Читать книгу A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1&2) - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 35

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The condition of the peasantry in Germany has also to be described. The folk who practise husbandry usually form the most stable element in any community, but they could not avoid being touched by the economic movements of the time. The seeds of revolution had long been sown among the German peasantry, and peasant risings had taken place in different districts of south-central Europe from the middle of the fourteenth down to the opening years of the sixteenth centuries. It is difficult to describe accurately the state of these German peasants. The social condition of the nobles and the burghers has had many an historian, and their modes of life have left abundant traces in literature and archæology; but peasant houses and implements soon perished, and the chronicles seldom refer to the world to which the “land-folk” belonged, save when some local peasant rising or the tragedy of the Peasants' War thrust them into history. Our main difficulty, however, does not arise so much from lack of descriptive material—for that can be found when diligently sought for—as from the varying, almost contradictory statements that are made. Some contemporary writers condescend to describe the peasant class. A large number of collections of Weisthümer, the consuetudinary laws which regulated the life of the village communities, have been recovered and carefully edited;54 folk-songs preserve the old life and usages; many of the Fastnachtspiele or rude carnival dramas deal with peasant scenes; and Albert Dürer and other artists of the times have sketched over and over again the peasant, his house and cot-yard, his village and his daily life. We can, in part, reconstruct the old peasant life and its surroundings. Only it must be remembered that the life varied not only in different parts of Germany, but in the same districts and decades under different rural proprietors; for the peasant was so dependent on his over-lord that the character of the proprietor counted for much in the condition of the people.

The village artisan did not exist. The peasants lived by themselves apart from all other classes of the population. That is the universal statement. They carried the produce of their land and their live-stock to the nearest town, sold it in the market-place, and bought there what they needed for their life and work.

They dwelt in villages fortified after a fashion; for the group of houses was surrounded sometimes by a wall, but usually by a stout fence, made with strong stakes and interleaved branches. This was entered by a gate that could be locked. Outside the fence, circling the whole was a deep ditch crossed by a “falling door” or drawbridge. Within the fence among the houses there was usually a small church, a public-house, a house or room (Spielhaus) where the village council met and where justice was dispensed. In front stood a strong wooden stake, to which criminals were tied for punishment, and near it always the stocks, sometimes a gallows, and more rarely the pole and wheel for the barbarous mediæval punishment “breaking on the wheel.”

The houses were wooden frames filled in with sun-dried bricks, and were thatched with straw; the chimneys were of wood protected with clay. The cattle, fuel, fodder, and family were sheltered under the one large roof. The timber for building and repairs was got from the forest under regulations set down in the Weisthümer, and the peasants had leave to collect the fallen branches for firewood, the women gathering and carrying, and the men cutting and stacking under the eaves. All breaches of the forest laws were severely punished (in some of the Weisthümer the felling of a tree without leave was punished by beheading); so was the moving of landmarks; for wood and soil were precious.

Most houses had a small fenced garden attached, in which were grown cabbages, greens, and lettuce; small onions (cibölle, Scotticé syboes), parsley, and peas; poppies, garlic, and hemp; apples, plums, and, in South Germany, grapes; as well as other things whose mediæval German names are not translatable by me. Wooden beehives were placed in the garden, and a pigeon-house usually stood in the yard.

The scanty underclothing of the peasants was of wool and the outer dress of linen—the men's, girt with a belt from which hung a sword, for they always went armed. Their furniture consisted of a table, several three-legged stools, and one or two chests. Rude cooking utensils hung on the walls, and dried pork, fruits, and baskets of grain on the rafters. The drinking-cups were of coarse clay; and we find regulations that the table-cloth or covering ought to be washed at least once a year! Their ordinary food was “some poor bread, oatmeal porridge, and cooked vegetables; and their drink, water and whey.” The live-stock included horses, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and hens.55

The villagers elected from among themselves four men, the Bauernmeister, who were the Fathers of the community. They were the arbiters in disputes, settled quarrels, and arranged for an equitable distribution of the various feudal assessments and services. They had no judicial or administrative powers; these belonged to the over-lord, or a representative appointed by him. This official sat in the justice room, heard cases, issued sentences, and exercised all the mediæval powers of “pit and gallows.” The whole list of mediæval punishments, ludicrous and gruesome, were at his command. It was he who ordered the scolding wife to be carried round the church three times while her neighbours jeered; who set the unfortunate charcoal-burner, who had transgressed some forest law, into the stocks, with his bare feet exposed to a slow fire till his soles were thoroughly burnt; who beheaded men who cut down trees, and ordered murderers to be broken on the wheel. He saw that the rents, paid in kind, were duly gathered. He directed the forced services of ploughing, sowing, and harvesting the over-lord's fields, what wood was to be hewn for the castle, what ditches dug, and what roads repaired. He saw that the peasants drank no wine but what came from the proprietor's vineyards, and that they drank it in sufficient quantity; that they ground their grain at the proprietor's mill, and fired their bread at the estate bakehouse. He exacted the two most valuable of the moveable goods of a dead peasant—the hated “death-tax.” There was no end to his powers. Of course, according to the Weisthümer, these powers were to be exercised in customary ways; and in some parts of Germany the indefinite “forced services” had been commuted to twelve days' service in the year, and in others to the payment of a fixed rate in lieu of service.

This description of the peasant life has been taken entirely from the Weisthümer, and, for reasons to be seen immediately, it perhaps represents rather a “golden past” than the actual state of matters at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It shows the peasants living in a state of rude plenty, but for the endless exactions of their lords and the continual robberies to which they were exposed from bands of sturdy rogues which swarmed through the country, and from companies of soldiers, who thought nothing of carrying off the peasant's cows, slaying his swine, maltreating his womenkind, and even firing his house.

The peasants had their diversions, not always too seemly. On the days of Church festivals, and they were numerous, the peasantry went to church and heard Mass in the morning, talked over the village business under the lime-trees, or in some open space near the village, and spent the afternoon in such amusements as they liked best—eating and drinking at the public-house, and dancing on the village green. In one of his least known poems, Hans Sachs describes the scene—the girls and the pipers waiting at the dancing-place, and the men and lads in the public-house eating calf's head, tripe, liver, black puddings, and roast pork, and drinking whey and the sour country wine, until some sank under the benches; and there was such a jostling, scratching, shoving, bawling, and singing, that not a word could be heard. Then three young men came to the dancing-place, his sweetheart had a garland ready for one of them, and the dancing began; other couples joined, and at last sixteen pairs of feet were in motion. Rough jests, gestures, and caresses went round.

“Nach dem der Messner von Hirschau,

Der tanzet mit des Pfarrhaus Frau

Von Budenheim, die hat er lieb,

Viel Scherzens am Tanz mit ihr trieb.”

The men whirled their partners off their feet and spun them round and round, or seized them by the waist and tossed them as high as they could; while they themselves leaped and threw out their feet in such reckless ways that Hans Sachs thought they would all fall down.

The winter amusements gathered round the spinning house. For it was the custom in most German villages for the young women to resort to a large room in the mill, or to the village tavern, or to a neighbour's house, with their wool and flax, their distaffs and spindles, some of them old heirlooms and richly ornamented, to spin all evening. The lads came also to pick the fluff off the lasses' dresses, they said; to hold the small beaker of water into which they dipped their fingers as they span; and to cheer the spinsters with songs and recitations. After work came the dancing. On festival evenings, and especially at carnival times, the lads treated their sweethearts to a late supper and a dance; and escorted them home, carrying their distaffs and spindles.56 All the old German love folk-songs are full of allusions to this peasant courtship, and it is not too much to say that from the singing in the spinning house have come most of the oldest folk-songs.

These descriptions apply to the German peasants of Central and South Germany. In the north and north-east, the agricultural population, which was for the most part of Slavonic descent, had been reduced by their conquerors to a serfdom which had no parallel in the more favoured districts.