Daily Life During The Reformation (13 page)

Drinking and dancing in public houses at feasts or in
private homes was the highlight of entertainment for the Germans. In addition,
they had shooting contests with crossbow and harquebus, sleigh-riding through
the streets when snow covered the ground, and hunting and hawking, although the
latter was generally off limits to all but the princes. At the time, there were
still bears, wild oxen, wolves, wild boar, and rabbits in Germany. The princes all
had herds of red deer and harts freely roaming their forests that were a curse
to the peasants as the animals ate their crops and trampled their fields.
During harvest time, the country people stayed up all night to try and scare
away the animals (especially the red deer) from their wheat fields and
vineyards by whistling and making loud noises, but the animals learned that
they could not be harmed and seldom moved away. To kill a landowner’s deer,
boar, or a wild goat could lead to either execution or having one’s eyes put
out. Wolves, it seems, were fair game for all.

Moryson observed at first that in spite of religious
differences, the German Protestants were surprisingly tolerant of each other;
but he was not aware of the animosity that lurked beneath the surface of public
life. Eventually, however, he arrived at the conclusion that Calvinists and
Lutherans hated each other with a passion.

NURNBERG

Nurnberg, in the state of Bavaria, was indicative of urban
living in many German towns. The merchants of the city were frugal in business
and lifestyle, and some were very rich. Like other townsmen, they took care of
their civic duties such as standing guard on the walls at night and received no
special treatment in the taxes they owed or if they broke the law.

The city stood in a good location for trading purposes. In
1450, a census revealed about 30,000 inhabitants, and another, in 1622, showed
a population increase to some 40,000–50,000, of which more than half were
artisans. Nurnberg became a focus of the German Renaissance during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was also an early center of humanism,
science, and printing. In 1534, it was the first of the imperial cities to
embrace Protestantism.

The free imperial cities tried to control the number of
people low on the economic scale by setting a fee for citizenship. Nurnberg set
this at 100 gulden, which was high and more than many other free cities
charged. Also required was a minimal amount of property. A dye master wishing
to establish a shop in town with rights of citizenship, for example, needed 350
gulden: 200 gulden in property, 100 to become a citizen, and 50 for a craft
license. It was not the same for all crafts. A linen worker needed only 50
gulden in property. Such cities were also home to a large class of noncitizens
such as piece workers in cloth industries, day laborers, and assistants to
artisans and merchants—many of whom were transient and lived a day-to-day
existence.

Everyone had their rank within society, and all were
expected to behave accordingly. In the cities, people lived on certain streets
depending on their work or profession, and their mode of dress would be
appropriate to their class. The manner of clothing was set out in sumptuary
laws, as was the way in which houses could be decorated.

Among the artists who were born or lived there, the painter
and printmaker Albrecht Durer was the most prominent and well esteemed by his
contemporaries. Others, such as sculptors, painters, and woodcarvers, adorned
the city with their works, which brought together the Italian Renaissance and
the German Gothic traditions. Scholars went to Nurnberg to lecture, and a
printing press was established there. The first pocket watches, known as
Nurnberg eggs, were made there around 1500. An interest in culture on the part
of the prosperous artisan class found expression in the contests of the master
singers, among whom the shoemaker-poet Hans Sachs was the most well known.

Foreigners such as William Smith of London who resided in
the city from the 1570s to the 1590s lauded its virtues and presented some
aspects of life in letters back to England. He mentioned the liveliness of the
city and remarked on the clothes, the government, festivals, and morals.

Smith recorded that the city was well painted, and gutters
and spouts for rain water were of copper, gilded, and fashioned like flying
dragons. The buildings were high and stately but only up to four storeys. They
commonly had three or four garrets, one above the other,—in which the wealthy
stored their grain. Few houses were made completely of timber; lower storeys
were generally of stone.

After Augsburg and Koln, Nurnberg was one of the most
populous cities of Germany, but as in most major towns, there was a wide
disparity of wealth. Smith was impressed with the good order and cleanliness
and that many lanes were paved. The city was well provided with public hot
water baths and wells that served most of the houses. He also stated that no
dunghills existed along the streets but were found only in odd corners, and
that people did not urinate in the streets. Refuse could not be thrown out of
the house until after ten o’clock at night under penalties of fines or
imprisonment.

Each family was allowed to keep one pig that had to be
housed outside the city when it became six months old.

Since not all cities had such stringent laws as Nurnberg,
some merchants found it behooved them to relocate to other places such as
Augsburg where mercantile supervision was less onerous, and laws were not
enforced so scrupulously.

In crowded environments, disease was always at hand to
strike down the vulnerable. Between 1560 and 1585, major epidemics racked the
city. First came plague, then smallpox, then plague again and dysentery,
followed by measles and, once more, smallpox. The latter took 5,000 lives in
the year 1585. Most victims were children. The city suffered a population
decline that took years to recover.

There were many towers. Smith figured about 200, each with
lodging for watchmen. The streets were patrolled every night by a man who blew
a horn at the foot of each tower to make certain the watchman was not sleeping.
If the blast of the horn was not acknowledged, then the watchman had to be
asleep, and subject to eight days in prison on bread and water.

Pieter Brueghel’s
Justicia
.
Justice stands blindfolded as people around her are being tortured.

Crime
and Punishment

Criminals or suspected criminals received little in the way
of justice. They were generally allowed to say something on their own behalf,
and this would be followed by close questioning from the magistrate. If the
accused did not plead guilty, they were escorted to the torture chamber where
in due course they would confess to anything.

Convicted thieves were beheaded if they were citizens of
the city or hanged if they were not. Hanging was considered by far the worst
punishment since the agony was prolonged.

A conviction of arson brought the perpetrator to the stake
to be burned alive. Anyone who swore a false oath had two joints of their forefingers
amputated, and blasphemers had their tongues cut out. For lesser crimes,
punishment included whippings and banishment from the town.

Trials lacked witnesses and lawyers for the defense, and
judgments were already in place before a hearing. The law required evidence of
guilt, and a confession was extracted by any means available. For serious
crime, execution followed immediately.

The Church generally had no sympathy for the accused. Pain
and suffering were unimportant. Individual clerics who were charged with care
of their souls explained the beliefs of the Church in the hope that their faith
would be renewed and they would die with a prayer on their lips.

City Regulations

Smith, an innkeeper himself, speaks of the hospitality of
the city council. A person arriving in town with two or more horses presented
his name to the magistrates who immediately sent him pots of wine and bid him
welcome. If the guest was a nobleman, he received one wagon laden with wine,
another with oats and a third with foodstuffs. He also found the citizens
honest and as good as their word. If a purse was dropped in the street with
money or other valuables in it, for example, its owner was more than likely to
have it returned. Smith lamented that such was not the case in London.

The city council in Nurnberg, as in other cities, regulated
everything. Nothing was kept secret. The authorities took note of the amounts
spent on weddings, clothes, christenings, feasts, parties, gifts, and funerals.
Draconian details of these and other events were laid out in manuals to be
adhered to by the public. It was forbidden to be secretly betrothed, and if a
man wished to serenade his lady, the payment to the musicians was restricted to
bread, cheese, fruit, and a cup of wine, which could be passed around only
once. For a newly married couple, only one party and seven guests were allowed.
For all sorts of entertainment or ceremonies, there were manuals to be
followed, and any breach of regulations was subject to fines. In addition, a
list of guests had to be sent to the office that dealt with weddings and
funerals. Dancing after a wedding could only continue until ten o’clock. These
are but a few of the many burdensome restrictions placed upon the citizens.

AUGSBURG

The free city of Augsburg, with a population of about
30,000, ranked on a par with Nurnberg and Strassburg. The life of the city was
trade, but monasteries, convents, and parish churches were in abundance. There
was a cathedral, containing relics of saints, towering above the buildings and
its extensive land holding surrounded the city beyond the walls. Its power
rivaled that of the city council. Lodgings for numerous clergy were tucked away
in its shadows, and here, business was good for prostitutes. Market day was
particularly active and noisy with throngs of servant girls bargaining with
stall keepers.

Nearby thieves and swindlers sat dismally in the stocks
having lost all semblance of dignity. When their time was up, they were
banished from the city. The great houses and gardens of the rich merchants
contrasted with the cramped quarters of the workshops and one-room hovels of
the craftsmen.

Martin Luther visited Augsburg in 1518, and from then on
his supporters grew in numbers as did problems for the city council. By
1524–1925, the council, made up of aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and guild
masters, was under threat. Radical evangelical preachers and followers carried
out direct action that included throwing salt into holy water, tearing up
missals, and other annoying deeds. The council ejected one of the instigators,
an evangelical monk, from the city, causing a riot. Many of those who gathered
to protest the expulsion were poor weavers, laborers, and some guildsmen. The
council feared more social unrest from the people who united behind Luther and
took the bold step of secretly executing two weavers. Unsure of its citizens,
the council then stationed armed mercenaries in the city. In Augsburg as
elsewhere, the Reformation took on a social and economic dimension as the poor
resented the wealthy upper class that ran city hall.

By the late 1520s, the evangelist preachers and the
political elite began to form alliances, while radical Lutherans started to
associate with the Anabaptist movement, persecuted by both Lutherans and Catholics.
Throughout the 1530s, propaganda leaflets flooded the city mostly directed at
monks and Catholic priests who were condemned for every imaginable, and
especially sexual, sin.

In 1537, Hans Welser (a disciple of Zwingli) and Mang
Seitz, were elected mayors of the city. The Reformation was now firmly
established. Tensions continued, however, between rich and poor, guildsmen and
aristocrats.

CHANGES IN MANNERS

Some of the old medieval customs became offensive to the
new religious orientation. In Saxony, a newly married couple bathed together
and emerged from the water wet and naked to distribute refreshments to a crowd
of friends. Consummation of the marriage was closely observed by half a dozen
or more people to ascertain that the couple had performed this function
properly, and there could be no dispute about the legality of the marriage.
Such practices began to change about 1550 with the spread of the Reformation as
a more prudish attitude toward nakedness and sex set in. Similarly, defecating
and urinating in public places became taboo.