Читать книгу History of the Reformation - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 36

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It was among the peasants of German descent that there had been risings, successful and unsuccessful, for more than a century. The train for revolution had been laid not where serfdom was at its worst, but where there was ease enough in life to allow men to think, and where freedom was nearest in sight. It may be well to refer to the earlier peasant revolts, before attempting to investigate the causes of that permanent unrest which was abundantly evident at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The first great successful peasant rebellion was the fight for freedom made by the people of the four forest cantons in Switzerland. The weapons with which they overthrew the chivalry of Europe, rude pikes made by tying their scythes to their alpenstocks, may still be seen in the historical museums of Basel and Constance. They proved that man for man the peasant was as good as the noble. The free peasant soldier had come into being. These free peasants did not really secede from the Empire till 1499, and were formally connected with it till 1648. The Emperor was still their over-lord. But they were his free peasants, able to form leagues for their mutual defence and for the protection of their rights. Other cantons and some neighbouring cities joined them, and the Swiss Confederacy, with its flag, a white cross on a red ground, and its motto, “Each for all and all for each,” became a new nation in Europe. During the next century (1424–1471) the peasants of the Rhætian Alps also won their freedom, and formed a confederacy similar to the Swiss, though separate from it. It was called the Graubund.

The example of these peasant republics, strong in the protection which their mountains gave them, fired the imagination of the German peasantry of the south and the south-west of the Empire, and the leaders of lost popular causes found a refuge in the Alpine valleys while they meditated on fresh schemes to emancipate their followers. We have evidence of the popularity of the Swiss in the towns and country districts of Germany all through the fifteenth and into the sixteenth century.57

But while the social tumults and popular uprisings against authority, which are a feature of the close of the Middle Ages, are usually and rightly enough called peasant insurrections, the name tends to obscure their real character. They were rather the revolts of the poor against the rich, of debtors against creditors, of men who had scanty legal rights or none at all against those who had the protection of the existing laws, and they were joined by the poor of the towns as well as by the peasantry of the country districts. The peasants generally began the revolt and the townsmen followed; but this was not always the case. Sometimes the mob of the cities rose first and the peasants joined afterwards. In many cases, too, the poorer nobles were in secret or open sympathy with the insurrectionary movement. On more than one occasion they led the insurgents and fought at their head. The union of poor nobles and peasants had made the Bohemian revolt successful.

It must also be remembered that from the end of the fourteenth century on to the beginning of the sixteenth, however varied the cries and watchwords of the insurgents may be, one persistent note of detestation of the priests (the pfaffen) is always heard; and, from the way in which Jews and priests are continually linked together in one common denunciation, it may be inferred that the hatred arose more from the intolerable pressure of clerical extortion than from any feeling of irreligion. The tithes, great and small, and the means taken to exact them, were a galling burden. “The priests,” says an English writer, “have their tenth part of all the corn, meadows, pasture, grass, wood, colts, lambs, geese, and chickens. Over and besides the tenth part of every servant's wages, wool, milk, honey, wax, cheese, and butter; yea, and they look so narrowly after their profits that the poor wife must be countable to them for every tenth egg, or else she getteth not her rights at Easter, and shall be taken as a heretic.” As matter of fact, many of these tithes, extorted in the name of the Church, did not go into the pockets of the clergy at all, but were seized by the feudal superior and went to increase his revenues. Popular feeling, however, seldom discriminates, and feudal and clerical dues were regarded as belonging to one system of intolerable oppression. Besides, the rapacity of Churchmen went far beyond the exaction of the tithes. “I see,” said a Spaniard, “that we can scarcely get anything from Christ's ministers but for money; at baptism money, at bishoping money, at marriage money, for confession money—no, not extreme unction without money! They will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church without money; so that it seemeth that Paradise is shut up from them that have no money. The rich is buried in the church, the poor in the churchyard. The rich man may marry with his nearest kin, but the poor not so, albeit he be ready to die for love of her. The rich may eat flesh in Lent, but the poor may not, albeit fish perhaps be much dearer. The rich man may readily get large Indulgences, but the poor none, because he wanteth money to pay for them.”58

In spite of this hatred of the priests, it will be found that almost every insurrectionary movement was impregnated by some sentiment of enthusiastic religion, with which was blended some confused dream that the kingdom of God might be set up on earth, if only the priests were driven out of the land. This religious element drew some of its strength from the Lollard movement in England and from the Taborite in Bohemia, but after 1476 it had a distinctly German character. Its connection with what may almost be called the epidemic of pilgrimages, the strongly increased veneration for the Blessed Virgin, and the injunctions laid upon the confederates in some of the revolutionary movements to repeat so many Pater Nosters and Ave Marias, seem to lead to the conclusion that much of that revival of an enthusiastic and superstitious religion which marked the last half of the fifteenth century may be regarded as an attempt to create a popular religion apart from priests and clergy of all kinds.

One of the earliest of these popular uprisings occurred at Gotha in 1391, when the peasantry of the neighbourhood and many of the burghers of the town rose against the exactions of the Jews, and demanded their expulsion. It was an insurrection of debtors against usurers, and was in the end put down by the majority of the citizens. From this date onwards to 1470 similar risings took place in many parts of Germany, prompted by the same or like causes—the exactions of Jews, priests, or nobles. The years 1431–1432 saw a great Hussite propaganda carried on all over Europe. Countries were flooded with Hussite proclamations, and traversed by Hussite emissaries. Paul Crawar was sent to Scotland, and others like him to Spain, to the Netherlands, and to East Prussia. They taught among other things that the Old Testament law about tithes had no place within the Christian Church, and that Christian tithes were originally free-will offerings—a statement peculiarly acceptable to the German peasantry. All Germany had learnt by this time how Bohemian peasants, trained and led by men belonging to the lesser nobility, had routed in two memorable campaigns the imperial armies led by the Emperor himself, and how they had begun even to invade Germany. The chroniclers speak of the anxiety of the governing classes, civic and rural, when they recognised the strength of the feelings excited by this propaganda. The Hussite doctrine of tithes appears hereafter in most of the peasant programmes.

A still more powerful impulse to revolts was given by the tragic fate of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Charles was the ideal feudal autocrat. He was looked up to and imitated by the feudal princes of Germany in the fifteenth as was Louis xiv. by their descendants in the end of the seventeenth century. The common people regarded him as the typical feudal tyrant, and the hateful impression which his arrogance, his vindictiveness, and his oppression of the poor made upon them comes out in the folk-songs of the period:

“Er schazt sich künig Alexander gleich;

Er wolt bezwingen alle Reich,

Das wante Got in kurzer stund.”

He even came to be considered by them as one of the Antichrists who were to appear, and for years after his death at Nancy (1477) many believed that he was alive, expiating his sins on a prolonged pilgrimage.

When this great potentate, who was believed to have boasted that there were three rulers—God in heaven, Lucifer in hell, and himself on earth—was defeated at Granson, routed at Morat, routed and slain at Nancy, and that by Swiss peasants, the exultation was immense, and it was believed that the peasantry might inherit the earth.59