Just as the nobles by means of their strong castles sought to preserve for themselves and their posterity the advantages which their merit or their fortune had acquired, so the burghers surrounded their cities with walls and trenches in order to acquire that sense of security which is the first condition of comfort. And just as in their best period the nobles had testified their gratitude to God and to the world by the erection of churches and monasteries, so likewise the burghers filled their cities with stately cathedrals and charitable institutions.
But the romance of knighthood scarcely found an entrance into city life. It is true that tournaments were held in the market-places, but these were especially intended for the entertainment of princely guests. The poetry of the courts was represented in the cities by the songs of the Meistersingers; but the clang of the hammer and the puffing of the bellows were too noticeable in the latter to allow them the stamp of true poetry. Nevertheless, there was an ideal tendency in city life. This is evident from the portraits belonging to the fifteenth century, all of which exhibit an expression of genuine piety and a religious mood characteristic of that age. An echo of paganism lingered among the rural classes, and perhaps vivified their life, but over the better classes of the cities the Church had been completely triumphant, and had established among them a community devoted to her interests. But this very devotion to the actual substance of faith had momentous consequences for its external organization, the Church.
The the end of the fifteenth century signs of hostile criticism and of bold scepticism began to multiply. Men began to compare the substance of their faith with the form or institution in which it had become embodied. They began to examine what was contained in the conception of the highest good as enunciated by the Church, and which thus far had been accepted without question.
The Church had quietly permitted many a reformation in the Romance countries even before the appearance of Luther. In Germany, however, it absolutely refused to make the slightest concession to the most just demands. When a positive decision had to be made, the Teutonic prin ciple of private judgment unrestrainably forced itself to the front, and became, because coupled with a matter affecting the entire domain of Christianity, a question involving the moral development of the world.
What Luther actually accomplished in the theological domain of mere dogma may only have been a refinement upon existing tenets, and how far he was in accord with the spirit of the Founder of the religion will perhaps always remain an open question. But his great merit is that he initiated energetic action. His course was a proclamation that man kind had attained its majority—a claim of man's right to have a voice in the control of that which most nearly concerns him. The founda tion of that claim had long been laid in the German character, and the real motive of Luther's action must thereby be sought and explained. What have been adduced as causes and auxiliaries of the Reformation, such as Gutenberg's invention of printing, the Renaissance and the con sequent widening of the intellect, the intercourse with newly-discovered parts of the globe,—all these no doubt prepared the soil for the reception of the seed, but they did not give it fecundity.
The Reformation not spring from the humanism of the sixteenth century. That at most produced auxiliaries for the cause, but it also pro duced the orthodox zealots who succeeded in destroying much of the work before it had even been completed. The true essence of the Ref ormation was a breath from the forests of those countries which Tacitus describes—an emancipation of the Teutonic spirit, which had grown into self-consciousness under the peaceful influence of Rome, but which was thenceforth to shape its course in a constant struggle with it.
State of Society at this was high time that new foundations should be provided for the further development of European society, since the signs most inimical to a healthy state of things were increasing in an alarming degree. Culture was declining, and it had no hold on the masses of the population, who were able neither to contribute to it nor to receive any of its benefits. Figure 4 (pi. 44), copied from wood-cuts by one of the foremost artists of that age, Hans Sebald Beham, gives us a glimpse into the actual state of society. In the background are seen brigands who have set fire to a village and plundered travellers; in the foreground paupers are receiving food at a monastery-door. The former species of disorder might indeed be a mere robbery or an episode in the private feuds which were customary in those times.