rope, hang her on a bough, take three big wolves and
hang them beside her. Whoever saw gallows with worse
skins? There the song has an end, God evil women to
Hades send!"
We cheerfully leave the foul atmosphere of a poetry
which could not have sunk lower in form and spirit, and
which, nevertheless, could not have existed but for its
direct connection with the social sphere of which it treated
and in which its roots were imbedded. And indeed we
know also from incontestable historical evidence that while
the privileges of the other three estates grew, a heavy
slavery lay upon the fourth, the peasantry. When op-
pression lays its leaden hand too heavily upon a race or a
class, it crushes out, gradually but surely, the divine in-
stincts of the human soul. Mlinster, in his Kosmography,
which appeared in 1545, speaks of "the low and wretched
life of the peasants." Their houses are miserable hovels
of dirt and wood, placed directly on the ground, and
thatched with straw. Their food is black rye bread, oats
or boiled lentils and peas. A coarse upper coat, two
wooden shoes, and a cheap felt hat are their only clothing.
These people have never peace or rest. Their masters
they must serve through the whole year; there is noth-
ing that the poor people must not do. The picture is
completed by another author, who says: " The toilsome
people of the peasantry are everybody's footrag, heavily
laden and burdened with tasks of slavery, hard labor,
interests, taxes, duties, etc." We will not unroll here the
endless lists of personal and property dues which were
imposed upon the unfortunate peasants of that period.
The saddest aspect of that physical oppression is that the
unfortunate people were not even conscious of their fright-
ful moral subjugation. We have already mentioned that
THE COMING OF THE MASTERSINGERS 2OI
even the marriage of the serfs of both sexes depended upon
the consent of their masters, the landed proprietor or, in
most cases, of his steward, that the marital tax (maritagium)
had to be paid for this consent, and that the body of the
unfortunate peasant girl belonged to her oppressor, at least
for the first night (jus primce noctis'). The existence
of this infamous right has been contested by German
historians, but as proofs Scherr adduces two authentic
documents of the years 1538 and 1543. All these facts
are sufficient proof that the above literary remnants do
not greatly exaggerate the moral and intellectual condi-
tion of that class, which is the basic element of every
civilization.
We now proceed with more satisfaction to an estimate
of the bourgeoisie. They became more and more cultured,
and took upon themselves the task of raising the standards
of education and morality, of upholding the sacred flame
of German spiritual and intellectual life. They began to
spin again the thread of poetry that had broken in the
brutalized hands of a degraded nobility. This thread was
now the " Mastersong." Mastersong, though of a prosaic,
mechanical style, was nevertheless an ennobling, purifying
element of culture in the frivolous and impure life of late
mediasval German cities. Mastersong formed the bridge
between the world of everyday realism and the world of
ideals. Mastersong alone prevented an entire break of
the continuity of German civilization between the two
great periods of bloom, the thirteenth and the eighteenth
centuries. As the bourgeoisie acquired a social position
and a personal worth of their own, as the German peas-
antry, in the extreme North at the mouth of the Elbe
between marshes and sea, the Ditmarschen and Steding-
ers, and again in the South between the Alpine passes,
the Swiss, heroically defended their manhood and
202 WOMAN
liberties, there began among those lowly born, but high-
minded, vigorous, and comparatively pure classes an
intellectual and a moral life of a higher order. The folk
song of love, of warlike honor, of victory over the brutal
squirearchy, of invigorating patriotism, of a national union
embracing all classes, begins to ring through the German
"poetic forest," as Uhland calls it. The loving maid
speaks of the falcen, and means the lover; the rose garden
signifies love's favor; flowers are maidens, like the rose
on the heath that is plucked by the boy in spite of its
thorns; the forget-me-not designates modesty, humility,
chastity. There are little love songs describing the sorrow
of parting, the joy of the dance, the dream of love under
the tree from which a rain of blossoms bedews the sleeping
beauty.
Emperor Maximilian (1493-1519), "the last knight,"
the best-beloved son of the house of Habsburg, reigns
now in Germany. .It is a time of transition, of universal
change. The world has doubled its size by the discovery
of America, and the horizon has been enlarged accord-
ingly. The printing press has revolutionized the arts.
Yet poetry is dry, allegorical, wooden. Maximilian, aided
by his secretaries, relates in a rimed allegorical romance,
Teuerdank, his wooing of Mary of Burgundy, or, as he calls
her in his poem, the beautiful and illustrious virgin Ehren-
reich, only daughter of the powerful king "Glorious"
(Ruhmreich) . He recounts the mighty deeds which he
must accomplish before he can possess her.
The barrenness of the time, in spite of a great and
varied literary activity which, however, bears the stamp
of mediocrity, appears also in the translations made by
several highborn ladies: Elizabeth of Lorraine, and Eleanor
of Scotland, consort of Duke Sigmund of Austria. Prin-
cess Mathilda, of the illustrious Wittelsbach-Palatine house,
THE COMING OF THE MASTERSINGERS 203
the "Lady of Austria," as she is called in the folk song,
fostered the first advent of humanism into Suabia and
Bavaria, and entertained sympathetic relations with all
those who worked in the direction of humanism and liter-
ary reform. Niclas von Wyle, an early Humanist, had
already in 1474, in opposition to the popular farces which
contained offensive, coarse, and frequently obscene treat-
ment of woman, composed an encomium or eulogy in her
honor, in which he enumerated the manifold blessings which
woman had brought to the world. Yet the ribald farces
still abound, and are even stimulated by the incipient re-
ligious reform. Joseph in Egypt is the typical subject for
poems expressing the criminal and passionate love of
woman; the monologue of Potiphar's wife expressing her
sinful feelings for Joseph is nothing less than edifying.
The play of Fair Susanna presented wicked passion in
aged men, and innocence persecuted, but finally saved;
Judith and Holofernes characterized the clash between
conflicting religions.
In South Germany, Niirnberg, Luther's "eye and ear
of Germany," is the centre of the culture of the transition
period, and is the mirror in which the life of the time is
reflected. The aesthetic culture and the lack of it, the
status of woman in society, appear nowhere more plainly
than in the plays of Hans Sachs, the greatest exponent of
the life of his time. He is not stimulated by the passions
of a Hutten, of a Luther, or of the latter's bitter foe,
Thomas Murner. His soul overflows with peace and
equanimity even where he censures and chides. His cen-
sure is always amiable and gentle. He even describes
passions meekly. He touchingly represents the driving
from Paradise of Adam and Eve, who become more
closely attached to each other in misfortune; he delicately
depicts Eve's naive anxiety concerning God, whose visit
204 WOMAN
she apparently fears. He writes decorously of the priest
and his fair housekeeper who has not yet attained the
canonic age of safety: of the old hag who acts as a pro-
curess and panderer, who is quarrelsome and hideous, and
of whom even the devil is afraid; the faithless, cunning,
amorous wife who makes sport of her deceived, foolish
husband; the jealous and the credulous husband, etc.
In formulating a theory of love, Hans Sachs, who, in
his own long life, had felt love's grief and unrest, decided
to employ the examples which he gathered from his own
experience as well as from history and poetry, especially
the Italians Petrarca, Boccaccio, and others. In his car-
nival plays, however, he avoids, from the very first, the
coarseness and obscenity of Rosenplut and Hans Folz; but
though he no doubt considered that he had excluded all
indecency from his works, they still are, here and there,
grievous to our modern ears.
In his carnival play Vom f^enusberg, the goddess speaks:
"I am Venus, protectress of love, many a realm was
destroyed through me; I have great power on earth over
rich, poor, young, and old; whom I wound with the arrow
mine, he must forever my servant be. I now draw my bow;
he who will flee shall flee at once." Too late: the knight
is struck, so are all the others, maids and gentlewomen.
In 1518 Sachs wrote the Complaint of the Exiled Lady
Chastity, a very bold allegory: Virgin Chastity, daughter
of Lady Honor, dwelt with many virgins in the realm of
Virginitas. In the neighborhood lived the frivolous Queen
Venus, who frequently invaded the former's kingdom and
tried to conquer it. In the repeated wars, Queen Venus
succeeded in capturing almost all the virgins, and took
them over to the kingdom of Lady Shame. Only Chastity
herself, with her royal retinue, the allegorized twelve
womanly virtues, had been saved from capture; they fled
THE COMING OF THE MASTERSINGERS 205
and wandered long from one country to the other without
finding a hospitable reception. At last they arrived at a
distant wilderness, where Chastity was again suddenly
attacked by Queen Venus and her allied princesses: Pride,
Frivolity, Intemperance, Idleness, Faithlessness, etc. The
poet then warns maidens of the dangers threatening them
on the part of Venus and her suite. After explaining the
twelve virtues which aid Chastity, he concludes: " Beware
of love, be steady, spare your love until you come to
marriage." Sachs himself had at an early age married,
in 1519, Kunigunde Kreuzer, an orphan of good family.
The biographer of Hans Sachs described the marriage of
Dr. Christoph Scheuerl, a famous jurist of Nurnberg, " the
oracle of the Republic." The description of this marriage
is interesting as a picture of the life of the high patri-
cian families and their ceremonies and festivities. All
the families (Geschlechter) of the city were present. The
festivities lasted a whole week, and the ceremonies were
elaborate and splendid. Marriage feasts of the city aris-
tocracy took place either in the house of the parents of
the bridal couple, or in the city hall, or even in the cloister.
This last practice was, however, forbidden in Nurnberg
in 1485, "because the carousals and dances had become
unbefitting the holy place." The patrician bridegroom gave
the bride a ring with precious stones, the latter presented
the bridegroom with an embroidered silken kerchief.
There was a great display of precious garments and silk
damask. The servants wore the colors of the family to
which they belonged. The headgear of the patrician lady
was a high diadem, while the bridegroom wore a silver
wreath adorned with artificial flowers. The bride's maids
and the table maidens wore the same kind of wreath and
their hair was arranged in loose waves. The first mar-
riage day was followed by an "early morning dance at
206 WOMAN
the city-hall, a night-dance, and a wedding-assembly only
for the ladies."
The artisan marriages are recorded to have been similar
in character, only the jests of the official "speaker"
(Sprucksprecher) were probably somewhat rude, and the
display was not so elaborate as that used in patrician
weddings.
Hans Sachs's married life was very happy. His mani-
fold jests regarding quarrelsome women and their quali-
ties, and regarding the hardships of married life were
merely products of his humor. " My wife is my Paradise
dear, and also my daily hellfire sheer;" and the climax:
"She is my virtue, and my vice ;
She is my wound, and yet my balm.
She is my heart's constant abode,
Yet makes me gray and makes me old."
While happily married himself, he knew enough of bad
wives. Albrecht Durer's unhappy married life could fur-
nish him sufficient material for his Ninefold Skin of a Scold,
and The Twelve Properties of a Bad Woman, against which
all the arts employed in the "taming of the shrew " came
to naught.
In 1 560 his beloved wife died, and one year later he mar-
ried Barbara Harscher, a charming girl of seventeen years,
whose beauty he sang in his Artistic Woman's Praise, and
with whom he lived happily till 1576. He was buried in
Saint John's Cemetery at Nurnberg. The grateful city
erected in 1874 a beautiful monument in his honor. But
the highest monument, "more abiding than steel," the
prince of poets, Goethe, erected to him in his Hans Sachs's
Poetic Mission:
"An oak wreath hovers yonder in the clouds,
With ever green fair foliage adorned ;
With this the grateful nation crowns his brow."
THE COMING OF THE MASTERSINGERS 207
Hans Sachs is the typical, the universal, the noblest,
and the purest Mastersinger; but he is only the first among
hundreds of others who helped to preserve in Germany
the sacred fire of poetry.
The bourgeoisie womanhood of the school of humanism,
of the circle where virtue was the ideal of life, ably sec-
onded the efforts of men like Sachs. But no one lofty
specimen of superior womanhood arose from the atmos-
phere of feud, brigandage, and drunken intemperance
among the so-called higher classes. Banqueting, hunting,
fighting, gambling, carousing, and sexual excesses are re-
corded in plenty. The diary of the Silesian knight Hans
vjon Schweinichen introduces us, in the middle of the six-
teenth century, into a "noble" society full of poverty,
brutality, and ignorance. He relates the slight acquire-
ments of his education, interrupted by the occupation of
tending the geese, his service as a page at the court of the
Duke of Liegnitz, his early interest in women, his presence
at weddings, "where he ate and drank his fill for day and
night just as they wanted to have it." Of his friendly
expedition with the Duke of Liegnitz to Mecklenburg, he
says: "I have made for myself a great reputation with
drinking, as I could never get enough to drink myself full."
Anna of Saxony, daughter of Elector Moritz, wife of William
of Orange, who died of delirium tremens, proves, by the
way, that drunkenness was by no means uncommon with
princely ladies. Scherr also adduces many other such
princely examples. A festival at the Mecklenburg court is
thus described in nal've fashion by Schweinichen in his
diary: "The native squires as well as the noble young
ladies lost themselves little by little, until finally there
remained with me but two ladies and one knight, who
began a dance. I followed with the other lady. It did not
last long; my good friend slipped with his dancer to the next
208 WOMAN
chamber; I followed him. As we came to the chamber, two
squires and ladies rested in a bed; the one who danced be-
fore me fell also with his lady in one bed. I asked my lady
what we should do. She said in her Mecklenburg language:
I should lie by her. I did not have her ask me a long time,
but lay down with mantle and garments, so did the lady,
and thus we chatted till the dawn of morning; however, in
all honor. This they call there ' to lie by a maiden on truth
and faith,' but I do not trust such a 'lying by/ for such
truth and faith might easily become roguish." Evidently,
so far as the nobility were concerned, delicacy and propriety
were quite unknown in sixteenth century society.
ffiJHomen of tfje l&enafesance antr tfje
Reformation
VII
WOMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE
REFORMATION
WOMAN, it has been said, always needs a background.
She has one in early sixteenth century Germany a splen-
did background of material prosperity.
The great free cities were at the zenith of their power.
Organized labor had triumphed. The guilds and the mer-
chant corporations had done their work well. From the
sturdy, self-respecting German handworker, modestly
offering his own wares for sale, had been evolved the
governing patrician. Prince, pope, emperor, even for-
eign potentates, bowed before the German patrician, for
he held the purse strings of the world. Not a sovereign
in all Europe dared enter into a campaign without per-
mission of the Fuggers, the great merchant-bankers of
Augsburg.
In their magnificent free cities the patricians of Germany
lived in far more than royal splendor. The chronicler,
Wimpheling, writes: " It was not an uncommon thing to eat
from gold and silver plates at merchants' tables as I, myself,
did in company with eleven other guests at Cologne."
>neas Sylvius exclaims to Martin Mayer, Chancellor of
Mainz: "How is it that even in your inns you always
serve drinks in silver vessels? What shall I say of the
knights and of the bits of their horses which are of pure
211
212 WOMAN
gold, of their rings, girdles, and helmets blazing in gold,
of the spears and sheaths studded thickly with diamonds?
What riches are displayed in your altar decorations! How
beautiful are the reliquaries set in pearls and gold! How
magnificent your priests' vestments! What riches in your
sacristies!"
Dress received much attention. Women revelled in
embroideries of gold and silver, plaited skirts with expen-
sive galloon borders, mantles of ermine, sable and marten;
crowns of gold and precious stones; pearl embroidered
smocks and the daintiest, finest linen ever woven. Even
the burghers' wives and daughters braided gold and silver
into their back hair and curls and wore gems of rare value.
At frequent intervals, sumptuary laws designed to lessen
feminine extravagance were passed, but, like all such laws
since the days of Eve's figleaf, they failed. The women
invariably got the better of the city fathers. In Mainz
one of the most beautiful young dames of the town, acting
as the representative of a large number of society women,
appealed, personally, to Prince Albert, Archbishop of Bran-
denburg, against a decree of the Council concerning femi-
nine attire. That handsome, Lothario-priest, Prince Albert,
was not the man to resist the pleading of a pretty woman.
Dismissing his fair petitioner with a kiss and the gift of a
beautiful jewelled bracelet, he at once ordered the repeal
of the hateful law.
But the great sociological preacher, Geiler von Kaisers-
berg, was no debonair voluptuary. The fairest woman's
face could never persuade him to look leniently upon
feminine vanity. He shouts:
"The authorities ought to forbid the abominably short
skirts that are worn! Look at the belts which encircle their
waists, sometimes they are of silk, sometimes of gold,
sometimes so costly that the jeweller charges from forty
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 213
to fifty florins for making them. They drag long trains
through the dirt without thinking of the nakedness of
Christ among his poor. Some have so many dresses
that, during the week, they have two dresses for each
day, morning and afternoon. They have many others
for dancing, and they would rather see them eaten by
moths than give their cost to the poor. We see women
letting their hair hang down their backs in cues like men,
and wearing cock's feathers in the astoundingly ugly bon-
nets on their heads. What a shame and a sin! Do you
not see there is no one without donkey ears on her head?
It is a shame that women wear hats with ears. Some
paint themselves many times a day and have false teeth
and hair. O Woman! are you not fearful, with the hair
of strangers on your heads? It may be the hair of some
dead woman to the injury of your souls!"
The Renaissance was a period of transition a liberation
of mental force which, from Italy, spread itself, invigo-
ratingly, over the rest of Europe. The modern world was
rolling into light. With a gun in his hands, the peasant
soldier was the equal, physically at least, of his former
master. The art of printing and the invention of cheap
paper had given wings to thought and knowledge. Trade
had penetrated strange lands. Every returning sailor and
adventurer brought back tales more fascinating than fairy
lore of mysterious golden islands newly discovered in the
west. Wonder and imagination were awakened. Money
was plentiful. In the German cities a leisure class existed.
Conditions were ripe for culture, and Humanism came.
The "New Learning," as Humanism was generally
called, rapidly overwhelmed the old, barren scholasticism
and ecclesiasticism. Every monastery and university be-
came a battleground where Humanism fought Scholasticism
to the death.
214 WOMAN
Under the quickening influence of the " New Learning,"
free Latin schools for boys were established over all Ger-
many. The poorest boy might attend any or all of the
schools. Thus arose the specifically German educational
system of "wandering students," with its good and evil
influences.
At first little was done, educationally, for the girls.
There were a very few small, poorly equipped public
schools where daughters of artisans and laborers received
religious teaching and slight rudimentary instruction in
reading, spelling, and writing. Girls belonging to noble
and patrician families were usually taught in convents.
Music, dancing, embroidery, deportment, and, above all,
the supervision of a large household were the studies upon
which wealthy parents insisted for their daughters. But
the brighter girls soon became curious about the "New
Learning" of which their fathers and brothers spoke so
frequently. Sastrow, in his biography, writes:
" One of my five younger sisters, Catherine, was an ex-
cellent, amiable, lovely, 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,
'This is, truly, a beautiful maiden.' He replied, 'Profecto
formosa puella.' She asked farther how one could say,
'Rather so.' He replied, 'Sic satis.' Some time after,
three students, sons of gentlemen, came from Wittenberg
to see our town. They had been recommended to the
hospitality of the burgomaster, Herr Nicholas Smiterlow,
who was desirous to entertain them well and have good
society for them. As he had three grown-up daughters,
my sister Catherine was invited among other guests. The
students exchanged all kinds of jokes with the maidens,
and as young fellows are wont to do also said things to one
another in Latin that it would not have been seemly to
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 21$
say before maidens in German. At last one said to the
other, 'Profecto formosa puella,' whereupon, my sister an-
swered, 'Sic satis,' Then the students were much afraid,
fancying she had also understood their former amatory
talk."
Enthusiasm for the "New Learning" quickly spread
among German women of the higher class. Among the
princesses, Matilda of the Palatinate was especially famed
for her love of learning. She was a generous patron of
the fine arts, and, a rarer trait among humanistic scholars,
she was also an admirer of the literature of her fatherland.
She made a collection of ninety-four works on the old
court poetry, and delighted in the national folk songs
orally preserved. Matilda encouraged the poets of her
court to write poetry after the ancient methods. She
ordered many valuable works translated into German.
Through her influence the university of Tubingen, in
Wurtemberg was established.
The "New Learning" stole into the convents and
made many proselytes among the nuns. Aleydis Raiskop,
of Goch, to whom Butzbach dedicated a book, was re-
nowned for her classical scholarship. She composed seven
homilies on Saint Paul and translated a work on the mass
from Latin into German. In the same convent with
Aleydis lived an artist nun, Gertrude von Buchel, to
whom Butzbach also dedicated a book, Celebrated Painters.
Richmondis von der Horst, abbess of the convent of See-
bach, corresponded in Latin with Trithemius who highly
praises her various writings. Of the nun Ursula Canton,
one of her admirers exclaims: " Her equal in knowledge of
theological matters, of the fine arts and in eloquence and
belles lettres, has not been seen for centuries."
Among German Humanists, Charitas Pirkheimer, of
Niirnberg, stands preeminent. Through her brother,
2l6 WOMAN
Willibald Pirkheimer, the friend and generous patron of
Albrecht Durer, Erasmus, and a host of lesser Humanists,
Charitas corresponded with many renowned men. Chris-