a>: For this see the 'Theologia Te�tsch,' the best work of
+the time previous to the Reformation, by an unknown writer of Tanler's
+school, which was in fact the main source from which Luther drew his
+opinions; an admirable work even for us.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_20" href="#div2_20">Footnote 20</a>: Exhortation to the ecclesiastics collected at the Diet at
+Augsburg.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_21" href="#div2_21">Footnote 21</a>: It is thus represented in the woodcut on the title-page
+of a work entitled, 'Complaint of a Layman, called Hans Schwall, of the
+vile abuse of Christian Life,' 521, 4.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_22" href="#div2_22">Footnote 22</a>: The similarity of his Latinized name with that of Oswald
+Myconius, of Geissha�ser, teacher of Thomas Platter, is not owing to
+any relationship.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_23" href="#div2_23">Footnote 23</a>: Luther writes in 1541:--&quot;So I desire and beg of our dear
+God to allow me to be sick, and to lay aside this mortal coil in your
+stead; therefore I beg and admonish you in all earnestness to pray to
+God together with us, that He may preserve you in life for the service
+and improvement of his church, and to the confusion of the devil.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:.5in">&quot;<i>May the Lord never allow me to hear, as long as I live, that you are
+dead, but ordain that you shall outlive me. This I earnestly pray for,
+and being certified of it, will have it so, and my will shall come to
+pass. Amen.</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_24" href="#div2_24">Footnote 24</a>: See 'Dr. Martin Luther's Passion,' written by Marcellus;
+the author is probably the marshal of Strasbourg.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_25" href="#div2_25">Footnote 25</a>: It was the evening of the 4th March, 1522.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_26" href="#div2_26">Footnote 26</a>: A spirit supposed to haunt certain parts of Germany in
+those days.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_27" href="#div2_27">Footnote 27</a>: Compare with this the beautiful passage from the 'Table
+Talk:'--&quot;If, when I first began to write, I had known what I do now, I
+should never have been so bold as to attack and anger the Pope, and
+almost all men. I thought they sinned only from ignorance and human
+frailty; but God led me on like a horse with its eyes blinded. Good
+works are seldom undertaken from wisdom or foresight; they are all
+brought about unconsciously.&quot; To this Philip Melancthon answered, that
+having carefully studied history, he had observed that no great or
+remarkable deeds had been done by old people, but at the age when
+Alexander the Great and St. Augustine did them; later, men became too
+wise and circumspect. Dr. Martinus said: &quot;Young companions, if you had
+wisdom the devil could not deal with you; but because you have not, you
+need ours also, who are now old. Ah, if the old were but strong, and
+the young wise! Behold these factious spirits--vain young people,
+Icaruses, Pha�tons, who flutter in the air; chamois hunters, everywhere
+and nowhere, who wish to knock down twelve ninepins when there are only
+nine standing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_28" href="#div2_28">Footnote 28</a>: Ecclesiam Romanam <i>pure</i> colant. The double meaning
+appears intentional, and seems a cunning device of Miltitz.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_29" href="#div2_29">Footnote 29</a>: That this happened designedly is betrayed in Luther's
+letter to Melancthon, 13th July, 1521: &quot;I conjure you to be beforehand
+with the court, and not to follow its counsels. I have done this
+hitherto; I should not have effected half that I have done had I made
+myself dependent on its wishes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_30" href="#div2_30">Footnote 30</a>: 'Table Talk.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_31" href="#div2_31">Footnote 31</a>: Geek is the German for coxcomb.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_32" href="#div2_32">Footnote 32</a>: German for tom-cat.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_33" href="#div2_33">Footnote 33</a>: Cat's head and claws.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_34" href="#div2_34">Footnote 34</a>: The buck.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_35" href="#div2_35">Footnote 35</a>: A little brat.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_36" href="#div2_36">Footnote 36</a>: With what satisfaction he thought of his death appears
+from many passages in his writings--we give one--at the time of his
+residence at Wartburg, from the dedication of 'The Gospel of Ten
+Lepers,' the 17th September, 1521: &quot;I, a poor brother, have again
+lighted up a new fire, and have bitten a great hole in the Pope's
+pocket, because I have attacked confession. Where can I now remain, and
+where will they find brimstone, pitch, fire, and wood enough to
+pulverize the poisonous heretic? They must assuredly break open the
+church windows, for some holy fathers and ecclesiastical princes say
+that they must have air to proclaim the gospels, that is, to revile
+Luther, and to call out murder. What else can they preach to the poor
+people? every one must preach what he can. Only death, death, death to
+the heretic! they scream out--as ho would overturn all things, and
+overthrow the whole ecclesiastical order, upon which rests the
+foundation of Christendom. Now I hope, if I be accounted worthy, that
+they may kill me, and so fill up the measure of their forefather's
+sins; but it is not yet time, my hour is not yet come; I must first
+anger the serpent brood still more, and justly deserve death from them,
+that they may have cause to perform in me a great service to God.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_37" href="#div2_37">Footnote 37</a>: &quot;I thank God, that I feel assured my doctrines are the
+word of God and that I have been enabled to overcome grievous thoughts
+and temptations, when my heart tempted by Satan has said, 'Art thou the
+only one who holdest the word of God in truth and purity, and are
+others altogether without it?' 'Then again, when the devil finds me
+idle, and I am not thinking of the word of God, he troubles my
+conscience by the thought that I have disturbed the governments, and
+have occasioned much scandal and uproar; but when I lay hold of the
+word of God I win the game.'&quot; Passages like this are to be found in
+many other places of the 'Table Talk.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_38" href="#div2_38">Footnote 38</a>: 'An Account of how God helped an Honourable Nun,' 1524,
+p. 4.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_39" href="#div2_39">Footnote 39</a>: We find a mild judgment of the Saxon court in his 'Table
+Talk,' 4: &quot;I have again preached a sharp sermon at court against
+drinking, but it does no good. Taubenheim and Minkwitz say that it
+cannot be otherwise at court; for music and all knightly amusements
+have passed away, and nothing is thought of now but drinking. And truly
+our most gracious sovereign and Elector, John Frederic, is a gentleman
+of much strength, who can well stand a good drink; what he can bear
+would make another drunk. But when I return to him I will only beg of
+him to command his subjects and courtiers, on pain of severe
+punishment, to get very drunk; perhaps when it is commanded, they may
+do the contrary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_40" href="#div2_40">Footnote 40</a>: The passage following the one just quoted is remarkable:
+&quot;The nobles wish to govern, but have not the power, and understand
+nothing about it; but the Pope not only understands how, but has the
+power to govern: the weakest pope has more power to govern than ten
+nobles of the court.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_41" href="#div2_41">Footnote 41</a>: Luther's 'Table Talk.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_42" href="#div2_42">Footnote 42</a>: For instance, in the year 1527, Luther could not lend
+eight gulden to his old prior and friend Briesger. He writes to him
+sorrowfully: &quot;Three silver cups, marriage presents, have been mortgaged
+for fifty gulden, the fourth has been sold, and the year has produced a
+hundred gulden of debts. Lucas Cranach will no longer accept my
+security, that I may not be quite ruined.&quot;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:.5in">Luther often refused presents, even such as were offered to him by his
+sovereign; but it appears that consideration for wife or children gave
+him in later times somewhat more of a household feeling. What he left
+at his death amounted to about eight or nine thousand gulden; it
+consisted partly of a small landed property, a large garden and two
+houses, which undoubtedly he must chiefly have owed to Frau Kate.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_43" href="#div2_43">Footnote 43</a>: It is in Timothy v. 11, and has no reference to this
+question.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_44" href="#div2_44">Footnote 44</a>: Thus he speaks in many parts of the 'Table Talk.' His
+last conversation at the supper-table of Mansfelder, in Eisleben, a few
+hours before his death, was on the subject of meeting again with
+father, mother, and friends in the next life.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_45" href="#div2_45">Footnote 45</a>: This discourse was spoken in Latin, and immediately
+afterwards translated into German by Gasper Creutzinger.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_46" href="#div2_46">Footnote 46</a>: Christopher von Carlowitz, the confidant of the Elector
+Maurice of Saxony, whose counsels he secretly guided, was at that time,
+with good reason, the favourite of the Emperor, for it was he who
+directed the politics of his master.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_47" href="#div2_47">Footnote 47</a>: Peilketafel, a long narrow board with a rim all round,
+and two little gutters on the sides; on it they played with little
+ironstones smoothed at the bottom.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_48" href="#div2_48">Footnote 48</a>: Valentin Stoientin, who had been the intimate of Ulrich
+von Hutten in their youth, was then ducal councillor, and an
+influential promoter of the Reformation.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_49" href="#div2_49">Footnote 49</a>: On Palm-Sunday it was the custom of the Catholics to draw
+to the churchyard a large wooden ass on wheels, with a figure of Christ
+as large as life upon it. After the consecration of palms the people
+streamed thither. The choir of scholars sang the words of the
+Evangelist, <i>Cum audisset populus, quia Jesus venit Hierosolymam,
+acceperunt ramos palmarum</i>, &amp;c. Then eight of the scholars stepped
+forth, pointed to the ass, and sang aloud, <i>Hic est, qui venturus est</i>
+(the lesser <i>Hic est</i>); to this the choir responded, <i>In salutem
+populi</i>. Then eight other scholars pointed to the ass and sang, <i>Hic
+est salus nostra et redemtio Israel</i> (the great <i>Hic est</i>). Then eight
+other scholars knelt before the ass, clasped their hands over their
+heads, and sang, <i>Quantus est iste ad throni et dominationes occurrunt?
+Noli timere, filia Sion, ecce Rex tuus.</i> This already was a very grand
+performance for the scholars; but afterwards there came six other
+scholars who knelt down, their faces to the earth, clasped their hands
+of one accord over their heads, and sang the <i>Salve</i>; and when they had
+finished it they went forward three steps, knelt down again, and sang
+thrice, <i>Salve Rex, fabricator mundi</i>, &amp;c. Then they drew the ass
+forwards, and so on. Faithfully given from a description of the
+solemnity, in the archives of St. Gallen, printed in Kessler's 'Life of
+J. J. Bernet.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_50" href="#div2_50">Footnote 50</a>: The father Sastrow did not go to the communion from a
+conscientious feeling, because he would not fulfil the condition of
+forgiving his enemies.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_51" href="#div2_51">Footnote 51</a>: <i>Querela de ecclesia. Epicedion Martyrus Christi, D.
+Roberti Barns, Angli. Authore Joanne Sastroviano.</i> Lubec�, 1542, 8;
+directed against Henry VIII. of England, who in tolerable distichs was
+compared to Busiris and similar ancient characters.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_52" href="#div2_52">Footnote 52</a>: The guests were counted by tables, twelve persons being
+generally reckoned to each table.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_53" href="#div2_53">Footnote 53</a>: The reward to the first bearer of good news. It was the
+universal custom in Germany, in the middle ages, to demand and give the
+&quot;botenbrot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_54" href="#div2_54">Footnote 54</a>: Thomas Platter, the father, married again later, and had
+six children by his second wife.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_55" href="#div2_55">Footnote 55</a>: 'Biography of Hans von Schweinichen,' v., B�sching, 1 S.
+157. The host is the same Marcus Fugger who wrote the best work on the
+training of horses in the sixteenth century. He himself had a large
+stud, first in Hungary, and then at the foot of the Allganer Alps.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_56" href="#div2_56">Footnote 56</a>: Compare with this the beautiful characteristic of
+Wilibald Pirkheimer in D Strauss Hutten, 1.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_57" href="#div2_57">Footnote 57</a>: Margaret Horng of Ernstkirchen was twice married, first
+to Dr. Johann von Glauburg at Lichtenstein, then to Weicker Frosch,
+both of Frankfort families.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_58" href="#div2_58">Footnote 58</a>: This refers to the presents of the bridegroom to the
+female relation of the bride.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_59" href="#div2_59">Footnote 59</a>: The bridegroom was a widower.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_60" href="#div2_60">Footnote 60</a>: After the marriage feast the shoes are taken from the
+feet of the bride and given to the best-man.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_61" href="#div2_61">Footnote 61</a>: Of the ceremonial of fetching home the bride, and the
+festive entrance into the city of Frankfort. This fetching home took
+place with a splendour which made an epoch in the patrician circles of
+Frankfort. 1598.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_62" href="#div2_62">Footnote 62</a>: G�tz's method of acting is characteristic: he enters into
+a quarrel with the rich Nurembergers, seeks for causes of quarrel, and
+waylays their merchants. The supposition that the Nurembergers hold a
+good comrade of his in durance is sufficient for him; of a like
+character is the ground of offence, that they had stabbed in another
+quarrel a servant whom he had wished to take into his service. There is
+nothing further said of Fitz von Littwach, than that G�tz was obliged
+to reconcile himself with the Nurembergers. The grounds upon which G�tz
+broke bounds are in themselves remarkable, as will be perceived in the
+following narrative.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_63" href="#div2_63">Footnote 63</a>: Hohenburg and Bissingen lay in the territory of
+Oettingen. The Counts of Oettingen claimed to be lords paramount over
+these properties.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_64" href="#div2_64">Footnote 64</a>: The princes stood by the members of their own order; and
+this family, as we know, belonged to the higher nobility. Their
+struggle for seigniorial rights over property occasioned many battles
+in the sixteenth century; and the claims of Sch�rtlin appeared to them
+particularly arrogant, as his nobility by birth was more than
+doubtful.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_65" href="#div2_65">Footnote 65</a>: Bishop of Breslau, the crown commissary of Bohemia, under
+the supremacy of which Silesia was then incorporated.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_66" href="#div2_66">Footnote 66</a>: Winds are nothing but good and bad spirits.--'Table
+Talk.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_67" href="#div2_67">Footnote 67</a>: At one time Luther was inclined to think that he himself
+had one or two especial devils as opponents, who lurked about him and
+accompanied him to the dormitory in the cloister.--'Table Talk.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_68" href="#div2_68">Footnote 68</a>: 'The compact alliance of the world-famed Duke of
+Luxemburg--General and Court-Marshal to the King of France--with Satan,
+and the terrible catastrophe that followed.' Frankfort and Leipzig,
+1716.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_69" href="#div2_69">Footnote 69</a>: The title of the manuscript is, 'Wonderful Tidings of a
+Money Devil; a strange, incredible, yet true story. Published at
+Frankfort on the Oder, where it took place, 1538, 4.'</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_70" href="#div2_70">Footnote 70</a>: Pfaff was the nickname of the Roman Catholic priests in
+those days.</p>
+
+<p class="hang1"><a name="div2Ref_71" href="#div2_71">Footnote 71</a>: This does not mean mushroom, still less bath sponge, as
+the Dean understood it; it is the Bavarian word <i>Schwaim</i>, pronounced
+<i>Schwam</i>, &quot;The Floating Shadow.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>END OF VOL. I.</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>LONDON:</h3>
+
+<h4>PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET<br>
+AND CHARING CROSS.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of German Life in the XVth
+XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I., by Gustav Freytag
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE, VOL I ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth
+and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I., by Gustav Freytag
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I.
+
+Author: Gustav Freytag
+
+Translator: Georgiana Malcolm
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2010 [EBook #33794]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE, VOL I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+1. Page scan source: Google Books
+http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA315&dq=editions:52ZfIxnPQ6cC&id=52Zf
+IxnPQ6cC
+
+2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+                        PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE
+
+                                 IN THE
+
+            FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
+
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+                                VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                PICTURES
+
+                                   OF
+
+                              GERMAN LIFE
+
+
+                 In the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries.
+
+
+                                   BY
+                             GUSTAV FREYTAG
+
+
+
+                    Translated from the Original by
+                             MRS. MALCOLM.
+
+
+
+                 _COPYRIGHT EDITION.--IN TWO VOLUMES_.
+
+
+                                VOL. I.
+
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                   CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.
+                                 1862.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+The great interest which these graphic Pictures of Life in Germany have
+created in that country, has induced me to translate them. The object
+of the distinguished author seems to have been, to convey a lesson, a
+warning, and at the same time an encouragement to his countrymen,
+derived from the experience of the past; whilst he demonstrates to
+other nations how it is, that a people so superior in intellectual
+power, has remained so far behind in social and political development.
+
+I have also felt as an additional reason, that at the present moment,
+the British public must take a deep interest in everything connected
+with the past, and future, of the country in which the daughter of our
+beloved Queen has cast her lot, and which was the Fatherland of the
+revered Prince, who has been a source of blessing to England for so
+many years, and whose irreparable loss we now so deeply deplore.
+
+                                                GEORGIANA MALCOLM.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS.
+
+
+                   FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.
+
+Introduction.--Life of a German proprietor, 300, 200, and 100 years
+ago--In what respect the life of the past appears alien to us--Greater
+repression of the individual mind--Significance of the last four
+centuries
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+Scenes From The Hussite War (1425)--Emigration of Germans to
+the east after the thirteenth century--Silesia and its Sclave
+Princes--Colonization, the blessing of free labour recognized--
+Character and fate of the German Silesians--Contrast of the
+Bohemians--Narrative by Martin von Bolkenhain--Consequences of the
+Hussite war and subsequent fate of the Silesians
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+A German Lady Of The Royal Court (1440)--Development of the
+popular mind in the Hussite time--Life at Court--The last of
+the Luxemburgers--The Hungarian Crown--Narration of Helen
+Kottanner--Struggles of conscience in the fifteenth century
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+A Travelling Student (1509)--Characteristics of the fifteenth
+century--Introductions in the sixteenth century--Excitement in
+the people, wandering propensities, exciting news, Landsknechte,
+art of printing--German learning; the Humanitarians--The Latin
+schools, the children of the people as scholars--Narrative Of Thomas
+Platter--Influence of the Latin schools upon the people
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Mental Struggles of a Youth, and his Entrance into a Monastery
+(1510)--The wants of the popular mind--The church--Brotherhoods;
+Indulgences--Opposition to them--Narrative Of Friedrich Myconius
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+Out of the Cloister into the Struggle (1522)--The storm among the
+people--Luther's popularity--Narration of Ambrosius Blaurer--The knight
+from the Wartburg--Narrative of Johann Kessler
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+Doctor Luther (1517 to 1546)--His importance to us--The tragic in his
+life--Distinct periods in it--His father--Mental struggle in the
+monastery, and how he delivered himself from it--His character in
+1519--Three letters to the Pope--An inward struggle--Luther as a
+writer--At the Wartburg--Adherence to Scripture, and defects in his
+method--The marriage of priests--Return to Wittenberg--His political
+position--The crisis--How he married--Activity of his latter years--His
+spirit, his family, his God, his temptations, and ideas of the end of
+the world--From the funeral discourse of Melancthon--Letter of Luther
+to the Elector Friedrich the Wise, March, 1522
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+German Princes At The Imperial Diet (1547)--Luther and Charles
+V.--The Roman Empire--Possibility of a new confirmation--The man
+wanting--Princes of the sixteenth century--Charles V.--Narrative of
+Bartholomaeus Sastrow--Weakness of the Imperial power--Alliance of the
+German opposition with France--Internal disorganization of the empire
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A Burgher Family (1488)--Insight into the lower circles of German
+life--Increasing popular strength--Social superiority of the Protestant
+provinces (1542)--Insecurity of life--Family History Of Bartholomaeus
+Sastrow
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+The Marriage and Housekeeping of a Young Student (1557)--The female sex
+among the Germans--Position of women in the middle ages--Marriage
+considered as an alliance between families--The betrothal--Narrative of
+Felix Platter
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+Of a Patrician House (1526 to 1598)--The patricians rich and
+educated--Hans Schweinichen's account of the riches of the
+Fuggers--Their women--Clara Pirkheimer and Argula von Grumbach--Letters
+of a Lady of the Glauburg Family
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+German Nobility In The Sixteenth Century (1500)--False position
+in the nation--Unproductiveness--Gradual change--Character of Goetz
+von Berlichingen--Extract from his Autobiography--Character of
+Schaertlin--Narrative Of Schaertlin--Hans von Schweinichen and Duke
+Heinrich von Liegnitz--Narrative Of Schweinichen--Transition to modern
+life
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+German Ideas of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century (1500)--The
+introduction of German traditions concerning him; change in the middle
+ages--Luther spiritualizes the ideas regarding the devil--Activity of
+the devil in the new Church--Compacts with the devil after Luther's
+time--Favourable position of the possessed--The money devil at
+Frankfort--Satan exorcised from one possessed--Witches--Dreadful
+persecutions--Gloomy state of men's minds at the end of the sixteenth
+century
+
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION.
+
+
+To my dear Friend Solomon Hertzel.
+
+Without your knowledge I dedicate this work to you, who have taken so
+kind an interest in it, whose excellent library has so often helped
+when other sources failed, and where, as industrious collectors, we
+have examined so many old flying sheets and manuscripts.
+
+To you also these records of the olden times, in which the private life
+and feelings of the writers are portrayed, are especially valuable, for
+by them a clear light is thrown on events in our political history
+which till now have been only occasionally noticed, and we may discover
+from them how the German people have felt, suffered, and lived.
+
+If these records of individuals can be judiciously arranged according
+to periods and their position in life, it appears to me that an
+instructive insight may be obtained into the gradual development of the
+mind of the German people.
+
+I have endeavoured to carry this out from the middle ages to the
+beginning of the present era.
+
+What I have added of my own is simple explanation: I have avoided
+saying anything where it could be given in the original; only where the
+old records fail to give a complete picture have I supplied the
+deficiency.
+
+As there are very few who can read the language of the fifteenth, or
+even the seventeenth, century with ease, I have thought it necessary to
+translate the records into modern German, but at the same time to
+preserve something of the old style.
+
+Accept kindly then, my friend, what of right belongs to you, for your
+flag waves on every vessel that I launch; and I trust that the freight
+that I have this time prepared, may meet with your hearty approbation.
+
+                                             GUSTAV FREYTAG.
+
+_Siebleben, 8th October_, 1859.
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+In vain does the German seek for "the good old times." If even the
+pious zealot who condemns Hegel and Humboldt as the greatest of
+Atheists, or the conservative proprietor who is struggling for the
+privileges of his order, were to be thrown back into one of the last
+centuries, he would feel first unmitigated astonishment, then horror,
+at the position in which he would find himself placed. What now appears
+to him so desirable would make him miserable, and he would be driven to
+despair at the loss of all the advantages of that civilization which he
+at present so little appreciates.
+
+Let a German proprietor endeavour to realize to himself the position
+of one of his ancestors in the year 1559. Instead of the house he
+has now, built in the old German style, surrounded by its English
+pleasure-grounds, he would find himself shut up in a gloomy, dirty, and
+comfortless building, placed either on a height destitute of water, and
+exposed to the cutting blasts of the wind, or else surrounded by the
+f[oe]tid smells of stagnant ditches. It is true that three generations
+back dim panes had been added to the small windows,[1] and large stoves
+of Dutch tiles, which were fed with logs from the neighbouring forest,
+kept the cold out of the sitting-rooms; but the accommodation was
+limited, as it was occasionally necessary to defend the house against
+attacks from the citizens of the nearest town, roving bands of
+marauders, or reckless soldiers bent on revenge because they had been
+cheated of half their pay by the neighbouring prince.
+
+Comfortless and dirty is the house, for it is occupied by many others
+beside the family of the owner: younger brothers and cousins, with
+their wives and children, numberless servants, amongst them many of
+doubtful character, men-at-arms, labourers, and in 1559, mercenaries,
+may be added. In the court-yard, from the dung-heap is heard the cry of
+children quarrelling, and from round the kitchen fire the no less
+inharmonious sound of wrangling women. The children of the house grow
+up amongst horses, dogs, and servants; they receive scanty instruction
+in the village school; the boys keep the geese[2] and poultry for their
+mother, or they go with the village people to the wood to collect wild
+pears and mushrooms, which are dried for the winter meal; the lady of
+the castle is housekeeper, head cook, and doctor of the establishment,
+and is well accustomed to intercourse with lawless men and to the
+ill-treatment of her drunken husband. She is faithful, a thorough
+manager, proud of her escutcheon, of the gold chains and brocades
+belonging to the family; she looks suspiciously on the dress and finery
+of the wives of the counsellors of the town, who she considers have no
+right to wear sable and ermine, velvet dresses, pearls in their hair,
+and precious stones round their necks. The love and tenderness of her
+nature frequently gave elevation to her countenance and manners; but in
+those days, both in the homes of the nobles and in the courts of
+princes, much was considered decorous and was permitted to women of the
+highest character in familiar conversation which now would be condemned
+as unseemly in the wife of a common labourer.
+
+The daily life of the landed proprietor is one of idleness or wild
+excitement. The hunting is certainly excellent. Where the forest has
+not been laid waste by the reckless stroke of the axe, grow the stately
+trees of the primeval wood; the howl of the wolf is still heard in the
+winter nights; the hunters sally forth on horseback, with spear and
+cross-bow, against beasts of prey, stags, roedeer, and the wild boar,
+and all adopt the habits of the rough hunters. But whilst hunting, even
+in his own wood, every one must be provided with weapons against other
+foes than the wolf and the boar. There are few hunting-grounds
+concerning which there is not some quarrel with a neighbour or feudal
+lord, who often claims the right of following the chase up to the
+squire's castle; the squire is also set at defiance by the peasants of
+the nearest village, whose crops have been laid waste by the stag and
+the boar, and who hates the master of the castle for having beaten or
+thrown him into prison for crossing the path of the chase; and not
+unfrequently an arrow whistles through the darkness of the wood with
+other aim than a wild animal; or an armed band breaks through a
+clearing, and then begins a race for freedom and life. We will suppose
+the game to be brought home and cut up in the castle yard; then follows
+the banquet, with endless drinking of healths and wild revelry, and
+seldom a night passes without the whole party breaking up in a state of
+intoxication. Drunkenness was at this time a national evil, prostrating
+alike the powers of princes, nobles, and people. The guests at the hunt
+and the banquet are of the same rank as their host--some are old
+cavaliers, constantly swearing, and relating anecdotes of the knightly
+feats they have performed in the greenwood against the traders and
+townspeople; others a younger race, hangers-on of the great feudal
+lords, who proudly wear the gold-laced caps given by these lords to
+their vassals.
+
+Thus the week passes away. On Sunday it is considered a duty to attend
+the village church, and listen to the preacher's endless sermon, which
+generally breathes hatred to Calvinists or Papists, and denounces the
+factious Schwenkfeld or the apostate Melancthon. There is but little
+intercourse with foreign countries: the country gentleman gratifies his
+curiosity by buying from the itinerant pedler what was then called a
+newspaper, being a few quarto sheets published at intervals in the
+towns, containing very doubtful intelligence, such as a horrible fight
+having taken place between the sons of the Turkish sultan, a young
+maiden being possessed by the devil, or the French king having been
+struck on the head by one of his nobles. Sometimes the young squire
+listens to the songs of ballad singers, who recite similar news to old
+popular tunes, or, what is still more welcome, satirical verses on some
+neighbour, which the singer has been paid to propagate far and wide
+through the country. The reading which gives most pleasure at home, is
+either some astrological absurdity, such as a prophecy of old Wilhelm
+Friese or Gottfried Phyllers, or a description of the funeral festival
+of the Emperor Charles V. at Augsburg; besides these, theological
+writings find their way into the castle.
+
+This life, which in spite of all its excitement is so meagre and
+monotonous, is sometimes varied by the discovery of a murdered man in
+the fields, or by some old woman of the village being accused of
+witchcraft. These incidents give rise to judicial proceedings, in the
+first case tardy and of little interest, in the latter fierce and
+bloodthirsty.
+
+There are other annoyances in these times from which the landed
+proprietor is seldom free,--lawsuits and many difficulties. His father
+had sought to obtain money for the payment of his debts on the highway
+in his breastplate and saddle, and thus revenged himself for his
+injured rights. But now a new age has begun, and law asserts its
+supremacy over the self-will and independence of individuals; it is
+however an uncertain, dilatory, distorted law, which overlooks the
+powerful, and too often favours the wealthy. The young squire still
+rides his charger, armed with lance and pistol, but he is no longer
+eager to obtain fame and booty in war. The foot-soldier with pike and
+musket, and light-horseman of the town have outstripped him. Even at
+the tournament he prefers running at the ring; and if perchance he
+should encounter in the lists any person of distinction, he finds it
+more advantageous to allow himself to be unhorsed, than to contend
+manfully.
+
+The condition of his peasantry is wretched: they have sunk from freemen
+to slaves; the rent they have to pay in labour, corn, and money,
+swallows up their earnings, yet he benefits little by it. The roads
+being bad and unsafe, it is impossible to export his produce: he is
+just able to keep himself and his household, for his income is small;
+everything has become dear; the new gold which has been brought to
+Europe from America is amassed in the great commercial towns, and is of
+little advantage to him, and he is unable to maintain the state
+suitable to his position.
+
+He holds obstinately to all he considers his right, and supports or
+resists his feudal lord according to his personal advantage;
+occasionally he follows him to the Imperial Diet. But in the Provincial
+States, he eagerly resists the impost of new taxes; he has no real love
+of his country, and only feels himself German in opposition to Italians
+and Spaniards, whom he hates; but looks with a selfish interest on
+France, whose King burns cursed Calvinists and engages German Lutherans
+at high salaries. The province in which he lives has no political
+unity; the sovereignty of his feudal lord is no longer a firm edifice,
+and his attachment is therefore only occasional. His egotism alone is
+firm and lasting, a miserable hateful egotism, which has scarce power
+to excite him to deeds of daring, not even to bind him to others of his
+own class. Rarely does the feeling of his own social position ennoble
+his conversation or actions; his education and knowledge of the world
+are not greater than those of a horsedealer of the present day.
+
+A century has passed, it is the year 1659--ten years since the
+conclusion of the great German war. The walls of the old castles have
+been shattered, foreign soldiers have encamped within them, whose fires
+have blackened the ruins, and whose fury has emptied the granaries and
+destroyed all the household goods. The squire has now erected a new
+building with the stones of the old one; it is a bare house, with thick
+walls, and without ornament; the windows look on a miserable village,
+which is only partly built, and on a field which, for the first time
+for many years, is prepared for cultivation; the flock of sheep has
+been replenished, but there are no horses, and the peasants have
+learned to plough with oxen. The owner of the house has no longer to
+provide for the horses of troopers and knights; a coach stands in a
+hovel,--a kind of lumbering chest on leather straps, but nevertheless
+the pride of the family. The house is surrounded by walls and moats
+with drawbridges; massive locks and strong iron work defend the
+entrances, for the country is still insecure. Gipsies and bands of
+marauders lurk in the neighbourhood, and the daily conversation is of
+robberies and horrible murders. There is great regularity both in house
+and village, and strict order is kept by the squire amongst his
+children, servants, and retainers; but many wild figures may be still
+seen about the court-yard,--disbanded soldiers who have taken service
+as messengers, foresters, halberdiers, &c. The village school is in sad
+decay, but the squire's children receive instruction from a poor
+scholar. The squire wears a wig with flowing curls; instead of the
+knightly sword, a slender rapier hangs at his side; in society his
+movements and conversation are stiff and formal; the townspeople call
+him your honour, and his daughter has become "fraulein" and
+"damoiselle;" the lady of the house wears a bunch of keys at her side;
+she is great in receipts and superstitious remedies, and her repose is
+troubled by ghostly apparitions in the old tower of the castle. When a
+visitor approaches, the spinning-wheel is hidden, an embroidered dress
+is quickly put on, the scanty family treasures of silver goblets and
+tankards laid out on the sideboard, a groom, who is just capable of
+making a bow, is hastily put into livery, and perfumes are burnt in
+the room. The young squire when he visits appears as a gallant a la
+mode,--in lace coat and wig, and pays the most fulsome compliments to
+the lady of the house; he is her most devoted slave, he extols the
+daughter as a heart-enslaver, and declares that she is quite angelic in
+her appearance; but these finely turned compliments are bad sauce to
+coarse manners, and are generally interspersed with stable language and
+oaths. When conversation begins to flow more freely, it is directed by
+preference to subjects which are no longer ambiguous, and women listen,
+not with the naivete of former times, but with secret pleasure, to the
+boldness of such language, for it is the fashion to relate improper
+anecdotes, and by enigmatical questions to produce a pretty affected
+embarrassment in the ladies. But even such conversation soon wearies,
+and the wine begins to circulate, the hilarity becomes noisy, and they
+finish by getting very drunk, after the old German fashion. They smoke
+clay pipes, and cavaliers of high breeding take snuff from silver
+boxes. The chase is again the amusement of the country gentleman: he
+tries to exterminate the wolves, which during the late war have become
+numerous and insolent; he exhibits rifles among his hunting gear, but
+no longer mounts his steed as an armed knight; his armour is rusty, his
+independence is gone, war is carried on by the soldiers of the Prince,
+and he appears at court only as the obsequious servant of his
+illustrious lord.
+
+He is still firm in his faith, and adheres to the rites of the Church;
+but he holds in contempt the theological controversies of the clergy,
+and does not object to holding intercourse with unbelievers, though he
+prefers Jesuits to zealous sectarians. The pastor of his village is
+poor and devout, and from living amongst lawless men, has lost much of
+his priestly pride; he strives to support himself by agriculture, and
+considers it an honour to dine at the squire's table, and has in return
+to laugh at his patron's jokes, and retail the news of the day. When it
+is a fete day at the castle he presents a pompous poem, in which he
+calls on Venus, the Muses and Graces, to celebrate in Olympus the
+birthday of the lady of the house. On such days there is music at the
+castle, and the viola da gamba is the fashionable instrument. Once a
+week the newspaper is brought to the castle, from thence it is sent to
+the parsonage, then to the schoolmaster and forester: the chief reading
+besides this consists of tedious novels and histories of adventures, or
+anecdotes of ghostly apparitions and discoveries of treasure; sometimes
+also dissertations on the phenomena of nature, the first glimmering of
+a more intellectual literature. The squire interests himself in
+politics; he distrusts Sweden, and abhors the regicide tendencies of
+England, but admires everything French, and whosoever can give him news
+of Paris is a welcome guest. He attends the Diet, but it is only for
+the sake of maintaining the privileges of his order; he lounges in
+antechambers, and by bribery endeavours to secure for his relations
+some appointment about the court. He unwillingly allows his son to
+study law, with the hope that he may, as royal counsellor, advance the
+interests of his family; in short, he looks upon the court and the
+government as wine vats to be tapped, so as to afford him a good
+draught. Germany is to him a mere geographical spot, which he neither
+loves nor hates; his family or his order are all that he serves or
+cares for, and if one abstracts from him his high pretensions, and
+compares the remains of the kernel with the men of our own time, we
+should find more sense and rectitude in the stubborn head of a
+corporation of the smallest town than in him.
+
+Again a century has passed, a time of little energy or national
+strength, and yet great changes have taken place. The year 1759 is in
+the youth of our grandfathers; numberless remembrances cling to our
+hearts; it will be sufficient to recall a few. The squire's house has
+no longer a bare front: a porch has been added, supported by stone
+pillars; the staircase is ornamented with vases; over the hall door a
+rudely carved angel holds the family arms emblazoned on a spiral shell.
+On one side of the building lies the farm-yard, on the other the
+garden, laid out with trim beech hedges and obelisks of yew. The old
+whitewashed walls are almost all covered with plaster-of-paris, and
+some are highly ornamented. There is an abundance of household
+furniture beautifully carved in oak or walnut; near the ancient family
+portraits hang modern pastil pictures, amongst them perhaps the
+daughter of the house as a shepherdess with a crook in her hand. In the
+apartments of the lady of the house there is a porcelain table with
+coloured tankards, small cups, pug-dogs, and Cupids of this newly
+discovered material. Propriety reigns everywhere with a strict stern
+rule; women and servants speak low, children kiss their parents' hands,
+the master of the house calls his wife "ma chere," and uses other
+French phrases. The hair is powdered, and the ladies wear stiff gowns
+and high head-dresses; violent emotions or strong passions seldom
+disturb the stiff formality of their carriage or the tranquillity of
+the house.
+
+The squire has become economist, and looks a little after the farming;
+he tries by selecting choice breeds to improve the wool of his flocks,
+and raises carefully the new bulb called the potato, which is to be a
+source of unfailing nourishment to man and beast. The mode of life is
+quiet, simple, and formal. The mother shakes her head about Gellert's
+'Life of the Swedish Countess;' the daughter is delighted with Kleist's
+'Spring,' and sings to the harpsichord of violets and lambs; and the
+father carries in his pocket the 'Songs of a Grenadier.' Coffee is
+placed before the visitors, and on high holidays chocolate makes its
+appearance. Everything is managed by government officials, and much is
+required of the country gentleman, who has to pay taxes without being
+consulted: he is a person of more consideration than the citizen, but
+is now far removed from the prince. The great noble looks with
+contempt on him, and it is well for him if he does not feel the
+weight of his stick: the officials of the capital interfere with his
+farming; they order him to dig a drain, to build a mill, even to plant
+mulberry-trees, and send him the eggs of silkworms, insisting upon his
+rearing them. It is a weary time; the third, or Seven years', war is
+raging between the king and emperor; the squire is walking about his
+room, wringing his hands and weeping. How is it that this hard man has
+so completely lost his composure? The letter on the table has informed
+him that his son, an officer in the king's army, has come unscathed out
+of the fight at Cunnersdorf; why then does he weep and wring his hands?
+His King is in distress; the state to which he belongs is in danger of
+destruction, and it is for this that he grieves. He is greater, richer,
+and better than any of his ancestors, for he has a fatherland; the
+training of his generation is rough, manners coarse, and government
+despotic; his knowledge of the world is not greater than that of a
+subordinate official of the present day, but this feeling within him,
+either in life or death, makes him a man.
+
+Life in every period of the German past was much rougher than now; but
+it is not the hardships of individuals which make the old time appear
+so strange to us, it is that the whole mode of life, in every thought
+and feeling, is so essentially different. The reason of this difference
+is, that at all periods of the past the mind of the individual was less
+free and more subordinate to the spirit of the nation; we may see this
+especially in the middle ages, but it may still be observed in the last
+century.
+
+There was no such thing as public opinion. The individual submitted his
+conscience to the approbation of those with whom he lived; he committed
+to them his honour, interests, and safety, and only felt that he
+existed as a member of the society, thus rendering the necessity of
+union more urgent. How strikingly this tendency of the old times was
+exemplified in the clubs of Hanseatic stations! The constraint within
+their closed walls was almost monkish. Every word and gesture at the
+dinner-table was regulated, and this rule was maintained by severe
+punishments. The soldiers who roamed about together in troops from all
+parts of Germany, made laws for themselves, by which they kept the
+strictest discipline, each being accuser and judge of the other. Upon a
+sea voyage the passengers selected from amongst themselves a
+magistrate, judge, and police-officer, who declared the law, imposed
+fines, and awarded even bodily punishment; and if at the conclusion of
+the journey any individual wished to free himself from this control, he
+had to take an oath that he would not revenge himself for any annoyance
+or injury he might have suffered under the ship's law; and it was the
+same with pilgrimages to the Holy Land, especially where it was
+question of any dangerous enterprise. For instance, when, in the year
+1535, five-and-twenty men from Amberg undertook to explore the cavern
+of the "awful" mountains, their first act at the entrance to the
+caverns was to choose two leaders, and take an oath of obedience to
+stand by one another in life or death.
+
+The same feature is to be found amongst the artists of the middle ages:
+thus did the life of individuals first find its full expression, in
+association with others.
+
+One peculiar charm which we find in the national character of those
+early ages, is the union of a strong love of freedom with a spirit of
+obedience. To this characteristic of the old times may be added
+another. All, from the emperor to the wandering beggar, from their
+birth to their death, from morning till night, were fenced in by
+customs, forms, and ceremonies. A wonderful creative genius produced
+endless pictures and symbols, by which everything on earth was
+idealized. By these means was expressed the way in which the people
+understood their relations with God, and the right direction of all
+human energy; there were also many mysterious rituals which served as
+means of defence against the supposed influence of unearthly powers.
+Even in law mimic and figurative proceedings were laid down. Whoever
+sought revenge before a court of justice for the murder of a relative,
+had everything as to garments and gestures, the very words of the
+accusation, and even their complaints, prescribed to them. Every
+transfer of property, every investiture and contract, had its
+significant forms and precise words, on which its legality depended.
+The knights were summoned to the lists by the herald; the bride was
+claimed and the guests invited to the wedding by fixed forms of speech;
+it was considered of importance which foot was placed first on the
+ground in the morning, which shoe was first put on, and what stranger
+was first met on going out; also, how the bread was laid on the table
+at each meal, and where the salt-cellar was placed. All that concerned
+the body, the cutting of the hair, baths, and bleeding, had their
+appointed time and appropriate regulations. When the agriculturist
+turned up the first clod, when he brought in the last sheaf, leaving a
+truss of corn in the field, in short, all the incidents of labour had
+their peculiar usages; there were customs for every important day of
+the year, and they abounded at every festival. Many relics of these
+remain to our day; we maintain some for our amusement, but most of them
+appear to us useless, senseless, and superstitious.
+
+Many of these practices had been derived in Germany from the heathen
+faith and ancient laws and customs. The Church of the middle ages
+followed in the same track, idealizing life. The services became more
+frequent, the ceremonials more artificial. In the same way that it had
+sanctified the great epochs of life by the mystery of its sacraments,
+it tried, rivalling the heathen traditions, to influence even the
+trifling actions of every-day life. It consecrated fountains and
+animals, and professed that it could stop the effusion of blood and
+turn away the enemy's shot by its blessing. Its endeavours to make the
+spiritual perceptible to the senses of the multitude, produced many
+proverbs and symbolical actings, which gave rise to the dramas of the
+middle ages. But whilst it thus met the imaginative tendencies of the
+people, its own spiritual and moral character was injured by all these
+outward observances; and when Luther accused the Church of thirty-seven
+errors, from the sale of indulgences, to the consecrated salt, and the
+baptism of bells with their two hundred godfathers, he was not in a
+position to perceive that the old Church had given growth to these
+excrescences, by having yielded too much to the imaginative disposition
+of the German popular mind.
+
+The artisans liked to reproduce the formulas of their religion and
+guilds for their amusement: dialogue and gesture were interchanged, and
+thus dramatic representations arose. The initiated and best informed of
+every class became known by this; they had an opportunity of showing
+their nature under the traditional form. In such a way every young
+nation tries to represent life, and among the Germans, this
+inclination, together with the love of mystery, worked most powerfully
+in the same direction. It gave much opportunity for dramatic acting,
+though it was a peculiarly undramatic period in the life of the people,
+for words and characteristic gestures do not flow from the inward man;
+they come with imposing power from external circumstances, leading,
+forming, and restraining the individual.
+
+Such union of order and discipline belongs to the epic time of the
+people.
+
+How the German mind outgrew these bonds we shall learn from the
+following stories of the olden time. In the course of four centuries
+the great change was accomplished--a powerful action of the mind
+brought freedom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a fearful
+political catastrophe brought destruction in the seventeenth.[3] After
+a long deathlike sleep the modern spirit of the people awoke in the
+eighteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+
+                        PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+                      SCENES FROM THE HUSSITE WAR.
+                             (about 1425.)
+
+
+Among the events of the thirteenth century, the wonderfully rapid
+colonization of the Sclave country east of the Elbe has never been
+sufficiently appreciated. In the course of one century a numerous body
+of German emigrants of all classes, almost as many as now go to
+America, spread themselves over a large tract of country, established
+hundreds of cities and villages, and united it for the most part firmly
+to Germany. Nearly the whole of the eastern part of Prussia extends
+over a portion of the territory that was thus colonized.
+
+The time however of this outpouring of national strength was not the
+heroic period of Germany. The enthusiasm of the Crusades, the splendour
+of the Hohenstaufen, the short reign of German chivalry, and the
+greatest elevation of German art, were at the end of the twelfth and
+beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the colonization of the
+Sclave frontier was carried on with most energy towards the close of
+it. This was the period when Neumark and Prussia were conquered, and
+Lausitz, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Rugen, and Silesia colonized. But
+there was a striking difference in the case of Silesia; for whilst in
+the other Sclave countries the people were crushed by the iron hand of
+the conqueror, and were compelled to adopt German habits of life,
+Silesia became the centre of a quiet, peaceful colonization, which
+spread itself far and wide over, the frontier towards the east.
+
+How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German
+people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon.
+The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the
+Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and
+eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in
+Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks,
+enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at
+the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers
+to follow them to Poland. But little is known concerning this
+emigration; we do not even know from what province the great stream of
+Silesian wanderers flowed. There are grounds for thinking that most of
+them came from Magdeburg, Thuringia, and perhaps Franconia. There is no
+mention of it in the ancient manuscripts or chronicles; the only
+evidence concerning it might perhaps be found in the Silesian and
+Thuringian dialects, but even these have not been sufficiently
+investigated. We have however more knowledge as to who invited the
+Germans into the country of the Oder. It was the Sclavonian dukes of
+the Piasten family, who were then rulers of the country.
+
+At the end of the twelfth century a race of ancient Polish princes
+resided on their paternal inheritance in Silesia; inferior to these
+were numerous Sclave nobles, and below them again a much oppressed and
+enslaved people. The country was thinly populated, and poor both in
+capital and labour. The heights of the Riesenberge and the plains of
+the Oder were clothed with wood; between them stretched out miles of
+desolate heath. Herds of wild boars laired in the swamps, bears picked
+the wild honey from the hollow trunks of the trees, and the elks fed on
+the branches of the pine; the beaver made its home beside the rivers,
+the fish eagle hovered about the ponds, and above him soared the noble
+falcon. The beaver and falcon were more valuable in the eyes of the
+princes than their serfs. The peasants looked from their miserable huts
+with horror on the lords of the water and air, for the preservation of
+which they had to pay exorbitant penalties. What the earth yielded
+freely they had to collect for their rigorous masters and the Church.
+They had to pay tribute from the water and the heath of fish and honey,
+and heavy imposts on their arable land, sheaves of corn, grain and
+money; and a certain amount of service was required of them. The
+greater part were serfs; few were free. And not only the peasants, but
+also the artisans and tradesmen of all kinds lived in every gradation
+of servitude, ground down by oppression without hope or pleasure in
+their work. The Sclave cities only differed from the villages in being
+a larger collection of bare huts, surrounded by a moat and wooden
+palisades, and usually situated in the vicinity of a nobleman's castle,
+under whose protection they lived. In peaceable times markets were held
+in the towns. Even till the end of the twelfth century the merchants
+often made their payments, as in Poland, with the tails of martins and
+skins of squirrels instead of money. But the Silesian mines were
+already being worked; they yielded silver and gold, copper and lead,
+and mining, which was considered the nobleman's right, was carried on
+actively. Mints were erected in all the great market towns, and, as in
+Poland, the coinage was changed three times a year; and the princes
+derived some of their income from tolls on the market-places, butchers'
+stalls, and public-houses.
+
+Such was the country that was then ruled by the royal Piasten families
+under the Polish sovereignty, which, however, was often disputed, and
+sometimes entirely thrown off. A great dissimilarity might however be
+discerned in the different branches of the family. The Piastens of
+Upper Silesia united themselves closely with Poland, and kept up the
+Sclave habits in their country, so that even at the present day a
+Sclave population is to be found there; but the rulers of Lower Silesia
+adhered to the Germans. It was their policy to marry the daughters of
+the German princes: they set the highest value upon everything German,
+and German manners were introduced into the court; their children were
+sent to travel in Germany, and often brought up there, so that in the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, the Piasten family was held in
+great consideration throughout that country; they sought for knighthood
+from their relations in the west, and out of courtesy to them dressed
+their followers in their colours. They knighted their own nobles with
+the German straight sword, instead of using the crooked Sclave sabre;
+they preferred getting drunk on malmsey and Rhine wines, instead of the
+old mead. The German dances were in great request among the ladies of
+the court.
+
+In this way a numerous German nobility was established in the country,
+for these courtiers or adventurers and their relations soon became
+landed proprietors, and the Sclavonian institution of the Castellan was
+replaced by the German feudal tenure. But an influx of priests and
+monks tended still more to the promotion of German habits; a stream of
+them poured incessantly from the west into the half-civilized country.
+Monasteries, cloisters, and other pious establishments sprang up
+rapidly, and became as it were the strongholds of German life; for the
+brotherhoods of the west sent their best and most distinguished
+members, and continued to furnish them with learning, books, and
+spiritual energy. The princes, nobles, and clergy soon became aware of
+the difference between German and Sclave labour; under the latter,
+large tracts of country yielded little produce, except wood from the
+forest and honey from the heath. The landed proprietors therefore, with
+due regard to their own interests, introduced everywhere German labour.
+Thus in Silesia the great truth first dawned upon men, on which rests
+the whole system of modern life, that the labour of free men, can alone
+give stability to a nation and make it powerful and prosperous. The
+landed proprietors gave up the greater part of the claims which,
+according to the Polish law, they had upon men who dwelt on their
+property, and which were so exorbitant that they derived but little
+benefit from them. The princes granted the inhabitants as a favour, the
+right of founding cities and villages in accordance with German law,
+that is to say, free communities, and this privilege was eagerly sought
+after, especially by the ecclesiastical bodies, such as Cistertians,
+Augustines, &c.
+
+A regular method was pursued in founding these communities; but the
+fate of the villages was very different from that of the cities in the
+latter part of the middle ages. In the cities, as the body politic
+continually gained fresh strength, their rights and independence
+increased; the burgesses acquired by purchase the mayoralty, with its
+rights and jurisdiction; whilst, on the other hand, the villages were
+unable to protect themselves from the exactions of the landed
+proprietors and the burdens laid upon them by their princes; they lost
+much of their freedom, and many rights they had possessed at their
+foundation in the thirteenth century were only restored to them in the
+beginning of this present one.
+
+It was thus that after the beginning of the thirteenth century a new
+German race sprang up with a surprising rapidity, bordering on the
+Oder, between the Reisenberge and the plains of Poland. The emigration
+continued for a considerable period, and the quiet struggle between the
+German and Polish races lasted long after the former had gained the
+predominance; indeed, in some districts it has not yet ceased. But for
+the most part the pliant Sclave race of Silesia peaceably adopted the
+new customs, as it was very advantageous to put themselves under German
+law. And thus the new race showed in its dialect, manners, and
+education a new phase of the German popular character which one may
+perceive has arisen from the union of the German and Sclave races.
+
+The people who thus sprang up were not destined to an easy life, and it
+required all the excitability they derived from the Sclaves, together
+with the higher capacity they inherited from the Germans, to preserve
+them from annihilation. Driven in like a wedge between Bohemia and
+Poland quite to the vicinity of Hungary, they contended with all these
+nations, dispensing blows and receiving them from their stronger
+neighbours. They were never able to attain to the independence of a
+united people. However strong particular communities and confederations
+became when it was a question of external enemies, the Silesians were
+almost always divided.
+
+In the fifteenth century the country was visited by that terrible
+scourge the Hussite war. It is in that fearful time, when the fanatical
+warriors of the chalice burnt the Silesian villages and cloisters, and
+threw everything ecclesiastical into the flames, when the land was
+devastated for nearly a century by the horrors of war, that the
+peculiar Silesian character may be traced in contradistinction to that
+of the races dwelling in the adjoining country.
+
+Whilst in the regions adjoining the Oder, and still farther off by the
+shores of the Baltic, the German race, proud of their recent conquest
+over the Sclaves, desired to improve themselves by union with Germany,
+a great Sclave population had arisen in the middle of the German
+states, the toughest and most stable of all that family: it was firmly
+incorporated in the Empire, and had long been under the influence of
+German culture. Prague in the beginning of the fifteenth century might
+have passed for a German city, for not only in its laws and commerce,
+but also in science and art it exhibited all the vigour and
+independence of German life. About 1289 the King of Bohemia rode as a
+German elector to the election of the Emperor, and waved the golden
+glass at the coronation; the Bohemian minstrels and chroniclers wrote
+in the Swabian language and style, and Bohemian artists painted
+pictures of saints and windows for the German churches. Under the
+Luxemburgers Bohemia became the centre of the empire. The Bohemian
+throne was adorned with the German Imperial eagle and crown, and the
+flower of Germany's youth flocked to the many-turreted Moldavian city,
+in order to win in the first German university a nobler patent of
+nobility than the sword could give. It seemed then for a considerable
+period as if this fine compact Sclave country, lying with its mountain
+ramparts in the midst of Germany like a gigantic fortress, was likely
+to become the kernel of a great united empire, spreading far beyond the
+Rhine on the west, and to the Vistula on the east, or even perhaps to
+the swamps of the Theis. But just at this time an energetic reaction of
+Sclave popular feeling was roused in Bohemia against the Germans, and a
+long struggle ensued which fearfully shook the political, religious,
+and social life of Germany, rent the unity of the Roman Catholic
+Church, weakened the empire and threw it into confusion, depopulated
+large districts by a war full of cruelty, and amidst the flames of
+burning cities and the waning of millions, gave the death-blow to the
+Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages. It was the peculiar destiny of
+Germany that this great struggle should first break out among the
+teachers and scholars in the halls of the universities, and that the
+funeral pile of a Bohemian professor should give a new direction to the
+policy of German princes and people.
+
+The auto-da-fe of Huss did not appear to the Germans a very striking or
+blamable occurrence; people in those days were hastily condemned to
+death, and there hardly passed a year that the torch was not laid to
+the stake in every large city. However great the grief and indignation
+of the national party of Bohemia might be at these proceedings, the
+wild fanaticism of the people was first roused by another, and greater
+crime of the reckless Emperor Sigismund, who, at the head of the
+orthodox German fanatics, began the strife by the great massacre in
+1420; this outrage gave the Bohemians the strength of despair, and was
+the beginning of the wars which raged between the Germans and the
+Sclaves to the end of that century. Even after dissensions had broken
+out amongst the Bohemians themselves, and after the death of Georg von
+Podiebrad, feuds continued, and predatory bands spread themselves over
+the neighbouring lands, the people and nobility of Bohemia as well as
+those of the suffering frontier lands became lawless, and a hatred of
+races, less passionate but more savage and more enduring, took the
+place of fanaticism.
+
+No land suffered more from the terrors of the Hussite time than
+Silesia, and it must be confessed that the Silesians showed to less
+advantage in this century than at any other period of their history; by
+the division of their country they were politically weak, and quite
+unfitted to withstand by their own strength the attacks of powerful
+enemies; when danger approached a feeling of the helplessness of their
+position came over them and disheartened them; but whenever they could
+breathe more freely, they became overbearing and full of high-flown
+plans which generally ended in nothing. As neighbours they were bitter
+enemies of the Bohemians, and from hatred to them, zealous in their
+orthodoxy; they were actively engaged in the first disgraceful
+devastation of Bohemia, and thus, by breach of faith, brought down on
+themselves the vengeance of the Bohemians. As in the Roman time the
+truth of a Carthaginian was a byword, so now in Silesia was that of a
+Bohemian; but the Silesians had no right to reproach the Bohemians with
+breach of faith. Their dangerous position did not make them more
+careful, and they allowed their possessions and cities to be destroyed
+from the want of timely succour; they were always irritating their
+enemies and causing fresh attacks by their insolent witticisms and
+small perfidies. Their vigour and elasticity, however, were most
+enduring; as often as the Bohemians burnt down their cities and
+villages, they rebuilt them, and patched up whatever would hold
+together; they never tired of irritating the heretical Girsik, as they
+called Georg von Podiebrad.[4] If, however, they were in need of his
+assistance, they tried to appease him by a present of a hundred oxen.
+After a time, however, their hatred became more manly; they took up
+arms and fought him valiantly; and when at last he sank into the grave,
+they had the satisfaction of feeling that they had embittered the life
+and thwarted the ambitious plans of this determined character by their
+perpetual opposition.
+
+It is the beginning of this unhappy period which is described in the
+following narrative. It is taken from the report of a merchant in
+Bolkenhain,[5] named Martin, the fragment of his notes which we
+possess, published by Heinrick Hoffman (in Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum
+I., 1839).
+
+"In the year of our Lord 1425, the Hussites appeared one Saturday
+evening before the town of Wuenschelburg. On Sunday, about the time of
+vespers, they made breaches in the walls, and by their overwhelming
+force gained an entrance. The people flew to the house of the mayor,[6]
+which was a high stone building. When all the men and women had arrived
+there, they set fire to the city from the mayor's house, and thought
+thereby to save themselves; but the Bohemians waited till the fire had
+burnt out, then rushed in a powerful body against the stone house,
+endeavouring to storm and undermine it. Then followed a parley: the
+mayor let himself down to the Hussites by means of a coarse tilt,[7]
+that he might negotiate with them whether the citizens should be
+allowed to go free. He was so long absent in the town that the people
+began greatly to fear, especially the pastor of the town, who was
+godfather to the mayor; he called out to them, asking whether the mayor
+was still below, requiring him to show and report himself, and come
+back to them; whereupon the mayor returned to the house and was again
+drawn up. When he had come up, his godfather the pastor asked how it
+had gone with him, and whether he had obtained from the enemy freedom
+for himself and his chaplain. Then spake the mayor: 'No, godfather;
+they give no mercy to priests!' Then the pastor and his chaplain were
+sore troubled, and said, 'How miserably you abandon and betray me, be
+God Almighty your judge. When aforetime I wished to fly, you bade me
+remain with you, saying you would abide by me for good or for evil,
+even unto death; and you said, Shall the shepherd fly from his sheep?
+And now, alack, evil is the day, the sheep fly from the shepherd.' Then
+spake the women and the citizens' wives to him, weeping, 'We will
+disguise you and your chaplains, and will bring you down with us
+safely.' Then spoke the pastor Herr Megerlein, 'That, please God, will
+I never do. I must not disavow my office and dignity, for I am a priest
+and not a woman; but look to it well, you men; see in what a pitiful
+way you deliver me over to death to save yourselves.' No one heeded
+these complaints; but the two chaplains allowed themselves to be
+disguised, and carried children on their shoulders--not so the pastor.
+
+"Whilst they thus held converse together, the mayor agreed with the
+citizens on what terms they would surrender. They then went down, one
+after the other, and the Bohemians and Hussites were there in front of
+the building, and made prisoners of them all; they allowed only the
+women and children to go free. But many of the women, maidens, and
+children had been in such fear that they had taken refuge in the
+cellars; so when the fire reached them they were suffocated and
+perished. Now when all in the house had surrendered, there remained
+only the pastor, with a few journeymen and artisans who had been unable
+to purchase their liberty, and who feared death and imprisonment; these
+the pastor exhorted as follows: 'Dear companions, look well after your
+necks, and be firm, for if they make you prisoners they will torment
+and martyrize you.' Then they replied they would do as he advised. But
+when they saw that the citizens had all surrendered, great fear came
+over them, and they went down and submitted themselves; but the pastor
+remained there with an old village priest to the last. Then the
+Hussites went up to them and brought them down, and led them into the
+midst of the army and the multitude. Then Master Ambrosius, a heretic
+of Graetz, being present, spoke to these gentlemen in Latin: 'Pastor,
+wilt thou gainsay and retract what thou hast preached? thus thou mayst
+preserve thy life; but if thou wilt not do this, thou must be burnt.'
+Then answered Herr Megerlein the pastor, and said, 'God forbid that I
+should deny the truth of our holy Christian faith on account of this
+short pain. I have taught and preached the truth at Prague, at Goerlitz,
+and at Graetz,[8] and for this truth will I gladly die.' Then one of
+them ran and fetched a truss of straw, which they bound round about his
+body so that he could not be seen; they then set fire to the straw, and
+made him, thus surrounded by flames, run and dance about in the midst
+of the multitude, till he was suffocated. Then they took him as a
+corpse and threw him into a brewer's vat of boiling water; they also
+threw in the old village priest, and let them boil therein; thus they
+were both martyred; but the two chaplains of whom I have before spoken,
+came out with the women concealed in women's clothes, and the child
+that one of these priests bore on his arm began to weep and to cry
+after its mother, and the priest tried to comfort and quiet it. So the
+Hussites discovered by the voice that it was a man, and one of them
+took the veil off him; then he let fall the child, took to flight, and
+ran with all his might; they followed after and killed him. The other
+came away with the women and children. This happened at Wuenschelburg.
+
+"1429. Soon after this the Hussites returned home, but remained there
+scarcely six weeks; they called out for another campaign, collected
+again in great strength, and passed into the land of Meissen. The
+Meisseners, however, were strong in the field, with others such as
+Brunswickers, Saxons, and people from the marshes, also some from the
+Imperial cities. The Hussites entered the country with fire and sword,
+killing and taking prisoners and living lawlessly. Now when the
+Hussites had advanced to where a large army of Meisseners and people
+from the Imperial cities were collected together, they encamped
+opposite to them, and threw up a barricade of waggons. When the armies
+were thus lying opposite each other they exchanged letters. The
+Meisseners wrote thus:--'Oh! you apostates from the faith, and cursed
+heretics, we shall, God willing, fight you to-morrow, and make you food
+for the dogs.' To which the Hussites thus replied:--'Oh! you hounds,
+we shall, God willing, make you food for the dogs, only wait for us
+to-morrow.' When it was still quite early on the following morning, the
+Hussites prepared themselves for the fight; they first heard mass, than
+ate and drank their fill, and when they moved forward to begin the
+fight, they received intelligence that the Meisseners had fled. When
+they heard this, they hastened onward and chased them two whole days.
+When they found they could not catch them, they deliberated, and
+dividing themselves spread all over the country, burning, killing, and
+making prisoners, and entering the towns from which the people had
+retired.
+
+"1443. The country armed and prepared itself, and raised a troop of
+four hundred horse. It was known that the Bohemians and Hussites
+intended making an inroad upon the country, therefore the States
+encamped themselves some miles from Schweidnitz by Boegendorf, in order
+to watch the enemy, as they knew not at what point they would enter.
+But Hein von Czirnan had a presentiment that they would come to
+Bolkenhain (where he had settled), as did indeed happen; therefore he
+sent a horseman in all haste to Bolkenhain, to inform the burgomaster,
+and beg him to set a strong and vigilant watch, as he had certain
+intelligence that the enemy would enter the country in that quarter.
+The burgomaster sent warning to the villagers, but Hein von Czirnan's
+messenger arriving only in the evening, the watch not being well
+established in the city, the enemy appeared on the walls at the dawn of
+morning; for they had approached the city early in the evening and
+concealed themselves behind the hills and among the rocks, and had in
+the night quite at their leisure prepared ladders. The ladders were
+short, each of four rundles, so that four of these ladders could hardly
+reach up the wall; but the first piece of ladder had in front a little
+wheel; when this was placed, not being fixed, it advanced up the wall.
+The other ladders were so contrived that one fitted into the other, and
+fastened together by an iron band. With such cunning and malice had
+they so early set to work against us. They had placed these same
+ladders in the night by the walls where the city and hill were highest,
+the ladders were so broad and wide that two of the enemy could mount at
+a time. As now at daybreak they had placed many of the ladders, they
+began to ascend four at once, but when they arrived at the top of the
+wall they found no passage on it towards the city, and were obliged for
+some distance to slide and creep along till they came to a watch-house,
+where they found some steps; so, alas! they came upon us in the city.
+And when in this way many of them had assembled, they began to cry and
+to holloa out most terribly, like devils. This took place the last
+Thursday before Bartlemy-tide. When we heard this terrible noise and
+tumult, we were woefully frightened, and every one that was able fled
+to the towers of the gate, church, or any other tower that was
+accessible; but we could not get into the stronghold, as the enemy had
+surrounded it, and whoever attempted to enter it was slain. As the
+people of the city thus concealed themselves, the Hussites went in
+great troops about the town; some rushed to the churches, others to the
+best houses; about eight came to my house and forced themselves up into
+the shop, and placed two of their number with naked swords at the door,
+and let no one enter the house till they had plundered and divided the
+whole of my shop and goods. My wife was at that time in the midst of
+her confinement, God be merciful to her, and she had in her room many
+valuable things, such as her bed-linen and her clothes; they treated
+her however with such respect, that no one entered her room. But two of
+them who were well known to her, and to whom she had shown great
+kindness, went to the door of her room, told her how they pitied her,
+and brought her secretly a coverlet and bed-cover, and said, 'Good
+woman, they will soon set fire to the city, therefore lose no time in
+being carried to the cellar with all that you desire to save, for we
+shall be off immediately.' When they had pillaged all the houses they
+would gladly have left the town, but could not, for the inhabitants who
+had taken refuge in the towers and gate-houses, threw down stones upon
+them, so that they could not pass through the gates, however much they
+wished it. At last they found an old gate which for many years had been
+walled up; this they broke open, and carried through it all their
+plunder, with which they loaded their waggons, and intended to return
+to Bohemia; they fired the city, and marched off to Landshut. When the
+troops of the provincial states assembled at Boegendorf beheld such a
+great smoke and fire, they said to one another, 'It is indeed at
+Bolkenhain, or in its neighbourhood;' then they started off at full
+speed for Landshut, and overtook their enemies. When therefore the
+Bohemians and Hussites began to retrace their steps, they perceived a
+great host of our town-people coming towards them over the Galgenberg;
+so they in great fear took to flight. Then our people fell upon them,
+and the men who had charge of the waggons loaded with our goods,
+abandoned them and fled for refuge into the woods; thus we deprived
+them of their plunder, and made many prisoners, both horse and foot,
+who were distributed among the cities."--So writes Martin of
+Bolkenhain.
+
+This endless war ruined German Silesia: the plains lay waste and
+desolate, and most of the German peasantry in this century of fire and
+sword sank into a state little removed from that of the Sclave serfs.
+The smaller cities were burnt down and impoverished, and only a few of
+the larger ones have since attained any degree of importance. The
+Silesian nobles became rude and predatory; they learnt from the
+Bohemians to steal cattle, to seize merchants and traders, and to levy
+contributions on the cities. The princes in their endless disputes with
+one another allied themselves sometimes with the Bohemians, and shared
+their booty with them; indeed, some of them took pleasure in a wild
+robber life, carrying it on even in their own country. These deeds of
+violence and lamentable struggles continued quite into the sixteenth
+century, till the Reformation gave a new bent to this lively and
+impressible race, and brought with it new sufferings.
+
+Through all these times the Silesians retained their love of orderly
+arrangements, even in the most desperate situations. When, for example,
+in the year 1488, Duke Hans of Sagen, one of the lawless characters who
+figured in the border wars, imprisoned seven honourable counsellors of
+his own city, Glogau, in a tower, and starved them to death because
+they had refused to act contrary to a solemn engagement; these seven
+martyrs, in a truly German manner, punctually and conscientiously kept
+a diary of their sufferings, and left in writing, prayers to the
+Almighty for mercy and a happy death; but it is a truly Silesian and
+almost modern trait, that the writer of this fearful journal had a
+certain gloomy pleasure in reflecting on his painful fate, and in the
+last lines he wrote before his death, he endeavoured to depict the
+destitution of his situation by mentioning that he had been obliged to
+use the black of the burnt wick as ink.[9]
+
+In the century of the reformation, the Silesians, as might be expected
+of a people of such quick susceptibilities, were for the most part
+zealous for the new teaching. They had been bound by strong ties to the
+old Church, like most of the other races; for it was partly at the call
+of the Church that their ancestors had come into that country;
+notwithstanding which, almost the whole people freed themselves from
+Rome, and manfully ventured life and property for their convictions.
+And most severely was their constancy tried; for the supreme power,
+which had been in Polish and Bohemian hands, had now fallen into those
+of the House of Austria.[10] Of all the countries under the power of
+the House of Hapsburg, Silesia is the only one which did not make a
+sacrifice of the new faith to the iron hand of reaction, but maintained
+a desperate resistance even into the eighteenth century. These were
+indeed two most unhappy centuries; the Thirty years' war laid the
+country waste, and not a third part of the former population escaped
+from the brutality of the soldiers, or from pestilence, or famine. But
+just at this time, when the whole of Germany had become one vast
+burial-ground, in which not even the loud wail of sorrow was heard, the
+genius of Silesia, as the representative of Germany, entered on the
+only domain in which advance was possible. Whilst they were still
+exchanging blows with the Imperial soldiers, they took pleasure in
+poetry and songs. Already the delicate and polished writings of the
+vapid Opitz gave pleasure amidst the coarse language of the camp; but
+truly refreshing to the heart was the short; humorous laugh of Logau,
+at a period when nothing was to be seen save sad or angry faces. The
+whole of the educated Silesians were eager to sympathize with Opitz,
+Logau, Gryphius, and Guenther, and to vie with them in making heroic
+verses. Their songs have few charms for us, but we must always feel
+thankful to them that they had the power of giving expression to the
+ideal feelings of Germany. It was a great thing to be able to show at
+such a time, when the coarse and the commonplace overlaid the German
+life, that there was still something beautiful on earth, and a more
+intellectual enjoyment than could be found in dissolute revelry, and
+also that behind the grey and colourless sky which overspread the land,
+there was another world, full of brilliant colours, and of nobler and
+more refined feelings.
+
+But whilst the songs of the Silesian "Swans and Nightingales" were held
+in honour by the other German races, and the fame of the Silesian poets
+rose high, the worldly position of the Silesians themselves was
+lamentable. The Thirty years' war was followed by a century of
+persecution and oppression, which so diminished their energies, that at
+last it appeared as if they would fall into the same condition as that
+in which they had found the Sclaves,--a death-like apathy, and a future
+without hope. The Silesians never became utterly downcast, for they
+took every opportunity of enjoying themselves, but it was only in
+feasting and revelry. When, however, the misery of the country was at
+the highest, the Prussian drum sounded on the frontier from Muencheberg,
+and the trumpets of the Ziethen hussars pealed along the same roads on
+which five hundred years before the first song of the German colonists
+had resounded with the good words, "We come in God's name."
+
+The Germanizing of the country was not thoroughly accomplished till it
+was conquered by Prussia; it is only since that time that the Silesians
+have become conscious of being an integral part of the German nation.
+What was begun by the Sclave Piastens of the thirteenth, was concluded
+by the German Hohenzollern of the eighteenth, century.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                   A GERMAN LADY OF THE ROYAL COURT.
+                             (about 1440.)
+
+
+Many incidents may be found in the descriptions of the struggles
+between the Silesians and Hussites, which are characteristic of the
+minds and manners of the people in their epic period. We are made
+sensible of the great dissimilarity between the past and present by the
+style of Martin's narration. In his scanty yet graphic description he
+gives us the facts, but makes no reflections on them. The writer
+undoubtedly feels how noble and manly was the death of the Pastor
+Megerlein; but he does not consider it necessary, and, indeed, seems to
+want the facility and confidence requisite, to give expression to his
+judgment.
+
+Decisions hastily taken were on the impulses of the moment as hastily
+given up. The pastor, even when abandoned by his flock, still advised
+resistance to the young men that remained, though there was little hope
+of saving himself; but he rejected the proposal of his Hussite friend,
+and met death like a man. Little value was set upon human life: hard
+hearted and cruel, the people murdered each other without compunction;
+yet the infuriated Bohemians kept respectfully out of the sick woman's
+room, and the plunderers with touching zeal requited past kindness. We
+find unbridled egotism together with heroic self-denial, rude levity
+with the deepest religious convictions: the minds of individuals moved
+in a narrow circle, but with firmness and decision.
+
+An insight into the mental struggles of the fifteenth century may be
+supplied by another narrative, in which the life and feelings of a
+clever and strong-minded woman are made known. The circle in which she
+moved was the court of the German emperor's daughter. Few of our court
+officials are aware, how much their office has increased in comfort,
+honour, and decorum since the days of their predecessors, at whose
+heads the Emperor Wenzel threw his boots, or on whom Margaret Maltash
+used to inflict blows with her clenched fist. It was necessary for the
+men and women of a court in former centuries to have strong nerves and
+good health, to bear heat and cold, to endure in winter the draughts of
+badly constructed dwellings, and in summer whole days of riding on
+rough hacks: men had to drink deep and yet keep sober longer than their
+worthy masters, if they would not be blackened with coals, and trodden
+under foot by them and other drunken princely guests; the women of the
+court had to jest with crowds of drunken men with rough manners, or to
+have their nights' rest disturbed by the clashing of naked swords, or
+by the cries of an excited multitude. It actually happened once at the
+Imperial court, that there was no money in the chest for the purchase
+of new shoes, and frequently the honest citizens declined to furnish
+the court with the necessary supplies of bread and meat. Most of the
+great courts led a wandering life, and on their journeys, bad inns,
+worse roads, and scanty fare were by no means their greatest
+discomforts: the roads were unsafe, and the reception at the end of the
+journey was often doubtful.
+
+The scenes we are about to portray are of a Hungarian court, but the
+royal family and the narrator are German. It is the court of Queen
+Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Sigismund, widow of Albrecht of
+Austria, king of Hungary, who died in the year 1439. The German
+Imperial race of Luxemburg was, after Charles IV., the least worthy of
+renown of all who have ruled over central Europe, and the Emperor
+Sigismund was one of the worst of his race. His daughter Elizabeth
+suffered under the curse of her house: it was her fate to throw Hungary
+into confusion and weakness; but as she must be judged from history, it
+appears she was somewhat better than her father or her reprobate
+mother: she had a feeling of her own dignity, and was, unlike her
+parents, a person of distinguished manners. This did not hinder her
+committing, for political purposes, unworthy actions, which every age
+has stigmatized as mean; but she attached people to her by that
+fascination of manner which often takes the place of better qualities.
+
+It was thus that one of her attendants, Helen Kottenner, was devoted to
+her with the most unshaken fidelity; she was bed-chamberwoman and
+governess to the young princess, a child of four years old, and at the
+same time she was confidante and counsellor of her mistress. Her ardent
+loyalty and motherly love for the little king Ladislaus made her the
+most zealous partisan of his family. She secretly stole for her
+sovereign the Hungarian crown, and she carried the little Ladislaus
+through the swamps of Hungary and the rebellious magnates to his
+coronation, and became his instructress when fate separated him from
+his mother. It was remarkable that this woman, in a stirring time, when
+writing was troublesome and difficult even to men, recorded the
+important events of her life and her share in politics in the shape of
+a memoir. Our surprise at so unusual a circumstance increases, when we
+examine closely the fragment of her memoirs which is preserved to us.
+Her narrative is strikingly detailed, clear, and graphic.
+
+There is no doubt that the fragment is genuine: it was published at
+Leipzig, 1846, with some explanatory remarks by Stephen Endlisher, from
+the manuscript still preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna (No.
+2920), under the title, 'From the Memoirs of Helen Kottenner, 1439,
+1440.' The principal event recorded is the theft of the Hungarian
+crown, by which the coronation of the child Ladislaus was effected.
+
+To enable the reader to understand this, we must mention that up to the
+present time a mysterious importance has been attached by the
+Hungarians to the crown of the Holy Stephen, "_die heilige_," without
+which no one could become rightful King of Hungary; and this mysterious
+importance has, as is well known, added many romantic adventures to the
+long and sorrowful history of this crown. When King Albrecht died, his
+widow Elizabeth had not given birth to the heir who was to secure the
+succession of the throne of Hungary. Amid the fierce and egotistical
+quarrels of the nobles who then decided the fate of the country, two
+large parties may be distinguished,--the national and the German. The
+national party was desirous of giving the throne to the King Wladislaus
+of Poland, whilst the Germans sought every means of preserving it to
+the royal family of Germany. Helen Kottenner writes as follows:--
+
+"Her highness the noble Queen came to reside at Plintenburg,[11] and
+many Hungarian lords with her. These went down to the vaults and
+brought up from thence a chest in which was kept the holy crown, which
+they took out with its case: there were many seals to this, which they
+broke open, and looked to see that it was all right. I was present.
+Then they placed the holy crown in a small chest. This was standing
+near a bed in which lay the noble Queen, about to be confined, and in
+the same room with her were two maidens, one called Barbara, the
+daughter of a Hungarian lord, the other called Ironacherin, and there
+was a wax taper for a nightlight, as is the custom amongst princesses.
+One of these maidens got up in the night, and upset the light without
+perceiving it; and a fire broke out in the room, and was burning so
+near the chest that it was singed, and a hole as large as a hand's
+breadth was burnt in a blue velvet cushion that layover the chest. Now
+observe this wonder: the King who was to wear the holy crown was yet
+within his mother's womb, and they were scarcely two fathoms apart from
+the chest, and the evil one would gladly have injured them by the fire;
+but God was their protector, and caused the Queen to awake at the right
+time. I was then with the young princess. Then came the maidens and
+bade me quickly rise up, as there was fire in the chamber wherein lay
+my honoured lady. I was sore afraid, rose up hastily, and went into the
+room, which was full of smoke: having extinguished the fire, I let in
+fresh air to clear away the smoke, so that the noble Queen might be
+able to remain there. In the morning the Hungarian lords waited on my
+honoured lady. Her highness told them what had happened in the night,
+and how nearly both she and the holy crown had been burnt. Then the
+lords were much amazed, and they advised that the holy crown should be
+replaced in its chest, and carried again down to the vault from whence
+it had been taken; which was done at once. The door was sealed again as
+before, but with fewer seals. And the Hungarian lords desired that the
+castle might be given over to her cousin, Lassla Wan von Gara,[12]
+which was also done. Herr Lassla Wan took possession of the castle, and
+placed it under the superintendence of a Burgrave.
+
+"After all this had happened, the noble widow, my honoured lady,
+departed for Ofen, in great anxiety of mind, because the Hungarian
+lords wished her to take another husband; and the King of Poland was
+the one whom her cousin Lassla Wan was desirous she should choose.
+This, however, she would not do, as her doctors had assured her she
+would bear a son: she hoped that this might prove true, but not having
+any certainty thereof, she was undecided how to act. Then the noble
+Queen had begun to consider and devise how she could get the holy crown
+from the Hungarian lords. These Hungarian lords would have been glad
+for the confinement of the noble Queen to have taken place at the
+Plintenburg; but that did not please her highness, and she would not
+return to the castle; for having weighed the matter well, she had
+reason to fear that were she there, she and her child might be forcibly
+detained; still less could she think of going there now, as she was
+endeavouring to obtain possession of the holy crown. The noble Queen
+had taken her youngest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, with her from the
+castle, as also myself and two young maidens, and left all the others
+there. Every one was astonished that her highness should leave the
+remainder of the court up at the castle; the reason was known only to
+God, her highness, and myself.
+
+"The noble Queen went with her youngest daughter, Princess Elizabeth,
+to Komorn. Here Count Ulric von Eily[13] came to visit her highness,--a
+faithful friend, with whom she consulted by what means she could bring
+away the holy crown from the Plintenburg. Then came my honoured lady to
+me, desiring that I should undertake it, as there was no one else she
+could trust, or who knew so well the locality. This sorely troubled me;
+for it was a dangerous venture for me and my little children, and I
+turned it over in my mind what I should do, for I had no one to take
+counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did it not, and evil arose
+therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the world. So I consented
+to risk my life on this difficult undertaking, but desired to have some
+one to help me. Then I was asked whom I should consider fit for this: I
+proposed a Croat whom I thought faithfully devoted to my lady. He was
+called into secret council, and we laid before him what we desired of
+him: the man was so terrified that he changed colour, and became as
+one, half dead: he would not consent, and went forthwith to the stable
+for his horse. I know not whether it came to pass through his own
+awkwardness, or if it was the will of God, but an account was received
+at court that he had had a bad fall from his horse, and as soon as he
+recovered he made the best of his way to Croatia; so the plan was
+delayed, and my honoured lady was very sorrowful that one who was so
+weak hearted should know of the affair, and I also was in great
+anxiety.
+
+"When the time came that the Almighty had ordained that this great work
+should be done, He sent us a Hungarian who was willing to undertake to
+obtain the holy crown; his name was the....[14]; he set about it in a
+wise and manly manner. We arranged what we should require, and took
+certain keys and two files. This man who was about to venture
+his life--as I was mine--in this affair, put on a black velvet
+dressing-gown and a pair of felt shoes, and in each shoe he placed a
+file, and he hid the keys under his dress. I took my honoured lady's
+little seal and the keys of the front door; at the side of the door
+there was a chain and hook; we had before we left put on a lock, so as
+to prevent any one else from putting another. When we were ready, my
+honoured lady sent forward a messenger to the Plintenburg, to let the
+Burgrave and the maidens know that the latter were to prepare
+themselves to join her highness at Komorn, as soon as the carriage
+arrived. When the carriage which was to be sent for the maidens, and
+also the sledge which was to convey me and my confederate were ready,
+two Hungarian noblemen were directed to accompany me. We proceeded, and
+information was given to the Burgrave, that I had arrived for the
+maidens. He and the other courtiers were surprised that I had left my
+young mistress, because she was so little, and they all knew well that
+I was rarely allowed to do so. The Burgrave was ill, and had intended
+to place his bed near the first door of the place where the holy crown
+was kept; but God ordained that his illness should increase, and he was
+unable to sleep there, and he could not place servants there, it being
+in the women's apartment; therefore he placed a cloth over the padlock,
+which we had placed on the chain, and sealed it up.
+
+"When we arrived at the Plintenburg, the maidens were right glad to
+find they were to rejoin my honoured lady: they immediately made
+preparations, and had a trunk made for their clothes; this occupied a
+long time, even up to the eighth hour. My confederate came also into
+the apartment of the women, and jested with the maidens. Now there was
+a little heap of fire-wood lying near the stove, under which he hid the
+files; but the servants who waited on the maidens observed this, and
+began to whisper among themselves. I heard them, and forthwith told
+him; this frightened him so much that he changed colour, but he took
+the files away and concealed them elsewhere, and said to me, 'Woman,
+take care that we have a light.' And I begged of the old woman to give
+me some tapers, because I had many prayers to say, for it was the first
+Saturday night after the carnival. I took the tapers and hid them near
+me. When the maidens and every one else slept, there remained in the
+small room besides myself, only the old woman whom I had brought with
+me, who did not know a word of German, nor anything about my business;
+she had also no knowledge of the house, and lay there sleeping soundly.
+At the right time my confederate came through the chapel and knocked at
+the door, which I opened and closed again after him. He had brought a
+servant with him to help him, who was called by the same Christian name
+as himself, and was bound to him by oath. I then intended to give him
+the tapers, but they had disappeared. I was in such terror that I knew
+not what to do, and the business had well-nigh miscarried only for want
+of the lights. Then I bethought me that I would go and quietly awake
+the woman who had given me the tapers; and I told her the tapers were
+lost, and I had yet some time to pray; so she gave me more. Then I was
+glad, and gave them to him with the keys and the little seal of my
+honoured lady, that he might fasten and seal everything up again. I
+gave him also the three keys which belonged to the first door. He took
+off the cloth with the seal of the castle, which had been placed on it
+by the Burgrave, opened the door and went in with his servant, and
+worked so hard at the other locks that the noise of the knocking and
+filing became alarming. But though the watchers and the Burgrave's
+people were more than usually vigilant that night in the care of the
+crown, yet Almighty God stopped their ears, so that they did not hear
+the noise. I however heard it all, and kept watch in great trouble and
+anxiety. And I devoutly prayed to God and the Holy Virgin that they
+would support and help me; yet I was in greater anxiety for my soul
+than for my life, and I prayed to God that He would be merciful to my
+soul, and let me die at once there, rather than that anything should
+happen against his will, or that should bring misfortune on my country
+and people. Whilst I was thus praying, I heard a loud noise and
+rustling, as if many armed men were at the door through which I had
+admitted my confederate, and it appeared to me as if they desired to
+break open the door. In great fear I rose from my knees, and was about
+to warn him to desist from his work, when it occurred to me to go first
+to the door, which I did; when I came to the door, the noise was at an
+end, and no one seemed to be there; then I bethought me that it was a
+spirit, and went again to my prayers; and I vowed to our dear lady a
+pilgrimage to Zell[15] barefooted, and until I could fulfil it, I would
+every Saturday night forego my feather bed, and also as long as I lived
+would make an especial prayer to the Holy Virgin, thanking her for her
+favour, and begging her to express my gratitude to our dear Lord Jesus
+Christ, for the great mercy which out of his compassion He had shown
+me. Whilst I was still at my prayers, I thought again that there was a
+great noise and rustling of armour at the other door, which was the
+special entrance into the women's room; and this frightened me so much
+that I trembled and perspired all over, and thought it was surely not a
+spirit, but that they had gone round to this door whilst I was still
+standing at that of the chapel. I knew not what to do, and listened to
+find out whether the maidens had heard anything. But I heard no one,
+then I went slowly down the small stairs through the chamber of the
+maidens, to the door which was the usual entrance into the women's
+apartments; when I came to the door there was no one. Then was I glad,
+and thanked God, and went again to my prayers, and bethought me it was
+the devil who wished to hinder our business.
+
+"When I had ended my prayer I got up, and determined to go to the vault
+and see what they were doing: the man met me, and told me to rejoice,
+as it was all accomplished. They had filed away the locks of the doors,
+but that on the case was so fast they could not file it, and were
+obliged to burn the wood. From this arose a great smoke, and I was
+again in much anxiety lest inquiry should be made about it; but God
+averted this danger. As we had now got the holy crown we closed the
+doors again, and fixed on other locks instead of those we had broken,
+and put on them again the seal of my honoured lady: we made fast the
+outer door, and replaced on it the cloth with the seal of the castle,
+as had been done by the Burgrave, and as we had found it. And I threw
+the file into the privy that was in the women's apartments; and if it
+were broken open, the file would be found in evidence of the truth of
+all this. The holy crown we carried out through the chapel, wherein
+rest in God the remains of St. Elizabeth; and I, Helen Kottenner, owe
+to this chapel a priestly garment for the mass, and an altar cloth,
+which shall be paid by my honoured lord, King Lassla. My confederate
+took a red velvet cushion which he opened, and taking a portion of the
+feathers out, placed the holy crown therein, and then sewed it up
+again.
+
+"In the meanwhile it was almost daylight, the maidens and every one had
+arisen, and we were to depart: now the maidens had in their service an
+old woman, who my honoured lady had commanded should have her wages
+paid, and be left behind, that she might return home to Ofen. When she
+had received her wages she came to me, and told me that she had seen a
+curious thing lying before the stove, and did not know what it might
+be. I was much alarmed at this, for I saw plainly that it was part of
+the case in which the holy crown had been kept; and I did my best to
+persuade her not to believe her own eyes; but I went secretly to the
+stove, and threw the fragments that I found into the fire, that they
+might be entirely burnt; and I took the woman with me on the journey.
+Every one was surprised at my doing this; but I said that I intended
+asking my honoured lady for a benefice at St. Martins at Vienna for
+her, which I afterwards did.
+
+"When the maidens and the retinue were ready to depart, my confederate
+took the cushion in which the holy crown was concealed, and commanded
+his servant to carry it from the house to the sledge on which he and I
+were to sit. Then the good fellow took the cushion on his shoulders,
+and threw over it an old cowhide with the tail on, which hung down
+behind, and every one who saw it began to laugh.
+
+"When we arrived in the market-place we would gladly have had something
+to eat, but could find nothing except herrings. When we had eaten a
+little, and assisted at the usual mass in the Church, the day was far
+advanced, and we had to go that day from the Plintenburg to Komorn,
+which was full twelve German miles off. On mounting the sledge I took
+great care not to sit on the corner of the cushion in which the holy
+crown was concealed, and thanked God Almighty for all his mercies; yet
+I often turned round to see if any one followed us; and there was no
+end to my anxiety, for my thoughts troubled me much.
+
+"On arriving at the inn where we intended to dine, the faithful servant
+to whom the care of the cushion was intrusted carried it into the
+chamber, and laid it on a table before me, so that it was under my eye
+the whole time that we were eating; and before starting, the cushion
+was replaced. We journeyed onwards, and about dark arrived at the
+Danube, which was still frozen over, but the ice in some places was
+very thin. When we were half way across the river the ice gave way
+under the carriage in which the maidens were, and it was upset; they
+raised a great cry, for it was so dark they could not see each other. I
+was in great fear that we, with the holy crown, should be lost in the
+Danube; but God was our help, so that no one got under the ice, but
+many things from the carriage fell into the water under the ice. Then I
+took the Duchess of Silesia and the principal maidens into the sledge
+with me, and we, with all the others, got safe over the river. When we
+arrived at the castle of Komorn, my confederate took the cushion with
+the holy crown, and carried it to a place of safety, and I went to my
+honoured lady the noble Queen, who received me graciously, and said,
+'That with God's help, I had been a good messenger.'
+
+"The noble Queen received me in bed, and told me how she had suffered
+during the day. Two widow ladies had come from Ofen to her highness,
+bringing with them two nurses, one was the midwife, the other the
+wet-nurse; and the latter had brought her child with her, which was a
+son, for the wise people think that the milk which comes with a son is
+better than that which comes with a daughter. These women were to have
+gone with her highness to Presburg, where she was to have been
+confined, for according to their reckoning her highness had yet another
+week to go; but either the reckoning was wrong, or, as I said to the
+noble Queen, it was God's will: her grace told me that the women from
+Ofen had given her a bath, after which her pains had come on. I
+discovered from this that the birth was now approaching. The women from
+Ofen were staying in the market-place, but we had a midwife with us,
+called Margaret, who had been sent to my honoured lady by the Countess
+Hans von Schaumberg, as being particularly good, which she was. Then I
+said, 'Honoured lady, it seems to me that you will not go to-morrow to
+Presburg;' so her highness got up and began to prepare herself for the
+event. Then I sent for the Hungarian housekeeper who was called Aessem
+Margit, who came immediately, and also the maiden called Ironacherin,
+and I hastened to call the midwife whom the Countess von Schaumberg had
+sent. She was in the room with my young lady,[16] and I said,
+'Margaret, rise quickly, for the hour of my honoured lady is come;' the
+woman being heavy with sleep answered, 'By the holy cross, if the child
+is born to-night we shall hardly go to Presburg to-morrow;' and she
+would not get up. The contest between us appeared to me so long that I
+hastened back to my honoured lady, lest anything should go wrong, as
+those who were with her did not understand such things; and she
+inquired, 'Where is Margaret?' and I gave her the foolish answer of the
+woman; and her highness said, 'Go again quickly, and bid her come, for
+this is no jesting matter.' I hurried back in great anger, and brought
+the woman with me; and in less than half an hour after she came to my
+honoured lady, Almighty God sent us a young King. The same hour that
+the holy crown came from the Plintenburg to Komorn, the King Lassla was
+born. The midwife was sharp-witted, and exclaimed, 'Honoured lady,
+grant me my wish, and I will tell you what I have in my arms.' The
+noble Queen answered, 'Yes, dear mother;' and the nurse said, 'I have a
+young King in my arms.' This made the noble Queen very happy: she
+raised her hands to God, and thanked Him for his mercy. When she had
+been arranged comfortably in her bed, and no one was with her save I
+alone, I knelt down and said to the Queen, 'Honoured lady, your
+Highness must thank God as long as you live for his great mercy, and
+for the miracle which He has wrought in bringing the crown and the King
+together in the same hour.' The noble Queen replied, 'It is indeed a
+great miracle of God Almighty, the like of which has never happened
+before.'
+
+"When the noble and faithful Count Ulric von Eily heard that a King and
+friend was born to him, who was both his lord and cousin, he was
+overjoyed, as were also the Croats, and all the lords and attendants on
+the court. The noble Count von Eily had bonfires made, and they had a
+procession on the water with torches, and amused themselves till after
+midnight. Early in the morning they sent for the Bishop of Gran to come
+and christen the young King: he came, accompanied by the pastor of
+Ofen, Master Franz. And my honoured lady desired that I should be
+godmother; but I answered, 'Honoured madam, I am bound to obey your
+Highness always, but I beg of you to take the Aessem Margit instead of
+me,' which her Highness did. When the noble King was to be baptized, we
+took off the black dress from the young princess, which she had worn
+for the great and dear prince, King Albrecht, and put on her a golden
+dress woven with red; and the maidens were all gaily dressed to the
+honour and praise of God, who had given an hereditary King to the
+people and country.
+
+"Not long after, there came certain intelligence that the King of
+Poland was approaching, and had designs upon Ofen, which proved true.
+It became therefore necessary to make secret and hasty preparations for
+the coronation; and my honoured lady sent to Ofen to get cloth of gold
+for the coronation dress of the little King Lassla; but this took so
+long a time that we feared it would be too late, for the coronation
+must take place on a high festival, and Pentecost, which was the first,
+was near at hand, so that it was necessary to make haste. Now there was
+a rich and beautiful vestment for the mass which had belonged to the
+Emperor Sigismund; it was red and gold, with silver spots worked on it;
+this was cut up and formed into the first dress of the young King that
+he was to wear with the holy crown. I sewed together the small pieces,
+the surplice and the humeral, the stole and the banner, the gloves and
+the shoes; and I was obliged to make these secretly in the chapel with
+bolted doors.
+
+"In the evening, when every one had gone to rest, my honoured lady sent
+for me to come to her immediately; this made me fear that something had
+gone wrong. The noble Queen's thoughts had been wandering to and fro,
+and she said to me, 'What would you advise? our affairs are not going
+on well; they desire to stop us on our way; where shall we conceal the
+holy crown? It will be a great misfortune if it falls into the hands of
+the enemy.' I stepped aside for a little while, wishing to reflect and
+to pray to the mother of all mercy to intercede with her Son, that we
+might manage our business so that no evil should accrue from it. Then I
+returned to the noble Queen and said, 'Honoured lady, with deference to
+your wisdom, I will advise what seems good to me: your Highness knows
+well that the King is of more importance than the holy crown; let us
+lay the holy crown in the cradle under the King, so that wherever God
+leads the King there will the crown be also.' This counsel pleased her
+Highness, who answered: 'We will do so, and thus let him take care of
+the crown himself.' In the morning I took the holy crown and packed it
+carefully in a cloth, and laid it in the mattress of the cradle, for
+his Highness did not yet lie on a feather-bed; and laid there also a
+long spoon, such as we use for mixing the child's pap. This I did to
+make any one who felt in the cradle, believe that what lay therein was
+the vessel in which the pap for the noble King was prepared.
+
+"On the Tuesday afternoon before Whitsunday the noble Queen set out
+with the young King, the noble Count von Eily, the Croatian counts, and
+the Dukes of Lindbach. A large boat had been prepared for the noble
+Queen, her son, and daughter; and many good people went on board with
+them, so that the boat being heavy laden was scarce a hand's breadth
+above the water: there was much fear and danger, especially as the wind
+was high; but God took us prosperously over the river. The young King
+was carried in the cradle by four men, most of them armed, and I myself
+rode by the side of it. He had not been carried far when he began to
+cry violently, and would not remain in the cradle; so I descended from
+my horse and carried him in my arms: and the roads were bad, for there
+had been much rain; but there was a pious knight there, Herr Hans of
+Pilach, who conducted me through the swampy ground.
+
+"We went on in great anxiety, for all the peasants had fled from their
+villages into the wood, and most of them were vassals of the lords who
+were our enemies; therefore, when we came to the mountains, I
+dismounted from my horse and took the noble King out of his cradle, and
+placed him in the carriage, wherein sat the noble Queen and her young
+daughter Elizabeth; and we women and maidens formed a circle round the
+noble family, so that if any one fired at the carriage we should
+receive the shots. And there were many foot-soldiers who went on both
+sides of the carriage, and searched in the underwood, lest there should
+be any enemies there who might injure us. Thus, with God's help, we
+crossed the mountain without hurt. Then I took the noble King again out
+of the carriage, and placed him in his cradle, riding by the side of
+it: we had not gone far when he began again to cry; he would not remain
+in the cradle or carriage, and the nurse could not quiet him. Then I
+took him up in my arms and carried him a good bit of the way; the nurse
+also carried him till we were both tired, when I laid him again in his
+cradle; thus we continued to change during the whole of our journey.
+Sometimes it rained so that the noble King was quite wet. I had brought
+a fur pelisse with me for my own wear, but when the rain was very heavy
+I covered the cradle with it, till it was wet through, I then had it
+wrung out, and again covered the cradle with it as long as it was
+wanted. The wind also was so high that it blew the dust into the
+cradle, so that the King could hardly open his eyes; and at times it
+was so hot that he perspired all over, and from that a rash broke out
+upon him afterwards. It was almost night when we arrived at the inn;
+and when every one had eaten, the gentlemen placed themselves round the
+house in which the royal family were, and made a fire, keeping watch
+all night, as is the custom in the kingdom of Hungary. The next day we
+journeyed to Weissenburg.
+
+"When we arrived near Weissenburg, Miklosch Weida of the free city rode
+to meet us, accompanied by full five hundred horse.
+
+"When we went through the marshy ground the young King began again to
+cry, and would not remain in the cradle or carriage; and I was again
+obliged to carry his Highness in my arms, till we arrived in the city
+of Weissenburg. Then the gentlemen sprang from their horses, and formed
+themselves into a wide circle of armed men, holding naked swords in
+their hands, and I, Helen Kottenner, had to carry the young King in the
+midst of this circle; and Count Bartholomae of Croatia went on one side
+of me, and another on the other side, to do honour to the noble King;
+thus we went through the city till we arrived at the inn. This was on
+Whitsun eve.
+
+"On our arrival my honoured lady sent for the elders of the city; she
+showed them the holy crown, and gave directions to prepare everything
+that was meet for the coronation, according to the old usages. And
+there were certain burghers there, who remembered the coronation of the
+Emperor Sigismund, having been present at it. On Whitsun morning I got
+up early, bathed the young King, and dressed him as well as I could;
+then they carried him to the church, where all the Kings were crowned,
+and there were many good people there, both ecclesiastics and laymen.
+When we arrived at the church they carried the young King to the choir,
+but the door of the choir was closed; the citizens were within, and my
+honoured lady was outside the door with her son, the noble King. My
+honoured lady spoke Hungarian with them, and the burghers answered her
+Highness in the same language: her Highness took the oath instead of
+her son, for his Highness was only twelve weeks old that day. When all
+this was accomplished according to the old customs, they opened the
+door and let in their rightful lord and lady, and all the others who
+were summoned, both ecclesiastics and laymen. And the young Princess
+Elizabeth stood up by the organ, that her Highness might not be injured
+in the throng, as she was only just four years old. When the service
+was about to begin, I had to raise up the young King that his Highness
+might be confirmed. Now Miklosch Weida had been appointed to knight the
+young King, because he was a genuine Hungarian knight. The noble Count
+von Eily had a sword which was thickly ornamented with silver and gold,
+and on it was a motto that ran thus: 'Indestructible.' This sword he
+gave to the young King that his Highness might be knighted with it.
+Then I, Helen Kottenner, raised the young King in my arms, and the
+knight of the free city took the sword; and he gave the King such a
+blow that I felt it on my arm. This the noble Queen, who stood near me,
+remarked, and said to the knight of the free city: 'Istemere nem
+misertem!' that is to say, 'For God's sake do not hurt him!' to which
+he replied: 'Nem;' that is to say, 'No,' and laughed. Then the right
+reverend prelate, the Archbishop of Gran, took the holy oil, and
+anointed the noble child, King; and the dress of cloth of gold, such as
+is worn by kings, was put on the noble child; and the archbishop took
+the holy crown and placed it on his head; and thus he, King Albrecht's
+son, grandson of the Emperor Sigismund, who throughout all holy
+Christendom is recognized as King Lassla, was crowned at Weissenburg by
+the Archbishop of Gran, with the holy crown, on Whitsunday. For there
+are three laws in the kingdom of Hungary which must not be departed
+from, as without them no king is deemed legally crowned. One of these
+is, that a king of Hungary must be crowned with the holy crown; another
+that it must be done by the Archbishop of Gran; and the third, that it
+shall take place at Weissenburg. When the archbishop placed the crown
+on the head of the noble King Lassla, he held his head quite upright
+with the strength of a child of a year old, which is seldom to be seen
+in children of twelve weeks. After the noble King, seated in my arms,
+had been crowned at the altar of St. Stephen, I carried him up a small
+staircase to a high gallery, according to custom, and the prescribed
+ritual for the festival was read; but there being no golden cloth for
+the King to sit on, after the old usage, I took for the purpose a red
+and gold cover lined with ermine from his cradle; and whilst the noble
+King was held upon the golden cloth, Count Ulric von Eily held the
+crown over his head during the chanting of the office.
+
+"The noble King had little pleasure in his coronation, for he wept
+aloud, so that all in church heard him; and the common people were
+astonished, and said, 'It was not the voice of a child of twelve weeks;
+it might be taken for that of a child of a year old, which, however, he
+was not. Then knighthood was conferred by Miklosch Weida on behalf of
+the noble King Lassla. When the office was completed I carried the
+noble King down again, and laid him in the cradle, for he was very
+tired from sitting so long upright. Then he was borne to St. Peter's
+church, where I was again obliged to take him out of his cradle and
+place him on a chair, as it is the custom for every king when crowned
+to be seated there. Again I carried his Highness down and laid him in
+his cradle; and he was taken from St. Peter's church, followed by his
+noble family on foot, back to the inn. The only one who rode was Count
+von Eily, for he had to hold the holy crown over the head of the noble
+King, that every one might see it was the holy crown which had been
+placed on the head of the holy St. Stephen and other Hungarian Kings.
+Count Bartholomae carried the orb, and the Duke von Lindbach the
+sceptre; a legate's staff was borne before the noble King, because he
+did not hold any part of Hungary on feudal tenure from the holy Roman
+Empire; and the sword with which his Highness had been knighted was
+also carried before him, and pence were scattered among the people. The
+noble Queen was so humble and showed such respect to her son, that I,
+poor woman, had to walk before her, next to the noble King, because I
+had held his Highness in my arms at the anointing and coronation. When
+the noble King had arrived at the inn, he was put to rest, as his
+Highness was very tired. The lords and all others went away, and the
+noble Queen remained alone with her son. Then I knelt down before her,
+and reminded her of the service which I had rendered to her Highness
+and the noble King; and also to her other children and members of the
+royal family. Thereupon the noble Queen gave me her hand and said,
+'Rise up, and if please God our affairs prosper, I will exalt you and
+your whole race. You have well deserved it, for you have done for me
+and my children what I myself could not have done.' Then I inclined
+myself humbly, and thanked her Highness for her kind encouragement."
+
+Thus far Helen Kottenner. History tells us in what consternation the
+party of King Wladislaus of Poland was placed by the robbery of the
+crown, and also how the crown itself was mortgaged by the Queen to the
+Emperor Frederick III., but of the after life of Helen Kottenner we
+know nothing.
+
+What interests us most in this narrative is the night scene in which
+the holy crown of Hungary is purloined, and the mental struggles of a
+strong female character. But these inward struggles and scruples of
+conscience assume to the daughter of the fifteenth century a palpable
+form: they become to her an outward reality that mysteriously assails
+her. Her soul is not tormented with thoughts alone that accuse and
+excuse each other, but with delusive appearances that strike her with
+terror.
+
+This activity of the senses, which clothes with an appearance of
+outward life all that rises in the soul, of the fearful and
+incomprehensible, is generally and peculiarly characteristic of the
+early life of every people. The souls of individuals are not
+sufficiently free to enable them to understand the inward struggles of
+their own minds: they begin by contending against what torments them,
+as if it were an outward form or enemy. Such were the noble struggles
+of Luther; and when the incomparable English poet of the sixteenth
+century caused his tragic hero to struggle with the apparitions of
+murdered men, and with the dagger which was the implement of his crime,
+this conception, which we consider as a highly poetical and spiritual
+creation, had a far deeper truth for him and his spectators.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+                        THE TRAVELLING STUDENT.
+                      (1509, and following years.)
+
+
+The fifteenth century passed away. To us Germans it appears an
+introduction to the great events of the following one,--a period of
+earnest but imperfect striving towards improvement. The excitement of
+the masses in the great half-Sclave population of the Roman empire had
+brought death and destruction over the German provinces, and the
+fanaticism of the Hussites had appeared to exhaust itself in the
+burning ruins of hundreds of cities and villages; but the same feeling
+had stirred the hearts of two generations, and in the next century the
+flame again blazed forth, more powerful and unquenchable, a pillar of
+fire to all Europe. The house of Luxemburg had passed away; its last
+heirs had mortgaged the Hungarian crown to the Austrian Hapsburgers,
+and bequeathed to them their claims to the wide and insecure
+acquisitions of their race. In the next century Charles V. made them
+the greatest dynasty of the world. It was a century of strife and
+reckless egotism, and on all sides arose knightly associations and
+confederacies; but it was also a time when the German mind, having
+become more practical in its tendencies, arrived at the greatest of all
+new discoveries,--the art of printing; when, in spite of fighting on
+the highways and bloody quarrels within the cities, commerce and trade
+began to flourish; when citizens and peasants acquired the habits of
+regular soldiers; when the German merchant established his supremacy on
+the northern seas, while the Italian navigator pressed on through the
+mists of boundless oceans, to unknown regions of the earth; finally, it
+was the time in which the Alpine mules bore, together with the spices
+of the East and the papal bulls, the manuscripts of a foreign nation,
+by means of which a new enlightenment was spread over Germany,--the
+early dawn of modern life.
+
+With the sixteenth century began the greatest spiritual movement that
+ever roused a nation. This century has for ever impressed its seal on
+the spirit and temper of the German people. A wonderful time, in which
+a great nation anxiously yearning after its God, sought peace for the
+burdened soul, and a moral and mental aim for a life hitherto so poor
+and joyless.
+
+This effort of the popular mind to found a new collective life by a
+deep apprehension of the eternal, produced a political development in
+Germany which is strikingly distinct from that of other nations. The
+whole powers of the nation were so engrossed in this passionate
+struggle, that it sank into a state of extreme exhaustion: the
+political concentration of Germany was delayed for centuries; most
+fearful civil wars were followed by a deathlike lassitude; German was
+divided from German, and a deep chasm was formed between the new and
+the middle ages. The result was, that a large portion of the German
+people, who might carry back their history in uninterrupted continuity
+up to the struggles of Arius and Arminus, now regard the time of the
+Hohenstaufen, and even the imperial government of the first Maximilian,
+as a dark tradition; for their state polity, their rights, and their
+municipal laws are hardly as old as those of the free states of North
+America. The oldest of the proud nations that arose from the ruins of
+the Roman empire, is now in many respects the youngest member of the
+European family. But whatever may have been the influence of the
+sixteenth century on the political formation of the fatherland, every
+German should look back to it with respect, for we owe to it all which
+now is our hope and pride; our power of self-sacrifice, our morality
+and freedom of mind, an irresistible impulse for truth, our art, and
+our unrivalled system of science, and lastly, the great obligation
+which our ancestors have imposed upon us of accomplishing what they
+failed in. It is especially now, in the midst of a political struggle
+for German national life, that it would be useful to us to consider how
+this struggle began three centuries and a half ago.
+
+Whoever attempts to examine the German mind at the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, will observe a secret restlessness, something like
+that of migratory birds when spring approaches; this indefinite impulse
+reproduced frequently the old German love of wandering. Many causes
+combined to make the poor restless and desirous of novelty. The number
+of vagrants, young and old, such as pedlers, pilgrims, beggars, and
+travelling students, was very great; many of the adventurers went to
+France, but the greater part to Italy.
+
+Wonderful reports came from distant lands. Beyond the Mediterranean,
+in the countries contiguous to Jerusalem (which was annually visited by
+the German pilgrims), a new race and a new and obnoxious religion had
+spread itself. Every pilgrim who came from the south related in the
+hostelries tales of the warlike power of the Turks, of their polygamy,
+of the Christian children whom they stole and brought up as slaves,
+and of danger to the Christian islands and seaports. On the other hand
+the fancy was led from the terrors of endless seas to the new gold
+lands,--countries like paradise, coloured tribes who knew nothing of
+God, and endless booty and dominion for believing Christians. To this
+was added the news from Italy itself,--how discontented the inhabitants
+were with the pope, how wanton the simony, and how wicked the princes
+of the Church.
+
+And those who brought these tidings into the city and country were no
+longer timid traders or poor pilgrims, but sunburnt hardy troopers,
+bold in aspect, and well accoutred; children of neighbours, and
+trustworthy men, who had accompanied the Emperor as mercenaries to
+Italy, where they had fought with Italians, Spaniards, and Swiss, and
+now returned home with all kinds of booty, gold in their purses, and
+the golden chains of knighthood round their necks. The youths of the
+village gazed with respect on the warrior who thrust his halberd into
+the ground before the inn, and took possession of the rooms for himself
+and his guests, as if he were a nobleman or a prince; for he, the
+peasant's son, had trodden under foot Italian knights, and dipped deep
+into the money coffers of Italian princes; had obtained full
+dispensation from the Pope for his deeds, and, it was even whispered, a
+secret blessing which made him invulnerable. The lower orders began for
+the first time to have an idea of their own strength and capacities;
+they felt that they also were men; the hunting-spear hung in their
+huts, and they carried the long knife in their belt. But what was their
+position at home? The use of their hands and their teams was required
+by the landed nobleman for his fields; to him belonged the forest and
+the game within it, and the fish in their waters; and when the peasant
+died, his heir was obliged to give up the best of his herd, or its
+worth in money. In every feud in which the nobleman was engaged they
+were the victims: the enemy's soldiers fell upon their cattle, and they
+themselves were shot down with arrows, and imprisoned in dark dungeons
+till they were able to pay ransom. The Church also sought after their
+sheaves and concealed money. Dishonest, cunning, and voluptuous were
+the deans, who rode through their villages, falcon on hand, with
+troopers and damsels; the priests, whom the peasants could neither
+choose nor dismiss, seduced their wives, or lived scandalously at home.
+The mendicant monks forced their way into their kitchens, and demanded
+the smoked meats from their chimneys, and the eggs from their baskets.
+All the communities throughout Southern Germany were in a state of
+silent fermentation, and already, at the end of the fifteenth century,
+local risings had begun, the forerunners of the Peasant war.
+
+But more wonderful still was the influence of the new art, through
+which the poorest might acquire knowledge and learning. The method of
+multiplying written words by thousands was discovered on the banks of
+the Rhine in the middle of the fifteenth century. The printing of
+patterns by means of wooden blocks had been practised for many
+centuries, and frequently single pages of writing had in this way been
+struck off; at last it occurred to a citizen that whole books might be
+printed with cast metal type. Its first effect was to give intelligence
+to the industry of the artisan, and a way was thus opened to the people
+of turning their mental acquirements to profit.
+
+The learning of the middle ages still occupied the professors' chairs
+at the German universities, but it was without soul, and consisted in
+dry forms and scholastic subtleties. There was little acquaintance with
+the ancient languages, Hebrew and Greek were almost unknown; the solid
+learning of the olden times was taught in bad monkish Latin; the Bible
+and Fathers of the Church, the Roman historians, institutes and
+pandects, the Greek text of Aristotle, and the writers upon natural
+philosophy and medicine, were found only in dusty manuscripts; nothing
+but the commentators and systematizers of the middle ages were ever
+expounded or learnt by heart. Such was the state of things in Germany.
+But in Italy, for more than a century, mental cultivation had begun,
+from the study of Roman and Greek poets, historians, and philosophers.
+The men of high intellect on the other side of the Alps rejoiced in the
+beauty of the Latin language and poetry, admired the acute logic of
+Cicero, and regarded with astonishment the powerful life of the Roman
+people. Their whole literature entwined itself, like the tendrils of a
+creeper, round the antique stem. It was soon after the invention of
+printing, and during the war carried on by the Germans in the
+Peninsula, that this new Humanitarian learning was gradually introduced
+into Germany. The Latin language, which appeared to the Germans like a
+new discovery, was industriously studied in the classical schools, and
+disseminated through the means of manuals. The close attention and long
+labour necessary in Germany to acquire the foreign grammar, acted as
+discipline to the mind. Acuteness and memory were strongly exercised;
+the logical construction of the language was more attended to than the
+phonetic; the grandeur and wisdom of the subject, more than the beauty
+and elegance of the style: the German mind required more exercise,
+therefore the result was more lasting, because the mastery had to be
+gained over two languages of different roots. A number of earnest
+teachers first spread the new learning; among these were Jacob
+Wimpfeling and Alexander Hegius, Crato of Udenheim, Sapidus, and
+Michael Hilspach. To these may be added the poets Henry Bebel and
+Conrade Celtes, Ulrich Zasius the lawyer, and others; in close union
+with them were to be found all the men of powerful talent in Germany;
+Sebastian Brand, author of Narrenschiffs, and also the great preacher
+John Geiler of Kaisersberg, although he had been brought up in the
+scholastic teaching.
+
+They were sometimes led by their knowledge of ancient philosophy into
+secret speculations upon the being of God, and all were opposed to the
+corruptions of the Romish Church; but their opposition differed from
+that of Italy in this respect, that the German mind gave it more
+elevation. It is true that many of the Humanitarian teachers considered
+the German language as barbarous; they Latinized their names, and in
+their confidential letters took the liberty of calling their countrymen
+unpolished; they hated the despotic arrogance with which the Romish
+priests looked down upon them and their nation; yet they did not cease
+to be good Christians. Besides their unceasing attacks on the vices of
+the Italian priesthood, they ventured, though with hesitation and
+caution, upon an historical critique on the foundation of the claims of
+the Papacy. They were united in bonds of friendship, and formed one
+large community. Bitterly persecuted by the representatives of the old
+scholastic school, they nevertheless gained allies everywhere,--in the
+burgher houses of the Imperial cities, in the courts of the Princes, in
+the entourage of the Emperor, and even in the cathedral chapters and on
+the Episcopal thrones.
+
+The mental culture of these men, however, could not keep a lasting hold
+on German life; its groundwork was too foreign to the real needs of the
+mental life of the people; its ideal, which it had gathered from
+antiquity, was too vague and arbitrary; its fantastical occupation with
+a bygone world, of whose real meaning they knew so little, was not
+favourable to the development of their character. Some indeed became
+forerunners in the struggle of faith, but others, offended by the
+roughness and narrowness of the new teaching, fell back to the old
+Church which they had before so severely judged. One of this school,
+the enthusiastic and high-minded Ulrich von Hutten, who was
+passionately German, and attached to the teaching of Luther, suffered
+for his devotion to the popular cause.
+
+In the beginning of the century, however, the Humanitarians carried on
+almost alone the struggle against the oppression under which the nation
+groaned. They exercised a powerful influence on the minds of the
+multitude; even what they wrote in Latin was not lost upon them, and
+the rhymesters of the cities were never weary of propagating the
+witticisms and bitter attacks of the Humanitarians in the form of
+proverbs, jocose stories, and plays.
+
+The desire for learning became powerful amongst the people. Children
+and half-grown boys rushed from the most distant valleys into the
+unknown world to seek for knowledge; wherever there was a Latin school
+established, there the children of the people congregated, often
+undergoing the greatest sufferings and hardships, demoralized by the
+uncertainty of their daily life; for though the founders and managers
+of the schools, or the burghers of the cities, gave these strangers
+sometimes a roof over their heads, and beds to lie on, they were
+obliged for the most part to beg for their daily subsistence.
+Little control was exercised over them; only one thing was strictly
+enjoined,--that there should be some method in the lawlessness of their
+life; it was only under appointed forms, and in certain districts of
+the city, that they were allowed to beg. When the travelling scholar
+came to a place where there was a Latin school, he was bound to join
+the association of scholars, that he might not make claims on the
+benevolence of the inhabitants, to the prejudice of the schoolmaster or
+of those already there. An organization was formed among these
+scholars, as was always the case where Germans assembled together in
+the middle ages, and a code was established, containing many customs
+and demoralizing laws, with which every one was obliged to comply;
+besides this there was the rough poetry of an adventurous life, which
+few could go through without injury to their characters in after life.
+The younger scholars, called Schuetzen, were, like the apprentices of
+artisans, bound to perform the most humiliating offices for their older
+comrades, the Bacchanten: they had to beg and even to steal for their
+tyrants, who in return gave them the protection of their strength. It
+was considered honourable and advantageous for a Bacchant to have many
+Schuetzen, who obtained gifts from the benevolent, on which he lived;
+but when the rough Bacchant rose to the university, he was paid off for
+all the tyrannical injustice he had practised towards the younger
+scholars: he had to lay aside his school dress and rude manners, was
+received into the distinguished society of students with humiliating
+ceremonies, and was obliged in his turn to render service and to bear
+rude jests like a slave. The scholars were perpetually changing their
+schools, for with many the loitering on the high roads was the main
+object; their youth was passed in wild roving from school to school, in
+begging, theft, and dissoluteness. Whilst we rejoice in finding a few
+individuals who, by strength of mind and ability, rose through all this
+to intellectual preeminence, we must bear in mind how many a pet child
+died miserably under some hedge, or in the lazar-house of a foreign
+city, whose youthful minds had looked forward with hope to reaching the
+same goal.
+
+The instruction in the Latin schools was very deficient, for a book was
+a rare treasure: the boys had often to copy the text for themselves,
+and the old grammar of Donat still served as the groundwork by which
+they learned to read Latin. There was still much useless scholastic
+pedantry, and what was then admired as elegant Latin, has somewhat of a
+monkish flavour. But the great teacher Wimpfeling took every
+opportunity of selecting examples which might excite the boys to
+honesty, integrity, and the fear of God; he endeavoured to impart not
+merely the knowledge of forms, or the subtle distinctions of words, but
+the spirit that flows from the ancients. The mind was to be ennobled;
+intellect and faith were to be advanced; learning was to act as a
+preservative against war, to promote peace, the greatness of states,
+and the reformation of the Catholic Church, for its object was
+knowledge of the truth.
+
+Some idea of the life of a travelling student has been preserved to us
+in the description of Thomas Platter, the poor shepherd boy from
+Visperthale, in the Valais, later a renowned printer and schoolmaster
+at Basle; his autobiography has been published by Dr. Fechter, Basle,
+1840. In those days no travellers in search of the picturesque had
+begun to roam in the wild mountain valley from which the Visp rushes
+towards the Rhone, nor to visit Zermatt, the Matterhorn, and the
+glaciers of Monte Rosa. The shepherd boy grew up amidst the rocks, with
+no companions but his goats; his herd straying into a corn-field, or an
+eagle hovering threateningly above him, his climbing a steep rock, or
+being punished by his severe master, were the only events of his
+childhood; how he was cast out into the wide world from his solitude he
+shall himself relate.
+
+"When I was with the farmer, one of my aunts, named Frances, came to
+see me; she wished me, she said, to go to my cousin, Herr Anthony
+Platter, to learn the Scriptures; thus they speak when they want one to
+go to school. The farmer was not well pleased at this; he told her I
+should learn nothing: he placed the forefinger of his right hand in the
+middle of the left, and went on to say, 'The lad will learn about as
+much, as I can push my finger through there.' This I saw and heard.
+Then said my aunt: 'Who knows? God has not denied him gifts; he may yet
+become a pious priest.' So she took me to that gentleman. I was, if I
+remember right, about nine or ten years old. First it fared ill with
+me, for he was a choleric man, and I but an unapt peasant lad. He beat
+me cruelly, and ofttimes dragged me by the ears out of the house, which
+made me scream like a goat into which the knife had been stuck; so that
+the neighbours oft talked of him as if he wished to murder me.
+
+"I was not long with him, for just at that time my cousin came, who had
+been to the schools at Ulm and Munich, in Bavaria; the name of this
+student was Paulus of Summermatten. My relations had told him of me,
+and he promised that he would take me with him to the schools in
+Germany. When I heard this I fell on my knees, and prayed God Almighty
+that He would preserve me from the 'Pfaffs,'[17] who taught me almost
+nothing and beat me lamentably, for I had learned only to sing a little
+of the Salve, and to beg for eggs with the other scholars, who were
+with the Pfaff in the village.
+
+"When Paulus was to begin his wanderings again, I was to go to him at
+Stalden. Simon, my mother's brother, dwelt at Summermatten, on the road
+to Stalden: he gave me a gold florin, which I carried in my little hand
+to Stalden. I looked often on the way to see that I still had it, and
+gave it to Paulus. Then we departed into the country, and I had to beg
+for myself, and to give of what I got to my Bacchant Paulus: on account
+of my simplicity and countrified language, much was given to me. At
+night going over the Grimsel Mountain we came to an inn; I had never
+seen a _kachelofen_,[18] and as the moon shone on the tiles, I imagined
+it was a great calf: I saw only two tiles shining, which were, I
+imagined, the eyes. In the morning I saw geese. I had never seen any
+before, and when they hissed at me I thought they were devils, and
+would eat me; so I cried out and ran away. At Lucerne I saw the first
+tiled roofs.
+
+"Afterwards we went to Meissen: it was a long journey for me, as I was
+not accustomed to travel so far and to obtain food on the road. There
+were eight or nine of us travelling together; three small Schuetzen, the
+others great Bacchanten, as they are called; amongst all these I was
+the smallest and youngest. When I could not keep up well, my cousin
+Paulus came behind me with a rod, or little stick, and switched me on
+my bare legs, for I had no stockings, and bad shoes. I do not remember
+all that happened to us on the road. Once when we were talking together
+on the journey, the Bacchanten said it was the custom in Meissen and
+Silesia for the scholars to steal geese and ducks, and other such food;
+and nothing was done to them on that account, if they could escape from
+those to whom the things belonged. One day, when not far from a
+village, we saw a large flock of geese, and the herdsman was not with
+them; then I inquired of my fellow-Schuetzen when we should be in
+Meissen; as then I thought I might venture to kill the geese; they
+answered, 'Now we are there.' So I took a stone, threw it at one of the
+geese, and hit it on the leg; the others flew away, but the lamed one
+could not rise. I took another stone, and hit it on the head, so that
+it fell down. I ran up and caught the goose by the neck, carried it
+under my coat, and went along the road through the village. Then came
+the gooseherd running after me, and called aloud in the village, 'The
+boy has stolen my goose!' I and my fellow-Schuetzen fled away, and the
+feet of the goose hung out behind my coat. The peasants came out with
+spears to throw at us, and ran after us. When I saw that I could not
+escape with the goose, I let it fall, and sprang out of the road into
+the bushes; but two of my fellows ran along the street, and were
+overtaken by two peasants. Then they fell down on their knees, and
+asked for mercy, as they had done them no harm; and when the peasants
+saw that it was not they who had killed the goose, they returned to the
+village, taking the goose with them. But when I saw how they hastened
+after my fellows, I was in great trouble, and said to myself: 'Ah, my
+God! I think I have not blessed myself this day.' (For I had been
+taught to bless myself every morning.) When the peasants returned to
+the village, they found our Bacchanten in the public-house, for these
+had gone forward; and the peasants desired that they would pay for the
+goose: it would have been about two batzen; but I know not whether or
+no they paid. When they joined us again, they laughed, and asked how it
+had happened. I excused myself, as I had imagined it was the custom of
+the country; to which they said it was not yet the right moment.
+
+"Another time a murderer came to us in the wood, eleven miles on this
+side of Nuremberg, who wished to play with our Bacchanten, that he
+might delay us till his fellows joined him; but we had an honest fellow
+amongst us called Anthony Schallbether, who warned the murderer to
+leave us, which he did. Now it was so late that we could hardly get to
+the village; there were very few houses, but there were two taverns.
+When we came to one of these the murderer was there before us, and
+others besides, without doubt his comrades; so we would not remain
+there, and went to the other public-house. As they themselves had
+already that night had their food, every one was so busy in the house,
+they would not give anything to us little lads; for we never sat at
+table to our meals; neither would they take us to a bedroom; but we
+were obliged to lie in the stable. But when they were taking the bigger
+ones to their bedroom, Anthony said to the host: 'Host, methinks you
+have strange guests, and are not much better yourself. I tell you what,
+place us in safety, or we will treat you in such a way that you will
+find your house too narrow for you.' When they had taken them to rest
+(I and the other little boys were lying in the stable without supper),
+some persons came in the night to their room, perhaps among them the
+host himself, and would have opened the door; but Anthony had put a
+screw before the lock inside, placed his bed before the door and struck
+a light; for he had always wax tapers and a tinder-box by him, and he
+quickly woke up the other fellows. When the rogues heard that, they
+made off. In the morning we found neither host nor servants. When they
+told us boys about it, we were all glad that nothing had happened to us
+in the stable. After we had gone from thence about a mile, we met with
+people, who when they heard where we had passed the night, were
+surprised that we had not all been murdered; for almost all the
+villagers were suspected of being murderers.
+
+"Our Bacchanten treated us so badly that some of us told my cousin
+Paulus we should escape from them; so we went to Dresden; but here
+there was no good school, and the sleeping apartments for strange
+scholars were full of lice, so that we heard them at night crawl on the
+straw. We then left and went on to Breslau: we suffered much from
+hunger on the road, having nothing for some days to eat but raw onions
+and salt, or roasted acorns and crabs. Many nights we lay in the open
+air; for no one would receive us into their houses or at the inns, and
+often they set the dogs upon us. But when we arrived at Breslau,
+everything was in abundance; indeed so cheap that we poor scholars
+overate ourselves, and frequently made ourselves ill. We went at first
+to the chapter school of the Holy Cross, but when we found that there
+were some Swiss in the parsonage house at St. Elizabeth, we went there.
+The city of Breslau has seven parishes, and each its separate school:
+no scholar ventured to sing in another parish; if he did the cry of 'Ad
+idem, ad idem,' was raised, and the Schuetzen collected together and
+fought. It is said that there were at one time some thousands of
+Bacchanten and Schuetzen who all lived on alms; it is also said that
+some of them who were twenty or thirty years old, or even more, had
+their Schuetzen who supported them. I have often of an evening carried
+home to the school where they lived, for my Bacchanten, five or six
+meals. People gave to me willingly because I was little, and a Swiss,
+for they loved the Swiss.
+
+"There I remained for some time, as I was very ill that winter, and
+they were obliged to take me to the hospital; the scholars had their
+own especial hospital and doctors, and sixteen hellers a week are given
+at the town hall for the use of the sick, which provided for us well.
+We were well nursed and had good beds, but there were lice therein,
+beyond belief, as big as hempseed, so that I and others would much
+rather have lain on the floor than in the beds. It is hardly possible
+to believe how the scholars and Bacchanten were covered with lice. I
+have ofttimes, especially in the summer, gone to wash my shirt in the
+water of the Oder, and hung it on a bush to dry; and in the mean time
+cleared my coat of the lice, buried the heap, and placed a cross over
+the spot. In the winter the Schuetzen used to lie on the hearth in the
+school; but the Bacchanten lived in small rooms, of which there were
+some hundreds at St. Elizabeth; but during the summer, when it was hot,
+we lay in the churchyard, like pigs in straw, on grass which we
+collected from before the houses of the principal streets, where it was
+spread on Sundays; but when it rained we ran into the school, and if
+there was a storm we chanted almost all night the responsoria and other
+things with the succentor. We often went in summer after supper to the
+beerhouses to beg for beer: they gave us the strong Polish peasant
+beer, which, before I was aware of it, made me so drunk that even when
+within a stone's throw from the school I could not find my way to it.
+In short, we got sufficient nourishment, but little study.
+
+"In the school of St. Elizabeth, nine bachelors always read together at
+the same hour in one room, for there were no printed Greek books in the
+country at that time; the preceptor alone had a printed Terence: what
+was read, therefore, had first to be dictated, then parsed and
+construed, and lastly explained; so that the Bacchanten when they went
+away carried with them large sheets of writing.
+
+"From thence our eight went off again to Dresden, and fell into great
+want. We determined therefore one day to divide ourselves; some were to
+look out for geese, some for turnips and onions, and one for a kitchen
+pot; but we little ones went to the town of Neumarkt, to get bread and
+salt, and we were to meet together in the evening outside the town,
+where we were to camp out, and then cook what we had. There was a well
+about a stone's throw from the town, near which we wished to pass the
+night; but when they saw our fire in the town, they began to shoot at
+us, yet did not hit us. Then we retired behind a bank to a little
+stream and grove; the big fellows lopped off branches and made a kind
+of hut, some plucked the geese, of which we had two; others put the
+heads and feet and the giblets into the pot, in which they had shred
+the turnips, others made two wooden spits and roasted the meat; when it
+had become a little brown, we ate it with the turnips. In the night we
+heard a kind of flapping: we found there was a pond near us which had
+been drained in the day, and the fish were struggling in the mud; then
+we took as many of them as we could, in a shirt fastened on a stick,
+and went away to a village, where we gave some of them to a peasant,
+that he might cook the others for us in beer.
+
+"Soon after we went again from thence to Ulm, there Paulus took with
+him another lad called Hildebrand Kalbermatter, son of a Pfaff: he was
+quite young, and had some cloth given to him, such as is made in that
+country, for a little coat. When we came to Ulm, Paul desired me to go
+about with the cloth begging for money to pay for its making up; in
+this way I got much money, for I was well accustomed to begging in
+God's name, for the Bacchanten had constantly employed me in this, so
+that I had hardly ever been taken to school, and not once taught to
+read. Going thus seldom to the school, and having to give up to the
+Bacchanten all I got by going round with the cloth, I suffered much
+from hunger.
+
+"But I must not omit to mention that there was at Ulm a pious widow,
+who had two grown-up daughters; this widow had often, when I came in
+the winter, wrapped up my feet in a warm fur, which she had laid behind
+the stove on purpose to warm them, and gave me a dish of porridge and
+sent me home. I was sometimes so hungry that I drove the dogs in the
+streets away from their bones, and gnawed them; item, searched for the
+crumbs out of the bag, which I ate. After that we returned again to
+Munich: there also I had to beg for money to make up the cloth, which
+nevertheless was not mine. The year following we went once more to Ulm,
+and I brought the cloth with me, and again begged on account of it; and
+I remember well that some one said to me, 'Botz Marter! is not the coat
+made yet? I believe you are employed in knavish work.' We went from
+thence, and I know not what happened to the cloth, or whether or no the
+coat was ever made up. One Sunday, when we came to Munich, the
+Bacchanten had got a lodging, but we three little Schuetzen had none; we
+intended therefore to go at night to the corn market, in order to lie
+on the corn sacks; and certain women were sitting in the street by the
+salt magazine, who inquired where we were going. When they heard that
+we had no lodging, a butcher's wife who was near, when she saw that we
+were Swiss, said to her maid, 'Run and hang up the boiler with the
+remains of the soup and meat; they shall stay with me over the night; I
+like all Swiss. I served once at an inn in Innspruck, when the Emperor
+Maximilian held his court there: the Swiss had much business to arrange
+with him; and they were so friendly that I shall always be kind to them
+as long as I live.' The woman gave us good lodging, and plenty to eat
+and drink. In the morning she said to us, 'If one of you would like to
+remain with me, I would give him food and lodging.' We were all willing
+to do so, and inquired which she wished to have: when she had inspected
+us, as I looked more bold than the others, she took me, and I had
+nothing to do but to get the beer, to fetch the meat from the shambles,
+and to go with her sometimes to the field; but still I had to provide
+for the Bacchant. This the woman did not like, and said to me, 'Botz
+Marter! let the Bacchant go, and remain with me; you shall not beg any
+more.' So for a whole week I did not return to my Bacchant, nor the
+school; then he came to the house of the butcher's wife, and knocked at
+the door; and she said to me, 'Your Bacchant is there; say that you are
+ill.' She let him in, and said to him, 'You are truly a fine gentleman;
+you should have looked after Thomas, for he has been ill, and is so
+still.' Then he said to me, 'I am sorry for it, lad: when you can go
+out again, come to me.' Some time after, one Sunday, I went to vespers,
+and when they were over, my Bacchant came up to me and said, 'You
+Schuetz, if you do not come to me, I will trample you under foot.' This
+I determined he should not do, and made up my mind to run away. That
+Sunday I said to the butcher's wife, 'I will go to the school and wash
+my shirt.' I dared not tell her of my intention, for I feared she would
+speak of it. So I left Munich with a sorrowful heart, partly because I
+was leaving my cousin, with whom I had gone so far (though he had been
+so hard and unmerciful to me), and also on account of the butcher's
+wife, who had treated me so kindly. I journeyed on over the river Isar,
+for I feared if I went to Switzerland, Paulus would follow me, and beat
+me, as he had often threatened. On the other side of the Isar there is
+a hill. I seated myself on the top, looked upon the town, and wept
+bitterly, because I had no longer any one to take an interest in me,
+and I thought of going to Saltzburg, or Vienna, in Austria. Whilst I
+was sitting there a peasant came with a waggon, which had carried salt
+to Munich: he was already drunk, though the sun had only just risen. I
+begged him to let me sit in it, and I went with him till he unharnessed
+the horses in order to give them and himself food; meanwhile I begged
+through the village, and waiting for him not far from it, fell asleep.
+When I awoke I again wept bitterly, for I thought the peasant had gone
+on, and it appeared to me as if I had lost a father. Soon, however, he
+came, and was still drunk, but called to me to sit in the cart, and
+asked me where I wished to go; I replied, 'To Saltzburg.' When it was
+evening, he turned off from the road, and said, 'Get down, there is the
+road to Saltzburg.' We had gone eight miles that day. I came to a
+village, and when I got up in the morning everything was white with
+rime, as if it had snowed, and I had no shoes, only torn stockings, no
+cap, and a scanty jacket. Thus I travelled to Passau, and intended to
+get on the Danube and go to Vienna, but when I came to Passau they
+would not admit me. Then I thought of going to Switzerland, and I asked
+the guard at the gate the nearest way to Switzerland: he answered by
+Munich. I said, 'I will not go by Munich, I had rather travel ten
+miles, or even more, out of the way to avoid it.' Then he pointed out
+the way by Friesingen. There was a high school there, and I found some
+Swiss, who inquired of me from whence I came? In the course of a few
+days Paulus arrived: the Schuetzen told me that the Bacchant from Munich
+was looking for me. I ran out of the gate as if he had been behind me,
+and travelled to Ulm, where I went to the widow's house, who had so
+kindly warmed my feet, and she received me, and I was to guard the
+turnips in the field, and did not go to school. Some weeks after, a
+companion of Paul's came to me, and said, 'Your cousin is here, and is
+seeking for you.' He had followed me for eighteen miles, as he had lost
+in me a good provider, I having supported him for some years. When I
+heard this, although it was night, I ran out of the gate towards
+Constance. I again wept bitterly, for I was sorry to leave the kind
+widow.
+
+"I crossed the lake, and arrived at Constance; and as I went over the
+bridge I saw some of the Swiss peasant girls with their white
+petticoats. Oh my God, how glad I was! I thought I was in heaven. When
+I came to Zurich I saw there some people from the Valais, big
+Bacchanten, to whom I offered my services for getting food, if they in
+return would teach me; but I learned no more with them than with the
+others. After some months Paulus sent his Schuetz Hildebrand from
+Munich, to desire me to return to him, and said he would forgive me;
+but I would not go back, and remained at Zurich, where however I
+studied little.
+
+"One Antonius Venetz from Visp in the Valais persuaded me to go with
+him to Strasburg. When we arrived there we found many poor scholars,
+but no good school; there was however a very good one at Schlettstadt,
+so we went there. In the city we took a lodging with an old couple, one
+of whom was stone blind; then we went to my dear preceptor, the late
+Johannes Sapidus, and begged him to receive us. He asked from whence we
+came, and when we said out of Switzerland, from the Valais, he
+answered, 'The peasants there are bad, for they drive all their Bishops
+out of the country; if, however, you study industriously, I will take
+little from you, if not, you must pay me, or I will take the coat off
+your back.' That was the first school in which it appeared to me that
+things went on well. At that time learning, especially that of
+languages, was gaining ground--it was the year of the Diet at Worms.
+Sapidus had once nine hundred students, some of them fine scholars, who
+afterwards became doctors and men of renown.
+
+"When I came to this school I knew little, could not even read the
+Donat. Though I was eighteen years old, I was placed among the little
+children, and looked like a hen amidst her small chickens. One day when
+Sapidus called over the list of the scholars, he said, 'I find many
+barbarous names, I must try to Latinize them.' He then called over the
+new names: he had turned me into Thomas Platterus, and my fellow,
+Anthony Venetz into Antonius Venetus, and said, 'Which are the two?' We
+stood up and he exclaimed, 'Poof! what measly Schuetzen to have such
+fine names!' this was partly true, especially of my companion, for I
+was more accustomed to the change of air and food.
+
+"When we had stayed there from autumn to the following Whitsuntide, a
+great many fresh scholars arrived, so that there was not sufficient to
+support us all; and we went off to Solothurn, where there was a
+tolerably good school, and more food; but we were obliged to be so
+constantly in church that we lost all our time; therefore we returned
+home.
+
+"The following spring I went off again with my two brothers. When we
+took leave of our mother, she wept and said, 'Am I not to be pitied, to
+have three sons going to lead this miserable life?' It was the only
+time I ever saw my mother cry, for she was a brave, strong-minded
+woman, respected by every one as honourable, upright, and pious.
+
+"I came to Zurich, and went to the school of the monastery of our Lady.
+About this time it was reported that a thoroughly good and learned but
+severe schoolmaster was coming from Einsiedeln. I seated myself in a
+corner not far from the schoolmaster's chair, and I thought to myself,
+in this corner will I study or die. When he (Father Myconius) entered,
+he said, 'This is a fine school (it had only just been built); but
+methinks you are a set of ignorant boys: but I will have patience with
+you, if you will only be industrious.' I knew that if it had cost me my
+life I could not have declined a word, even of the first declension;
+but I could repeat the Donat by heart from beginning to end, for when I
+was in Schlettstadt, Sapidus had a bachelor who plagued the Bacchanten
+so grievously with the Donat, that I thought it must be such a good
+book, I had better learn it by heart. I got on well with Father
+Myconius: he read Terence to us, and we had to conjugate and decline
+every word of a whole play; and it often happened that my shirt became
+quite wet, and my sight seemed to fail me with fear; and yet he had
+never given me a blow, except once with the back of his hand on my
+cheek. He read also the Holy Scriptures, and to these readings many of
+the laity came, for it was the time when the light of the holy Gospel
+was beginning to dawn. If at any time he was severe with me, he would
+take me home and give me something to eat, and he liked to hear me
+relate how I had gone all through Germany, and how it had fared with
+me.
+
+"Myconius was obliged to go with his pupils to church at the monastery
+of our Lady, to sing at vespers, matins, and mass, and conduct the
+chanting. He said to me once, 'Custos (for I was his custos), I would
+rather hold four lectures than sing one mass. Dear son, if you would
+sometimes chant the easy masses for me, requiems, and the like, I will
+requite it to you.' I was well content with this, for I had been
+accustomed to it, and everything was still regulated in the popish
+manner. As custos, I had often not enough wood to burn in the school,
+so I observed which of the laymen who came to it had piles of wood in
+front of their houses: there I went about midnight and secretly carried
+off wood to the school. One morning I had no wood; Zwinglius was to
+preach at the monastery early that morning, and when they were ringing
+the bells, I said to myself, 'Thou hast no wood, and there are so many
+images in the church that no one cares about them.' So I went to the
+nearest altar in the church, and carried off a St. John, and took him
+to the stove in the school, and said to him, '_Joegli_, now thou must
+bend and go into the stove.' When he began to burn, the paint made a
+great hissing and crackling, and I told him to keep quiet, and said,
+'If thou movest, which however thou wilt not do, I will close the door
+of the stove: thou shalt not get out unless the devil carry thee away.'
+In the mean time came Myconius' wife; she was going to hear the sermon
+in the church, and in passing by the door, said, 'God be with you, my
+child, have you heated the stove?' I closed the door of the stove, and
+answered, 'Yes, mother, I have already warmed it;' but I would not tell
+her how, for she might have tattled about it, and had it been known, it
+would have cost me my life. Myconius said to me in the course of the
+lesson, 'Custos, you have had good wood to-day.' When we were beginning
+to chant the mass, two Pfaffs were disputing together in the church;
+the one to whom the St. John belonged said to the other, 'You rogue,
+you have stolen my St. John;' and this dispute they carried on for some
+time.
+
+"Although it appeared to me that there was something not quite right
+about Popery, I still intended to become a priest. I wished to be
+pious, to administer my office faithfully, and to ornament my altar. I
+prayed much, and fasted more than was good for me. I had also my saints
+and patrons, and prayed to each for something especial; to our Lady,
+that she would be my intercessor with her child; to St. Catherine, that
+she would help me to learning; to St. Barbara, that I might not die
+without the sacrament; and to St. Peter, that he would open the door of
+heaven to me; and I wrote down in a little book what prayers I had
+neglected. When I had leave of absence from the school on Thursdays or
+Saturdays, I went into a confessional chair in the monastery, and wrote
+the omitted prayers on a chair, and counted out every sin one after
+another; then rubbed them out, and thought I had done my duty. I went
+six times from Zurich with processions to Einsiedeln, and was diligent
+in confession. I often contended with my associates for the Papacy,
+till one day M. Ulrich Zwinglius preached on this text from the gospel
+of St. John:--'I am the good shepherd.' He explained it so forcibly,
+that I felt as if my hair stood on end; and he showed how God will
+demand the souls of the lost sheep at the hands of those shepherds who
+caused their perdition. I thought, if that is the true meaning, then
+adieu to priestcraft, I will never be a Pfaff. I continued my studies,
+began to dispute with my companions, listened assiduously to the
+sermons and to my preceptor Myconius. There still continued to be mass
+and images at Zurich."
+
+Thus far Thomas Platter. His struggle in life lasted some time longer:
+he had to learn rope-making in order to support himself; he studied at
+night, and when Andreas Kratander, the printer at Basle, had sent him a
+Plautus, he fastened the separate sheets on the rope by means of a
+wooden prong, and read whilst he was working. Later he became a
+corrector of the press, then citizen and printer, and lastly rector of
+the Latin school at Basle. The unsettled life of his childhood was not
+without its influence on the character of the man; for however great
+his capacities, he displayed neither energy nor perseverance in his
+undertakings.
+
+It was among the thousands who, like the boy Thomas, thronged to the
+Latin schools, that the new movement won its most zealous followers.
+These children of the people carried from house to house with unwearied
+activity their new ideas and information. Many of them never arrived at
+the university; they endeavoured to support themselves by private
+tuition, or as correctors of the press. Most of the city, and in later
+times the village schools were occupied by those who could read Virgil,
+and understand the bitter humour of the Klagebriefes, _de miseria
+plebenorum_. So great were their numbers that the reformers soon urged
+them to learn, however late, some trade, in order to maintain
+themselves honestly. Many members of guilds in the German cities were
+qualified to furnish commentaries to the papal bulls, and translate
+them to their fellow-citizens; and subtle theological questions were
+eagerly discussed in the drinking-rooms. Great was the influence
+exercised by these men on the small circles around them. Some years
+afterwards they, together with the poor students of divinity who spread
+themselves as preachers over all Germany, became a great society; and
+it was these democrats of the new teaching who represented the Pope as
+antichrist in the popular plays, harangued the armed multitudes of
+insurgent peasants, and made war on the old Church in printed
+discourses, popular songs, and coarse dialogues.
+
+In this way they made preparation for what was coming. But however
+clearly it had been shown by the Humanitarians that the Church had in
+many places falsified the Holy Scriptures, however humorously they had
+derided the tool of the Inquisition--the baptized Jew Pfefferkorn, with
+his pretty little wife--and however zealously the small school teachers
+had carried among the people the colloquies of Erasmus on fasting, &c.,
+and his work on the education of children, yet it was not their new
+learning alone that gave birth to the Reformation and the spiritual
+freedom of Germany. Deeper lay the sources of this mighty stream; it
+sprang from the foundation of the German mind, and was brought to light
+by the secret longings of the heart, that it might, by the work of
+destruction and renovation, transform the life of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                THE MENTAL STRUGGLES OF A YOUTH, AND HIS
+                       ENTRANCE INTO A MONASTERY.
+                                (1510.)
+
+
+Great was the wickedness of the world, heavy the oppression under which
+the poor suffered, coarse the greed after enjoyment, boundless the
+covetousness both of ecclesiastics and laymen. Who was there to punish
+the young nobleman who maltreated the peasants? who to defend the poor
+citizen against the powerful family unions of the rich counsellors?
+Hard was the labour of the German peasant from morning till evening,
+through summer and winter; pestilence was quickly followed by famine
+and hunger: the whole system of the world seemed in confusion, and
+earthly life devoid of love. The only hope of deliverance from misery,
+was in God; before Him all earthly power, whether of Emperor or Pope,
+was weak and insignificant, and the wisdom of man was transitory as the
+flower of the field. By his mercy men might be delivered from the
+miseries of this life, and compensated by eternal happiness for what
+they had suffered here; but how were they to obtain this mercy? by what
+virtues could weak men hope to gain the endless treasure of God's
+favour? Man had been doomed from the time of Adam to will the good and
+do the evil. Vain were his highest virtues; inherited sin was his
+curse; and if he obtained mercy from God, it was not by his own
+merits.[19]
+
+These were the questions that then struggled within the agonized hearts
+of men. But from the holy records of Scripture, which had only been a
+dark tradition to the people, went forth the words; Christ is love. The
+ruling Church knew little of this love; in it God was kept far from the
+hearts of men: the image of the Crucified One was concealed behind
+countless saints, who were all made necessary as intercessors with a
+wrathful God. But the great craving of the German nature was to find
+itself in close connection with the Almighty, and the longing for the
+love of God was unquenchable. But the Pope maintained that he was the
+only administrator of the inexhaustible merits of Christ; and the
+Church also taught, that by the intercession of saints for the sins of
+men, an endless treasure of good works, prayers, fasts, and penances
+were made available for the blessing of others; and all these treasures
+were at the disposition of the Pope, who could dispense them to whom he
+chose, as a deliverance from their sins. Thus, when believers united
+together in a pious community, the Pope was able to confer on such a
+brotherhood the privilege of passing over from one to the other, the
+merits of the saints, the surplus of prayers and masses, as well as of
+good works done for the Church.
+
+In the year 1530, Luther complained that the number of these
+communities was countless.[20] An example will show how rough and
+miserable their mechanism was, and the "Brotherhood of the Eleven
+Thousand Virgins," called "St. Ursula's Schifflein," is selected,
+because the Elector, Frederick the Wise, was one of the founders and
+brothers. The collection of spiritual treasures given by statute to
+enable the brotherhood to obtain eternal happiness, amounted to 6,455
+masses, 3,550 entire psalters, 200,000 rosaries, 200,000 _Te Deum
+Laudamus_, 1,600 _Gloria in excelsis Deo_. Besides this, 11,000 prayers
+for the patroness St. Ursula, and 630 times 11,000 Paternosters and Ave
+Marias; also 50 times 10,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias for 10,000
+knights, &c.; and the whole redeeming power of these treasures was for
+the benefit of the members of the brotherhood. Many spiritual
+foundations and private persons had gained to themselves especial merit
+by their great contributions to the prayer treasures. At the revival of
+the society, the Elector Frederick had presented a beautiful silver
+Ursula. A layman was entitled to become a member of the brotherhood if
+he once in his life had repeated 11,000 Paternosters and Ave Marias: if
+he repeated daily thirty-two, he gained it in a year, if sixteen, in
+two, and if eight, in four years: if any one was hindered by marriage,
+sickness, or business, from completing this number of prayers, he was
+enabled to enter by having eleven masses read for him; and so on. Yet
+this brotherhood was one of the best, for the members had not to pay
+money; it was to be a brotherhood of poor people who wished only to
+assist each other to heaven by mutual prayer; and we maintain that
+these brotherhoods were the most spiritual part of the declining Church
+of the middle ages.
+
+The indulgences, on the other hand, were the foulest spot in its
+diseased body. The Pope, as administrator of the inexhaustible treasure
+of the merits of Christ, sold to believers, drafts on this store in
+exchange for money. It is true that the Church itself had not entirely
+lost the idea that the Pope could not himself forgive sins, but only
+remit the penances the Church prescribed; those, however, who held
+these views, individuals of the university and worthy village priests,
+were obliged to be careful that their teaching should not come into
+open collision with the business of the seller of indulgences. For what
+did the right teaching of their own Church signify to the papists of
+the sixteenth century? It was money that they craved for their women
+and children, their relatives, and princely houses. There was a fearful
+community of interests between the bishops and the fanatical members of
+the mendicant orders. Nothing had made Huss and his tenets so
+insupportable to them as the struggle against the sale of indulgences:
+the great Wessel had been driven out of Paris into misery for teaching
+repentance and grace; and it was the sellers of indulgences who caused
+the venerable Johannes Vesalia to die in the prison of a monastery at
+Mayence, he who first spoke the noble words, "Why should I believe what
+I know?"
+
+It is known how prevalent the traffic in indulgences became in Germany
+in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and how impudently the
+reckless cheating was carried on. When Tetzel, a well-fed haughty
+Dominican, rode into a city with his box of indulgences, he was
+accompanied by a large body of monks and priests: the bells were rung;
+ecclesiastics and laymen met him, and reverentially conducted him to
+the church; his great crucifix, with the holes of the nails, and the
+crown of thorns, was erected in the nave, and sometimes the believers
+were allowed to see the blood of the Crucified One trickling down the
+cross. Church banners, on which were the arms of the Pope with the
+triple crown, were placed by the cross; in front of it the cursed box,
+strongly clamped with iron, and near these on one side, a pulpit from
+which the monk set forth with rough eloquence the wonderful powers of
+his indulgences, and showed a large parchment of the Pope's with many
+seals appended to it. On the other side was the pay table, with
+indulgence tickets, writing materials, and money baskets; there the
+ecclesiastical coadjutors sold to the thronging people everlasting
+salvation.[21]
+
+Countless were the crimes of the Church, against which all the wounded
+moral feelings of the Germans were roused. The opposition spread all
+over Germany; but the man had not yet appeared, who, by a fearful
+inward struggle, discerning all the griefs and longings of the people,
+was preparing to become the leader of his nation, which would in his
+determined character, see with enthusiasm its own mind embodied. For
+two years he had been teacher of natural philosophy and dialects in the
+new university of Wittenberg, and was still lying in the dust of the
+Roman plains, looking with pious enthusiasm at the towers of the holy
+city appearing on the verge of the horizon. In the mean while we may
+learn from the experiences of a Latin scholar, what was working in the
+souls of the people.
+
+Frederick Mecum (Latinized into Myconius[22]) was the son of honest
+citizens of Lichtenfelds, in Upper Franconia, and was born in 1491.
+When thirteen years of age, he went to the Latin school of the then
+flourishing city of Annaberg, where he experienced what we propose
+giving in his own words. In 1510 he went into a monastery, and as a
+Franciscan he was one of the first, most zealous, and faithful
+followers of the Wittenberg professors. He left his order, became a
+preacher at the new church in Thuringia, and finally pastor and
+superintendent at Gotha, where he established the Reformation, and died
+in 1546. The connecting link between him and Luther was of a very
+peculiar nature; he was not only his most intimate friend in many
+relations of private life, but there was a poetry in his connection
+with him which spread a halo round his whole life. Seven years before
+Luther began the Reformation, Myconius saw in a dream the vision of
+that great man, who calmed the doubts of his excited heart; enlightened
+by his dream, the faithful, pious German discovered in him the great
+friend of every future hour. But another circumstance gives us an
+interest in the narrator. However unlike, this gentle, delicately
+organized man may appear to his daring friend, there was a striking
+similarity in the youthful life of both, and much which is unknown to
+us of Luther's youth may be explained in what Myconius relates of his
+own. Both were poor scholars from a Latin school; both were driven by
+their inward struggles and youthful enthusiasm into a monastery, and
+found there only new doubts, greater struggles, and years of torment
+and anxious uncertainty instead of that peace for which they so
+passionately longed. To both was the shameless Tetzel the rock of
+offence, which stirred up their minds, and determined the whole course
+of their future life: finally, both died in the same year,--Myconius
+seven weeks after Luther, having five years before, been restored to
+life from a mortal illness by Luther's letter of invocation.[23] Few of
+Frederick Myconius' works have been printed: besides theological
+essays, he wrote a chronicle of his own time in German, in which he
+describes with the greatest detail his own labours and the state of
+Gotha. "The dream" which he had the first night after he entered the
+monastery is well known, and has often been printed. In the dream the
+Apostle Paul presents himself to him as his leader, and, as Myconius in
+after years fancied, had the form, face, and voice of Luther. This long
+dream was written in Latin, but we find a German translation of the
+introduction, in a manuscript of the same date, in the Duke's library
+at Gotha, from which we give the following extracts:--
+
+"Johannis Tetzel of Pyrna in Meissen, a Dominican monk, was a powerful
+preacher of the papal indulgences. He tarried two years in the then new
+city of Annaberg for this object, and so deluded the people that they
+all believed there was no other way to obtain forgiveness of sins and
+eternal life, than by the sufficiency of our own works, which
+sufficiency he added was impossible. But there was one way remaining,
+namely, to obtain it by money from the Pope: so we bought the papal
+indulgence, which he called forgiveness of sins and a certain entrance
+into eternal life. Here I could relate wonder upon wonder, and many
+incredible things which I heard preached by Tetzel for two years at
+Annaberg, for he preached every day, and I listened to him assiduously.
+I even repeated his sermons by heart to others; imitating his delivery
+and gestures; not that I did it to ridicule him, but from my great
+earnestness, for I considered it all as _oracular_, and the word of
+God, which ought to be believed; and what ever came from the Pope I
+considered as if it were from Christ himself.
+
+"At last, about Whitsuntide, 1510, he threatened to take down the red
+cross, close the door of heaven, and extinguish the sun, adding, that
+we should never more have the opportunity of obtaining remissions of
+sins and eternal life for so little money, as it could not be hoped
+that this benevolent mission from the Pope would return again as long
+as the world lasted. He admonished every one to take care of his soul,
+and those of his friends, both living and dead, for that now was the
+accepted time, now was the day of salvation. And he said, 'Let no one
+neglect his own eternal happiness, for if ye have not the papal letter,
+ye cannot be absolved from many sins, nor, _casibus reservatis_, by any
+man.' Printed letters were publicly affixed to the walls and doors of
+the church, in which it was promised that, as a token of thanks to the
+German people for their piety, from henceforth till the close of the
+sale, the indulgence letters and the full power of remission should be
+sold at a less price; at the end of the letter, underneath, was
+written, _pauperibus dentur gratis_,--to the poor who have nothing, the
+letters of indulgence shall be given without money, for God's sake.
+
+"Then I began to deal with this commissary of indulgence wares; but in
+truth I was led and encouraged hereto by the Holy Spirit, although I
+myself knew not at the time what I did.
+
+"My dear father had taught me in my childhood the Ten Commandments, the
+Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, and insisted upon my continually praying;
+for, said he, all that we have is from God alone, and He gives it us
+gratis, and He will lead and direct us if we pray to Him diligently. Of
+the papal indulgences, he said, they were only nets with which money
+was fished out of the pockets of the simple, and one could not
+assuredly obtain for money the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
+But the priests became angry when such things were said. When,
+therefore, I daily heard in the sermons nothing but praise of the
+indulgences, I doubted whom I should most believe, my dear father, or
+the priests as teachers of the Church. But though I had doubts, I
+believed more the instructions of the priests than those of my father.
+The only thing I could not, however, allow, was, that the forgiveness
+of sins could only be obtained by money, especially when it was
+question of the poor. Therefore, the _clausula_ at the end of the papal
+letter, _pauperibus gratis dentur propter Deum_, pleased me
+wonderfully.
+
+"As at the end of three days, the cross, together with the steps and
+ladder to heaven, were to be taken down with extraordinary solemnity,
+the spirit led me to go to the commissary, and beg of him letters of
+remission out of charity to the poor. I declared that I was a sinner,
+and poor, and needed forgiveness of my sins, which I ought to receive
+gratis. The second day, at the time of vespers, I entered the house of
+Hans Pflock, where Tetzel with the confessors and crowd of priests were
+assembled together. I accosted them in the Latin language, and
+entreated that they would, according to the command in the Pope's
+letter, allow me, a poor lad, to obtain the absolution of all my sins
+gratis, and for God's sake, '_Etiam nullo casu reservato_,'--without
+reserve, and thereupon they should give me the '_literas
+testimoniales_,'--written testimony, of the Pope. The priests were much
+astonished at my Latin speech, for it was at this time a rare thing,
+especially with young boys; and they went speedily out of the room into
+the next apartment, where was Herr Commissary Tetzel. They laid before
+him my request, and begged of him to give me gratis the letter of
+indulgence. At last, after holding long counsel, they came again, and
+brought me this answer: 'Dear son, we have carefully laid your petition
+before the Herr Commissary, and he bids us say he would gladly grant
+it, but he cannot; and if he were to do so, this concession would
+become powerless, and of no avail. For he has shown us that it is clear
+from the Pope's letter, it is those only _qui porrigent manum
+adjutricem_,--those who help with the hand, that is, those who give
+money, that will certainly partake of the merciful indulgences and
+treasures of the Church, and of the merits of Christ.' And this they
+told me all in German, for there was not one among them who could speak
+three words of Latin rightly.
+
+"But I again renewed my petition, and showed them, how in the papal
+letter the holy father had commanded that these indulgences should be
+freely given to the poor, for God's sake, more especially as it was
+therein written: _ad mandatum Domini papae proprium_, that is, by his
+highness the Pope's own commands.
+
+"Then they went again to the proud, haughty monk, and begged him to
+grant my petition, for I was a deep-thinking and eloquent youth, who
+deserved that more should be bestowed upon him than upon others. But
+they brought back the same answer. I remained firm, however, and said
+that they did great injustice to me, a poor boy whom neither God nor
+the Pope would shut out from grace, and whom they wanted to discard for
+the sake of a few pence, which I had not. Then followed a dispute. They
+said I must give something, however little, if it was only a few
+groschen, that the helping hand might not be wanting. I answered, 'I
+have it not, I am poor.' At last it came to this, I was to give six
+_pfennige_, to which I replied again, 'I have not a single _pfennig_.'
+They tried to persuade me, and conferred together. At last I heard them
+say that they were in anxiety on two points; first, they must on no
+account let me go without the indulgence, as this might be a concerted
+plan, and lead to mischief hereafter, for it was clearly written in the
+Pope's letter that indulgences were to be given free to the poor; but
+on the other hand, it was necessary to take something from me, that
+others might not hear that they were given away gratis, in which case a
+whole crowd of poor scholars and beggars would come and demand them.
+They need not have had any anxiety on this account, for the poor
+beggars would rather seek for bread to drive away their hunger.
+
+"After they had taken counsel they came again to me, and offered me six
+_pfennige_, that I might give it to the commissary; by this
+contribution they said that I should become one of the builders of the
+church of St. Peters at Rome, a slayer of the Turks, and partaker of
+the indulgence and grace of Christ. But I spoke out freely, stirred by
+the Holy Spirit, and said that if I was to buy indulgence and remission
+of sins, I could sell one of my books, and obtain it with my own money;
+but I wished to have it given me freely for God's sake, or they would
+have to answer before God, for having trifled with the happiness of my
+soul for the sake of six _pfennige_, when both God and the Pope desired
+that I should be partaker of the forgiveness of sins for charity sake.
+I said this, but truly did not know how it stood with the letters of
+indulgence.
+
+"After this speech the priests inquired of me from whence I had been
+sent, and who had instructed me to deal with them about this matter.
+Then I told them the simple truth, how it was that I had not been told
+or sent by any one, or induced to come by other men's counsel, but had
+of myself made this request, in full trust and confidence in the free
+and charitable gift of forgiveness of sins; and I had never before in
+my life spoken to, or dealt with such great people, for I was by nature
+modest; and if I had not been constrained by my great thirst for the
+mercy of God, I should not have ventured on so high an undertaking.
+Then they again offered me the indulgence, but in this way: I was to
+buy it with six _pfennige_, and these _pfennige_ were to be returned to
+me for myself. But I remained firm that he who had the power should
+give me the indulgence free; and if he would not, I would commend the
+affair to my dear God, and resign myself into his hands; and so they
+dismissed me.
+
+"The holy thieves were however sorrowful over this affair. I too was
+somewhat troubled that I had not got my indulgence; yet I also rejoiced
+that in spite of them there was one in heaven who would forgive the
+sins of the penitent sinner, without money and without price, according
+to the text which I had often repeated in church: 'As I live, saith the
+Lord God, I would not the death of a sinner, but that he should be
+converted and live.' Ah, dear Lord God, thou knowest that I have not
+lied or invented.
+
+"I was so overcome by all this, that whilst I was going home to my
+lodging, I was dissolved in tears. When I arrived there, I went into my
+room and took the crucifix, that always lay on the table in my study,
+placed it on the bench, and fell down before it on the ground. I cannot
+here describe it, but I then felt the spirit of prayer and grace, which
+thou, my God and Lord, pouredst out upon me. The purport of my prayer
+was this, I beg that thou, dear God, wouldst be my father, and wouldst
+forgive me my sins. I resign myself to thee altogether and entirely;
+thou mayest do with me what thou pleasest, and though the priests will
+not be merciful to me without money, be thou my merciful God and
+Father.
+
+"Then I found that my whole heart was changed: I felt vexed with all
+worldly things, and imagined that I was quite wearied with this life.
+Only one thing I desired, which was, to live for God and to please Him.
+But who was there that could teach me, and how was I to effect this?
+For the Word, the light and life of men, was throughout the whole world
+buried in the darkness of human traditions and the mad idea of 'good
+works.' Of Christ nothing was said, nothing was known of Him; or if He
+was mentioned, He was represented to us as an angry and terrible judge,
+whom his mother and all the saints in heaven could hardly appease, or
+persuade to be merciful even by tears of blood; and it was said that
+He, Christ, would cast those men who repented, for seven years into
+purgatory for every mortal sin: there was no difference between the
+pains of purgatory and those of hell, except that they were not
+eternal. But now the Holy Spirit gave me the hope that God would be
+merciful unto me.
+
+"After this I began to consider how I was to enter upon a new course of
+life. I saw the sinfulness of the whole world, and of the whole human
+race. I saw my own manifold sins which were so very great. I had heard
+somewhat of the great holiness and of the pure and innocent life of
+monks; how they served God day and night, were separated from all the
+wickedness of the world, and lived a temperate, pious, and chaste life,
+performed masses, sang psalms, and were always fasting and praying. I
+had also seen something of this plausible life, but I did not know that
+it was the greatest idolatry and hypocrisy.
+
+"I consulted with my preceptor, the master Andreas Staffeltstein, who
+was rector of the school; he advised me to enter the newly built
+Franciscan monastery, and for fear I should change my mind through any
+long delay, he went himself with me to the monks, praised my talents
+and intellect, and boasted that in me alone amongst all his scholars he
+had perfect confidence, that I should become a truly godly man.
+
+"I desired, however, beforehand to mention my undertaking to my
+parents, and to hear their opinion upon it, as I was their only son and
+heir; but the monks showed me out of St. Jerome that I ought not to
+regard father or mother, but leave them, and take up the cross of
+Christ. And they quoted the saying of Christ: 'No man, having put his
+hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God;'
+and thus they pressed me to become a monk. I will not here speak of the
+many bonds and fetters with which they bound and shackled my
+conscience. They told me I could never henceforth be happy if I did not
+at once accept the offered grace of God; and as I would rather have
+died than have been deprived of the grace of God and eternal life, I at
+once consented, and promised that I would in three days return to the
+monastery, and commence my year of probation, as it is called; that is,
+I would become a pious, devout, and God-fearing monk.
+
+"On the 14th of July, in the year 1510, about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, I entered the monastery, accompanied by my preceptor, some
+of my schoolfellows, and certain devout matrons, to whom I had partly
+explained why I entered the ecclesiastical order. I then gave my
+blessing to all who had thus accompanied me, who with many tears
+implored for me God's grace and blessing. And so it came to pass that I
+went into a monastery. Dear God, thou knowest that this is all true. It
+was not a life of idleness nor good living that I sought, nor yet the
+odour of sanctity, but I wished to please thee, and to serve thee well.
+
+"Thus for a time I groped on in great darkness."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+                OUT OF THE MONASTERY INTO THE CONFLICT.
+                             (about 1522.)
+
+
+The storm broke loose; it convulsed the whole nation as with electric
+fire: the words of the Augustine of Wittenburg rolled through the land
+like peals of thunder, and every clap betokened an advance and a
+victory. Even now, after three centuries and a half, this prodigious
+movement has an irresistible fascination for the German people. Never,
+from its first existence, had the nation revealed its innermost being
+so touchingly and grandly. All the fine qualities of the German mind
+and character burst forth at this time; enthusiasm, self-devotion, a
+deep moral indignation, an intense pleasure in systematic thought, and
+an inward seeking after the highest. Every individual took his share in
+the strife. The travelling trader over the fire at night contended for
+or against the indulgences, the countryman in the most remote villages
+heard with astonishment of the new heretic whom his spiritual father
+cursed in every sermon, and the women of the villages no longer gave
+willingly to the mendicant monks. A sea of small literature overflowed
+the country, a hundred printing-presses were in activity, spreading
+abroad the numerous controversial writings, both learned and popular;
+parties raged in every cathedral and parish church; everywhere men of
+resolute character amongst the ecclesiastics declared themselves for
+the new doctrines, whilst the weaker ones struggled with timid doubts;
+the doors of the monasteries were opened, and the cells soon became
+empty. Every month brought to the people something new and unheard of.
+
+It was no longer a quarrel between priests, as Hutten had in the
+beginning contemptuously called the dispute between the Wittenberger
+and Tetzel; it had become a war of the nation against the Romish
+supremacy and its supporters. Ever more powerfully rose the image of
+Luther before his cotemporaries. Banished, cursed, persecuted by Pope
+and Emperor, by princes and high ecclesiastics, he became in four short
+years the idolized hero of the people. His journey to Worms was
+described in the style of the Holy Scriptures, and the over-zealous
+placed him on a footing with the martyrs of the New Testament.[24] The
+learned also felt themselves irresistibly drawn into the struggle; even
+Erasmus smiled approbation, and Hutten's soul fired up in the cause of
+the new teacher, he no longer wrote in Latin, but broke forth in
+German, more stormy and wild than the Wittenberger, with a fire that
+consumed himself, the knight fought his last fight for the peasant's
+son.
+
+The man on whom for half a generation the highest feelings of his
+nation were concentrated, now enters upon the scene. Yet before we
+endeavour to understand his mind, it is well to point out, shortly, how
+his peculiar character worked upon impartial cotemporaries. We first
+take the witness of a moderate and truthful mind, who never personally
+knew Luther, and who later, in a middle position between the
+Wittenberger and the Swiss reformer, had reason to be dissatisfied with
+Luther's stubbornness. Ambrosius Blaurer, born in Constance, of noble
+family, was a brother of the old Benedictine monastery of Alpirsbach,
+in the wildest part of the Black Forest; he was afterwards a writer of
+sacred poetry, and at the time we are speaking of, thirty years old. He
+had left the cloister in 1523, and fled to his family. At the
+instigation of his Abbot, the Stadtholder of the principality of
+Wuertemberg demanded that he should be sent back to the monastery by the
+Burgomaster and council of Constance. Blaurer published a defence, from
+which the following is taken. He became shortly after a preacher in
+Constance, and on the restoration of Duke Ulrich, one of the reformers
+of Wuertemberg, and died at a great age at Winterthur. What he praises
+and blames in Luther may be considered as the general view of his
+character taken at that time by earnest minds.
+
+"I call God and my own conscience to witness that no wilfulness or
+frivolous motive drove me out of the monastery, or excited me to
+abandon it. Vulgar rumour reports, that monks and nuns have left their
+convents on account of their aversion to its tranquil life, and that
+they might live in carnal freedom, and give vent to their wilfulness
+and worldly desires. But I was actuated by honourable and weighty
+reasons, and great troubles and urgings of conscience, on account of
+the word of God. I hope that all the circumstances of my departure will
+show neither levity, wantonness, nor unseemly purpose? I laid aside
+neither cowl nor capouch except for a few days after my departure for
+my greater security, till I had reached my place of refuge. I neither
+left to fight, nor to carry away a pretty wife, but I went forthwith as
+quickly as I could to my much loved mother and relations, who are
+undoubted Christians, and are held in such honour and esteem in the
+city of Constance, that it is certain they would never counsel or help
+me in any unworthy undertaking.
+
+"Therefore I trust that my previous conduct and course of life will
+relieve me from any suspicion of unseemly or wilful intentions; for
+although I may not boast myself before God, yet I may before men glory
+in the Lord, that I, whether in the cloister or the school, here, and
+wherever I have been, have retained a good repute and esteem, with much
+love and favour, on account of my uprightness. You yourselves have
+heard the messengers from Wuertemberg acknowledge that there was no
+complaint or evil report of my conduct or manner of life at the
+monastery of Alpirsbach, but that I have behaved myself well and
+piously; all they can say against me is, that I have concerned myself
+too much with what they call the seductive and cursed teaching of
+Martin Luther, whose writings I have read and adhered to, and preached
+them, contrary to the command of the abbot, publicly to the laity in
+the monastery; and when this was forbidden me, I yet continued
+secretly, and as it were in a corner, to infuse them into the souls of
+some of the young gentlemen there. With such praise from my fathers and
+brethren I am well content, and can justify myself for this one
+misdeed, as a Christian, from the word of God, and I hope that my
+defence will serve to remove false and ungrounded suspicions, not only
+from me, but also from others.
+
+"When in the course of the last year, the works and opinions of Martin
+Luther were spread abroad and became known, they came into my hands
+before they had been condemned and forbidden by the ecclesiastical and
+lay authorities; and like other newly printed works, I saw and read
+them. In the beginning, these doctrines appeared to me somewhat strange
+and objectionable, and contrary to the long-established theology and
+clever teaching of the schools, in opposition also to the papal and
+ecclesiastical rights, and to the old, and, as I then considered them,
+praiseworthy customs and usages of our forefathers. But it was not less
+evident to me that this man interspersed everywhere in his teaching
+clear and distinct passages from the Holy Scriptures, according to
+which all human teaching ought to be guided and judged, accepted or
+rejected. I was much amazed, and stirred up to read these doctrines,
+not once or twice, but frequently, with much industry and earnest
+attention, and to weigh and compare them with the evangelical writings
+to which they constantly appealed. The longer I did this, the more I
+perceived with what great dignity the Holy Scriptures were treated by
+this learned and enlightened man,--how purely and delicately he handled
+them, how cleverly and well he everywhere brought them forward, how
+skilfully he compared and weighed them one with the other, and how he
+explained the dark and difficult texts, by bringing forward others that
+were clearer and more comprehensible. I saw also that there was great
+mastership in his treatment of the Scriptures, and that it afforded the
+most substantial aid to a right understanding of them, so that every
+intelligent layman who industriously studied his books, could
+distinctly perceive that these doctrines were true and Christian, and
+had the firmest foundation. On that account they impressed themselves
+on my mind, and deeply touched my heart: it was to me as if a veil had
+fallen from before my eyes; I felt they were in no wise to be
+distrusted, like those of so many other school teachers that I had
+formerly read, because their aim was neither dominion, fame, nor
+worldly enjoyment, but to place before us, only the poor, despised, and
+crucified Christ, and to teach us to live a pure, moderate, and sober
+life, conformable in all things to the doctrine of Christ; and they
+were therefore too hard and self-denying for the ambitious and many
+beneficed priests and doctors, puffed up with pride and vain glory, who
+sought in the Scriptures their own honour and fame, more than the
+Spirit of God. Therefore would I rather give up all my worldly means
+and life itself, than be deprived of them, not for the sake of Luther,
+who, except as he appears in his writings, is unknown to me, and being
+only a man, may, like other men, be in error; but for the sake of the
+word of God, which he holds so clearly and distinctly, and explains so
+victoriously and triumphantly from the fullness of his undaunted
+spirit.
+
+"The enemy endeavoured to embitter this honey to us by representing
+that Luther was testy and irritable, aggressive and sarcastic; that he
+attacked his opponents the great princes and ecclesiastical and lay
+lords, with audacity; had recourse to abuse and slander, and forgot all
+brotherly love and Christian moderation. He had, it is true, often
+displeased me by this, and I would not desire any one to do the like;
+but I could not on that account reject and cast aside his good
+Christian teaching, nor even condemn him in these respects; and for
+this reason, that I could not read his mind, nor the secret counsels of
+God, as perhaps it might be the means of drawing people from his
+teaching. And as it was not his own cause, but the divine word that he
+defended, much allowance should be made for him, and all should be
+attributed to zealous indignation for God. Even Christ, the source and
+pattern of all meekness, severely rebuked before others the stubborn
+and stony-hearted Pharisees, and called them false hypocrites, painted
+sepulchres, sons of harlots, blind leaders of the blind, and also the
+children of the devil, as may be seen in the gospels. (Matt. xii. 15,
+23; John viii.) Perhaps Luther would gladly speak well of many if he
+could do so with truth; he may not think it fitting to call those who
+are in darkness, enlightened; nor rapacious wolves, good shepherds; nor
+the unmerciful, merciful; for without doubt, had God not been more
+merciful to him than they have been, he would not now be upon earth.
+But however this may be, I will not defend him in this place, but
+laying aside his expressions of contempt and abuse, accept with
+thankfulness the earnestness of his valiant Christian writings for our
+amendment.
+
+"As I openly persevered in what I had undertaken advisedly, and would
+not desist at the bidding of any one, being bound as a Christian not to
+do so, the displeasure of my superior at Alpirsbach, and certain others
+of the monastery, greatly increased, and the sword of God's anger began
+to cause division and discord between the brothers. I was peremptorily
+ordered to abstain from my undertaking, and also not to speak of these
+matters with others; but as I could not do this, being bound to yield
+obedience to God's commands, rather than to those of man, I earnestly
+begged of my Abbot and monastery, that they would graciously give me
+leave of absence. I wished for a year or two to support myself at some
+school or elsewhere, without being any expense to the monastery, and
+perhaps in the mean while, by a godly examination of the cause of our
+discord, it might be brought to a peaceable end.
+
+"This being however refused by them, I resolved, after having taken
+counsel with many wise, learned, and God-fearing men and friends, to
+leave the monastery." So far Ambrosius Blaurer.
+
+Whilst brother Ambrosius was yet looking anxiously from the windows of
+his cell, over the pines of the Black Forest into the free expanse,
+another was riding out of the gate of a princely castle near the
+woodclad mountains of Thuringia. Behind him lay the dark
+_Drachenschlucht_; before him the long ridge of the magic Hoerselberges,
+wherein dwelt an enchantress, to whom the Pope, that wicked forgiver of
+sins, had once driven back the repentant Tannhaeuser. But the dry stick
+which the Pope had then thrust into the ground, brought forth green
+foliage during the night; God himself confuted the Pope. The poor
+penitent man no longer required the Bishop of Rome to enable him to
+find mercy and grace from his heavenly Father; but the wicked Pope
+himself would descend into the jaws of the old dragon.
+
+The exterior of the man who was riding down from Wartburg to
+Wittenberg, shall be described by a young student who was travelling
+with a friend from Switzerland to Saxony. His narrative is well known,
+yet we must not omit it here.
+
+His name was John Kessler; he was born at St. Gallen, in 1502; his
+parents were poor citizens; he attended the school of the monastery
+there, studied theology at Basle, and went early in the spring of 1522
+with a companion to Wittenberg, to continue his studies under the
+Reformers. In the autumn of 1523, he returned to his native town, and
+as the new doctrines had not yet taken root there, being very poor he
+determined to learn a trade, and became a saddler. He soon collected a
+small community round him, taught and preached, laboured in his
+workshop, wrote books, and became at last schoolmaster, librarian and
+member of a council of education. He had an unpretending, pure nature,
+with a heart full of love and gentle warmth, but he took no active part
+in the theological controversies of his time. His narrative begins as
+follows:--
+
+"When we were travelling to Wittenberg to study the Holy Scriptures, we
+arrived at Jena in Thuringia, in, God knows how wild a storm; and after
+many inquiries in the city for a lodging wherein we might pass the
+night, we could not find any; everywhere lodging was denied us, for it
+was Shrovetide,[25] when pilgrims and strangers were little cared for.
+So we determined to leave the town, and endeavour to reach a village
+where they would lodge us. In the mean while we met at the gate an
+honest man, who spoke kindly to us, and inquired where we were going so
+late, as there was neither house nor farm that we could reach before
+night; besides which, it was a road that was difficult to find;
+therefore he advised us to remain there.
+
+"We answered: 'Dear father, we have tried all the inns to which we have
+been directed, and having everywhere been refused a lodging, we are
+obliged to proceed further.' Then he asked us whether we had made
+inquiry at the Black Bear; and we replied: 'It has never been mentioned
+to us; tell us, dear father, where we shall find it.' He then showed us
+a little way out of the town, and when we came to the Black Bear,
+behold, the landlord, instead of refusing us, as all the others had
+done, came to meet us at the door, and not only received us, but kindly
+begged of us to lodge there, and took us into a room.
+
+"There we found a man sitting alone at a table, and before him lay a
+book; he greeted us kindly, and bid us approach and sit by him at the
+table; for we were seating ourselves quietly on a bench close to the
+door, as our shoes (if one may be allowed to write it) were so covered
+with mud and dirt, that we were ashamed to enter the room on account of
+our dirty footmarks. He invited us to drink, which we could not refuse,
+and as we found him so kind and cordial, we seated ourselves by him at
+his table as he had asked us, and called for a quart of wine, that we
+might return his civility by asking him to drink. We supposed him
+however to be a knight, as he was dressed in hosen and jerkin, with a
+red leather cap, and without armour, and sat, according to the custom
+of his country, with a sword at his side, with one hand resting on the
+pommel and the other clasping the hilt. His eyes were black and deep
+set, flashing and sparkling like stars, so that one could hardly bear
+to look at them.
+
+"Shortly after, he asked where we were born, but answered himself: 'You
+are Swiss; from what part of Switzerland do you come?' We replied,
+'From St. Gallen.' He then said, 'If you are going, as I hear, to
+Wittenberg, you will find there some good countrymen of yours, Dr.
+Jerome Schurf and his brother Dr. Augustin.'
+
+"We said, 'We have letters to them;' and we proceeded to inquire: 'Can
+you inform us, sir, whether Martin Luther is now at Wittenberg; or if
+not, where he is?'
+
+"He answered, 'I know for certain that Luther is not now at Wittenberg,
+but will return soon. Philip Melancthon is however there, who teaches
+Greek, and others who teach Hebrew. In truth I would advise you to
+study both, as they are needful for the right understanding of the Holy
+Scriptures.' We replied, 'So help us God! as long as He grants us life,
+we will not desist till we have seen and heard this man; for on his
+account we have undertaken this journey, as we learn that he will
+overthrow the priesthood, together with the mass, that being a service
+founded on error. As we have been brought up by our parents, and
+destined from our youth to be priests, we are anxious to hear what his
+teaching is, and what authority he can bring forward for such
+propositions.'
+
+"After we had thus spoken, he inquired: 'Where have you studied
+hitherto?'--Answer: 'At Basle.'--Then he said: 'How are things going on
+at Basle? Is Erasmus of Rotterdam still there, and what is he doing?'
+
+"We replied: 'We only know, sir, that all is going on well, and that
+Erasmus is there; but what he is about is unknown to and concealed from
+every one, as he keeps himself quite quiet and private.'
+
+"This manner of talk appeared to us very strange in the knight; how
+could he know everything relative to the two Schurfs, of Philip, and
+Erasmus, and also be aware of the necessity of learning Greek and
+Hebrew? He introduced occasionally Latin words, so that we bethought us
+he must be more than a common knight.
+
+"'Dear sons,' he said, 'what do they think in Switzerland about
+Luther?'
+
+"We answered: 'Sir, there, as everywhere, opinions vary. Many cannot
+exalt him sufficiently, and thank God who has manifested his truth
+through him, and exposed error; but many condemn him as a cursed
+heretic, especially all the ecclesiastics.'
+
+"He answered: 'I can well imagine it of the priests.'
+
+"Thus holding converse, we became quite at home with him, so that my
+companion took up the book that was lying before him and opened it. It
+was the Hebrew Psalter; he put it down again quickly and the knight
+drew it towards him. Then my companion said: 'I would give one of my
+fingers to be able to understand this language.' He answered, 'You will
+have no difficulty in comprehending it, providing you devote yourself
+to it industriously; I also desire to know more of it, and study it
+daily.'
+
+"In the mean while evening drew on, and it became quite dark. The
+landlord came to the table, and when he learned our longing desire to
+know Martin Luther, he said, 'Dear comrades, if you had been here two
+days ago, you would have succeeded, for he was here, and sat at this
+table, and,' pointing with his finger, 'in that very place.' We were
+much vexed and provoked that we had missed him, and laid the blame of
+it on the muddy bad road which had delayed us; but we said, 'We
+rejoice, however, that we are in the same house and sitting at the same
+table at which he sat.'
+
+"At this the landlord laughed and went away. After a little while the
+landlord called to me to come to him outside the door of the room. I
+was frightened, and thought that perhaps without intending it I had
+done something that was unbecoming.
+
+"Then he said to me, 'As I know that you wish to hear and see Luther;
+it is he who sits by you.'
+
+"I took this for a joke, and said, 'I see indeed, good sir, that you
+wish to banter me by imposing upon me a false Luther.' He answered, 'It
+is he most assuredly; but do not show that you think so, or that you
+recognize him.' I assented, but did not believe him. I went again into
+the room, and placed myself at the table; and was anxious to tell my
+companion what the landlord had said. At last I turned to him and
+whispered secretly, 'The landlord has told me that this is Luther.' He
+would not believe it any more than I, and said, 'He perhaps told you
+that it was Hutten, and you did not rightly understand him.' As the
+dress and bearing reminded me more of Hutten than a monk like Luther, I
+was persuaded that he had said it was Hutten, as the beginning of both
+names sounded so much alike: what I further said, was as if spoken to
+the knight, Herr Ulrich von Hutten.
+
+"In the mean while there arrived two merchants, who intended to remain
+there all night: after they had taken off their travelling dresses and
+spurs, one of them laid down near him an unbound book. Then Martinus
+asked what kind of book it was; and he answered, 'It is Dr. Luther's
+exposition of some of the gospels and epistles, just printed and
+published; have you not yet seen it?' Martinus said, 'I shall soon get
+it.' The host now desired us to arrange ourselves at table, as it was
+time to eat; we begged of him to have consideration for us and give us
+something separate, but he replied, 'Dear comrades, place yourselves by
+these gentlemen at table, I will charge you moderately.' When Martinus
+heard this, he said, 'Come here, I will settle for you with the
+landlord.'
+
+"During the meal, Martinus spoke many kind and godly words, so that the
+merchants as well as ourselves were mute before him; attending more to
+his words than to the viands before us. Amongst other things, he
+lamented with a sigh that the princes and lords just then assembled at
+the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg, on account of the troubles of the
+German nation, and for the sake of the pending proceedings concerning
+God's word, were only inclined to waste their time in costly
+tournaments, sledge drives, vanity, and dissipation, when fear of God
+and Christian prayer would be of more avail. 'But such are our
+_Christian_ princes.' He further said, 'There was hope that evangelical
+truth would bear more fruit among the children and descendants who were
+not poisoned by papal errors, and might yet be grounded in pure truth
+and the word of God, than among the parents in whom error was so deeply
+rooted that it could hardly be eradicated.
+
+"Then the merchants gave their opinions freely, and one of them said,
+'I am a simple layman, and understand little of these disputes, but I
+must speak of things as I find them; Luther must either be an angel
+from heaven, or a devil out of hell. I would gladly, however, give ten
+gulden to confess to him, for I believe he could and would give me good
+instruction.' Then the landlord came to us, and said secretly,
+'Martinus has paid for your supper:' that gave us much pleasure, not
+for the sake of the money and food, but for the hospitality shown us by
+this man. After supper the merchants rose and went to the stable to
+look after their horses; in the mean while Martinus remained alone with
+us in the room; we thanked him for the honour he had done us, as well
+as for the gift, and as we did so we showed him that we took him for
+Ulrich von Hutten; but he said, 'I am not Hutten.'
+
+"Then the landlord coming in, Martinus said, 'I have become a nobleman
+to-night, for these Swiss have taken me for Ulrich von Hutten.' The
+landlord replied, 'You are not him, but Martinus Luther.' Then Martinus
+laughing as if it were a joke, said, 'These take me for Hutten, you for
+Luther, soon I shall become a Markolfus.'[26] After this talk he took a
+long glass of beer, and said, according to the custom of the country,
+'Drink with me a friendly glass with God's blessing;' and when I was
+going to take the glass from him, he changed it, and offered instead a
+glass with wine, saying, 'The beer is foreign to you, and you are
+unaccustomed to it, drink the wine.' Meanwhile he rose and threw his
+tabard over his shoulders, and took leave. He held out his hand to us,
+and said, 'If you go to Wittenberg, greet Dr. Jerome Schurf for me.' We
+replied, 'We will do that with pleasure, but how must we designate you,
+that he may understand your greeting?' He answered, 'Say nothing
+further than that he who is coming sends you greeting; he will
+immediately understand these words.' So he departed from us and went to
+rest.
+
+"Afterwards the merchants returned into the room, and called to the
+landlord to bring them something to drink; in the mean while they had
+much talk about the guest, and wondered who he could be. The landlord
+declared it was Luther, and the merchants were soon convinced of it,
+and regretted that they had spoken so unbecomingly before him, and
+said, 'They would rise at an early hour in the morning, that they might
+see him before he started; and would beg of him not to be angry with
+them, as they had not known who he was.' This they did, and found him
+in the morning in the stable; but Martinus answered them, 'You said
+last night at supper that you would give ten gulden to confess yourself
+to Luther; when you do so, you will see and learn if I am Martinus
+Luther.' He did not make himself further known, but mounted his horse
+and rode off to Wittenberg.
+
+"On the following Saturday, the day before the first Sunday in Lent, we
+presented ourselves at Dr. Jerome Schurf's house to deliver our
+letters. When we entered the room, behold we found there the knight
+Martinus just as we had seen him at Jena, and with him were Philippus
+Melancthon, Justus Jodocus Jonas, Nicholas Amsdorf, and Dr. Augustin
+Schurf, who were telling him what had happened during his absence from
+Wittenberg: he greeted us, and laughing, pointed with his finger, and
+said, 'This is the Philip Melancthon of whom I told you.'"
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in the truthlike narrative of Kessler,
+than the cheerful tranquillity of the great man whilst riding through
+Thuringia under ban and interdict, his heart filled with anxious care,
+on account of the great danger with which his doctrines were threatened
+by the fanaticism of his own partisans.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                              DR. LUTHER.
+                              (1517-1546.)
+
+
+Even the most enlightened Roman Catholics look with horror upon Luther
+and Zwinglius as originators of the schism in their old Church. It is
+to be hoped that such views may disappear in Germany. All sects have
+reason to thank Luther for whatever depth and spirituality now remains
+in their faith: The heretic of Wittenberg was as much the reformer of
+German Roman Catholics as of Protestants; not only, because in the
+struggle with him the teachers of the Roman Catholic Church were
+obliged to erect at Trent a firmer building on the ruins of the Church
+of the middle ages, but because he left the impress of his mind on the
+character of the people, in which we all equally partake. Some things
+for which the obstinate and pugnacious Luther contended, against both
+Reformers and Catholics, have been condemned by the free judgment of
+modern times. His doctrines, vehement and high strained, wrung from a
+soul full of reverence, were in some weighty points erroneous, and he
+was sometimes bitter, unjust, indeed harsh to his opponents; but such
+things should not lead Germans astray, for all the deficiencies of his
+nature and education disappear in the fullness of blessing, which
+streamed from his great heart into the life of his nation.
+
+To few mortals has it been granted to exercise such an influence on his
+cotemporaries and on after times, as has fallen to the lot of Luther:
+his life may be divided into three periods. In the first, the character
+of the man was formed; it was powerfully influenced by the surrounding
+world, but from the depths of human nature, under the pressure of
+individual character, thoughts and convictions were gradually
+strengthened into resolutions which broke forth into action, and the
+individual commenced a struggle with the world. Then followed another
+period, one of more energetic action, of more rapid development and of
+greater triumph. Ever greater became the influence of the individual on
+the world; powerfully did he draw the whole nation along with him; he
+became their hero and model; the inward life of millions seemed
+concentrated in one man.
+
+But a single individual, however powerful in character, however great
+his aims, could not long dominate over the spirit of a nation, the
+life, strength, and wants of which are manifold. The man is under the
+constraint of the logical consequences of his thoughts and actions; all
+the spirits of his own deeds force him into a fixed limited path; but
+the soul of a people requires for its life, incessant working with the
+most varied aims. Much that an individual cannot bring himself to
+receive, is taken up by others in opposition to him. The reaction of
+the world begins: it is first weak, and from many quarters, with
+various tendencies and little authority; then it becomes stronger and
+more victorious. Finally, the inward spirit of the individual life
+confines itself within its own system, and becomes only a single
+element in the formation of the people. The end of a great life is
+always full of secret resignation, mixed with bitterness and quiet
+suffering.
+
+And thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods ended with the
+day on which he affixed his Theses; the second continued till his
+return from the castle of Wartburg; the third till the beginning of the
+Smalkaldic war and his death. It is not our intention to give his life
+here, but only to describe shortly how he became what he was. There was
+much in him which, only viewed from a distance, appears strange and
+unpleasing, but the more closely we examine his character, the greater
+and more amiable we find it.
+
+Luther rose from the peasant class; his father left Moehra, a place amid
+the forests of the Thuringian mountains, which was half peopled by his
+kindred, to engage in mining in the district of Mansfeld; thus the boy
+was born in a cottage, where the terrors inspired by the spirits of the
+pine woods, and dark fissures which served as entrances to the mine in
+the mountains, were still strong and vivid. His mind was no doubt often
+occupied with the dark traditions of the heathen mythology; he was
+accustomed to perceive in the terrors of nature, as well as in the life
+of man, the work of the powers of darkness. When he became a monk,
+these recollections of his childhood blended themselves with the figure
+of the devil, and the busy tempter always wore the same aspect to his
+imagination as the mischievous hobgoblins that frequent the hearth and
+stable of the countryman.
+
+His father was a man of concentrated and energetic character, firm and
+decided, and gifted with a full measure of strong common sense: he
+struggled hard to attain wealth; he kept strict discipline in his
+house, and in later years Luther remembered with grief the severe
+punishment he had received as a boy, and the sorrow it had inflicted on
+his childish heart. The influence of the old Hans Luther on the life of
+his son lasted till his death in 1530. When Martin went secretly into a
+monastery at the age of twenty-two, the old man was violently angry, as
+he had intended to provide for his son by a good marriage. At last
+friends succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between them, and
+when the supplicating son approached his father, confessing that he had
+been driven by a fearful apparition to take the monastic vows, he
+replied to him in the following words: "God grant that it may not have
+been a delusion of the devil." He agitated still more the heart of the
+monk by the angry question: "You thought you were listening to the
+command of God when you went into the cloister; have you never heard
+that it is a duty to be obedient to parents?" This made a deep
+impression on the son, and when, many years afterwards, he was residing
+at Wartburg, cast out of the Church, and proscribed by the Emperor, he
+wrote to his father these touching words: "Do you still wish to
+withdraw me from the thraldom of the monastery? You are still my
+father, I your son; you have on your side the power and commands of
+God; on my side there is only human error. Behold, that you may not
+boast yourself before God, He has anticipated you, and taken me out
+himself." From that time he was as it were restored to the old man.
+Hans had once reckoned upon having a grandson for whom he would work,
+and to this idea he stubbornly returned, regardless as to what the rest
+of world thought; he soon therefore admonished him earnestly, to marry,
+and his persuasions had a great share in determining Luther to do so.
+When the father, who at a great age had become councillor of Mansfeld,
+was about to draw his last breath, and the priest bending over him
+asked him whether he died in the pure faith of Christ and the Holy
+Gospel, old Hans collected himself once more, and said shortly: "He is
+a rogue who does not believe in it." When, afterwards, Luther was
+relating this, he added admiringly: "That was indeed a man of the olden
+time." The son received the account of his father's death, in the
+fortress of Coburg; and when he read the letter, which his wife had
+conveyed to him with the portrait of his youngest daughter, Magdalen,
+he spoke only these words to his companions: "God's will be done, my
+father is dead." He arose, took his psalter, went into his room, where
+he wept and prayed, and returned with a composed mind. The same day he
+wrote to Melancthon with deep emotion, of the heartfelt love of his
+father, and of the entire confidence that existed between them. "Never
+did I despise death so much as I do now: how often do we suffer death
+by anticipation before we really die! I am now the eldest of my race,
+and I have a right to follow him."
+
+Such was the father from whom the son derived the groundwork of his
+character, veracity, a steadfast will, an honest understanding, and
+circumspection in the management of business and in his dealings with
+men. His childhood was full of hardships, and he had much that was
+disagreeable to endure at his Latin school, and as a chorister; but he
+experienced also much good-will and love, and he retained, what is more
+easily kept in the smaller circles of life, a heart full of trust in
+the goodness of human nature, and respect for the great people of the
+world. His father was able to support him comfortably at the university
+of Erfurt; he was then full of youthful vigour, and took great delight
+in joining his companions in vocal and instrumental music. Of his
+mental life at that time we know but little, only that when in peril of
+death, in a storm, "a fearful apparition called to him from heaven." In
+his terror he vowed to go to a monastery, and quickly and secretly
+carried out his resolution.
+
+It is here that our accounts of the state of his mind begin. At
+variance with his father, full of terror at an incomprehensible
+eternity, frightened by the anger of God, he began, in a convulsive
+struggle, a life of self-denial, penance, and devotion. He found no
+peace. All the highest questions of life stormed with fearful power
+over his distracted soul, which had no anchor to rest on. Strongly did
+he feel the need of being in harmony with God and the world, and all
+that he derived from his faith was unintelligible and repulsive. The
+mysteries of the moral government of the world were to his mind matters
+of the deepest import. That the good should be tormented and the wicked
+made happy, that God should condemn the whole human race with the
+monstrous curse of sin, because an inexperienced woman had eaten an
+apple, and that on the other hand the same God should bear with our
+sins, in love and patience; that Christ should sometimes repel upright
+people with severity, and at others receive adulterers, publicans, and
+murderers,--about all this, the wisdom of man becomes foolishness. He
+complained in these words to his ghostly counsellor, Staupitz: "Dear
+doctor, our Lord God does indeed deal terribly with us; who can serve
+Him when He deals such blows on all?" To which the answer was: "How
+could He otherwise bow down the stiff-necked?" This ingenious argument
+was of no comfort to the youth. In his earnest strivings to find the
+incomprehensible God, he tormented himself in searching out all his
+thoughts and dreams. Every ebullition of youthful blood, every earthly
+thought, appeared to him a shocking iniquity; he began to despair, and
+wrestled with himself in endless prayer, fasting, and mortification. On
+one occasion the brothers were obliged to break into his cell, where he
+had been lying the whole day in a state not far removed from insanity.
+Staupitz observed with warm sympathy the agitation and torments of his
+soul, and endeavoured, though only by rough consolation, to give it
+rest. Once when Luther had written to him, "Oh my sins! my sins! my
+sins!" his ghostly counsellor answered him: "You wish to be without
+sin, and yet have no real sins. Christ is the forgiver of mortal sins,
+such as the murder of parents, &c., &c. If you would have the help of
+Christ, you must have mortal sins to record, and not come to Him with
+such trifles and peccadilloes, making a sin out of every little
+infirmity."
+
+The way in which Luther raised himself out of this despair decided the
+whole tenour of his life. The God whom he served appeared then as a God
+of terror, whose anger was only to be appeased by the means of grace
+given by the old Church, especially by continual confession, for which
+endless forms and directions were given, which were but cold and empty
+to the spirit. By the prescriptions of the Church and the practice of
+so-called good works, young Luther had not attained the feeling of true
+reconciliation and inward peace. At last a sentence from his spiritual
+adviser pierced him like an arrow: "There is no true repentance that
+does not begin by the love of God; the love of God, and the reception
+of it in the soul, does not follow, but precedes the means of grace
+enjoined by the Church." This teaching which came from Tauler's school
+became for him the foundation of a new, genial, and moral relation with
+God; it was a holy discovery to him. The change in his own spirit was
+the main point for which he must labour; repentance, penance, and
+expiation must proceed from the inward feelings of the heart. It was by
+his own efforts alone that man could raise himself to God. For the
+first time he experienced what direct prayer was. In the place of a
+distant God, whom hitherto he had sought in vain, by hundreds of forms
+and childish confessions, he beheld the image of an all-loving
+protector, with whom he could hold communion at every hour, whether in
+joy or sorrow, before whom he could lay every grief and doubt, who
+incessantly sympathized with, and cared for him, and, like a good
+father, either granted or denied the requests of his heart. Thus he
+learned to pray, and how ardent his prayers became! Now he was able to
+live in tranquillity, being daily and hourly in communion with his God,
+whom he had at last found; his intercourse with the Highest became more
+confidential than with those dearest to him on earth. When he poured
+out his whole soul before Him, he obtained rest, holy peace, and a
+feeling of inexpressible happiness; he felt himself a portion of God,
+and this sense of intimate communion with Him he preserved during the
+whole remainder of his life. He needed no longer the distant paths of
+the old Church; with his God in his heart he could defy the whole
+world. He already ventured to believe, that teaching must be false
+which laid such great weight on works of penance; that besides these
+there remained only cold satisfaction and ceremonious confession; and
+when later he learned from Melancthon that the Greek word for penance,
+"_Metanoia_," denotes literally "a change of heart," it appeared to him
+as a wonderful revelation. On this foundation was built that confidence
+of faith, with which he brought forward the words of Scripture in
+opposition to the prescriptions of the Church.
+
+It was in this way that Luther, whilst still in the monastery, attained
+to inward freedom. The whole of his later teaching, his struggle
+against the indulgences, his unshaken firmness, and his method of
+scriptural exposition, all rest on the inward process by which as a
+monk he had found his God; and one may truly say that the new period of
+German history began with Luther's cloister prayers. Life soon placed
+him under its hammer, to harden the pure metal of his soul.
+
+Luther unwillingly took the Professorship of Dialectics in the new
+university of Wittenberg, in 1508; he would rather have taught that new
+theology which he already began to consider the truth. It is known that
+in the year 1510 he went to Rome on the business of his order; how
+devoutly and piously he lingered in the holy city, and with what dismay
+he was seized on observing the heathenish character of the people of
+Rome, and the worldliness and corrupt morals of the ecclesiastics. But
+deeply as he was shaken by the depravity of the hierarchy, he felt that
+his whole life was still enclosed in it; out of it there was nothing:
+The exalted idea of the Roman Catholic Church, and its triumphant reign
+of 1500 years, fettered even the most powerful minds; and when the
+German in the dress of a Romish priest, and in danger of his life,
+contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome, and stood in amazement before
+the gigantic pillars of the temples, which, according to tradition, had
+once been destroyed by the Goths little did the valiant man from the
+mountains of the old Hermunduren then think, that it would be his own
+fate to destroy the temples of the Rome of the middle ages, more
+completely than the brethren of his ancestors had done in the olden
+time. Luther returned from Rome still a faithful son of the great
+Mother, holding all heretical proceedings, as for example those of the
+Bohemians, in detestation. He sympathized warmly in Reuchlin's dispute
+with the Cologne inquisitor, and about 1512 had sided with the
+Humanitarians. But even then he began to find something in their
+teaching which separated him from them. When some years later he was at
+Gotha, he did not visit the worthy Mutianus Rufus, though he wrote him
+a very civil letter of excuse. Soon after, he was much wounded by the
+coldness and worldly tone of Erasmus's dialogues, in which theological
+sinners are turned into ridicule. The profane worldliness of the
+Humanitarians did not suit the earnest faith of Luther; it aroused that
+pride which had already taken root in his soul, and caused him
+afterwards to wound the sensitive Erasmus in a letter intended to be
+conciliatory. Even the form of literary moderation adopted by Luther at
+this time, gives us the impression of being wrung by the pressure of
+Christian humility from a stubborn spirit.
+
+He felt himself already strong and secure in his faith: in 1506 he
+wrote to Spalatinus, who was the connecting link between him and the
+Elector, Frederic the Wise, that the Elector was of all men most
+knowing in secular wisdom, but in things pertaining to God and the
+salvation of souls, he was struck with sevenfold blindness.
+
+Luther had reason for the opinion here expressed, for the domestic
+disposition of this sober-minded prince showed itself in his anxiety to
+provide for his home the means of grace bestowed by the old Church.
+Amongst other things he had a particular fancy for relics, and
+Staupitz, vicar-general of the Augustine monks in Germany, was at that
+time engaged in collecting these treasures for the Elector. This
+absence of his superior was very important to Luther, for he had to
+fill his place. He was already a man of high repute in his order; but
+though a professor at Wittenberg, he continued to reside in his
+monastery, and generally wore his monk's dress. He visited the thirty
+monasteries of his congregation, deposed priors, delivered strong
+rebukes on account of lax discipline, severely admonished criminal
+monks, and had become in 1517 a man of fully developed character and
+commanding powers; yet he still preserved somewhat of the trusting
+simplicity of the monastic brother.
+
+Thus, when he had affixed the Theses against Tetzel to the church door,
+he writes confidingly to the Archbishop Albrecht of Maintz, the
+protector of the trader in indulgences. Full of the popular faith in
+the good sense and the good will of the governing powers, Luther
+thought--he often said so later--nothing was necessary but to represent
+straightforwardly to the princes of the Church the injurious effects
+and immorality of these malpractices.[27] But how childish did this
+zeal of the monk appear to the smooth and worldly prince of the Church!
+That which had roused such deep indignation in the upright man, had
+from the archbishop's point of view long been a settled question. The
+sale of indulgences was a much lamented evil in the Church, but
+unavoidable, as are to politicians many regulations not good in
+themselves, but necessary to preserve some great interests. The
+greatest interest of the archbishops and the guardians of the Romish
+Church was their dominion, which was to be won and maintained by such
+means of acquiring money. The greatest interest of Luther and the
+people was truth; here, therefore, their paths separated.
+
+Thus Luther entered into the struggle, full of faith, still a true son
+of the Church, and with all the German devotedness to authority; but
+yet his firm connection with his God worked in him strongly against
+this authority. He was then thirty-four years of age, in the full
+vigour of his strength, of middle size, thin, but strongly made, so
+that he appeared tall by the side of the small delicate boyish figure
+of Melancthon. Fiery eyes, whose intense brilliancy was almost
+overpowering, glowed in a face in which one could perceive the effects
+of night watches and inward struggles. Though a man of great repute,
+not only in his order, but in the university, he was no great scholar;
+he first began to learn Greek with Melancthon, and soon afterwards
+Hebrew; he possessed no great compass of book learning, and never had
+any ambition to shine as a Latin poet. But he was astonishingly well
+read in the Holy Scriptures and some of the Fathers, and whatever he
+took up he worked out profoundly. He was unwearied in his care for the
+souls of his congregation, a zealous preacher, and a warm friend; he
+had a certain frank gaiety, together with a self-possessed demeanour,
+and much courteous tact; the certainty of his convictions appeared in
+his social intercourse, and gave a cheerful radiance to his
+countenance. He was irritable, and easily moved to tears; the trifling
+events of the day excited and disturbed him; but when he was called
+upon for any great effort, and had subdued the first agitation of his
+nerves--which, for instance, had overcome him on his first entrance at
+the Imperial Diet at Worms--he then attained a wonderful composure and
+confidence. He did not know what fear was; indeed, his lion nature took
+pleasure in the most dangerous situations. The malicious snares of his
+enemies, and the dangers to which his life was occasionally exposed, he
+seemed to consider hardly worth speaking about. The foundation of this
+more than human heroism--if one may venture to call it so--was the firm
+personal union between him and his God. For a long period, with smiles
+and inward gladness, he desired to serve truth and God by becoming a
+martyr. A fearful struggle still lay before him, but it was not caused
+by the opposition of men; he had to contend constantly for years
+against the devil himself; he overcame also the terror of hell, which
+threatened to obscure his reason. Such a man might be destroyed, but
+could hardly be conquered.
+
+The period of struggle which now follows, from the beginning of the
+dispute about indulgences to his departure from Wartburg, the time of
+his greatest triumph and greatest popularity, is that of which perhaps
+most is known, and yet it appears to us that his character even then is
+not rightly judged.
+
+Nothing in this period is more remarkable than the way in which Luther
+gradually became estranged from the Romish Church. He was sober-minded
+and without ambition, and clung with deep reverence to the high idea of
+the Church, that community of believers fifteen hundred years old; yet
+in four short years he departed from the faith of his fathers, and
+shook himself free of the soil in which he had been so firmly rooted.
+During this whole time he had to maintain the struggle alone, or at
+least with very few faithful confederates: after 1518 Melancthon was
+united with him. He overcame all the dangers of fierce encounters, not
+only against enemies, but against the anxious dissuasions of honest
+friends and patrons. Three times did the Romish party try to silence
+him by the authority of Cajetan, the persuasive eloquence of Miltitz,
+and the unseasonable assiduity of the pugnacious Eckius; three times he
+addressed the Pope in letters which are among the most valuable
+documents of that century. Then came the separation: he was
+anathematized and excommunicated; he burnt--according to the old
+university custom--the enemy's challenge, and with it the possibility
+of return. With joyful confidence he went to Worms, where the princes
+of his nation were to decide whether he should die, or henceforth live
+amongst them, without Pope or Church, by the precepts of the Holy
+Scriptures alone.
+
+When first he published in print the "Theses against Tetzel," he was
+astounded at the prodigious effect they produced in Germany, at the
+venomous hatred of his enemies, and at the tokens of friendly
+approbation which he received from all sides. Had he done anything so
+very unprecedented? The opinions he expressed were entertained by all
+the best men in the Church. When the Bishop of Brandenburg sent the
+Abbot of Lehnin to him, with a request that he would withdraw from the
+press his German sermon upon indulgences and grace, however right its
+contents might be, the poor Augustine friar was deeply moved that so
+great a man should hold such friendly and cordial intercourse with him,
+and he felt inclined to give up the publication rather than make
+himself a lion disturbing the Church. He zealously endeavoured to
+refute the report that the Elector had induced him to engage in the
+dispute with Tetzel. "They wish to involve the innocent Prince in the
+odium that belongs to me only." He desired as much as possible to
+preserve peace with Miltitz before Cajetan; only one thing he would not
+do: he would not retract what he had said against the unchristian sale
+of indulgences. But this retraction was the only thing that the
+hierarchy required of him. Long did he continue to wish for peace,
+reconciliation, and a return to the peaceful occupations of his cell;
+but some false assertion of his opponents always reinflamed his blood,
+and every contradiction was followed by a new and sharper stroke of his
+weapons.
+
+The heroic confidence of Luther is striking; even in his first letter
+to Leo X., dated the 30th May, 1518, he is still the faithful son of
+the Church; he still concludes by laying himself at the feet of the
+Pope; offers him his whole life and being, and promises to respect his
+voice as the voice of Christ, whose representative he is as sovereign
+of the Church. But in the midst of all this submission, which became
+him as a monastic brother, these impassioned words burst forth: "If I
+have deserved death, I do not refuse to die." And in the letter itself,
+how strong are the expressions with which he describes the insolence of
+the indulgence vendors! Honest, too, are his expressions of surprise at
+the effect of his Theses, which were difficult to understand, being,
+according to the old custom, composed of enigmatical and involved
+propositions. Good humour pervades the manly words, "What shall I do? I
+cannot retract. I am only an unlearned man, of narrow capacity, not
+highly cultivated, in a century full of intellect and taste, which
+might even put Cicero into a corner. But necessity has no law; the
+goose must cackle among the swans."
+
+The following year all who esteemed Luther endeavoured to bring about a
+reconciliation. Staupitz, Spalatinus, and the Elector scolded,
+entreated, and urged. Even the Pope's chamberlain, Miltitz, praised his
+opinions, whispered to him that he was quite right, entreated, drank
+with, and kissed him; though Luther indeed had reason to believe that
+the courtier had a secret commission to take him if possible a prisoner
+to Rome. The mediators happily hit on a point in which the refractory
+man heartily agreed with them; it was, that respect for the Church must
+be maintained and its unity not destroyed; Luther therefore promised to
+keep quiet and to leave the disputed points to the decision of three
+eminent bishops. Under these circumstances he was pressed to write a
+letter of apology to the Pope; but this letter of the 3rd of March,
+1519, though undoubtedly approved by the mediators and wrung from the
+writer, shows the advance that Luther had already made. Of the humility
+which our theologians discover in it, there is little; it is, however,
+thoroughly cautious and diplomatic in its style. Luther regrets that
+what he has done to defend the honour of the Romish Church has been
+attributed to him as a want of respect; he promises henceforth to be
+silent on the subject of indulgences,--provided his opponents would be
+the same, and to address a letter to the people admonishing them
+loyally to obey the Church,[28] and not estrange themselves from it,
+because his opponents had been insolent and he himself harsh. But all
+these submissive words could not conceal the chasm which already
+separated his spirit from that of the Romish Church. With what cold
+irony he writes: "What shall I do, most holy father? All counsel fails
+me; I cannot bear your anger, and yet know not how to avoid it. It is
+desired that I should retract; if by this what they aim at could be
+effected, I would do so without delay, but the opposition of my
+opponents has spread my writings further than I had ever hoped, and
+they have laid too deep hold on the souls of men. There is now much
+talent, education, and free judgment in our Germany: were I to retract,
+I should, in the opinions of my Germans, cover the Church with still
+greater shame; but it is my opponents who have brought disgrace in
+Germany upon the Romish Church." He concludes his letter politely. "Do
+not doubt my readiness to do more, if it should be in my power. May
+Christ preserve your Holiness. M. Luther."
+
+There is much concealed behind this measured reserve. Even if the
+conceited Eckius had not immediately after stirred up the indignation
+of the whole university of Wittenberg, this letter could hardly have
+availed at Rome as a sign of repentant submission.
+
+The thunderbolt of excommunication was launched; Rome had spoken.
+Luther, now restored to himself, wrote once more to the Pope; it was
+the celebrated letter, which, at the request of the indefatigable
+Miltitz, he antedated, the 6th of September, 1520, in order to ignore
+the bull of excommunication. It is the noble expression of a determined
+spirit which contemplates its opponent from its elevated position,
+grand in its uprightness and noble in its sentiments! He speaks with
+sincere sympathy of the Pope, and of his difficult position; but it is
+the sympathy of a stranger: he still mourns over the Church, but it is
+evident that he has already passed out of it. It is a parting letter
+written with cutting sharpness and confidence, but in a tone of quiet
+sorrow, as of a man separating himself from one whom he had once loved,
+but found unworthy.
+
+Luther had in the course of these years become quite another man; he
+had acquired caution and confidence in intercourse with the great, and
+had gained a dear-bought insight into the political and private
+character of the governing powers. To the peaceful nature of his own
+sovereign nothing could be more painful than this bitter theological
+strife, which, though sometimes advantageous to him politically, always
+disquieted his spirit. Continual endeavours were made at court to
+restrain the Wittenbergers, but Luther was always beforehand with them.
+Whenever the faithful Spalatinus warned him against the publication of
+some new aggressive writing, he received for answer, that it could not
+be helped; that the sheets were already printed, already in many hands,
+and could not be withdrawn.[29] In intercourse also with his opponents
+Luther acquired the confidence of an experienced combatant. He was very
+indignant when in the spring of 1518, Jerome Emser had inveigled him at
+Dresden to a supper, at which he was obliged to contend with angry
+enemies; and still more when he heard that a begging Dominican had
+listened at the door, and had the following day reported all over the
+town that Luther had been put down by the number of his opponents, and
+that the listener had with difficulty restrained himself from springing
+into the room and spitting in his face. At the first interview with
+Cajetan, he placed himself humbly at the feet of the Prince of the
+Church; but after the second, he permitted himself to say that the
+Cardinal was as well suited to his business as an ass to play on the
+harp. He treated the polite Miltitz with corresponding civility; the
+Romanist had hoped to tame the German Bear, but the courtier himself
+was soon put in his proper position, and was made use of by Luther; in
+the disputation at Leipsic with Eckius, the favourable impression
+produced by Luther's unembarrassed, honest, and self-composed
+demeanour, was the best counterbalance to the self-sufficient
+confidence of his dexterous opponent.
+
+But Luther's inward life demands a higher sympathy. It was a fearful
+period for him; he experienced together with a sense of elevation and
+victory, mortal anguish, tormenting doubts, and terrible temptations.
+He, with a few others, stood against the whole of Christendom, always
+opposed by the most powerful and implacable enemies; and these
+comprised all that he had from his youth considered most holy. What if
+he should be in error? He was answerable for every soul that he carried
+away with him. And whither was he taking them? What was there beyond
+the pale of the Church?--Destruction, temporal and eternal ruin.
+Opponents and timid friends cut his heart with reproaches and warnings,
+but incomparably greater was one pain, that secret gnawing and
+uncertainty which he dared not confess to any one. In prayer, indeed,
+he found peace; when his glowing soul soared up to God, he received
+abundance of strength, rest, and cheerfulness; but in his hours of
+relaxation, when his irritable spirit writhed under any obnoxious
+impressions, he felt himself embarrassed, torn asunder, and under the
+interdict of another power which was inimical to his God. From his
+childhood he had known how busily evil spirits hover around men, and
+from the Scriptures he had learned that the devil labours to injure
+even the purest. On his own path lurked busy devils seeking to weaken
+and entice him, and to make countless numbers miserable through him. He
+saw them working in the angry mien of the Cardinal, the sneering
+countenance of Eckius, and indeed in his own soul; and he knew how
+powerful they were in Rome. In his youth he had been tormented by
+apparitions, and now they had returned to him. Out of the dark shadows
+of his study rose the tempter as a spectre, clutching at his reason,
+and when praying, the devil approached him, even under the form of the
+Saviour, radiant as king of heaven, with his five wounds as the old
+Church represented him. But Luther knew that Christ only approaches
+weak man in his word, or in humble form, as He hung upon the cross; so
+by a violent effort he collected himself and cried out to the
+apparition: "Away with thee, thou vile devil!" then the spectre
+vanished.[30] Thus again and again for years did the stout heart of the
+man struggle with wild excitement. It was a gloomy conflict between
+reason and delusion; he always came out as conqueror, the primitive
+strength of his healthy character gained the victory. In long hours of
+prayer the stormy waves of excitement were calmed; his solid
+understanding and his conscience led him always from doubt to security,
+and he felt this expansion of his soul as a gracious inspiration from
+his God. It was after such experiences, that he, who had been so
+anxious and timid, became firm as steel, indifferent to the judgment of
+men, intrepid and inexorable.
+
+He appeared quite another person in his conflicts with earthly enemies;
+in these he almost always showed the confidence of superiority, and
+especially in his literary disputes.
+
+The activity he displayed from this period as a writer was gigantic. Up
+to the year 1517, he had published little; but after that he became not
+only the most copious, but the most popular writer of Germany. By the
+energy of his style, the power of his arguments, the fire and vehemence
+of his convictions, he carried all before him. No one had as yet spoken
+with such power to the people. His language adapted itself to every
+voice and every key; sometimes brief, terse, and sharp as steel; at
+others, with the rich fullness of a mighty stream his words flowed upon
+the people; and a figurative expression or a striking comparison made
+the most difficult things comprehensible. He had a wonderful creative
+power, and pre-eminent facility in the use of language; when he took
+his pen, his spirit seemed to emancipate itself: one perceives in his
+sentences the cheerful warmth that animated him, and they overflow with
+the magic creations of the heart. This power is very visible in his
+attacks upon individual opponents, and was closely allied to rudeness,
+which caused much perplexity to his admiring cotemporaries. He liked
+also to play with his opponents: his fancy clothed them in a grotesque
+mask, and he rallied, derided, and hit at this fantastic figure, in
+expressions by no means measured, and not always very becoming. But the
+good humour which shone out from the midst of these insults had
+generally a conciliatory effect, though not upon those whom they
+touched. Scarcely ever do we perceive any small enmities, but
+frequently inexhaustible kindness of heart. Sometimes forgetting the
+dignity of the reformer, he played antics like a German peasant child,
+or rather like a mischievous hobgoblin. How he buffeted his
+adversaries! now with the blows of an angry giant's club, now with the
+rod of a buffoon. He delighted in transforming their names into
+something ridiculous; thus they were known in the Wittenberger's circle
+by the names of beasts and fools: Eckius became Dr. Geek,[31]
+Murner[32] was called Katerkopf[33] and Krallen; Emser, who had his
+crest (the head of a horned goat) engraved on every controversial
+writing, was insulted by being changed into Bock;[34] the Latin name of
+the apostate Humanitarian, Cochlaeus, was translated back into German,
+and Luther greeted him as Schnecke (the snail) with impenetrable
+armour, and--it grieves one to say--sometimes as Rotzloeffel.[35] Still
+more annoying, and even shocking in the eyes of his cotemporaries, was
+the vehement recklessness with which he broke forth against hostile
+princes; the Duke George of Saxony, cousin to his own sovereign, was
+the only one he was occasionally obliged to spare. The profligate
+despotism of Henry VIII. of England was abhorrent to the soul of the
+German reformer, who abused him terribly, and he dealt with Henry of
+Brunswick as a naughty school-boy. It cannot, we fear, be denied that
+it was this alloy to the moral dignity of his character that acted as
+the salt, which made his writings so irresistible to the earnest
+Germans of the sixteenth century.
+
+In the autumn of 1517, he had a controversy with the reprobate
+Dominican; in the winter of 1520, he burnt the papal bull; in the
+spring of 1518, he still laid himself at the feet of the Pope as the
+vicegerent of Christ; but in the spring of 1521, he declared before the
+Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios at the Imperial Diet at Worms, that
+he did not trust either in the Pope or the councils alone, but only in
+the witness of the Holy Scripture and the convictions of his own
+reason. He had now become a free man, but the papal interdict and the
+ban of the empire hung over him; he was inwardly free, but he was free
+like the wild beast of the forest, with the bloodthirsty hounds giving
+tongue after him. He had now arrived at the acme of his life: the
+powers against which he had revolted, and even the thoughts which he
+had excited in the people, began now to work against his life and
+doctrines.
+
+It appears that already at Worms, Luther was warned that he must
+disappear for a time. The habits of the Franconian knights, among whom
+he had many faithful adherents, gave rise to the idea of carrying him
+off by armed men. The Elector Frederic planned the abduction with his
+confidential advisers; yet it was quite in the style of this Prince to
+arrange that he himself should not know the place of his confinement,
+that in case of necessity he might be able to affirm his ignorance. It
+was not easy to make this plan acceptable to Luther, for his valiant
+heart had long overcome all earthly fear, and with ecstatic pleasure,
+in which there was much enthusiasm and some humour, he watched the
+attempts of the Romanists who wished to take away his life; this,
+however, was under the disposal of another and higher power, which
+spoke through his mouth.[36] He unwillingly submitted; but however
+cleverly the abduction was arranged, it was not easy to keep the
+secret. In the beginning, Melancthon was the only one of the
+Wittenbergers who knew the place of Luther's concealment; but Luther
+was not the man to accommodate himself, even to the most well-meaning
+intrigue, and soon messengers were actively passing to and fro between
+the Wartburg and Wittenberg, so that whatever circumspection was
+employed in the care of the letters, it was difficult to prevent the
+spreading of reports. Luther in the castle, learned what was going on
+in the great world sooner than the Wittenbergers; he received accounts
+of all the news of his university, and endeavoured to raise the courage
+of his friends and to guide their politics. It is touching to see how
+he tried to strengthen Melancthon, whose unpractical nature caused him
+to feel bitterly the absence of his stronger friend. "Things must go on
+without me," Luther writes to him. "Only take courage and you will no
+longer need me; if, when I come out, I cannot return to Wittenberg, I
+must go out into the world. You are the men to maintain, without me,
+the cause of the Lord against the devil." His letters are dated from
+the "aerial regions," from "Patmos," from the "wilderness," "from among
+the birds who sing sweetly among the branches, and praise God day and
+night with all their powers." Once he endeavoured to be cunning:
+writing to Spalatinus, he enclosed a crafty letter, saying, that it was
+believed without foundation that he was at Wartburg. That he was living
+among faithful brothers, and that it was remarkable no one thought of
+Bohemia; it concluded with a not ill-natured thrust at Duke George of
+Saxony, his keenest enemy. This letter, Spalatinus, with pretended
+negligence, was to lose, that it might come into the hands of his
+enemies; but in such diplomacy Luther was by no means consistent, for
+no sooner was his lion nature roused by any intelligence, than he made
+a hasty decision to burst forth to Erfurt or Wittenberg. He bore with
+difficulty the tedium of his residence; he was treated with the
+greatest consideration by the commander of the castle, and this care
+showed itself chiefly, as was then the custom, in providing him with
+the best food and drink. The good living, the absence of excitement,
+the fresh air on horseback, which the theologian enjoyed, worked both
+on soul and body. He had brought with him from Worms, a bodily ailment
+from which arose hours of dark despondency, which made him incapable of
+work.
+
+Two days successively he went out hunting; but his heart was with the
+poor hares and partridges, which were hunted by a host of men and dogs
+into a net. "Innocent little creatures! thus do the papists hunt." To
+preserve the life of a little hare he concealed it in the sleeve of his
+coat; then came the hounds and broke the limbs of the little animal
+within the protecting coat. "Thus does Satan gnash his teeth against
+the souls I seek to save." Luther had enough to do to defend himself
+and his from Satan; he had thrown off all the authorities of the
+Church, and now stood shuddering alone, only one thing remained to him,
+the Scriptures. The old Church had been continually expounding
+Christianity; traditions which were concurrent with the Scriptures,
+councils and decrees of the Pope, had kept the faith in constant
+agitation. Luther placed in its stead the word of Scripture, which
+while it brought deliverance from a wilderness of erroneous soulless
+conceptions, gave threatenings of other dangers. What was the Bible?
+There were about two centuries between the oldest and the newest
+writings of the holy book. The New Testament itself was not written by
+Christ, nor even always by those who had received his holy teaching
+from himself; it had been compiled long after his death, portions of it
+might have been delivered incorrectly; all was written in a foreign
+language that Germans could with difficulty understand. Expounders of
+the greatest discernment were in danger of interpreting falsely if not
+enlightened by the grace of God as the Apostles had been. The old
+Church had brought to its assistance that sacrament which gave to the
+priest's office this enlightenment; indeed the holy father assumed so
+much of the omnipotence of God, that he considered himself in the right
+even where his will was contrary to the Scripture. The reformer had
+nothing but his weak human understanding and his prayers.
+
+It was indeed imperative that Luther should use his reason, for a
+certain degree of criticism upon the Holy Scriptures was necessary. He
+did not set an equal value upon all the books of the New Testament: it
+is known that he had doubts about the Revelations of St. John, and he
+did not much value the Epistle of St. James; but objections to
+particular parts never disturbed his faith in the whole; his belief in
+the verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures (with the exception of a
+few books) could not be shaken; they were to him what was dearest on
+earth, the groundwork of his whole knowledge; he was so thoroughly
+imbued with their spirit, that he lived as it were under their shadow.
+The more deeply he felt his responsibility, the more intense was the
+ardour with which he clung to the Scriptures.[37] A powerful instinct
+for what was rational and judicious helped him over many dangers; his
+penetration had nothing of the hair-splitting sophistry of the old
+teachers; he despised unnecessary subtleties, and with admirable tact
+he left undecided what appeared to him not essential. But if he was not
+to become a frantic or godless man, nothing remained to him but to
+ground his new doctrines on the words which were spoken and written
+fifteen hundred years before him, and he fell in some case into what
+his opponent Eckius called "Black-letter style."
+
+Under these restraints his method was formed. If he had a question to
+solve, he collected all the passages in Scripture which appeared to him
+to contain an answer; he examined each passage to understand their
+mutual bearing, and thus arrived at his conclusions. By this mode of
+proceeding, he brought the Scriptures within the compass of an ordinary
+understanding; for example, in the year 1522, he undertook, out of the
+Holy Scriptures, to place marriage on a new moral foundation; he
+severely criticised the eighteen reasons given by ecclesiastical law,
+forbidding and dissolving marriages, and condemned the unworthy
+favouring of the rich in preference to the poor.
+
+It was this same system which made him so pertinacious in his
+transactions with the Reformers in the year 1529, when he wrote on the
+table before him: "This _is_ my body;" and looked gloomily on the tears
+and outstretched hands of Zwinglius. Never had that formidable man
+shown more powerful convictions, convictions won in vehement wrestling
+with his doubts and the devil. It may be considered by some as an
+imperfect system; but there was a genial strength in it, that made his
+own view more available to the cultivation and heart-cravings of his
+time, than even he himself anticipated.
+
+Besides these great trials, the proscribed monk at the Wartburg was
+exposed to smaller temptations: he had long, by almost superhuman
+spiritual activity, overcome, what great self-distrust led him to
+consider as merely sensual inclinations; still nature stirred
+powerfully in him, and he many times begged of his dear Melancthon to
+pray for him concerning this.
+
+It happened providentially, that just at this time at Wittenberg the
+restless spirit of Karlstadt took up the subject of the marriage of
+priests, in a pamphlet in which he decided that vows of celibacy were
+not binding upon priests and monks. The Wittenbergers were in general
+agreed on this question, especially Melancthon, who was perfectly
+unbiassed, as he himself had never entered into holy orders, and had
+been married two years.
+
+Thus a web of thoughts and moral problems was cast from the outer world
+upon Luther's soul, the threads of which enclosed the whole of his
+later life. Whatever joy of heart and earthly happiness was vouchsafed
+to him henceforth, rested on the answer to this question. It was the
+happiness of his home that made it possible for him to bear the trials
+of his later years; by that the full blossom of his rich heart was
+first unfolded. So graciously did Providence send to him, just in the
+time of his loneliness, the message which was to bind him anew, and
+more firmly than ever to his people. Again, the way in which Luther
+treated this problem is quite characteristic; his pious spirit and the
+conservative tendency of his character strove against the hasty and
+superficial way in which Karlstadt reasoned. It may be assumed, that
+his own feelings made him suspicious as to whether this critical
+question was not made use of by the devil, to tempt the children of
+God; and yet the constraint upon the poor monks in the monasteries
+grieved him much. He examined the Scriptures, and easily made up his
+mind as to the marriage of priests; but there was nothing in the Bible
+about monks: "Where the Scripture is silent, man is unsafe." It
+appeared to him, withal, a laughable idea that his friends could marry,
+and he wrote to the cautious Spalatinus: "Good God, our Wittenbergers
+wish also to give wives to the monks! now they shall not so encumber
+me;" and he warns him ironically: "Have a care that you also do not get
+married;" yet this problem occupied him incessantly. Men live fast in
+great times. Gradually, by Melancthon's reasoning, and we may add by
+fervent prayer, he arrived at certainty. What, almost unknown to
+himself, brought about the decision, was the perception that it had
+become wise and necessary for the moral foundation of social life, that
+the monasteries should be opened. For nearly three months this question
+had been struggling in his mind; on the 1st November, 1521, he wrote
+the afore-mentioned letter to his father.
+
+Unbounded was the effect of his words on the people; they produced a
+general excitement: out of almost all the cloister doors monks and nuns
+slipped away; it was at first singly and by stealth, but soon whole
+monasteries and convents dissolved themselves. When Luther in the
+following spring returned to Wittenberg, his heart full of anxious
+cares, the fugitive monks and nuns caused him a great deal of trouble.
+Secret letters were forwarded to him from all quarters, chiefly from
+excited nuns who had been placed as children in convents by harsh
+parents, and being now without money or protection, looked to the great
+Reformer for help; it was not unnatural that they should throng to
+Wittenberg. Nine nuns came from the foundation for noble ladies at
+Nimpschen, amongst them were a Staupitz, two Zeschau, and Catherine von
+Bora; besides these there were sixteen other nuns to take care of, and
+so forth. He was much grieved for these poor people, and hastened to
+place them under the protection of worthy families. Sometimes, indeed,
+it became too much of a good thing, and the crowd of runaway monks
+especially annoyed him. He complains: "They desire immediately to
+marry, and are unfit for every kind of work." He gave great scandal by
+his bold solution of this difficult question; and there was much that
+was very painful to his feelings; for amongst those who now returned in
+tumult to social life, though there were some high-minded men, others
+were coarse and dissolute. Yet all this did not for one moment make him
+turn aside; he became, according to his nature, more decided from
+opposition. When, in 1524, he published the history of the sufferings
+of a nun, Florentina von Oberweimar, he repeated in the dedication what
+he had so often preached: "God often testifies in the Scriptures that
+He desires no compulsory service, and no one can become his, who is not
+so in heart and soul. God help us! Is there nothing in this that speaks
+to us? Have we not ears and understanding? I say it again, God will not
+have compulsory service; I say it a third time, I say it a hundred
+thousand times, God will have no compulsory service."[38]
+
+Thus Luther entered the last period of his life. His disappearance in
+the Thuringian forest had made an immense sensation. His opponents, who
+were accused of his murder, trembled before the indignation which was
+roused against them, both in city and country. The interruption,
+however, of his public activity was pregnant with evil to him; as long
+as he was at Wittenberg, the centre of the struggle, his word and his
+pen could dominate the great spiritual movement both in the north and
+south, but in his absence it worked arbitrarily in different
+directions, and in many heads. One of Luther's oldest associates began
+the confusion, and Wittenberg itself was the scene of action of a wild
+commotion. Luther could no longer bear to remain at the Wartburg; he
+had already been once secretly to Wittenberg; he now returned there
+publicly, against the will of the Elector. Then began an heroic
+struggle against old friends, and against conclusions drawn from his
+own doctrines. His activity was superhuman; he thundered incessantly
+from the pulpit, and his pen flew over the pages, in his cell. But he
+was not able to bring back all the erring minds, neither could he
+prevent the excitement of the people from gathering into a political
+storm. What was more, he could not hinder the spiritual freedom which
+he had won for the Germans, from producing, even in pious and learned
+men, an independent judgment upon faith and life, which was often
+opposed to his own convictions. Then came the dark years of the
+Iconoclastic and Anabaptist struggle, the Peasant war; and the sad
+dispute about the Sacrament. How often at this time did the figure of
+Luther arise gloomy and powerful above the disputants! how often did
+the perversity of men and his own secret doubts, fill him with anxious
+cares about the future of Germany!
+
+In this wild time of fire and sword, the spiritual struggle was carried
+on more nobly and purely by him than by any one else. Every
+interference of earthly power was hateful to him; he did not choose to
+be protected even by his own sovereign, and would not have any human
+support for his teaching. He fought with a sharp pen, alone against his
+enemies; the only pile that he lighted was for a paper: he hated the
+Pope as he did the devil, but he had always preached toleration and
+Christian forbearance towards papists; he suspected many of having a
+secret compact with the devil, but he never burnt a witch. In all the
+Roman Catholic countries the stake was lighted for the confessors of
+the new faith, and even Hutten was strongly suspected of having cut off
+the ears of some monks; but so benevolent were Luther's feelings, that
+he had heartfelt compassion for the humbled Tetzel, and wrote him a
+consolatory letter. His highest political principle was obedience to
+the authorities ordained by God, and he never rose in opposition to
+them except when necessary for the service of God. On his departure
+from Worms, although on the point of being declared free from
+interdict, he was forbidden to preach; he did not, however, desist from
+doing so, but suffered great anxiety lest it should be imputed to him
+as disobedience. His conception of the unity of the Empire was quite
+primitive and popular; the reigning princes and electors, according to
+the laws of the Empire, owed the same obedience to the Emperor that
+their own subjects did to them.
+
+During the whole course of his life he took a heartfelt interest in
+Charles V., not only in that early period when he greeted him as the
+"Dear youth," but even later, when he knew well, the Spanish Burgundian
+only tolerated the German reformation for political reasons: he said of
+him, "He is good and quiet; he does not speak as much in one year as I
+do in a day; he is the favourite of fortune:" he had pleasure in
+extolling the Emperor's moderation, discretion, and long sufferance;
+and after he had begun to condemn his policy, and to distrust his
+character, he still insisted upon his companions talking with reverence
+of the sovereign of Germany; for he said, apologetically, "A politician
+cannot be as candid as we ecclesiastics." In 1530 he gave it as his
+opinion, that it would be wrong in the Elector to arm in opposition to
+the Emperor: it was not till 1537 that he unwillingly adopted a more
+enlarged view; but even then, the threatened Prince was not to take up
+arms first. So strongly in this man of the people still dwelt the
+honourable tradition of a firm well-ordered state, at a time when the
+proud edifice of that old Saxon and Frank empire was crumbling into
+ruin; but there was no trace of servile feeling in this loyalty: when
+the Elector on one occasion desired him to write a plausible letter,
+his truthful feeling revolted against the Emperor's title of "Most
+Gracious Sovereign," for the Emperor was not graciously disposed
+towards him; and in his intercourse with people of rank he showed a
+careless frankness that shocked the courtiers. To his own sovereign he
+had with all submission spoken truths as only a great character can
+speak, and to which only a good heart will listen. He had in general a
+poor opinion of the German princes, though he esteemed individuals
+among them; frequent and just are his complaints of their incapacity,
+licentiousness, and other vices:[39] the nobles too he treated with
+irony; the coarseness of most of them displeased him extremely.[40] He
+felt a democratic aversion to the hard and selfish lawyers who
+conducted the affairs of the princes, courted favour, and tormented the
+poor; to the best of them he allowed only a doubtful prospect of the
+grace of God: his whole heart, on the other hand, was with the
+oppressed: he blamed the peasants sometimes for their obduracy and
+their usuriousness, but he commended their class, regarded their vices
+with heartfelt compassion, and remembered that he sprang from them.
+These were his views on worldly government, but he served the
+spiritual: he held firmly the popular idea, that there should be two
+ruling powers,--the Church, and the princes, and he thought he was
+justified in proudly placing the domination of the former above that of
+worldly politics. He strove indignantly to prevent the governing powers
+from assuming the control in matters pertaining to the care of souls
+and to the autonomy of his communities. He estimated all politics with
+reference to the interests of his faith and according to the laws of
+his Bible. When the Scripture seemed to be endangered by worldly
+politics, he raised his voice, indifferent where it hit: it was not his
+fault that he was strong and the princes weak, and it ought to be no
+reproach to him, the monk, the professor, and the shepherd of souls, if
+the allied Protestant princes withstood the cunning statesmancraft of
+the Emperor, like a herd of deer; he himself was so conscious that
+politics were not his business, that when on one occasion the active
+Landgrave of Hesse would not follow ecclesiastical advice, he was the
+more esteemed for it by Luther: "He has a good head of his own; he will
+be successful; he thoroughly understands the world."
+
+Since Luther's return to Wittenberg a democratic agitation had been
+fermenting amongst the people. Luther had opened the cloisters, and now
+people desired to be delivered from many other social evils, such as
+the destitution of the peasants, the ecclesiastical imposts, the
+malversation of the benefices, and the bad administration of justice.
+The honest heart of Luther sympathized with this movement, and he
+exhorted and reproved the landed proprietors and princes; but when the
+wild waves of the Peasant war poured over his own country, when deeds
+of bloody violence wounded his spirit, and he found that factious men
+and enthusiasts exercised a dominion over the multitudes which
+threatened his doctrines with destruction, he threw himself with the
+deepest indignation into the struggle against the rough masses. Wild
+and warlike was his appeal to the princes; he was horrified at what had
+taken place: the gospel of love had been disgraced by the headstrong
+wilfulness of those who had called themselves its followers. His policy
+was right; there was in Germany, unfortunately, no better power than
+that of the princes; on them, in spite of everything, rested the future
+of the father-land, for which neither the peasant serfs, nor the
+rapacious noblemen, nor the dispersed cities of the empire, which stood
+like islands in the midst of the surging sea, could give a guarantee:
+he was entirely in the right; but in the same headstrong unbending way,
+which had hitherto made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular,
+he now turned against the people. A cry of dismay and horror was raised
+among the masses. He was a traitor. He, who for eight years had been
+their hero and darling, suddenly became the most unpopular of men:
+again his life and liberty were threatened; even five years afterwards
+it was dangerous for him to visit his sick father at Mansfeld, on
+account of the peasants. The anger of the multitude worked also against
+his teaching; the field preachers and new apostles treated him as a
+lost, corrupt man.
+
+He was excommunicated and outlawed by the higher powers, and cursed by
+the people; even many well-meaning men had been displeased with his
+attack on celibacy and monastic life. The nobility of the country
+threatened to waylay the outlaw on the high-roads, because he had
+destroyed the convents in which, as in foundling hospitals, the
+respectable daughters of poor nobles were thrown in early childhood.
+The Romish party triumphed; the new heresy was deprived of that which
+had hitherto made it powerful; Luther's life and doctrines seemed
+doomed to destruction.
+
+It was at this time that Luther determined to marry. Catherine von Bora
+had lived at Wittenberg for two years in the house of Reichenbach, the
+town clerk, afterwards burgomaster. She was a fine young woman of
+stately manners, the deserted daughter of a noble family of Meissen.
+Twice had Luther endeavoured to obtain a husband for her, as with
+fatherly care he had already done for many of her companions; at last
+Catherine declared that she would not marry any man, unless it were
+Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf. Luther was astonished, but he
+came to a rapid decision. Accompanied by Lucas Kranach, he went to woo
+her, and was married to her on the spot. He then invited his friends to
+his marriage feast, begged for venison from the court, which it was the
+habit of the prince to present to the professors on their wedding days,
+and received from the city of Wittenberg, as a bridal present, wine for
+the feast. We would fain understand what passed through Luther's soul
+at that time; his whole being was strained to the uttermost; his strong
+and wild primitive nature was excited on all sides; he was deeply
+shaken by the evils arising up everywhere around him, the burning
+villages and slaughtered men. If he had been a mere fanatic he would
+have ended in despair; but above the stormy disquiet, which is
+perceptible in him up to his marriage, a bright light shone; the
+conviction that he was the guardian of the divine law amongst the
+Germans, and that in order to protect social order and morals, he was
+bound to guide and not to follow the opinions of men. However eagerly
+and warmly he might declaim in individual cases, he appears now
+decidedly conservative and more firmly self-contained than ever. He
+had, moreover, the impression that it was ordained that he should not
+live much longer, and many were the hours in which he looked forward
+with a longing to martyrdom. He concluded his marriage in full harmony
+with his convictions. He had entered fully into the necessity of
+marriage and its conformity with Scripture, and he had for some years
+pressed all his acquaintances to marry, at last even his own opponent
+the Archbishop of Mentz. He himself gives two reasons for his decision.
+He had robbed his father for many years of his son; it would be to him
+a kind of expiation, in case he should die first, to leave old Hans a
+grandson. Besides this, it was also an act of defiance; his opponents
+triumphed that Luther was humbled, all the world was offended with him,
+and by this he would give them still more offence.
+
+He was a man of strong passions, but there was no trace of coarse
+sensuality; and we may assume that the best reason, which he did not,
+however, avow to any of his friends, was yet the most decisive, and
+that was, that there had long been gossip amongst people, and he
+himself knew that Catherine was favourably disposed towards him. "I am
+not passionately in love, but am very fond of her," he writes to one of
+his dearest friends. And this marriage, concluded contrary to the
+opinion of his cotemporaries, and amidst the derision of his opponents,
+was an act to which we Germans owe as much, as we do to all the years
+in which, as an ecclesiastic of the old Church, he had by deeds
+supported his theology. For from henceforth the father, husband, and
+citizen became also the reformer of the domestic life of his nation;
+and that which was the blessing of his earthly life, in which Roman
+Catholics and Protestants to this day have an equal interest, arose
+from a marriage contracted between an outcast monk and a fugitive nun.
+He had still, for one-and-twenty laborious years, to carry out the
+moulding of his nation. His greatest work, the translation of the
+Bible, which he had now brought to a conclusion, in union with his
+Wittenberger friends, gave him an entire mastery over the language of
+the people, a language, the richness and power of which first became
+practically known by this book. We know in how noble a spirit he
+undertook the work: he wished to produce a book for the people, for
+that purpose he studied assiduously the forms of speech, proverbs, and
+technical expressions used by them. The Humanitarians still continued
+to write clumsy and involved German, a bad resemblance to the Latin
+style. The nation now obtained for its daily reading a work which in
+simple words and short sentences gave expression to the deepest wisdom
+and the highest spiritual treasures. The German Bible, together with
+Luther's other writings, became the groundwork of the new German
+language; and this language, in which our whole literature and
+spiritual life have found expression, is an indestructible possession,
+which, though marred and spoilt, has even in the worst times reminded
+the different branches of the German race that they belong to one
+family. Individuals are now discarding their native dialects, and the
+language of education, poetry, and science which was created by Luther
+is the bond by which the souls of all Germans are united. Not less was
+done by this same man for the social life of Germany. Private devotion,
+marriage, the education of children, corporate life, school life,
+manners, amusements, all feelings of the heart, all social pleasures
+were consecrated by his teachings and writings; everywhere he
+endeavoured to place new boundary stones and to dig deeper foundations.
+There was no sphere of human duty over which he did not constrain his
+countrymen to meditate. By his numerous sermons and essays he worked on
+the public; by countless letters in which he gave counsel and comfort
+to inquirers he worked on individuals. He urged incessantly upon all
+the necessity of self-examination, and the duty of being well assured
+what was owing from the father to the child, from the subject to the
+sovereign, and from the chief magistrate to his community; the progress
+he thus made was important in this respect, that he freed the
+consciences of people; and in the place of outward pressure, against
+which egotism had haughtily rebelled, he substituted everywhere a
+genial self-control. How beautifully he comprehended the necessity of
+cultivating the minds of children by school instruction, especially in
+the old languages! How he recommended his beloved music to be
+introduced into the schools! How great his views were when he advised
+the magistrates to establish city libraries; and, again, how
+conscientiously he endeavoured to secure freedom of choice in
+matrimony! He had overthrown the old sacrament of marriage; but higher,
+nobler, and freer, he established the inward relation of man and wife.
+He had attacked the unwieldy monastic schools; everywhere in village
+and city, as far as his influence reached, flourished better
+institutions for the education of youth; he had removed the mass and
+the Latin chantings; he gave instead, to both disciples and opponents,
+regular preaching and the German chorale.
+
+His desire to find something divine in all that was lovely, good, and
+amiable, which the world presented to him, always kept increasing. With
+this feeling he was ever pious and wise, whether in the fields, or in
+decorous gaiety among his companions, in his playfulness with his wife,
+or when holding his children in his arms. He rejoiced when standing
+before a fruit tree at the splendour of the fruit: "If Adam had not
+fallen, we might thus have admired all trees." He would take a large
+pear admiringly in his hands, and exclaim: "See, six months ago it was
+deeper under the earth than its own length and breadth, and has come
+from the extreme end of the roots; these smallest, and least thought of
+things are the most wonderful of God's works. He is in the smallest of
+his creations, even to the leaf of a tree or a blade of grass." Two
+little birds had made a nest in his garden, and flew about in the
+evening, being frightened by the passersby: he thus addressed them:
+"Ah, you dear little birds, do not fly away. I wish you well from my
+heart, if you could only trust me--though I own we do not thus trust
+our God." He had great pleasure in the companionship of true-hearted
+men; he enjoyed drinking wine with them, and conversation flowed
+pleasantly on both great and small matters; he sang, or played the
+lute, and arranged singing-classes. He delighted in the art of music,
+as it yielded innocent enjoyment. He was lenient in his judgment about
+dancing, and spoke with indulgence--fifty years before Shakespeare--of
+plays: "For they teach," said he, "like a mirror how every one should
+behave himself."[41]
+
+Once when sitting with Melancthon, the mild and learned master Philip
+prudently moderated the too bold assertions of his vehement friend.
+Rich people were the subject of conversation, and Frau Kate could not
+resist remarking, eagerly, "If my husband had held such opinions he
+would have become very rich." Then Melancthon replied decidedly: "That
+is impossible, for those who thus strive after the good of the
+community cannot attend to their own interest." There was one subject,
+however, on which both men liked to argue. Melancthon was a great lover
+of astrology; Luther looked on this science with sovereign contempt; on
+the other hand, by his method of Biblical exegesis, and also by his
+secret political views, he had come to the conviction that the end of
+the world was near; and that appeared very doubtful to the sagacious
+Melancthon. When therefore the latter began with his signs and aspects
+of the heavens, and explained that Luther's success was owing to his
+having been born under the sign of the sun, Luther exclaimed: "I have
+no faith in your Sol. I am the son of a peasant; my father,
+grandfather, and ancestors have all been thorough peasants." "Yes,"
+answered Melancthon, "but even in a village you would have become the
+leader, the magistrate, or the head labourer over all others." "But,"
+exclaimed Luther, triumphantly, "I became a Baccalaureus, a master, and
+a monk; that was not written in the stars: after that, I quarrelled
+with the Pope, and he with me. I have taken a nun for my wife, and
+have had children by her; who has seen that in the stars?" Again
+Melancthon--continuing his astrological exposition--began to explain
+about the Emperor Charles; how he was destined to die in the year 1584.
+Then Luther broke out vehemently: "The world will not last so long, for
+when we have driven away the Turks, the prophecy of Daniel will be
+fulfilled, and the end of all things come, then assuredly the last day
+is at hand."
+
+How amiable he was as the father of a family! When his little children
+were standing at the table watching eagerly the peaches and other
+fruit, he said, "Whoever wishes to see a picture of one who rejoices in
+hope, will see it truly portrayed here. Oh, that we could look as
+joyfully for the last day. Adam and Eve must have had far better
+fruits: ours are in comparison only like crabs. The serpent was then, I
+have no doubt, the most beautiful of creatures, amiable and lovely; it
+still has its crest, but after the curse it lost its feet and beautiful
+body." Looking at his little son, just three years old, who was playing
+and talking to himself, he said, "This child is like a drunken man; he
+does not know that he lives, and yet he enjoys life in security,
+jumping and skipping about." He drew the child towards him, and thus
+addressed him: "Thou art our Lord's little innocent, not under the law,
+but under the covenant of grace and forgiveness of sins; thou fearest
+nothing, but art secure and without cares, and what thou doest is
+pure." He then continued: "Parents always love their youngest children
+best; my little Martin is my dearest treasure: the little ones have
+most need of care and love, therefore the love of parents naturally
+descends. What must have been the feeling of Abraham when he had to
+sacrifice his youngest and dearest son? he could not have told Sarah
+about it; this journey must have been a bitter one to him." His beloved
+daughter Magdalen lay dying; he laments thus: "I love her very much,
+but, dear Lord, as it is thy will to take her to thee, I am content to
+know that she is with thee. Magdalen, my little daughter, thou wouldst
+willingly remain with thy father here, yet gladly goest to thy Father
+yonder." The child then said, "Yes, dear father, as God wills it." As
+she was dying, he fell on his knees by the bed, weeping bitterly, and
+praying that God would redeem her. She then passed away in her father's
+arms. When the people came to bury her, he addressed them as was usual,
+saying, "I am joyful in spirit, but the flesh is weak; parting is
+beyond measure grievous. It is a wonderful thing, that, though feeling
+assured of all being well with her, and that she is at peace, one
+should yet feel so sorrowful." His _dominus_, or Herr Kate, as he used
+to call his wife in his letters to his friends, had soon become an apt
+and thrifty housewife. She had great troubles; many children, her
+husband frequently an invalid, a number of boarders (masters and poor
+students), always open house--as it seldom happened that they were
+without learned or distinguished guests, and in addition to all, a
+scanty income and a husband who preferred giving to taking; and who
+once during his wife's confinement got hold in his zeal of the baby's
+christening plate to give in alms.[42] From the way in which Luther
+treated her, we see how happy his family life was, and when he made
+allusions to the glib chattering of women, he had no right to do so,
+for he was by no means a man who was himself scanty in words. Once,
+when his wife appeared much delighted at being able to serve up
+different kinds of fish from the pond in their little garden, the
+doctor was heartily pleased to see her joy, and did not fail to take
+the opportunity of making a pleasant remark upon the happiness of
+contentment. Another time, when he had been reading to her too long in
+the Psalter, and she said that she heard enough upon sacred subjects,
+that she read much daily, and could talk about them, "God only grant
+that she might live accordingly," the doctor sighed at this sensible
+answer, and said, "Thus begins a weariness of the word of God; new
+trifling books will come in the place of the Scriptures, which will
+again be thrown into a corner." But this close union between these two
+excellent persons was still for many years disturbed by a secret
+sorrow. We only learn what was gnawing at the soul of the wife, by
+finding, that when as late as the year 1527, Luther, being dangerously
+ill, took a last leave of her, he spoke these words:--"You are my true
+wedded wife, of that you may feel certain."
+
+Luther's spiritual life was as much a reality to him as his earthly
+one. All the holy personages of the Bible were to him as true friends;
+through his lively imagination he saw them in familiar forms, and with
+the simplicity of a child he liked to picture to himself the various
+circumstances of their life. When Veit Dietrich asked him what kind of
+person he thought the Apostle Paul was, Luther answered quickly, "He
+was an insignificant, lean little man, like Philip Melancthon." He
+formed a pleasing image of the Virgin Mary: he used to say, admiringly,
+"She was a pretty, delicate maiden, and must have had a charming
+voice."
+
+He preferred thinking of the Redeemer as a child with his parents; how
+he took his father's dinner to the timber-yard, and how when he had
+been absent too long, Mary asked him, "Where have you been so long,
+little one?"
+
+The Saviour should be thought of, not as in his glory, nor as the
+fulfiller of the law, conceptions too high and terrible for man; but
+only as a poor sufferer, who lived among and died for sinners.
+
+His God was to him entirely as father and head of the family. He liked
+to meditate on the economy of nature: he was filled with astonishment
+at the quantity of wood which God must always be creating. "No one can
+reckon what God requires to nourish merely sparrows and useless birds:
+in one single year they cost Him more than the income of the King of
+France; and then think of all that remains." "God understands all
+trades: as a tailor He can make a coat for the deer, which might last a
+hundred years; as a shoemaker He gives him shoes to his feet, and by
+means of the dear sun He is a cook. He could become rich indeed, if He
+chose, if He were to withhold the sun and air, and threatened the Pope,
+Emperor, bishops, and doctors with death, if they did not pay Him a
+hundred thousand gulden on the spot. He does not do this, yet we are
+thankless miscreants." He seriously reflected whence came the means of
+nourishment for so many men. Old Hans Luther had maintained that there
+were more men than sheaves of corn; the doctor indeed thought that
+there were more sheaves than men, but that there were more men than
+shocks. "A shock of corn, however, hardly yields a bushel, and that
+will not nourish one man a whole year." Even a dung-heap was a subject
+of pleasant reflection to him. "God is obliged to clear away as well as
+to create; if He had not continually done so, the world would long ago
+have become too full." "When God chastises the godly more severely than
+the godless, He deals with him as a strict father of a family with his
+son, whom he more frequently punishes than the bad servant: but he
+secretly collects treasures as an inheritance for his son, whilst he
+finally casts the servant off." Luther comes joyfully to this
+conclusion: "If God can forgive me for having during twenty years
+offended Him by saying mass, He can also excuse my having sometimes had
+a good drink to his honour--let the world think what it will."
+
+It surprised him much that God should be so very wrath with the Jews.
+"For fifteen hundred years they have prayed fervently with great zeal
+and earnestness, as their little prayer-books show; and He has not
+revealed himself to them during the whole time by the smallest word. I
+would give two hundred florins' worth of books if I could pray as they
+do. It must be a great and unspeakable anger. Ah! dear Lord, punish me
+with pestilence, rather than be thus silent!"
+
+Luther prayed like a child morning and evening, and often during the
+day, even indeed, during his meals. He repeated again and again with
+fervent devotion those prayers which he knew by heart. His favourite
+was the Lord's Prayer, and then he repeated the short catechism; he
+always carried the Psalter with him as a little prayer-book. When he
+was in extreme trouble his prayer became like a storm, a wrestling with
+God, the power, the greatness, and the holy simplicity of which can
+hardly be compared with any other human emotion. He was then the son
+who despairingly lies at the feet of his father, or the faithful
+servant who supplicates his prince. For nothing could shake his
+conviction that we may influence God's decisions by prayer and
+supplication. Thus overflowing feelings alternated in his prayers with
+complaints and even remonstrances. It is often related how, in the year
+1540, he restored to life the dying Melancthon at Weimar. When Luther
+arrived he found "_Magister Philippus_" at the point of death,
+unconscious and with closed eyes. Luther, struck with terror, said,
+"God forbid! how has this organ of God been marred by the devil!" Then
+he turned his back on those assembled, and went to the window as he was
+wont to do when he prayed. "Now," said Luther, "must the Lord God
+stretch forth his hand to me, for I have brought the matter home to
+Him, and dinned in his ears all his promises as to the efficacy of
+prayer, which I could repeat from the Holy Scripture, so that He must
+hearken to me if I am to trust his promises." Then he took Melancthon
+by the hand, saying, "Be comforted, Philip, you will not die:" and
+Melancthon, under the spell of his powerful friend, began at once to
+breathe again, and recovered his consciousness. He was restored.
+
+As God was to Luther the source of all good, so was the devil the
+producer of all evil and wickedness. He considered that the devil
+interfered destructively with the course of nature by illness or
+pestilence, deformity and famine. All that this deep-thinking man
+preached so firmly and joyfully had formerly pressed with fearful
+weight upon his conscience; especially when awaking in the night, the
+devil stood full of malice by his bed, whispering horrors in his ear;
+then his spirit wrestled for freedom, often for a length of time in
+vain. It is extraordinary what this son of the sixteenth century went
+through in these inward struggles. Every fresh inquiry into the
+Scriptures, every important sermon upon a new theme, threw him again
+into this strife of conscience: then he reached such a state of
+excitement that his soul became incapable of systematic thought, and
+for whole days he trembled with anguish. When he was occupied with the
+question of monks and nuns, a text of the Bible startled him, which he
+thought, in his excitement, placed him in the wrong: his heart died
+within him, and he was nearly strangled by the devil. At this time
+Bugenhagen visited Luther, who showed him the threatening text.[43]
+Bugenhagen, probably infected by the eagerness of his friend, began
+also to doubt, unconscious of the greatness of the misery which it
+occasioned Luther. Now was Luther indeed terrified, and again passed a
+fearful night. The next morning Bugenhagen came back. "I am very
+angry," he said; "I have now, for the first time, understood the text
+rightly; it has quite another sense." "And it is true," said Luther
+later, "it was a ridiculous argument; ridiculous indeed for one who is
+in his right mind, and not under temptation."
+
+He often lamented to his friends, over the terrors which these
+struggles with the devil occasioned him. "He has never been from the
+beginning so fierce and raging as now, at the end of the world. I feel
+him well. He sleeps much nearer to me than my Kate; that is to say, he
+gives me more disquiet than she does pleasure." Luther never ceased to
+abuse the Pope as antichrist, or the papal system as devilish. But
+whoever observes more accurately, will perceive behind this hatred of
+the devil, the indestructible reverence by which the loyal spirit of
+the man was bound to the old Church. What became to him temptations,
+were often only the pious recollections of his youth, which stood in
+striking contrast to the changes he had gone through as a man.
+
+Indeed, no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds
+of his manhood. We ourselves do not become new through new actions; our
+inward life consists of the sum of all the thoughts and feelings which
+we have ever had. He who has been chosen by fate to create the new by
+the destruction of the old, shatters in pieces at the same time a
+portion of his own life: he must violate lesser duties to fulfil
+greater ones. The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels
+the rent which he has made in the order of the world, and also in his
+own inward nature. This is the secret sorrow, and even the regret, of
+every great historical character. Few mortals have felt this grief so
+deeply as Luther; and that which was so great in him, was his never
+being prevented by this feeling from acting with the utmost boldness.
+
+This appears to us a tragical moment in his inward life; and equally so
+was the effect of his teaching upon the life of the nation. He had laid
+the foundation of a new Church upon the pure Gospel, and had given
+greater depth and substance to the minds and conscience of the people.
+Around him burst forth a new life, greater general prosperity, many new
+arts, improvements in painting and music, comfortable enjoyment, and
+more refined cultivation in the middle classes. Yet there was a
+something gloomy and ominous which pervaded the German atmosphere.
+Fierce discord raged amongst princes and governors. Foreign powers were
+arrayed against the people, the Emperor from Spain, the Pope from Rome,
+and the Turks from the Mediterranean; enthusiasts and factious spirits
+were powerful, the hierarchy had not yet fallen. Had his gospel given
+greater unity and power to the nation? The discord had become only
+greater, and the future of his Church seemed dependent on the worldly
+interests of individual German princes. And well he knew what even the
+best among them were. Something terrible seemed approaching, the
+Scripture would be fulfilled, the last day was at hand. But afterwards
+God would raise up a new world, more beautiful, more splendid, and more
+pure, full of peace and blessing; a world in which there would be no
+devil; where the soul of man would find more enjoyment in the flowers
+and fruit of the new heavenly trees, than the present race do in gold
+and silver; where music, the most beautiful of all arts, would give
+birth to tones more entrancing than the most splendid song of the best
+singers of this world; and where good men would find again all that
+they had loved and lost.[44]
+
+Ever more powerful became in him the longing of the creature after an
+ideal purity of existence. If he expected the end of the world, it was
+the dim traditions of the German people from the distant past which
+still veiled the heaven of the new Reformer; and yet it was at the same
+time a prophetic presentiment of what was at hand. It was not the end
+of the world which was approaching, but the Thirty years' war.
+
+So he died. As the hearse bearing his corpse passed through the country
+of Thuringia, the bells tolled in every village and town, and the
+people pressed sobbing round his coffin. A large share of German
+popular strength was buried with this one man. Philip Melancthon, in
+the church of the castle at Wittenberg, standing before the corpse of
+Luther, said: "Every one who has known him well must bear witness that
+he was a truly good man; gracious in speech, friendly and lovable; not
+in the least insolent, violent, obstinate, or quarrelsome; and yet
+there was an earnestness and boldness in his words and bearing
+befitting such a man. His heart was true, and without guile; the
+harshness which appeared in his writings against the enemies of his
+doctrine, did not arise from a quarrelsome or bad spirit, but from his
+great earnestness and zeal for the truth. He showed great courage and
+manliness, and did not allow himself to be easily frightened. He was
+not dispirited by threatenings and danger. He possessed such a lofty
+and clear understanding, that in confused, dark, and difficult
+circumstances, he could see sooner than others what was to be
+counselled and done. He was not, as some perhaps have thought, so
+heedless as not to have remarked how it fared everywhere with the
+governments. He knew right well in what government consists, and paid
+assiduous attention to the opinions and will of the people with whom he
+had to do. Let us have a constant and undying remembrance of this our
+beloved father, and keep him ever in our hearts."[45]
+
+Such was Luther, a superhuman nature; his mind was ponderous and
+sharply defined, his will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, and
+his heart full of love. As besides him no other powerful spirit arose
+strong enough to become the leader of the nation, the German people
+have lost for centuries the supremacy over the world; their supremacy
+in the realm of mind rests however upon Luther. That he may in
+conclusion speak for himself, we will give a letter to the Elector
+Frederic the Wise, written at the time when Luther's whole powers were
+most strongly developed. The prudent prince had commanded him to remain
+at Wartburg, because he could not protect him at Wittenberg, as the
+anger of the Duke George of Saxony would lead him to insist immediately
+upon the carrying out of the ban of the empire against Luther. Luther
+then writes to his sovereign:--
+
+"Most Serene Highness, Illustrious Elector, and Gracious Sovereign!
+Your Electoral Highness's letter and gracious remembrance of me,
+reached me on Friday evening, when I was preparing to leave on Sunday
+morning. I need truly neither proof nor witness that your Electoral
+Highness's intentions are for the best, for I am as fully convinced
+thereof as any human being can be.
+
+"Yet in this matter, Gracious Sovereign, I must answer thus: your
+Electoral Highness knows, or if you do not know, permit me hereby to
+make you acquainted with it, that I have not received the gospel from
+man, but from heaven alone, through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I
+may, and indeed from henceforth will, boast and sign myself a servant
+and evangelist. If I have presented myself for trial and judgment, it
+was not because I doubted the truth, but from overflowing humility, and
+to persuade others. I have done enough for your Electoral Highness in
+leaving my place vacant for a whole year for the sake of your Electoral
+Highness. The devil knows well that I have not done it from fear. He
+saw what a heart I had when I came to Worms; for if I had known that as
+many devils were lying in wait for me as there were tiles on the roofs,
+yet I would have rushed into the midst of them with joy.
+
+"Now the Duke George is very unlike even a single devil. And since our
+Father, in his unfathomable mercy, has, by his gospel made us joyful
+lords over death and all devils, and has given us such a fullness of
+assurance that we may call Him 'Dearly beloved Father,' your Electoral
+Highness can yourself judge that it would be the greatest offence to
+such a Father if we did not so trust Him as to be above the anger of
+Duke George. For my part I know well, I would gladly ride into his own
+Leipzig--I hope your Electoral Highness will forgive my foolish
+jesting--even though it should rain, proud Duke Georges during nine
+following days, and every one should be ninefold more furious than this
+one. He considers my Lord Christ only a man of straw; this my Lord and
+I can well bear with for a time. But I will not conceal from your
+Electoral Highness that I have not once only, but often prayed and wept
+for Duke George, that God would enlighten him. I will still once more
+pray and weep for him, but after that never more. And I beg of your
+Electoral Highness to help and pray also that we may turn from him the
+evil, which, God help him, weighs incessantly upon him. I would at once
+strangle Duke George with a word if it could be thus removed.
+
+"I have written thus to your Electoral Highness, with the intention of
+making known to you that I come to Wittenberg under a far higher
+protection than that of the Elector. I also do not intend to request
+the protection of your Electoral Highness, for indeed, I think I could
+better protect your Electoral Highness than you could protect me. So
+much so, that if I knew your Electoral Highness could protect me, and
+would do so, I would not come. It is not the sword which can counsel or
+help in this business; it is God alone who can act, without any human
+assistance; therefore he who has most faith will have most power to
+protect.
+
+"As I therefore perceive that your Electoral Highness is as yet weak in
+faith, I can in no wise regard your Electoral Highness as the man to
+protect or deliver me.
+
+"As your Electoral Highness desires to know what you shall do in this
+business, especially as you think that you have done too little, I
+answer, with all due submission, that your Electoral Highness has done
+too much, and should do nothing. For God will not allow of our cares
+and doings; He will have every doing left to himself, to himself and no
+other. May your Electoral Highness act accordingly.
+
+"If your Electoral Highness believes this, you will have security and
+peace; if you do not, I do, and must leave your Electoral Highness in
+your unbelief, to torment yourself with the anxieties which all
+unbelievers deservedly suffer. As, therefore, I will not obey your
+Electoral Highness, you will be excused before God if I should be
+imprisoned or put to death. Towards men your Electoral Highness ought
+thus to conduct yourself. You should as Elector be obedient to the
+supreme authority, and should allow the Imperial majesty to rule in
+your towns and provinces, over persons and property, in conformity with
+the laws of the empire, and should not attempt to prevent or oppose, or
+make any hindrance or resistance to this power if it should seize and
+kill me. For no one should resist authority, he excepted by whom it has
+been established, otherwise it is revolt, and against God. But I hope
+that your Electoral Highness will be reasonable, and perceive that you
+are in too high a position to become my gaoler. If your Electoral
+Highness keeps the door open, and grants a free escort in case my
+enemies themselves or their emissaries should come to seize me, you
+will have done enough for obedience-sake. They cannot indeed demand
+more of your Electoral Highness, than to learn the residence of Luther
+in your Electoral Highness's dominions. And that, they shall do without
+any care, work, or danger on the part of your Electoral Highness; for
+Christ has not yet taught men to be Christians to the injury of others.
+
+"If, however, they should be so unreasonable as to command your
+Electoral Highness to lay hands on me yourself, I will then tell you
+what is to be done: I will secure your Electoral Highness from injury
+and danger to person, property, and soul, in what concerns me. Your
+Electoral Highness may or may not believe this.
+
+"Herewith I commend your Electoral Highness to God's grace; of anything
+further we will speak when it is needful. For I have written this in
+haste, that your Electoral Highness may not be troubled by the report
+of my arrival, for I must comfort and not injure any one if I would be
+a true Christian. I have to deal with quite a different man to Duke
+George: we know each other well. If your Electoral Highness would have
+faith, you would see the glory of God; but because you have not yet
+faith, you have not seen it. Love and praise be to God in eternity.
+Amen. Given at Borna by the messenger, Ash Wednesday, anno 1522.
+
+"Your Electoral Highness's most obedient servant,
+
+                                                  "Martin Luther."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+                  GERMAN PRINCES AT THE IMPERIAL DIET.
+                                (1547.)
+
+
+Luther was dead. Over his grave raged the Smalkaldic war. Charles V.
+made a triumphal progress through humiliated Germany.
+
+Only once did these two men confront each other--these great opponents
+whose spirits are still struggling in the German nation,--the
+Burgundian Hapsburger and the German peasant's son--the Emperor
+and the professor;--the one, who spoke German only to his horse; the
+other, who translated the Bible and formed the new German language of
+literature;--the one, the predecessor of the Jesuit protectors and the
+originator of the Hapsburger family politics; the other, the forerunner
+of Lessing the great German poet, historian, and philosopher.
+
+It was a moment in German history pregnant with fate, when the young
+Emperor, lord of half the world, spoke at Worms the disdainful
+words,--"That man shall not make me a heretic." For then began the
+struggle between his house and the spirit of the German nation. A
+struggle of three centuries; victory and defeat on both sides; its
+final issue not to be doubted.
+
+When the German princes and lords of the Empire, with the envoys from
+the free cities, rode to the Diet, they assembled to transact business
+with the two rulers of Germany. These two rulers were the Pope and the
+Emperor.
+
+The Pope ruled in the holy Roman Empire of the German nation, not only
+as chief bishop in his spiritual capacity, but equally as a political
+power. A third of Germany was under the rule of ecclesiastical princes,
+who had at least to be confirmed by the Pope. The greatest part of his
+income he drew from the Empire; his legates sat at the Imperial Diet,
+among the ecclesiastical and temporal Electors, and could even open it
+without the Emperor.
+
+When the Emperor would not confirm the Count Palatine Frederic the
+Victorious in the Electoral dignity, this temporal prince accepted the
+confirmation of the Pope. The Pope endeavoured to bring every difficult
+political negotiation before his court; indeed, he granted rights of
+custom, he annulled the Imperial ban, and ventured by his own power to
+exact tithes.
+
+The Emperor was still considered the nominal centre of the Empire, and
+the source of all power. All hastened, upon his accession, to obtain
+from him the confirmation of old freedoms and privileges, and he was
+the first judge and first general of the Empire, but could not raise a
+single thaler of money or a single soldier without the consent of the
+Diet. And what was of still greater importance, he could only obtain
+taxes and soldiers from among the vassals, by the consent of their
+feudal lords. Hesitatingly and sparingly did the Diet grant subsidies,
+and so defective was the payment that the grant became a mere farce.
+
+Within the Empire, Electors, princes, nobles, and Imperial cities ruled
+their territories, with many gradations of sovereign rights. The
+greater princes were real sovereigns, their power only restricted by
+their states. Noble families, holding temporal principalities in
+heritable possession, strove incessantly to enlarge their power, to put
+down the smaller lords round them, and to limit the sovereign rights of
+the Emperor. In the fifteenth century they had reduced the Imperial
+power almost to a shadow. It was only by extending the power of his
+house that the Emperor Maximilian was able to maintain himself against
+them.
+
+We may easily perceive that there were two ways of remodelling this
+clumsy state edifice of the middle ages. In one case the power of the
+great princes might rise so high, that the temporal influence of the
+Pope and the supremacy of the Emperor would be overthrown; then Germany
+would be divided into a number of individual states, whose conflicts,
+wars, and destinies might for centuries throw the whole of central
+Europe into weakness and confusion, and which at last, in another state
+of development, might lead to new endeavours to restore unity to the
+Empire. It has been the fate of Germany up to the present time to
+follow this dangerous path.
+
+In the other case, the Emperor might have succeeded in adding to the
+old groundwork of his power, such real strength, that the opposition of
+all the ruling princes would be broken, and Germany gradually changed
+into a modern state, that would either enclose the individual
+governments in perfect unity, or at least concentrate all the highest
+powers of government in the hand of one ruler. To form such a state,
+the Hapsburgers of the sixteenth century, and with more wilful
+obstinacy those of the seventeenth, have striven to the injury of the
+German nation and themselves; yet in the year 1519, when Maximilian
+died, the prospect opened to an able prince was grand, though the power
+of his house was moderate.
+
+The time had arrived when a German Emperor might raise his power above
+the heads of all the princes, and with irresistible strength overthrow
+every opponent; for just at that time a new power arose in Germany,
+imperative in its demands, and capable of the greatest results,--public
+opinion. The Reform movement in the Church combined also within it the
+germ of great political reforms. Had an Emperor arisen who would have
+sympathized with the needs of the German spirit, who would have united
+himself with the Reformation, and known how to raise it for his own
+aims in an exalted spirit, he would have had it in his power to form
+out of the Empire a new state and a united German Church: it was the
+highest prize that ever was offered to an ambitious prince; and how
+favourable would have been his position! The nation was deeply roused
+against the hierarchy and Romish influence, and the Reformation began
+with a struggle against the highest of the ecclesiastical electors.
+Three Electorates, more than seventy Imperial dignities, comprising the
+largest third of the whole country of Germany, were in the hands of
+ecclesiastical lords, who would all have fallen had the Reformation
+been undertaken by the Emperor and people. The Emperor would have found
+in the movement, powers which would have made his Imperial army
+irresistible; the evangelical preachers could not in a moment have
+transformed awkward peasants into skilled soldiers; but they might have
+infused into the armies of the Emperor, much of the enthusiasm and
+reckless daring which the best among them made proof of in their own
+lives; besides which, comprehensive ideas of political reform sprang up
+in the circle of the Huttens and Sickingens; and a German Emperor might
+well have found in such ideas the means of reconciling the conflicting
+interests of peasants, citizens, and knights, at least sufficiently so
+to serve his own purposes. How could the German princes, disunited as
+they always were, have withstood an Emperor with such allies,
+strengthened by a well-established income, and leader of an army which
+for the first time since the Crusades would have been animated by a
+great idea? Good grounds would such an emperor have had to have
+respected old families: it would not have been necessary for him to
+take the Electoral crown from off their heads, but he might have
+reduced them to be dignitaries of one great united empire, in which the
+highest jurisdiction and the power of the army would have been vested
+in him alone: the want of such a man was for centuries the misfortune
+of Germany.
+
+It is difficult to do justice to the German princes of the sixteenth
+century; their position was unfavourable for the formation of their
+character and for the development of elevated political action. They
+were too great to be loyal vassals, but not powerful enough, with only
+moderate abilities, to conduct the affairs of the nation in a liberal
+spirit. They were for the most part pretentious _Junkers_; their
+selfishness appeared to foreigners rapacious, their manners rude, their
+greed insatiable.
+
+The private life of many of them was stained by the blackest crimes; a
+few of them were at heart pious; their religion was, we hope, a
+restraint in the hour of temptation, but it did not contribute to
+enlarge their political views. There was a patriarchal feeling among
+many of them. Such were Frederic the Wise and his next successor; such
+also was the Margrave Ernest of Baden, who used to have condemned
+criminals brought to him before their execution, that he might give
+them comfort from the Gospel, and beg for their forgiveness (as he felt
+obliged to fulfil his duty), and who offered them his hand at parting.
+Besides men of this kind there were others, overbearing, profligate,
+and wicked; such was Duke Ulrich of Wuertemberg, who stabbed Hans Hutten
+in the forest because he wished to obtain possession of his wife. But
+though at most of the courts consideration for wife and children
+compelled a certain degree of moderation, the ecclesiastical princes
+were not even under this restraint. They were in the worst repute, and
+the more athletic preferred the helmet and the hunting-spear to the
+vestments of the Church, which some of them wore very awkwardly. There
+were bishops and archbishops who hardly knew the ritual of their
+Church. Once when a Latin discourse was to be made, it appeared that
+the highest princes of the Church could not speak that language, and
+the Margrave of Brandenburg was obliged to do it.
+
+It was through princes like these that Charles, sovereign of Lower
+Burgundy and the Netherlands, King of Spain and Naples, Duke of Milan,
+and Lord of the new world on the other side of the ocean, became also
+Emperor of Germany. It is well known how long and actively the
+intrigues both for him and the King of France were pursued. There was
+no Electoral house to which money or promises were not proffered by
+both parties, and none which did not negotiate for its own advantage.
+At last Frederic the Wise decided the election, and dear has his
+family paid for this decision. When the young king was crowned at
+Aix-la-Chapelle, where, to the great delight of the assembled
+multitude, he caused his horse to prance joyously before them, and
+when, after the coronation, the heralds proclaimed that the Emperor
+would, by permission of his Holiness the Pope, take the title of "Roman
+Emperor Elect," there were absent from the festive train the Electors
+of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Princes of the two houses which from
+henceforth were to lead the German opposition against the house of
+Hapsburg.
+
+The fate of Germany was decided by the election of Charles V. He was
+not entirely a Burgundian, not always a Spaniard, not an Italian, and
+least of all a German. His position was too high, for him to make it
+the interest of his life to meet the requirements of any one of the
+many nations under his sway. The unfortunate part of his exalted
+position was, that he could only carry out a personal policy,
+subordinating sometimes one, sometimes another country to the course of
+his plans, the ultimate aim of which was the advantage of his own
+family. Had Charles been less able and less moderate, what was
+insupportable in these incongruities would have been felt as a
+grievance by all his states; but seldom has a prince maintained so
+long, a position in itself untenable. At last, however, the catastrophe
+arrived. After thirty years of fame and success, he broke down, and the
+misery of Germany became apparent.
+
+Although he had so little in common with the Germans, still he was not
+unpopular in the Empire. The people of Germany looked upon him as
+Luther himself did. The confiding attachment with which the Germans
+received the grandson of Maximilian was almost touching; his noble,
+reserved, and composed bearing had an imposing effect upon all. In the
+beginning the best was hoped of him, and later also, even the
+Protestants who had experienced his displeasure, rejoiced when he
+encountered the Pope or conquered the French King. Long did the German
+nation continue to feel itself exalted by the glory and splendour of
+his government. Charles did his best; he spared the prejudices of the
+Germans, indulged them more than any of his other people, and even when
+he sided with a party, he knew how to conciliate his opponents by his
+benevolent dignity. At last, however, the time came when his pride and
+pretensions rose so high that the intractable independence of the
+Protestant party became insupportable to him, and then his long
+concealed opposition broke forth into hate. Suddenly, a storm arose
+against him among the people. As in the first years of Luther, a sea of
+small literature again overflowed the country: they fought against him
+in prose and verse, and they depended more on the support of heaven
+than was wise. The successor of Duke George of Saxony, that most
+zealous opponent of the Reformation, the Protestant Maurice, united
+himself with the Emperor against his own family, and the Protestant
+party was defeated.
+
+Now the Emperor Charles had attained the height of his power; the
+battle of Muehlberg was won; the Smalkaldic league had fallen to pieces
+ingloriously. The Protestant princes and cities hastened to make their
+peace with that lord of half Europe, to whom in an evil hour they had
+been so eager to offer the dominion over them. Carrying away with him
+the captive Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, he marched
+from the Saale in triumphant procession to Augsburg, accompanied by his
+army of Spaniards, and Flemings, and German _Landsknechte_. There all
+the most powerful of Germany were gathered together at the Diet to
+obtain pardon or reward, to pay court to the most mighty sovereign that
+for centuries had ruled over Germany, to decide their own future and
+that of their Fatherland, and to seek pleasure and adventures. Amidst
+this crowd of sovereigns and dynasties, courtiers, swindlers, soldiers,
+and deputations of citizens, was one Bartholomew Sastrow, the son of a
+citizen of Greifswald. He was actively employed as agent of the Dukes
+of Pomerania, who were strongly compromised by their Protestant
+alliances, and preferred not to appear in person before the Emperor. In
+his biography (edited 1823) Sastrow has left some, lively descriptions
+of what he experienced after the battle of Muehlberg, during the
+triumphal march of the Emperor to Augsburg and the Diet. The historical
+value of his narrative is not insignificant. He made good observations
+in his subordinate position, and had connections enough to be enabled
+to form a true conception of the character of the great lords; and
+however insignificant some of his anecdotes may be, they help, on the
+whole, to show men and great events in a new light. The following is a
+faithful quotation from his words, but from the lengthiness of his
+narrative parts, only have been given.
+
+"The Pomeranian councillors desired me to remain in the Imperial camp,
+and to put myself under the protection of George von Wedell. This
+Pomeranian nobleman had stabbed his own cousin, and was in disgrace
+with Duke Barnim, but was now serving the Emperor with nine-and-twenty
+horse. Under my guidance he made himself so useful to the Pomeranian
+dukes, that Duke Barnim, at my earnest petition, restored him to
+favour, and reinstated him in his own property. Thus I remained with my
+steed at the Imperial court at Augsburg; how it fared with me on this
+march, and what I saw and heard, is here correctly recorded.
+
+"It is customary in war for comrades to steal each other's horses, and
+they remain unpunished; the process is as follows. If any one likes
+another's horse, he pays a cunning stable-boy six or seven thalers to
+procure it for him; then it is sent away for five or six weeks that it
+may be forgotten; the tail, mane, and other marks are changed, and it
+is brought back to the camp. This was done in the Imperial camp at
+Halle by a German nobleman, who commissioned a boy to steal a Spanish
+steed for him, and having kept him for a few weeks at his home,
+thinking the rumour of it had died away, he had him brought back to the
+camp. Now it happened that about eight or more squadrons of German
+horse, were stationed in a beautiful meadow delightfully situated on
+the Saale; but the Spaniards were encamped on the heights round the
+castle. The stolen steed towards evening was taken to the river to
+drink; a Spanish boy recognizing it said, 'This belongs to my master, I
+will be off with it.' The German boy would not let him go; three or
+four German horsemen came to his assistance, ten or twelve to the
+Spaniard, then twenty or thirty to the German; thus both sides
+continued increasing, and at last they began to fire. The Spaniards
+being on the heights, had greatly the advantage over the Germans who
+were encamped below them; and shooting through their tents, they killed
+some of the noblemen who were sitting at table: the Germans on their
+side did not spare the Spaniards. The Emperor sent out a Spanish lord
+who was riding a splendid charger, and was adorned with glittering
+golden chains, to pacify the German knights, and to quiet the uproar;
+upon which the Germans screamed out, 'Shoot down the Spanish
+miscreant!' When therefore he came on to the bridge to cross the Saale,
+his horse was killed under him, and he of the golden chains falling
+into the river, was drowned. Then the Emperor sent out to them King
+Ferdinand's son, the Archduke Maximilian, afterwards Roman Emperor,
+thinking that they would undoubtedly listen to him and be appeased; but
+they screamed all the same, 'Beat the Spanish miscreant!' whereupon one
+struck him on the right arm, and I saw how for some weeks after he
+carried his arm in a black sling. At last, the Emperor himself came
+out, and said, 'Dear Germans, I know you are not guilty; be satisfied;
+I will repair the damage you have suffered; and by my Imperial honour,
+tomorrow at daybreak I will have the Spaniards hung before your eyes.'
+Thus the uproar was quieted. The following day the Emperor caused an
+examination and valuation to be made of the damage done in both the
+German and Spanish camps; and as it appeared that only eighteen German
+squires and servants, together with seventeen horses, had been killed,
+whilst the Spaniards had lost seventy men, the Emperor sent word to the
+German knights that His Majesty would replace the value of their
+horses, and would not be disinclined to fulfil his promise of the day
+before, of hanging the Spaniards; but the Germans would themselves see
+now that the Spaniards had suffered fourfold, and that thus they had
+been sufficiently revenged; the Emperor therefore hoped, and had
+graciously decided, that the Germans should be satisfied and contented.
+
+"On the evening of the 18th of June, the two Electors, Maurice of
+Saxony, and Brandenburg, took the Landgrave Philip of Hesse between
+them to Halle. On the following day, about six o'clock in the evening,
+he, together with his chancellor who was kneeling beside him,
+prostrated himself in the great hall before the Emperor, in the
+presence of many lords, electors, princes, foreign potentates,
+ambassadors, counts, colonels, generals, and a large number of
+spectators, as many as the room could hold, and as many as could see
+through the window from without. But when the chancellor most humbly
+craved pardon, the Landgrave, who was a satirical gentleman, knelt, but
+laughed deridingly. Then the Emperor pointed his finger at him and said
+with an angry look, 'Truly I will teach you to laugh;' which indeed was
+afterwards done.
+
+"The Emperor proceeded from Halle to Naumburg, and remained there three
+days. When the Imperial army was assembled before Naumburg, and his
+Imperial Majesty was waiting before the gate, he wore a black velvet
+hat and a black mantle bordered with velvet two inches wide, but a
+shower of rain coming on, he sent into the city for a gray felt hat and
+cloak; meanwhile he turned his cloak, and holding his hat under it,
+exposed his bare head to the rain. Poor man! he who had tons of gold to
+spend, would rather expose his bare head to the wet than allow his
+cloak to be spoilt by the rain. The Spaniards always took the Landgrave
+a day's march before the Emperor; they were very disorderly and ill
+conducted, for they left their dead lying on the road which the Emperor
+had to pass, and behaved shamefully to men, women, and children.
+
+"On the 1st of July he arrived at Bamberg. The Emperor made his
+entrance with a great concourse of people about midday; he was mounted
+on a little horse. In the suburb there was a street turning off to the
+right, and in the corner house was lodged the imprisoned Elector of
+Saxony, so that on one side he could look out into the fields, and on
+the other into the city. He was standing above at the window, to watch
+the Imperial procession; and when the Emperor approached the corner, he
+bowed lowly before him: the Emperor kept his eyes fixed on him as long
+as he could see him, and laughed deridingly.
+
+"On the 3rd of July the Emperor fixed the 1st of September for the Diet
+to be held at Augsburg. The Spaniards carried away from the bishopric
+of Bamberg upwards of four hundred women, maidens, and maidservants to
+Nuremberg. From thence they sent them home again; the parents,
+husbands, and brothers had followed them to Nuremberg; fathers seeking
+their daughters, husbands their wives, and brothers their sisters, and
+there each one found his own again. Was not that a wicked nation? thus
+to act when war was over, in a friend's country, and in the presence of
+the Imperial Majesty, who nevertheless keeps very strict rule. Every
+evening where his tent was erected, he caused a gallows to be raised,
+and had them hung unsparingly; yet even that was of no avail.
+
+"When he left Nuremberg, the Duke of Leignitz, who usually passed his
+nights in drunken revelry, for once rose early and rode to the
+Emperor's lodging, where he arrived at six o'clock, but found that the
+Emperor had already been gone two hours. The duke was too much ashamed
+to follow; but sent two of his councillors to Augsburg, and returned to
+his own country, where he continued his disorderly life. Once when he
+was very tipsy he commanded the councillors, at the peril of their
+lives, to put him into a tower and feed him with bread and water; and
+if they disobeyed him, he would have their heads off. They took him to
+a tower wherein there were already prisoners; he was let down into the
+hole where they were, and the keeper received orders not to let him
+out, and to feed him with nothing but bread and water. When he had
+outslept his drunkenness he roused himself, and began to talk with the
+prisoners, and called to the gaoler to set him free. The man told him
+it was strictly forbidden; but he made it known to the councillors, who
+temporized till the third day. The duke meanwhile did not desist from
+ordering the gaoler to beg the councillors to give in and release him.
+Then they went to him in the prison, and heard him begging and
+entreating; but they told him what he had commanded them, on pain of
+having their heads cut off, and they knew that he would not trifle with
+them, and therefore dared not let him out. But as he promised by
+everything that was high and holy not to injure them, they released
+him.
+
+"He continued his mad wild life until he ruined his people and country
+and his own health. He died, leaving his wife, who was a Duchess of
+Mecklenburg, and their children in the greatest poverty. His widow
+complained to the city councils that she was in great need, and knew
+not what to do, nor how to bring up her sons according to their
+position; and begged that they would assist her. So the council of
+Stralsund sent her some thalers by a special messenger.
+
+"At the end of July, his Imperial Majesty arrived with the whole army
+at Augsburg; he had left the Landgrave with a troop of Spaniards at
+Donauwoerth, but had brought the captive Elector along with him to
+Augsburg, and had quartered him in the house of Welser, in the wine
+market; it was separated from the Emperor's palace by two houses and a
+little street, and was close to our inn. The Emperor had a way made
+through the two houses, and a bridge made over the little street, so
+that he could pass from his rooms into those of the Elector. The latter
+kept house himself, and had his chancellor Minkwitz and his own
+attendants with him, so that no Spaniards need enter either his
+sitting, or his sleeping rooms. The Duke of Alva and other great lords
+of the Imperial court had free access to and held friendly intercourse
+with him, and enlivened him by their society. In the courtyard of the
+Elector's dwelling, which was built and furnished in princely style,
+there was a circus, where they threw the spear; he was also allowed to
+ride to any of the places of amusement and ornamental gardens, of which
+there were many at Augsburg; and because from his youth he had always
+taken delight in fencing, and had been an adept at it when younger and
+more active, fencing-schools were erected for his pleasure; but the
+Spanish soldiers guarded him. Besides this, he was allowed to read
+books and so forth up to the end of the Diet, when he refused to accept
+the interim. But with the Landgrave at Donauwoerth it did not fare so
+well; the Spaniards were all day long in his rooms. When he was at his
+window looking into the square, one or two Spaniards were always beside
+him, stretching out their necks as far as his. Armed Spaniards lay all
+night in his room, and when the watch was changed, and the new one came
+in with drums and fifes, those who had kept guard half the night
+uncovered the bed and said, 'See there, we deliver him to you;
+henceforth you must guard him.'
+
+"Methinks that this was indeed keeping the promise made at Halle:
+'Truly I will teach you to laugh.' His Imperial Majesty as soon as he
+arrived at Augsburg, caused a gallows to be erected in the middle of
+the city close to the Town Hall, in order to create terror, and near it
+also a platform on which the bowstring was administered; and directly
+opposite another, about the height of a middle-sized man, whereon
+people were broken on the wheel, beheaded, strangled, quartered, and
+the like.
+
+"It was truly a warlike Diet, for there were already in the garrison
+ten companies of _Landsknechte_, besides the Spanish and German troops
+which the Emperor brought with him to Augsburg, who were encamped in
+the country round the city. But it was also a notable and stately Diet,
+for the Emperor and King were there, all the Electors in person, with
+large bodies of followers; the Elector of Brandenburg with his wife,
+the Cardinal of Trent, Duke Heinrich of Brunswick with his two sons
+Carl Victor and Philip, Margrave Albrecht of Culmbach, Duke Wolfgang,
+Palatine of the Rhine, Duke Augustus of Saxony, Duke Albrecht of
+Bavaria, &c., Frau Maria, the Emperor's sister, and the daughter of his
+sister, the widow of Lorraine; the wives of the Margrave and of the
+Bavarian Duke; item; ambassadors of foreign potentates; besides these
+many bishops and abbots, numberless counts, barons, citizens of the
+Imperial cities, illustrious envoys, and excellent men. I must not
+forget Michael the Jew, who considered himself a great man, and rode
+through the streets on a well-caparisoned horse, splendidly attired,
+his neck covered with gold chains. He was always surrounded by ten or
+twelve of his servants, all Jews, accoutred as troopers. He was a
+distinguished-looking man, and it is said that his true father was a
+Count von Rheinfelden. The hereditary Marshal of Pappenheim, an old
+gentleman who could not see very distinctly, not only took off his hat,
+but also bent his knee to him, as he would to one greater than himself.
+When he found afterwards that it was Michael, he repented that he had
+shown such honour to a Jew, and exclaimed, 'May God confound thee, thou
+old rogue of a Jew.'
+
+"Splendid banquets were held at the Diet, and there were dances almost
+every evening, both foreign and German. King Ferdinand especially was
+seldom without guests; they were always treated magnificently, with all
+kinds of pastimes and splendid dances. He had exceedingly fine music,
+not only instrumental, but also singing. Besides other diversions, he
+had always behind him a witty fool, whose powers he knew how to bring
+out, and to meet his lively sallies with a retort, his tongue was never
+still. I saw one evening at his house a dance, in which a Spanish
+gentleman, attired in a long closed robe, reaching to the ground, so
+that one could not see his feet, led out a young lady, and danced with
+her an _Algarde_ or _Passionesa_ (as they call it, I know nothing about
+it); he sprang about so wonderfully, and she likewise, and they went so
+well together, that it was a pleasure to see them. His brother, the
+Emperor of Rome, on the contrary, gave no banquets, and did not even
+entertain his own attendants; when they accompanied him from the church
+to the chamber in which he dined, giving each of them his hand, he
+dismissed them, and placed himself alone at table. Neither did he talk;
+only once when he came out of the church into his chamber, he looked
+round, and not seeing Carlowitz,[46] he said to Duke Maurice, '_Ubi est
+noster Carlovitius?_' and when the latter answered, 'Most Gracious
+Emperor, he is somewhat unwell,' he called out to his doctor in
+Flemish, 'Vesali, you must go to Carlowitz; he is said to be somewhat
+unwell; see if you cannot restore him.' I have often seen the Emperor
+dine during the Diet, but he never invited his brother, King Ferdinand,
+to dine with him. The dinner was brought up by the young princes and
+counts, and there were always four courses, each consisting of six
+dishes, which were placed on the table before him, and the covers
+removed one by one; he shook his head at those which he did not desire,
+nodded when he wished to partake of one, and drew the dish towards him.
+The fine pies, game, and well-dressed dainties were sent away, and he
+would keep a roast pig, and calf's head, and suchlike: he did not allow
+it to be cut for him, nor did he often himself use the knife, except to
+cut many small pieces of bread as large as he could put into his mouth
+with each bit of meat. He then loosened with his knife, the corner
+which he liked best of the dish he wished to eat; he broke it with his
+fingers, held the dish under his chin, and ate in this primitive manner
+so neatly and cleanly that it was a pleasure to see him. When he wished
+to drink--and he only drank thrice during his meal--he nodded to his
+physicians, who were standing before the table; they went forthwith to
+the treasury, where were kept two silver bottles and a crystal cup
+which held about a pint and a half, and filled the glass out of the two
+bottles; this he drank clean off, so that not a drop remained therein,
+and he had to take breath two or three times before he withdrew it from
+his mouth. He never spoke whilst at table, and though there were fools
+standing behind him, who cut all kinds of jokes, he did not heed them;
+at the utmost he twisted his mouth into a half-smile if they said
+something very amusing. He did not care that many should stand round to
+see an Emperor eating. He had a splendid choir, as well as instrumental
+music, which performed in the churches but never in his own rooms. The
+dinner did not last an hour; then everything was removed, and seats and
+tables put away, so that nothing remained but the four walls, hung on
+all sides with costly tapestry. When grace had been said before him,
+they handed him a little quill for a toothpick; then he washed himself
+and placed himself in a corner of the chamber at the window, and any
+one might come, and either present a written petition or speak
+themselves, and he told them on the spot where they might obtain an
+answer.
+
+"There were fine doings also amongst the princes and lords, both
+spiritual and temporal. I was once looking on when the Margrave
+Albrecht was drinking and playing at the _Peilketafel_,[47] with other
+young princes and young bishops who were not born princes; they did not
+give each other their titles, but called mockingly, 'Shoot away,
+priest; what does it matter? you will never hit the mark;' and the
+bishop replied after an equally vulgar fashion. Young princes lay upon
+the ground with princesses and countesses, for they did not sit upon
+benches or seats, but costly carpets were spread about the rooms,
+whereon they could sit and stretch themselves comfortably. They
+squandered upon extravagant banqueting, not only what was in their
+exchequers and what they had brought to the Diet, which amounted to
+many thousand thalers, but they were obliged, with great difficulty and
+vexation and irreparable loss, to borrow enough to enable them to leave
+Augsburg with becoming style. The subjects of certain princes,
+particularly of the Duke of Bavaria, whose wife was daughter of the
+King of Rome, collected some thousand gulden only for play, which they
+made a present of to their lords, who lost it all.
+
+"I often addressed petitions to the Bishop of Arras, Doctor Marquardt,
+and other councillors; but as I did not of my own accord find out what
+was usual to be done to gain favour in courts and great cities and with
+lords, Doctor John Marquardt cleverly gave me to understand that it
+would give him particular pleasure to possess a pretty little horse,
+whereon he might ride to the council, as was customary at the Imperial
+court; I wrote therefore to Pomerania, and they sent me a fine horse,
+with an order to have suitable riding gear made for it, and then to
+present it to the doctor, together with three large Portuguese pieces
+of gold, which the doctor gladly accepted without any hesitation. A
+great treasure of silver, gold, money, and money's worth of costly and
+rare goods, was presented to Herr von Granvella, whereby the Electors,
+princes, and cities thought to obtain his favour with his Imperial
+Majesty. He carried it on large waggons and strong mules along with him
+on his return home, and when he was asked what was on the waggons and
+mules, he answered, '_Peccata Germaniae_.'
+
+"At the earnest entreaties and supplications of the Electors of Saxony
+and Brandenburg, the Emperor fixed a day in December to decide the
+matter concerning the Landgrave of Hesse. Now the Elector Duke Maurice
+was intriguing with the Duchess of Bavaria, and on the Sunday morning
+before the Monday on which the long-desired decision was to be given,
+he placed himself in a sledge, for it had frozen hard, and there was
+snow on the roads. Carlowitz came running to him from the Chancellery,
+and said, 'Whither will your Electoral Grace drive?' The Elector
+answered: 'I drive to Munich.' I was standing outside the gate, so that
+I and others who were near could hear all that passed. Carlowitz then
+said: 'Has your Electoral Grace forgotten that to-morrow his Imperial
+Majesty's decision will be given in the business so important to your
+Electoral Grace and to the Elector of Brandenburg?' The Elector
+replied: 'I will drive to Munich.' Then Carlowitz answered: 'You owe it
+to me that you have become an Elector of note, but you have conducted
+yourself so frivolously at this Diet, that you have brought on yourself
+the contempt of the distinguished persons of all nations, and of their
+Imperial and Royal Majesties.' As he was saying this, Duke Maurice
+touched his horses with the whip, and drove out of the gate. Carlowitz
+called out to him loudly: 'Go your way in the devil's name, and may God
+confound you in your driving and all else.' When the Elector returned
+from Munich, Carlowitz was on the point of starting for Leipzig, as he
+said the new year's fair was at hand, and he must needs be there, or he
+would lose some thousand thalers; so the Elector, wishing to retain
+him, was obliged to present him with that amount. Neither of the
+Electors appeared on the appointed day before his Imperial Majesty, nor
+was a decision come to on the matter of the imprisoned Landgrave. For
+as the drive to Munich, and the conversation betwixt Duke Maurice and
+Carlowitz, which had been held in open day in the streets, and heard by
+many, was not concealed from his Imperial Majesty, he considered the
+many entreaties of this prince more as mockery than earnest, and no
+further day was fixed upon to hear the cause.
+
+"The German Landsknechte of the garrison at Augsburg had not been paid
+for some months, and it was reported that the fine upon the Landgrave
+and the cities, out of which they were to have been paid, had been
+collected, but that the Duke of Alva had lost it at play with the
+imprisoned Landgrave, so they were kept long without their pay: then
+some of them fell upon the ensigns' quarters, seized flags, and marched
+thus with colours flying in battle order to the wine market. When the
+standard bearers were marching along in good order, an arrogant
+Spaniard, desirous of gaining honour, of deserving the favour of his
+Imperial Majesty, and of immortalizing his name, sprang upon the
+ensign, and tore the flag out of his hands. The ensign was followed by
+three men-at-arms, one of them struck this wretch in two like a carrot,
+according to the saying: 'He who seeks danger perishes therein.' When
+the Landsknechte reached the wine market there was a great running to
+and fro of the Spanish soldiers, who beset all the streets leading to
+the wine market, and carried off the imprisoned Elector to the
+Emperor's palace, for they feared he might be taken away: all the
+inhabitants, especially merchants and tradesmen, who had collected
+costly goods, silk stuffs, silver and gold, pearls and precious stones
+on the occasion of the Diet, were greatly afraid lest the city should
+be plundered, which might well have happened had the Landsknechte
+sought to pay themselves. There arose therefore wild cries, uproar, and
+running about; every one armed himself in earnest, citizens and
+strangers kept to their houses and apartments arquebuse in hand and
+their guns ready to fire, and every one did what he could for the
+protection of his own, so that the Diet might indeed have become an
+armed one.
+
+"But the Emperor sent to the Landsknechte to inquire what they wanted,
+and they, holding their guns in the left hand, and in the right,
+burning matches close to the touchhole, answered, 'Either money or
+blood?' Then the Emperor sent them word that they were to rest
+satisfied, as they should certainly be paid the next day. But they
+would not withdraw without the assurance that they would not be
+punished for having assembled in front of the Emperor's lodging. This
+the Emperor promised, so they withdrew, were paid the next day, and
+dismissed. But what happened? Some spies were sent out to mingle
+unperceived and travel for two or three days with the leaders of the
+Landsknechte, to find out whether they spoke ill or mockingly of his
+Imperial Majesty; if so, they were to call assistance and bring the men
+back prisoners to Augsburg. The second or third evening the
+Landsknechte had a jovial bout at an inn, for they had money in their
+pockets, and thought themselves as safe as if they were in the land of
+Prester John, and had no idea that there were traitors sitting with
+them: then they spoke of the Emperor in this fashion: 'Yes indeed! one
+ought to allow this Charles of Ghent to take soldiers and not to pay
+them! But we would have taught him better, and have paid him for it;
+may God confound him.' After these words they were seized, taken back
+to Augsburg, and hanged at Berlach on the gallows, and a tiny little
+flag stuck on the breast of each."--So far Sastrow.
+
+By his account of the revolt of the German Landsknechte it may be seen
+how insecure was then the highest earthly power. A few years later the
+new Elector, Maurice of Saxony, was able in a moment by a sudden
+expedition to overpower the experienced master of foreign politics.
+Neither the Emperor nor any other prince maintained a large standing
+army; even the Imperial power stood on a rotten foundation, and the
+Emperor Charles was in a difficult position with respect to the German
+soldiery. However easy was the conscience of the Landsknechte, and
+however ready they were to sell themselves for money, they were yet not
+entirely without political tendencies. Most of them were well disposed
+towards the Protestants, and even those who had helped to overthrow
+their comrades of the Saxon service at the battle of Muehlberg,
+discovered with vexation after the combat, that they had given a deadly
+blow to the Protestant cause. The memory of Luther was dear to them;
+but far deeper lay their hatred for the Spanish soldiers of Charles,
+that faithful invincible infantry who had bled for their king on the
+battle-fields of half Europe. The Emperor had himself excited the civil
+war in Germany; a few years later, the German soldiers marched
+defiantly against his anointed head. Most of the German princes, even
+the enemies of the Ernestine and Hesse, felt like these soldiers. The
+great Emperor had made an irreparable rent in the loose tissue of the
+German empire; for this had been no exercise of Imperial power, as once
+against the mad Wuertemberger; but it was a civil war in its broadest
+acceptation; it was a personal struggle of the Hapsburger against the
+German princes. Henceforth the German sovereigns knew what they had to
+expect from their Emperor: the last respect for order and duty to the
+Empire vanished, and each had cause to look after his own interests.
+The only safety against the fearful power of the Hapsburger was to be
+found in alliance with foreign sovereigns. More bold became the
+intercourse with France, and whoever opposed the Emperor looked there
+for help. Maurice of Saxony and Albrecht of Brandenburg rose against
+the Emperor in alliance with France. The German general, Schaertlin, who
+was in the French pay, assisted in depriving Germany of Metz, Toul, and
+Verdun. The younger princes of Germany went to the courts of the
+Valois, the Guises, and the Bourbon, to acquire refinement and obtain
+money and rank in the army; and this was done not only by the
+Protestant princes, but also by the Roman Catholics and even
+ecclesiastical Electors. The overpowering influence of France on the
+fate of the Fatherland dates not from the time of Richelieu, but from
+the wars of Charles V. The real disruption of the German empire dated
+from the battle of Muehlberg and the Diet of Augsburg; and however
+objectionable the alliance of these German princes with a foreign power
+may appear to us, it must not be forgotten, that it was owing to the
+un-German policy of the Imperial house. The destroyer of German
+self-dependence, the great Emperor, met with his punishment almost
+immediately. A very different man from the scrupulous and irresolute
+John Frederic, had received the electoral crown from Charles; his own
+disciple in self-seeking policy, with an overbearing character, without
+consideration, and secret in his resolves, like the Emperor himself. So
+Charles reaped what he had sown: the Landsknechte of Maurice drove him
+even to the last gorges of the Alps. The naked egotism of the Wettiner
+triumphed over the reckless policy of the great Hapsburger. What the
+lord of half Europe had striven for all his life, slipped out of his
+hands. Germany was not to be governed in his way; he had not been able
+to guide the great movement of the German mind, nor yet could he
+entirely destroy it. He had not succeeded in making the German princes
+serviceable to his house, nor had he been able to destroy their power.
+The far-seeing cautious player threw up his game, and quietly, as was
+his wont, laid down the cards. He himself, with a heavy heart, broke in
+two the power of his house.
+
+This did not render the political position of Germany more hopeful. The
+life of Maurice also passed away like a meteor, and his wild associate
+Albrecht of Brandenburg died an early and miserable death.
+
+Then followed the feuds of Grumbach and Cologne, the disputes of
+Juelich, and the disorders of Bohemia; one quarrel more contemptible
+than the other, and the leaders of both parties equally incapable. The
+end was the Thirty years' war.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                           A BURGHER FAMILY.
+                              (1488-1542.)
+
+
+Our narrative descends from the highest sphere of German life to the
+lower circles, in the individual families of which the characteristic
+life of the time may be traced. A series of examples shall lead us from
+the hardships of the peasant to the life of the privileged classes.
+
+From all times the peasantry have been the great source, from which
+fresh family vigour has ascended into the guilds of the cities and the
+closets of the learned. Therefore the basis of the prosperity of a
+people lies in the simple occupations of the peasant, in that human
+labour in which mind and body, work and rest, joy and sorrow, are
+regulated by Nature herself; whenever such labour is repressed,
+limited, and fettered, the whole nation becomes diseased. The
+destruction of the free peasant has more than once undermined the
+political existence of states, as for example in Poland; and indeed it
+caused the deadly weakness of the great Roman empire and the decay of
+the ancient world. The more abundantly and freely fresh vigour ascends
+from the lower strata into the higher circles, the more powerful and
+energetic will be the political life of the nation. And again, the less
+declining families are prevented, by artificial supports, from falling
+into the great mass of the people, the more rapid and vigorous will be
+the ascent of those who are struggling upwards.
+
+It was by favouring in a remarkable degree the rise of families out of
+this great source of national vigour, that the Reformation revived the
+youth of the nation. The abolition of enforced celibacy was one of the
+greatest steps towards social progress; it secures still the ascendency
+of the Protestant over the Roman Catholic districts. Up to the time of
+Luther, the greatest portion of the German popular strength which arose
+from the cottage of the labourer, was destined to wither beneath the
+consecrating oil. It is true the marriage of priests had never entirely
+ceased during the middle ages. There was even a cardinal who was
+regularly married; his wife established herself with him, in spite of
+the Pope and College of Cardinals, and was able, when weeping by the
+side of the corpse, to relate to the sympathizing Romans the astounding
+fact that her husband had been always true to her. And in Germany, the
+housekeepers of the priests, the _Papemeiers_ of Reineke Fuchs, formed
+a numerous and not unpretending class. But the country priests were
+obliged to buy tolerance for such unions from the bishop and _curie_.
+But however the higher ecclesiastical authorities may have favoured
+such a system, it was considered as immoral by conscientious pastors,
+and some even had scruples as to the propriety of their celebrating the
+mass. But the people looked with hatred and scorn on these profligate
+unions, and one of the greatest evils was, that the children remained
+as long as they lived under the curse of their birth; hardly any branch
+of trade was open to them; even the guilds of artisans would not
+receive them. They became either working men or vagrants. Yet such
+lasting unions of the Roman Catholic priests were generally, in the
+time of Luther, a benefit to their parishes, for we see in hundreds of
+pamphlets how recklessly the roving sensuality of the priests destroyed
+the family life of their parishes. With the Protestants, on the
+contrary, the ecclesiastical order became the medium by which the
+countryman rose to a higher sphere of activity. By his village life and
+little farm, the pastor became closely united with the peasantry, and
+was at the same time the preserver of the highest education of those
+centuries. So important has been the influence of the Protestant clergy
+on the intellectual development of Germany, that the ancestors, even to
+the third and fourth generation, of most of the great poets, artists,
+and learned men, and the intellectual members of the German
+bureaucracy, lived in a Protestant parsonage.
+
+What follows will portray the life of a family which at the end of the
+fifteenth century migrated from the village to the city, and in the
+third generation became the ruling family in a great commercial town.
+It may be seen from this narrative, that though family life was not
+then deficient in hearty and naive cheerfulness, yet the conception of
+life and duty was rough, and the amount of benevolence small, though
+family feeling was strong.
+
+United with violence and robbery, we find the commencement of a very
+modern system of police; the first prosecutions on account of offences
+of the press.
+
+We are to a certain extent aware that three hundred years ago, the life
+of individuals was of less value than now; but we shall yet learn with
+astonishment from the old narrative, how frequently deeds of violence
+and blood disturbed the peace of households. We find that in a quiet
+burgher family the grandfather was the victim of premeditated murder;
+the father killed another in self-defence, and the son was attacked on
+the public road by highwaymen, one of whom he killed, but was mortally
+wounded by the other. Lastly, it will interest many to observe how the
+great theologian who then divided Christendom into two camps, exercised
+an influence as family counsellor even on the shores of the Baltic, and
+how by his word he brought the souls of strangers to obedience and
+reverence.
+
+The following communications are again taken from the comprehensive
+autobiography of Bartholomaeus Sastrow, Burgomaster of Stralsund. His
+own life was unusually varied and rich in experiences. He was sent,
+when a young man, with his elder brother to the Imperial Court of
+Justice at Spire, to manage his father's lawsuit and to seek a
+livelihood for himself. He was first in the service of lawyers, then of
+one of the commanders of the Order of St. John, and afterwards found
+his way to Italy, in order to wrest from the hands of the Romish
+ecclesiastics the heritage of his elder brother, who had been crowned
+with laurels and ennobled by the Emperor as an improvisatore in Latin
+poetry, and who afterwards, on account of an unfortunate love affair,
+had gone with a broken heart to Italy and died in the service of a
+cardinal.
+
+The younger brother returned home from Italy in the midst of the
+confusion of the Smalkaldic war, entered into the service of the
+Pomeranian dukes, who sent him as political agent to the Imperial camp,
+and solicitor to the supreme court of judicature of the Diet of
+Augsburg. He then settled himself in Greifswald, and gained, as an
+expert notary, practice and wealth in Pomerania, removed to Stralsund,
+became Burgomaster there, and died at an advanced age in great repute
+as a skilful, cunning, hot-headed, and probably often hard and partial
+man. Thus he begins his narrative:--
+
+"About the year 1488, my father, the son of Hans Sastrow, was born at
+Ranzin at the sign of the Kruge, which lies near the churchyard towards
+Anklam, and belongs to the _Junker_ Osten zu Quilow. Now this Hans
+Sastrow by far surpassed the _Junker_ Horne, who also dwelt at Ranzin,
+in wealth, comeliness, strength, and understanding, so that even before
+his marriage he could compete with them in the extent of their land.
+Whereat the Hornes were sore vexed, and endeavoured to the utmost to
+work him shame, injury, and damage, and even to endanger his health and
+life. When he found that the enmity of the Hornes daily increased, he
+resolved to take himself and his family out of danger; and about the
+year 1487, he, settling his affairs in a friendly manner with his
+Junker, the old Hans Osten zu Quilow obtained the right of citizen at
+Greifswald, and there bought the corner house of Fleischhauerstrasse,
+opposite to Herr Brand Hartmann, and gradually conveyed his property
+from Ranzin to this new house. So that a year before my father's birth,
+he gave up his vassalage to the Ostens, and entered the burgher class.
+
+"See now what happened! Mark well this atrocious murderous deed! In the
+year 1494 there was a christening feast at Gribow, which lies not far
+from Ranzin, to the right in going from Greifswald, and there one of
+the Hornes had a property. To this same christening feast my
+grandfather, Hans Sastrow, being invited as nearest relation, led by
+the hand his little son, my father, then about seven years old, along
+the road passing the church.
+
+"The Hornes of Ranzin did not wish to lose this opportunity of giving
+him a parting valediction; and of putting in action what they had
+planned in their hearts for many years. So they rode to Gribow as if
+they wished to visit their cousin there; and in order to spy out the
+best opportunity, went to the christening feast, and placed themselves
+at the table where my grandfather sat, for they had fallen so low that
+they did not despise peasant fare and society. When the Hornes, late in
+the afternoon, were very drunk, they all got up and staggered to the
+stables. They fancied themselves alone; but one of my grandfather's
+relations standing in the corner of the stable, heard all that they
+were proposing to do: they were to hasten to their horses so soon as
+they should perceive that my grandfather was about to depart, to waylay
+him and to beat him and his little son to death.
+
+"The man came to my grandfather and told him what he had heard in the
+stable, and counselled him to start and go home while it was yet day.
+This my grandfather agreed to; he got up, took his little son, my
+father, by the hand, and proceeded towards Ranzin. But when he came to
+the coppice on the moor, which was overgrown with bushes and brambles,
+and about half way between Ranzin and Gribow, the murderous villains
+intercepted his path, trampled him down under their horses' hoofs, and
+wounded him so badly that they thought he was dead. They were however
+not satisfied therewith, but dragged him to a great stone, which even
+now lies on the moor, chopped off his right hand, and so left him for
+dead. But the boy, my father, had in the mean while crept along the
+moor and hidden himself in some bushes on a grass hill, so that they
+could not come near him with their horses, nor find him in the bushes,
+as it began to be dark.
+
+"The other peasants had ridden after the Hornes, to see what they had
+done: they found the wounded man thus mangled, and fetched the boy from
+the moor: one of these ran to Ranzin and brought quickly a cart and
+horses, on which they placed the wounded man, who showed no signs of
+life, except that on their arrival at Ranzin he gave a last gasp and
+expired.
+
+"The friends of the orphan boy, my father, sold the new house and
+turned everything into money, so that they amassed altogether about two
+thousand gulden. Few of the nobles at that period allowed their
+subjects to possess so much. These friends did their best by the boy,
+had him taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and sent him to
+Antwerp, and afterwards to Amsterdam, that he might be fitted to become
+a merchant. When, having attained a right age, he returned home and
+took possession of his property, he bought at the corner of the high
+street and Hundstrasse, directly opposite to the church of St.
+Nicholas, two houses and two shops. One of the former he turned into a
+dwelling-house, the other into a brewhouse, and one of the shops into a
+gateway, whereon he expended much cost and labour. Now as people were
+well pleased with his comely person, and he had good hopes of having a
+sufficient maintenance, my mother's guardian and nearest relations
+promised her to him in marriage.
+
+"My mother was the daughter of Bartholomaeus Smiterlow, the brother of
+the Herr Buergermeister Nicholaus Smiterlow; she was a truly pretty
+woman, small and delicately formed, amiable and lively, free from
+pride, neat and domestic, and to the end of her life devout and
+God-fearing. In the year 1514 my parents were married, and in 1515 the
+good God gave them a son, whom they called after my paternal
+grandfather Johannes. In 1517 was born my sister Anne, the relict of
+Peter Frubos, Burgomaster of Greifswald. In 1520 I came into the world,
+and was named after my maternal grandfather, Bartholomaeus.
+
+"One of my five younger sisters, Catherine, was an excellent, amiable,
+lovely, faithful, and pious maiden. When my brother Johannes came home
+from Wittenberg, where he was a student, she bade him tell her how one
+could say in Latin 'That is truly a beautiful maiden;' he said
+'_Profecto formosa puella._' She asked further how could one say
+'rather so:' he replied, '_sic satis_.' Some time after, three
+students, sons of gentlemen, came from Wittenberg to see the town; they
+had been recommended by Christian Smiterlow to the hospitality of his
+father, the burgomaster Herr Nicolaus Smiterlow, who was desirous to
+entertain them well, and to have good society for them. As he had three
+grown-up daughters, my sister Catherine was invited, besides other
+guests. The students exchanged all kinds of jokes with the maidens, and
+also said to one another in Latin what it would not have been seemly to
+say before maidens in German, as young fellows are wont to do. At last
+one said to the other '_Profecto formosa puella_;' whereupon my sister
+answered '_sic satis_;' then were they much afraid, fancying that she
+had also understood their former amatory talk. In the year 1544 she
+made a most unfortunate marriage with Christoph Meier, a coarse man,
+who wasted, idled away, and dissipated all that he had, even what he
+had received with my sister.
+
+"My mother accustomed her daughters from their youth up, to suitable
+household work. Once when my sister Gertrude, who was about five years
+old, was sitting spinning at her distaff--for spinning-wheels were not
+then in use--my brother Johannes told her that his Imperial Majesty had
+summoned a Diet, where the Emperor, Kings, Electors, princes, counts,
+and great lords would be assembled: she inquired what they would do
+there, and he answered, 'That they would determine and decree what was
+to be done in the world.' Then the little maiden at the distaff gave a
+deep sigh, and said dolefully: 'Oh good God! if they would only decree
+that such little children should not spin.' This sister, together with
+my mother and two other sisters, Magdalen and Catherine, died in peace
+in the year '49, when the plague was raging: my mother went first, and
+as my sisters were weeping bitterly, she said to them when dying: 'Why
+do you weep? pray rather that God would in his mercy shorten my pain.'
+Some days after, my youngest sister Gertrude died: although my eldest
+unmarried sister Magdalen was herself nigh unto death, she rose from
+her bed, and laid out not only Gertrude's shroud and winding-sheet, but
+her own also, and desired that when Gertrude was buried, the grave
+should be left open, being only lightly covered with earth, that she
+might be laid next to her; she then returned to her bed, and lived till
+the next day after Gertrude was buried: so she died, the tallest and
+strongest of all my sisters, an excellent, clever, and industrious
+housekeeper. This was written to me by my sister Catherine two days
+before her own death, who added, that it was even so with herself, that
+she was about to follow her mother and sisters, and that she did yearn
+for it, and she did admonish me not to grieve thereat.
+
+"Now my parents when they were first married were comfortably
+established; their buildings were finished, they were prosperous, and
+possessed plenty of feathers, wool, honey, butter, and corn; they had
+their stately mill and brewery; when suddenly all this happiness
+changed into sorrow and misfortune: for in the same year 1523, George
+Hartmann, the son-in-law of Doctor Stoientin,[48] bought of my father a
+quarter of butter, and they came to angry words thereupon. Hartmann,
+who was going to carry a sword to Herr Peter Korchschwantz, went on his
+way to complain to his mother-in-law: she, who was haughty and very
+rich, had married a doctor, councillor to the prince, and looked down
+upon smaller people; she put an axe into his hand with these words:
+'See, I give you a trifle, go to the market and buy yourself a heart.'
+He then met my father, who was without arms, and had not even his
+bread-knife with him, as he was going to have a pot of honey weighed at
+the weighing-place in the streets where the locksmiths lived. Hartmann,
+armed with sword and axe, fell upon him; my father springing into the
+house of one of the smiths, seized a spit; the boys tore it away from
+him, and also prevented him from using the ladder which was standing
+near the gallery; but he tore from the wall a hunting-spear, and
+running out into the street with it, called out: 'Where is he who wants
+to take my life?' thereupon Hartmann sprang out of the adjoining
+smith's house, having added to his former weapons a hammer from the
+anvil, which he threw at my father, and though he parried the blow with
+the spear, yet the hammer glided along the spear and hit him on the
+breast, so that he spit blood for some days. Immediately after,
+Hartmann struck him with the axe on the shoulder; having now hit him
+with both hammer and axe, and fancying he had the best of it, he
+unsheathed his sword, and rushing at my father, ran on the spear, which
+went into his body up to the handle, so that he fell. This is the true
+account of this lamentable story; I know well that the adversaries
+maintain that my father stabbed Hartmann when he was hiding himself
+behind the stove in the smith's room, but it is a mere fable.
+
+"My father hastened straight to the monastery of the Black Monks, with
+whom he was acquainted, and they took him into the church, up under the
+vaulted roof. Doctor Stoientin with many assistants and servants
+searched every corner of the monastery, and came also into the church.
+My father, thinking they saw him, was on the point of speaking out and
+entreating that they would spare him, as he was innocent and had only
+acted in self-defence; but the merciful God prevented him from
+speaking, and shut the eyes of his adversaries so that they could not
+see him.
+
+"In the night the monks let him down over the wall, so that he
+could walk along the dyke to the village of Neukirchen. There my
+step-grandfather arranged that my father should go to Stralsund, in a
+cart that he had ordered from Leitz, concealed among some sacks of
+barley and fodder. Stoientin met the peasant in the night, and asked
+him where he was going. 'To Stralsund,' he said. He kicked at the sacks
+and inquired what load he was carrying. The other replied: 'Barley and
+fodder.' He then asked whether the peasant had not seen some one riding
+or running; the latter answered: 'He had seen one riding hastily
+towards the village of Horst, who had appeared to him like Sastrow from
+Greifswald; and he had been astonished at his riding so hastily in the
+night.' So Doctor Stoientin left the peasant and rode to Horst; but my
+father arrived at Stralsund and obtained a safe conduct from the
+councillor there.
+
+"But my father could not trust to this, as the deceased had himself
+been under the safe conduct of my gracious sovereign Duke George; and
+Dr. Stoientin, the councillor of his princely grace, made good avail of
+it against my father; besides this, the adversaries were rich, proud,
+and powerful. So he was obliged to wander about in Denmark, going also
+to Luebeck, Hamburg, and elsewhere, till he conciliated the reigning
+prince by a considerable sum, which he was obliged to pay in ready
+money.
+
+"And although later, after repeated endeavours, and at the cost of much
+labour and exertion on the part of my step-grandfather, my father
+became reconciled with the offended party, upon the payment of
+blood-money to the amount of one thousand marks, he could not remain
+unmolested at Greifswald, on account of these adversaries residing
+there. But it may be seen how little this blood-money prospered with
+the son and heirs of the deceased, for evil and misfortune to person,
+land, and property pursued both wife and children.
+
+"Thus my mother was left in her youth without a husband, to keep house
+with four uneducated children. One can well imagine how many sad and
+sorrowful thoughts weighed upon her.
+
+"Whilst my mother was dwelling in Greifswald, I went to school there,
+and learnt not only to read, but also to decline, parse, and conjugate
+in the Donat. On Palm-Sunday I had to sing the '_Quantus_,' having sung
+the foregoing years first the lesser and then the great '_Hic
+est._'[49]
+
+"This was a great honour to the boy, and no small pleasure to his
+parents, for the most courageous scholars were always selected for it,
+who were not alarmed at the great multitude of ecclesiastics as well as
+laymen, and could sing the _Quantus_ with a loud and clear voice.
+
+"In the year 1528, when my parents discovered that the Hartmann party
+were not to be mollified, and would not let my father return to the
+town and to his business, they desired, as is becoming an honest
+couple, to bear the burden of housekeeping together, and thus my mother
+must needs follow my father. Therefore my father became a citizen of
+Stralsund, and bought a house there; my mother in the spring quitted
+Greifswald, sold her house, and settled near the Sound. About the same
+time my step-grandfather, who was then chamberlain at Greifswald, took
+me to his house, that I might study there. I however studied very
+little, for I preferred riding and driving with my grandfather to the
+neighbouring villages, so that I made little progress in my studies.
+
+"In the year 1529, my mother being pregnant, wished to have a scouring
+and washing before her confinement, as is customary with women. Now my
+parents had at this time a servant-maid who was possessed with an evil
+spirit; it had hitherto not shown itself, but now, when she had to
+scour the numerous kitchen utensils, and took down the kettle and
+saucepan, she threw them on the ground in a dreadful way, and cried
+out, with a loud voice, 'I will away!' When therefore they found the
+reason of this, her mother, who dwelt in the Patinenmacher Strasse,
+took her home, and she was taken several times in a Riga sledge to the
+church of St. Nicholas. When the sermon was ended, the spirit was
+exorcised; and it appeared from its confession, that her mother having
+bought a fresh sour cheese, and placed it in the cupboard, the maiden
+had gone there in her absence and eaten of the cheese. Now when the
+mother saw that some one had been to the cheese, she had wished that
+person possessed of the evil spirit, and ever since, he had dwelt in
+the maiden. When he was then asked how he could have remained in the
+maiden, as since then she had received the sacrament, he answered, 'A
+rogue may lie under a bridge whilst a good man is passing over;' he had
+meanwhile been under her tongue. He was not only exorcised and
+expelled, but each and every one present in the church knelt down and
+prayed diligently and devoutly. He however, loudly scoffed at the
+exorcism, for when the preacher conjured him to go away, he said he
+would depart, he must forsooth give up the field; but he demanded that
+he might be allowed to take away with him sundry things, and if this
+demand were refused, he would be free to remain. One of those present
+having his hat on whilst praying, the evil spirit begged of the
+preacher to allow him to take off this hat; he would then depart, and
+carry it away with him. I feared that, had it been permitted him by
+God, the hair and scalp would have gone with the hat. At last, when he
+perceived that his time for vexing the maiden was passed, and that our
+Lord God listened mercifully to the prayers of the believers present,
+he demanded mockingly a square of glass from the window over the tower
+clock, and when a pane was granted to him, it loosed itself visibly
+with a great clang, and flew away. After that time nothing evil was
+observed in the maiden. She got a husband in the village, and had
+children.
+
+"I went to school, and learnt as much as my wildness would
+allow me: of intelligence there was sufficient in me, as may be
+observed, but steadiness there was none. In the summer I bathed with my
+companions on the sea-shore; this my uncle saw from his garden behind
+his barn, and told it to my father, who came in the morning with a good
+rod into the room, in front of my bed, whilst I was asleep; he worked
+himself up into a rage, and spoke loud in order to awake me. When I
+awoke, and saw him standing before me, and the rod lying on the
+next bed, I knew well what was in the wind, and began to pray and
+entreat--weeping bitterly. He asked what I had done? I swore I would
+never again, all my life long, bathe in the sea. 'Yes, sir,' he said
+(when he called me 'sir,' I knew well that matters stood badly between
+us), 'if you have bathed, then I must use the mop.' Thereupon he seized
+the rod, threw my clothes over my head, and gave me my deserts. My
+parents brought up their children well. My father was somewhat hasty,
+and when his temper got the upper hand, he knew no moderation. Once
+when he was in a rage with me,--he was standing in the stable, and I in
+the doorway,--he caught hold of the pitchfork and threw it at me. I
+sprang aside, but it had been thrown with such violence, that the
+prongs stuck deep into one of the oaken tubs of the bathroom, and it
+required great strength to draw it out. Thus the merciful God hindered
+the evil designs of the devil against me and my father. But my mother,
+who was exceedingly gentle and tender, sprang forward in such cases,
+saying, 'Strike harder, the good-for-nothing boy has well deserved it!'
+But at the same time she would lay hold of the hand in which he held
+the rod, so that he might not strike too hard.
+
+"My father's house was still very unfinished, and an outhouse was built
+against it, with its entrance close to the well. A miller dwelt therein
+named Lewark-Lark,--who had many naughty children that cried day and
+night. At daybreak these young larks began to chirp, and continued the
+whole day, so that one could neither see nor hear until my father drove
+out the old larks with their young ones, pulled down the outhouse, and
+set to work in earnest to finish the whole house at great cost of
+labour and money. My parents received from Greifswald a considerable
+amount of cash; for my mother had been obliged to turn everything into
+money, so that many called him the rich man of the Vehr Strasse. But in
+a few years this appeared very doubtful, for my parents had great
+anxiety and loss of money, and also hindrance to the hoped-for
+happiness of their children as well as other detriment.
+
+"For there were then in Stralsund two women who might not unjustly be
+called swindlers; the one was named Lubbe Kesske, the other Engeln;
+they both dwelt in the Altbuesser Strasse. They bought divers kinds of
+cloth from my father, which they again sold to others, but it was not
+known to whom. Sometimes they paid part of the money for the cloth; but
+whenever they gave a hundred gulden, they straightway bought to the
+amount of two hundred or more. When, however, his claim upon them
+became very large, the women only being able to pay twenty gulden, he
+inquired what had become of his property; he found that his goods to
+the amount of seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden had gone to the
+wife of the tailor Hermann Bruser, who had a considerable traffic in
+cloth, being able to sell it cheaper in retail than other cloth
+merchants; and that his eight hundred gulden had found their way to the
+mother of Jacob Leweling. When my father called to account the two
+women and the wife of Bruser, the latter and her husband, Hermann
+Bruser, offered to pay: Bruser assured my father under his hand and
+seal that at fixed terms he would make the payment. See what happened!
+The first term was due at the time of the uproar of Burgomaster Herr
+Nicholaus Smiterlow, and Hermann Bruser, who was one of the principal
+ringleaders, thought it was now all over with my father, as well as
+with the burgomaster; so he disclaimed his bond, refused payment, and
+began a lawsuit with my father which lasted more than four-and-thirty
+years; my father came to terms with the heirs of Bruser, who had to pay
+for one and all a thousand gulden. The debt itself had amounted to
+seventeen hundred and twenty-five gulden, and my father's costs to
+upwards of a thousand more. Thus my father was deprived of his money
+for forty years; great inconvenience accrued to both parents and
+children. I thereby lost my studies and my brother, Magister Johannes,
+even his life, so that one may in truth say, that Hesiod's words, 'The
+half is more than the whole,' may well be applied to a lawsuit,
+particularly to one at the Imperial court, so that it would be more
+profitable to be satisfied with the half in the beginning than to
+obtain the whole by the sentence of the Imperial court.
+
+"During the lawsuit my brother Johannes became Magister at Wittenberg,
+where he was the first among thirteen, and my parents summoned him
+home. Before his departure from Wittenberg, he begged of Dr. Martin
+Luther to write to my father, as the latter, on account of his lawsuit
+with Hermann Bruser, had abstained for some years from the Lord's
+table.[50] The letter was thus worded:--
+
+
+'To the honourable and discreet Nicholaus Sastrow, burgher of
+Stralsund; my kind and good friend, _Gratia et Pax_.
+
+'Your dear son Magister Johannes has made known to me with touching
+lament, my dear friend, how you have abstained from the Sacrament for
+so many years, giving a scandalous example to others, and he has begged
+me to exhort you to give up such a dangerous practice, as we are not
+sure of life for a moment. So his filial, faithful care for you his
+father has moved me to write to you, and I give you my brotherly and
+Christian exhortation (such as we owe to one another in Christ) to
+desist from such a practice, and to consider that the Son of God
+suffered far more and forgave his crucifiers. And finally, when your
+hour comes, you will have to forgive as does a thief on the gallows. If
+your cause before the court lingers on, let it proceed, and wait for
+your right. Such things do not prevent us from going to the Sacrament,
+else we and also our princes could not attend, as the cause betwixt us
+and the Papists still lingers on. Commit your cause to justice, and
+meanwhile make your conscience free, and say, "Whoever shall be judged
+in the right, let him be considered so, in the mean time I will forgive
+those who have done the wrong, and go to the Sacrament." Thus you will
+go not unworthily, because you desire justice and are willing to suffer
+wrong, however the judge's sentence may fall. Take kindly this
+exhortation which your son has so earnestly begged from me. Herewith I
+commend you to God. Amen. Wednesday, after Miser., A.D. 1540.
+
+                                                'Martinus Luther.'
+
+
+"My children will find the original of this letter in its place with
+other important documents, and will no less carefully than myself
+preserve it as an autograph of that highly enlightened, holy, dear, and
+of the whole world praiseworthy man, and will love, and value, and keep
+it as a pleasant remembrance for their children and children's
+children.
+
+"This letter my brother brought home to my father, and in order that
+his parents might see that their money had not been spent in vain, he
+brought with him also some of his Latin poems which had been printed.
+In the following years he applied himself with industry at home to his
+private studies. For besides other poems at Rostock, he published at
+Lubeck an elegy on the Christian martyr Dr. _Robert Barns_,[51] which
+had a tragical result for both the printer and himself. For the poem
+came to the knowledge of the king of England, who sent an envoy to the
+city of Lubeck with bitter complaints and threatenings, as the poem had
+been published by their printer Johann Balhorn. The dignitaries of
+Lubeck made excuses for the author, although he did not dwell there nor
+belong to their jurisdiction, as he was only a young fellow who wished
+to give proof of his learning; but the publisher, Johann Balhorn, was
+sent out of the city, and had to leave it by break of day. They thereby
+appeased the king's anger, and after some months allowed Balhorn to
+return to the city.
+
+"But my brother, Magister Johann, when he was travelling home from
+Lubeck to Rostock had as companions Herr Heinrich Sonneberg and a
+female, and besides there rode near the carriage Hans Lagebusch and a
+smart young fellow, Hermann Lepper, who had exchanged _boguslawische
+schillinge_ and other money for some hundred gulden coined in
+Gadebusch, and which lay in the carriage. This was discovered by
+certain highwaymen, as thievish miscreants are called. Highway robbery
+was very common in Mecklenburg, as it was never seriously punished, and
+many nobles even of the highest birth were engaged in it; so that one
+may truly say with the poet:--
+
+/*
+           'Nobilis et Nebulo parvo discrimine distant:
+              Sic nebulo magnus nobilis esse potest.'
+*/
+
+Nevertheless the genuine nobility, among whom are many honourable men,
+who are in all ways worthy of esteem, are not spoken of here. Now,
+thank God, there is a careful superintendence exercised in the Duchy of
+Mecklenburg; but then the highwaymen could say, if we give up three
+hundred gulden we place ourselves out of all danger, and can always
+keep the remaining two hundred. When the travellers came to the
+Ribbenitzer heath, those who were sitting in the carriage alighted from
+it, having their arms with them; and the two horsemen, who ought to
+have remained by it in that insecure place, rode forward. Against these
+the highwaymen collected themselves, one of whom joined Lagebusch, and
+talked familiarly with him. When riding so near to him that he could
+reach the stock of his pistol, which was cocked (it was not then the
+custom to carry double barrels in the saddle), he seized it out of the
+holster, and hastened therewith after Hermann Lepper, who was riding
+back to the carriage, and shot him, so that he fell from his nag. Hans
+Lagebusch took to flight, and rode to Ribbenitz; Herr Heinrich
+Sonneberg ran into the wood, and concealed himself among the bushes; my
+brother, who had a hunting-spear, placed himself against the hind
+wheel, that they might not attack him from behind; in front he defended
+himself, and kept off one after another, inflicting wounds on them, for
+he thrust his spear into the side of one of them near his leg, so that
+riding to the bushes he fell from his horse, which escaped, and he
+remained lying there. Another then fiercely attacked my brother, and
+cut a piece from his head the size of a thaler, and even a little bit
+of his skull, at the same time wounded him in the neck with his sword,
+so that he fell and was considered dead. The miscreant plundered the
+carriage, took all that was therein, and also carried off the horse of
+their wounded comrade; as they saw he was so much wounded that there
+was little life remaining in him, and not being able to carry him away,
+they left him lying there. They left the driver his horses, and rode
+away with their booty. Herr Heinrich Sonneberg returned to the
+carriage; they laid my brother in it, and the woman bound up his head
+with her handkerchief, and held it in her lap. The dead body they laid
+at his feet, and thus drove slowly to Ribbenitz. There his wounds were
+dressed, and the surgeon put some plaster on his neck. A rumour of this
+came to Rostock. The councillor sent his servants to the spot, who
+found the wounded highwayman, and took him to Rostock; but, alas! he
+died as soon as they reached the prison, so that they could not learn
+who the others were. It did not, however, remain quite secret, but was
+hushed up by their connections, and the high magistrates did not in
+good earnest investigate the matter. The dead miscreant was however
+brought before the court, and from thence taken to the Landwehr to have
+his head cut off, which was placed on a pole, where it was to be seen
+for many years. Lagebusch brought the tidings to Stralsund, and the
+councillor sent along with my father a close carriage with four of the
+city horses; we took our beds with us, and starting in the evening,
+travelled all night through, so that we reached Ribbenitz early in the
+morning. We found my brother very weak, but we remained there on
+account of the horses; and had the deceased Hermann Lepper christianly
+and honourably buried, after an inquest had been held. Towards evening
+we left Ribbenitz, and drove at a foot's pace through the night, so
+that we reached Stralsund towards noon on the following day. When
+Master Joachim Geelhar, the celebrated surgeon, had properly dressed
+the wounds, the patient was soon thoroughly cured."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                   THE MARRIAGE AND HOUSEKEEPING OF A
+                             YOUNG STUDENT.
+                                (1557.)
+
+
+The chief charm of the life of the olden time consists in the graceful
+manifestation of those feelings which give brightness to our life; the
+passions of lovers, the deep affection of husband and wife, the
+tenderness of parents, and the piety of children. We are enabled in
+each period of the past to distinguish the universal attributes of
+human nature, nay, even the specific German characteristics of love and
+marriage, but these tender relations are precisely those which are
+often enveloped in much that is transitory and enigmatical. We have
+often to seek mild and humane feelings under repulsive forms.
+
+But two things have always been valued in Germany. In the first place
+it was a pre-eminent peculiarity of the Germans that they honoured the
+dignity of the female sex. Their women were the prophetesses of the
+heathen time, and, according to the laws of the people, whosoever
+killed a maiden or widow had to atone for it by the severest
+punishment. In times of strife and war, women enjoyed protection of
+person and property. Whilst Totila, Prince of the Goths, destroyed the
+men in Italy, the honour and life of the women were preserved, and the
+misbehaviour of a Goth to a Neapolitan woman was punished with death.
+It moreover appears from the Sachsenspiegel, that the same laws
+prevailed in the North even during the time of the cruel Hussite wars.
+
+Of all the misdeeds of the Spanish soldiers who accompanied Charles V.
+into Germany in the sixteenth century, their ill-treatment of women
+excited the greatest indignation. The infamous conduct of some Passau
+soldiers of the Archduke Leopold towards the women of Alsace, even in
+1611, was particularly repugnant to the people, and was commented on in
+their news-sheets. It was not till the Thirty years' war that the
+coarseness became universal, and women were looked upon as the booty of
+licentious men.
+
+This respect for women and chaste family life was considered by the
+Romans the highest quality of the Germans. Even Christianity, which
+spread from the Roman to the German countries, could not place women
+and marriage on a higher footing; on the contrary, its ascetic
+tendencies served to lower them. The full enjoyment of the pleasures of
+the world were no longer allowed to man; passionate devotion to a
+beloved husband was easily mistaken for a wrong to heaven and the holy
+Redeemer. On the other hand men fixed their eyes on the heavenly
+Virgin, whose especial favour they might win by despising the women of
+earth. At the time of the Saxon Emperors this tendency of the mind
+reached its highest point. In those days education was confined to the
+cloister; there the daughters of the nobility were educated; there men
+weary of sin retired; and there also, enthusiasm sought for the highest
+enjoyment of love, which seemed unattainable in marriage without danger
+to the salvation of the soul. Secret sensuality mixed even with the
+worship of the highest objects of faith.
+
+But the heart of man could not long rest satisfied with ideal love in
+heaven. When, under the first Hohenstaufen, education, manners, and
+good taste were only to be found among the feudal nobility, they
+hastened to transfer to the women of this world the devotion and
+veneration which had been exclusively confined to the Virgin Mary. The
+courtly worship of woman began, new conventional forms were introduced
+for the intercourse between man and woman, accompanied in Germany with
+a strong intermixture of Italian manners. The man had to give proof of
+his love by heroic deeds and adventures, and his lady-love was
+surrounded by an atmosphere of poetry, and veiled in ideal perfections,
+as we may perceive in the numerous minne-songs of that time. But
+neither the dignity of woman, nor the fundamental morality of marriage,
+was increased by this chivalrous devotion, and it became a cloak for
+reckless profligacy. Sometimes even a married woman had a knight
+devoted to her service; he was invested kneeling before his liege lady,
+and she, laying her hands between his, confirmed his allegiance by a
+kiss. From that time he wore her colours; he was bound to be faithful
+to her, and she to him, and in some cases they lived together as man
+and wife; and there were even instances in which the Church gave its
+sanction to these improper unions.
+
+This knightly service often led men into the greatest follies. For
+instance, Pierre Vidal of Toulouse went about on all-fours in a wolfs
+skin, in honour of his lady, till he was beaten and bitten almost to
+death by the shepherds and sheep dogs; and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who
+rode through the whole country in woman's clothes, challenging all the
+knights, and had his finger and upper lip cut off in honour of his
+lady, drank the water in which she had washed, and when he returned
+from his expeditions, was nursed by his wife. These are not the worst
+examples of the horrible eccentricities to which this knightly devotion
+led. The result was such as might be expected,--the glitter of romance
+soon disappeared, and coarse profligacy remained in its nakedness.
+
+The Church did little to improve this state of things. There were
+individual popular preachers who courageously advocated marriage and
+chastity, but it was at this very time that the celibacy of the secular
+clergy was established, and that the mass of the people were reduced to
+bondage by the feudal lords. The purity of marriage and the happiness
+of families were not promoted either by the position of the village
+priest living in his parish without a legal wife, nor by that of the
+proprietor who had to give his sanction to marriages, received tribute
+on account of them, and even laid shameful claims on the person of the
+bride.
+
+On the other hand there arose in the cities a fresh and vigorous life,
+and from the fourteenth century, the citizens became the best
+representatives of German cultivation and manners, as once the
+ecclesiastics had been, and afterwards the nobles. Owing to the close
+proximity of the dwellings in the city, and the smallness of their
+houses, the intercourse between man and woman became more strictly
+defined, and on the whole a practical sound conception of life took the
+place of chivalrous fancies; citizen habits followed courtly manners;
+ladies were won by cautious wooing instead of by daring heroic deeds;
+maidenly modesty attracted more than haughty assumption; instead of the
+wild knightly life of the nobles, which frequently separated man and
+wife, and violently severed the marriage tie, the woman now obtained a
+quiet sway in the well-regulated house, and the bold courtesy of the
+knight was replaced by a considerate, though strictly regulated and
+sometimes rather formal, expression of heartfelt esteem.
+
+The conception of propriety and purity was different, however, from
+what it is now. At the time of the Council of Constance, the refined
+Poggio relates with great satisfaction how at Baden near Zurich, the
+most fashionable bath of the fifteenth century, he had seen German men
+and women bathing together, and how delightfully naive their
+familiarity was. And even a century later Hutten praises this German
+custom in contradistinction to the Italian morals, which would have
+made this practice impossible. So tolerant still were the German
+Humanitarians.
+
+Marriage, however, was considered by our ancestors less as a union of
+two lovers, than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not
+only of married people towards one another, but also towards their
+relatives--as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. The relations of the
+wife became also the friends of the man, and they had claims on him as
+he had on them. Therefore in the olden time, the choice of husband and
+wife was always an affair of importance to the relatives on both sides,
+so that a German wooing, from the oldest times up to the last century,
+had the appearance of a business transaction, which was carried out
+with great regard to suitability. This perhaps takes away from German
+courtship, somewhat of the charm which we expect to find where the
+heart of man beats strongly; but this circumspect method of weighing
+things is a characteristic sign of an earnest and great conception of
+life. If a man desired to ask a woman in marriage he had to go through
+several solemn family negotiations. First the wooing, for which he had
+to employ a mediator; not always the lather or any other head of his
+family, but often some man of consideration in the town or country.
+This ambassador was generally accompanied by the wooer himself with a
+troop of his companions: if it took place in the country, they rode in
+solemn procession. If the family of the maiden was favourably disposed,
+they considered this as the preliminary step, and fixed a time for the
+negotiations between the families to take place. Formerly the man had
+to buy his wife from her family; but when this old custom fell into
+disuse, there still remained the arrangements concerning the dowry
+which the bride had to bring to her husband, and the jointure which he
+had to settle upon her. There were added to this, though not compulsory
+yet as a standing custom, presents of the man to the parents, brothers,
+and sisters of the bride, or from the bride to the family and best-men
+of the bridegroom. After this consultation, followed the betrothal,
+which had to take place in the presence of the rightful guardians:
+amidst the circle of witnesses, both parties had solemnly to declare
+that they would take each other in marriage; after which a ring was
+placed on the finger of the bride by the bridegroom; they embraced and
+kissed, thus showing the passing of the maiden into the family and
+guardianship of the man. After this betrothal, a certain space of time
+having elapsed, the termination of which was in many places legally
+fixed, the solemn fetching home of the bride to the house of the
+bridegroom took place. Again there was a solemn procession to the house
+of the maiden, and even if the bridegroom was present he was obliged to
+have a spokesman, who once more wooed her before the assembled family,
+and gave her over to the bridegroom; then she was taken in procession
+to the house of the latter, where the bridal feast was held. It was a
+bad custom in the middle ages, that this repast was got up with an
+extravagance which far surpassed the means of the bridal couple; and
+there were numerous police regulations endeavouring to limit the luxury
+in music, dishes, and the number of tables[52] and feast days.
+
+Such was the marriage ceremonial of the Germans. The old custom of the
+bridal wreath, which was worn by both bride and bridegroom, was
+introduced into Germany from Rome. The consecration of marriage by the
+Church was only required from the time of the Carlovingians, and was
+seldom neglected by the nobility, but did not become general among the
+people till a later period. The Church had indeed raised marriage to
+the dignity of a sacrament; but a feeling remained among the people
+that Christianity looked coldly and sternly on it. Even in the
+fifteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church was not
+entirely established, nor does it take place to this day in many places
+before the fetching home of the bride.
+
+In this respect also, Luther and the Reformation had a great influence.
+From the sixteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church
+became in the Protestant countries the essential part of the ceremony;
+from that time the old customs of betrothals and of fetching home the
+bride were secondary considerations. It was not till after Luther and
+the Council of Trent, that marriage became intimately connected with
+the Christian faith in the German mind; for then the different
+confessions endeavoured by educating and elevating the people, to make
+them comprehend the moral and domestic significance of marriage.
+
+And how was it with the heart of lovers? The following example will
+show how true love germinated amidst all the various family interests.
+
+Felix Platter, the son of Thomas Platter, burgher, printer,
+schoolmaster, and householder at Basle, was born in 1536. His father by
+unwearied activity had risen from the greatest poverty, and had up to
+an advanced age to struggle with anxieties for his maintenance, and
+with pecuniary embarrassments, in consequence of the constant extension
+of his business. This hard battle with life had exercised its usual
+influence on his mind; he had a restless spirit of enterprise, which
+sometimes hindered him from steadily pursuing a plan; he had no real
+self-confidence, was easily perplexed, irritable, and morose. His son
+Felix, the only child by his first marriage, had on the contrary
+inherited the joyous disposition of his single-minded mother; he was a
+jolly warm-hearted lad, rather vain, passionately fond of music and
+dancing, at the same time clever, open and ingenuous. He was still
+almost a boy when his father sent him from Basle to the celebrated
+medical college of the university of Montpellier. Felix having acquired
+there, not only everything that medical science then offered, but all
+kinds of French refinements, returned to the simple burgher life of his
+native town: at the age of one-and-twenty he took his degree as doctor,
+and married happily a maiden about whom he had been teased when a
+child. He gained a great reputation, became Professor of the
+university, and a man of opulence and consideration, and died at an
+advanced age. He was of the greatest service to the city of Basle, by
+his self-sacrificing activity at the time of the plague, and also to
+the medical faculty of his university by his learning; and he was often
+consulted as a physician of renown by persons of princely rank both in
+Germany and France. He laid out a botanic garden at Basle, and
+possessed a cabinet of physical science worthy of being shown for
+money. Like his father, he wrote an account of part of his life: the
+following fragment is taken from a printed edition of the manuscript,
+entitled 'Thomas and Felix Platter, two Autobiographies, by Dr. D. A.
+Fechter, Basle, 1840.'
+
+The narrative begins with that day on which the young Felix returns
+with all the self-confidence of a scholar to his native town.
+
+"I was welcomed home by all my neighbours, and there was great
+rejoicing; the servant-maid of the midwife, Dorly Becherer, as I learnt
+afterwards, gained the _botenbrot_[53] from my intended, by running to
+her father's house and screaming out the news, which she did so loud as
+quite to frighten her. Supper was prepared, and some of my companions
+who had heard of my arrival, and had forthwith come to visit me, stayed
+for it. After supper we escorted them to the Crown inn, and going down
+the Freienstrasse, my intended saw me passing by in my Spanish cap, and
+she fled. The innkeeper, who had himself been wooing her, bantered me,
+so that I perceived the affair was pretty well known: after that I
+returned home.
+
+"The following morning, Hummel came to me to take me about the town. We
+first passed the Minster close, there Herr Ludwig von Rischach spied me
+out, and was wondering who I was, because I wore a velvet barret cap
+and arms: I made myself known to him; then I saluted Dr. Sulzer, pastor
+of the Minster; afterwards, Dr. Hans Huber, who welcomed me kindly and
+offered me his services; I made him a present of Clemens Marot, which
+had been beautifully bound at Paris.
+
+"After that we went down Martin's Alley, and when we arrived at the
+bottom of it, opposite the school, my intended, who was standing by the
+bench saw me, though I did not see her; she ran into the school and
+home again; and after that she no longer went to the shops of the
+butchers, because they began to tease her. After dinner my father took
+me to his property at Gundeldingen; he talked to me on the road, and
+exhorted me not to speak too fast, as the French are apt to do, and
+gave me an account of his household. I began immediately to prepare my
+cypress lute, and to string the large harp which my father had formerly
+played; and I put my books and manuscripts in order; thus I spent the
+whole week.
+
+"Meanwhile my father arranged matters that I might talk with my
+intended, and she with me; he therefore invited Master Franz and his
+daughter to come out to Gundeldingen the following Sunday afternoon; it
+was the sixteenth of May, a merry spring day. I went out there after
+dinner with Thiebold Schoenauer; we had sent on our lutes, and when we
+entered the yard at Gundeldingen we saw two maidens standing there; one
+was the cousin of the landlady, and engaged to Daniel the son of Master
+Franz, the other was his daughter Magdalen, my intended, whom I greeted
+cordially, as she did me, not without changing colour. Thus we got into
+converse; her brother Daniel joined us; we walked about the property,
+talking of divers things; my intended was modest, bashful, and quiet.
+At three o'clock we returned to the house, and went up stairs; I and
+Thiebold played the lute, and I danced the gaillarde, as was my custom.
+Meanwhile, Master Franz, her father, arrived and welcomed me; we sat
+down to table and had an evening drink as at supper, till it was late,
+and time for us to return to town. On the road homewards, her father
+and mine went in advance, and I and Daniel followed with the ladies in
+friendly talk, when Dorothy, who was somewhat bold of speech, burst
+forth, saying, 'When two are fond of each other they should make no
+delay, for one knows not how quick a misfortune may come between them.'
+Near the ramparts we separated, Master Franz and his party went home
+through the Stein gate, and my father and his through the Eschemer
+gate. We all went to bed full of curious thoughts about myself.
+
+"My father-in-law and my father took counsel together, to make our
+engagement sure. I began to love her very much, and urged it on. I also
+was not disagreeable to her, which I had partly found out from herself,
+when the wife of the butcher, Burlacher, my mother's cousin, had
+invited us to her meadow before the Spalen gate to eat cherries, where
+we had been able to speak openly. It was determined that Dr. Hans Huber
+should make the proposal for me. When my father asked it of him, he
+readily assented, appointed Master Franz in the forenoon to meet him at
+the Minster, made the proposal, and gained his consent for a family
+marriage counsel. In the evening, when Dr. Hans came to me, he
+announced it to me with exultation, as was his wont, and congratulated
+me; but informed me that my father-in-law wished the affair to be kept
+quiet till my doctorate was over, when matters might proceed. I was
+well satisfied therewith, as my future father-in-law was at last
+inclined to consent. Formerly, he had always held back because he
+feared that my father was greatly in debt, and because he had boarders;
+for, as he said, he did not wish his daughter to be thrown into debts
+and disquietudes. But when he heard from my father that his debts were
+small in comparison with his property in land and houses, and that he
+himself intended to do away with the boarders, he was satisfied; and so
+much the more as Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards burgomaster, who had seen
+me, advised him, and because his son Ludwig told him he ought to thank
+God, as he had good hopes that I should become a renowned doctor, for I
+had shown my skill in curing his wife (who was weak after giving birth
+to two children) by giving her marchpane, which I had ordered when it
+was not yet the custom to do so. So my father-in-law was at last well
+pleased, and did not object to my going to his house to speak with his
+daughter. Yet I did this mostly in his absence, and secretly. I entered
+by the back door in the alley, and talked to her there in the lower
+part of the house, with due propriety and honour. Her father did not
+object, but appeared not to notice it; he also deferred matters as long
+as he could, for he did not like to give away his daughter, who, as he
+boasted, kept house so well for him.
+
+"About this time, Thomas Guerin was engaged to Jungfrau Elizabeth of
+the Falcon. He frequently came to me with Pempelfort, and begged of me
+to arrange a musical serenade, to do homage to his love at the Falcon.
+I promised him this, but under the condition that a serenade should
+also be given at any place that I chose. So we equipped ourselves, and
+went, late after supper, in front of the house of my intended. We had
+two lutes, I and Thiebold Schoenaur played together, afterwards I took
+the harp, and Pempelfort the viola. The goldsmith Hogenbach whistled an
+accompaniment, and it was altogether quite fine music; no one took any
+notice of us, for my future father-in-law was at home. Then we went to
+the Falcon, and there, after we had paid our court, we were admitted,
+and had a splendid night-cup, with all kinds of sweetmeats; when we
+were returning home, the watchmen stopped us at the Green King, but
+they let us go after we had given them satisfactory answers. I often
+took a walk to the house of my intended, but as far as possible,
+secretly, and talked much whimsical nonsense, as lovers do, which she
+answered discreetly. I dressed myself also, according to custom, for
+then we wore only coloured clothes, and not black, except for mourning.
+Certain persons now began to watch me, and once when I left the house
+after supper, two men followed me, and would willingly have beaten me,
+but I escaped, so that nothing happened to me.
+
+"Soon after I had become a doctor my father urged that the marriage
+should be concluded between me and the Jungfrau Magdalen; and
+therefore, towards the end of September, he spoke to her father, and as
+I had honourably and praiseworthily fulfilled everything, and the
+matter had not remained secret, he could not object to settling
+it--thereupon he gave a satisfactory answer, but kept always delaying
+the affair, for, as aforesaid, he was unwilling to part with his
+daughter. Meanwhile I was allowed to go to the house openly; but it
+surprised me that it did not displease him, as it was not yet a settled
+marriage, and, indeed, might never have taken place; our intercourse,
+however, was carried on with all due propriety and honour, and we held
+converse on divers discreet subjects, and had much joking and
+bantering, and often I helped her to make electuaries, and thus we
+passed the time. We had once particularly good fun; when on the eve of
+St. Simon and St. Jude they rang the bells for the fair, I wished to
+get a fairing from her. As her father was absent, I went secretly to
+the back door of her house which was constantly open, and seeing no
+one, as all were in the chamber below, I slipped up the stairs to the
+garret, and looked out of the skylight in order to hear when the bells
+rang in the fair at twelve. I waited for three hours, both cold and
+weary; as soon as the bells began to sound, I slipped down and opened
+the door of the room crying out, 'Give me a fairing,' thinking thereby
+to surprise her. There was no one there, and the maid said, as she had
+been told to do, that she was gone out; but she had hidden herself
+under the staircase, and was waiting; soon after she hastened into the
+room with the usual exclamation, and gained from me the fairing. This I
+gave her handsomely, and she gave me one also. I wished to present her
+with the little chain that I had brought with me from Paris, but she
+begged me to keep it, as it might give occasion for gossip, and she
+might have it at some other time; but she took the little beautifully
+bound Testament which I had also offered her; thus we had our pastime
+for a long period, as is usual with young people.
+
+"After the fair at Basle, my father-in-law, as he could no longer
+delay, began to prepare for the betrothal, and it was fixed for the
+week after St. Martin's day. We came about four o'clock to his house;
+there were assembled on his side Herr Caspar Krug, afterwards
+burgomaster, Martin Fickler, and Master Gregorius Schoelin, and Batt
+Hug, his friends, and his son Franz Jeckelmann; there were on our side
+Dr. Hans Huber, Matthias Bornhart, and Henricus Petri. They negotiated
+about the dowry, and my future father-in-law announced that his
+daughter would bring with her more than three hundred pounds' worth of
+property; of this there would be one hundred florins of ready money,
+and the rest in clothes and linen. When they asked my father what he
+would give, he replied he could not say; he had no child but me, and
+all would be mine. But when they told him that he must name something,
+as there might be changes (as did, indeed, afterwards happen),[54] he
+answered that he had not reflected upon this, so he would name four
+hundred gulden; but that as he could not give it me we should board
+with him instead, for he had no money to give me, on the contrary he
+was much in debt. Thereupon arose some disputing; my father-in-law
+exclaimed that he would not expose his daughter to the discomfort of
+the boarders, and would rather have us in his house, and censured my
+father for being in debt, so that my father was much grieved, and if
+the honourable company present had not interfered, the matter would
+have remained unsettled. This was the first contretemps that happened
+to me, and was a great grief both to me and to my intended, who had
+heard all in the kitchen, and was in great trouble. However, the affair
+was smoothed, as my father said he would gladly give up the boarders,
+though it could not be done immediately. From that time my father was
+somewhat out of sorts, which embittered the whole pleasure of my
+nuptials. We were betrothed, and I presented my bride with the gold
+chain I had brought from Paris; and my father-in-law gave the banquet,
+with good entertainment and speeches, but there was no music, which I
+should have liked best.
+
+"Great preparations were made for the marriage, which was to take place
+on the following Monday, for my father considering that he had an only
+son, wished, for the satisfaction of my father-in-law, to invite the
+whole of his friends and other well-wishers; so invitations were sent
+out on the Saturday to the relations and neighbours, and our good
+friends the master and councillor of the Guild of the Bear, to some of
+the high school, nobles, councillors, scholars, and also artisans with
+their wives and children.
+
+"On the following Sunday, the 21st of October, our banns were published
+as is customary; the tables, and everything appertaining to the wedding
+were arranged in both my fathers' houses; many helped, and Master Batt
+Oesy, the landlord of the Angel, was cook. In the evening I went to my
+father-in-law's house, watched them making the nosegays, and remained
+with them till after supper. When I returned home I found Herr
+Schreiber Rust, an old acquaintance of my father's, who had come out of
+friendship from Burtolf to the wedding, and had brought with him a
+beautiful Emmenthaler cheese. He was sitting at table with my father,
+who was greatly disquieted, as to how he could feed and treat so large
+a number of people as had been invited; he persuaded himself that it
+would be impossible, and that he would disgrace himself, and he was
+quite cross. Especially, when I came home, he began to scold me very
+roughly for sitting always with my bride, and letting him have all the
+trouble, instead of helping him; and he was so angry with me that Herr
+Rust had enough to do to pacify and comfort him. This third cross and
+embittering of the happiness of my wedding was very disquieting to me,
+as I was not accustomed to be thus scolded, and had hitherto usually
+been praised and well treated; I saw clearly how it would henceforth be
+when there were two of us living at my father's cost, so that
+everything would be rendered unpleasant to me. I went to bed full of
+sorrow, and thought like a fool that I would like to withdraw from my
+present position, if the door were only open to me.
+
+"On the morning of the 22nd of October, St. Cecilia's day, I was still
+dispirited, as I had slept little. I put on my bridegroom's shirt which
+had been sent to me, with a gold embroidered collar and many golden
+spangles on the short breast piece, as was the custom then, and over
+that a red brocaded satin waistcoat and flesh-coloured breeches. Thus I
+came down and found my father no longer so unjust, for when he had
+begun to complain again, although there was a superfluity of
+everything, he got a good chiding from Dorothea Schenkin, who was also
+helping, and was a rough-spoken woman. When the marriage guests were
+assembled, we went in procession to my father-in-law's house, and with
+us Dr. Oswald Berus, who, in spite of his great age, was dressed in an
+open satin waistcoat and a camlet coat, the same as mine, and a velvet
+barret cap, like that which was placed on my head, when in front of my
+bride's house, and this said cap was bordered with pearls and flowers.
+
+"We went about nine o'clock to the Minster, and then the bride arrived
+in a flesh-coloured cloak, led by Herr Heinrich Petri. After the sermon
+they married us; I gave her a twisted ring worth eight dollars; then we
+proceeded to the Jagdhof, where they gave us to drink. I led my bride
+in, and they regaled her splendidly in the upper room.
+
+"There were fifteen tables spread, which were well filled by more than
+one hundred and fifty persons, not counting those who waited upon them,
+and a number of them remained to supper. The entertainment proceeded
+after this fashion: there were four courses in the following order, a
+hash of mutton, soup, meat, fowls, boiled pike, a roast, pigeons,
+capons, geese, rice porridge, salted liver, cheese, and fruit. There
+were divers kinds of wines, amongst others Rangenwein, which was much
+to the taste of the guests. The music consisted of Christelin the
+trumpeter, with his viola; the singers were the scholars, who sang
+among other things the song of the spoon; after the dinner, which did
+not last as long as is now customary, Herr Jacob Meyer, the Councillor
+of the Bear, broke up the party. Dr. Myconius led the bride to the
+house of Dr. Oswald Berus, where there was dancing in the hall; there
+were many persons, and some of them people of consequence. Master
+Laurens played the lute, Christelin accompanied him on his viola, which
+was then less used than now. I wished to do the courteous by my bride,
+as I had been accustomed to do in France in dancing, but she being
+bashful gently admonished me, so I desisted. I danced however, at
+Myconius' suggestion, a gaillard alone.
+
+"After that we returned to my father's house to supper. When it began
+to get late the guests took leave, and that there might not be too much
+noise and joking, I hid myself in my father's room, where my bride also
+had been secretly concealed, whose father wept so at parting with her,
+that I thought they would be quite ill from crying. I led her into my
+father's little room, and some of the women of her acquaintance came to
+comfort her, to whom I gave some claret to drink, which I had kept in a
+small cask behind the stove, and had made very good. When they
+departed, my mother who was always cheerful, came and said that the
+young students were seeking me, therefore we had better conceal
+ourselves and go to bed; so she led us secretly by the back stairs up
+to my room, where we sat for some time, and as it was very cold we were
+half frozen, so we commended ourselves to God and went to bed; and none
+of the students knew what had become of us. After a time we heard my
+mother come up stairs above our room; there she sat and sang with as
+sweet a voice as a young maiden, though she had reached a great age;
+whereat my bride laughed heartily.
+
+"On the Tuesday morning her bridesmaid Kathleen brought her the rest of
+her clothes; we admitted her, and as she was a pleasant maiden, we had
+much fun with her. After that the marriage guests collected again at
+dinner, which took place at eleven o'clock, for then we had not turned
+time topsy-turvy, as is the bad custom now. There were as many tables
+laid as on the first day, and the entertainment was as ample; and there
+was in addition the bridal porridge, which is now replaced by mulled
+wine. After dinner they danced till night, and at supper there were
+still many guests, especially the maidens, who all took leave and went
+home in good time. There were many rich presents given at the marriage;
+but of these I got only a small goblet and two ducats, the rest my
+father took to defray the costs as far as they would, and later, as
+soon as I earned something, I had to pay him for my clothes. My father
+took also the hundred gulden that my wife had brought with her, and
+paid it off likewise. My father-in-law made me no present, because, as
+he afterwards told me, he had paid five gulden for me at the doctor's
+capping feast, and therewith I ought to be content. The household gear
+that my wife brought with her was not very good; an old pan in which
+they had made her porridge, and a large wooden bowl in which her
+mother's dinner had been brought to her during her confinements, and
+other bad utensils, which were placed behind a screen in our room.
+After that, our household arrangements were to be fixed and regulated
+by my wife's advice, which required great consideration. My father
+still continued to have boarders and all kinds of disquiet in the
+house, so that we young married people were much harassed; we had
+rather have kept house by ourselves, but we could not manage it; we
+were obliged for nearly three years to board with my father, and I had
+to make shift with my room, and to see the sick in the lower hall,
+which was cold in winter. There was frequent offence taken because I
+could not help towards the kitchen expenditure, for I had enough to do
+to provide ourselves with clothes, and frequently had to pay what I had
+just earned to the shops where I was still in debt for them; which was
+thrown in my teeth, if I did not do it. Thus there were at times
+quarrels, as often happens when old and young dwell together. Therefore
+my wife would have been glad if we could have dwelt by ourselves, and
+she would willingly have managed with very little; if my father would
+have given the promised dowry and the hundred gulden which she had
+brought to me, we could have subsisted upon that; but my father could
+not do this, as he had no ready money; and I did not wish to anger, but
+rather conciliate him, and so I spoke him fair, saying, we would have
+patience till I got into better practice. All this grieved me because I
+loved her much, and would gladly have maintained her as was meet for a
+doctor's wife; therefore for a long time I treated her with less
+familiarity and more ceremony; my father perceived this with
+displeasure, and thought it ought not to be. I had not much to do
+before the new year.
+
+"There were many doctors at Basle when I came there, both graduates and
+quacks, in the year 1557. Therefore I had to be very skilful to support
+myself, and God has abundantly blessed me therein. From day to day I
+got more practice both among the inhabitants of the town, and also
+among the strangers, some of whom came to me and dwelt a long time
+here, using my remedies, whilst others went away immediately, having
+obtained my advice and prescription. Strangers also sent for me to
+their houses and castles, whither I hastened, not staying long, but
+returning home quickly, that I might attend to those at home as well as
+in distant parts."
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+                         OF A PATRICIAN HOUSE.
+                              (1526-1598.)
+
+
+Though the narrative of Sastrow gives us a view of the hard struggle of
+a rising family, and that of Felix Platter shows to what shifts even a
+vigorous life may be reduced, yet one must not forget that the
+intellectual life of Germany was rich and varied in its aims and
+tendencies. Worldly-minded education, opulence, and the pleasures of
+social enjoyment were concentrated in the patrician families of the
+great Imperial cities, who, however, often manifested bad taste in
+their refinement; but at the same time arts and commerce called forth
+all their energies, and whatever sense of beauty then existed, was to
+be found especially in these circles. In the great cities of
+Switzerland, the Low Countries, and the seaports of the German Hanse
+Towns, there was a peculiar development of the patrician order; but it
+was the patrician families of the great commercial cities of South
+Germany, and amongst these more especially those of Nuremberg,
+Augsburg, Ulm, Frankfort on the Maine, and Cologne, that exercised the
+greatest influence on the luxury, industry, and learning of Germany.
+Members of the old families had once governed the cities with
+aristocratic rule; they were still the most influential citizens,
+accustomed to conduct great affairs, and to represent the highest
+interests; they were generally merchants or large landed proprietors.
+Most of the Church benefices were possessed by their families; they
+were the first who used to send their sons into Italy, the land of
+their mercantile friends, to study law, thus making preparation in
+Germany for the rising Humanitarian learning. Many of them were heads
+of mercantile firms, councillors and confidants of German princes; they
+were united together by family alliances, and not less by community of
+commercial interests and had extended themselves everywhere; they
+chiefly determined the German policy of the Imperial cities, and they
+would have exercised a decisive influence on the newly formed German
+life, had they been less conservative in their tendencies, and had they
+not by their self-interest become sometimes un-German.
+
+They represented the moneyed power of Germany; the Emperor and princes
+obtained loans from them, and they were the medium of the greater; part
+of the money and exchange transactions, when these were not in the
+hands of the Jews. The great firms of Fugger and Welser and their
+partners formed a great trading company, which carried on traffic not
+only with Italy and the Levant, but also beyond Antwerp and the
+Atlantic Ocean. Through them, German trade monopolized that of the East
+and West Indies; they bought a whole year's harvest from the King of
+Portugal, they united themselves with Spanish houses in unlimited
+speculations, undertook journeys to Calcutta, and settled on their own
+account the prices of the sugar and spices of the East, which were then
+of greater importance in the German cookery than now.
+
+This command over capital was regarded with great dislike by both
+princes and people. Through these trading companies much ready money
+passed out of the country, and all objects of luxury rose in price;
+complaints were general, for the diminution in the worth of money,
+occasioned by the introduction of the American gold, was mistaken for
+the raising of prices by the merchants. Not only Hutten, who was deeply
+imbued with the prejudices of his own class, but even the Imperial Diet
+was jealous of the power of these great moneyed companies; among the
+people also, the antipathy to them was general, and the Reformers
+shared the opinions of their cotemporaries as to the detriment of such
+domination over capital.
+
+Yet even then, it may be observed that these great merchant princes had
+not all the same tendencies. The Welsers of Augsburg, for example, in
+1512, took an active interest at Rome on behalf of Reuchlin, and that
+great scholar owed his deliverance from the hands of the Dominicans,
+more perhaps to their secret influence than to the refined rhetoric of
+his enthusiastic admirers in Germany. On the other hand, the Fuggers
+were considered by the people as reckless moneyed men and Romanists; as
+enemies of Luther and friends of Eck, who was suspected of being in
+their pay; for they had charge of the money affairs of the Elector
+Albrecht of Mayence, and of the Romish curie, and one of the Fugger's
+clerks accompanied the indulgence chest of Tetzel, and controlled the
+incoming receipts, on which the banking-house of the Archbishop of
+Mayence had made advances. The Emperor, Charles V., received the most
+solid support from these powerful firms, as their interests were
+generally concurrent with his; with the people, however, "_Fuggerei_"
+became the common term for usury. We learn the family tendency for
+outward splendour and intercourse with the great, from the description
+which Hans von Schweinichen gives of their opulence in the year 1575.
+
+When the dissolute Duke Hemrich von Liegnitz with his majordomo was at
+Augsburg, the splendour of this house appeared to the Silesian noblemen
+as quite fabulous. Schweinichen, who was more accurate in specifying
+the sums of money and prices than was necessary considering the endless
+debts of his master, gives the following narrative.[55]
+
+"Herr Max Fugger once invited his Princely Highness to dinner. Such a
+banquet have I never beheld, the Roman Emperor himself could not have
+been entertained better: there was superabundant splendour; the repast
+was spread in a hall where more gold than colour was to be seen; the
+floor was of marble, and as smooth as if one was walking on ice; there
+was a sideboard placed along the whole length of the hall, which was
+set out with drinking-vessels and notably beautiful Venetian glasses;
+there must have been, as one says, the value of more than a ton of
+gold. I waited on his Princely Highness when the drinking began. Now
+Herr Fugger gave to his Princely Highness for a drinking-cup, an
+artistically formed ship of the most beautiful Venetian glass; when I
+took it from the sideboard and was going across the hall, having on my
+new shoes, I slipped up, and fell upon my back in the middle of the
+hall; the wine poured about my neck, the new red brocade dress which I
+had on was quite spoilt, and the beautiful ship was broken into a
+thousand pieces. Though this created great laughter amongst all, yet I
+was told that Herr Fugger said privately he would rather have lost a
+hundred gulden than that ship; it happened, however, without any fault
+on my part, for I had neither eaten nor drunk; but when later I became
+intoxicated I stood firmer, and did not fall a single time even in the
+dance. Meanwhile the lords and all others were very merry. Herr Fugger
+took his Princely Highness a walk through the house, a prodigious great
+house, so great that the Roman Emperor at the Imperial Diet found room
+in it for himself and his whole court. Herr Fugger showed his Princely
+Highness, in a turret, a treasure of chains, jewels, and precious
+stones, and of curious coins and pieces of gold the size of a head, and
+he himself said that they were worth more than a million of gold.
+Afterwards he opened a chest that was full of nothing but ducats and
+crowns up to the brim; these he estimated at two hundred thousand
+gulden, which had been remitted to him in exchange by the King of
+Spain. Then he led his Princely Highness up to the turret, which was
+paved half way down from the top with good thalers; he said there were
+about seventeen thousand. He showed his Princely Highness great honour,
+but also his own power and possessions: it is said that Herr Fugger had
+enough to buy an empire. He gave me, on account of my fall, a beautiful
+new groschen which weighed about nine grains. His Princely Highness
+expected also a good present, but got nothing but a good drinking bout.
+At that time Fugger bestowed the hand of his daughter on a count, and
+gave two hundred thousand thalers, besides jewels, as her dowry.
+
+"As his Princely Highness had very little ready money he sent me to
+Herr Fugger to borrow four thousand thalers; but he decidedly declined
+doing this, excusing himself quite politely; however the following day
+he sent his steward to me to be introduced to my lord, through whom he
+presented to his Princely Highness two hundred crowns, a beautiful
+goblet worth eighty dollars, and besides that a splendid horse with
+black velvet housings."
+
+Together with this taste for display we find in other patrician
+families at the beginning of this century far higher aims in life. The
+firms of Pentinger at Augsburg, and Perkheimer at Nuremberg were the
+focus of the noblest interests of the nation; the heads of these houses
+were men of princely opulence, landed proprietors and merchant princes,
+statesmen and warriors, and at the same time men of learning and
+research. It was for families like these that Albert Duerer painted his
+best pictures; to them the travelling Humanitarians resorted; every
+elegant verse, every manly sentiment or word of genius, were there
+first heartily appreciated. As councillors and patrons in worldly
+concerns, as liberal proprietors of valuable libraries and of
+first-rate cabinets of antiquities, as hospitable masters of rich
+households, they knew how to do honour to all who brought to their
+houses intellect, knowledge, and refinement.[56]
+
+In these families, the women also frequently received an education
+which went further than the knowledge of cooking, spinning, and the
+prayer-book; the daughters of these households gained what was seldom
+to be found in the castles of the princes or in the mansions of the
+landed nobility,--a heartfelt interest in the sciences and arts with
+which the friends of the family were occupied. There is a peculiar
+charm for us in the contemplation of the first female characters who
+were ennobled by the dawn of a new civilization. Constance Peutinger,
+who twined the laurel wreaths for Hutten; Caritas Perkheimer, the
+suffering abbess of Clarenklosters at Nuremberg, and later Philippine
+Welser, the wife of the Emperor's son, all belonged to the class of
+German patricians; they were sensitive natures often oppressed and
+wounded in this rough and thorny period.
+
+It was especially when a woman took part in the literary struggle that
+she was destined to suffer, this however rarely happened; the best
+known instances are those of Caritas Pirkheimer and Argula von
+Grumbach, born at Stauffen; both experienced how bitter it is for women
+to take part in the disputes of men. The Roman Catholic Caritas wrote a
+letter full of reverence to Emser, and had to go through the trial of
+seeing her letter printed by the Lutheran party with contemptuous
+marginal notes. The Lutheran Argula, the friend of Spalatin, sent an
+admonitory letter to the rector of the university at Ingoldstadt, when
+it had compelled Arsatius Seehofer by imprisonment and a threat of the
+stake, to recant seventeen heresies, which he had propounded to the
+students from the writings of Melancthon. Argula bravely took the
+master's part, whom she called a child of eighteen years old, and
+offered to go to Ingoldstadt herself to defend the good cause against
+the university. She was in consequence of this, maliciously assailed in
+verse, against which she valiantly defended herself in counter-rhymes.
+The last years of Caritas and her mild brother were embittered by the
+rude attacks of the Protestant rabble and their teachers. Argula was
+banished from the Bavarian court, and her husband was dismissed in
+disgrace from his court appointment.
+
+The Glauburgs were one of the most distinguished patrician families of
+Frankfort-on-the-Maine; Hutten had been very intimate with some members
+of this family, and had at one time indulged in the charming dream of
+establishing himself at Frankfort and marrying one of them. Even the
+ardent spirit of Hutten was powerfully attracted by their splendid
+opulence and highly refined life. He eagerly disclaimed the suspicion
+that he intended to take away his bride to the rocky home of his
+family. He wooed the maiden with more consideration than was his wont,
+and Arnold of Glauburg was his confidant. But it was a short dream; his
+destiny soon tore him away. The following letters from two ladies will
+introduce us into this patrician family; they are printed in the
+Frankfort archives of J. C. von Fichard, 1811-1815. The first is the
+letter of a mother to her son, in which she recommends to him a maiden
+for his wife, in order to withdraw him from the revolutionaries of
+Wittenberg and the neighbourhood of Luther; a letter which is
+characteristic of the position of women in a family, and written by one
+possessed of energy and a practical understanding, who was accustomed
+to rule, and not without a disposition to intrigue; her son was the
+nephew of that Arnold of Glauburg, the son of Johann, to whom Hutten
+sent with hearty greeting his dialogue _Febris_.
+
+
+
+                                 1526.
+
+        _From Margaret Horng_[57] _at Frankfort, to her son John
+                      von Glauburg at Wittenberg_.
+
+"Having given you first, dear Johann, my friendly greeting, know that
+we are all well in health, praise and thanks be to God, and hope to
+hear the same of you. Dear Johann, after I had last written to you, the
+wife of Johann Knoblauch died, to whom God be merciful. She was my good
+friend, and her death has caused me as great grief as the decease of my
+two blessed husbands, which was however a great calamity to me; but
+what God wills we must bear with patience. She and I came here the same
+year, and lived so friendly together that neither ever angered the
+other with a word. On her death-bed she commended to me her two
+daughters as if I were her sister, and begged that I should take care
+of their dowry, if I should live till they married. One of them is now
+marriageable, an elegant, well-formed maiden; she is in height like
+your step-sister Anna, which is also her name, and she is a clever
+housekeeper, so that he who has her for a portion will not be ruined by
+her; I foresee that her father will soon establish her, for there are
+three who woo her, two of them are noblemen, and the third is Johann
+Wolf Rohrbach, the son of Frau Ursula at the green gate, who is now
+grown up and has been with his mother since Easter. Although he is only
+nineteen years old, yet it is the wish of his mother and his friends to
+establish him whilst she is still alive. For now no one knows what to
+do with their sons, that they may learn and study what is for their
+soul's salvation, and not be led astray: for when they have long
+studied, and spent much money, it is of little advantage to many of
+them, and perhaps it would have been more profitable to them, to have
+retained the innate honesty and simplicity which they have from God,
+than that they should study, and not rightly understand the Scripture,
+and that then the devil should lead them astray through pride, and
+others with them because they are learned and know how to talk well.
+Such men lead the people into great error. I would gladly write much to
+you thereupon, but having promised in my last letter that I would not
+write to you again thereof, I will not do so whilst you are at
+Wittenberg; for you imagine that you are in safe keeping in Wittenberg.
+God grant it may be true, and that you will find it so. Further, dear
+Johann, know wherefore I now write to you thus---- an honourable person
+has just told me that the wife of Johann Knoblauch had desired her
+husband, if you and your belongings should ask his daughter in
+marriage, and the daughter were willing, that he should give her to you
+rather than to any other. To this I answered, that I did not know your
+inclinations, but would write and inform you of this, and whatever
+answer I got from you I would communicate to this person. Therefore,
+dear son, I make known to you that the maiden pleases me well in all
+her ways, better than any other with whom I am acquainted; and the
+mother has always been an honourable steadfast woman. Therefore, I am
+well pleased that she is not of a fickle nature, for whoever has not an
+apt and steadfast wife, be she ever so polished and rich, will become a
+poor miserable man. Therefore, dear Johann, follow my advice, for I
+give you faithful counsel. It is true there are eleven children to
+provide for, some of whom are still little, but possibly may become
+fewer in number, and there is a good fortune, the greater part of it in
+landed property. Therefore bethink you, dear son, I do not wish to
+constrain you to change your condition, but it would be the greatest
+pleasure to me were you to enter this family, for looking into the
+future, I can see no place that would altogether suit you so well as
+this one. Dear Johann, if this idea should please you, and you should
+wish to see her and that she should see you beforehand, come here in
+the first week of Lent with any travelling companions that you like, to
+give you security on the road; but keep your purpose to yourself,
+saying nothing of it to your companions till a day or two before your
+departure, then tell Justinian that you are going home. But do not tell
+him why you wish to go home, but make it appear as if it were on
+account of your property which you wish to regulate, as I had written
+to you so strongly in my last three letters about it, declining to
+administer it any longer, as is indeed my intention, if you will in
+nowise take my advice. There is good reason why you should prevent his
+saying a word, in order that it should remain secret. Dear Johann, I
+beg of you to bethink yourself of how the times are, and that it is not
+fitting for you to remain longer unsettled. Ah! may my brother-in-law
+Herr Hammann find a wife also for Justinian now; it would do him no
+harm, as he leads a life of pleasure; and let it not be with him as it
+was with his deceased cousin Blasius, who had so accustomed himself to
+a profligate life that no one could persuade him to marry till he
+became old and had lost his health; he had no child, and now his wife
+is betrothed again to a nobleman, one Schenk of Schweinsburg. They say
+she will soon celebrate her nuptials: God grant her happiness."
+
+
+Thus far the letter: the wish of the prudent mother was fulfilled; her
+son returned, as she had so cautiously charged him to do, to Frankfort;
+he married the maiden of her choice, and they lived together forty
+years in happy matrimony.
+
+Though we can obtain no other particulars of him and Anna Knoblauch,
+yet we find accounts of members of the same family, towards the end of
+the century, which characterize in a charming way the position of a
+bride with her betrothed. A grandson of the above mentioned, the rich
+patrician Adolf von Glauburg of Frankfort, made acquaintance, when on a
+visit at Nuremberg, with the beautiful Ursula Freher, daughter of the
+city Syndic of Nuremberg, and sister of the renowned scholar and
+statesman, Marquard Freher of Heidelberg. The charms and agreeableness
+of the lady were celebrated throughout Swabia. The following letters
+were written by her to him, from Nuremberg to Frankfort during the time
+of betrothal.
+
+
+
+                                 1598.
+
+                                   I.
+
+"To the noble and honourable Johann Adolf von Glauburg, to the hands of
+my dearly beloved _Junker_.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly beloved _Junker_, I have
+received with heartfelt joy your letter, together with the chain, and
+rejoice to hear you are in health, but learn with regret that your dear
+sister and son are not well; may God Almighty restore them according to
+his holy will. Amen. As regards us, we are, thank God, tolerably well,
+may He thus long preserve us all. Dearly beloved _Junker_, my father
+would gladly have written to you, but your letter arrived too late, and
+the messenger waiting at the gate is in haste, so that he cannot do it
+now, but will take the first opportunity.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, with respect to the chain I have no
+directions to give you; as your wish is, so is my content, what pleases
+you pleases me also. The chain which I have here I will carefully
+preserve, and when God brings you to us I will take the opportunity of
+returning it to you; it is much too splendid for me. As to the picture,
+it is ready all but the dress, at which the painter is still working,
+and thinks it will be quite finished in about ten days. I have great
+fear that when the picture comes to you, it will be said the _Junker_
+need not have gone so far, he might have found the like of her at
+Frankfort.
+
+"As concerns the bracelets, I have not yet got them; there is yet
+plenty of time, but I will send after them.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, I have nothing more to write to you now, I
+beg of you kindly to excuse this miserable letter, which has been
+written in haste; another time I will give you something better.
+
+"No more now than kind greetings to you and your dear ones, from me and
+my honoured mother, and we commend you to the care and protection of
+God Almighty. Given the 12th September.
+
+                       "Your loving and always faithful
+
+                                         "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+                                  II.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, dearly beloved, and much trusted _Junker_, may
+my truth and love, together with my greetings and good wishes, be to
+you beyond all other love and possessions. I received your letter with
+pleasure, and learned from it with heartfelt joy of your well-being. It
+is even so with us, for which we thank the gracious God; may He
+continue his grace to you and all of us. Amen.
+
+"As concerning the marriage, my honoured father and mother have
+deliberated thereon, and have agreed that, please God, it shall take
+place on the 13th of November, as the _Junker_ will find more amply
+detailed in my honoured father's letter.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, I understand thus much from your letter, that
+you would gladly come here once again before the marriage. If that were
+possible, it would certainly be a great joy to me, and would give
+hearty pleasure to all mine without exception. I will not therefore
+this time entreat of you, but will have all hope and confidence that it
+may come to pass, and that the _Junker_ will not fail to pay a visit to
+me the poor forlorn one, to which I look with great longing. Dearly
+beloved _Junker_, know that the packet has not yet arrived. We have
+already sent after it several times, and the answer has been, it was
+expected every hour; as soon as it comes, your desire shall be attended
+to; I believe it will answer well. The wife of Dr. Reiner has already
+written to my honoured mother concerning it, and given it clearly to be
+understood that she is not to be forgotten in the bridal presents;[58]
+however she need not have been in anxiety about it, as she had already
+been thought of.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, with respect to the shirts and collars, you
+must know that we are working zealously thereat, and as many as can be
+got ready shall be distributed.
+
+"I have received the bracelets; accept, my dearly beloved _Junker_, my
+warmest thanks. They are much too pretty for my brown hands, but they
+please me well.
+
+"As regards dress, undoubtedly my honoured father would like to do for
+one daughter the same as for the other, but as that cannot be on this
+occasion, he has consented to do something more. I have three taffety
+dresses; the flesh colour, one gold colour, and one black. We have the
+tailor still in the house, who is making a violet-coloured damask, and
+another dress in which I am to go to church, which is to be either of
+red satin or of black damask. Now I beg you will let me know which you
+would prefer.
+
+"Dearly beloved _Junker_, I cannot venture to make further demands on
+my father; for this reason, that none of my sisters have had so much
+done for them, or such splendid things. But as you have so strongly
+admonished me, I will be so unreasonable as to ask somewhat of the
+_Junker_, first begging of you kindly not to take it amiss, as I do it
+at your own desire; and this is my petition, dearly beloved _Junker_: I
+wish you to send me a dress of whatever kind you like, whether flesh
+coloured or silver, that I may have greater change of dress.
+
+"Dearly beloved and well-trusted _Junker_, I have another great request
+to make to you. You know that I have two sisters who love me, and whom
+I equally love well; I should like to give them some little thing as a
+present in your name, if it seems good to you. I have written this to
+you because you have desired me to speak out my wishes, therefore, I
+beg you, _Junker_, not to take it amiss of me. I do not write it with
+the idea that it must be, but that it may be done or left undone by the
+_Junker_ at his pleasure.
+
+"I send you, according to your desire, the measure of my beautiful
+stature; we have added nothing to it, but such as the maiden is, so is
+the measure. I hope that, God willing, they may soon see me tall and
+beautiful as I am.
+
+"We have partaken with pleasure of the grapes you sent us, and kindly
+thank you for the same. If we get anything rare we will impart it to
+you.
+
+"I am delighted that my picture pleases your youngest daughter so well,
+and that she has shown it so much honour; let her boldly kiss it; God
+grant that I may see her, and I will return it to her with
+interest.[59]
+
+"The shoes which I must have for the pulling off,[60] I will have made
+as soon as possible of the best kind, as good as they can be made here,
+although here they are not in fashion. Dearly beloved _Junker_, I have
+one more petition to make in conclusion, namely, that you will make the
+best of my plain, simple, bad letter, for I intend it in all sincerity,
+and write from my open heart; and kindly favour me with an answer,
+which, at the same time, I would rather have by word of mouth, than in
+writing.
+
+"No more from me but what is always pleasing and agreeable to you.
+Herewith I send to the Junker, together with his dearly beloved son and
+daughter, a hundred thousand greetings, and commend you and ourselves
+to God Almighty. Given the 10th October at Nuremberg.
+
+     "Yours true in [Illustration: A Heart] as long as I live,
+
+                              "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+                                  III.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly loved Junker, I send you
+my most kindly greeting, together with my love and truth. I received
+your letter with pleasure, and learned therefrom with heartfelt joy of
+the well-being of you and yours. As regards us, we have also to thank
+our dear and gracious God; may He continue his mercy to us all. Amen.
+
+"I perceive from your letter that it is impossible for you to come to
+us before the marriage. This we are sorry to hear, and I am greatly
+disappointed. I quite thought you would come, and was heartily rejoiced
+thereat, and oft I ran to the window when I heard any sound of riding
+or driving. May our dear Lord God give us all health, and bring us
+together with joy.
+
+"With respect to the wreath, I thank you kindly, dearly beloved Junker,
+that you have informed me about it. I am quite persuaded that we shall
+give occasion for much rude gossip, from not knowing the customs
+amongst you, as they seem quite different to what they are here. I pray
+you to have the wreath made as it ought to be, and to send it to us as
+you propose in your letter. As to the other wreath, Frau Nuetzelin has
+instructed me how it ought to be, and I have ordered one with golden
+spangles, which shall be properly made. I am not satisfied about the
+bridal presents, as you have not written to me what I am to take for my
+sisters, and they will not say what they would like; I am fearful of
+taking too much, or too little, and yet wish to do exactly what is
+right; I hoped that you would let me know what, and how much they
+should have. As concerning mine, I hope I shall act so as to deserve
+them.
+
+"Dearly beloved Junker, I have yet a great request to make to you
+concerning the shoes, if I may venture to do it, and you will receive
+it without displeasure. It is, however, a shame that I should trouble
+you with it, but it cannot be helped. I have had shoes made, and shown
+them to Frau Nuetzelin, who says they are good for nothing, being much
+too large; that they ought to be quite little, or they would laugh at
+me outright; and she has advised me to write to the Junker, and beg he
+will have them made down there, because being the fashion, they can
+make them better than here, where they are never worn; they could not
+at all understand me, even when I explained it to them fully, still
+they did not comprehend it; however I indeed have never seen one. I
+send you herewith, dearly beloved Junker, two ducats, and pray you to
+let your maid-servant see after it, it is my desire that you should not
+be troubled with it. They need not be very costly, there should be only
+the arms, or perhaps the name upon them, and they should not be large
+or long.
+
+"My honoured mother begs that you will not take it amiss if she does
+not answer your letter now; she has so much to do, she has no leisure,
+but another time she will send you an answer.
+
+"Dearly beloved Junker, I have nothing further to write except that
+yesterday I was at the wedding, I felt much because you were not here,
+and also not coming, and Nuetzel brought me home in your place.
+
+"I have nothing further to say, and no leisure, as I must go to the
+wedding party. There remains only to send you and yours a hundred
+thousand kindly greetings from my honoured mother, my brothers and
+sisters, and to commend you to the care and protection of God Almighty.
+
+     "In great haste.
+
+        "Your true and loving brunette, and as long as I live,
+
+                 "Yours in [Illustration: A Heart]
+
+                                         "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+                                  IV.
+
+"Most noble, honourable, amiable, and dearly beloved Junker, may my
+kindly greeting and good wishes attend you.
+
+"I have received your letter, and learned with heartfelt joy, of the
+well-being of you and yours; as regards us, we are, thanks and praise
+be to God, still well. May God Almighty so keep us all for ever,
+according to his will and pleasure. Amen.
+
+"Concerning your letter, wherein you write that you wish to try my love
+and obedience, I did not long deliberate, because the time is now
+short, and I have taken a good deal out of the purse for myself and
+sisters, yet not with the intention that it should always go on so; and
+thus, dearly beloved Junker, your commands and my obedience are fully
+carried out, and I and my sisters do greatly and kindly thank you, and
+we hope, God willing, to thank you soon by word of mouth. I have also
+seen, after what you wrote, that the horses should be ready.
+
+"I hope that I shall have executed your orders so that you may be
+brought safely through your dangerous journey, for it would assuredly
+be very painful to me, if on my account you were to be exposed to great
+danger.
+
+"Dearly beloved Junker, we have heard with pleasure that you will come
+to us at the last inn, for in truth it will be necessary to instruct us
+as to all the arrangements.[61] May God Almighty give you health and
+happiness, and bring us together in joy. The last inn for sleeping will
+be Stockstadt; my honoured father will also write to you his
+instructions, and by them you will be guided.
+
+"No more at present, than that you, dearly beloved Junker, your son and
+daughter, are heartily greeted by me and mine, and commended to the
+care and protection of God Almighty.
+
+"In great haste.
+
+     "Your true and loving brunette, as long as I live
+
+                 "Yours in [Illustration: A Heart]
+
+                       "Ursula Freherin."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+               GERMAN NOBILITY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+In the beginning of the sixteenth century we find the names of the
+German nobles, Fronsperg, Hutten, and Sickingen, conspicuous in the
+three different ways in which the nobles then employed themselves,--the
+Army, the Church, and State, and the representation and maintenance of
+the rights and interests of the landed proprietors. But it appears
+strange that even up to the middle of the seventeenth century, men like
+these should have had so few of their own class following in their
+footsteps. From the time of Fronsperg to that of the Bohemian Junker
+Albrecht of Waldstein, and the wild cavalry leader Pappenheim, the
+whole of Germany produced no General of more than average skill from
+among the nobility. There were a few Landsknechte leaders of citizen
+extraction like Schaertlin, and some German princes, all however with
+more pretension than capacity, and it was principally to Spaniards and
+Italians that the family of the Emperor Charles V. and their opponents
+owed their most important victories. As to the intellectual life of
+Germany, there was still less of that amongst the nobility after the
+time of Hutten. How few noble names do we find in the long list of
+reformers, scholars, poets, architects, and artists! The first occur in
+the seventeenth century, when we find those of the members of the
+_Palmenordens_, the author of the 'Simplicissimus,' and of some noble
+rhymers belonging to the Silesian school of poetry or to the Saxon
+court. One may well ask how it happened that an order so numerous,
+holding such an advantageous position with respect to the people,
+should have accomplished so little in this great field of action, which
+up to the time of the Hohenstaufen was especially in the possession of
+the nobility. And even with the most favourably disposed judgment, it
+would be difficult to ascribe to the landed nobility of the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, any
+beneficial influences on any one of the great currents of life in
+Germany.
+
+In fact the lower nobility--considered as an order--had been, since the
+time of the Hohenstaufen, a misfortune to Germany. It was after the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, when the difference betwixt the
+noblemen and freeholders had been established by the laws, by the
+interests and inclinations of the Emperor, and by the limited ideal,
+which was formed by the aristocratic body, that the nobility gradually
+decayed. In the cities, undoubtedly, the old dominion of the privileged
+freeman was broken in the last period of the middle ages; there, in
+spite of all hindrances, a quicker circulation of popular strength had
+established itself. The labourer could become a citizen, the
+experienced citizen could rise to be the ruler of his city, or of a
+confederation of cities, and be the leader of great interests. But the
+landed nobleman after the beginning of the thirteenth century sank
+gradually into a state of isolation; labour was a disgrace to him, his
+acres were cultivated by dependent vassals, and he naturally
+endeavoured as much as possible to separate himself from them. Ever
+heavier became the oppression by which he kept them down; ever higher
+rose the pretensions which he, as lord of the land and soil, raised
+against his own people.
+
+But the oppression of the agriculturist was not the worst consequence
+of the privileged position of the noble. If he found it to his
+advantage to treat his beast of burden, the peasant, with moderation,
+he was so much the more eager to make use of his landed rights in other
+directions. The highroads, the river that ran by his castle, afforded
+him the opportunity of laying hold of the goods of strangers; he levied
+imposts upon goods and travellers; he obtruded his protecting escort
+upon them, and robbed such as considered this escort unnecessary; he
+built a bridge where there was no river, in order to raise a toll; he
+designedly kept the roads in bad condition, because he chose to
+consider that the goods of travelling merchants, though under the
+Emperor's protection, so long as they were in waggons or in vessels
+afloat; if the waggons were upset or vessels ran aground, belonged,
+according to manorial right, to the possessor of the land. Finally he
+became himself a robber, and with his comrades seized whatever he could
+lay hands on; he took the goods to his house, plundered the travellers,
+and kept them prisoners till they could free themselves by ransom.
+Nevertheless there were certain regulated observances accompanying
+these robberies, according to which the conscientious Junker
+distinguished between honourable and dishonourable plunder. But this
+moral code had very little to justify it. In the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries there were very few noblemen's houses which did not
+deserve the name of robber-holds, and still fewer out of which
+plundering attacks were not made.
+
+But this life was most of all detrimental to the nobles themselves;
+their love of plunder, and their pugnacity, made them turn as much
+against their fellow-nobles as against the cities, and through the
+whole of the middle ages led to innumerable feuds. When the feud was
+notified by letter, some days previous to the beginning of hostilities,
+it was considered honourable. Any trifle was sufficient to occasion a
+feud: never-ending boundary disputes, encroachments on the chase, or
+the flogging of a servant, caused discord, even between old comrades
+and friendly neighbours. Then both parties strengthened themselves by
+the assistance of relations and dependents; they enlisted troopers, and
+endeavoured to learn through the medium of spies how they could gain an
+advantage over the property, house, or person of their adversary. The
+opulence of the cities, and the rancour entertained by the nobles
+against the rising independence of the citizens, gave an agreeable
+excitement to their feuds with the latter. Whoever was unable to
+establish a profitable feud of his own, united himself as an assistant
+to another, and thus old comrades were often by the chapter of
+accidents opposed, and then, in the full consciousness of doing their
+duty, would beat and even stab each other.
+
+This marauding life on the highways, in the woods and caverns, and with
+drunken companions, was neither favourable to their family life nor to
+their higher interests, nor was it even fitted to develop warlike
+capacity except among the subordinates. At the best, it only formed
+leaders of small bodies of mounted troopers for foraging expeditions
+and surprises. Sickingen himself, the most skilful specimen of a Junker
+of the sixteenth century, showed in his great and decisive feud, only
+very moderate talents as a general; and the capacities of Goetz, in a
+military point of view, do not stand higher than those of an
+experienced serjeant of hussars. Thus wild, vicious, and detrimental to
+the community, was the conduct of even the quietest of the lower
+nobility. Their being a privileged order whose members considered
+themselves superior to citizen of peasant, who kept themselves apart
+from others, in marriage, business, law, manners, and ceremonials, made
+them for centuries weak, and their existence a misfortune to the
+people; but at the same time it saved them from the ruin consequent
+upon their disorderly life. On retrospect of the act itself, there is
+little difference to be seen between the robber who now waylays the
+wanderer on the lonely heath, and the country nobleman who about the
+year 1500 dragged the Nuremberger merchant from his horse and kept him
+in a dark prison upon bread and water, whilst the noble's wife made
+coats and mantles out of the stolen cloth. But three hundred and fifty
+years ago, the noble robber practised his evil deeds with the feeling,
+that though his actions were perhaps contrary to the decrees of an
+Imperial Diet, yet they were looked upon by the whole nobility of his
+province, indeed by the highest sovereigns of the country, as pleasant
+or at the worst as daring tricks. Certainly if he was caught by the
+city whose citizens he had injured, he might possibly lose his life, as
+does now a murderer on the high-road, but the law of the city was not
+his law, and if he died, his death would probably be revenged by other
+active comrades. However unreasonable were the laws of honour according
+to which he lived, he felt that these same laws were honoured by
+thousands whom he esteemed as the best upon earth. Thus it was
+possible, that amidst the greatest immorality and perversity, many
+manly virtues might be exhibited by individuals; fidelity to their
+word, devotion to their friends, and kind-hearted friendliness even to
+those whom they had robbed and imprisoned.
+
+It was at this period, under the new Emperor Maximilian, that the
+memorable attempt was begun, to give a new constitution to the
+shattered body of the Empire, and with it the possibility of a new
+life. More than a century elapsed and three generations passed away
+before the lesser nobility could accustom themselves to the restraint
+of the new laws; but the princes and cities, however much they might
+quarrel together, had the greatest interest in enforcing obedience to
+these laws. It is however worthy of note, that while losing a portion
+of their wild straightforward resoluteness, they adopted the faults
+more especially belonging to the new epoch. How the change gradually
+took place, we will demonstrate here by a few examples.
+
+A happy accident has preserved to us three autobiographies of
+well-known German nobles of different periods of the 16th century,
+those of Berlichingen, of Schaertlin, and of Schweinichen; one of them,
+so long as the German language lasts, will be intimately associated
+with the name of the greatest German poet. These three men, who
+flourished in the beginning, the middle, and the end of this celebrated
+century, were widely different in character and destiny, but all three
+were landed proprietors, and each of them has recorded the events of
+his life, so as to give an instructive insight into the social
+condition of his circle. The best known is Goetz von Berlichingen; his
+memoirs were first published in 1731. The halo, with which three
+hundred years after his death, Goethe's charming poem has invested him,
+will make it difficult for the reader of his biography to separate the
+ideal delineation of the poet from the figure of the historical Goetz.
+And yet this is necessary. For however modestly and lovingly Goethe has
+portrayed his character, he appears quite different in history. When as
+an old man, in a time to which he was a stranger, he wrote his life, he
+loved to dwell on the knightly exploits of his wild youth. It was not
+his line to enter into political questions; if he found himself in a
+crisis he acted according to the advice of his patrons,--the great
+sovereigns, who employed his strong arm and steadfast will for their
+own objects. When the peasant army broke into his territories, he and
+his kinsmen were utterly at a loss what to do, and wrote for advice.
+The answer was suppressed by his mother-in-law and wife, and he was
+left to his own judgment, and had not sufficient adroitness to withdraw
+himself from the thronging insurgents. Had he been like many of his
+cotemporaries, such as Max Stumpf, he would have abandoned the peasants
+in spite of all his vows. But although not really faithful to them,
+true to the letter of his word, he adhered to them till the four weeks
+were passed, for which he had bound himself though he was not in fact
+their leader but their prisoner. After that he lived some years in
+close imprisonment, then for a long time in strict confinement at his
+castle. He was surrounded by a new generation, engaged in vehement
+strife, and he himself was grieving the while that he had acted in the
+peasant struggle as an honourable knight, and that still true to his
+word, he had even now to count the steps which he was allowed to take
+beyond the gates of his castle. After sixteen years of solitary
+seclusion he was in his old age twice called to take part in the
+warfare of a younger race, which neither brought him adventures nor any
+opportunity to acquire fame or booty. When at last he died in peace at
+his Castle of Hornburg, at the age of eighty-two, Luther had been dead
+sixteen years, and the Emperor Charles V. had been interred in a
+cloister four years before; but the long period from the year 1525
+occupies few pages in his autobiography, although it was written in the
+last year of his life. There will be given here fragments from his
+account of the Nuremberg feud.
+
+
+                         Goetz von Berlichingen.
+
+"1512. Now I will not conceal from any one that I was desirous of
+coming to blows with the Nurembergers; I revolved the thing in my mind,
+and thought that I must pick a quarrel with the priest, the Bishop of
+Bamberg, that I might bring the Nurembergers into play. I waylaid
+ninety-five merchants who were under the safe conduct of the Bishop; I
+was so kind that I did not seize any of their goods, except those
+belonging to the Nurembergers; of these there were about thirty. I
+attacked them on the Monday after Our Lord's Ascension-day, about eight
+or nine in the morning, and rode along with them all Tuesday, that
+night, and Wednesday: I had my good friend Hans von Selbitz with me,
+and altogether our party amounted to thirty. But the other travellers
+were numerous; these I drove away in small bodies to whatever places
+they appeared to belong. My comrade, Hans von Selbitz, also an enemy of
+the Bishop of Bamberg, about a fortnight afterwards burnt his castle
+and a city, called, if I remember it rightly, Vilseck, so that this
+affair bore double fruit.
+
+"In order that every one may know why and wherefore I quarrelled with
+and attacked the men of Nuremberg, I will state the causes. Fritz von
+Littwach, a Margrave's page, with whom I had been brought up as a boy,
+who had been my companion-in-arms, and who was very good to me, once
+disappeared mysteriously in the neighbourhood of Onolzbach, being made
+prisoner and carried off, so that for a long time no one knew where he
+was or who had carried him away. Long afterwards, the Margrave caught a
+man, who gave him and the knights accompanying him many true tidings.
+Then it became known where Fritz von Littwach had been taken to; so I
+begged and prayed of my patron and relation Herr Hans von Seckendorf,
+who was the Margrave's majordomo, that he would procure me the
+confession of the traitor. Thereby it was discovered that those in the
+service of the Nurembergers had done the deed, and it might be assumed
+that he had been taken to one of their houses or a public gaol. This
+was one of my grounds of complaint against the Nurembergers.
+
+"Further, I had hired a servant called Georg von Gaislingen, who had
+promised to enter my service, but who had been, when with his Junker
+Eustach von Lichtenstein, stabbed and severely wounded by the men of
+Nuremberg; his Junker had been so likewise, but survived. Although many
+others besides the Nurembergers were hostile to Fritz von Littwach, yet
+I never perceived any one who had 'belled the cat,' as they say, or had
+taken up the matter, except poor truehearted Goetz von Berlichingen:
+these are the grounds of offence that I have everywhere and in every
+way notified and proved against the Nurembergers, every day in which I
+have negotiated with them before the commissaries of his Imperial
+Majesty, and also before the ecclesiastical and temporal princes.[62]
+
+"I will now show further what happened to me and my relations in the
+Nuremberg feud. The States of the Empire ordered out four hundred
+horsemen against me, amongst whom were counts and lords, knights and
+vassals; their challenges are still in existence. I and my brother were
+put repeatedly under the ban of the Empire, and in certain cities the
+priests and monks fulminated fire and flame at me from the pulpit, and
+gave me up to be eaten by the birds of the air, and everything that we
+had was taken from us, so that we could not possess a foot's breadth of
+anything. There was no time for festivities; we were obliged to conceal
+ourselves, and yet I was able to do my enemies some injury, both to
+their possessions and otherwise, so that his Imperial Majesty several
+times interposed and directed his commissaries to negotiate between us,
+to regulate all things and bring about a reconciliation; thereby his
+Imperial Majesty hindered many of my projects, and occasioned me more
+than two hundred thousand gulden' worth of loss, for I intended to have
+carried off both gold and money from the Nurembergers. It was my
+project then, by God's help, to overthrow, beat, and imprison all the
+Nuremberg soldiers, and even the burgomaster himself, who wore a large
+gold chain about his neck, and held a mace in his hand, and also all
+their horsemen and their standard bearer, when they were on their way
+to Hohenkraehen; I was already prepared for it with horse and foot, so
+that it was quite certain I should have got them into my hands. But
+there were some good lords and friends of whom I took counsel, whether
+I should on the appointed day appear before his Imperial Majesty, or
+put my project in execution. Their true and faithful counsel was, that
+I should honour his Imperial Majesty with a visit that day, which
+counsel I followed to my great and evident loss.
+
+"I knew when the Frankfort fair was to take place, when the
+Nurembergers were to go on foot from Wuerzburg to Frankfort by the
+Spessart. I made a reconnaissance and fell upon five or six; amongst
+them there was a merchant whom I attacked for the third time, having in
+half a year, twice made him prisoner and once deprived him of property;
+the others were mere bale packers of Nuremberg: I made semblance as if
+I would cut off their heads and hands, though I was not in earnest; but
+they were obliged to kneel down and lay their heads upon a block; I
+then gave one of them a kick behind, and a box on the ear to the
+others: this was the way I punished them, and then let them go their
+way. The merchant whom I had so frequently waylaid crossed himself and
+said: 'I should sooner have thought that the heavens would fall in than
+that you should have waylaid me to-day, for only some days ago, about a
+hundred of our merchants were standing in the market-place of
+Nuremberg, the talk turned upon you, and I heard that you were then in
+the forests at Hagenschiess waylaying and seizing property.' I myself
+wondered that in so short a time the rumour of my riding hither and
+thither should have reached Nuremberg. Soon after, his Imperial Majesty
+took the matter in hand, and arranged it at Wuerzburg."--Thus far Goetz.
+
+
+                       Schaertlin von Burtenbach.
+
+Sebastian Schaertlin does not exactly belong to the same class. He was
+not of noble origin, and had to thank his military talents for his
+knighthood. He was born in the year 1498, and studied arms under
+Fronsperg. From 1518 to 1557 he was actively employed in almost all the
+military affairs of Germany, in the service of the Emperor, and in that
+of the city of Augsburg. For a time also he served in the French army,
+as on account of his participation in the Smalkaldic war he had been
+obliged to leave Germany. He had more than once commanded large armies,
+and was in great repute as a bold and experienced general; he is an
+interesting contrast to Goetz. The one the noble cavalier, the other the
+citizen Landsknechte leader; Goetz the jovial companion-at-arms,
+Schaertlin the practical man of business. The lives of both were full of
+adventures and not free from inexcusable deeds: both died at a great
+age; but Goetz dissipated his time and property in plundering
+expeditions and knightly deeds, while Schaertlin helped to decide the
+fate of Germany. Goetz understood so little his own times and his
+interest, that he, the aristocrat, allowed himself to be made use of by
+the democratic peasants as a man of straw; Schaertlin understood his own
+time so well, that after the unfortunate Smalkaldic war he withdrew
+into Switzerland a rich man, and a few years afterwards was reinstated
+triumphantly in all his honours. Goetz had all his life a strong
+hankering after the merchant's gold, yet after all his daring
+plundering expeditions had but little in his coffers; Schaertlin made
+money in all his campaigns, bought one property after another, and knew
+how to command the highest price for his services. Both gave proof of
+character and of party fidelity; both were honourable soldiers, and the
+knightly consciences of both were according to our judgment too lax.
+Goetz, at whose want of prudence we sometimes smile, though fond of
+booty, was yet in his way painfully conscientious; Schaertlin was the
+cautious but agreeable egotist. All the good qualities of decaying
+knighthood were united in the simple soul of the possessor of Hornburg,
+whilst the Herr von Burtenbach was, on the contrary, thoroughly a son
+of the new time; soldier, negotiator, and diplomat. Both were with the
+Imperial army which invaded France in 1544; Schaertlin, in the prime of
+life as a general, Goetz as an old gray-headed knight with a small troop
+of vassals: the same year Schaertlin was created Imperial Lord High
+Steward and Captain General, and acquired seven thousand gulden. Goetz
+rode, ill and lonely, in the rear of the returning army back to his
+castle. Both have written their lives in a firm soldier's hand; that of
+Goetz is less skilful and well arranged, but his biography will be read
+with greater sympathy than that of Schaertlin: Goetz takes pleasure in
+relating his knightly adventures, as good comrades recall their
+recollections of old times over a glass of good wine; Schaertlin gives a
+perspicuous statement in chronological order, and favours the reader
+with many dry but instructive details of great political transactions;
+but respecting himself, he prefers giving an account of his gains and
+his vexatious quarrels with his landed neighbours.
+
+These quarrels, nevertheless, however uniform their course, claim the
+greatest interest here; for it is precisely by them that we discover
+how much the proceedings of the landed nobility had changed since the
+beginning of the century. There is the same love of feuds, as in the
+youthful days of the Berlichingen; deeds of violence still continue to
+abound, and numerous duodecimo wars are planned; but the old feeling of
+self-dependence is broken, the spirit of public tranquillity and of
+courts of justice hovers over the disputants, neighbours and kind
+friends interpose, and the lawless seldom defy the Imperial mandate or
+the will of the reigning princes without punishment. Sudden surprises
+and insidious devices take the place of open feuds; instead of the
+cross-bow and sword, adversaries make use of not less destructive
+weapons--calumny, bribery, and intrigues. Satirical songs had for a
+century been paid for and listened to with pleasure, and the travelling
+singers made themselves feared, as they ridiculed a niggardly host in
+their songs at a hundred firesides.
+
+Schaertlin relates as follows:--
+
+"Anno 1557. In this year I, Sebastian Schaertlin, bought the territorial
+domain of Hohenburg, together with Bissingen[63] and Hohenstein, from a
+Bohemian Lord, Woldemar von Lobkowitz, and from Hans Stein, for
+fifty-two thousand gulden, and took possession thereof in the presence
+of my son and son-in-law, and many other nobles, on St. Matthew's day,
+and received the homage of the vassals in the marketplace. The same
+summer I restored the castle of Hohenstein, and so repaired it as to
+enable one to reside there. Now about Michaelmas day my son went with
+his wife and children, and took up his residence there; and prepared
+rough and hewn stones, lime, and wood, for repairing the castle of
+Bissingen; and in the winter he caused the well to be put in order; for
+that purpose the neighbouring prelates gave me beautiful oak, and with
+their horses and those of the city of Donauwoerth, and by all the
+neighbouring peasants the carting was done.
+
+"The 18th September, 1560, Count Ludwig von Oettingen caused one of my
+husbandmen of Reutmannshof to be carried prisoner to his office at
+Harburg, where he was kept without bite or sup, because he and his sons
+in defending themselves had had a quarrel with certain peasants of
+Oettingen, who had opened his gate and forcibly driven over his land;
+nevertheless no one had been hurt. On the Monday following, the Count,
+with five hundred peasants and fifty horses, fell with a strong hand
+upon my wood, where he had no territorial rights, caused my acorns to
+be shaken down, and without notice or warning carried off by violence
+women, children, and waggons belonging to me. When I arrived the same
+day at Bissingen, and learned all this, I and my two sons, together
+with our cousin Ludwig Schaertlin and Hans Rumpolt von Elrichshausen,
+and a force of two-and-thirty horses, entered his domain, and close to
+his castle of Harburg seized a peasant and two of his vassals, and
+carried them prisoners to Bissingen. As his horsemen and archers had at
+their pleasure passed close to Bissingen under my very nose, with great
+parade and firing off of guns, so did I the like at Harburg with the
+above-mentioned horsemen, in order to excite my adversary to a
+skirmish, but no one would come out against us. Yet at last they shot
+at us with blunderbusses. On the Thursday after, the Count rode to
+Stuttgard for a shooting match, and as he knew well that I would not
+give way to him, he spoke evil of me to their princely highnesses the
+Elector and Count Palatine, and other counts and nobles, screening
+himself so as to get me into disgrace and disfavour. Duke Christoph of
+Wuertemberg especially, who had previously been favourably disposed
+towards me, recalled this year the pension of a hundred gulden which he
+had given me. The Count had besides so excited his brother, Count
+Friedrich, against me, that he also attacked me with violence.
+Afterwards both Counts strengthened themselves with horse and foot,
+against whom we brought into the castle of Bissingen a hundred good
+experienced archers, and the concourse of troops on both sides was
+great. The Counts had brought me and mine into ridicule with the
+people, by songs and other poems, proverbs, and writings, and also with
+His Imperial Majesty, the Electors and other princes, counts, and
+lords. They accused me of being an exciter of tumults, and a
+quarrelsome breaker of the public peace, and gave out everywhere that I
+was their tenant, vassal, and dependent, who was doubly bound to them,
+and had forgotten my feudal duty, and such-like lies, in the hope of
+injuring me and mine by their falsehoods. Now whilst I was preparing
+for being attacked, the Count Palatine, Duke Wolfgang, and Duke
+Albrecht of Bavaria, being the nearest princes, interposed; they wrote
+to both parties to keep the peace, and offered with Duke Christoph to
+bring about an amicable negotiation, so that the prisoners on both
+sides should be freed, and all the hired troops dismissed. This I was
+willing to do; but as Count Ludwig von Oettingen--nicknamed Igel--the
+Hedgehog--had begun all the mischief, I demanded that he should do it
+first. But the Count would not give freedom to the people, but placed
+Ratzebauer, who was my vassal alone, and owed neither fealty nor
+allegiance to Oettingen, before the criminal court. To all eternity it
+will not be shown that I and mine, by this purchase, became lawfully
+vassals, for we bought Hohenburg and Bissingen, together with all that
+appertains to them, as freehold properties, and as territorial domains
+which are independent and have criminal jurisdiction. Yet the princes
+would not leave the settlement to us, but gave us manifold admonitions
+to be peaceable; so I dismissed my hired troops, and in this
+transaction I well perceived that Duke Wolfgang, who before was my
+gracious protector, had also fallen away, and had become inimical to
+me. But in spite of all the princely mediations, Count Ludwig one
+evening advanced with many horsemen and some hundred peasants against
+the castle of Bissingen, and began a skirmish, with our horsemen of
+whom some were in the field and others issued forth, in which none
+received injury. As the enemy could do nothing, they returned again, a
+laughing-stock to all.
+
+"I brought all this business before the Supreme Court of Judicature,
+and made complaint against Count Ludwig for his delinquencies against
+me, hoping, as also happened, that I might bring this matter to a just
+conclusion, though the princes showed such a party feeling.[64]
+Meanwhile, Count Igel meanly cast odium upon my name everywhere by
+printed writings and calumnious songs; and in the presence of the Count
+von Mansfeld, erased from the armorial shield of my son Hans Bastian,
+which was upon the Inn, the prefix 'Herr von Bissingen,' which
+nevertheless had not been placed there by my son himself, but by the
+landlord; and Count Friedrich caused his bailiff publicly to proclaim,
+at the consecration of the church at Buchenhofen, that if one of the
+Schaertlingers should go thither, every one should beat him.
+
+"In the year 1561, Count Lothair von Oettingen came during Lent to
+Augsburg; he sent many friendly words to me, as that he and his other
+brothers were quite sorry that his brother Count Ludwig had treated me
+in so unseemly a manner. Besides which, he complained to me of his
+brother, that he would not give him his marriage settlement or any
+residence; it therefore became necessary for him to behave hostilely
+towards him, and he begged of me to yield him knightly service.
+Thereupon I thanked him for his sympathy, and regretted that with him
+also things did not go satisfactorily; but I let him know that there
+was a truce between me and his brother, and that I was engaged with him
+before the Supreme Court, that I did not willingly put my foot between
+the hammer and the anvil, but that if otherwise he wanted any knightly
+service, and would inform me of it, I would be his servant, and would
+not refuse to furnish horse and armour.
+
+"It was the custom annually at Bissingen to go on Holy Ascension Day to
+a fair and dance that was held behind the castle, and there was also
+shooting, whereat, this year, my son Hans Bastian gave his company.
+Then Counts Ludwig and Friedrich sent the bailiff of Unter Bissingen,
+together with other horsemen, to the fair, armed with five
+blunderbusses. They placed themselves there, and wished to hold their
+ground; my sons accosted them, asking why they placed themselves thus
+armed. To whom the bailiff answered that his lords had sent him to
+guard this place, and that the supremacy belonged to the Counts of
+Oettingen; which my son gainsaid, as the parents of the Counts had sold
+it, and it belonged to me, and he bid them take themselves off. Upon
+this the bailiff rode away with these words, that he would soon return
+after another fashion; and presently, from the footpath horsemen and
+infantry were to be seen coming; whereupon my son sent certain servants
+and vassals to the castle and the church tower, to await the enemy.
+Suddenly the Count's people, numbering about forty horsemen and three
+hundred foot, came riding and running at full speed, attacked my son,
+and cousin Ludwig, and their sharpshooters and vassals with spears and
+firearms, pressed quite up to the barrier of the fair, and closed the
+gates by overpowering force. On the other hand my son and his followers
+placed themselves on the defensive, fought them at close quarters, and
+firing at them from the castle and towers, shot two of the Count's
+horses and two of his men, one in the body and the other in the leg;
+thus they kept them at bay, and at last put them to flight, but, thank
+God! no misfortune happened to him or his. Afterwards, however, when my
+son had entered the castle with his people, and was eating his supper
+and taking no further heed, Count Lothar, that honourable man, who had
+before said so many friendly things to me, returned about six o'clock,
+and fired thirty shots at the castle with four powerful guns upon
+wheels, and blew away full twelve bricks. About nine o'clock they
+returned to Unter-Bissingen: both Counts strengthened themselves in the
+night, and came again in the morning with many people. As my son and my
+cousin Ludwig had no expectation of another attack, they came over to
+me early in the morning; then the burgomaster and certain councillors
+went out to the enemy and inquired what their intentions were, as there
+was no one in the castle but women and children, they also said that
+the domain was under process and Imperial neutrality. Thereupon the
+bailiff from Harburg made reply that they had come yesterday and again
+to-day with good and friendly intentions, to claim their lord's rights
+of supremacy, but they had been fired at, whereby great damage had been
+done to them. They desired to occupy the _Platz_ to-day, but if they
+were fired at, it would be seen what they should do in return. Upon
+this the people of Bissingen answered that they were poor people, and
+whatever might be done would have to be answered for. Afterwards the
+Count's people again advanced to the _Platz_, two hundred men strong
+with four guns and a drum, and after performing certain dances, and
+drinking, each one plucked a leaf from the linden trees; after this
+defiance, and firing, they withdrew, leaving behind them an ambuscade
+of two thousand men. All this I notified and complained of to his
+Imperial Majesty and the Supreme Court; thereupon a mandate was sent to
+both parties, that we should under pain of disgrace and outlawry not
+molest each other any further, and together with this a summons to
+appear before the court on the 20th of August, which were both
+delivered to the Counts, who answered in a most unseemly way that it
+was all a falsehood. I besides this protested against the injuries done
+to me.
+
+"On the aforesaid grounds, and because there was no end to their
+hostile behaviour, and also as neither law nor right were of any avail,
+I was compelled for the sake of mine honour and for protection against
+the molestation of the two above-mentioned Counts, to send a statement
+to His Imperial Majesty of the Roman Empire, to the Electors and
+Princes, Counts and States of the Empire, and also to the five
+divisions of nobility and the knighthood generally; I also made a like
+statement by word of mouth to the estates of the country communes, and
+fully apprised them and their governor, my worthy lord of Bavaria, of
+whom I was appointed representative, and further the city of Augsburg,
+whose vassal I am, of the whole transaction, and besought of them all,
+counsel, help, or support. These addressed a threatening document to
+the Counts, admonishing them to leave to me and mine, our rights, in
+peace; adding that if they did not, they would not abandon me. At the
+same time they recommended me to employ nothing but law. Now as so many
+calumnious songs and sayings had been circulated concerning me, one to
+whom I had perhaps done some good composed an admirable pasquinade and
+song upon the Count _Igel_ von Harburg, and cut him up well.
+
+"On the third of October, _Igel_, with fifteen hundred men, horse and
+foot, amongst them certain Landsknechte, together with five pieces of
+heavy artillery, advanced against my cousin Ludwig at Oberringingen,
+having sent before him certain nobles to demand of him to give up his
+house. But Ludwig Schaertlin had by my commands, two days before,
+supplied himself with three Landsknechte, certain blunderbusses and
+hand-guns of my son's at Bissingen, and with powder and shot. So he
+awaited the storm, as he hoped for a father's reward from me for his
+knightly truth and faith. He himself went out to these nobles, and
+answered them with threatening words; if Count _Igel_ would come in a
+neighbourly and friendly manner, like his brothers, he should partake
+with him of his sour wine; but coming in such a fashion, he could not
+open his house; he had a house for himself, and not for the Count of
+Oettingen, and the Count would find he had to deal with a soldier. Each
+party withdrew behind his defences, but the Count entrenched himself in
+the outer court, and by the fire of his artillery destroyed the
+battlements of the towers, all the windows, roofs, and chimneys, and
+two persons. On the other hand, Ludwig Schaertlin defended himself
+valiantly, shot the master-gunner of the Count's artillery and another
+person, and wounded besides many of the soldiers, of whom some
+afterwards died. Thus they fought from seven o'clock in the morning
+till six in the evening. In the night Ludwig caused the Count great
+alarm and disquiet; meanwhile he fortified himself, and again on the
+morrow defended himself valiantly. But when I, Sebastian Schaertlin,
+Knight, learned these things, I hastily sent on to Bissingen,
+according to the advice of Count Albrecht of Bavaria, four hundred
+soldiers, amongst them good marksmen from Augsburg, with powder and
+shot, iron cramps, and good material of war. Then I scraped together
+six-and-twenty thousand gulden, and provided helmets, powder and shot,
+also certain waggons and guns from the city of Memmingen; a great troop
+of Landsknechte and horsemen all appointed to be at Burtenbach on the
+fourth, and I myself came there in the evening, after I had put
+everything in motion. That same night, Count Wolf and Count Lothar came
+to me at Burtenbach in a friendly way, and complained to me that their
+brother, Count Ludwig, had also deprived them of their parental
+inheritance, and they entreated me to unite myself with them. So we
+made a written and sealed compact, that both the Counts and their
+brother Friedrich, with his marksmen, and all their power of horse and
+foot, should unite themselves with us, and I was to provide five
+thousand vassals, or other horsemen, and bear the expense of the war.
+But if I should restore the young Counts to their parental inheritance,
+they should pay two thirds, and I one, of the war expenses. We hoped
+Count _Igel_ would tarry before Oberringingen, and in case he conquered
+it, would proceed to Bissingen to besiege my son. But the Count on the
+fourth of October raised the siege, and withdrew himself disgracefully,
+after he had laid waste and plundered my cousin's fore-court and whole
+village, and carried off all the women and children: yet my cousin was
+very near getting hold of one of his guns. When Count _Igel_ perceived
+that we had come to an accommodation with his own brothers--Count
+Friedrich excepted, who would not act either with or against him--he
+fled the country, and went first to the Count Palatine, Duke Wolfgang,
+and afterwards to Duke Christoph von Wuertemberg, to whom he lied, and
+told many monstrous stories; such as, that I, with the assistance of
+His Imperial Majesty, the Kings of Bavaria, and city of Augsburg, and
+the league of Landsberg, had endeavoured to drive him from his people
+and country.
+
+"Meanwhile I strengthened myself, and at the end of two days I
+determined to make an expedition, and cross the Danube with a force of
+seven thousand men, horse and foot. But as it had been perceived by the
+two Princes, the Palatine, and Wuertemberg, that the Count would be
+driven away, and become a guest in their country, they both of them
+advanced, the Duke of Wuertemberg in person, with his horsemen and some
+guns, with the intention of not allowing me to cross the Danube, or to
+give me battle. The Palatine had before urged me extremely not to have
+recourse to arms, as his Princely Grace could not consent to this
+expedition of mine. His Imperial Majesty, and the Colonel of the
+Suabian troops, had also enjoined me to keep the peace, whereto also
+the Bavarian King and the city of Augsburg had repeatedly admonished
+me, and had offered to accommodate these affairs by negotiation. So
+with the loss of four thousand gulden, and in spite of my having been
+plundered, and my cousin endangered, I consented to sheath my sword and
+keep the peace, to come to an amicable agreement, and to fix a meeting
+at Donauwoerth. Negotiations were carried on there for a fortnight, and
+brought to a conclusion by the arbitrators of Bavaria and the
+Palatinate, to the effect that we should on both sides maintain peace,
+and as there was no other hope of peace between us, and no better way
+of settling matters, I should sell the property to the Count. This I
+would not do, as I wished to have no transactions with the Count. Yet
+at last I gave in so far, to the purport of the settled agreement, that
+I would submit myself respectfully to both Princes, and give up the
+supremacy of Hohenburg and Bissingen, on payment of sixty-two thousand
+gulden; but not withdraw from it till I was paid the last penny in
+peace and security."
+
+Thus far Schaertlin. In spite of his complaints of loss, it may be
+assumed that the sale, at least in a pecuniary point of view, was
+advantageous to him, but certain it is, that it did not put an end to
+his quarrels with the Count. For years they both continued to make
+complaints before the Supreme Court of Justice and the Emperor; and to
+make violent and mutual attacks on each other. At last the adversaries
+were obliged to shake hands in presence of the Emperor.
+
+
+
+                         Hans Von Schweinichen.
+
+About the end of the sixteenth century the deeds of violence of the
+noble landed proprietors were less barefaced and less frequent. Most of
+them became peaceful Landjunkers, the ablest and poorest sought shelter
+at the numerous courts. When Goetz was young every Landjunker was a
+soldier, for he was a knight, and the traditions of knighthood had
+influence even in great wars. But it was just then that the great
+change was preparing which made the infantry the nucleus of the new
+army; from that time an experienced Landsknecht who had influence over
+his comrades, or a burgher master-gunner, who understood how to direct
+a carronade, was of more value to a general than a dozen undisciplined
+Junkers with their retainers. The power of the princes had for the most
+part, through the new art of war, mastered that of the lower nobility,
+and had made the descendants of the free knights of the Empire,
+chamberlains and attendants of the great dynasties. The new roads to
+fortune were flattery and cringing. The old martial spirit was lost,
+but the craving for excitement remained. The Germans had always been
+hard drinkers; now drunkenness became the most prominent vice in those
+provinces where the vine was not cultivated. Ruined property,
+prodigious debts, and insupportable lawsuits disturbed the few sober
+hours of the day. The sons of the country nobility attended Latin
+schools and the University, but the number of those who pursued a
+regular course of study was small, for even throughout the whole of the
+next century the higher offices of the state which required knowledge
+and skill in business, as well as the most important posts as
+ambassadors, were generally filled by burghers, and whilst the nobility
+seemed only capable of holding the higher court appointments, it was
+generally found necessary to send the son of a shoemaker, or of a
+village pastor, to a foreign court as the representative of sovereign
+dignity, and to make the noble courtier his subordinate travelling
+chamberlain. Thus the country nobility continued to vegetate--sometimes
+struggling against the new times, at others serving obsequiously, till,
+in the Thirty years' war, those of superior character were drawn into
+the violent struggle, and the weaker sank still lower.
+
+Hans von Schweinichen lived during this period of transition, which was
+about the end of the sixteenth century; he was a Silesian nobleman of
+old family, groom of the bedchamber, chamberlain, and factotum of the
+Quixotic Duke Heinrich XI. of Liegnitz. We see the characters of both,
+in juxta-position in two biographies written by Schweinichen. One is
+the account of his own life, 'Life and Adventures of the Silesian
+Knight, Hans von Schweinichen, published by Buesching, three parts,
+1820;' the other an extract from it, with some alterations and
+additions: 'The Life of Duke Heinrich XI., published in Stenzel;
+Script. Rer. Siles. iv.,' both, works of great value as a history of
+the manners of the sixteenth century.
+
+The old royal house of Silesian Piastens produced, with a few
+exceptions, a set of wild, wrong-headed rulers, with great pretensions
+and small powers.
+
+One of the most remarkable among them is Heinrich XI. von Liegnitz, the
+dissolute son of a worthless father. When the latter, Duke Friedrich
+III. was deposed by the Imperial commissioners in the year 1559, and
+put under arrest as a disturber of the community, the government of the
+principality devolved upon his son, then twenty years of age. After ten
+years of misrule he quarrelled with his brother Friedrich and his
+nobility, and in a fit of despotic humour caused the States of the
+duchy to be all imprisoned. Whilst the indignant members were appealing
+against him to the Emperor, he himself undertook an adventurous
+expedition through Germany, making the round of numerous courts and
+towns as a beggar, during which, the lack of money plunged him into one
+embarrassment after another, and led him into every kind of unworthy
+action. Meanwhile he was suspended, and his brother, who was not much
+better, was established as administrator. Heinrich complained
+querulously, undertook a new begging expedition to the German courts,
+and at last made his solicitations to the Emperor at Prague; he was
+still under the severe pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, but
+finally succeeded in obtaining the restoration of his duchy. Now
+followed fresh recklessness and open opposition to the Imperial
+commissary, a new deposition and strict imprisonment at Breslau. From
+this imprisonment he escaped and wandered about in foreign parts as a
+friendless adventurer; he offered his services to Queen Elizabeth of
+England in her war with Philip of Spain; and at last went to Poland to
+fight against Austria. He died suddenly at Cracow in 1586, probably of
+poison.
+
+If in his shatterbrained character there was anything out of the common
+way, it was his being entirely devoid of all one is accustomed to
+consider as honourable and conscientious. He had not the frivolity of
+his courtiers who cast off all reflection, but he entirely lacked all
+moral feeling. Being a prince, this recklessness for a long time
+answered, for with a pleasing facility he slipped out of all
+difficulties, and with a smile or dignified surprise, made his way out
+of positions that would have brought burning blushes to the cheeks of
+most others. It was indifferent to him how he obtained money; when in
+distress he wrote begging letters to all the world, even to the Romish
+Legate, though himself a Protestant; from every court and city which he
+visited, and where according to the custom of those times he was
+entertained, he endeavoured to borrow money. Generally the host, taken
+by surprise, came to terms with Schweinichen, and instead of the loan,
+a small travelling fee was given, with which the Prince was content. He
+had a wife, an insignificant woman, whom he was sometimes compelled to
+take with him; she had also to make shift and contract debts like him,
+and after having forced herself on the hospitality of the rich Bohemian
+nobles, she sought for loans through Schweinichen, and received their
+courtly refusals with princely demeanour. All this would be simply
+contemptible if there was not something original in it, as Duke
+Heinrich, in spite of all, had a strong feeling of the princely dignity
+which he so often disgraced, and was as far as outward appearance was
+concerned a distinguished man. Not only with his Schweinichen, but also
+in the courts of foreign princes, indeed even in social intercourse
+with the Emperor, he was according to the ideas of those times an
+agreeable companion, well skilled in knightly pursuits, always good
+humoured, amused with every joke made by others, quick at repartee, and
+in serious things he appeared really eloquent. In some matters also he
+showed in his actions traces of a manly understanding. However unseemly
+his tyrannical conduct, as Duke, towards his States, however strange
+his open resistance to the Imperial power, and however childish his
+hope of becoming elective King of Poland, yet the foundation of all
+this was the abiding feeling that his noble origin gave him the right
+to aspire to the highest position. He was always engrossed with
+political interests and plans. Nothing ever prospered to him, for he
+was unstable, reckless, and not to be trusted, but his aims were always
+great, either a king's throne or a field-marshal's staff. It was this,
+and not his drunken follies, that cast him down from his throne, and at
+last into the grave. On one other point he was steadfast,--he was a
+Protestant; although he did not hesitate a moment to demand loans of
+his Catholic opponents in the most shameless way; yet when the Papal
+Legate promised him a considerable revenue, and indeed his
+reinstatement in his principality if he would become a Roman Catholic,
+he rejected this proposal with contempt. If he engaged himself as a
+soldier, it was by preference against the Hapsburgers. Such a
+personage, with his freedom from all principle, his complete
+recklessness, his impracticable and at the same time elastic character,
+and his mind filled with the highest projects, appears to us as a
+representative of the dark side which is developed in the Sclavonic
+nature.
+
+Other princes of his race, above all his brother Friedrich, are
+epitomes of the faults of the German character. Mean, egotistic,
+narrow-minded, and suspicious, without decision or energy, Duke
+Friedrich was his perfect opposite.
+
+Another contrast is to be found in his biographer and companion, the
+Junker Hans von Schweinichen. This comical madcap was a thorough German
+Silesian. When a boy, as page of the imprisoned Duke Friedrich, and as
+whipping-boy of the son, he had early made a thorough acquaintance with
+the wild proceedings of the Liegnitzer court, and been initiated into
+all its intrigues. His father, a landed proprietor, had fallen into
+debt in consequence of having once become security for Duke Heinrich.
+Schweinichen was co-heir to a deeply involved property, and up to an
+advanced age was engaged in endless quarrels with the creditors, and
+also with his relations, who had been surety for him, and for whom he
+had been surety. This was indeed, towards the end of the sixteenth
+century, the usual lot of landed proprietors. But besides this, he for
+many years joined in all the mad pranks of his princely master, which
+were for the most part rather of a lax nature, so he came in for no
+unimportant share of these frivolous proceedings. The moral cultivation
+of those times was undoubtedly on the whole much lower than that of
+ours, and he must only be judged by the standard of his own time. He
+was no man of the sword, and his valour was tempered by a strong degree
+of caution. Always in good humour, and at the same time crafty,
+furnished with great powers of persuasion, he contrived to glide like
+an eel through the most difficult situations with the open bearing of
+an honest man, and the most good humoured countenance in the world.
+Even when most dissolute he still clung to the hope of redeeming the
+future, and whilst living as a wild courtier, he considered himself as
+an honourable country nobleman, who had to preserve the good opinion of
+his fellows. He had always a small degree of conscientiousness in
+domestic matters; his was not however a burdensome or strict
+conscience, and demanded only occasional obedience. He valued himself
+not a little, and gradually began to take less pleasure in his master's
+vagaries. The endless changes, the quarrels with Jews and Christians,
+and the anxieties about the daily wine, made this life at last too
+irregular for him; he had always kept a diary of his own life, and
+seldom forgot to note down that on the previous evening he had been
+tipsy: at the end of each year's diary, which sometimes contained
+nothing but a succession of convivial parties and discreditable money
+transactions, he would commend his soul to God, and after that, note
+the price of corn in the last year. All that he had mortgaged for his
+lord we find marked down in his diary with a statement, as precise as
+superfluous, of the real worth in silver. After he had thus pretty
+nearly mortgaged everything, he experienced the heartfelt grief of
+seeing his Duke in the Imperial prison, there he parted with him, not
+without grief, as one parts from the friend of one's youth; but his
+German understanding told him that this parting was fortunate for
+himself. Then followed years in which he drank with his neighbours,
+reconciled himself with Duke Friedrich, to whom he even became
+chamberlain, married, leased a small property, and half as landlord,
+half as courtier, lived respectably like others. Afterwards, when
+another prince ruled the country, Schweinichen became a royal
+councillor, and an active member of the government; he had the gout,
+lost his wife and married another. He still continued to move
+restlessly about the country, adjusted the differences of the noblemen
+and peasants, occasionally got tipsy with good comrades, discharged
+debts, acquired landed property, increased in respectability as in age,
+and died highly esteemed. His escutcheon, emblazoned with eight
+quarterings, shone conspicuously upon the black mourning horses at his
+funeral, as it had done when arranged by himself for his deceased
+father; his effigy was cut in stone upon his tomb in the village
+church, and his banner hung above it, whilst the coffin of his unhappy
+prince was still above ground unconsecrated, walled up in a ruined
+chapel by zealous monks, as that of a heretic.
+
+The following episode is taken from the biography of Schweinichen. It
+occurred in 1578, the time in which Duke Heinrich was suspended in his
+government by Imperial mandate and lived in Hainau on a fixed income
+under the sovereignty of his younger brother. Schweinichen was then
+six-and-twenty; Schaertlin had died two months before at the advanced
+age of eighty-two.
+
+"Duke Heinrich found that it was no longer possible to hold a court in
+Hainau, and notified to his Imperial Majesty, that as Duke Friedrich
+would no longer give him an allowance, his Princely Grace would take it
+himself where he could. To this the Emperor gave no answer, but allowed
+things to take their course, as neither party would conform to his
+Imperial Majesty's commands, 'as the one prince broke jugs and the
+other pitchers.' Now his Princely Grace knew that the States had a
+great store of corn at Groeditzberg, so the Duke took counsel with me
+how he should capture Groeditzberg, and there keep house till he learned
+the Imperial determination. I could by no means approve of this affair
+nor give counsel thereto, for many serious reasons which I laid before
+his Princely Grace's consideration. For his Imperial Majesty would
+interpret it as a breach of the peace, and his Princely Grace would
+thereby make matters worse rather than better. Because I thus discussed
+it with the Duke, his Princely Grace was ill-content with me, and said
+I was good for nothing in such affairs; for he had in his own mind,
+determined to march out and try whether he could not take the fortress;
+so he commanded me to prepare twelve troopers, and to tell the Junkers
+that they were to ride with him, yet not to inform them where his
+Princely Grace was going.
+
+"Although I still continued to entreat of his Princely Grace not to do
+this, as he would bring the whole country upon him, and I therefore
+wished to dissuade him from it, yet I could not prevail with him, but
+he went forth, and commanded me meanwhile not to move from the house at
+Hainau till he called me away. But if his Princely Grace should capture
+the fortress in the night, he would immediately send back a mounted
+messenger, and if I heard a shot I should at once admit him, and obey
+the commands that he brought. Thus my lord marched from Hainau the 18th
+of August, about two o'clock, to Groeditzberg. When his Princely Grace
+came into the wood under the hill, he sent up two horsemen as if to
+examine the place; these were to bring information who were there, and
+if they found that my lord could advance, they were to fire a shot. As
+they found only two men there, they fired the shot. His Princely Grace
+speedily rode up, took the castle, and about three o'clock in the
+night, according to agreement, sent a mounted messenger to me. Now when
+I heard the shot before the door at Hainau, I was greatly terrified,
+and said to those who were with me in the room: 'This shot will rouse
+all the country against my lord.' They did not understand this, but
+suspected that my lord had carried off Duke Friedrich. I forthwith
+ordered the gates of the castle to be opened. His Princely Grace had
+sent me notice through Ulrich Rausch, that he had taken possession of
+Groeditzberg and did not think of returning; but to send forthwith up to
+that place, his remaining horses, servants, and other things.
+
+"Two days afterwards, two Polish lords, Johann and Georg
+Rasserschafsky, announced themselves as visitors to his Princely Grace
+at Hainau, of which I speedily informed the Duke, and inquired what I
+should do. Thereupon his Princely Grace replied, that I should receive
+and entertain them a few days at Hainau; and he sent me six dollars for
+the charges. As the Polish lords had sixteen horsemen with them, the
+whole six dollars went for wine at the first sitting; so I had to
+consider how with care and by borrowing I might provide for those lords
+who were to abide there for a fortnight. Thereupon my lord wrote to me
+to bring them to Groeditzberg, and to accompany them myself. There the
+Duke had already established a guard of twenty men, armed with long
+carabines, having become a warrior; and at the reception of the two
+lords, caused six trumpets and kettledrums to be sounded. As soon as I
+came up to the castle, his Princely Grace charged me with the care of
+the household.
+
+"His Princely Grace wished to have the house supplied with provisions,
+and commanded me to get in a store of four-and-twenty malters of flour,
+which I did; and I also bought at his desire, eight malters of salt.
+The enormous piles of preserved mushrooms and bilberries is not to be
+told; great vats full, whereby much money was wasted. Twelve pigs also
+were fattened at the castle upon corn alone, and the Duke himself was
+wont to feed them. Everything was prepared for the siege of the castle.
+Now there were carriers at Modelsdorf who had to convey lead from
+Breslau to Leipzig; when therefore his Princely Grace learnt this, he
+commanded that two carriers should bring this lead up to the castle,
+the value of which amounted to more than two hundred and fifty thalers.
+It was conveyed into the house and remained lying there. The merchants
+hearing this, complained to the Bishop, who called upon my lord to
+deliver up the lead forthwith; this, however, his Princely Grace would
+not do, but offered some day to pay for the lead from his allowance. In
+the end it remained unpaid; and the carriers got into great trouble on
+this account. Then Bishop Martin[65] sent commissaries to Groeditzberg;
+and his Princely Grace kept them two days with him and gave them good
+entertainment, but allowed them to depart again with the affair
+unsettled.
+
+"Meanwhile Frau von Herrnsdorf invited me to a wedding; without doubt
+to please her daughter, to whom I was not averse, and whom I was
+courting. I therefore asked his Princely Grace for leave of absence,
+and also to lend me three horses, which he did most willingly; and as
+his servants were just then being newly dressed in gray cloth, I
+requested that those who were to accompany me might be clothed first. I
+then had my sword and dagger sharpened, and adorned myself as I best
+could. Thus I rode with three horsemen to Herrnsdorf, where the young
+lady received me with great pleasure. I helped to fetch the bride to
+Herrnsdorf, making my appearance with my trumpeter. We continued
+together after the wedding till the Saturday, full of jollity; and
+although I was in the mean time recalled by the Duke, I remained late,
+that it might not be perceived that I had the Duke's horsemen. On
+Saturday, however, I rode forth again, and when I arrived at
+Groeditzberg, I desired the trumpeter to blow; but when I dismounted at
+the castle, a good friend of mine came and informed me that his
+Princely Grace was very angry with me, and had sworn that he would put
+me in arrest in one of the rooms in the courtyard: I did not, however,
+trouble myself about it, but entered the castle so that my lord might
+see me from the corridor. Now his Princely Grace had some Polish guests
+with him; but there was no provision either in kitchen or cellar; so
+for more than an hour after the trumpeter had summoned to table, there
+was nothing served up. His Princely Grace sent to me to desire that I
+would cause dinner to be served up, and would be in attendance. In
+answer, I let the Duke know that I had learned his Princely Grace was
+angry with me; I had therefore hesitated to appear before him, but when
+his Princely Grace should hear the cause of my prolonged absence he
+would be well content. But the Duke returned for answer, that I must be
+in attendance; that he already knew the cause of my prolonged absence,
+that I loved the maiden better than him. When therefore, at table, I
+presented the water to his Princely Grace, he looked very sour, but I
+pretended not to perceive it. His Princely Grace began a carouse, but
+when it was at its highest, the wine failed. Thereupon his Princely
+Grace sent to inform me that there was no more wine, and that I had
+brought him to shame by not returning at the right time. I returned for
+answer to the Duke that it was no fault of mine; and why had not his
+Princely Grace sent for wine in proper time? Then his Princely Grace
+informed me he had no money, but that I was to send quickly for some
+wine.
+
+"I desired then to be informed what I was to do, adding that if he was
+angry with me, he should tell me so himself. I had meanwhile a little
+cask of wine, containing about six firkins, lying concealed in the
+cellar. When a glass of this wine was poured out for the Duke, he cried
+out, 'My steward, I drink to you on your return!' called me to him, and
+said, 'I have been very angry with you, but it is now past; see to it
+that you get me provisions, and above all, wine.' I answered, 'Your
+Princely Grace may now be merry; there will be no lack of wine; other
+things also shall not be wanting; but your Princely Grace had no cause
+to look so askance at me, for I had been with a fair lady whom you
+would gladly have seen.' Whereupon the Duke said, 'I like you, and am
+well pleased with you; I was sure that you would have something in
+store.' So we became again master and servant, and all ungraciousness
+was at an end; and thus after my gaieties I was obliged to return to my
+cares, and consider how I could provide for the kitchen and cellar,
+which, after my pleasuring, was very distasteful to me. I learnt from
+various sources that endeavours had been made to blacken my character
+with the Duke, by representing me as a traitor, and as having dealings
+with Duke Friedrich, with whom I had made so long a stay; which was not
+the case, as I was too honourable to do the like. But it is usual to
+find many backbiters at princes' courts. I was desirous to learn from
+the Duke who my detractor was; but his Princely Grace would not tell
+me, and answered that he had not believed it.
+
+"As the supply of corn and other things were nearly at an end, and
+there was nothing more in store, I was obliged to seek after
+provisions. Now Heinrich Schweinichen von Thomaswaldau had a number of
+old sheep which no one else would buy, and I could not buy any other
+cattle for want of money, as we had none; so his Grace bade me to
+traffic with my cousin for the old sheep, and I made a bargain with him
+to pay twenty silver groschen apiece for the sheep, and there were
+three hundred and twenty-five of them. But when we had agreed upon the
+bargain, he would not deliver them to me without receiving either money
+or security, and he would not take me as surety; so I had to return to
+my lord to inform him of this, and he was sore displeased that no one
+would trust him. He wrote a letter, therefore, with his own hands to
+Schweinichen, desiring that he would deliver the sheep according to the
+agreement. But it could not be arranged, and Schweinichen excused
+himself. This irritated the Duke still more; and as we had nothing but
+mushrooms and bilberries to eat, his Princely Grace desired me to think
+of some means of giving security. As I had before asked for a loan of
+three hundred thalers for his Princely Grace from the council at
+Loewenberg, and had received fair promises, I went again to the
+councillors, and begged of them to settle the affair; but they refused.
+I persevered, and at last they consented to be security for the sheep,
+provided I were responsible for any damage or loss. This, however, I
+objected to, but begged that they would trust his Princely Grace, for
+they should not be the worse for it. So I persuaded the council to
+become security with their seal to the old higgler for half a year, and
+we obtained provision again from the old sheep. These were frequently
+dressed in eight different ways, also the mushrooms in three different
+ways, and the bilberries in two ways. With this his Princely Grace and
+we all were obliged to be content, and to drink bad Goldberger beer.
+Meanwhile autumn drew on, and we were able to obtain birds. But when I
+went to set gins in the wood, I had great difficulty with the retinue,
+who all wished to scour the wood and get birds for themselves. Although
+his Princely Grace himself forbad it, no one would desist therefrom, so
+that I was obliged to put the Junkers under arrest in the room in the
+courtyard, and the common people in the tower. I became thereby very
+unpopular, yet it could not be helped. His Princely Grace went every
+morning himself to catch birds, and that was also my pastime. Otherwise
+the time passed very tediously; although I had not much rest, as I had
+to procure provisions, which was a source of great trouble to me.
+
+"Now his Princely Grace perceiving that it was difficult for him to
+maintain himself at the Groeditzberg, and that no allowance could be
+obtained from Duke Friedrich, hearing likewise that the Arnsdorf pond
+had been fished at an earlier period than heretofore, and that when
+drawn, a certain quantity of carp had been caught and placed in
+reservoirs, he ordered me to provide some waggons, and rode himself
+with fifteen horsemen to Arnsdorf. As it was almost evening, and there
+was no one near the reservoir but the pond watchman, his Princely Grace
+had a large number of the fish taken out, as many as the five waggons
+could carry, and returned therewith to Groeditzberg.
+
+"Whilst the Duke was having the waggons loaded with fish, the alarm was
+given at Liegnitz; thereupon the Burgrave Kessel and Hans Tschammer,
+the master of the horse, galloped off with five horsemen, to prevent
+any fish from being carried away; but they were too late, for the
+greater part of the waggons laden with fish were gone, besides which,
+they perceived that his Princely Grace was there in person, and
+stronger than themselves. His Princely Grace did not give them a kind
+greeting, but gave Kessel a blow on the back, saying, that if he
+allowed a word to pass his lips that was not seemly, he should be his
+prisoner, and would find that the Duke would treat him as a rebel. So
+these five were obliged to let the matter pass, and thank God that they
+had got so well out of it.
+
+"On the following day the pond was again to be drawn for fish, and Duke
+Friedrich expected that Duke Heinrich would return and seize more of
+them; so he proceeded thither himself, taking with him five-and-twenty
+horsemen, and likewise fifty arquebusiers, who were concealed among the
+bushes under the bank. His Princely Grace however remained at home, but
+sent me and a foreigner, Hans Fuchs, a captain of Landsknechts,
+together with six horsemen to Arnsdorf, with directions to greet Duke
+Friedrich kindly, and say that my lord had been compelled by necessity
+to carry off the fish on the preceding day, and he begged he would not
+take it amiss; that Duke Friedrich was to consider it as the provision
+due to him, and his Princely Grace entreated him in a friendly way to
+send him yet another supply of fish for provision.
+
+"But Duke Friedrich looked black, knit his brows, and answered thus:
+'As for this greeting of his Princely Grace, if he sent it with a true
+brother's heart, he thanked him for it; but two days ago the fish had
+been carried off from the reservoir, which greatly annoyed him, and if
+he had come there in person no good would have arisen from it.' He was
+quite unfriendly, and said that no more fish should be sent, and if an
+attempt should be made to take them away by force, he would guard them.
+Thus I departed from Duke Friedrich, and asked Kessel for a dish of
+fish, as we wished to breakfast at Perschdorf, whereupon Duke Friedrich
+ordered them to give me what I wanted.
+
+"Now when I came with such an answer to my lord, he was sore
+displeased, and made all kinds of projects, and wished to take the fish
+by force. Meanwhile there came intelligence that Duke Friedrich was
+again going to fish the next day, and would have a guard with him. Then
+my lord said to me: 'Hans, we'll have some sport; reckon how many
+horsemen we can muster; we will go and frighten Duke Friedrich a little
+at the Arnsdorf pond.' But I would not consent to this, and objected to
+any such plan, as their hearts would have been much embittered thereby
+towards each other. Duke Friedrich had also many Poles, servants of the
+nobility, with him, and they were powerful. His Princely Grace however
+would not give it up, but promised me he would not speak an angry word
+to any one, and I should see how he would drive away Duke Friedrich and
+his followers; thereupon I made a reckoning, and found that we could
+bring together a force of nineteen horsemen, three trumpeters, six
+arquebusiers, and two lackeys, wherewith Duke Heinrich was well
+content, and commanded me to take with us one waggon with fish barrels,
+as Duke Friedrich would not be so uncourteous as to refuse to present
+us with some fish.
+
+"Early in the morning his Princely Grace left his castle for
+Perschdorf. There he received information that Duke Friedrich had gone
+in a little boat on the pond. On hearing this, his Princely Grace said
+to me: 'Hans, now is the time, advance.' Now Duke Friedrich had placed
+a sentinel at the end of the dam, who as soon as he observed anything,
+was to fire a shot as a signal. As soon therefore as this shot was
+fired by the Duke's sentinel, I caused one of the trumpeters to blow,
+and then another, and afterwards all three together. Then, as I was
+afterwards told, a great tumult arose, and Duke Friedrich and his
+attendants called out for their armour, and Duke Friedrich was in so
+great terror on the pond, that they could hardly prevent his fainting.
+At last he sprang out of the boat and waded in the mud, so that he lost
+his breath. When the arquebusiers whom Duke Friedrich had with him,
+heard the trumpeters, they ran among the bushes on the meadow; so that
+there was no one to be seen when he called for his guard, and some
+shots that fell on the lappets of Duke Friedrich's coat, and on his
+steed, were the only answer, and he made off to Liegnitz with all
+speed. As soon as the others saw that their lord was riding away, they
+followed his example, and only nine horsemen remained by the
+reservoirs; among them Leuthold von der Saale, Balthasar Rostitz, and
+Muschelwitz. So when his Princely Grace approached them, they took off
+their hats, and my lord greeted them graciously, and inquired where
+their master was; to which they replied that they did not know.
+Whereupon my lord replied, that he had not come as an enemy, but as a
+brother, and added: 'I have brought with me a fish-barrel, hoping that
+my brother would hold friendly intercourse with me, and not be
+uncourteous, but make me a present of a dish of fish. And as I am
+expecting foreign guests, I will take twenty large pike, sixty of round
+pike, and a score of large carp.' Those who were to have fished
+withdrew, and von Saale protested that his Princely Grace should not
+take away the fish. My lord, however, did not enter into parley about
+it, but compelled the peasants who had run away to descend to the
+reservoir and catch the fish. And his Princely Grace packed the fish
+himself in the barrel, and commanded the Junkers to tell Duke Friedrich
+that he should not have fled from him and his troopers, as he had come
+with friendly intentions; but it was clear that a bad conscience could
+not conceal itself. Also that Duke Friedrich might come the next
+morning and help him eat the fish; and he added: 'But if your Lord will
+not come, do so yourselves if you are honest men, and be not afraid as
+you have been to-day.' After this his Princely Grace said to me: 'Hans,
+did I not tell you beforehand that I would drive away my brother? Are
+you content? I will in like manner drive him from Liegnitz, you will
+see: it will not take long.' Thus we returned to Groeditzberg in good
+spirits."
+
+Thus far Schweinichen. The reader will have no difficulty in
+discovering that no one thought of attacking the Duke in his castle.
+When winter drew on he himself became weary of this caprice, and
+determined to make another expedition through Germany, which
+Schweinichen very wisely opposed, but for which he afterwards exerted
+his wits to procure money.
+
+In the year 1675, a century after Duke Heinrich and his faithful Hans
+had undertaken their first wild expedition through Germany, there
+appeared in Silesia on the great heath of Kolzenau, which since the war
+had lain waste and desolate, a strange and monstrous animal, such as in
+the grim time of yore had rent the Silesian thickets with its horns,
+when the first Piastens ranged through the woods with the hunting-spear
+and arrow. And above in the royal castle at Liegnitz, the last Piasten
+Duke, the young Georg Friedrich celebrated his birthday with his
+nobles. As the rare venison was placed on his table, the joyful sounds
+of the trumpet rang through the city, and the cannons thundered as
+often as the health of the new Duke was drunk. But thoughtful people in
+the country, trembled on account of the wild monster that had come into
+their woods and to their young lord, as an ill omen from the olden
+time; and they shook their heads and prophesied misfortune. The last
+elk that was slain in Silesia was for the last joyous repast of the
+last of the Piasten. A few days after he died; and when his coffin was
+borne in the evening through the streets of Liegnitz, pitch wreaths
+were burnt at every corner, and hundreds of boys dressed in black,
+carried white wax tapers before their deceased lord. The German
+Silesians grieved over the fall of the great Sclavonic dynasty, which
+had once led their fathers into this land, and had first shown through
+them to the world, that the union of men in a free community is more
+beneficial to a country, than despotic government over slaves. But this
+truth had afforded no safeguard for the lives of the lords of this
+country.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+                  THE GERMAN IDEAS OF THE DEVIL IN THE
+                           SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+The phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and
+develop themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence
+it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had more weight
+than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development
+which we there see, and to it is due the last place in the
+characteristic features of the period of the Reformation.
+
+In the most ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention of the
+devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan was
+considered by the Jews as the great tempter of mankind, and as having
+the power to enter into men and animals, out of which he could be
+driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated the power
+of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil.
+When the Christian faith spread over the western empire, the Greek and
+Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the
+superstition of many who yet clung to the later worship of Rome, made
+the devil the centre of their mythology.
+
+But the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person
+and power of the devil, were still more changed when the German tribes
+overthrew the government of the Roman empire and adopted Christianity.
+In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their
+own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology.
+It is true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was
+obviously contrary to the new faith was at last set aside by the zeal
+of the priests, by force, and by pious artifices; but innumerable
+familiar shapes and figures, customs and ideas, were kept alive, nay,
+they not only were kept alive, but they entwined themselves in a
+peculiar manner with Christianity. As Christian churches were erected
+on the very spots where the heathen worship had been held, and as the
+figure of the crucified Saviour, or the name of an apostle was attached
+to sacred places like Donar's oak; thus the Christian saints and their
+traditions took the place of the old gods. The people transferred their
+recollections of their ancient heathen deities to the saints and
+apostles of the Church, and even to Christ himself, and as there was a
+realm in their mythology which was ruled by the mysterious powers of
+darkness, this was assigned to the devil. The name devil, derived from
+the Greek (diabolos), was changed into Fol, from the northern god
+Voland, his ravens and the raging nightly host were transferred to him
+from Wuotan, his hammer from Donar; but his black colour, his wolves or
+goat's form, his grandmother, the chains wherewith he was bound, and
+many other traditions, he inherited from the evil powers of heathendom
+which had ever been inimical to the benevolent ruling gods. These
+powerful demons, amongst whom was the dark god of death, belonged
+according to the heathen mythology to the primeval race of giants,
+which as long as the world lasted were to wage a deadly struggle with
+the powers of light. They formed a dark realm of shapeless primordial
+powers, where the deepest science of magic was cultivated. To them
+belonged the sea-serpent, which coiled round the earth in mighty
+circles, lay at the bottom of the ocean, the giant wolves which lay
+fettered in the interior of the earth or pursued the sun and moon, by
+which, at the last day, they were to be destroyed; the ice demons which
+from the north sent over the land snow-storms and devastating floods;
+and worse than all, the fiendish Helia, goddess of the dead. Besides
+the worship of the _Asengoetter_, there was in heathen Germany a gloomy
+service for these demons, and we learn from early Christian witnesses
+that even before the introduction of Christianity, the priestesses and
+sorcerers of these dark deities were feared and hated. They were able
+by their incantations to the goddess of death, to bring storms upon the
+corn-fields and to destroy the cattle, and it was probably they who
+were supposed to make the bodies and weapons of warriors invulnerable.
+They carried on this worship by night, and sacrificed mysterious
+animals to the goddess of death and to the race of giants. It was these
+priestesses more especially--so at least we may conclude--who, as
+_Hazusen_ or _Hegissen_, or _Hexen_ (witches), were handed down by
+tradition to a late period in the middle ages.
+
+The remembrance of these heathen beings became mixed with a wild chaos
+of foreign superstitions, which had been brought from all the nations
+of antiquity into heathen Rome, that great nursery of every
+superstition, and from that ancient world had penetrated into
+Christianity. The _Strigen_ and _Lamien_, evil spirits of ancient Rome,
+which like vampires consumed the inward life of men, sorceresses who
+flew through the air, and assembled nightly to celebrate disgraceful
+orgies, were also handed down to the Germans, who mingled them with
+similar conceptions, having perhaps a like origin. It is not always
+possible to discover which of these notions were originally German or
+which were derived from other nations.
+
+The western Church in the beginning of the middle ages kept itself pure
+from this chaos of gloomy conceptions; it condemned them as devilish,
+but punished them on the whole with mildness and humanity, when they
+did not lead to social crimes. But when the Church itself was frozen
+into the rigidity of a hierarchical system, when strong hearts were
+driven into heresy by the worldly claims of the papacy, and the people
+became degraded under the nomination of begging monks, these
+superstitions gradually produced in the Church a narrow-minded system.
+Whatever was considered to be connected with the devil was put an end
+to by bloody persecution. After the thirteenth century, about the
+period when great masses of the people poured into the Sclave countries
+from the interior of Germany, fanatical monks disseminated the odious
+notion that the devil, as ruler of the witches, held intercourse with
+them at nightly meetings, and that there was a formal ritual for the
+worship of Satan, by accursed men and women, who had abjured the
+Christian faith; and for this a countless number of suspected persons,
+in France, in the first instance, were punished with torture and the
+stake, by delegated inquisitors. In Germany itself, these persecutions
+of the devil's associates first became prevalent after the funeral pile
+of Huss. The more vehement the opposition of reason to these
+persecutions, the more violent became the fury of the Church. After the
+fatal bull of Innocent VIII., from the year 1484, the burning of
+witches in masses began to a great extent in Germany, and continued,
+with some interruptions, till late in the eighteenth century. Whoever
+owned to being a witch was considered for ever doomed to hell, and the
+Church hardly made an effort to convert them.
+
+According to popular belief, the connection of man with the devil was
+of three kinds. Either they renounced the worship of God for that of
+the devil, swearing allegiance to him, and doing him homage, like the
+witches and their associates; or they were possessed by him, a belief
+derived by the Germans from Holy Scripture; or men might conclude a
+compact with the devil binding both parties under mutual obligations.
+In the latter case men signed away their souls in a deed written with
+their own blood, and in return the devil was to grant to them the
+fulfilment of all their wishes upon earth, success, money, and
+invulnerability. Although the oldest example known is that of the Roman
+Theophilus--a tradition of the sixth century--and although the written
+compact originated at a time when the Roman forms of law had been
+introduced among the western nations, yet it appears that the source of
+this tradition concerning the devil was German. These transactions were
+based upon a deep feeling of mutual moral obligation, and on a
+foolhardy feeling, which liked to rest the decision of the whole of the
+future upon the deed of a moment. There is much similarity between the
+German who in gambling stakes his freedom on the throw of the dice, and
+he who vows his soul to the devil. These alliances were not looked upon
+by the old Church with mortal hatred; these wicked and foolhardy
+beings, like Theophilus himself, might be saved by the intercession of
+the saints, and the devil compelled to give up his rights. It is also
+peculiar to German traditions, that the devil endeavours to fulfil
+zealously and honestly his part of the compact, the deceiver is man.
+
+Through these additions the popular mind invested the devil with new
+terrors, yet it strove at the same time to think of him in a more
+agreeable point of view. The race of giants of the ancient mythology
+had had two aspects for the people; they took pleasure in seeing
+something harmless, and indeed burlesque about them, besides the
+terrors of their demoniacal nature. On one hand, the deformity of their
+great bodies, their strength, and clumsy wit, and on the other, their
+supposed knowledge of magic and technical dexterity, had already been
+in heathen times an inexhaustible source of comic stories, by which the
+people poetically explained to themselves, among other things, all
+striking phenomena of nature. But besides the giants there was in the
+heathen times a numerous host, of smaller spirits in nature, who
+hovered around men. The hairy _Schrate_ dwelt in the woods, the _Nix_
+sang on the banks of the brooks, a numerous race of dwarfs hammered in
+the mountains, elves and _Idisien_, the German fairies, played on the
+dew in the meadows, and the fighting maidens of Wuotan flew through the
+air in the form of swans or on magic horses. In house and courtyard, in
+barn, cow-house, and dairy, dwelt household spirits of various kinds,
+sprites sat under the hearth, hobgoblins glided in the form of tom-cats
+over the rafters, brown and gray mannikins, and sometimes white ladies
+surrounded the family, as guardian spirits of their domestic comfort
+and welfare. The repose of sleepers was disturbed by nightmares, the
+rye-mume sat in the ears of corn, and the little wood fairy on the
+felled timber, the will-o'-the-wisp in the marsh fluttered about
+restlessly, and endeavoured to entice men out of the right track. These
+lesser spirits maintained their place in Christendom, but became timid
+and averse to men. It may be observed in the old traditions, with what
+sorrow the new convert regarded the disturbance of his relations with
+his old friends; in some, the little sprites lamented that they also
+could not become blessed; in others, they are disturbed by the sound of
+a clock, and depart secretly out of the country. Many of their dark and
+malicious traits of character were also transferred to the devil,
+especially those of the giants. He became an architect like them, he
+was obliged to carry great masses of rock through the air, which he
+lost on his journey, or cast down in anger; he had to raise prodigious
+walls, and build bridges, castles, mills, and even churches. And in
+these works, he was almost always the person cheated, as were the
+giants in the olden traditions; being deprived of the reward for which
+he had worked. He had to guard treasures beneath the earth, in the form
+of a wolf or dog with fiery eyes, or to fly as a fiery dragon, and
+throw treasures down the chimney on to the hearth. He was obliged to
+appear in person at popular festivals, and act the part of the buffoon
+and much belaboured opponent of the heavenly powers, in a half
+ludicrous, half terrific dress. Among the Germans he had his disguises;
+the horns, the goats' or horses' foot, the halting gait, the tail, and
+the black colour. It is possible that the details of his costume may be
+taken from recollections of the ancient satyrs, but similar strange
+animal figures are to be found in the festive processions of German
+heathendom, and in the rising cities of the middle ages, the dress of
+the chimney sweeper was an inestimable help.
+
+Such were the notions which prevailed about the devil in Germany for
+about a thousand years. They were influenced by all the great
+excitements and changes of the popular mind. In times of great
+religious zeal, they bore a wild misanthropic aspect; but in days when
+the people were engrossed with worldly pleasures, they assumed a more
+comic and harmless form.
+
+Then came Luther and the Reformation. Together with every one else in
+Germany, the devil also was brought into the great struggle of the
+century. The Roman Catholics looked upon him as the head of the whole
+body of heretics; while the Protestants took the popular view of him as
+a figure standing with a bellows behind the pope and cardinals,
+inflating them with attacks on the reformed doctrines. He was mixed up
+in all theological and political transactions; he sat on Tetzel's box
+of indulgences, visited Luther at the Wartburg, made intrigues between
+the Emperor and Pope, humbled the Protestants by the Smalkaldic war,
+and the Roman Catholic party by the apostacy of the Elector Maurice;
+and in all the concerns, small and great, of the people he appeared,
+and was busy everywhere.
+
+This enlargement in his powers of action would probably have taken
+place at any period of zealous faith; but in the person and teaching of
+the great character who gave to the whole of the sixteenth century its
+impress and colour, there was something peculiar by which even the
+reverse of all that was holy was remoulded.
+
+First of all, Luther was the son of a German peasant. In the
+recollections of his childhood, as revived by him amid the circle of
+his companions at Wittenberg, the devil wore a very old-fashioned, nay,
+heathenish, aspect; he brought devastating storms, while the angels
+brought the good winds, as once upon a time the gigantic eagles did
+from the furthest corners of the world by the stroke of their
+wings;[66]  he sat as a water-god under the bridges, drawing maidens
+down into the water, whom he made his wives; he served in the cloister
+as household spirit; blew the fire as a goblin; as a dwarf laid his
+changelings in the cradles; as a nightmare deluded the sleepers into
+ascending the roof of the house, and bustled about the rooms as a
+hobgoblin. By this last species of activity he sometimes disturbed
+Luther. It is true that the ink-spot at the Wartburg is not
+sufficiently verified, but Luther could tell of a disagreeable noise
+which the devil had made there nightly with a sack of hazel nuts. In
+the monastery of Wittenberg also, where Luther was studying Rempter one
+night, the devil made such a noise, for so long a time in the crypt of
+the church underneath him, that he at last snatched up his book and
+went to bed. Afterwards he was provoked with himself for not having
+defied the Jackpudding.
+
+Thus deeply was Luther imbued with the popular superstition. But to
+this kind of devilry he did not attach much importance; the bad spirits
+who employed themselves after this fashion, he very properly called
+poor devils. His opinion was that devils were countless. "They are not
+all," he says, "insignificant devils, but country devils and princes'
+devils, who for a long period, above five thousand years, have been
+busy, tempting men, and are thoroughly clever and cunning. We have
+great devils who are _doctores theologiae_; then the Turks and papists
+have bad insignificant devils who are not theological but juridical."
+From them he thought came everything bad upon earth, as for instance
+illnesses; he had a strong suspicion that the dizziness he had long
+suffered from was not natural; also conflagrations:--"Wherever a fire
+breaks out a little devil sits behind blowing the flame;" likewise
+famine and war:--"If God did not send us the holy and dear angels as
+guards and arquebusiers, who encamp round us like a bulwark, it would
+soon be over with us." Expert as Luther was in describing his own
+characteristics, he was equally so with the devil; he declared that he
+was haughty, and could not bear to be treated contemptuously. Therefore
+he advised that he should be driven away by scorn, and jeering
+questions. He thought, also, that Satan was a melancholy spirit, and
+could not endure gay music.[67]
+
+But it was not in vain that Luther had spiritualized the Church
+teaching; it was owing to him that the struggle for eternal salvation
+began in the souls of individuals, and that the destiny of man was made
+to depend on his own conscience and faith in God. Through this, Satan's
+sphere of activity was changed, and the strife of men with the evil
+spirit became more especially an inward one. It was not the outward
+appearance and clatter of the devil that was peculiarly terrible, but
+his whisperings to the souls of men. The preservatives against this
+danger were, constant inward repentance, frequent prayer, and an
+enduring and loving remembrance of God. Luther's temptations have
+already been mentioned; he spoke openly and honestly to his
+cotemporaries concerning them, and the race of men who listened with
+faith to his discourse were infected by him; inward temptations were
+commonly recognized by the Protestants, and on this point also he
+became the comforter and confidant of many.
+
+The difference between the old and new Church was first shown in the
+conception of the free contract which man concluded with hell. In the
+old Church it had been made comparatively easy to believers to escape
+from the devil. By certain pious outward observances the Christian
+could in the worst case, even when deeply engaged with Satan, free
+himself from him in the last hour. Therefore, in the contracts made
+between men and the devil before the Reformation, the latter was almost
+always the person defrauded; this business-like and immoral method of
+reaching the kingdom of heaven excited the deepest indignation of
+Luther. He strongly proclaimed the doctrine of St. Augustine; that man
+being corrupt through original sin is a prey to the devil, and can only
+be put in the way of salvation by continual inward repentance, and that
+therefore unrepentant sinners cannot be saved from hell. The result of
+this was, that after the sixteenth century, those men who had concluded
+a compact with hell were generally supposed to be carried off by the
+devil. The sorrowful end of the traditional Dr. Faust is well known; he
+was not Satan's only prey. It was generally believed, and published in
+hundreds of tracts, that men of profligate character, reckless
+drunkards, gamblers, swearers, or enemies against whom a bitter hatred
+was entertained, were carried off into the nether regions. And the hand
+of the devil was thought to be distinctly perceptible in the twisted
+neck of the dying sinner. Luther himself had once to interfere in such
+a case. A young student at Wittenberg, an ill-disposed youth, had
+invoked the devil, and had offered himself up to him. Luther took the
+affair in hand with great earnestness and dignity; he first crushed the
+culprit by severe admonitions, then he knelt down with him in the
+church, laid his hands on him, prayed with fervour, and caused the
+youth finally to repeat after him a penitent confession; thus was the
+business settled. Even historical personages did not escape the
+melancholy fate of being possessed by the devil. The belief in this
+continued beyond the Thirty years' war.
+
+In the last century the compact which the Duke of Luxemburg, the
+opponent of Prince William of Orange, had made with the devil, was
+imparted to the public with all kinds of details and comments; and it
+is characteristic of that fastidious period, that the Duke imposed upon
+the devil, among other conditions, that he should only appear to him
+under an agreeable, not in a terrible form.[68] Following the examples
+given in the Bible, the new Church treated more kindly those that were
+possessed. Luther and his followers assumed that these, through sins
+which might be forgiven, and sometimes through small errors, had fallen
+into the power of the devil, and that it was a duty and a merit in
+believers to drive out the evil spirit by prayers and adjurations. It
+was not all lunatics or epileptic persons who were considered to be
+possessed of the devil, but as he was supposed to be at work
+everywhere, they often had the satisfaction of finding him. The most
+wonderful indications of his activity were watched with credulous zeal.
+Weak-minded women principally were impressed with the belief that they
+were tormented by the devil; and it was the natural result of this
+imagination that in their sickly condition they expressed the most
+violent repugnance against ecclesiastics, and the pious ceremonies with
+which they were favoured. But how far preconceived opinions can confuse
+the senses, not only of the sick, but also of the healthy, and falsify
+the witness of their own eyes and ears, we discover with astonishment
+in numerous accounts of eye-witnesses, who are fully worthy of credit,
+but who perceive and believe in the most impossible things in those
+possessed. To mention a very absurd instance supposed to have happened
+in the time of Luther, at Frankfort on the Oder; a maiden who had
+always been weak in mind was possessed by Satan in the following way:
+"When the suspected maid seized any one by the coat or beard, or
+otherwise, she always found money instead in her hand, which she
+instantly put into her mouth, crunched, and at last swallowed. This
+money one could only get out of her hand by force. In the same way she
+everywhere found needles. Sometimes she handed over to the people who
+stood around her this devil's money, which she had caught from the
+walls, tables, benches, stones, and ground. It was good coin, groschen
+and pfennige, but there were some bad red ones among it." This
+extraordinary occurrence is related in a pamphlet by Dr. Andreas Ebert,
+an ecclesiastic; and his account is confirmed by Theodore Duerrkragen,
+the president of the city council. Luther, as with hundreds of other
+critical questions, was asked his opinion about this: he was
+distrustful, desired to know whether it was good money; and at last
+advised that the maiden should be sedulously taken to church and
+prayers made for her to God. There were some difficulties about this
+cure, for the devil in the maiden insulted the clergyman during his
+sermon, and gave him the lie. In vain also did a Roman Catholic priest
+endeavour to conjure the devil from her, who treated him with scorn and
+despised his holy exorcism. The power, however, of evangelical prayer
+compelled Satan to depart; the maiden became vigorous and sound, after
+her recovery knew nothing of the past, but continued to be, as servant
+maid, a useful member of the community.[69]
+
+Such were the ideas of German Catholics and Protestants. Nothing shows
+more strikingly the power which Luther personally exercised, than the
+influence he gained over his bitterest opponents. The Roman Catholic
+dogmas, it is true, withstood his assaults, and between the new
+bulwarks of faith which he had thrown up, and the closed fortress of
+the old Church, there raged for a century a furious war. But his mode
+of thought, his language, and above all the special character of his
+spiritual life, influenced the German Catholic Church of his day as
+well as the Protestant, in a way which was both peculiar and one-sided.
+The rude formalism of her indulgence trade and pious brotherhoods, did
+not entirely disappear; but he gave a new tendency to her inward
+spirit. Earnest study, acute thought, dialectic skill, and what was of
+more value, a greater moral depth, became the necessary requisites of
+the Roman Catholic champions. They learnt to preach and compose their
+controversial writings in Luther's language and method, even
+appropriated the strong abusive expressions of the great heretic, and
+sought to imitate felicitously the popular humour to which Luther owed
+not a little of his success. The words of the evangelical songs, the
+titles and contents of Lutheran works were always parodied. Perhaps the
+internal resemblance is nowhere more striking than among the most
+talented of the Ingoldstadt University. Andrea, Scherer, and their
+friends might but for the difference of their dogmas, and above all
+personal, hate, as well be Lutherans as Roman Catholics. Thus there
+arose between the ecclesiastics of both confessions a sometimes
+laughable, but frequently a disgusting contention to drive the devil
+out of the possessed. If a possessed person became in question where
+the two Churches were in collision, each endeavoured to show the power
+of their faith by healing the patient; the evangelical by the prayers
+of the clergy and parishioners, the Roman Catholics by exorcism; the
+soul which was saved brought glory on the fortunate Church. Among the
+numerous accounts which we find of suchlike exorcisms, the following,
+which proceeds from the Roman Catholic camp in the neighbourhood of
+Ingoldstadt, is remarkable from its detailed narration and interesting
+psychological features. It was published shortly after the event, in a
+pamphlet, with the title, 'A terrible but quite true history, which
+took place between Hans Geisslbrecht, citizen at Spalt, and his wife
+Apollonia, in the bishopric of Eystaetter. By M. Sixtus Agricolas.
+Ingolstadt, 1587.' The narrative begins as follows:--
+
+"Hans Geisslbrecht, citizen at Spalt, after the death of his first
+wife, married Apollonia, widow of the late Hans Francke of
+Lautershausen, in the Margravate of Brandenburg; here he continued
+after his marriage, and lived with her more than a year; at last,
+however, the miserable marriage devil entered in, so that there was
+between them both, nothing from morning to night but scolding,
+quarrelling, strife, crying, chiding, and nagging; besides which, what
+was altogether most terrible, great blaspheming of God and wicked
+swearing. The said Geisslbrecht came home quite drunk on Friday the
+nineteenth October of the past year '82, and began according to his old
+custom to quarrel and swear at his wife; and they carried this on, as
+most of their neighbours heard, almost throughout the night. On
+Saturday morning Apollonia came to Anna Stadlerin, her neighbour, and
+said: 'Dear Stadlerin, have you not heard how rudely and shamefully my
+husband has behaved during the whole night?' 'Yes,' answered the other,
+'I and my Stadler have, alas! but too well heard what caterwauling and
+blaspheming has been going on between you; the neighbourhood can have
+no peace whilst you live in so unchristian a way.' To this the said
+Apollonia answered with grim anger: 'Ah me! if our Lord God will not
+deliver me from this violent man, I shall call upon the devil to come
+to my help.' Now mark what followed! On the said Saturday evening, when
+Geisslbrecht's cows came home from the meadow, and she was about to
+milk them, as was her wont, there came two birds like swallows, of
+which at that time of year none are to be seen in the country; and they
+flew swiftly round about her head. Before she could look up from under
+the cow there appeared near her a tall man (but, alas! it was the devil
+in human form), who said to her: 'Ah, my dear Appel, how much do I
+sympathize with you, that you are in such trouble; your life is so hard
+and wretched, and you have such a bad husband, who behaves so ill to
+you, and who intends to make away with everything, so that nothing may
+remain to you after his death. Do one thing, promise that you will be
+mine, and behold I in return, will promise to convey you in this very
+hour to a beautiful enjoyable place, where you shall for ever and ever
+do nothing but eat, drink, sing, jump, and dance; in short, where you
+will spend such days of pleasure as you have never seen all your life
+long, for the kingdom of heaven is not such as your priests say; I will
+teach you better.'
+
+"These great promises of the embodied Satan induced the wretched woman
+thoughtlessly to give him her hand, and say that she would become his;
+instantaneously the said Apollonia became possessed by him, and
+forthwith he suggested to her that she should hasten with him to the
+loft; in the hope that she would there hang herself. Now when the
+aforesaid wife of Geisslbrecht sprang up from the cows and hastened to
+the house, the before-mentioned neighbours perceived her condition, and
+called out to her husband: 'Oh, Ulrich, come! the old shepherdess (her
+husband used to be called the shepherd) has lost her senses.' After
+that, they ran towards her, and before they could reach her she laid
+herself in the pond before the cottage door, with the intention of
+drowning herself therein. When she had been taken out, many other
+neighbours came to her, and brought the poor possessed woman into the
+house again; she desired directly to be carried up to the loft, and
+cried out: 'Oh let me go! Do you not see how luxuriously I live, that I
+do nothing but eat, drink, jump, and dance, and lead an enjoyable
+life?' When Apollonia was brought into her room, it required first two
+and afterwards four men to hold her. Meanwhile a messenger was sent at
+midnight on Saturday to the venerable and learned Dean and pastor, Herr
+Wolfgang Agricola, to beg that his reverence would hasten to the old
+shepherdess, as she had that evening lost her wits. But the prudent
+Dean thought the affair was by no means so urgent as they represented
+it, and did not wish to go out so late on this holy night, but he
+apprized them, that he had always feared that these continual godless
+quarrels and disputes would at last come to this conclusion; he bade
+them, in case the woman became so refractory that they could not hold
+or restrain her, to fasten her meanwhile with two chains, which was
+done.
+
+"In the evening after he had performed matins, the Dean, like a man who
+had been accustomed to deal with the like cases, provided himself with
+a small reliquary, wherein was a piece of the holy cross, and of the
+pillar on which the Lord Christ was scourged; further, an Agnus Dei of
+the year of the Jubilee; and lastly a piece of white wax, which had
+been consecrated by _summus pontifex_; all these he carried upon his
+own person. When he went to the house of Geisslbrecht and was perceived
+by Apollonia with her deceitful indweller, who so evil treated her, it
+would be impossible for any one who had not been there, to believe how
+she began to rage, rave, and gnash her teeth; for although she lay
+bound by two chains, yet four men had enough to do to hold her. The
+reverend Dean began, and said: 'Ah, Appel! may God in Heaven hear me;
+this great calamity grieves me to the heart; Christ bless thee; what
+has happened to thee?' Then the poor woman began with a strong manly
+voice, such as was not her wont before: 'Hui, _Pfaff_, begone with you,
+what do I want with you and your Christ? I have enough for my whole
+life, do you not see how well I live? I need your heaven no more.'
+Thereupon the Dean answered: 'I see, alas! how well you live; I would
+not wish your pleasant life to a dog, let alone a man.' In order to
+prove whether she was possessed or naturally crazy, the Dean took the
+above-mentioned relics, and as she turned her back to him, placed them
+with his hand upon her head without her knowledge: what a lamentation,
+complaining, and whining she set up from that hour! how she raged in
+her chains, foaming at the mouth like a champing horse, and snapped at
+the Dean; concerning all this, those who held her, and the many people
+in the room will give a better report than his reverence. Her constant
+cry was, 'Oh, _Pfaff_, _Pfaff_![70] take away that thing from my head,
+if not, behold I swear to you that I will tear you to pieces with my
+teeth; I will trample on you, tear you limb from limb, and so kill you:
+Oh! take that thing off, and lay upon me instead six large sacks full
+of stones, they will not be so heavy.' 'Tell me,' said the Dean, 'what
+it is? I will then directly take it off.' The evil one answered: 'I
+know well what it is, but I would do anything--_cum venia_--rather than
+tell you.' 'What?' said the Dean earnestly, 'you will not come out with
+the words? quickly bring me a white cap, with it I will fasten this
+small article upon your head.' 'Yes,' answered the evil one,' you may
+well say a small article; if it were so small, it would not scorch so
+much.' 'I conjure thee, by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob, to
+tell me what it is.' But he gave no answer. Meanwhile, the poor
+tormented woman thirsted much, and with all her imaginary costly good
+living, would gladly have had something to drink; at a sign from the
+Dean the women presented her first with some consecrated water; but
+this was no drink for the evil one, he wished to have other water: the
+Dean asked why he would not drink this, as it was only water. He
+answered, '_Pfaff_, you lie, it is consecrated water.' Thereupon the
+women gave her to drink from the great holy well, which was consecrated
+every year on the golden Trinity Sunday; but little as the former was
+to her taste, still less would she have to say to this; it was
+necessary to withdraw it quickly, for she knew well what it was. Then
+the Dean said that it was only water; but the evil one answered him
+furiously: 'You always say that I lie, but I see that you can lie also;
+it is your holy water.' When therefore they gave her the common water
+she said, or rather he in her, although there was not the slightest
+apparent difference in the vessel or the water, 'That is the right
+kind.' Thereupon they mixed the three waters together, opened her mouth
+with a spoon, and had much to do to pour it in and to make her swallow
+it, thereupon she, or rather he through her, began thus: 'Oh, _Pfaff_!
+how you deal with me.' The Dean answered: 'As you have tasted one you
+may taste the other also; I know well what a bad guest you are, I and
+you must have a better understanding before we separate.' 'What
+_Pfaff_, do you wish to drive me away? I will sooner tear you to
+atoms.' The Dean replied: 'You desperate villain! I think you hanker
+after me, the smallest of little popish priests, therefore you shall,
+before all the world, be permitted to enter into me as your pride
+impels you; I will open my mouth wide enough, and make no sign of the
+cross before it.' Then the evil one answered: 'Yes, enter, enter I
+would, if I could only catch and bite your tongue and your fingers.'
+'That I fully believe,' said the Dean, 'if it were in your power to
+destroy me and every Christian man in his mother's womb, I hold it
+certain you would spare no pains to do so; and listen to me, Satan, I
+hold this head fast till you tell me what is in this little reliquary.'
+'Then,' he answered, 'it is a holy thing.' 'What holy thing?' inquired
+the Dean. 'That of Jerusalem,' said the evil one. The Dean replied:
+'What of Jerusalem? make short of it, and be not so ceremonious.' To
+which Satan exclaimed: 'Oh, leave me in peace; you know that I cannot
+name it.' 'Then,' said the Dean, 'these are rotten, lame excuses; you
+can very well name it if you will, therefore I conjure you, by the
+death of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you publicly declare what it is.'
+'Oh,' said he, 'it is indeed a piece of the holy cross, and a bit of
+the pillar at which He was scourged.' The Dean replied: 'Do you then
+believe that Christ died for us?' To which he said: 'Why should I not
+believe it? I was not far off.' Upon that the Dean took down the
+reliquary, and laid the above-mentioned Agnus Dei upon her head without
+her perceiving it. She complained, wept, and cried out, even more than
+before. On perceiving this strange agitation, the Dean wished again to
+hear what it was that so discomposed her. Then the bad spirit called
+out: 'Ho! ho! you shall make me tell you that again.' Then there was
+much talk on both sides, till at last the evil spirit was constrained
+by the hand of God to say, 'It is truly an Agnus Dei.' The Dean then
+asked: 'Where was it consecrated?' To which the evil one said: 'If the
+whole world stood by, they should not compel me to name the city.' The
+Dean said: 'Indeed there is no place in all the world where you and
+yours do meet with so much damage and opposition, therefore make not so
+much ado, but say what is the name of the city?' As the Dean pressed
+him so hard, and would not let him rest, he began: 'It is called R! R!
+R!' To which the Dean said: 'Hui! Hui! young scholar, still better.'
+Then the evil one, 'O! O! O!' To which the Dean said: 'Oh, what a
+hopeful scholar! you desperate miscreant, you mortal enemy of the holy
+true faith; add the M! M! M! thereto, and God will have imparted to you
+a threefold truth.'
+
+"Now when the Dean found that he had but too well ascertained the
+condition of the unhappy woman, and that all the means which had
+formerly been of use to others, were of no avail against an enemy so
+powerful and well entrenched, he deferred the matter, till by God's
+grace a better time and opportunity should occur. He commanded that
+they should watch assiduously day and night, that she should not get
+hold of anything wherewith she might cause bodily injury either to
+herself or others; he also begged the neighbours and her appointed
+watchmen to look after her, which they did day and night out of
+brotherly and sisterly compassion.
+
+"The following days the aforesaid Dean made preparation with all
+diligence as far as possible for the great work, and had enough to do
+to provide what was necessary for such a thorny and dangerous business.
+
+"Meanwhile, it came to pass that a young Lutheran, a queer preaching
+fellow, Johannas Baeuerlein, son of a furrier of this place, came here
+fresh from his examination, and imagined he had already received full
+power for this work; like the poet in his wretched tragedy, who in the
+year 1545 in the parish sacristy at Wittenberg, drove the devil in and
+out of a possessed person. This preacher had heard from his mother, who
+dwelt in a house opposite to Geisslbrecht, of this lamentable affair,
+had seen us many times go in and out, and had even stood among the
+people in the room; but on account of his great beard wherein, like
+Samson's strength, lay all his science, we did not recognize him. He
+went there several times in our absence, and saw how pitifully and
+miserably the poor woman was plagued and tormented by the evil spirit.
+He spoke to it; but ah, dear God! at his weak lifeless words, the old
+dog would not come out, but only carried on his monkey tricks with him.
+At last he called the husband of the unhappy woman to him, and accosted
+him thus: 'My dear Hans Geisslbrecht, that your wife should be
+delivered from this miserable Satan, by whom she is so severely
+tortured, will never take place by the aid of your popish priests; it
+is beyond their power. But I,' said the sharp blade, 'will take with me
+another servant of the altar, and we will drive him out by the pure
+word of God.' This was revealed to us by the aforesaid Geisslbrecht. It
+grieved all the ecclesiastics, and not unreasonably, coming from one
+who had been born, baptized, brought up, and confirmed, and had
+communicated here, and whose father, mother, and sisters had lived, and
+most of them already died, good Catholics; he alone having apostatized.
+So that we all came to a determination that during the act of exorcism,
+which was fixed to take place with all secresy on the Thursday, he
+should be in the church even were we to bind him like the poor woman,
+and drag him in. Not that we wished any harm to him, but only that he
+might see what an anxious, great, and dangerous work this was, and not
+such a thing as when one enticeth the tom-cat from behind the stove.
+However he smelt fire, was warned, and went off.
+
+"On Wednesday, after vespers, the suffering of the sick person became
+so great, that they hastened to fetch the Dean, for if she did not
+obtain help, she would be torn to a thousand pieces by the evil one.
+When the said Dean, and some of us arrived, we found such a wretched
+state of things as will be present to us all our lives; for although
+the more than miserable woman was extended on the ground, on a wretched
+little bed, fastened by two chains so that she could not move hand or
+foot, and had also two men holding her arms whilst her brother sat
+astride on her legs, and some women on her body, thinking thus
+effectually to hold her down, yet all was of no avail. The evil spirit
+reared himself up, and raised all that were over him in such a manner,
+that any one could have slipped under her back. But the most horrible
+of all was, that the evil spirit raised himself up between the skin and
+the flesh, in the form of a great adder or serpent, so that we could
+see and lay hold of him. Swiftly as by nature they glide along the
+earth, so did he glide backwards and forwards in the body; at one
+moment into the head, afterwards into one arm, then into the other, or
+suddenly into the feet; and when in the body, it became hot, as if
+burning with pure fire; finally the evil one glided into the heart,
+which swelled up like a twopenny loaf, and crept and coiled himself
+round it, just as a viper does round a tree; he shook and squeezed her
+heart together, so that it began to crack, and we one and all thought
+that the fierce and infuriated spirit would have entirely suffocated
+and destroyed her, for in her whole body not the smallest vein could
+stir. The Dean cried out and called continually upon God in heaven.
+Meanwhile they opened her mouth with a spoon, but for a long time she
+showed no signs of life, till they poured something down her throat;
+then her heart began to beat again. That was a great comfort to us, and
+we all did our best to revive her, till she came a little to herself.
+Then the Dean commanded that they should cut her hair clean off her
+head, for it was all overrun with blood; he ordered also that the women
+should wash her clean with lye, and said he would return again
+forthwith.
+
+"Thereupon the Dean returned home, and desired me, his brother Magister
+Sixtus, Herr Georg Wittmeier, his confessor, Herr Bernhardt Eisen, who
+was then deacon, Wilibald Plettelius the student, who had lately come
+from the German college at Rome, and Leonhard Agricola, the student, to
+come to him; and told us with great grief that it was certain that if
+the poor woman could not be relieved this evening, the evil one would
+destroy her even if she were of the worth of a thousand men. 'Therefore
+come quickly with me,' said the Dean; 'have a good heart, be undaunted
+and fear not, no harm shall happen to you; and if it should be
+requisite that in the exorcism you should reply to me _et cum spiritu
+tuo_, or Amen, pay the closest attention, especially you priests.' Then
+he gave to one of the students to place under his dress, what was
+necessary for this ceremony, and taking us first to the church,
+admonished us all there to pray with faith, opened the Sacrarium, took
+from the viaticum a holy host, laid it in a small napkin on his body,
+put off the cope again, and went in form and appearance as before with
+us to the house. Then he commanded him who bore his other vestments to
+wait in the barn till further orders. He went into the room, knelt down
+on the ground by the poor woman, laid his hand, as he was always wont
+to do, on her head, and spoke to her; but the former old insults were
+beginning again, when the Dean without any one perceiving it, put his
+hand in his bosom and drew out the napkin with the ever-blessed host,
+and placed it under his hand on her head. As soon as she perceived it,
+she made in her bed three great bounds. Then said the Dean: 'Appel, do
+I hurt you with my hand? How does it happen that at one time you can
+bear it and at another time not?' 'Oh, yes,' said she, 'I can bear the
+hand well, but take away what you have under your hand, otherwise you
+will destroy me.' 'God forbid!' said the Dean; 'but tell me what is on
+your head?' Then answered the evil one: 'Look you, wait a little!'
+(here followed an examination as before), and at last the evil spirit
+said what it was. Thereupon the Dean proceeded: 'But I wish to know yet
+one thing, whether you are alone, or have any companions with you?' 'I
+am alone,' said the evil one. 'What is your name?' 'I am called
+_Spielfleck_,' said the evil one. 'Oh, that is nothing, you have never
+in the beginning told me the truth; I must bring it out of you
+perforce, you shall acquaint me with your right name, for I must and
+shall know it.' Then the exorcism began again, till the evil one was
+constrained to say, _Schwamm_.[71] Thereupon the watchers and nurses
+exclaimed: 'Oh that is truly his right name, it is what she has always
+called him.' Then the Dean answered: 'Well-a-day! God grant we may soon
+lay hold of Schwamm, and send him down to Lucifer in hell, that he may
+wipe his shoes with him.' The evil one: 'Oh no, no, spare me.' Upon
+this my brother called on me, Herr Magister Sixtus, to draw near and
+hold the napkin, containing the most holy and revered sacrament, on her
+head, and commanded at the same time that all her chains should be
+unloosed and done away with; whereupon many were much afeared. He
+himself had his cope, stole, and books brought to him, and having thus
+dressed and prepared himself, when the poor woman was loosened from all
+her shackles, he took an old red stole in his hand and said: 'Behold,
+_Schwamm_! I now come to thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and
+the Holy Ghost. This threefold, indissoluble, godly bond shall now bind
+thee down in the abyss of hell, so that you shall never more throughout
+all eternity do any detriment or injury, either to persons, or cattle,
+or any other creature.' He took both her hands, wound the stole three
+times round her, and commanded the evil one, by the great power and
+dignity of that which lay on the poor woman's head, to give up all
+further struggle. Thereupon the Dean turned himself towards the people,
+of whom there was such a multitude, that the room, windows, barn, and
+streets were all quite full, and spoke to them:--
+
+"At the conclusion of the holy prayer, the Dean gave directions to us
+students whom alone he had employed as assistants, to place ourselves
+round the miserable woman; gave to one the book, to another the candle,
+to each one what he would need for this ceremonial, and then began in
+the name of God a _modus conjurationis_ so lofty and so exceeding well
+grounded on the holy, godly Scripture, and with such assiduity and
+earnestness, (as he had in this a pure, strong, and undaunted Hon
+heart) that our hearts began to tremble and the hairs of our heads to
+stand erect. During this noble exorcism, which lasted some time, the
+evil spirit did not make any especial blustering, only, perceiving a
+boy showing his teeth in at the window, he desired to be allowed to
+break them; but this his desire could not be granted. During the
+ceremony the surrounding people, who could better observe, than one of
+us who had more to do, saw distinctly that the eyes of the woman, which
+were naturally dark, but in this misery had become gray and fiery like
+cats' eyes, gradually recovered their natural colour; that her limbs
+which were all distorted, returned to their right position, and that
+her colour, form, and whole nature, which had been totally altered, was
+restored delicate, fresh, and vigorous. Some who were standing by,
+testified and confirmed by oath, that they had seen during the process
+a black bird in the form of a thrush fly out of the mouth of the woman.
+We do not publish this as a truth, because we none of us saw it, for we
+do not wish to report anything but what we could in case of necessity
+confirm with a good conscience, and by our priestly dignity and the
+highest oath.
+
+"This ceremony, God be praised, was throughout successfully performed,
+and the aforesaid Apollonia clasped her hands together. Then the Dean
+bent down towards her, took the stole out of her hands and asked her:
+'Dear Apollonia, how are you now? do you now know me and the other
+people?' Then the restored one tried to spring up for joy in her little
+bed and throw her arms round the Dean's neck. This moistened many eyes.
+But her limbs and whole body were so much torn that she had not
+sufficient strength, so she clasped her hands over her head, looked up
+to heaven and exclaimed three times: 'Oh Almighty and Eternal God, to
+Thee be praise, honour, and glory, for ever and ever! Oh God, forgive
+and pardon me for I have sinned against Thee so grievously! Oh Lord,
+now will I gladly die!'"
+
+Here concludes our extract from the pamphlet. The end of it is
+edifying; the valiant Dean reaped the reward of his dangerous work by
+winning the soul of Apollonia to his Church. She exhorted her husband,
+and vowed a pilgrimage; and it appears that after that, the quarrelsome
+couple lived together peaceably. What the religious zeal of the
+narrator has added to the spiritual examination of the devil, is more
+harmless than it is in many similar cases.
+
+The tender care of both Churches for those possessed, and the pious
+interest with which they regarded these victims of the devil, made
+similar cases become a matter of speculation. Thus in Thuringia in
+1560, a herdsman, Hans the father of Mellingen, made a great sensation.
+He pretended that he had been compelled by a man of ill repute, to eat
+some food which had brought him into the power of the devil; that he
+had been severely handled and beaten by the devil, and showed his
+stripes. He was on this account commended in pamphlets to the prayers
+of Christendom. But once when he made his appearance at Nuremberg with
+a bleeding ear, his hands tied behind his back with a three-coloured
+cord, and there praying and begging, related his old story, that the
+devil himself had thus fastened his hands, the Nurembergers, took the
+matter up in earnest, and the audacity of the man sank before the
+pressing cross-examination of the ecclesiastical and temporal
+authorities; he acknowledged that he was a deceiver; he was placed in
+the pillory, and then driven out of the town. The Nurembergers did not
+fail to make known their discovery in a pamphlet.
+
+But fierce indeed was the hatred with which was regarded, in the last
+half of the century, that other connection with hell,--the old
+witchcraft. Even Luther believed in witches; he mentions incidentally
+that such a woman had injured his mother; and in another place was
+angry with the lawyers who did not punish similar sorceresses when
+they injured their fellow-creatures. But these expressions were not
+intended to be very severe; he on the whole troubled himself little
+with this phase of superstition. He, the copious writer, never
+considered it necessary to discourse to his people concerning it; in
+his sermons he only occasionally mentions witchcraft, and his whole
+nature was repugnant to the application of violence. But if happily
+for us, Luther's pure spirit preserved him from bitterness against
+the devil's helpmates, his scholars and successors had little of his
+high-mindedness. Young Protestantism was on this point little better
+than the old belief. In Protestant countries the ministers of God were
+by no means the only persecutors; the civil authorities were also
+willing to follow the example of the ecclesiastical courts of the Roman
+Catholics, and above all of the Jesuits. The victims were countless;
+they amount without doubt to hundreds of thousands. It was first in the
+domains of the ecclesiastical princes, that the contagion burst forth,
+which devastated whole provinces as in Eichstaedt, Wuertsburg and
+Cologne. In twenty villages in the vicinity of Treves, three hundred
+and sixty-eight persons were executed in seven years, besides many who
+were burnt in the city itself; in Brunswick the burnt stakes stood like
+a little forest on the place of execution. In every province hundreds
+and thousands might be counted. Every kind of baseness was practised by
+the ecclesiastical and temporal judges; the most contemptible grounds
+of suspicion sufficed to depopulate whole villages. No position and no
+age was a security; children and the aged, learned men and even
+councillors, were bound to the stake, but the greater part were
+women;--we shudder when we look at the method of these condemnations.
+It is not impossible, although it cannot be spoken of with certainty,
+that a victim here and there did live in the mad delusion that they
+were in union with the devil through magic arts; it is not impossible,
+although this cannot be certified, that hurtful mediums, intoxicating
+beverages and superstitious medicaments were in some cases used for the
+detriment of others. But it is the strongest proof of the infamy of the
+whole proceeding, that amidst the monstrous mass of old records
+concerning witches, we find no ground of belief that in any case the
+judgment was justified by the real misdeeds of the accused, though they
+were made the excuse for it; for so great was the degree of fanaticism,
+narrow-mindedness, or malice, that the mere accusation was almost
+certain to be fatal. Torture was applied on the most frivolous charges;
+the capability even of bearing pain was taken as evidence against those
+who held out under torture; and every kind of accidental symptom,
+disease of the body, outward appearance, or countless fortuitous
+circumstances, were also considered as evidence. The possessions of the
+condemned were confiscated; the greediness and covetousness of the
+judges were united with brutality and stupidity. This fearful disorder
+did not end with that century: through the whole of the sixteenth and
+up to the middle of the eighteenth century these horrible judicial
+murders continued. It was not till the time of the great Frederick that
+they ceased.
+
+The literary activity of the few enlightened men who ventured to speak
+out in the interests of humanity against these trials for witchcraft,
+was pregnant with danger. They themselves had to fear imprisonment and
+the stake, and at least they incurred the hatred and the malice with
+which believing fanatics assailed their opponents. One name belongs to
+the sixteenth century which should ever be named with gratitude; that
+of the Protestant physician _Johann Weier_, physician in ordinary to
+Duke Wilhelm of Cleves, who in 1593 wrote his three volumes--'_De
+praestigiis Daemonum_.' Even he believed in necromancers, who, by the
+help of the devil, wrought mischief, in which case they were to fall
+under the punishment of the laws; but the witches he considered as poor
+miserable beldames, who, in the worst cases, only imagined themselves
+to be doing the work of the devil, but were for the most part quite
+innocent. His warm heart for the oppressed, and his noble indignation
+against the brutality of the judges in the cases of witchcraft, made an
+immense sensation. Within his limited sphere of action Weier appears to
+us as a supplement to Luther. Against him also the raging orthodox crew
+upraised themselves. The good effect produced by Weier's book was in a
+great manner counteracted by a flood of opposition writings. But again
+amidst the horrors of the Thirty years' war, Friedrich Spee, the best
+of the German Jesuits, wrote secretly his '_Cautio Criminalis_,'
+against the burning of heretics; he published this anonymously in a
+Protestant printing-press.
+
+The various popular transformations of the devil did not end with the
+century in which Luther taught, and Weier endeavoured to banish the
+stake from the place of execution. The Thirty years' war brought
+forward another set of gloomy fantasies concerning him. Satan was
+considered by the wild troopers as a demon who made fortresses, and
+cast magic balls which could penetrate every kind of armour.
+
+When the peace came, the war-devil withdrew into the woods, where he
+taught his arts to the wild huntsmen; and when there remained nothing
+in the land but an impoverished population devoid of faith and hope,
+the devil was sought after in his ancient and quiet occupation--only
+disturbed by the covetousness of men--as the guardian of hidden
+treasures. Much money and property had been buried during the long war,
+and was discovered by lucky accidents after the peace.
+
+The poverty-stricken people lusting after gold, and unused to quiet
+labour, were powerfully excited by these treasure-troves, and the hopes
+of still greater. There had always been, from ancient times, treasure
+seekers, and magicians who were to conjure away the evil one from the
+treasure; and it is probable that this superstition had been imported
+into Germany from Rome.
+
+Gradually the popular conception of the form and working of the devil
+became less vivid. In a more enlightened age it was thought wrong to
+speak mockingly of him, and the greatest poet of Germany gracefully
+idealized his image as it had been handed down from antiquity. Some of
+the musical composers also introduced him into their operas.
+
+Thus did the German people seek earnestly after their God at the
+commencement of this great sixteenth century, and thus powerful was the
+devil at the close of it. Lofty exaltation was followed by enfeebling
+relaxation, and the striving after Christ, by the fear of hell; and the
+opponent of the Holy One pressed himself as a spectre into the whole
+life of man. Other countries were infected with these superstitions;
+but in Germany, for many years, the burning of witches was almost the
+only public action in which the deluded people showed a strong
+spiritual interest. The want of unity, public spirit and great
+political aims, was the destruction of the nation.
+
+By the disputes of priests, the selfishness of princes, and the unhappy
+political position of Germany, the course of Protestantism was checked
+and the Roman Catholic reaction with fresh vigour raised its head.
+Throughout the country, in politics, in the pulpit, and in the closets
+of the ecclesiastics, there was more hatred than love. The minds of men
+languished under a spiritless dogmatism, and the hearts of believers
+were oppressed by gloomy forebodings. The wisest felt deep anxiety for
+the unhappy condition of the German Fatherland, and the devout were
+kept by the ecclesiastics and countless calendar-makers in continued
+anxiety, and fear that the end of the world was at hand, and the
+frequent interference of the devil appeared to many as an additional
+sign of its approach. Meanwhile the mass of the people of all ranks
+lived in a state of refined enjoyment in the then opulent country.
+Luxury was great, and every kind of excess was general. Those who did
+not fear the devil did not concern themselves much either about God or
+his saints. It was under such aspects that the fearful century of wars
+began.
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: It was not till after the fifteenth century that glass
+became common in windows in towns; and about the same time they began
+to find out the comfort of separate rooms. And it is thought worthy of
+mention, that in 1546, Luther's bedroom at the palace of Eisleben was
+protected by windows that closed.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Little Hans of Sweinichen was deprived of his post as
+gooseherd because he had tried to keep the geese quiet by gagging them
+with small pieces of wood.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Thirty years' war.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Georg von Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, died 1471.]
+
+[Footnote 5: A town of Silesia, near Riesenberge.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The word house, standing alone, denotes a fortified
+building in the cities of the mayoralty, in the territory of some
+nobleman; in such cases it was of stone, the walls very thick, but
+without foundations, and therefore easily undermined; the windows were
+provided with iron gratings, and a passage ran under the roof within
+the walls; sometimes there was a large empty hall between the upper
+floor and the roof, in the walls of which loop-holes of different kinds
+were made for arrows, or at a later period for fire-arms, and in the
+fifteenth century, for light guns. These houses, especially when
+situated in the country, were often surrounded by an outer wall, which
+also enclosed the farm buildings. They were often inhabited by many
+families of noble descent all crowded together, some were husbandmen,
+others freebooters, all however had a strong feeling of aristocratic
+privileges.]
+
+[Footnote 7: A linen covering, such as would be spread over the wooden
+hoops of a waggon.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Koenig's 'Graetz in Bohemia.']
+
+[Footnote 9: This journal, as also the whole account of Marcus
+Kintsch von Zobten, is unfortunately in bad handwriting, and very much
+defaced; but no one could read the fragment without emotion. There
+cannot possibly be a more simple or striking description than the
+following:--"As we are unjustly denied the Holy Sacrament, we hereby
+testify before all, who hear, see, or read this writing, that we die in
+the holy Christian faith, innocent of all that has been publicly laid
+to our charge by our sovereign lord. And in making us suffer, he wrongs
+us: this we testify before our God, and desire that Duke Hans, our
+merciless master, may answer for it before the righteous tribunal of
+God. For every one will observe, that had he any just ground of
+complaint or accusation against us, he would not have condemned us so
+cruelly in a dark corner; had he brought us in the light of day before
+the people, his violence would have been apparent. As God Almighty, on
+account of our sins, has brought this upon us, we will accept it, and
+suffer patiently, and beg Him of his mercy to give us a happy end.
+Amen. Written in great distress and affliction."
+
+"Be it known, good people, that we died more from thirst than hunger."
+
+"I, Hans Keppel, have written this, amidst all my distress and
+suffering, and have my ink from the black of the burnt wick of the
+light that is burning above. What God will further do with me, depends
+on his grace and mercy. But if they give us no more food, we shall not
+last long. May God help and support us. Amen. Hactenus Keppel."
+
+On the day that Keppel wrote this, two of them died; and he and the
+others later. This diary is given most accurately in 'Stenzel Script.
+Rer.' Siles. iv.]
+
+[Footnote 10: In 1526.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The famous royal castle of Vissegrad on a bend of the
+Danube four leagues north of Buda--Pesth.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Ban Ladislaus von Gara was cousin to Queen Elizabeth.]
+
+[Footnote 13: He was cousin to the queen and Ladislaus von Gara.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The name is destroyed in the old manuscript.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Maria Zell in Styria.]
+
+[Footnote 16: The princess Elizabeth.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Pfaff, a contemptuous name for a priest.]
+
+[Footnote 18: A large stove used chiefly in Germany and Switzerland: it
+was built of brown-glazed tiles cemented together; the door of it was
+outside the room; it was heated by large logs of wood, and was
+sometimes large enough to have beds made on it.]
+
+[Footnote 19: For this see the 'Theologia Teuetsch,' the best work of
+the time previous to the Reformation, by an unknown writer of Tanler's
+school, which was in fact the main source from which Luther drew his
+opinions; an admirable work even for us.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Exhortation to the ecclesiastics collected at the Diet at
+Augsburg.]
+
+[Footnote 21: It is thus represented in the woodcut on the title-page
+of a work entitled, 'Complaint of a Layman, called Hans Schwall, of the
+vile abuse of Christian Life,' 521, 4.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The similarity of his Latinized name with that of Oswald
+Myconius, of Geisshaueser, teacher of Thomas Platter, is not owing to
+any relationship.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Luther writes in 1541:--"So I desire and beg of our dear
+God to allow me to be sick, and to lay aside this mortal coil in your
+stead; therefore I beg and admonish you in all earnestness to pray to
+God together with us, that He may preserve you in life for the service
+and improvement of his church, and to the confusion of the devil.
+
+"_May the Lord never allow me to hear, as long as I live, that you are
+dead, but ordain that you shall outlive me. This I earnestly pray for,
+and being certified of it, will have it so, and my will shall come to
+pass. Amen._"]
+
+[Footnote 24: See 'Dr. Martin Luther's Passion,' written by Marcellus;
+the author is probably the marshal of Strasbourg.]
+
+[Footnote 25: It was the evening of the 4th March, 1522.]
+
+[Footnote 26: A spirit supposed to haunt certain parts of Germany in
+those days.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Compare with this the beautiful passage from the 'Table
+Talk:'--"If, when I first began to write, I had known what I do now, I
+should never have been so bold as to attack and anger the Pope, and
+almost all men. I thought they sinned only from ignorance and human
+frailty; but God led me on like a horse with its eyes blinded. Good
+works are seldom undertaken from wisdom or foresight; they are all
+brought about unconsciously." To this Philip Melancthon answered, that
+having carefully studied history, he had observed that no great or
+remarkable deeds had been done by old people, but at the age when
+Alexander the Great and St. Augustine did them; later, men became too
+wise and circumspect. Dr. Martinus said: "Young companions, if you had
+wisdom the devil could not deal with you; but because you have not, you
+need ours also, who are now old. Ah, if the old were but strong, and
+the young wise! Behold these factious spirits--vain young people,
+Icaruses, Phaetons, who flutter in the air; chamois hunters, everywhere
+and nowhere, who wish to knock down twelve ninepins when there are only
+nine standing."]
+
+[Footnote 28: Ecclesiam Romanam _pure_ colant. The double meaning
+appears intentional, and seems a cunning device of Miltitz.]
+
+[Footnote 29: That this happened designedly is betrayed in Luther's
+letter to Melancthon, 13th July, 1521: "I conjure you to be beforehand
+with the court, and not to follow its counsels. I have done this
+hitherto; I should not have effected half that I have done had I made
+myself dependent on its wishes."]
+
+[Footnote 30: 'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 31: Geek is the German for coxcomb.]
+
+[Footnote 32: German for tom-cat.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Cat's head and claws.]
+
+[Footnote 34: The buck.]
+
+[Footnote 35: A little brat.]
+
+[Footnote 36: With what satisfaction he thought of his death appears
+from many passages in his writings--we give one--at the time of his
+residence at Wartburg, from the dedication of 'The Gospel of Ten
+Lepers,' the 17th September, 1521: "I, a poor brother, have again
+lighted up a new fire, and have bitten a great hole in the Pope's
+pocket, because I have attacked confession. Where can I now remain, and
+where will they find brimstone, pitch, fire, and wood enough to
+pulverize the poisonous heretic? They must assuredly break open the
+church windows, for some holy fathers and ecclesiastical princes say
+that they must have air to proclaim the gospels, that is, to revile
+Luther, and to call out murder. What else can they preach to the poor
+people? every one must preach what he can. Only death, death, death to
+the heretic! they scream out--as ho would overturn all things, and
+overthrow the whole ecclesiastical order, upon which rests the
+foundation of Christendom. Now I hope, if I be accounted worthy, that
+they may kill me, and so fill up the measure of their forefather's
+sins; but it is not yet time, my hour is not yet come; I must first
+anger the serpent brood still more, and justly deserve death from them,
+that they may have cause to perform in me a great service to God."]
+
+[Footnote 37: "I thank God, that I feel assured my doctrines are the
+word of God and that I have been enabled to overcome grievous thoughts
+and temptations, when my heart tempted by Satan has said, 'Art thou the
+only one who holdest the word of God in truth and purity, and are
+others altogether without it?' 'Then again, when the devil finds me
+idle, and I am not thinking of the word of God, he troubles my
+conscience by the thought that I have disturbed the governments, and
+have occasioned much scandal and uproar; but when I lay hold of the
+word of God I win the game.'" Passages like this are to be found in
+many other places of the 'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 38: 'An Account of how God helped an Honourable Nun,' 1524,
+p. 4.]
+
+[Footnote 39: We find a mild judgment of the Saxon court in his 'Table
+Talk,' 4: "I have again preached a sharp sermon at court against
+drinking, but it does no good. Taubenheim and Minkwitz say that it
+cannot be otherwise at court; for music and all knightly amusements
+have passed away, and nothing is thought of now but drinking. And truly
+our most gracious sovereign and Elector, John Frederic, is a gentleman
+of much strength, who can well stand a good drink; what he can bear
+would make another drunk. But when I return to him I will only beg of
+him to command his subjects and courtiers, on pain of severe
+punishment, to get very drunk; perhaps when it is commanded, they may
+do the contrary."]
+
+[Footnote 40: The passage following the one just quoted is remarkable:
+"The nobles wish to govern, but have not the power, and understand
+nothing about it; but the Pope not only understands how, but has the
+power to govern: the weakest pope has more power to govern than ten
+nobles of the court."]
+
+[Footnote 41: Luther's 'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 42: For instance, in the year 1527, Luther could not lend
+eight gulden to his old prior and friend Briesger. He writes to him
+sorrowfully: "Three silver cups, marriage presents, have been mortgaged
+for fifty gulden, the fourth has been sold, and the year has produced a
+hundred gulden of debts. Lucas Cranach will no longer accept my
+security, that I may not be quite ruined."
+
+Luther often refused presents, even such as were offered to him by his
+sovereign; but it appears that consideration for wife or children gave
+him in later times somewhat more of a household feeling. What he left
+at his death amounted to about eight or nine thousand gulden; it
+consisted partly of a small landed property, a large garden and two
+houses, which undoubtedly he must chiefly have owed to Frau Kate.]
+
+[Footnote 43: It is in Timothy v. 11, and has no reference to this
+question.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Thus he speaks in many parts of the 'Table Talk.' His
+last conversation at the supper-table of Mansfelder, in Eisleben, a few
+hours before his death, was on the subject of meeting again with
+father, mother, and friends in the next life.]
+
+[Footnote 45: This discourse was spoken in Latin, and immediately
+afterwards translated into German by Gasper Creutzinger.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Christopher von Carlowitz, the confidant of the Elector
+Maurice of Saxony, whose counsels he secretly guided, was at that time,
+with good reason, the favourite of the Emperor, for it was he who
+directed the politics of his master.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Peilketafel, a long narrow board with a rim all round,
+and two little gutters on the sides; on it they played with little
+ironstones smoothed at the bottom.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Valentin Stoientin, who had been the intimate of Ulrich
+von Hutten in their youth, was then ducal councillor, and an
+influential promoter of the Reformation.]
+
+[Footnote 49: On Palm-Sunday it was the custom of the Catholics to draw
+to the churchyard a large wooden ass on wheels, with a figure of Christ
+as large as life upon it. After the consecration of palms the people
+streamed thither. The choir of scholars sang the words of the
+Evangelist, _Cum audisset populus, quia Jesus venit Hierosolymam,
+acceperunt ramos palmarum_, &c. Then eight of the scholars stepped
+forth, pointed to the ass, and sang aloud, _Hic est, qui venturus est_
+(the lesser _Hic est_); to this the choir responded, _In salutem
+populi_. Then eight other scholars pointed to the ass and sang, _Hic
+est salus nostra et redemtio Israel_ (the great _Hic est_). Then eight
+other scholars knelt before the ass, clasped their hands over their
+heads, and sang, _Quantus est iste ad throni et dominationes occurrunt?
+Noli timere, filia Sion, ecce Rex tuus._ This already was a very grand
+performance for the scholars; but afterwards there came six other
+scholars who knelt down, their faces to the earth, clasped their hands
+of one accord over their heads, and sang the _Salve_; and when they had
+finished it they went forward three steps, knelt down again, and sang
+thrice, _Salve Rex, fabricator mundi_, &c. Then they drew the ass
+forwards, and so on. Faithfully given from a description of the
+solemnity, in the archives of St. Gallen, printed in Kessler's 'Life of
+J. J. Bernet.']
+
+[Footnote 50: The father Sastrow did not go to the communion from a
+conscientious feeling, because he would not fulfil the condition of
+forgiving his enemies.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Querela de ecclesia. Epicedion Martyrus Christi, D.
+Roberti Barns, Angli. Authore Joanne Sastroviano._ Lubecae, 1542, 8;
+directed against Henry VIII. of England, who in tolerable distichs was
+compared to Busiris and similar ancient characters.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The guests were counted by tables, twelve persons being
+generally reckoned to each table.]
+
+[Footnote 53: The reward to the first bearer of good news. It was the
+universal custom in Germany, in the middle ages, to demand and give the
+"botenbrot."]
+
+[Footnote 54: Thomas Platter, the father, married again later, and had
+six children by his second wife.]
+
+[Footnote 55: 'Biography of Hans von Schweinichen,' v., Buesching, 1 S.
+157. The host is the same Marcus Fugger who wrote the best work on the
+training of horses in the sixteenth century. He himself had a large
+stud, first in Hungary, and then at the foot of the Allganer Alps.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Compare with this the beautiful characteristic of
+Wilibald Pirkheimer in D Strauss Hutten, 1.]
+
+[Footnote 57: Margaret Horng of Ernstkirchen was twice married, first
+to Dr. Johann von Glauburg at Lichtenstein, then to Weicker Frosch,
+both of Frankfort families.]
+
+[Footnote 58: This refers to the presents of the bridegroom to the
+female relation of the bride.]
+
+[Footnote 59: The bridegroom was a widower.]
+
+[Footnote 60: After the marriage feast the shoes are taken from the
+feet of the bride and given to the best-man.]
+
+[Footnote 61: Of the ceremonial of fetching home the bride, and the
+festive entrance into the city of Frankfort. This fetching home took
+place with a splendour which made an epoch in the patrician circles of
+Frankfort. 1598.]
+
+[Footnote 62: Goetz's method of acting is characteristic: he enters into
+a quarrel with the rich Nurembergers, seeks for causes of quarrel, and
+waylays their merchants. The supposition that the Nurembergers hold a
+good comrade of his in durance is sufficient for him; of a like
+character is the ground of offence, that they had stabbed in another
+quarrel a servant whom he had wished to take into his service. There is
+nothing further said of Fitz von Littwach, than that Goetz was obliged
+to reconcile himself with the Nurembergers. The grounds upon which Goetz
+broke bounds are in themselves remarkable, as will be perceived in the
+following narrative.]
+
+[Footnote 63: Hohenburg and Bissingen lay in the territory of
+Oettingen. The Counts of Oettingen claimed to be lords paramount over
+these properties.]
+
+[Footnote 64: The princes stood by the members of their own order; and
+this family, as we know, belonged to the higher nobility. Their
+struggle for seigniorial rights over property occasioned many battles
+in the sixteenth century; and the claims of Schaertlin appeared to them
+particularly arrogant, as his nobility by birth was more than
+doubtful.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Bishop of Breslau, the crown commissary of Bohemia, under
+the supremacy of which Silesia was then incorporated.]
+
+[Footnote 66: Winds are nothing but good and bad spirits.--'Table
+Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 67: At one time Luther was inclined to think that he himself
+had one or two especial devils as opponents, who lurked about him and
+accompanied him to the dormitory in the cloister.--'Table Talk.']
+
+[Footnote 68: 'The compact alliance of the world-famed Duke of
+Luxemburg--General and Court-Marshal to the King of France--with Satan,
+and the terrible catastrophe that followed.' Frankfort and Leipzig,
+1716.]
+
+[Footnote 69: The title of the manuscript is, 'Wonderful Tidings of a
+Money Devil; a strange, incredible, yet true story. Published at
+Frankfort on the Oder, where it took place, 1538, 4.']
+
+[Footnote 70: Pfaff was the nickname of the Roman Catholic priests in
+those days.]
+
+[Footnote 71: This does not mean mushroom, still less bath sponge, as
+the Dean understood it; it is the Bavarian word _Schwaim_, pronounced
+_Schwam_, "The Floating Shadow."]
+
+
+                             END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+
+          PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
+                           AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of German Life in the XVth
+XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,  Vol. I., by Gustav Freytag
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