Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 302 - 305
THE GERMANS
They were probably at this time the healthiest, strongest, most vital and exuberant people in Europe. They were coarse but jolly, and tempered their piety with sensuality. They could be cruel, as witness the awful instruments of torture that they used on criminals, but they could be merciful and generous, too, and rarely displayed their theological ferocity in physical ways; in Germany the inquisition was bravely resisted and usually subdued. Their robust spirits made for bibulous humour rather than dry wit, dulled their sense of logic and beauty, and denied them the grace and subtlety of the French or Italian mind. Their meagre Renaissance foundered in bibliolatry, but there was a steady persistence, a disciplined industry, a brute courage, in German thought that enabled them to break the power of Rome, and already gave promise of making them the greatest scholars in history.
By comparison with other nations they were clean. Bathing was a national passion. Every well-arranged house even in rural districts, had its bathroom. As in ancient Rome, the numerous public bathhouses provided much more than baths; men could be shaved there, women could have their hair dressed, diverse forms of massage were offered, drinking and gambling were allowed, and relief could be found from monogamy. Usually the two sexes bathed together, chastely clothed; but there were no laws against flirtations, and an Italian scholar, visiting Baden-Baden in 1417, remarked that “ no baths in the world are more fit for the fecundity of women.”
The Germans of that age could not be accused of Puritanism. They drank too much at all ages and imbibed sexual experience lavishly in their youth. Erfurt in 1501 seemed to the pious Luther “nothing better than a brothel and beer-house.” German rulers, ecclesiastical as well as secular, agreed with St. Augustine and St, Thomas Aquinas that prostitution must be allowed if women are to be safe from seduction or assault. We read of the bishops of Strasbourg and Mainz receiving revenues from brothels, and the bishop of Würzburg gave the municipal brothel to Graf von Hennenburg as a revenue-producing fief. In the actual moral code of Europe in the later Middle Ages resort to a prostitute was condoned as a venial but normal sin. Perhaps the spread of syphilis after 1492 made it a mortal affair.
Marriage, as elsewhere, was a union of properties. Love was considered a normal result, not a reasonable cause, of marriage. Betrothal was as binding as matrimony. Weddings ceremonious and luxurious in all classes; festivities might last a week or two; purchase of a husband was as expensive as the upkeep of a wife. The authority of the husband was theoretically absolute, but was more real in deeds than in words. The women of Nuremburg were undaunted enough to pull the half naked Emperor Maximilian from bed, throw a wrap around him, and lead him in a merry nocturnal dance in the street.
Family life flourished. An Erfurt chronical reckons eight or ten offspring per couple as normal; households of fifteen children were not uncommon. The numbers included bastards, for illegitimate children, who abounded, were usually taken into the father’s home after his marriage. Family names came into use in the fifteenth century, often indicating ancestral occupation or place of origin, but now and then congealing a moment’s jest into the rigor of time. Discipline was firm at home and school. German homes were now (1500) the most comfortable in Europe, with wide staircases, sturdy balustrades, massive furniture, cushioned chairs, carved chests, windows of coloured glass, canopied beds, carpeted floors, shelves crowded with books or flowers, or silver plate, and kitchens gleaming with all the utensils for a German feast.
Externally the houses were mostly made of wood, and fires were frequent. Overhanging eaves and windowed balconies shaded the streets. Only a few avenues in the larger towns were paved. Street lighting was unknown except on festival evenings; life was unsafe outdoors at night. There were no organised police; severe punishments were relied upon to deter crime. The penalty for robbery was death, or, in mild theft, cutting off the ears. Women who had murdered their husbands were buried alive, or were tortured with red hot tongs and then hanged. Die verflÜchte Jungfer, or Cursed maiden of iron, who received the condemned with arms of steel, enclosed him in a spiked embrace, and then relaxing, let him fall to a slow death in a pit of revolving knives and pointed bars.
Political morality accorded with general moral laxity. Bribery was wide spread, and worst at the top. Commercialism -- the sacrifice of morals to money -- was as intense as in any age; money, not man, was the measure of all things. Yet these same hustling burghers gave large sums to charity. “In papal times,” Luther wrote, “men gave with both hands. It snowed alms, foundations, and legacies. Our forefathers, lords and kings, princes and other folk gave richly -- yes to overflowing -- to churches, parishes, burses, hospitals.” It was a sign of a secularizing age that many charitable bequests were left, not to ecclesiastical bodies but to town councils, for distribution to the poor.
Manners became coarser-- in France and England as well as in Germany -- when the plutocracy of money superseded the aristocracy of birth in controlling the economy. Drunkenness was the national vice; both Luther and Hutten denounced it. Forks had come to Germany in the fourteenth century, but men and women still liked to eat with their fingers.
Dress was grandiose. Workmen were content with cap or felt hat, short blouse and trousers tucked into boots, or high shoes. Rich women wore crowns of gold, or gold embroidered hoods, and braided gold threads in their hair. On festive occasions men might outshine women in magnificence. Thousands of men and women travelled. They moved in painful delight on horses or mules, bearing the discomfort of unpaved roads and unwashed inns. Sensible persons, when they could, journeyed by boat along the Rhine, the Danube, or other great rivers. By 1500 a postal service, open to all, united the major towns.
All in all the picture is one of a people too vigorous and prosperous to tolerate any longer the manacles of feudalism or the exactions of Rome. A proud sense of German nationality survived all political fragmentation, and checked supernational emperors as well as supernatural popes. The Reformation would defeat the Holy Roman Empire as well as the papacy. In the 1,500 year war between Teuton and Roman, victory was once more, as in the fifth century, inclining toward Germany.
