Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 10

In most of the cities that were centres of intellectual life, the plebeians arose and replaced the formerly highly cultured patricians.

The burghers began to tune the melodies of a new music: a banausic artisan song. The comic anecdote and the dramatic farce pleased the people best and, therefore, prevailed. There was a general delight in comical, farcical roles, and such elements were even introduced into religious plays. For example, Saint Mary complains that she has no diapers to protect the Holy Child from frost. Saint Joseph gets into a quarrel with two maids; there is a free fight; vulgar reproaches and blows are exchanged. Darkness begins to spread over Germany. The devil, stupid or otherwise, introduces his spook; sorceresses and hags professing magic skill are everywhere. The defamation of the grand inst.i.tutions of the Papacy, owing to several unworthy successors of Saint Peter, promotes contempt and ludicrous treatment. The ridiculous fiction of the alleged "Papess" Joanna becomes a farcical subject, but is, nevertheless, jokingly rescued from the claws of the devil. Her story goes thus: a maiden elopes with a priest, her lover, to Rome, dons man's dress, becomes a doctor, a cardinal, and at last a Pope. She is finally ignominiously unmasked, received by the devils in h.e.l.l, but saved by the intercession of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas. Dietrich Schernberg treated this strange subject at Muhlhausen, in Thuringia, in his play of _Frau Jutla_. All these morality plays, mysteries, farces, sottises, sacred or profane, are scarcely ever edifying, and this whether they treat of court sessions regarding love troubles, marriage calamities, allegorical figures, fools of love, women, wicked monks, or quacks. Here, a maiden leads her lovers by the nose; there, lovers present themselves before Lady Venus. An immoderate coa.r.s.eness and indecency in manner and action is part of the game; even in the presence of women the utmost vulgarity was permitted. Women joined in the most obscene conversation, and it is astonishing to what depths of immodesty their speech descended. Nurnberg was the centre of carnival plays. Hans Rosenblut and Hans Folz, authors of incredibly obscene, though very clever, farces, were the forerunners of the great and lovable Hans Sachs,

"Who was a shoe- maker and a poet, too."

But it is inc.u.mbent upon us to return to the beginning of the period of decadence and consider the decline in its sequence. During the era of chivalry the follies of the n.o.bles were imitated by the peasants and burghers. Inter-marriages between poor n.o.bles and rich peasants occurred now and then, liaisons and amours between them were much more frequent; the caricature of the _bourgeois gentilhomme_, whom Moliere satirized in his immortal comedy, was ever present. Neidhart's and Strieker's poems and Werner's _Meier Helmbrecht_ furnish delightful figures and caricatures of the upstart cla.s.s which was so scorned, ridiculed, and snubbed by the "smart set" of the time.

Yet, on the whole, it may be said that the boys and girls of the peasants and bourgeois led natural lives, courting and dancing and wooing, as long as they were kept from the influence of the chivalric craze. Instead of knight-errantry there were among these young people simple though not always platonic relations. The lords still exercised their harmful influence upon the freedom of the peasantry, but it gradually diminished. At springtide there was love and marriage, not always voluntarily, but in deference to the right of lords and princes to command their dependants to marry. In some localities a system of pairing prevailed, and maids were a.s.signed as companions by lot, and mated couples danced together during an entire summer. Such play, very naturally, and not infrequently, became earnest.

The n.o.bles were mostly landed proprietors, but when the cities began to grow, urban patricians, proud and self-satisfied, arose. The common people, however, because of their number and increasing wealth, gained a share in the government. They formed themselves, for strength and self-defence, into "corporations and guilds." They won city rights. In the course of time, instead of the rule of the "families," or patricians, there came the rule of the guilds. The democracy gained control, though not until after hard and frequently very b.l.o.o.d.y fights of the factions at the polls for munic.i.p.al supremacy. With the victory of democracy begins the industrial, commercial, and political vigor of the common people. This is manifested in the great and important city leagues: especially the _Hansa_, but also the League of Rhenish and of Suabian Cities unions that were at times more powerful than kings and emperors.

Socially, nevertheless, the picture is reversed: the castes remain separated even in the church, as they were separated in dancing halls and other places of pleasure and drinking. Yet the free artisans, their wives and daughters, led a joyful life at their weddings, dances, and carnivals, though they dwelt in narrow lanes and alleys, in houses of wood, straw-covered and with a few windows, and these frequently with panes of paper or none at all. Goethe in Faust describes these abodes:

"Out of the hollow, gloomy gate, The motley throngs came forth elate: Each will the joy of the sunshine h.o.a.rd, To honor the day of the Risen Lord!

They feel themselves their resurrection: From the low, dark rooms, scarce habitable; From the bonds of Work, from Trade's restriction; From the pressing weight of roof and gable; From the narrow crushing streets and alleys; From the churches' solemn and reverend night, Ah come forth to the cheerful light."

On the other hand, especially later during the Renaissance period when the wealth of the burghers excited the jealousy of the mighty country n.o.bility, the houses of the wealthy burghers were often genuine palaces, with rich antique and Italian or French furnishings. Nurnberg, Augsburg, Stra.s.sburg, etc., were real treasure cities with their mediaeval architecture; so were Ulm, Frankfort, Mainz, Cologne, with their mansions filled with fine tapestry, rich furniture, colored carpets, precious art objects, painted windows, silver and gold trappings.

When the _interregnum_ was over, with its political anarchy, with its plague (black death) that swept away hundreds of thousands, with its flagellants and other crazy penitents, the natural concomitants of the plague; when the gloomy religious fanaticism which vented its horrible "hatred of races and cla.s.ses and ma.s.ses" on heretics, Jews, and infidels in terrible Jew slaughters and witch burnings began to melt away under the radiant sun of the incipient Renaissance, there arose in western and southern Germany a wondrously rich and luxurious life among the city aristocracy. A caricature of chivalrous customs sprang up. It is characteristic that "a light miss" was the prize of a tournament in Magdeburg in 1229.

In the cities, life was more refined than on the estates of the n.o.bles in the country. There were sleigh riding, dances, carnivals, and serenades before the windows of the fair ones. Even the churches, as stated before, offered for entertainment "mysteries and pa.s.sion plays that verged on blasphemy." We hear of practical jokes which the ladies played with ill.u.s.trious guests, like Emperor Sigismund and, later, Maximilian I., which genial lord the ladies took from his bed half naked, threw a wrapper over him, and danced with him through the streets of the city, which pleased the debonnaire emperor immensely.

Many German patrician women were already given over to the pleasures of society and became ladies of fashion rather than mothers, housekeepers, and helpers to their husbands. The nouveau-riche artisans soon began to imitate the luxuries of the patricians: we hear of gold bracelets, silk garments, gold girdles studded with diamonds; of shoes with silver buckles, garters embroidered with gold brocade. A chronicler relates the immense amount of wealth squandered at the wedding of a rich baker, Veit Gundlinger, in 1493. There were then consumed twenty oxen, thirty stags, forty-six calves, ninety-five swine, twenty-five peac.o.c.ks (turkeys?), etc., etc.

Patricians were, however, more elegant: bridegroom and bride adorned with rings and bracelets of gold, walked to the Cathedral surrounded by bridesmaids, while fiddles, lutes, pipes, trumpets made music. At the dancing hall, however s.p.a.cious, not more than five couples could dance at the same time on account of the ladies' long trains which, according to a preacher of the time, "served the devil as a dancing place." With torches the newly wed couple were at last led home to the bridal chamber, where the maidens undressed the bride, the cavaliers took off her shoes, and "when one cover covered the couple" as the technical term ran the companions discreetly retired.

But the unfree peasants, alas! continued to live in debas.e.m.e.nt; as also their wives and daughters. There is even doc.u.mentary evidence from A. D.

1333 that women could be sold into slavery and at a very low price, moreover, "with all their descendants." The free and rich peasants, on the other hand, sometimes lived in an unbecoming state of luxury. We glean the most interesting types of peasant life from the poets who arose among the Bavarian-Austrian race. Neidhart von Reuenthal, who lived till about 1240 at the Bavarian and Austrian courts, though a n.o.ble himself, is a rugged, old German type who neutralizes the sentimental minnesong. He contrasts strikingly the bizarre life of the lower people with the unnaturalness of the "chivalric courtoisie." All is depicted in strong relief, though it appears to our taste extremely coa.r.s.e. Yet if any poet ever understood the life and actions of the lower cla.s.ses, it was Von Reuenthal. He describes South German peasant life as it is, their dances and carousals; he compares satirically the breaking of lances at tournaments, as practised by knights, with the peasants' festivals that are turned into bouts of gluttony and free fights. His types of rustic women, however, are "courteously" dressed, with wreaths in their prettily arranged hair, fashionable hand mirrors in their girdles; they appear at the village linden tree on a Sunday, courting and flirting with the rustics (_Torper_) who carry swords and spurs in truly knightly fashion. Nevertheless, the peasant girls prefer their liaisons with the genuine article, and the poet reveals no idyls, no abstinence, no innocent play, but downright immorality. As they could not have the knights for husbands, they chose them for lovers.

Frivolity is general also among the lower strata of society. Drastic pictures are drawn and overdrawn. There are dialogues in spring songs.

Sometimes two maidens converse and open their hearts. Then mother and daughter commune; the mother desires to partic.i.p.ate in the dance, the daughter tries in vain to dissuade her; or the daughter wishes to go and the mother dissuades; the daughter desires to join Neidhart, but the mother has a peasant ready for her to whom she is, however, indifferent; the mother keeps her clothing from her; the daughter takes it by force; the mother whips her daughter with a rake or a spindle; the other resists, and there are blows on both sides. In all these songs the girl is longing and pa.s.sionate; the knight is a successful lover.

In the winter songs the case is reversed. Here the knight is sighing, complaining, rejected. The peasant girl for whom he pines makes him languish. The peasants prove superior to the knight, who avenges himself by mocking, satirizing, caricaturing the brutalities of the peasant dances, their fights, their gluttony, tawdry luxury of dress, and drunkenness.

However painful it may be to the historian of culture to record the mournful facts of degeneracy and demoralization of entire periods in the life of great and n.o.ble nations, yet he owes it to historical truth to conceal nothing. It is unfortunately true that entire cla.s.ses of the German people, entire periods, entire regions, were sunk in the mire of immorality due to outer and inner conditions over which neither the nation nor its leaders had any control. Yet, such periods of moral depression are perhaps as necessary for a vigorous convalescence as the glorious periods of the moral purity, honor, and chast.i.ty of women.

As there can be no life without death, no joy without pain, no good without evil, as no religion was ever conceived in which the principle of G.o.d, of immortality, and of infinite goodness remained una.s.sailed by the evil forces, be it devil, demon, Loki, or Ormuz, so the history of the German nation is filled with evil forces, against which generation after generation, so far as our records go, struggled, yet finally conquered _per aspera ad astral_.

Every German historian of culture, especially Scherr, who sought the truth and stated it fearlessly, has been attacked, reviled by captious critics, but strong is the truth and it will prevail! _veritas prevalebit_!

In this period of German decadence the moral sense seems indeed frequently to have entirely vanished. In a mutual confession by a peasant and his wife of their moral shortcomings, which are treated jestingly, the demoralization appears plainly, without any apparent conception of its impropriety. At a peasant wedding, we hear of brutish drinking and gluttony, coa.r.s.e speeches and actions, consummation of marriage before church consecration, brutal and deadly fights.

The character of the peasantry of the time appears most distinctly from Werner's _Meier Helmbrecht_, a Bavarian village story, which depicts the ambitions, sorrows, and joys, and the dissatisfaction of that cla.s.s.

Young Helmbrecht, an ambitious peasant boy, who had been spoiled by mother and sister, proud as a peac.o.c.k in knightly raiment, desires to play a role at the court. In spite of his father's warnings, he joins a robber knight. After one year of debauch and degradation, he returns home as a braggart, and the old and the new generation of peasants are contrasted. The father, who in his youth had known court life, when he went to the castle to sell his products, tells of knightly n.o.ble games, chaste dances with beautiful song and music, and the reading of the ancient heroic lays. The son reports heavy drinking, impure speeches, lies, quarrels, frauds. He replies to the exhortations of his father with vile threats. He induces his sister to follow him secretly, to be married to his comrade Lamsling; but the crisis comes at the wedding.

The judge and sheriffs come and capture the robbers. Helmbrecht is blinded, driven away from home, and hanged by the peasants.

In the cities the state of affairs is even worse. Pandering is a common and thriving business, though the laws against it are of barbaric severity. In Brunswick, those convicted of the heinous crime of fostering prost.i.tution were buried alive. But when did laws and police measures ever do away with crime when moral putrefaction once impregnated a social structure? The clerics and monks play a prominent role in the literature of the s.e.xual excesses of that time, although, or perhaps because, celibacy as such has now become an enforced inst.i.tution. It is true, however, that the literature of a decaying time, catering to corrupt tastes, furnishes to us sensational and extraordinary cases of impurity, while it fails to record the numerous instances of virtue, self-abnegation, and n.o.bility.

An authority of first rank, aenea Silvio Piccolomoni, later Pope Pius II., transmits to us a glaring picture, with little light and much lurid shadow, of Vienna as he saw it. We find there society of all ranks sadly demoralized. The burghers invite to their houses vile carousers and "light misses;" the common people are represented as steeped in immorality and drink. Wives are rarely satisfied with one husband, and the husbands knowing their shame are not specially pained by it. Gallant n.o.bles call on married burgher women, their husbands offer wine and then leave them to themselves. Widows do not wait, even for decency's sake, the expiration of the year of mourning before they remarry; rich old men marry young girls, who then carry on adultery with their husband's valets as they did before marriage. It happens not infrequently that fathers or husbands who dare to disturb their daughters or wives in their iniquities with the n.o.bles are killed or poisoned. Such is aeneas Silvio's account of Viennese society.

Similar stupefying pictures of social life in many other cities may be gleaned from chronicles, history, and sermons. Debauch is constant and appalling. In the thriving Hanseatic city of Lubeck we hear of ill.u.s.trious ladies masked by thick veils holding b.e.s.t.i.a.l orgies with common sailors in the vilest drinking resorts. Again we read of the great severity of the penal laws, and again we note their practical inefficiency. The punishment for the crime of rape was death, usually by decapitation, but in Suabia and Hessen the criminal was buried alive or transfixed. The injured woman, however, to give legal force to her accusation was required to announce her disgrace immediately by loud screams and by the exhibition of dishevelled hair and torn garments. The statutes vary, but all are harsh. Adulterers belonging to the lower cla.s.ses,--in the upper cla.s.ses adultery was too common to be punished,--when seized _in flagranti delicto_, were liable to be decapitated or to be buried alive together. Incest was punishable by confiscation of property; bigamy, by death. The penalty for infanticide also was death, either by decapitation or by drowning; sometimes a snake, a cat, or a dog was put into the sack with the victim to render her punishment more terrible. Shrews and evil-tongued women were sometimes punished by being placed backward on a.s.ses and driven through the streets in disgrace.

Even the pleasures considered legitimate during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era, were decidedly equivocal or immoral.

Public bathing which was so general that even in the country every well-arranged house had its own bathroom, might be considered rather a redeeming feature of the unclean life recorded. But excesses soon make it doubtful whether public baths should not be regarded as baudy houses of the worst kind. The city of Basle in the thirteenth century had not fewer than fifteen bathhouses. As in ancient Rome, the bathhouses were public places of amus.e.m.e.nt somewhat like the clubs of to-day. There men were shaved and had their toilette perfected and the ladies had their hair dressed. Ma.s.sage was in fashion. Amus.e.m.e.nts of all kinds, gambling, drinking, flirting, and love intrigues made public bathing a rather costly pastime. At most places there was common bathing of men and women. The most famous water resorts were the Wildbad in the Black Forest, Baden in the Breisgau, and Baden in Aargau. There is gathered all the wealth of the surrounding country. Princes and knights, highborn ladies, rich merchants, prelates, and abbesses bathed, jested, and led a gay life.

We have an intensely interesting account from the pen of the scholarly Francis Poggio of Florence (1380-1459) of the bathing customs of Baden.

He had accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, and had then gone to Baden to cure the "chiragra" from which he suffered. From a Latin letter written to his friend Niccolo Niccoli, in the summer of 1417, and translated by Gustav Freytag, in his famous Pictures from German Life, we glean the following facts:

"Baden itself affords for the mind little or no diversion; but has in all other respects such extraordinary charm that Venus seems to have come from Cyprus, for whatever the world contains of beauty has a.s.sembled here, and so much do they uphold the customs of this G.o.ddess, so fully do you find again her manners and dissoluteness, that, though they may not have read the speech of Heliogabalus, they appear to be perfectly instructed by Nature herself....

"Two special baths, open on all sides, are prepared for the lowest cla.s.ses of the people; and the common crowd, men, women, boys, and unmarried maidens, and the dregs of all that collect together here, make use of them. In these baths there is a part.i.tion wall, dividing the two s.e.xes, but this is only put up for the sake of peace; and it is amusing to see how, at the same time, decrepit old beldames and young maidens descend into it naked, before all eyes, and expose their charms to the gaze of the men. More than once I have laughed at this splendid spectacle; it has brought to my mind the games of Flora at Rome, and I have much admired their simplicity who do not in the least see or think anything wrong in it....

"The special baths at the inns are beautifully adorned, and common to both s.e.xes. It is true they are divided by a wainscot, but divers open windows have been introduced, through which they can drink with, speak to, see, and touch each other, as frequently happens. Besides this, there are galleries above, where the men meet and chatter together, for every one is free to enter the bath of another, and to tarry there, in order to look about, and joke and enliven his spirits, by seeing beautiful women nude when they go in and come out. In many baths both s.e.xes have access to the bath by the same entrance, and it not unfrequently comes to pa.s.s that a man meets a naked woman, and the reverse. Nevertheless, the men bind a cloth around their loins, and the women have a linen dress on, but this is open either in the middle or on the side, so that neither neck, nor breast, nor shoulders are covered....

"It is wonderful to see in what innocence they live, and with what frank confidence they regard the men; the liberties which foreigners presume to take with their ladies do not attract their attention; they interpret everything well. In Plato's Republic, according to whose rules everything was to be in common, they would have behaved themselves excellently, as they already, without knowing his teaching, are so inclined to belong to his sect....

"There can be nothing more charming than to see budding maidens, or those in full bloom, with pretty, kindly faces, in figure and deportment like G.o.ddesses, strike the lute; then they throw their flowing dress a little back in the water, and each appears like a Venus. It is the custom of the women to beg for alms jestingly from the men who view them from above; one throws to them, especially to the pretty ones, small coins, which they catch with their hands or with the outspread dresses, whilst one pushes away the other, and in this game their charms were frequently unveiled....

"But the most striking thing is the countless mult.i.tude of n.o.bles and plebeians, who gather here from the most distant parts, not so much for health as for pleasure. All lovers and spendthrifts, all pleasure seekers, stream together here, for the satisfaction of their desires.

Many women feign bodily ailments, whilst it is really their hearts that are affected; therefore, one sees numberless pretty women, without husbands or relations, with two maidservants and a man, or with some old beldame of the family who is more easily deceived than bribed.... There are here also virgins of Vesta, or rather of Flora; besides, abbots, monks, lay-brothers, and ecclesiastics, and these live more dissolutely than the others; some of them also live with the women, adorn their hair with wreaths, and forget all religion.... And it is remarkable that among the great number, almost thousands of men of different manners and such a drunken set, no discord arises, no tumults, no partisanship, no conspiracies, and no swearing. The men allow their wives to be toyed with, and see them pairing off with entire strangers, but it does not discompose or surprise them; they think it is all in an honest and housewifely way." Poggio, with truly Rabelaisian irony, adds: "No baths in the world are more apt for the fecundity of women."

But whether the Italian cla.s.sicist is willing to excuse the luxury and debauch, refined or otherwise, which he found at Baden, or which he might have found anywhere in the social circles of the rich German cities, the truth is that the intercourse between the s.e.xes had become loose, and that the prelates and their ladies, the cavaliers and their mistresses, the rich burghers and the "light misses," the monks and roving women were swarming everywhere; and that those abuses became one of the foremost grievances which helped to swell the ranks of those German patriots so that a reform in head and limbs of the social structure became a necessity.

Indeed, "the good old time of pious memory" had reduced prost.i.tution to the standard of a science; there is an ostentatious freedom in the treatment of the question which is quite offensive to modern ears. The fantastic romanticism described in the preceding chapter had really contributed very little to genuine morality: the theory of the veneration of women and the practice of unrestrained l.u.s.t were absolutely opposed. The history of prost.i.tution during this period is divided into two chapters: one treats of the women who remain stationary in their cities; the other of the migratory women who travel to fairs, church councils, tournaments, imperial diets, coronations. Scherr gives some statistics of the high prices paid for l.u.s.t; he mentions the gain by one woman of eight hundred gilders on such an excursion, a sum which at that time represented a fortune. The armies, too, were accompanied by hosts of women who, with the other baggage, were under the control of the general provost (_Hurenweibel_). This stage of corruption, however, belongs more immediately to the abominations of the Thirty Years' War.

The settled prost.i.tutes lived in public houses (_Frauenhduser_) of which, in large cities, there were several, usually under communal administration. We read that entertainment in these houses was then part of the hospitality offered to honored guests, just as at present the privileges of our clubs are extended as a courtesy. The houses were built and maintained avowedly for "a better protection of womanly and virgin honor" of the burgher wives and daughters. Emperor Sigismund and his suite were entertained without expense in the bawdy houses of Bern and Ulm, in 1413 and 1434 respectively, as is proved by historical evidence. Such houses, under the directorship of a landlord, called "ruffian," were the property of the communities, nay, they sometimes belonged to the "regalia" of secular or spiritual princes. The inmates must be strangers and unmarried. Married men, clerics, and Jews were to be excluded, but this was only a paper law. According to the spirit of accurate definition prevalent at the time, everything was strictly regulated: payment, food for the inmates, etc. The houses were closed on Sundays and holidays and on the eves before these festivals. The inmates were treated harshly in some cities, were under the surveillance of the hangman, and when dead they were buried in the potter's field; in other cities they were privileged; in Leipzig they had even the freedom of the city to pa.s.s yearly in solemn procession at the beginning of the fasting period. A certain professional or guild pride existed among them; they rigidly persecuted the unlicensed, unprivileged prost.i.tutes. Some cities gave them citizenship for "their sacrifice for the common good"; in some places donations were given to those who married, a generous way indeed to rescue many unfortunates from shame. To make them noticeable, their garments, usually green in color, were prescribed for them. Augsburg ordered the hood of their veil to be green and two inches wide; Leipzig prescribed a short yellow mantle; Bern and Zurich a red cap. Sometimes luxurious fashions adopted by distinguished ladies were permitted to prost.i.tutes in order to bring luxury into disrepute.

At the end of the fifteenth century, prost.i.tution had a.s.sumed enormous proportions and carried in its train the terrible, loathsome, venereal disease. The Renaissance and the Reformation, it is true, had at first beneficent effects; disreputable houses were closed; a higher spirit swept over the land, but everything soon returned to its former condition, as we read in Erasmus's dialogues or Luther's writings. The brave and patriotic knight and humanist Ulrich von Hutton himself died, young and abandoned, of the loathsome disease; it is unknown whether he contracted it through his own fault, or by contagion.

Catholicism performed a n.o.ble work by opening many cloisters and asylums to penitent fallen women, and thus saved many victims. The church certainly strove, on the whole, to improve the moral conditions of the country. The monasteries were in most cases resorts for the daughters of the poorer n.o.bility, and for the pious maidens, whether highborn or lowly, when marriage was impossible or other motives urged them to retire from the world. This statement must be made and emphasized for the honor of the millions of pure and n.o.ble women, who lived and worked and suffered and sacrificed themselves for humanity in the Church and in the cloisters which were the female academies of the time. Women lived there a happy and quiet life with intellectual and spiritual occupations. Reading, writing, religion, sewing, weaving, and embroidery were taught.

But it is only natural that among the thousands of women in religious life many failed in their mission, having mistaken their vocation. They became unhappy in their solitude without love, especially such as had been forced into the nunnery against their will and inclination. In such cases their conduct sometimes stands in glaring contrast with their vows of chast.i.ty.

The centuries leading up to the Reformation are full of complaints of priestly debauchery, which naturally reflected also upon the nuns. The cloister of Gnadenzell is reported to have been a pleasure resort for the neighboring n.o.bility, who there celebrated nightly orgies and infamous dances; Count Hans von Lupfen, A. D. 1428, chided the prioress, in a doc.u.ment of historical interest, for having failed to remove in time the nuns who had become pregnant, and for having thus given cause to the neighbors to complain that "the cloister walls were resounding with the cries of babies." Bishop Gaimbus, of Castell, reports to the Pope (June 20, 1484) of the nunnery of Loflingen, near Ulm, that, at an investigation for reforms, the majority of the nuns were found "in an advanced state of motherhood" (_in gesegneten Leibesumstanderi_).

Sebastian Brant's _Ship of Fools_ (1494) gives a terrible picture of the sins and follies of the era; never has there been such a heavy freight of perverse and wicked fools from all ranks and walks of life.

Thomas Murner's _Conjuration of Fools_ (Narrenbeschworung), fourteen years later, shows the mediaeval ideals in the caricature to which they had degenerated. The old conditions that had produced lofty and genuine ideals had died away, nothing remained but the sh.e.l.l, the mere form and outline. The satire against the dissolute world, the chastis.e.m.e.nt of it by stinging words and sarcastic writings, proves simply the righteous anger which the good and patriotic men of the time felt regarding the national degradation; a total reform became a dire necessity. This was a t.i.tanic task indeed, for during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries intellectual barrenness, spiritual corruption, and luxuriant debauchery prevailed. The worst feature was the chain of vice which, through apish imitation, was transmitted from the debased women of the upper cla.s.ses to the women of the bourgeoisie, and from the latter to the peasants.

The new fashions were not only hideous, but became even obscene: "What nature wants to be concealed, that do they expose and prost.i.tute. Shame upon the German nation!" are Brant's harsh words. The famous preacher Geiler von Kaisersberg thunders from the pulpit words hardly expressible in modern language: "Women's dresses are so short that they conceal nothing in front or behind, the upper garments are so cut down that the bosom is visible. Then again the trains are as long as tails. Women imitate man's foolish garb: the ridiculous high pointed shoes and tinkling bells on their garments." The pictures of the time and the attempts of cities and princes to regulate these monstrosities prove to us that the portraits of the satirists and the preachers are not overdrawn.

In order to illuminate a cultural epoch in the history of any nation it is, however, always safest to recur to the sources themselves, for they spring, knowingly or unknowingly, from the social soil upon which they thrive.

One of the most characteristic, though not edifying, "human doc.u.ments"

is the collection of contemporary poetry by a female author, Klara Hatzlerin, who was, according to her editor, Karl Haltaus, undoubtedly a nun from Augsburg, and who filled her leisure hours as was customary in the nunneries of her time in copying songs and poems. Evidently, though a cultured woman, she was not a pietist. This is apparent from the erotic and obscene matter found in her work, which even recalls Roswitha of Gandersheim's plays written more than five hundred years earlier. The work is undoubtedly genuine. It is signed: "_A. 0.1471. Augsburg. Clara Hatzlerin._" The ma.n.u.script contains two hundred and nineteen poems, besides ditties and sententious sayings. It marks the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, and is therefore of very great cultural value. The poems do not yet bear the scholastic, not to say pedantic, character of the best mastersingers; their type is, on the contrary, strictly popular, and frequently vulgar. The subjects of Klara Hatzlerin's collection of lyric poetry coincide with those of the minne: there are night songs and watch songs, songs of the love of the fair one, songs describing her virtues and her beauty, songs telling of fears of the light and the spies, rhythmical entreaties for slight favors of love, a glance, an embrace to appease the lover's sorrow or to give him strength to be constant.

Very characteristic of the time, especially as selections by a nun, betraying her interests and occupations, are the rustic caricatures and exaggerations of the coa.r.s.eness of the peasant cla.s.ses.

It must not be forgotten that as to material wealth the burghers and the peasant cla.s.ses were never better off in Germany than during the two centuries preceding the Thirty Years' War, while the n.o.bility had sunk into poverty, ruffianism, brigandage. What shall be said of a time when a prince of the highest rank, Duke Ernst of Bavaria, A. D. 1436, brutally murdered fair Agnes Bernauerin, the lawful wife of his son. To this very day the martyred woman is sung in German romance and poetry.