German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages

CHAPTER VII.

COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

For the complete understanding of the events which follow it must be borne in mind that we are witnessing the end of a distinct historical period; and, as we have pointed out in the Introduction, the expiring effort, half conscious and half unconscious, of the people to revert to the conditions of an earlier age. Nor can the significance be properly gauged unless a clear conception is obtained of the differences between country and town life at the beginning of the sixteenth century. From the earliest periods of the Middle Ages of which we have any historical record, the Markgenossenschaft, or primitive village community of the Germanic race, was overlaid by a territorial domination, imposed upon it either directly by conquest or voluntarily accepted for the sake of the protection indispensable in that rude period. The conflict of these two elements, the mark organisation and the territorial lordship, constitutes the marrow of the social history of the Middle Ages.

In the earliest times the pressure of the over-lord, whoever he might be, seems to have been comparatively slight, but its inevitable tendency was for the territorial power to extend itself at the expense of the rural community. It was thus that in the tenth and eleventh centuries the feudal oppression had become thoroughly settled, and had reached its greatest intensity all over Europe. It continued thus with little intermission until the thirteenth century, when from various causes, economic and otherwise, matters began to improve in the interests of the common man, till in the fifteenth century the condition of the peasant was better than it has ever been, either before or since within historical times, in Northern and Western Europe. But with all this, the oppressive power of the lord of the soil was by no means dead. It was merely dormant, and was destined to spring into renewed activity the moment the lord's necessities supplied a sufficient incentive. From this time forward the element of territorial power, supported in its claims by the Roman law, with its basis of private property, continued to eat into it until it had finally devoured the old rights and possessions of the village community. The executive power always tended to be transferred from its legitimate holder, the village in its corporate capacity, to the lord; and this was alone sufficient to place the villager at his mercy.

At the time of the Reformation, owing to the new conditions which had arisen and had brought about in a few decades the hitherto unparalleled rise in prices, combined with the unprecedented ostentation and extravagance more than once referred to in these pages, the lord was supplied with the requisite incentive to the exercise of the power which his feudal system gave him. Consequently, the position of the peasant rapidly changed for the worse; and although at the outbreak of the movement not absolutely in extremis, according to our notions, yet it was so bad comparatively to his previous condition and that less than half a century before, and tended so evidently to become more intolerable, that discontent became everywhere rife, and only awaited the torch of the new doctrines to set it ablaze. The whole course of the movement shows a peasantry not downtrodden and starved, but proud and robust, driven to take up arms not so much by misery and despair as by the deliberate will to maintain the advantages which were rapidly slipping away from them.

Serfdom was not by any means universal. Many free peasant villages were to be found scattered amongst the manors of the territorial lords, though it was but too evidently the settled policy of the latter at this time to sweep everything into their net, and to compel such peasant communes to accept a feudal over-lordship. Nor were they at all scrupulous in the means adopted for attaining their ends. The ecclesiastical foundations, as before said, were especially expert in forging documents for the purpose of proving that these free villages were lapsed feudatories of their own. Old rights of pasture were being curtailed, and others, notably those of hunting and fishing, had in most manors been completely filched away.

It is noticeable, however, that although the immediate causes of the peasant rising were the new burdens which had been laid upon the common people during the last few years, once the spirit of discontent was aroused it extended also in many cases to the traditional feudal dues to which until then the peasant had submitted with little murmuring, and an attempt was made by the country side to reconquer the ancient complete freedom of which a dim remembrance had been handed down to them.

The condition of the peasant up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, that is to say, up to the time when it began to so rapidly change for the worse, may be gathered from what we are told by contemporary writers, such as Wimpfeling, Sebastian Brandt, Wittenweiler, the satires in the Nürnberger Fastnachtspielen, and numberless other sources, as also from the sumptuary laws of the end of the fifteenth century. All these indicate an ease and profuseness of living which little accord with our notions of the word peasant. Wimpfeling writes: "The peasants in our district and in many parts of Germany have become, through their riches, stiff-necked and ease-loving. I know peasants who at the weddings of their sons or daughters, or the baptism of their children, make so much display that a house and field might be bought therewith, and a small vineyard to boot. Through their riches, they are oftentimes spendthrift in food and in vestments, and they drink wines of price."

A chronicler relates of the Austrian peasants, under the date of 1478, that "they wore better garments and drank better wine than their lords"; and a sumptuary law passed at the Reichstag, held at Lindau in 1497, provides that the common peasant man and the labourer in the towns or in the field "shall neither make nor wear cloth that costs more than half a gulden the ell, neither shall they wear gold, pearls, velvet, silk, nor embroidered clothes, nor shall they permit their wives or their children to wear such".

Respecting the food of the peasant, it is stated that he ate his full in flesh of every kind, in fish, in bread, in fruit, drinking wine often to excess. The Swabian, Heinrich Müller, writes in the year 1550, nearly two generations after the change had begun to take place: "In the memory of my father, who was a peasant man, the peasant did eat much better than now. Meat and food in plenty was there every day, and at fairs and other junketings the tables did well-nigh break with what they bore. Then drank they wine as it were water, then did a man fill his belly and carry away withal as much as he could; then was wealth and plenty. Otherwise is it now. A costly and a bad time hath arisen since many a year, and the food and drink of the best peasant is much worse than of yore that of the day labourer and the serving man."

We may well imagine the vivid recollections which a peasant in the year 1525 had of the golden days of a few years before. The day labourers and serving men were equally tantalised by the remembrance of high wages and cheap living at the beginning of the century. A day labourer could then earn, with his keep, nine, and without keep, sixteen groschen[24] a week. What this would buy may be judged from the following prices current in Saxony during the second half of the fifteenth century. A pair of good working shoes cost three groschen; a whole sheep, four groschen; a good fat hen, half a groschen; twenty-five cod fish, four groschen; a waggon-load of firewood, together with carriage, five groschen; an ell of the best home-spun cloth, five groschen; a scheffel (about a bushel) of rye, six or seven groschen.

The Duke of Saxony wore grey hats which cost him four groschen. In Northern Rhineland about the same time a day labourer could, in addition to his keep, earn in a week a quarter of rye, ten pounds of pork, six large cans of milk, and two bundles of firewood, and in the course of five weeks be able to buy six ells of linen, a pair of shoes, and a bag for his tools. In Augsburg the daily wages of an ordinary labourer represented the value of six pounds of the best meat, or one pound of meat, seven eggs, a peck of peas, about a quart of wine, in addition to such bread as he required, with enough over for lodging, clothing, and minor expenses. In Bavaria he could earn daily eighteen pfennige, or one and a half groschen, whilst a pound of sausage cost one pfennig, and a pound of the best beef two pfennige, and similarly throughout the whole of the States of Central Europe.

A document of the year 1483, from Ehrbach in the Swabian Odenwald, describes for us the treatment of servants by their masters. "All journeymen," it declares, "that are hired, and likewise bondsmen (serfs), also the serving men and maids, shall each day be given twice meat and what thereto longith, with half a small measure of wine, save on fast days, when they shall have fish or other food that nourisheth. Whoso in the week hath toiled shall also on Sundays and feast days make merry after mass and preaching. They shall have bread and meat enough, and half a great measure of wine. On feast days also roasted meat enough. Moreover, they shall be given, to take home with them, a great loaf of bread and so much of flesh as two at one meal may eat."

Again, in a bill of fare of the household of Count Joachim von Oettingen in Bavaria, the journeymen and villeins are accorded in the morning, soup and vegetables; at mid-day, soup and meat, with vegetables, and a bowl of broth or a plate of salted or pickled meat; at night, soup and meat, carrots, and preserved meat. Even the women who brought fowls or eggs from the neighbouring villages to the castle were given for their trouble—if from the immediate vicinity, a plate of soup with two pieces of bread; if from a greater distance, a complete meal and a cruise of wine. In Saxony, similarly, the agricultural journeymen received two meals a day, of four courses each, besides frequently cheese and bread at other times should they require it. Not to have eaten meat for a week was the sign of the direst famine in any district. Warnings are not wanting against the evils accruing to the common man from his excessive indulgence in eating and drinking.

Such was the condition of the proletariat in its first inception, that is, when the mediæval system of villeinage had begun to loosen and to allow a proportion of free labourers to insinuate themselves into its working. How grievous, then, were the complaints when, while wages had risen either not at all or at most from half a groschen to a groschen, the price of rye rose from six or seven groschen a bushel to about five-and-twenty groschen, that of a sheep from four to eighteen groschen, and all other articles of necessary consumption in a like proportion![25]

In the Middle Ages, necessaries and such ordinary comforts as were to be had at all were dirt cheap; while non-necessaries and luxuries, that is, such articles as had to be imported from afar, were for the most part at prohibitive prices. With the opening up of the world-market during the first half of the sixteenth century, this state of things rapidly changed. Most luxuries in a short time fell heavily in price, while necessaries rose in a still greater proportion.

This latter change in the economic conditions of the world exercised its most powerful effect, however, on the character of the mediæval town, which had remained substantially unchanged since its first great expansion at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries. With the extension of commerce and the opening up of communications, there began that evolution of the town whose ultimate outcome was to entirely change the central idea on which the urban organisation was based.

The first requisite for a town, according to modern notions, is facility of communication with the rest of the world by means of railways, telegraphs, postal system, and the like. So far has this gone now that in a new country, for instance America, the railway, telegraph lines, etc., are made first, and the towns are then strung upon them, like beads upon a cord. In the mediæval town, on the contrary, communication was quite a secondary matter, and more of a luxury than a necessity. Each town was really a self-sufficing entity, both materially and intellectually. The modern idea of a town is that of a mere local aggregate of individuals, each pursuing a trade or calling with a view to the world-market at large. Their own locality or town is no more to them economically than any other part of the world-market, and very little more in any other respect. The mediæval idea of a town, on the contrary, was that of an organisation of groups into one organic whole. Just as the village community was a somewhat extended family organisation, so was, mutatis mutandis, the larger unit, the township or city. Each member of the town organisation owed allegiance and distinct duties primarily to his guild, or immediate social group, and through this to the larger social group which constituted the civic society. Consequently, every townsman felt a kind of esprit de corps with his fellow-citizens, akin to that, say, which is alleged of the soldiers of the old French "foreign legion," who, being brothers-in-arms, were brothers also in all other relations. But if every citizen owed duty and allegiance to the town in its corporate capacity, the town no less owed protection and assistance, in every department of life, to its individual members.

As in ancient Rome in its earlier history, and as in all other early urban communities, agriculture necessarily played a considerable part in the life of most mediæval towns. Like the villages they possessed each its own mark, with its common fields, pastures, and woods. These were demarcated by various landmarks, crosses, holy images, etc.; and "the bounds" were beaten every year. The wealthier citizens usually possessed gardens and orchards within the town walls, while each inhabitant had his share in the communal holding without. The use of this latter was regulated by the Rath or Council. In fact, the town life of the Middle Ages was not by any means so sharply differentiated from rural life as is implied in our modern idea of a town. Even in the larger commercial towns, such as Frankfurt, Nürnberg or Augsburg, it was common to keep cows, pigs, and sheep, and, as a matter of course, fowls and geese, in large numbers within the precincts of the town itself. In Frankfurt in 1481 the pigsties in the town had become such a nuisance that the Rath had to forbid them in the front of the houses by a formal decree. In Ulm there was a regulation of the bakers' guild to the effect that no single member should keep more than twenty-four pigs, and that cows should be confined to their stalls at night. In Nürnberg in 1475 again, the Rath had to interfere with the intolerable nuisance of pigs and other farmyard stock running about loose in the streets. Even in a town like München we are informed that agriculture formed one of the staple occupations of the inhabitants, while in almost every city the gardeners' or the winegrowers' guild appears as one of the largest and most influential.

It is evident that such conditions of life would be impossible with town-populations even approaching only distantly those of to-day; and, in fact, when we come to inquire into the size and populousness of mediæval cities, as into those of the classical world of antiquity, we are at first sight staggered by the smallness of their proportions. The largest and most populous free imperial cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Nürnberg and Strassburg, numbered little more than 20,000 resident inhabitants within the walls, a population rather less than that of (say) Gloucester at the present time. Such an important place as Frankfurt-am-Main is stated at the middle of the fifteenth century to have had less than 9000 inhabitants. At the end of the fifteenth century Dresden could only boast of about 5000. Rothenburg on the Tauber is to-day a dead city to all intents and purposes, affording us a magnificent example of what a mediæval town was like, as the bulk of its architecture, including the circuit of its walls, which remain intact, dates approximately from the sixteenth century. At present a single line of railway branching off from the main line with about two trains a day is amply sufficient to convey the few antiquarians and artists who are now its sole visitors, and who have to content themselves with country-inn accommodation. Yet this old free city has actually a larger population at the present day than it had at the time of which we are writing, when it was at the height of its prosperity as an important centre of activity. The figures of its population are now between 8000 and 9000. At the beginning of the sixteenth century they were between 6000 and 7000. A work written and circulated in manuscript during the first decade of the sixteenth century, "A Christian Exhortation" (Ein Christliche Mahnung), after referring to the frightful pestilences recently raging as a punishment from God, observes, in the spirit of true Malthusianism, and as a justification of the ways of Providence, that "an there were not so many that died there were too much folk in the land, and it were not good that such should be lest there were not food enough for all".

Great population as constituting importance in a city is comparatively a modern notion. In other ages towns became famous on account of their superior civic organisation, their more advantageous situation, or the greater activity, intellectual, political, or commercial, of their citizens.

What this civic organisation of mediæval towns was, demands a few words of explanation, since the conflict between the two main elements in their composition plays an important part in the events which follow. Something has already been said on this head in the Introduction. We have there pointed out that the Rath or Town Council, that is the supreme governing body of the municipality, was in all cases mainly, and often entirely, composed of the heads of the town aristocracy, the patrician class or "honorability" (Ehrbarkeit), as they were termed, who on the ground of their antiquity and wealth laid claim to every post of power and privilege. On the other hand were the body of the citizens enrolled in the various guilds, seeking, as their position and wealth improved, to wrest the control of the town's resources from the patricians. It must be remembered that the towns stood in the position of feudal over-lords to the peasants who held land on the city territory, which often extended for many square miles outside the walls. A small town like Rothenburg, for instance, which we have described above, had on its lands as many as 15,000 peasants. The feudal dues and contributions of these tenants constituted the staple revenue of the town, and the management of them was one of the chief bones of contention.

Nowhere was the guild system brought to a greater perfection than in the free imperial towns of Germany. Indeed, it was carried further in them, in one respect, than in any other part of Europe, for the guilds of journeymen (Gesellenverbände), which in other places never attained any strength or importance, were in Germany developed to the fullest extent, and of course supported the craft-guilds in their conflict with the patriciate. Although there were naturally numerous frictions between the two classes of guilds respecting wages, working days, hours, and the like, it must not be supposed that there was that irreconcilable hostility between them which would exist at the present time between a trades union and a syndicate of employers. Each recognised the right to existence of the other. In one case, that of the strike of bakers towards the close of the fifteenth century, at Colmar in Elsass, the craft-guilds supported the journeymen in their protest against a certain action of the patrician Rath which they considered to be a derogation from their dignity.

Like the masters the journeymen had their own guild-house, and their own solemn functions and social gatherings. There were, indeed, two kinds of journeymen-guilds: one whose chief purpose was a religious one, and the other concerning itself in the first instance with the secular concerns of the body. However, both classes of journeymen-guilds worked into one another's hand. On coming into a strange town a travelling member of such a guild was certain of a friendly reception, of maintenance until he procured work, and of assistance in finding it as soon as possible.

Interesting details concerning the wages paid to journeymen and their contributions to the guilds are to be found in the original documents relating exclusively to the journeymen-guilds, collected by Georg Schanz.[26] From these and other sources it is clear that the position of the artisan in the towns was in proportion much better than even that of the peasant at that time, and therefore immeasurably superior to anything he has enjoyed since. In South Germany at this period the average price of beef was about two denarii[27] a pound, while the daily wages of the masons and carpenters, in addition to their keep and lodging, amounted in the summer to about twenty, and in the winter to about sixteen of these denarii. In Saxony the same journeymen-craftsmen earned on the average, besides their maintenance, two groschen four pfennige a day, or about one-third the value of a bushel of corn.

In addition to this, in some cases the workman had weekly gratuities under the name of "bathing money"; and in this connection it may be noticed that a holiday for the purpose of bathing once a fortnight, once a week, or even oftener, as the case might be, was stipulated for by the guilds, and generally recognised as a legitimate demand. The common notion of the uniform uncleanliness of the mediæval man requires to be considerably modified when one closely investigates the condition of town life, and finds everywhere facilities for bathing in winter and summer alike. Untidiness and uncleanliness, according to our notions, there may have been in the streets and in the dwellings in many cases, owing to inadequate provisions for the disposal of refuse and the like; but we must not therefore extend this idea to the person, and imagine that the mediæval craftsman or even peasant was as unwholesome as, say, the Roumanian peasant of to-day.

When these wages received by the journeymen artisans are compared with the prices of commodities previously given, it will be seen how relatively easy were their circumstances; and the extent of their well-being may be further judged from the wealth of their guilds, which, although varying in different places, at all times formed a considerable proportion of the wealth of the town. The guild system was based upon the notion that the individual master and workman was working as much in the interest of the guild as for his own advantage. Each member of the guild was alike under the obligation to labour, and to labour in accordance with the rules laid down by his guild, and at the same time had the right of equal enjoyment with his fellow-guildsmen of all advantages pertaining to the particular branch of industry covered by the guild. Every guildsman had to work himself in propriâ personâ; no contractor was tolerated who himself "in ease and sloth doth live on the sweat of others, and puffeth himself up in lustful pride". Were a guild-master ill and unable to manage the affairs of his workshop, it was the council of the guild, and not himself or his relatives, who installed a representative for him and generally looked after his affairs. It was the guild again which procured the raw material, and distributed it in relatively equal proportions amongst its members; or where this was not the case, the time and place were indicated at which the guildsman might buy at a fixed maximum price. Every master had equal right to the use of the common property and institutions of the guild, which in some industries included the essentials of production, as, for example, in the case of the woollen manufacturers, where wool kitchens, carding rooms, bleaching houses and the like were common to the whole guild.

Needless to say, the relations between master and apprentices and master and journeymen were rigidly fixed down to the minutest detail. The system was thoroughly patriarchal in its character. In the hey-day of the guilds, every apprentice and most of the journeymen regarded their actual condition as a period of preparation which would end in the glories of mastership. For this dear hope they were ready on occasion to undergo cheerfully the most arduous duties. The education in handicraft, and, we may add, the supervision of the morals of the blossoming members of the guild, was a department which greatly exercised its administration. On the other hand, the guild in its corporate capacity was bound to maintain sick or incapacitated apprentices and journeymen, though after the journeymen had developed into a distinct class, and the consequent rise of the journeymen-guilds, the latter function was probably in most cases taken over by them. The guild laws against adulteration, scamped work, and the like, were sometimes ferocious in their severity. For example, in some towns the baker who misconducted himself in the matter of the composition of his bread was condemned to be shut up in a basket which was fixed at the end of a long pole, and let down so many times to the bottom of a pool of dirty water. In the year 1456 two grocers, together with a female assistant, were burnt alive at Nürnberg for adulterating saffron and spices, and a similar instance happened at Augsburg in 1492. From what we have said it will be seen that guild life, like the life of the town as a whole, was essentially a social life. It was a larger family, into which various blood families were merged. The interest of each was felt to be the interest of all, and the interest of all no less the interest of each.

But in many towns, outside the town population properly speaking, outside the patrician families who generally governed the Rath, outside the guilds, outside the town organisation altogether, there were other bodies dwelling within the walls and forming imperia in imperiis. These were the religious corporations, whose possessions were often extensive, and who, dwelling within their own walls, shut out from the rest of the town, were subject only to their own ordinances. The quasi-religious, quasi-military Order of the Teutonic Knights (Deutscher Orden), founded at the time of the Crusades, was the wealthiest and largest of these corporations. In addition to the extensive territories which it held in various parts of the Empire, it had establishments in a large number of cities. Besides this there were, of course, the Orders of the Augustinians and Carthusians, and a number of less important foundations, who had their cloisters in various towns. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the pomp, pride, and licentiousness of the Teutonic Order drew upon it the especial hatred of the townsfolk; and amid the general wreck of religious houses none were more ferociously despoiled than those belonging to this Order. There were, moreover, in some towns, the establishments of princely families, which were regarded by the citizens with little less hostility than that accorded to the religious Orders.

Such were the explosive elements of town life when changing conditions were tending to dislocate the whole structure of mediæval existence. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had struck a heavy blow at the commerce of the Bavarian cities which had come by way of Constantinople and Venice. This latter city lost one by one its trading centres in the East, and all Oriental traffic by way of the Black Sea was practically stopped. It was the Dutch cities who inherited the wealth and influence of the German towns when Vasco da Gama's discovery of the Cape route to the East began to have its influence on the trade of the world. This diversion of Oriental traffic from the old overland route was the starting point of the modern merchant navy, and it must be placed amongst the most potent causes of the break-up of mediæval civilisation. The above change, although immediately felt by the German towns, was not realised by them in its full importance either as to its causes or its consequences for more than a century; but the decline of their prosperity was nevertheless sensible, even now, and contributed directly to the coming upheaval.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE.

The impatience of the prince, the prelate, the noble, and the wealthy burgher at the restraints which the system of the Middle Ages placed upon his activity as an individual in the acquisition for his own behoof and the disposal at his own pleasure of wealth, regardless of the consequences to his neighbour, found expression, and a powerful lever, in the introduction from Italy of the Roman law in place of the old canon and customary law of Europe. The latter never regarded the individual as an independent and autonomous entity, but invariably treated him with reference to a group or social body, of which he might be the head or merely a subordinate member; but in any case the filaments of custom and religious duty attached him to a certain humanity outside himself, whether it were a village community, a guild, a township, a province, or the Empire. The idea of a right to individual autonomy in his dealings with men never entered into the mediæval man's conception. Hence the mere possession of property was not recognised by mediæval law as conferring any absolute rights in its holder to its unregulated use, and the basis of the mediæval notions of property was the association of responsibility and duty with ownership. In other words, the notion of trust was never completely divorced from that of possession.

The Roman law rested on a totally different basis. It represented the legal ethics of a society on most of its sides brutally and crassly individualistic. That that society had come to an end instead of evolving to its natural conclusion—a developed capitalistic individualism such as exists to-day—was due to the weakness of its economic basis, owing to the limitation at that time of man's power over nature, which deprived it of recuperative and defensive power, thereby leaving it a prey not only to internal influences of decay but also to violent destructive forces from without. Nevertheless, it left a legacy of a ready-made legal system to serve as an implement for the first occasion when economic conditions should be once more ready for progress to resume the course of individualistic development, abruptly brought to an end by the fall of ancient civilisation as crystallised in the Roman Empire.

The popular courts of the village, of the mark and of the town, which had existed up to the beginning of the sixteenth century with all their ancient functions, were extremely democratic in character. Cases were decided on their merits, in accordance with local custom, by a body of jurymen chosen from among the freemen of the district, to whom the presiding functionaries, most of whom were also of popular selection, were little more than assessors. The technicalities of a cut-and-dried system were unknown. The Catholic Germanic theory of the Middle Ages proper, as regards the civil power in all its functions, from the highest downward, was that of the mere administrator of justice as such; whereas the Roman law regarded the magistrate as the vicegerent of the princeps or imperator, in whose person was absolutely vested as its supreme embodiment the whole power of the State. The Divinity of the Emperors was a recognition of this fact; and the influence of the Roman law revived the theory as far as possible under the changed conditions, in the form of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings—a doctrine which was totally alien to the Catholic feudal conception of the Middle Ages. This doctrine, moreover, received added force from the Oriental conception of the position of the ruler found in the Old Testament, from which Protestantism drew so much of its inspiration.

But apart from this aspect of the question, the new juridical conception involved that of a system of rules as the crystallised embodiment of the abstract "State," given through its representatives which could under no circumstances be departed from, and which could only be modified in their operation by legal quibbles that left to them their nominal integrity. The new law could therefore only be administered by a class of men trained specially for the purpose, of which the plastic customary law borne down the stream of history from primitive times, and insensibly adapting itself to new conditions but understood in its broader aspects by all those who might be called to administer it, had little need. The Roman law, the study of which was started at Bologna in the twelfth century, as might naturally be expected, early attracted the attention of the German Emperors as a suitable instrument for use on emergencies. But it made little real headway in Germany itself as against the early institutions until the fifteenth century, when the provincial power of the princes of the Empire was beginning to overshadow the central authority of the titular chief of the Holy Roman Empire. The former, while strenuously resisting the results of its application from above, found in it a powerful auxiliary in their courts in riveting their power over the estates subject to them. As opposed to the delicately adjusted hierarchical notions of Feudalism, which did not recognise any absoluteness of dominion either over persons or things, in short for which neither the head of the State had any inviolate authority as such, nor private property any inviolable rights or sanctity as such, the new jurisprudence made corner-stones of both these conceptions.

Even the canon law, consisting in a mass of Papal decretals dating from the early Middle Ages, and which, while undoubtedly containing considerable traces of the influence of Roman law, was nevertheless largely customary in its character with an infusion of Christian ethics, had to yield to the new jurisprudence, and that too in countries where the Reformation had been unable to replace the old ecclesiastical dogma and organisation. The principles and practice of the Roman law were sedulously inculcated by the tribe of civilian lawyers who by the beginning of the sixteenth century infested every Court throughout Europe. Every potentate, great and small, little as he might like its application by his feudal over-lord to himself, was yet only too ready and willing to invoke its aid for the oppression of his own vassals or peasants. Thus the civil law everywhere triumphed. It became the juridical expression of the political, economical, and religious change which marks the close of the Middle Ages and the beginnings of the modern commercial world.

It must not be supposed, however, that no resistance was made to it. Everywhere in contemporary literature, side by side with denunciations of the new mercenary troops, the Landsknechte, we find uncomplimentary allusions to the race of advocates, notaries, and procurators who, as one writer has it, "are increasing like grasshoppers in town and in country year by year". Wherever they appeared, we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang up. He who had but the money in hand might readily defraud his poorer neighbour in the name of law and right. "Woe is me!" exclaims one author, "in my home there is but one procurator, and yet is the whole country round about brought into confusion by his wiles. What a misery will this horde bring upon us!" Everywhere was complaint and in many places resistance.

As early as 1460 we find the Bavarian estates vigorously complaining that all the courts were in the hands of doctors. They demanded that the rights of the land and the ancient custom should not be cast aside; but that the courts as of old should be served by reasonable and honest judges, who should be men of the same feudal livery and of the same country as those whom they tried. Again in 1514, when the evil had become still more crying, we find the estates of Würtemberg petitioning Duke Ulrich that the Supreme Court "shall be composed of honourable, worthy, and understanding men of the nobles and of the towns, who shall not be doctors, to the intent that the ancient usages and customs should abide, and that it should be judged according to them in such wise that the poor man might no longer be brought to confusion". In many covenants of the end of the fifteenth century, express stipulation is made that they should not be interpreted by a doctor or licentiate, and also in some cases that no such doctor or licentiate should be permitted to reside or to exercise his profession within certain districts. Great as was the economical influence of the new jurists in the tribunals, their political influence in the various courts of the Empire, from the Reichskammergericht downwards, was, if anything, greater. Says Wimpfeling, the first writer on the art of education in the modern world: "According to the loathsome doctrines of the new jurisconsults, the prince shall be everything in the land and the people naught. The people shall only obey, pay tax, and do service. Moreover, they shall not alone obey the prince but also those he has placed in authority, who begin to puff themselves up as the proper lords of the land, and to order matters so that the princes themselves do as little as may be reign." From this passage it will be seen that the modern bureaucratic state, in which government is as nearly as possible reduced to mechanism and the personal relation abolished, was ushered in under the auspices of the civil law. How easy it was for the civilian to effect the abolition of feudal institutions may be readily imagined by those cognisant of the principles of Roman law. For example, the Roman law of course making no mention of the right of the mediæval "estates" to be consulted in the levying of taxes or in other questions, the jurist would explain this right to his too willing master, the prince, as an abuse which had no legal justification, and which, the sooner it were abolished in the interest of good government the better it would be. All feudal rights as against the power of an over-lord were explained away by the civil jurist, either as pernicious abuses, or, at best, as favours granted in the past by the predecessors of the reigning monarch, which it was within his right to truncate or to abrogate at his will.

From the preceding survey will be clearly perceived the important rôle which the new jurisprudence played on the continent of Europe in the gestation of the new phase which history was entering upon in the sixteenth century. Even the short sketch given will be sufficient to show that it was not in one department only that it operated; but that, in addition to its own domain of law proper, its influence was felt in modifying economical, political, and indirectly even ethical and religious conditions. From this time forth Feudalism slowly but surely gave place to the newer order, all that remained being certain of its features, which, crystallised into bureaucratic forms, were doubly veneered with a last trace of mediæval ideas and a denser coating of civilian conceptions. This transitional Europe, and not mediæval Europe, was the Europe which lasted on until the eighteenth century, and which practically came to an end with the French Revolution.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

The following is a rescript issued by a Commission of the Reichstag held at Nürnberg in 1522-23, anent the commercial syndicates which the sudden development of the world-market had recently called into existence:—

"What the small Commission by order of the great Commission hath determined concerning the Monopolia or pernicious and prohibited commerce is hereafter related."

(MSS. of 61 pages in the Ernestine General Archives at Weimar, Margin E. Quoted by Egelhaaf. Appendix, vol. i.)

"In the first place, concerning the origin of the word Monopolia. Monopolia is a Greek word, from the word Monos, that is, alone, and Polonia, that is, a selling. As if one should say: I alone sell this or that, or my Company or I alone sell. Therefore, such separate dealing whereby several dealers or traders unite together in such wise that they alone obtain profit from their handicraft or merchandy is called Monopolia. This is discoursed of in Lege Unica (?), Cod. de Monopoliis.

"Item, the aforesaid Monopolia, Uniting, Combining, Associatings and their Sellings have not now for the first time been found not to be borne; but the same were regarded and known as very noxious to the Commonweal, destructive and worthy to be punished, as aforetime by the Roman Emperors and Jurisconsults, and more especially by the blessed Emperor Justinian, so that such trespassers should be made to lose all their goods, and moreover should be adjudged to eternal misery (exile) from their own homes, as standeth written Lege Unica, Cod. de Monop. Honorius also and Theodosius forbade those of noble birth and those of the richer sort from harmful commerce; so that the common folk might the more easily buy of the Merchants; and in the Reichstag at Köln in 1512 the matter was much debated by the Emperor Maximilian, the Electors, the Princes and the Estates, and the aforesaid increase in the price of Wares was forbidden under great pains and penalties. The decree of the Reichstag sayeth:—

"And since much great fellowship in Trade hath arisen within the Realm in the last years, and also there be several and sundry persons who venture to bring all kinds of Wares and Merchants' goods, such as Spices, Arras, Woollen Cloth, and such-like into their own hand with power to trade in them, to set or to make their own advantage out of them, as it them pleaseth, and do greatly harm thereby the Holy Empire and all Estates thereof, contrary to the Imperial written Law and to all honesty: we have ordered and enacted for the furthering of the common profit and according to necessity, and we do desire that earnestly, and we will, that such noxious dealing be henceforth forbidden, and that they abstain [from it], and that henceforth they may [not] carry it on or exercise it. Those who shall do this contrary to the aforesaid, their Goods and Chattels shall be confiscated and fall to the Authority of the place. And the same Companies and Merchants [shall] henceforth not be conducted [on their journeys] by any authority in the Empire, nor shall it be lawful for such to do so with whatsoever words, opinion or clauses the convoy hath been given. Yet shall it not be forbidden to any man on this account to enter into company with any other save only if he undertake to bring the Wares into one hand and to place upon the Wares a worth according to his own mind and pleasure; or shall pledge the buyer or seller to sell, to give, or to keep such Wares to or for no man but himself, or that he shall not give them save such wise as he hath agreed with him. But when they, to whom it is permitted to pursue such trade, shall seek to make an unbecoming dearness, the Authority shall with zeal and earnestness forbid such dearness, and command an honest sale; but where an Authority be careless, the Fiscal shall exhort the same to perform his duty within the space of one month, failing such hath the Fiscal power to enter process against him.

"But the Authority and the Fiscal have neither done their duty, as is not right nor just, forasmuch as in the present times other small robbers and thieves are punished sorely, and these rich Companies, even one of them, do in the year compass much more undoing to the Commonweal than all other robbers and thieves in that they and their servants give public display of luxuriousness, pomp and prodigal wealth, of which there is no small proof in that Bartholomew Rhem did win, in so short a time and with so little stock of trade, such notable riches in the Hochstetter Company—as hath openly appeared in the justifying before the City Court at Augsburg and at the Reichstag but lately held at Worms. Therefore hath the said Rhem been made prisoner in Worms, and is even still kept in durance. Moreover shall he be sent here to Nürnberg that he may bear witness, and that it may be known with what perils the aforesaid forbidden Monopolies and Trade be practised, also through what good ways and means such may be set aside and prevented.

"There are three questions to be discoursed of: (1) Whether the Monopolies be hurtful to the Holy Empire and therefore are to be destroyed; (2) Whether all Companies without difference shall be done away, or whether a measure shall be set to them; (3) By what means this shall be done, and how these things may be remedied.

"I. Firstly, that the great Companies and the heaping up of their Stocks are everywhere harmful is the one cause as may be seen from the Spice, which is the most considerable Merchandise thus dealt and traded with, in the German nation. It is said with credibility that the King of Portugal hath not to pay more for one pound's weight of Pepper sent from the Indies to Antwerp than three shillings in gold, twenty of which shillings go to a Rhenish Gulden. But also if a Company in Portugal doth send for Spices it hath no trouble and excuse. How dear soever the King doth offer or give the Wares, it payeth him sometimes yet more, but on condition that he shall not furnish such Wares to them who will hereafter buy, save for a still greater price. To this example it may be added that he who hath offered an hundred-weight of Pepper from Portugal for eighteen ducats hath received for them twenty ducats or even more, with the condition that the Royal Majesty shall furnish to none other for the space of one or two years the same Pepper or Wares cheaper than twenty-four ducats, and thereby one hath so outbidden the other that the Spice which at the first could be sold but for eighteen ducats is now sold in Portugal for thirty-four ducats and up-wards. And it hath become at one time well-nigh as dear as it was ever before. The same hath also happened to other Spices with which such Merchants are nothing burdened, nor do they have any loss there-withal, but great over-abounding gain, the while they, for their part, will sell as dearly as they may, and none else in the Holy Empire may have or obtain the same. What loss and disadvantage resulteth to most men, even to the least, is not hard to be comprehended. We may prove this from the Nürnberg Spice convoys. The Saffron of most price, so called from the Catalonian place Saffra, hath cost some years ago, as namely in the sixteenth year, two and a half Gulden, six Kreutzers; now in the twenty-second year it costeth five and a half Gulden, fifteen Kreutzers. The best Saffron, which is called Zymer by the Merchants, hath cost from 1516 to 1519 two Gulden the pound, and even in 1521 two Gulden, twenty-four to twenty-six Kreutzers; now it costeth four Gulden; and even so are all Saffrons more dear, Arragonian, Polish, Avernian, etcetera.

"The Merchants, moreover, do not make dear everything at the same time, but now with Saffron and Cloves, the one year with Pepper and Ginger, then with Nutmeg, etcetera, to the intent that their advantage may not at once be seen of men. It is therefore purposed to make an enquiry of how much Spices are brought into Germany each year, so that it may be known how much the tax upon these Spices would bring in, in so far as the Merchants make a small increase to each pound, as happeneth very commonly. It hath been ordered to the Merchants to make estimation thereof, but their estimations were diverse; yet are the numbers told for the Spices which each year go in from Lisabon [Lisbon] alone, so that there may be had better knowledge. 36,000 hundred-weight of Pepper and not less but rather the more; 2400 hundred-weight of Ginger, about 1000 balls of Saffron do come from Lisabon alone, without that which cometh from Venice. For the other Spices they do not make known the sum. At Antwerp this may be known the more surely, through the due which is there levied.

"The Companies have paid especial note to such Wares as can be the least spared; and if one be not rich enough, it goeth for help to another, and the twain together do bring the Wares, whatsoever they be, wholly into their own hand. If a poor, small Merchant buy of them these same Wares, whose worth hath been cunningly enhanced, and if he desireth to trade with these Wares, according to his needs, then these aforesaid great hucksters are from that hour upon his neck, they have the abundance of these same Wares, and can give them cheaper and on longer borrowing; thereby is this poor man oppressed, cometh to harm and some to destruction. Ofttimes do they buy back their Wares through unknown persons, but not to the gain of them that sell; therefore it is that they have their Storehouses in well-nigh all places in Europe; and here lieth the cause of the magnificence of the heaping up of Stock.

"The great Companies do lessen trading and consuming in the lands. They do all their business in far countries and by letters; where now there is a great Company, there aforetime did twenty or more [persons], it may be, nourish themselves, who must all now wander afar, because they cannot hold a storehouse and servants in other places. By these means came it to pass that roads, tolls and convoy dues were multiplied, as innkeepers and all handiworkers of use and pleasure have knowledge; for many sellers bring good sale and cheapness into the Wares.

"Furthermore, the good gold and silver Monies are brought out of the land by the Companies, who everywhere do buy them up and change them. Within a short time Rhenish gold will have been changed and melted from far-seeking lust of gain. Therefore are there already in divers towns risings of the poor man, which, where it be not prevented, will, it is to be feared, extend further and more.

"II. Now it be asked, are all Companies to be therefore destroyed? We have now already shown cause why the great Companies mighty in money should be scattered and not be borne with. But, therefore, it is not said that all Companies and common trading should be wholly cut away; this were indeed against the Commonweal and very burdensome, harmful and foolish to the whole German nation; for therefrom would follow (1) that one should give strength, help and fellowship to Frenchmen and foreign nations, that they should undertake and carry out that which with so much pains we have gone forth to destroy. These foreign nations would then suck out the whole German land. (2) Furthermore, if each would trade singly and should lose thereby, that would then be to his undoing, and also to theirs who had entrusted to him their Goods. That may not happen where divers persons join together with moderation. (3) Such a forbidding would solely serve the rich to their advantage, who in all cases everywhere do pluck the grain for themselves and do leave the chaff for others. Of these rich, some are so placed that they are able even to do that which now great Companies do and which is thought to be so sore an oppression. Therewith would the matter not be bettered, but only a covering would be set upon it. (4) Trading and industry do bring this with them, that the Wares should not be sought in one place alone. One man is not able, and more especially not at the time when there is need thereof. The issue would be that trade in the land would be forbidden and it would serve the gain of foreign nations, and especially at this time [hurt?] the Germans; but to hire servants and to send such in his stead to another place needs money, and small Stocks will hardly bear the holding of domestics; many there be, indeed, who are not able to provide for themselves, let alone for servants.

"III. What proposals are now to be put forth for the staying of the aforesaid forbidden practice?

"(1) Companies or single persons shall use no more than twenty thousand, forty thousand, or for the most fifty thousand Gulden Stock for trade, and shall have no more than three Storehouses outside their family dwelling.

"(2) They shall be held by their bodily sworn vows to declare to their Authority that they have no more money in trade.

"(3) Their Stock may not be enhanced by gain; but rather, at farthest, account must be made every two years and the gain divided, also a notifying to the Authority must be made that the reckoning and the distributing hath been fulfilled.

"(4) No Money may be lent with usury for purpose of trade, for this is ungodly and usurious, also harmful and noxious to the Commonweal, without weighing of gain and of loss to take or to give monies or usury.

"(5) No sort of Ware may be brought into one hand.

"(6) Dispersed Companies may not join themselves together, on pain of losing all their goods.

"(7) No Merchant may buy at one buying more than 100 hundred-weight of Pepper, 100 hundred-weight of Ginger, and of no manner of Spice which hath the name, more than 50 hundred-weight; also after such buying he may not buy or trade any more of the same Ware for the fourth part of a year.

"(8) Inasmuch as especial nimbleness is used by the great Companies, the which have their knowledge in many lands, when the Wares spoil or when they come into greater worth, so as they make foreign Merchants buy up from others that have such Wares and bring the same into their hands before the others do know of such loss. Therefrom there followeth a great dearness of the Ware. For the other part the punishment may be best set in such wise that should such a harmful sale be disclosed within four weeks from the making thereof, the buyer shall be bound thereunto that he surrender his Ware again to the seller for the one half that was paid therefor; the other half part of the price falleth to the Authority.

"(9) On pain of loss of the Goods, as hath been determined in Köln, the seller may not make condition that the buyer shall not dare to give away the Wares for a lesser price.

"(10) In order that foreign nations may not be healed and bettered the while German land is oppressed and despoiled, it is commanded that this ordinance shall bind all foreigners born without who have their Storehouse within the Empire; so that a foreigner, whether a Frenchman or whatsoever he may be, that tradeth in the Holy Empire and is encompassed by this ordinance, shall and must suffer all penalties even as other Merchants born in this country, that do transgress. This shall also bind all Principalities, Lordships and Cities, even though they be free, to the intent that it shall be held equally for all men, and that none shall therein be spared.

"(11) Through the voyaging of German Merchants to Portugal there ariseth great evil, in that in Lisabon, because of the shipping from Portugal to the Indies with Spices and other matters, there be great Storehouses and very bold buying and selling, such as can in no wise else exist in one place, and therefore in that place ariseth the great due and enhancement of every manner of Spice and Ware which are borne away from thence, the same also with the pennyworths which they use up even in Portugal, and may not succeed with till they be once more shipped from the Indies to that city. To this end must every Ware that cometh from Portugal be ventured on the sea by Germans and be bound upon the Wheel of Fortune; and the voyage to Portugal is well-nigh more fearsome and dangerous than is that to the Indies. In few years on this same sea hath the worth of fifteen hundreds of thousands of Gulden been drowned and perished; and yet nevertheless are the Merchant folk, who have inherited but little, become so unspeakably rich. Therefore shall all shipping to Portugal be forbidden; the Portuguese shall themselves take in hand the venture and their Wares, and those that they may not keep they shall bring to Germany; for if one doth not thus pursue them, they must perforce sell at a lesser price. Others do affirm, indeed, that if the Portuguese do bring their Wares to Antorff (Antwerp), then would the great Companies find there also means to buy up the Wares; and the King of Portugal may be moved to get the Ware to Danzig or Egen Merten (Aigues Mortes) in France, so that the Germans must fetch them thence. But others would show, forsooth, that because of his receiving of the metals he cannot spare Germany, and without them he can do no trade to the Indies; one must therefore but hinder his receiving of the metals, and thus shall one compel him not to trade to France.

"(12) There shall be a fixing of the price of some Wares, to the end that not merely is it ordered for the common hucksters and Merchant folk, but also for them that buy these Wares for their own use and pleasure. It is to fear that also the scattered Companies do agree together secretly to sell over the price; moreover, hath the King of Portugal the Spices in his power alone, and since that time can he set the prices as he will, because for no manner of dearness will they rest unsold among the Germans. Moreover, it hath been related from Refel and Lubeck that the King of Denmark and the Fuggers stand in trade, the one with the other, that all Merchants' goods that have hitherto come from Muscey (Moscow) into the German trading cities shall further come to Denmark, and into the might of the King thereof and of the Fuggers, to the end that they may enhance the same at their pleasure. Thus far have men not punished such things with just pains, but have wittingly borne with them. Such can alone be made riddance of by a forbidding, that they and the Wares may not be sold in Germany higher than for a price determined. The Regiment (Imperial Governing Body) shall tax each Ware by the hundred-weight to a fixed sum. As measure shall the customary middle prices serve as they have been wont to be before the Wares have come into the power of the King of Portugal and of the great, hurtful, forbidden Companies. But question may be made: what though the Wares should miscarry? Then shall the Merchant folk recover themselves in them that do succeed. But what if there be lack of those Wares? The foreigners can far less spare our money than we their Wares; therefore is there in the Empire no long enduring, hurtful lack to be feared; unless it should be that one should esteem the not giving out in vain of Money for a lack. By such ordinance shall the danger of the overweening raising of prices be best hindered. In the matter of the dues the remoteness of the places can be made consideration of, also the diversness of the measures and the weights; thus will the Pepper in the storehouse in Frankfort be taxed at one Kreutzer the pound and even so in Nürnberg. The due shall begin one half-year after the determination thereof by the Imperial Estates.

"Further, it shall not be that the Merchants shall lend money to the poor folk upon pledge of the seed that standeth in the field, or upon the grapes of the vine-stems and other fruits, whereby these poor, needy people have that taken from them that they do hardly earn.

"Thereupon shall follow penalties for all transgressors as for careless Authorities; the leave that each may indite before the Fiscal; the determination that all confiscated goods wherewith transgressions have been committed shall fall, the half to the Imperial Fiscus, the half to the [local] Authority. The Fiscal shall also proceed against the Companies which have enriched themselves openly against right and justice; if this do befal, it shall not alone feed the Fiscus but shall also warn others to guard themselves from such evil hurtfulness. The ordinance concerning the sale, etc., shall be put in work two months after it hath been proclaimed.

"It be also considered that the safe conduct of the highways is beneficial to the Merchants' calling, so that all traders may traffic and travel more safely on the highways of the Holy Empire than hath befallen for long time past.

"It chanceth that certain Merchants deceitfully in the seeming of trust and faith do take the Goods of other men by making bankruptcy, which is like unto a theft, and he who doth of purpose strive after another man's Money and Goods shall be punished hardly.

"In fine, there be Imperial Measures and Weights needed; for the falsifying of Cloths and Wares it behoveth a grievous treatment, and the Estates are warned to beware of cunning and greedy and suborned procurations, whereby this ordinance may be brought to nought by the Companies." (N.B.—Hereby is meant according to a notice from another hand: "by a bribing of the Authorities so that by their favor and patrocinium the pains of this ordinance may be escaped".)

I have given the above document at length, as it is curious and instructive, for more than one reason. In the first place, it indicates the Imperial German centralisation in several ways attempted during the reigns of Maximilian and Charles V., on the lines of the recent centralising administrations of England, France and Spain. It also shows us Germany commanding the bullion of Europe to a great extent. This was, of course, in consequence of the wealth of the trading cities, especially of the Hanse and Bavarian towns. The importance of the spice trade is also strikingly illustrated; and on this point the document may well give rise to various reflections as to the character of late mediæval cookery. Last, but not least, we see the hostility of the proud feudal prince or baron and his legal assessor to the Parvenu and Nouveau riche then for the first time appearing on the scene.

I. (IM AUSZUG).

1522. Was der Kleine Ausschuss auf Befehl des grossen Ausschusses, der Monopolia oder schädlichen verbotenen Verkauf halb geratschlagt hat, wird nachher erzählt.

(Handschrift von 61 Seiten im Ernestinischen Gesamt Archiv zu Weimar. Registrande E.)

Erstlich von dem Ursprung des Wortes Monopolia. Monopolia ist ein kriegerisch Wort, welches seinen Ursprung hat von dem Worte Monos, das ist allein, und Polonie, das ist Verkauf. Gleich als spräche jemand: ich allein verkauf das oder jenes, Oder; meine Gesellschaft oder ich allein verkaufe. Darum wird solche sonderliche Hantierung, als ob sich etliche Hantierer oder Kaufleute dermassen vereinigen, dass sie allen den Nutzen aus ihrem Handwerk oder Kaufmannschaft empfangen, Monopolia genannt. Davon ist gesagt in lege Vinca (?) Cod. de Monopoliis.

Item obengemeldete Monopolia, Vereinigung, Verbindung, Gesellschaften und ihr Verkauf wird nicht allein allererst jetzt dem gemeinen Nutzen unleidlich und unerträglich erfunden, sondern sind dieselben wie vor durch den römischen Kaiser und Rechtsetzer und sonderlich durch den löblichen Kaiser Justinio, dem gemeinen Nutzen als fast schädlich, verderblich und sträflich geacht und erkannt, dass dieselben Überführer [Übertreter] alle ihre Güter verloren und dazu ausserhalb ihrer Wohnung in ewiges Elend (Verbannung) verurteilt sein sollen, als geschrieben steht lege Vinca Cod. de Mono. Auch Honorius und Theodosius haben denen vom Adel und den Reicheren die schädliche Kaufmannschaft verboten, damit das gemeine Volk leichter bei den Kaufleuten kaufen könne, und auf dem Reichstag zu Köln ist 1512 die Sache von Kaiser Maximilian, Kurfürsten, Fürsten und Ständen hoch bewegt und gemeldete Verteurung der Waren bei grossen Peenen und Strafen verboten worden. Der Abschied dieses Reichstags sagt:—

Und nachdem etwa viel grosse Gesellschaft in Kaufmannschaft in kurzen Jahren im Reich aufgestanden, auch etliche sondere Personen seien, die allerlei Waren und Kaufmannsgüter wie Spezerei, Artz, wollene Tücher und dergleichen in ihre Hand und Gewalt zu bringen unterstehn, Verkauf damit zu treiben, setzen und machen ihnen zu Vorteil gewertet ihres Gefallens, fügen damit dem heiligen Reiche und allen Ständen desselben merklichen Schaden zu, wider gemein geschriebenes kaiserliche Recht und aller Ehrbarkeit: haben wir zu Förderung gemeinen Nutzens und der Notdurft nach georduct und gesetzt, und tun das hiermit ernstlich, und wollen dass solche schädliche Handierung hinfüro verboten und abstehn und die hinfüro treiben oder üben. Welche herwider solches tun wurden [werden] der [deren] Habe und Güter soll confisciert und der Oberkeit jiglichs Orts verfallen sein. Und dieselben Gesellschaften und Kaufleute hinfüro durch keine Obrigkeit im Reich geleitet werden, sie auch desselben nicht fähig sein, mit was Worten, Meinung oder Clauseln solch Geleit gegeben wurden. Doch soll hiedurch niemand verboten sein sich mit jemand in Gesellschaft zu tun, um Waren die ihm gefallen zu kaufen und zu verhandieren, dann allein, dass er die Ware nicht unterstehe in eine Hand zu bringen und derselben Ware einen Wert nach seinem Willen und Gefallen zu setzen, oder dem Käufer oder Verkäufer andingen, solche Ware niemandem denn ihm zu kaufen, zu geben oder zu behalten, oder dass er sie nicht mehr geben will, wie er mit ihm überein gekommen sei (wa wie er mit ihme überkomen hette). Wenn aber die, welchen so Kaufmannschaft zu treiben erlaubt ist, unziemliche Teurung zu machen sich unterstehn, so soll die Oberkeit mit Fleiss und Ernst, solche Teuerung abschaffen und redlichen Kauf verfügen. Wo aber eine Oberkeit lässig wäre, soll der Fiscal sie mahnen in Monatsfrist das Ihre zu tun; andernfalls hat er Macht gegen sie zu procedieren.

Allein die Oberkeit und der Fiscal haben das Ihre nicht getan, das denn weder gut noch Recht ist, dieweil doch je zu Zeiten andere kleine Räuber und Diebe hart (als hertiglich) gestraft werden, und diese reichen Gesellschaften eine des Jahrs den gemeinen Nutzen viel mehr weder [als] alle andere Strachräuber und Diebe beschädigen, wie dann das ihr und ihrer Diener Köstlichkeit, Pracht und überschwenglicher Reichtum öffentliche Anzeigung gibt. Derselben nicht kleine Anzeigung hat man auch daraus, dass Bartholome Rhem gar in kurzer Zeit mit so wenigem Hauptgut in der Hochsteter Gesellschaft als einmerklich Gut gewonnen hat, wie dann das in der Rechtfertigung am Stadtgericht zu Augsburg und auf jüngst gehaltenem Reichstag zu Worms offenbar gemacht ist. Man hat den Rhem deshalb in Worms gefänglich eingebracht, da er denn noch jetzt gefänglich enthalten wird. Man soll ihn hieher nach Nürnberg erfordern, damit er Zeugnis ablegt und man erfährt, mit waserlei Gefährlichkeit obengemeldete verbotene Monopolien und Verkauf geübt werden, auch durch welche guten Mitteln Wege solchem zuvorzukommen und abzuwenden ist.

Drei Fragen sind hierüber zu stellen. (1) Ob die Monopolien dem heiligen Reiche schädlich und deshalb abzuthun sind. (2) Ob alle Gesellschaften ohne Unterschied abgethan werden sollen oder ob ihnen ein Mass zu setzen sei. (3) Durch was für Mittel dieses geschehen und wie diesen Sachen geholfen werden kann.

I. Erstlich dass die grossen Gesellschaften und Haufung ihrer Hauptgüter männiglich nachteilig sind, ist die eine Ursache und will es an der Spezerei, welches der vornehmste Stücke eines ist, so in deutscher Nation verführt und hantiert werden, ansehen. Man sagt glaublich, dass der [dem?] König von Portugal 1 Pfund Pfeffer aus Indien bis nach Antwerpen zu liefern, über drei Schilling in Gold, deren zwanzig ein Rheinischer Gulden tut, nicht zu stehen komme. So aber eine Gesellschaft in Portugal nach Spezerei schickt, so habe sie keine Beschwerde und Einrede, wie teuer der König solche Waare beut oder gibt, bezahle ihm sogar zu Zeiten noch mehr, nur mit dem Geding, dass er solche Ware andern, die hernach kaufen wollen, noch teurer gebe. Des zu einem Exempel mag gesetzt werden: so der von Portugal einen Centner Pfeffer um 18 Dukaten etwa geboten hat, haben sie ihm 20 oder noch mehr darum gegeben, doch mit dem Geding, dass die königliche Würde in einem oder zwei Jahren keinem andern desselben Pfeffer oder Ware näher [billiger] denn um 24 Dukaten geben soll, und so einer den andern gesteigert, dass die Spezerei, so erstlich um 18 Dukaten erlangt werden mochte, itzund [jetzt] in Portugal über 34 Dukaten kauft wird. Und ist also shier noch einsten [einmal] so teuer geworden als es vorher gewesen. Dergleichen mit andern Spezereien auch geschehen ist, davon solchen Kaufleuten nichts gelegen, noch sie einigen Verlust, sondern grossen überschwänglichen Gewinn haben dieweil sie wiederum, so teuer sie wollen, geben mögen, und sonst niemand im heiligen Reiche dieselbe haben oder bekommen mag. Was Schätzung und Nachteil den meisten bis auf den mindesten daraus erfolgt, ist nicht schwer zu gedenken. Man kann dies aus den Nürnberger Spezerei-Reisen beweisen. Der höchste Saffra, so kathelonisch Ort Saffra genannt wird, hat vor etlichen Jahren, als nämlich im 16, dritthalb Gulden sechs Kreuzer gegolten; jetzt kostet er, im 22 Jahr, fünfhalb Gulden 15 Kreuzer. Der beste Saffran, so von den Kaufleuten Zymer genannt wird, hat pro Pfund 1516-1519 2 Gulden und noch 1521 2 Gulden 24-26 Kreuzer gegolten, jetzt gilt er 4 Gulden; ebenso sind alle Saffrane, arragonischer, polnischer, avernischer aufgestiegen, u. s. w.

Die Kaufleute schlagen auch nicht mit allem auf einmal auf, sondern jetzt mit Saffran und Nägelien, das eine Jahr mit Pfeffer und Ingwer, dann noch mit Muskatnuß u. s. w., damit ihr Vorteil nicht verstanden werden soll. Man will deshalb eine Erhebung anstellen, wie viel Spezerei jährlich nach Deutschland gebracht wird, damit man weiss, so die Kaufleute auf ein jedes Pfund einen kleinen Anschlag machen, was es in solch grosser Menge tut, und damit abnehmen kann, was ein Zoll auf diese Spezerei ertrüge. Man hat auch schon von Kaufleuten sich Angaben machen lassen, welche aber abweichend waren, doch werden die Ziffern genannt für die Spezereien, welche allein jährlich aus Lissabon eingehen, damit man bessere Erkundigung einziehen könne. 36,000 Centner Pfeffer und nicht darunter; che darüber; 2400 Centner Ingwer; auf 1000 Ballen Saffran kommen allein von Lissabon, ohne das was von Venedig kommt. Der andern Spezereien wissen sie keine Summe anzuzeigen. Genaueres kann man in Antwerpen vermittelst des dort erhobenen Zolls erfahren.

Die Gesellschaften haben es besonders auf die Waren abgesehen, deren man am wenigsten geraten [entbehren] mag; und wenn eine nicht reich genug ist, so nimmt sie eine andere zu Hilfe und beide bringen dann die betreffende Ware ganz in ihre Hand. Wenn ein armer kleiner Kaufmann von ihnen dieselbe aufgezurgene Ware kaufen und dann die Ware andernfalls seiner Nahrung nach vertreiben will, so sind ihm gedachte grosse Hantierungen von stund an auf dem Nacken, haben den Überschwall derselben Ware, können sie wohlfeiler, auch auf langem Burgk [Borg] hingeben; damit wird dieser Armer bedrängt, kommt zu Schaden und etliche zu Verderb. Manchmal kaufen sie auch ihnen ihre Waren durch urkundliche Personen, doch nicht ihnen zu gut, wieder ab; das schafft, dass sie schier an allen Orten im ganzen Europa ihre Gelager halten; Ursach das ist der Pracht des grossen Haubtgutz.

Die grossen Gesellschaften mindern die Hantierung und Zehrung in den Landen. Sie richten alles über Land und in Briefen aus; wo jetzt eine grosse Gesellschaft ist, da nährten sich sonst wohl 20 oder mehr, die alle webern und wandeln mussten, weil sie keine Lager und Diener an andern Orten halten konnten. Dadurch wurden die Strassen gebaut, Zoll und Geleit gemehrt, desgleichen wie Wirte und alle Handwerk des Nutzens und Geniessen empfinden; denn viel Verkäufer bringen gut Kauf und Wohlfeilheit der Waren.

Weiter kommt die gute goldene und silberne Münz durch die Gesellschaften, welche sie überall aufkaufen und einwechseln, ausser Landes. Binnen kurzer Zeit wird aus weit gesuchtem Eigennutz Rheinisch Gold ausgewechselt, verführt und verschmelzt sein. Deshalb sind auch schon in etlichen Städten Empörungen des gemainen Mannes entstanden, was, wo es nicht abgewendet wird, noch weiter und mehr zu besorgen ist.

Man fragt sich II., sollen deshalb alle Gesellschaften abgetan werden? Das die grossen geldmächtigen Gesellschaften zu vertrennen und nicht zu dulden sind ist die Ursach oben angezeigt. Deshalb sollen aber nicht alle Gesellschaften und versammelte Hantierungen gänzlich abgeschnitten sein; wär wider gemeinen Nutzen, auch ganzer deutscher Nation sehr hoch beschwerlich, nachteilig und verfächtlich; dann daraus würde folgen (1) dass man Franzosen und äussern Nationen Stärke, Hilf und Handreichung gäbe, dasjenige für zu nehmen und zu treiben, das man jetzt so hoch beschwerlich abzutun fürhat. Diese fremden Nationen würden das ganze deutsche Land dann aussaugen. (2) Wenn ferner alle allein handeln würden und einem Schaden entstünde, so würde ihm das zum Verderben gereichen, und auch denen, welche ihm das Ihre anvertraut hätten. Das kann nicht geschehen, wo mehrere Personen mit Mass sich vereinigen. (3) Würde ein solches Verbot allein den Reichen zum Vorteil dienen, welche ohnehin allenthalben die Körner für sich ziehen und die Spreu den andern lassen. Von diesen Reichen sind einige so gestellt, dass sie eben dasjenige zu tun vermöchten, was jetzt grosse Gesellschaften tun und was man für so herb beschwerlich achtet. Damit würde der Sache nicht geholfen, sondern ihr nur ein Deckel aufgesetzt sein. (4) Hantierung und Gewerb bringen es mit sich, dass man die Ware nicht blos an einem Orte suchen muss; dazu ist eine einzige Person nicht im Stande, und namentlich nicht zu der Zeit, wo es etwa Notdurft ist. Die Folge wäre, dass man dem Handel das Land verbieten, fremden Nationen Nutzen schaffen, die Deutschen aber drucken und bösern würde. Diener aber anzunehmen und solche an seiner Statt an andere Orte zu schicken erfordert Geld, und kleine Hauptgüter ertragen kaum das Halten von Knechten; viele können sich selbst nicht, zu geschweigen Diener, hinbringen.

III. Welche Vorschläge sind nun zur Ablehnung gemeldeter verbotener, böser Verkäufe zu machen?

(1) Es sollen Gesellschaften oder sondere Personen nur bis zu 20,000, 40,000 oder zum meisten 50,000 Gulden Hauptgut zum Handel gebrauchen und nicht mehr als drei Lager ausserhalb ihrer häuslichen Wohnung haben.

(2) Sie sollen gehalten sein, bei ihren leiblichen geschworenen Eidespflichten ihrer Obrigkeit anzusagen, dass sie nicht mehr Geld im Handel haben.

(3) Dieses Hauptgut darf nicht durch Gewinn vermehrt werden; vielmehr muss längstens alle zwei Jahre Rechnung getan und der Gewinn verteilt, auch der Oberkeit davon Anzeige gemacht werden, dass die Rechnung und Austeilung erfolgt ist.

(4) Es darf zu Handelszwecken kein Geld um Zinskauf entlehnt werden, da dies ungottlich und wucherlich, auch gemeinem Nutzen nachteilig und schädlich ist, ohne Wagnis Gewinns und Verlusts Geld oder Zins zu nehmen oder zu geben.

(5) Keinerlei Ware darf in eine Hand gebracht werden.

(6) Zertrennte Gesellschaften dürfen sich nicht vereinigen, bei Verlierung aller ihrer Güter.

(7) Kein Kaufmann darf auf einen Kauf mehr über 100 Centner Pfeffer, 100 Centner Ingwer und von keinerlei Spezerei, wie die Namen hat, über 50 Centner kaufen, auch nach solchem Kauf in einem Vierteljahr derselben Ware keine mehr führen oder kaufen.

(8) Nachdem von den grossen Gesellschaften eine sondere Behendigkeit gebraucht wird, dieweil sie in vielen Landen ihr Wissen haben, wann die Waren verderben oder in Aufschlag kommen, so machen sie fremde Kaufleute, die andern, so solche Waren haben, abkaufen, und bringen dieselben zu ihren Händen, ehe die andern solchs Schadens gewahr werden. Daraus folgt dann ein grosser Aufschlag der Ware. Dagegen setzt man am besten die Strafe, dass, so sich ein solcher gefährlicher Verkauf in vier Wochen den nächsten darnach erfunden, dass dann der Abkäufer soll verpflichtet sein, dem Verkäufer seine Ware um das halbe Kaufgeld wieder zuzustellen, weil er es ihm abgekauft hat der andere halbe Teil der Kaufsumme soll dann der Obrigkeit verfallen sein.

(9) Bei Strafe des Verlusts der Güter, wie in Köln bestimmt worden ist, darf der Verkäufer die Bedingung nicht machen, dass der Käufer die Ware nicht näher [billiger] geben dürfe.

(10) Damit nicht fremde Nationen geheilt und gebessert, aber das deutsche Land bezwungen und verderbt werden, ist bedacht, dass diese Ordnung auch alle Fremden, die Lager im Reiche haben, binden soll. So indem ein Walch [Welscher], Franzos oder wer er sei, im heiligen Reich hantierte und in dieser Ordnung begriffen, soll und muss er alle Strafen wandeln und kehren, wie andere inländische überfahrende Kaufleute. Dass soll alle Fürstentümer, Herrschaften und Städte, ob die gleich indem dafür gefreiet wären, auch beflissen und binden, damit es gegen männiglich gleich gehalten und niemand hierin geschont werde.

(11) Durch das Fahren deutscher Kaufleute nach Portugal entsteht grosser Schaden, weil in Lissabon wegen der Schiffung von Portugal nach Indien mit Spezerei und anderem die grossen Niederlagen und tapfersten Käufe und Gewerbe sind, die sonst mindert an einigen Orten bestehen könnten, und deshalb dort die grossen Zoll Schatzung von allerlei Spezereien und Waren, die von dannen weggeführt werden, der gleichen auch von der Pfennigwerten [Verkaufsartikeln] die sie in Portugal selbst verbrauchen und nicht geraten, mögen als die wieder hinein in India und an den Ort geschifft werden, aufkommen. Dazu muss alle Ware, welche von Portugal kommt, von Deutschen auf der See gewagt und aufs Glücksrad gebunden werden, und die Fahrt nach Portugal ist schier mehr sorglich und gefährlich als die nach Indien; in wenig Jahren sind auf derselben See über 1,500,000 Gulden Wert ertrunken und verdorben, und trotzdem sind die Kaufleute, welche wenig ererbt haben, so unaussprechlich reich geworden. Deshalb soll alle Schiffung nach Portugal verboten werden; die Portugiesen sollen selbst das Wagnis übernehmen und ihre Ware, die sie doch nicht behalten können, nach Deutschland bringen; wenn man ihnen so nicht nachläuft, werden sie auch billiger verkaufen müssen. Andere bemerken nun freilich, dass wenn die Portugiesen auch die Ware nach Antorff [Antwerpen] bringen, so würden die grossen Gesellschaften auch dort Wege finden, die Waren aufzukaufen; auch könne der König von Portugal bewogen werden, die Ware nach Danzig oder Egen Merten [Aigues Mortes] in Frankreich zu schaffen, so dass die Deutschen sie dort holen müssten. Allein andere zeigen an, dass er wegen des Zugangs der Metalle Deutschland nicht entbehren und ohne dieselben gegen India nichts schaffen könnte; man dürfe ihm also nur den Zugang der Metalle versperren, so werde man ihn zwingen können, nicht nach Frankreich zu handeln.

(12) Soll eine Satzung etlicher Waren vorgenommen werden, damit nicht blos für die gemeinen Hantierer und Kaufleute gesorgt ist, sondern auch für die, so diese Waren zu ihrer Niessung und Gebrauch kaufen. Es ist zu besorgen, dass auch die getrennten Gesellschaften sich heimlich über die Preise verständigen; auch hat der König von Portugal die Spezerei allein in seiner Gewalt, und seither kann er Preise setzen wie er will, weil sie bei den Deutschen wegen keiner Verteuerung ungekauft blieben. Auch ist von Refel [Reval] und Lübeck angezeigt worden, dass der König von Dänemark und die Fucker miteinander in Handlung stehen, dass alle Kaufmannsgüter, so seither aus der Muscey [Moskau] in deutsche Handelsstädte kommen, fürder nach Dänemark und in des Königs und der Fucker Gewalt kommen sollen, damit sie dieselben nach Gefallen verteuern können. Bisher hat man solche Dinge nicht mit rechter Peen gestraft, sondern wissiglich geduldet. Dem kann nur ein Verbot abhelfen, dass die und die Waren in Deutschland nicht höher als zu einem bestimmten Satz verkauft werden dürften. Das Regiment soll eine jede Ware den Zentner auf eine Hauptsumme taxieren. Als Massstab sollen die gewöhnlichen Mittelpreise gelten, wie sie bestanden haben, ehe die Waren in die Gewalt des Königs von Portugal und der grossen schädlichen verbotenen Gesellschaften kamen. Man wendet freilich ein; wenn die Waren missraten? Dann werden die Kaufleute sich bei den wohlgeratenen erholen. Wenn Mangel an solchen Waren entsteht? Die Fremden können unser Geld gar viel weniger entbehren, als wir ihre Waren; deshalb ist im Reich kein langwieriger schädlicher Mangel zu besorgen; man wollt denn unnütz Geld ausgeben für einen Mangel achten. Durch solche Satzung wird die Gefahr übermässiger Steigerung der Preise am besten verhütet werden. Bei den Taxen kann die Entlegenheit der Örter in Betracht gezogen werden auch die Verschiedenheit der Ellen und Gewichte; so wird der Pfeffer an der Hand in Frankfurt das Pfund auf 1 Kreuzer taxiert, ebenso in Nürnberg. Die Taxe soll ein halbes Jahr nach Beschliessung durch die Reichsstände angehen.

Weiter soll nicht sein, dass die Kaufleute dem armen Volke auf den Samen, so noch auf dem Feld steht, auf die Trauben an den Stöcken und andere Frucht Geld leihen; dadurch diesen armen notdürftigen Lenten das genommen wird, was sie härtiglich erarbeiten.

Darauf folgen Strafen für alle Überfahrer, für die lässigen Obrigkeiten; die Erlaubnis, dass jeder Fiskal klagen darf; die Bestimmung, dass alle konfiszierten Güter hälftig dem Reichsfiskus, hälftig der Obrigkeit zufallen sollen, darunter solche Verbrechen geschehen. Der Fiskal soll auch gegen die Gesellschaften, welche sich seither offenbar widerrechlich bereichert haben, vorgehen; geschicht dies, so wird das nicht allein den Fiskus speisen, sondern auch andere warnen; sich vor dergleichen böser Beschädigung zu hüten. Die Ordnung, betreffend den Verkauf u. s. w. soll zwei Monate nach ihrer Verkündigung angehen.

Ist auch bewogen, dass Befriedung der Strassen dem Kaufmannsgewerb fürträglich sei, damit alle Hantierer auf des heiligen Reichs Strassen sicherer, dann etliche Zeit her geschehen ist, webern und ziehen mögen.

Es kommt vor, dass etliche Kaufleute betrüglich im Schein Trauens und Glaubens den Leuten das ihre nehmen durch Bankrottieren, was einem Diebstahl vergleichbar ist, und wer andere fürsätzlich an Geld und Gut ansetzt soll streng gestraft werden.

Endlich werden Reichsmasse und-Gewichte gefordert, für Fälschung der Tücher und Waren eine strengliche Handhabung verlangt und die Stände gewarnt, gegen arglistige und erkaufte Prokurei auf der Hut zu sein, wodurch diese Ordnung von den Gesellschaften bekämpft werden kann. (N.B.—Gemeint ist, nach einer Notiz von andrer Hand, Bestechung der Obrigkeiten, um durch ihren favor und patrocinium den Folgen dieser Ordnung zu entgehen.)