Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847
BYWAYS OF HISTORY. 16
We have sometimes been disposed to regard with extreme impatience the fragmentary manner in which history is now written amongst us. Lives of the Queens—Lives of the Kings—Lives of our Statesmen—Lives of our Chancellors– thus breaking up into detached and isolated figures the great and animated group which every age presents. If our writers cannot grapple – and it is indeed a herculean task – with the annals of a nation, why not give us at least some single period, a reign or epoch, in its unbroken entirety? If they cut up the old man of history into this multitude of pieces, into what kettle or cauldron will they throw him that will boil him into youth and unity again? The scattered members are all that will remain to us. But our impatience on this matter would be very fruitlessly expressed. Such is the mode, such the fashion in the gentle craft of authorship. It were better, perhaps, to submit at once with a good grace – take whatever is worth the having, come in what shape it will, and keep our own good-humour into the bargain.
Amongst these fragmentary sketches, few have pleased us more than the two small volumes that designate themselves as Byways of History. Indeed, without pretending to do so, and notwithstanding their desultory nature, they give a very fair picture of the great period of the middle ages of which they treat, in its darker as well as its brighter points of view. There is also more novelty in the anecdotes than could have been expected, considering how well gleaned a field the authoress has had to traverse; and there is a playfulness in the style which, to youthful readers especially, will be found very attractive, though it may not always be sufficiently pungent to stir the stiffer muscles that grow about the upper lip of a sexagenarian critic.
"Byways" in history there are, strictly speaking, none at all; least of all can the peasant war in Germany, the principal subject of these volumes, be thought to lie amongst the secondary and less important transactions of the past. Whatever facts throw light upon the temper and modes of thinking of a bygone age, are of the very essence of history, though they may not immediately relate to crowned heads or official dignitaries. Yet, adopting the latitude of common speech, the title is significant enough. It is not the actions of kings and emperors, or the fate of nations and dynasties, that the fair historian undertakes to record; and as such a narrative is generally looked upon as the highway of history, she who diverges from it may be said to be traversing its byways. Only the byways, be it understood, may be the very roads which a good traveller would first and most industriously explore.
Ladies are said to hold it as one of their prerogatives to be a little unreasonable in their exactions, and a little self-contradictory in their sentiments. Our authoress appears, in one point, disposed to assert this prerogative of her sex. In ordinary cases, we know of nothing more impertinent than to appeal to the common process of litigious argumentation against these fair despots of society; but we doubt whether we should be acting even in the true spirit of gallantry, if we recognised any such prerogative in the domain of literature. It is open to any writer who thinks fit so to do, to disparage the present age by comparing it with olden times. It is also open to him, if he should be so minded, to show that these olden times, so much vaunted, were in fact far more culpable than ourselves, even in those points where we are guilty. But to none is it open – in the same book – to do both the one and the other; to disparage the present by comparison with the past, and then prove the past to have been ten times worse than the present. This is more than can reasonably fall to the share of any one author, or authoress. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot have the pleasure of putting the present age to shame by a contrast with the past, and the pleasure, almost as great, of exposing in their true colours the vices of a past that has been too indulgently surveyed.
But something of this license Mrs Sinnett seems disposed to take. At p. 37 we have to submit, with the rest of our contemporaries, to the following rebuke: – "When we hear it publicly proclaimed that it is a great thing for a young nobleman to postpone 'his pleasures' for a week or two for the sake of performing a service to his country, we cannot but begin to doubt whether, in the education of our privileged classes, we have really improved much on the system of the 'dark ages.' Then, at least, it was not thought that any class had a right to make 'its pleasures' its chief consideration."
Indeed! Yet we are told in other parts that the landlords of those times not only made their pleasures their chief consideration, but wrung by violence the last groschen from the peasant's hand in order to procure them. At p. 55, vol. ii., after an account of the pleasures of the kings and nobles, we have the following description of the peasant: – "And what, then, was the condition of the people all this while? 'Look here upon this picture and on this!' All taxes and imposts fell, as a matter of course, on the lower orders; the humble citizen, the laborious peasant, had to toil and earn by the sweat of his brow, not his own daily bread, but the means of luxurious indulgence to his insolent masters; yet if the wild boar came tearing up his fields and vineyards, and the knight and his followers dashed after him with a troop of horsemen dogs, he had no redress, and dared not even kill the beast, lest he should interfere with the pleasures of his lord… New methods and pretences for extorting money from the people were devised every day."
It would be easy to multiply similar quotations. The landlords of ancient times, with whom it was plainly intimated we could bear no flattering comparison, are held up, we see, to complete reprobation.
The difference between the bad landlord of ancient and of modern times, (for we presume the good and the bad, the wheat and the tares, were sown together then as now,) we believe to be this. The modern bad landlord takes his rent – a rent obtained often by a ruinous competition for the soil – and thinks no more of the matter; thinks nothing of the tenant, whether he has offered a higher rent than he can well pay, or of the labourer, whether the wages he receives are sufficient to support him in health. The ancient bad landlord was a positive extortioner; he did look after his tenants or his serfs – to see if there was any thing more he could take from them; he looked into the roost for the last hen, and behind the barn-door for the last egg. When we censure the modern landlord for being an absentee, reckless of his tenantry, we in fact tacitly demand from him a higher strain of virtue than we exact from other wealthy classes, who are allowed to receive without inquiry, and expend without control, the utmost income which fortune and the laws have given them. He is at worst the "sluggard king," indifferent to a world of which he knows nothing, and absorbed only in the pursuit of his own pleasures. But the bad landlord of feudal times had the active vices of the robber and the tyrant.
Let no one study the middle ages in the hope – which some seem to entertain – of extracting from them the lesson peculiarly applicable to ourselves. The feudal times are utterly past. Some of their forms, or some shadow of their forms, may still linger amongst us; but their spirit is as utterly past as that which animated an Athenian democracy, or the court of the Great King. We must study our duty as citizens, as Christians, in the circumstances around us, in the eternal Writing before us: we shall gain nothing by the fantastic gloss, with its grotesque illuminations, which the middle ages supply. This turning and struggling towards the past is but the backward looking of those whom the current is still carrying down the stream: it were wiser to look before, and on either side of them; they will better see whither they are going. —
It will perhaps be thought that throughout these volumes the sympathies of the authoress are a little too chameleon-like, – somewhat too mobile, and take their changeful hue from the immediate subject, or the last light thrown upon it. Now the knight, with his faith in God and his own right arm, his self-reliance, his daring and devotion, claims from the lady, as is most just, his meed of applause. But by-and-by she catches him upon his marauding expedition, the ruthless spoliator of the burgher, the contemptuous oppressor of the artisan; and she does not spare her censure. One moment she appears to join in the regret that the age of chivalry is gone! The next moment the same phrase rings differently, and when contemplating the oppressed condition of the peasantry, she rejoices that the age of chivalry is gone! In one part she makes honourable mention of the training the youthful nobleman received in the halls of the great, where he acted as page; but cannot, in another part, refrain from a little satire on this very system of training. "Noble young gentlemen," she says p. 32, "who would not to save their lives have employed themselves in any useful art or manufacture, had no objection to lay cloths, carry up dishes, wait at table, hold horses, and lead them to the stables; and noble young ladies did not disdain to perform many of the offices of a chambermaid at a hotel, for a knightly guest."
We note this versatility of feeling, but hardly for the purpose of blaming it; for indeed it is the peculiar characteristic of the middle ages thus to play with our sympathies. They present so many and such different phases, their institutions are capable of being viewed under such opposite lights, that it requires more care and watchfulness than is perhaps consistent with simple honesty of thought and feeling, to preserve one's self from these fluctuations of sentiment. One who yields unaffectedly to the genuine impressions which the history of this period produces, will find his Ohs and his Hahs breaking out in a very contradictory manner. That knight, with lance at rest which challenges the whole fighting world – whatever can be tilted at, – who would not be that knight? But the man cannot read; and thinks an old woman can bewitch him by her spells, and that his priest, by some spell also, can absolve him. That monk, with folded arms over a heart so well folded too – who would not be that monk? But the man has mingled asceticism with his piety till he knows not which is which; and let a woman in her youth and beauty traverse his path, he crosses himself, as if not the angel of this world, but the demon of another had appeared before him. In looking at these phantasmagoria of the past, we must be content to see and to feel for the moment; there is no stereotyped expression of face with which we can regard the whole.
We have soon exhausted our critical cavils, and shall look at leisure through these volumes for some of those points which interested us during their perusal. Amongst the first things we had noted for quotation is an account of our old friend Gotz von Berlichingen – him of the Iron Hand – which we somehow liked the better for there being no allusion to the drama of Goethe. Nobody whom the information could in the least interest, needed to be told that it was the hero of the drama whose real life and adventures he was getting acquainted with. We find, however, on re-perusal, that this account is too long to be extracted: we leave it untouched for those who peruse the work; and shall make our first quotation from the description of the Hanse Towns. Here is a curious passage, which shows that the mere collecting together in towns, and making some advance in the great art of money-getting, is no guarantee against superstitions as gross and ridiculous as any that haunt the boor in his cottage.
"With the horrors of superstition in the punishment of witches and the like, most readers are familiar enough; and such as occur in the registers of these cities, have little to distinguish them from similar occurrences elsewhere. Sometimes, indeed, there is an entry somewhat more noteworthy; as, for instance, of the arrival of 'The Wandering Jew' at the Isar gate of the city of Munich. It appears, that this rather remarkable visitor was not allowed to enter the city, but he told those who went to see him that he had been seven times round the world, and on being shown a picture of the Saviour, readily vouched for the likeness.
"Another entry concerns a certain wolf, who had committed terrible havoc, so that the country people, even at mid-day, were afraid to cross the fields; but a still greater consternation was created when the discovery was made that the wolf was no other than a certain deceased burgomaster of unhappy memory, who as every body knew, had stood looking out of an upper window of his house to watch his own funeral. The night-watchman was ready to swear to his identity; and as, putting all things together, no doubt existed any longer in the mind of any reasonable person, the formidable wolf, when taken, instead of being disposed of in the usual manner, was hung on a high gallows, in a brown wig, and a long gray beard, by way of completing his likeness to the burgomaster." – (P. 95.)
Those who indulge in, or applaud practical jests, should read on farther in the same chapter (p. 102.) We heartily wish that the professors of this species of wit were every one of them conducted in his turn into the "Paradise" here described; of which it may be sufficient to intimate that "it was provided with a bench and a good store of rods."
On monastic institutions, Mrs Sinnett has some very just and equitable remarks.
"Monasticism was a resolute attempt to subject the outward to the inward life; and through whatever devious paths it may have wandered, it set out from the true and high principle, that the spiritual and immortal man should attain dominion over the mere animal nature; and it grounded itself on the undeniable truth that the indulgence of the senses 'wars against the soul.' The objects it has in view are to us also true and holy, though we may differ as to the means of their attainment; yet even in these, the monks were not perhaps wholly wrong. Solitude and silence are unquestionably amongst the means of spiritual elevation; poverty is, in most instances, healthful to the soul, a means of obtaining a simplicity good for both body and mind; obedience is, beyond doubt, the school of patience, in which we best learn to combat our original sins of pride and self-will; but we have learned, from the experience of the Ascetics, a juster measure for these things, which, perhaps, a priori, we might not have been able to discover. They have tried the experiment for us; and now that its history is before us, it is easy to determine that the attempt to rend asunder the two natures so wonderfully combined in us, to put asunder what God has joined, is one that cannot come to good. Solitude, though often beneficial to full minds and active intellects, is more than the vacuity of ignorance can support. Poverty, pushed as it was by the Ascetics to the excess of destitution, tends, it is to be feared, to blight both body and soul. Obedience, carried beyond reasonable limits, leads to abject meanness and hypocrisy, as the history of convents in general will abundantly show. Yet, after making whatever deductions we fairly can for their mistakes, we still find, in the history of these singular institutions, much that is worthy of our deepest study; and the more so, the more firmly we are convinced of the utter impossibility of their restoration." – (P. 114.)
Restoration! Restore the Heptarchy! as Canning on one occasion exclaimed. And yet we understand that of late there has been a gentle sigh, and some half-formed projects for the revival of monastic institutions. We hear from the preface to Maitland's "Essays on the Dark Ages," that a circular was issued by persons of no contemptible influence in the church, headed "Revival of Monastic and Conventual Institutions on a plan adapted to the exigencies of the reformed Catholic religion." As Mr Maitland says of the plan – it would be after all but "a playing at monkery." Where, we would ask, is the irrevocable vow? Where is the unchangeable fate, the civil death, that awaited the inmate of the monastic house? Where is the superstitious admiration of the crowd without? Where all those religious ideas that made renouncement of life so sacred and meritorious? And where, moreover, is that insecure and unprotected condition of a half-civilised age, which made the retreat of the monastery so precious to the wearied and wounded spirit? You are charmed with an oasis in the desert; – you must spread the desert first, if you would realise the charm. What are monastic walls, to you, – who can take a lodging in Cheapside, and be as solitary, as undisturbed, as utterly forgotten as if the grave had closed upon you?
Viewed strictly as a portion of the past, and in relation to all the circumstances that gave origin and value to them, we confess we have a partiality for the old monasteries. Some of the popular censures which are still dealt upon them are founded upon erroneous ideas of the nature and purposes of such institutions. They are blamed repeatedly for their ignorance and their neglect of learning. They were not instituted for the preservation or advancement of learning. Originally they were not even ecclesiastical, but consisted of pious laymen, who wished to devote their souls to God, by drawing them out of the mire of their daily lives. Profane learning was more frequently regarded as a thing forbidden, than numbered amongst the objects which might engage their attention. "Solitude, labour, silence, and prayer – these were the elements of monastic life; and the question was not, how the monk might most effectually gather and diffuse learning, but – when, indeed, any question came to be raised – whether he might lawfully cultivate learning at all?" – (Maitland, p. 160.)
The charge of indolence, also – (the two epithets of "lazy and ignorant," generally go together, in the popular phraseology, when monks are spoken of) – is made without any discrimination, and bestowed as well upon bodies of men remarkable for their industrious and persevering cultivation of the soil, as upon the pampered and corrupted monastery. Amongst the rules of the Benedictines, labour figures conspicuously. In many cases it was the hard work of emigrants who first subdue the soil, that was performed by these sacred and secluded men. But, when an admiring world thought fit, in its sagacity, to reward a voluntary poverty by endowing and enriching it, – when the monastery became a wealthy landlord, with treasures of gold and silver in its coffers – then, as might be expected, labour declined, – the monk grew lazy, and the description which Mrs Percy Sinnett quotes from an old author, was, no doubt, very generally applicable to him. "Every other minute he comes out of his cell – then goes in again – then comes out again to look if the sun is not near setting." The world behaved towards the monk as an old gentleman we remember to have read of in some play, who, charmed with the temperance which his young friend had exhibited, rewarded it by putting his cellar of choice wines at his disposal. He was afterwards indignant at finding that the virtue of his protégé had not increased under his kind encouragement.
The remarks of Mrs P. Sinnett, which we have just quoted, on monastic life, usher in a very entertaining account of the origin and growth of the "Abbey of Altenberg." Here is a fragment of it: —
"The half-decayed mountain-castle, where the community was now established, was found to be in some respects unsuitable to its new destination; and the Abbot Berno, therefore, with the consent and assistance of the Counts of Berg, proposed to build a new convent down in the valley, where already, on a pleasant meadow-land, stood a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
"When the monks were called together to consider of the precise spot where the edifice should stand, it was found that they could by no means agree about it; some thought it should be built at the northern entrance of the valley, others that it should be at the foot of the castle-hill; others, again, that it should be immediately on the banks of the Dhun. In this dilemma, Abbot Berno, according to the narratives of the monks, proposed what seems a curious method of coming to a decision.
"Modern frivolity feels tempted to giggle when it hears that the animal always in especial favour with the monks was the ass. His simplicity of manners, humility of carriage, and usually taciturn habits, – the sign of the cross which he bears on his back – the manner in which he hangs his head, as the rules of most orders command the pious brethren themselves to do, – the patience with which he submits to discipline, – all this naturally recommended him to these devout recluses. They were even ready, it seems, to regard him as a kind of oracle in difficult cases.
"It was, we may recollect, not merely the spirit of monasticism, but the spirit of all those ages, to see in what we call trivial chances the ordination of a higher power. Do we not find, in the history of Nurnberg, that in the fourteenth century, two hundred years after the building of Altenberg convent, a worthy and respected burgher of that city, one Berthold Tucher, of the renowned family of that name, wishing to know whether it was the will of God that he should remain in the world and marry again, or take holy vows and devote himself to the monastic life did, after praying devoutly in the little chapel in his house, 'at the corner of the Milk Market, there where you turn into Dog Alley,' resolve to ascertain the Divine pleasure by the simple method of tossing up a halfpenny; three times did he toss it, and three times did it come up heads, and thereupon he accepted the oracle, and went directly and fetched himself a wife.
"Even so did the monks of Altenberg now resolve to devolve upon the ass the business which had proved too weighty for themselves. The highly-honoured Neddy was conducted accordingly to the gate of the castle, laden with the money to be expended for the building, and with the insignia of the convent, and then left to take whatever way might in his wisdom seem good to him. "Slowly and deliberately did he pace down towards the valley, the monks following at a reverential distance. Now and then the sagacious animal stopped, and cropped a thistle, doubtless to give himself time for reflection, and occasionally he stood still and looked around, as if to consider the capabilities of the place. He went on till he entered a shady grove, that afforded a delicious refuge from the burning rays of the afternoon sun, and stopped where a bright rivulet, trickling from the Spechtshard, and marking its course by a strip of the liveliest green, fell into the beautiful Dhun. The monks watched him with breathless expectation, for here they thought would be a delightful spot, and they dreaded lest he should go farther. The respectable animal, after due consideration, slowly stooped and tasted the water; and then, that he might omit no means of forming a correct judgment, began to try a little of the fragrant grass that grew in rich abundance on the bank. At length he lay down, and having apparently quite made up his mind, rolled over "heels upwards," and gave vent to his feelings in the trumpet tones of a loud and joyful bray. His sonorous voice was drowned in the exulting psalms of the monks – and on this, the loveliest spot of the whole valley, the sacred edifice was erected."
If the ass was a great favourite with the monk, it was still more so with the populace. With no other animal was so much of the rough humour of the middle ages associated. It might be worth consideration how far the introduction of the ass in certain religious or semi-religious festivals – as in the feast of the ass – has aided in investing him with that peculiar grave humour which modern wits associate with him. Apropos of this feast of the ass, we may as well correct a general error which Robertson has led his readers into, when he describes it as "a festival in commemoration of the Virgin Mary's flight into Egypt." The Virgin Mary appears to have had nothing to do with it, and the ass from which the festival took its name was not that on which she fled into Egypt, but the ass of Balaam. We rely on the authority of Maitland, whose "Essays on the Dark Ages" we have before alluded to – a not very amiable writer, by the way, and far more acrimonious than the importance of his contributions to our knowledge entitles him to be, but evidently a very formidable antagonist to those who deal in loose and careless statements. "The dramatis personæ of this celebrated interlude," he tells us, "were miscellaneous enough. There were Jews and Gentiles, as the representatives of their several bodies – Moses and Aaron and the prophets – Virgilius Maro – Nebuchadnezzar – The Sibyl, &. &c. Among them, however, was Balaam on his ass; and this (not, one would think, the most important or striking part of the show) seems to have suited the popular taste, and given the name to the whole performance and festival. I should have supposed, that Nebuchadnezzar's delivering over the three children to his armed men, and then burning them in a furnace made on purpose, in the middle of the church, would have been a more imposing part of the spectacle; but I pretend not to decide in matters of taste, and certainly Balaam's ass appears to have been the favourite. The plan of the piece seems to have been, that each of the persons was called out in his turn to sing or say something suitable to his character, and among others, 'Balaam ornatus, sedens super asinam,' having spurs on his heels, and holding the reins in his hands, struck and spurred his ass, and a youth holding a sword in his hand, barred his progress. Whereupon another youth, under the belly of the ass, and speaking for the abused animal, cries out, 'Why, &c., &c.'" – in the well-known terms of the colloquy.
"Indeed the ass," says the same writer in a note, "seems to be always a favourite with the public, and to give the tone and title wherever he appears. In the twelfth century, an order of monks was formed whose humility (or at least their rule) did not permit them to ride on horseback. The public (I hope to the satisfaction of these humble men) entirely overlooked them, eclipsed as they were by the animals on which they rode, and called it ordo Asinorum."
There is an account here of "Prussia in the Old Times," which will be read with interest; the more so as we suspect it is a portion of history not very familiar to English readers. We mean the period from the conquest of Prussia, and its conversion to Christianity by the knights of the Teutonic Order, to the year 1526, when Albert, Grand-master of that order, made a treaty with Sigismund, king of Poland, with whom he had been at war, by which it was stipulated that Albert should hold the duchy as lay prince, doing homage – how times have changed! —to the king of Poland!
We shall devote our remaining space, however, to some extracts from Mrs P. Sinnett's account of the peasant war, the subject which occupies the whole of the second volume.
In every historical or biographical work which treats of the Reformation in Germany, there will be found a short, and only a short, notice of the peasant war, which broke out on the preaching of Luther, and of the fury of the anabaptists and others; and in every such notice the reader will find it uniformly stated that these disturbances and insurrections, though assuming a religious character, were in their origin substantially of a political or social nature, springing, in short, from the misery and destitution of the lower orders. But we do not know where the English reader will find this general statement so well verified, or so fully developed, as in the little work before us. In every part of Germany we see partial insurrections repeatedly taking place, all having the same unhappy origin; and our wonder is, not that the preaching of the Reformation should have communicated a new vitality to these insurrectionary movements, but that, after being allied with religious feeling, and religious sanction and enthusiasm, they were not still more tremendous in their results.
Here is one of the earliest of these insurrections: it is a type of the class. The chapter is headed
"THE DRUMMER OF NIKLASHAUSEN
"Franconia, (the greatest part of which is now included in the kingdom of Bavaria) was the smallest of the circles of the empire, though excelling them all in fertility, and most of them in beauty. The valley of the Maine, which flows through it, is so rich in vineyards, that it has been said, it alone might furnish wine to all Germany; and the river also opens for it a communication with the Rhine, Holland, and the ocean, by which it might receive the produce of all other lands. Towards the north, where the hills of Thuringia, and the Pine Mountains are less productive, its comparative barrenness is compensated by its riches in minerals and wood. It is, in short, as a German writer says, 'a beautiful and blessed land,' – yet here it was that the peasantry were suffering the greatest extremities of want and oppression, and here began the first of the series of revolts that preceded the great outbreak of 1525. It was in the year 1476 that a shepherd lad of Wurzburg, named Hans Boheim, but commonly known as Hans the Drummer, or the piper – for he was in the habit of playing on both instruments at weddings, church festivals, and such occasions – began to meditate on all he saw and heard, – 'to see visions, and to dream dreams;' and one day – it was about the time of mid-Lent – there appeared to him no less a person than the 'Glorious Queen of Heaven' herself. The life he had hitherto led now appeared profane and sinful; he burned his drum in the presence of the people, and began to preach to them to repent of their sins, 'for the kingdom of heaven was at hand;' and he commanded them at the same time to lay aside all costly attire, cords of silk and silver, pointed-toed shoes and all manner of vanity. The people hearkened to the new prophet, and great numbers came every holiday flocking to Niklashausen to hear him. Soon he enlarged his theme. 'The Blessed Virgin,' he said, 'had not only commanded him to preach the renunciation of all the pomps and vanities of the world, but likewise to announce the speedy abolition of all existing authorities; there should be no lords spiritual or temporal, neither prince nor pope, neither king nor kaiser; but all should be as brothers; that all taxes and tributes, tithes and dues, should be done away with; and wood and water, spring and meadow, be free to all men.'"
In reading this paragraph, one is at first struck with the superfluous incongruity of preaching against "costly attire and silk and silver cords" to the ragged and shoeless populace that formed the chief part of the drummer's audience. But a little reflection suggests that, in the first place, it gives a preacher a great hold over a mob, to inveigh against the sins of their superiors, and that, in the next place, there is a very easy transition from inveighing against the sins of the rich, to disputing their privileges, and comtemning their power and authority.