Читать книгу A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1&2) - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 32

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It has been already said that the times of the Renaissance were a period of transition in the social as well as in the intellectual condition of the peoples of Europe. The economic changes were so great, that no description of the environment of the Reformation would be complete without some account of the social revolution which was slowly progressing. It must be remembered, however, that there is some danger in making the merely general statements which alone are possible in this chapter. The economic forces at work were modified and changed in countries and in districts, and during decades, by local conditions. Any general description is liable to be qualified by numerous exceptions.

Beneath the whole mediæval system lay the idea that the land was the only economic basis of wealth. During the earlier Middle Ages this was largely true everywhere, and was specially so in Germany. Each little district produced almost all that it needed for its own wants; and the economic value of the town consisted in its being a corporation of artisans exchanging the fruits of their industries for the surplus of farm produce which the peasants brought to their market-place. But the increasing trade of the towns, developed at first along the greater rivers, the arteries of the countries, gradually produced another source of wealth; and this commerce made great strides after the Crusades had opened the Eastern markets to European traders. Trade, commerce, and manufactures were the life of the towns, and were rapidly increasing their importance.

In mediæval times each town was an independent economic centre, and the regulation of industry and of trade was an exclusively municipal affair. This state of matters had changed in some countries before the time of the Reformation, and statesmen had begun to recognise the importance of a national trade, and to take steps to further it; but in Germany, chiefly owing to its hopeless divisions, the old state of matters remained, and the municipalities continued to direct and control all commercial and industrial affairs.

The towns had originally grown up under the protection of the Emperor, or of some great lord of the soil, or of an ecclesiastical prince or foundation, and the early officials were the representatives of these fostering powers. The descendants of this early official class became known as the “patricians” of the city, and they regarded all the official positions as the hereditary privileges of their class. The town population was thoroughly organised in associations of workmen, commonly called “gilds,” which at first concerned themselves simply with the regulation and improvement of the industry carried on, and with the education and recreations of the workers. But these “gilds” soon assumed a political character. The workmen belonging to them formed the fighting force needed for the independence and protection of the city. Each “gild” had its fighting organisation, its war banner, its armoury; and its members were trained to the use of arms, and practised it in their hours of recreation. The “gilds” therefore began to claim some share in the government of the town, and in most German cities, in the decades before the Reformation, the old aristocratic government of the “patricians” had given place to the more democratic rule of the “gilds.” The chief offices connected with the “gilds” insensibly tended to become hereditary in a few leading families, and this created a second “patriciat,” whose control was resented by the great mass of the workmen. Nürnberg was one of the few great German cities where the old “patricians” continued to rule down to the times of the Reformation.

These “gilds” were for the most part full of business energy, which showed itself in the twofold way of making such regulations as they believed would insure good workmanship, and of securing facilities for the sale of their wares. All the workmen, it was believed, were interested in the production of good articles, and the bad workmanship of one artisan was regarded as bringing discredit upon all. Hence, as a rule, every article was tested in private before it was exposed for public sale, and various punishments were devised to check the production of inferior goods. Thus in Bremen every badly made pair of shoes was publicly destroyed at the pillory of the town. Such regulations belonged to the private administration of the towns, and differed in different places. Indeed, the whole municipal government of the German cities presents an endless variety, due to the local history and other conditions affecting the individual towns. While the production was a matter for private regulation in each centre of industry, distribution involved the towns in something like a common policy. It demanded safe means of communication between one town and another, between the towns and the rural districts, and safe outlets to foreign lands. It needed roads, bridges, and security of travel. The towns banded themselves together, and made alliances with powerful feudal nobles to secure these advantages. Such was the origin of the great Hanseatic League, which had its beginnings in Flanders, spread over North Germany, included the Scandinavian countries, and grew to be a European power.48 The less known leagues among the cities of South Germany did equally good service, and they commonly secured outlets to Venice, Florence, and Genoa, by alliances with the peasantry in whose hands were the chief passes of the Alps. All this meant an opposition between the burghers and the nobles—an opposition which was continuous, which on occasion flamed out into great wars, and which compelled the cities to maintain civic armies, composed partly of their citizens and partly of hired troops. It was reckoned that Strassburg and Augsburg together could send a fighting force of 40,000 men into the field.

The area of trade, though, according to modern ideas, restricted, was fairly extensive. It included all the countries in modern Europe and the adjacent seas. The sea-trade was carried on in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, in the Baltic and North Seas, and down the western coasts of France and Spain. The North Sea was the great fishing ground, and large quantities of dried fish, necessary for the due keeping of Lent, were despatched in coasting vessels, and by the overland routes to the southern countries of Europe. Furs, skins, and corn came from Russia and the northern countries. Spain, some parts of Germany, and above all England, were the wool-exporting countries. The eastern counties of England, many towns in Germany and France, and especially the Low Countries, were the centres of the woollen manufactures. The north of France was the great flax-growing country. In Italy, at Barcelona in Spain, and at Lyons in France, silk was produced and manufactured. The spices and dried fruits of the East, and its silks and costly brocades and feathers, came from the Levant to Venice, and were carried north through the great passes which pierce the range of the Alps.

Civic statesmen did their best, by mutual bargains and the establishment of factories, to protect and extend trading facilities for their townsmen. The German merchant had his magnificent Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, his factories of the Hanseatic League in London, Bruges, Bergen, and even in far-off Novgorod; and Englishmen had also their factories in foreign parts, within which they could buy and sell in peace.

The perils of the German merchant, in spite of all civic leagues, were at home rather than abroad. His country swarmed with Free Nobles, each of whom looked upon himself as a sovereign power, with full right to do as he pleased within his own dominions, whether these were an extensive principality or a few hundred acres surrounding his castle. He could impose what tolls or customs dues he pleased on the merchants whose heavily-laden waggons entered his territories. He had customary rights which made bad roads and the lack of bridges advantages to the lord of the soil. If an axle or wheel broke, if a waggon upset in crossing a dangerous ford, the bales thrown on the path or stranded on the banks of the stream could be claimed by the proprietor of the land. Worse than all were the perils from the robber-knights—men who insisted on their right to make private war even when that took the form of highway robbery, and who largely subsisted on the gains which came, as they said, from making their “horses bite off the purses of travellers.”

In spite of all these hindrances, a capitalist class gradually arose in Germany. Large profits, altogether apart from trade, could be made by managing, collecting, and forwarding the money coming from the universal system of Indulgences. It was in this way that the Fuggers of Augsburg first rose to wealth. Money soon bred money. During the greater part of the Middle Ages there was no such thing as lending out money on interest, save among the Italian merchants of North Italy or among the Jews. The Church had always prohibited what it called usury. But Churchmen were the first to practise the sin they had condemned. The members of ecclesiastical corporations began to make useful advances, charging an interest of from 7 to 12 per cent.—moderate enough for the times. Gradually the custom spread among the wealthy laity, who did not confine themselves to these reasonable profits, and we find Sebastian Brand inveighing against the “Christian Jews,” who had become worse oppressors than the Israelite capitalists whom they copied.

But the great alteration in social conditions, following change in the distribution of wealth, came when the age of geographical discovery had made a world commerce a possible thing.