Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 7

In spite of those moral shortcomings, Princess Bertha was especially brilliant as a scholar. She was called Delia, sister of Apollo, in Charlemagne's "Academy." She sang her teacher Alcuin's poems, which she accompanied by string music. Besides the emperor's wife and his daughters, there were two nuns in the academic circle: the elder, Gisela, Charlemagne's sister, surnamed Lucia, Alcuin's best friend, and her intimate, Riktrudis, with the academic name of Columba; also Gundrada, of ill.u.s.trious n.o.bility and charm, the sole secular lady at the court against whom no word of gossip was ever uttered by courtiers or clerics.

So flagrant are, however, the sins of love at that brilliant court which did so much for cla.s.sical, Germanic, and sacred learning in Germany, that even the saga, in dim recollection of past events, seized upon Charlemagne's towering figure in respect to his moral side. He is represented by a later legend as having been misled into grievous sins by a mysterious, magic precious stone in a ring which he had presented to his queen. As long as she wore the ring, he could not live away from her. At last the queen fell ill and came to die. But grudging the stone to any other woman and desiring that the king might not love another as he loved her, she concealed the ring under her tongue and died.

Charlemagne unable to live without her did not allow her to be buried, but carried her with him day and night on the journey through his vast realm. An inexpressible sin, due to the magic ring in her mouth, ensued.

At last, when Charlemagne was absent, the corpse of the dead woman was examined and the ring was found in her mouth. A knight took the ring away and kept it. Charlemagne had the queen buried at once. But all the love which he bore to his dead wife, he now transferred to the knight as long as the latter possessed the stone. The knight, annoyed by this love and the shame thereof, threw away the stone into a mora.s.s. Charlemagne conceived such an affection for the place where the ring lay that he built there the Cathedral of Our Lady at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). And, as a higher irresistible power had brought about the moral sins as well as other sins bearing the character of incest, Saint aegidius and Saint Theodolin secured for him atonement, expiation, and absolution.

The court life at the time of Charlemagne, loose as it was, had its great redeeming features; it sank, however, under his weak successors into the utmost decay and degradation. The dynasty perished with Ludwig the Child (A. D. 911). Charles the Fat, the unworthy descendant of his great sire Charlemagne, had given the world, during his calamitous reign, the melancholy spectacle of a king publicly accusing his wife, Richardis, of adultery with his own chancellor, Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli. But Richardis a.s.serted that she was a virgin though she had been living with her husband for twelve years. The emperor forced an ordeal (A. D. 887) to free her from the terrible accusation: and an ordeal remained, during the entire Middle Ages, the only means for an accused woman to purify herself and redeem her honor. This special ordeal is minutely described in the so-called _Kaiserchronik_ (Chronicle of Emperors), how Richardis slipped into a garment made for that purpose, which was set on fire at all four ends, at her feet and arms, simultaneously. In a short hour the garment burned from her body; the wax dripped down to the pavement, but the royal lady remained unhurt, and the spectators of the cruel ordeal cried _Deo gratias!_ Richardis, however, retired after this disgrace to a cloister which she had founded.

The same accusation was raised later against Kunigunde, wife of the last Saxon emperor, Henry II. the Pious, but she, too, was exonerated by the ordeal of "the hot iron" upon which she trod with impunity. Kunigunde has been canonized by the Church for having preserved her virginity also in married life, and for having forced the devil to church building.

The moral life of the higher cla.s.ses was duly reflected in the lower walks of life. The female serfs, who, as we learn from imperial decrees of the time, when they did not work in the fields, carried on their domestic labors in a separate house, called _screona_ (shrine), were practically helpless in the hands of their masters. Those out-houses were frequently used as places for gratifying l.u.s.t by forcing their inmates to sin, though nominal fines still prevailed for rape or violence: he who "covered" (_belag_) a maid "without her thanks," _i.

e._, against her will, paid a fine of three s.h.i.+llings; if she was a head-maid, or a stewardess or skilled laborer, six s.h.i.+llings. Thus it happened that as early as the time of Charlemagne the women's house came to have the flavor of infamy _Frauenhduser_ was the name of houses of prost.i.tution during the Middle Ages. Unfree women could marry only with the permission of their masters; the bridegroom had, in recognition of this fact, to pay a tax (_maritagium_) called by different obscene names in different localities, as a redemption, as it were, of the bride's virginity. Naturally, the female serf was helpless against the lord, who did what he pleased: a shameful abuse, which, in the course of time, crystallized into a right; the infamous _jusprinuz noctis, i. e._, the right of the lord to the body of his unfree female serf during the first night of her married life. The several attempts to relegate this usage to the realm of legends have signally failed. Both Scherr and Freytag expatiate on this gloomy subject, on which a whole legal and cultural literature has sprung up. Pa.s.sing quickly over this saddest of all the chapters of human subjection to shame, many a beautiful feature of the growth of womanhood among the lower cla.s.ses may be noted.

With the general improvements of agriculture under Charlemagne, there was a corresponding improvement in the art of building. Instead of the old German block-house, plastered with clay, the crevices filled with reed, and without windows or staircases, in which people and cattle were stalled together, dwellings fit for human beings were gradually evolved.

The dwellings of unfree people (_Hdrige_) consisted of house, barn, and stable for cattle, while the estates and houses of landed proprietors comprised mansion (_Herrenhaus_), cellar house (_cellaria_), bath house, grange (_picarium_), stables, and a separate house for women (_genitium_ or _screona_) in which the women handled distaff and spindle, spinning linen and wool, making ornaments, embroidery, figures in cloth, and other feminine work. There they sat, the distaff between their knees, the spindle in their hands, beautiful pictures of n.o.ble German womanhood. There they made the linen garments for themselves and their families, including their husbands. Royal ladies worked not less than peasant women or unfree maids. Later on, Luitgardis, daughter of Emperor Otto the Great, was so famed for being an industrious spinner that a golden spindle was hung over her grave. The tailoring needle and scissors were handled with skill, as is certified in many a mediaeval song. The Carlovingian period, therefore, furnishes us with much over which to lament, but also with much over which to rejoice. Virtue and vice are there in abundant measure.

The Christian-German civilization founded by Charlemagne was almost destroyed under his successors. Under Charlemagne we could treat his vast realm, at least so far as it covered France and the North, as genuinely Teutonic land; two generations later, under his grandsons, Charles the Bald and Ludwig the German, we must begin the separation of France and Germany, by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, while the middle land, namely, Burgundy, Alsace, and Lorraine, which fell to Lothaire with the already shadowy imperial crown, becomes the Eris-apple between the two. Germany and France, originally one, are separated by a territorial dispute for more than one thousand years.

Side by side with the heroic figures of Henry I. (919-936), who refounded the shattered empire, and his still greater son, Otto I., who rebuilt it, we find spirited princesses, some of them, like Adelheid of Burgundy, foreigners, with great zeal for culture, who brought an appreciation of refinement and art to the German court. Otto the Great's son and grandson added the Byzantine culture to the Roman-Carlovingian substratum. The women of the tenth century played a remarkably active part in politics and literature. Mathilda and Editha, the pious wives of the first two Saxon emperors, powerfully affected the civilization of their time. The reigns of Otto II. and Otto III. bear most decided traces of the influence of two royal women, Adelheid and Theophano, who exercised a strong influence upon the political and intellectual life of the century.

The period of the Ottos marks the climax of an early renaissance as distinguished from the great cla.s.sical movement so called five centuries later. In art, this renaissance is expressed by churches and palaces built after late Roman and Byzantine models, partly even with the materials of those times; in literature, the renaissance blossoms in cla.s.sical studies, Latin historiography and poetry. Indeed, Tietmar of Merseburg, the famous chronicler of the Saxon emperors, could well say: "Proud like Lebanon's cedars the Empire towered, a terror to all nations far and wide;" and again: "Highly blessed was the world when Otto wielded the sceptre."

As regards the moral life of the times, Tietmar's _Chronicon_ presents Henry, the founder of the dynasty, as not faultless. The legend also weaves around Henry the wreath of romance when it reports that Princess Use of the Herz Mountains kissed the cares from his royal brow in her wondrous castle, a favor which, according to the charming Use song, she bestows some nine hundred years later on Heine, the darling of the Muses. When still very young, Henry concluded a marriage with Hatheburch, a distinguished widow at Merseburg, but rejected her after she had borne him a son, Thammo (_Thankmar_). He had fallen in love with Mathilda, a rich and beautiful maiden of the race of Duke Widukind, who had immortalized the Saxon name in the thirty years' struggle with Charlemagne. She became Henry's wife and bore him three sons, Otto, Henry, and Bruno. She seems to have steadied her great husband, though their married life did not remain always cloudless. An episode related by Tietmar, "to deter and warn the pious," may be repeated here because of the flavor of its time: Henry had once on the day before Good Friday of Easter week intoxicated himself, and, driven by the devil, abused his pious wife in the following night. Satan, rejoicing over the deed, could not refrain from telling the story to a respectable matron of Merseburg, adding that the fruit of that unholy embrace would undoubtedly belong to him. The matron betook herself to the queen and exhorted her "to keep constantly priests and bishops ready to wash by holy baptism off the newborn child all that may be pleasing on him to the devil." When the devil learnt of this betrayal of his confidence, he chided the matron violently, but added that, after all, something of the G.o.dless deed would ever cling to the race of the king. And the chronicler explains the violent feuds of the sons of King Henry and their fratricidal, internecine strifes by the flagitious transgression of G.o.d's commandment: "thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy." Tietmar, continuing, says: "That there is nothing which is not permitted in legal marriage, is proved by the Holy Scriptures. But such lawful married life obtains through the observation of holidays and honorable dignity, and is not disturbed by the storm of threatening danger." Another example of the same sin is quoted: Uffo, a Magdeburg burgher, while violently intoxicated, forced his wife, Gelsusa, to yield to his will. When the woman, having conceived in that night, in due time bore a child, it had bent and crooked toes. Terrified at that sign, she had her husband called and complained to him that this mark of divine displeasure was due to their common sin: "Behold, the wrath of G.o.d reveals itself to us and exhorts us that we should not act thus further! Thou hast committed a grievous sin in that thou commanded me what was not right; and I have sinned equally in that I obeyed thee." The fruit of sin, however, the babe, was taken from the exile of this life to the hosts of innocent children in heaven.

Queen Mathilda outlived her consort; and though she favored the succession of her younger son, Henry, she saw her eldest son, Otto (936-973), elevated to the throne of his father. Otto married an English princess, Editha, the pious daughter of King Ethmund. She was to the great emperor a pure and faithful consort. She was endowed with numberless virtues, a fact which became manifest after her death by miracles and heavenly signs. After nineteen years of married life "pleasing to G.o.d and men," says the chronicler, "she died, the n.o.blest foreign princess who ever adorned the German Imperial throne." She left but one son, Luidoulf by name, whom Otto married to the only daughter of Hermann, Duke of Suabia, whom he succeeded. Otto married again, his bride being Adelheid, widow of the Italian king Lothaire, who, hard pressed by Berengar, ruler of Ivrea, had called the Emperor to Italy as her protector and liberator. "Otto," says Tietmar, naively, "who had heard of her far-famed beauty, under the pretext of travelling to Rome, marched to Lombardy, wooed the princess, who had escaped from Berengar's cruel prison, and induced her, after he had won her favor by rich presents, to yield to his wishes." We have a life of Empress Adelheid by the abbot Odilo of Cluny, who was an intimate friend and closely connected with her during the last years of her reign. He deprecates his ability to write the life of the empress, to do which either Cicero would have to be recalled from Orcus or the presbyter Hieronymos from heaven. "For she deserves to be revered as the most imperial of all empresses. Not one before or after her was her equal, she so elevated and increased the Empire. She subjected defiant Germania, fruitful Italy and their princes to the sword and sceptre of Rome. Then n.o.ble king Otto won through her the imperial crown. Also the son whom she bore him, was the pride and ornament of the Empire."

After the death of Otto I., Adelheid, with her son, Otto II. (973-983), happily conducted the affairs of the empire and firmly established its supremacy. But evil people alienated the heart of her son; she retired to Burgundy, her home. Meanwhile, Germany mourned the absence of the benefactress, but all Burgundy exulted over her return. Seized by repentance, Otto humbly besought his mother to meet him at Pavia.

Weeping, he threw himself down before his mother, and from that time the insoluble bond of love remained until Otto's premature death. Otto III.

(983-1002) and his Greek mother, Theophano, his guardian, succeeded Otto II. Theophano, incited by the Greek, Philagathus, Archbishop of Piacenza, became hostile to the empress, and, overcome by anger, she uttered these menacing words: "If I shall still reign one year, Adelheid shall not rule over more ground than one can encompa.s.s with one hand."

Before one month was over, Theophano was overtaken by Nemesis and died (June 15, 991), while Adelheid outlived her in the enjoyment of happiness. "So many realms as she possessed, through the grace of G.o.d, first as the consort of the great Otto, then as the guardian of her son and grandson, so many cloisters did she found at her own expense, in honor of the King of kings." Before the year 1000 of Our Lord had ended, longing to be united with the Lord of Hosts, on the 16th of December, she died "and her soul rose to the pure light of the purest ether," says the chronicler, "and to describe all the miracles at her grave, another book would be necessary. But not to cover them entirely with silence at her grave the blind recover their lost sight, the paralyzed the use of their limbs, those sick with fever are cured there. Many ailing with manifold diseases are healed by the grace and the compa.s.sion of Our Lord Jesus Christ." Forsooth, A. D. 1000 is yet the blessed time when "faith transported mountains."

The most memorable women of the Ottoman epoch is perhaps the nun Roswitha, or Hrotsuit, of the cloister of Gandersheim, who is regarded as the first German poetess, although her works are exclusively in Latin. Born of a n.o.ble Saxon family she came early to Gandersheim, where she was educated by the Carmelite sister Richardis and the highly cultured Abbess Gerberga, Otto's niece. She became steeped in the cla.s.sics, and was soon able to imitate them to such an extent that her fame as the bright ringing voice of Gandersheim soon spread over the Christian world. She composed in Latin hexameters a eulogy on Saint Mary, legends of saints, and an epic of Otto's great deeds (_Carmen de gestis Oddonis I. Imperatoris_). The last work is rich in valuable information, but a part of it has, unfortunately, been lost. She also wrote the history of her cloister from its foundation until 919. But her fame is founded especially on her Latin comedies, or rather dramatic sketches, six in number, imitating the style of Terentius, but borrowing the material from sacred legends, and chiefly glorifying chast.i.ty and virginity. She takes as her themes womanly martyrdom, and the strength of which even the frail woman is capable, if animated by faith and virtue. She writes with a moral ascetic view and preeminently for her sisters in the cloisters. Yet, because of the taste of her time she introduces the reader to situations which are rather delicate. Hence ensues a strange blending of cla.s.sic sensualism and Christian spiritualism. The fire of sensuality blazes throughout, though the conclusion is always edifying through martyrdom; there is a struggle between vice and virtue, but in the end, the triumph of Christian sacrifices carries the day over the temptations and the sins of this world. Kuno Francke (_Social Forces in German Literature_) thinks that Roswitha, though surrounded by the atmosphere of the nunnery, was carried away by the naturalistic tendencies of her time. Scherr a.s.serts: "Methinks that we may not offend her state as a nun when we suppose that she must have had, before she wrote her comedies, some experience in love, not merely in Terentius." Preferably, she chooses quite equivocal situations. It is true that in her preface she deprecates any such purpose with great ardor: "There are many good Christians who, for the sake of a more refined language, prefer the idle glitter of pagan books to the usefulness of the Holy Scriptures, a fault of which we also cannot acquit ourselves entirely. Then there are industrious Bible readers, who, though they despise the writings of the other pagans, yet read the poems of Terentius too frequently, and, allured by the grace of diction, stain their minds through acquaintance with unchaste objects.

In view of this I, the clearly ringing voice of Gandersheim, have not disdained to imitate the much read author in diction, in order to glorify the praiseworthy chast.i.ty of pious women according to the measure of my feeble ability in the same way as the vile vices of lascivious women are there represented." It is interesting to see how she executes her plan. Take for example, her play ent.i.tled Abraham. In this an old hermit hears that his stepdaughter, who had run away with a seducer, is living in abject misery. He seeks to rescue her from a house of ill repute where she has sought shelter. She does not recognize him in his disguise, but he comes to see all the wretchedness of her life of shame, and melts her heart in a wonderfully poetic conversation which reminds one of Erasmus's colloquy between the youth and the fallen woman. "O my daughter, part of my soul, Maria, do you recognize the old man who with fatherly love brought you up and betrothed you to the Son of the Heavenly Lord?" "Whither has flown that sweet angelic voice which formerly was yours?" "Your maiden purity, your virgin modesty, where are they?" "What reward, unless you repent, is before you? You that plunged wilfully from heavenly heights into the depth of h.e.l.l!" "Why did you flee from me? Why did you conceal your misery from me from me who would have prayed and done penance for you?" The miserable woman in her agony replies only by exclamations of pain, and confesses: "After I had fallen a victim to sin, I did not dare approach you." Abraham replies to that: "To sin is human, to persist in sin is h.e.l.lish. He who stumbles is not to be blamed, only he who neglects to rise as quickly as possible."

In the play Dukitius, the Roman general so named, to commit an act of criminal wantonness, enters at night time the prison of three Christian maidens who had been thrown into confinement by order of Diocletian, the persecutor of Christians. But the would-be ravisher is confounded by the Holy Virgin, the protectress of innocence, and takes the pots and kettles and pans for the maidens. The virgins look through the c.h.i.n.ks of the wall, and see the fool out of his mind holding the pots caressingly on his lap, and kissing tenderly the pans and kettles. Irene remarks: "His face and his hands and his clothes are soiled and blackened all over by his imaginary sweethearts." "Just as it should be," replies Chiona, "it is the color of Satan who possesses him."

Such was the work of the virtuous Christian singer in a strange foreign garment, the only one possible for her to write in, for a popular written German language did not yet exist. But her work was not lost, or as she said herself in her preface: "If anybody shall find pleasure in this my devotion (_devotio_), I shall be glad; but if it should please no one, on account of my humble station or the rusticity of a faulty diction, I myself at least rejoice over what I have done." Later on, copies of her works were spread beyond her cloister. One copy was dug up some five hundred years later from the dust of the cloister library of Saint Emmeran at Regensburg by Conrad Celtes of Humanist fame, and edited by him in 1,501. Roswitha was greeted by the world of the Renaissance as the "German Muse." Celtes's edition is adorned by the immortal Albrecht Durer with a woodcut representing Roswitha in a kneeling posture, presenting her works to Emperor Otto the Great in the presence of Archbishop Wilhelm of Mainz.

While dealing with the womanhood of the Ottoman era, it is inc.u.mbent upon us to mention the history of a true German type of a royal woman, who has been immortalized by Scheffel in the romance _Ekkehard_, already mentioned: Hadwig, d.u.c.h.ess of Suabia, niece of Otto I., sister of Gerberga, the abbess of Germersheim, the famous connoisseur of the cla.s.sical authors, and the teacher of Roswitha. Early widowed by Burkhard of Suabia, the young, strong-minded princess of Saxon imperial blood with a firm hand continued the administration of the duchy. "The young widow," as Scheffel paints her, "was of royal disposition and uncommon beauty. But she had a short nose, and the sweet mouth was somewhat disdainfully puckered up, and her chin projected boldly so that the dimple which becomes woman so sweetly, was not to be found with her.

And whose countenance is thus shaped, he bears with a sharp spirit a hard heart in his bosom and his nature inclines to severity. Therefore the d.u.c.h.ess, in spite of the bright roses of her cheeks, inspired many a one in her land with a strange terror." Scheffel describes her steel-gray garment which flowed in light waves over the embroidered sandals; this garment clung close to her body; over it was a black tunic reaching down to the knee; in her girdle that encased her hips, shone a precious beryl; a gold-thread embroidered net held her chestnut-brown hair, yet carefully curled locks played around her bright forehead. The boudoir, too, of the ill.u.s.trious lady of the tenth century is minutely described. On the marble table near the window stood a fantastically formed, dark green vase of polished metal, in which burned a foreign incense and whirled its fragrant white fumes up to the ceiling of the room. The walls were hung with many colored, embroidered rugs.

On the whole, there is in the wide domain of literature scarcely anywhere such a detailed and absolutely accurate picture of the state of the culture and civilization of the tenth century as in this novel. The description of the characters, Hadwig's chamberlain Spazzo, the abbots and monks and warriors, the home industries, the vintage, the life of all the cla.s.ses of people, the cloisters, the festivals, the Hunnish terror, the virtues and faults of the time, clerical purity and piety and the little and great shortcomings of celibacy, the German Christmas and Easter and Whitsuntide, the German soul (_Gemuf_), the patriarchal relations between the imperial mistress of Otto's blood and her lowliest maidservants pa.s.s before our eyes in a charming, ever-changing kaleidoscopic procession. The young widow, in her lofty castle of the Hohentwiel, whiling away her idle hours in the study of Virgil, with the pure-hearted and scholarly monk Ekkehard, whom she invited from the famed cloister of Saint Gall; Praxedis, the lovely chamber-woman of the d.u.c.h.ess, of Greek race, a living souvenir of the time when the son of the Byzantine Emperor Basilius had wooed Hadwig; Hadumoth, the lovely forest flower and the foundling of the lowest stratum of society with her heart of love and truth and beauty, the personification of all that is great and good in the soul of German womanhood of the lower cla.s.ses; the wood witch, who continues the old beloved custom of wors.h.i.+p and loyalty to the old G.o.ds, in bitter hate of the new faith that has robbed her of husband, happiness, and child; the servant maid Friderun, tall as a building of several stories, surmounted by a pointed roof, her pear-shaped head, whose heart is now desolate, since her sweetheart was slain in the Hunnish battle, and who turns her attention to the solitary Hunnish prisoner, Cappan, whom she domesticates, Christianizes and marries; all these types of German womanhood are so perfect, so fragrant, so real that the historian of civilization loses heart in attempting to describe other or better types. The love of Hadwig and of Ekkehard, the latter's brief forgetfulness of his and her mission, Ekkehard's trial, his escape and recovery on the snowy Santis mountain in the Alps, the composition of the Walthari saga in the bracing mountain air, close to the blue heavens, inspired by the Alpine shepherd's G.o.dly child, Benedicta, are all episodes worthy of King Solomon's Song of Songs.

After the Ottoman dynasty follow the Franconian emperors, descendants, both through the female line and through marriage, from the Carlovingians and the Ottomans, since Konrad II. (1024-1039), the first Franconian, was descended from Otto's daughter and married Gisela of Burgundy, a descendant of Charlemagne. Theirs is a period of transition, of struggle between the Papacy and the empire, the preparation for the crusades, fantastic, impolitic expeditions to the Orient for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, fostering the spirit of aimless adventure, but, at the same time, widening marvellously the narrow horizon of the European world.

In contrast with the Latin poetry of court and cloister, the humble people cultivated in their own way the German popular love song and the tales that stir the popular soul. From those old folk songs we derive a great deal of our knowledge of the life and love of the women of the time. It is undoubtedly this awakening of the people which stimulated the clerics also to the necessity for preaching in German. An interesting spiritual poetess arises, known as the Frau Am, the recluse and sacred singer, who died in Austria in 1127, and who was the first woman known to us who in poetic German language worked out Biblical and evangelical stories. The nave tone of her poetry is exemplified in her description of the scene where the enemies of Christ lead the adulteress to Him. Before retiring from the wicked world she had been married, and had had two sons who seem to have been theologians. They furnished her with material for three spiritual poems in which she described, with the inartistic hand of a plain woman, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost as they are communicated to man and create his virtues; further, she deals with the Antichrist and the Last Judgment.

We must not leave the Prankish-Salian dynasty without mentioning briefly a few superior royal women. Konrad II. found in his consort, Gisela, a beneficent helpmate and also a coadjutor in the affairs of state. To Konrad attaches the particularly characteristic and touching story of the _Women of Weinsberg_, which has again and again been made the subject of poems exalting the virtues of the faith and love of German womanhood. When the emperor besieged the city of Weinsberg in Suabia he met with such a stout resistance that he swore in his wrath to slay all those who were able to carry arms. At last when hunger forced surrender, the women appeared in Konrad's camp pleading for mercy, but the emperor permitted them only to take as much of their precious possessions from the doomed city as they could carry on their backs. And behold! next morning when the gates opened, every woman tottered along under the burden of her husband on her shoulders. Konrad's magnates maintained that this was not the meaning of the grace offered to the women, but the emperor, touched by so much loyalty and love, exclaimed: "An Imperial word shall not be distorted by interpretation. The pledge as understood by the Women of Weinsberg shall hold good!"

Konrad and Gisela's great son, Henry III. (1039-1056), who was strong enough to bend and break the power of the Papacy during his brief reign, married Agnes, a princess with a manly soul. She would have saved her minor son, Henry IV. (1056-1106), perhaps the most unfortunate prince who ever wore the th.o.r.n.y crown of the empire, if the perfidious, selfish magnates of the empire had not s.n.a.t.c.hed him by force too early from her motherly and royal care. With the loss of his mother Henry lost the direction and control and he seldom regained it during his long and calamitous reign. At the age of sixteen he was married to Bertha of Savoy (A. D. 1066), to whom he conceived a strange and unmerited aversion, which she overcame in the course of time by her faithfulness and loyalty in times of misfortune. She shared all the sorrows and humiliations inflicted upon him by the haughty magnates of the realm and especially by the German Pope Hildebrand, Gregory VII., the overtowering personality of his time. But divine providence tried to compensate her for her life of trial and bitterness: she became the mother of Agnes, wife of Frederic of Hohenstaufen, ancestress of that glorious dynasty under which blossomed up the First Cla.s.sical Period of Bloom of German Literature and Civilisation.

Of tremendous influence in all states and conditions of women and men is the enforced celibacy of the clergy, an inst.i.tution due, with all its consequences of good and of evil, to the energy and iron will of Pope Gregory VII. It is true that among the ancient Hebrews the marriage of the high priest, and even of the priests in general, to a divorced woman or to a widow, or, in fact, to any woman not a virgin, had been forbidden. The New Testament, however, knows no such ordinance. Several apostles, especially Saint Peter, were married. The Latin Church, however, since the eighth century, insisted more and more upon the celibacy of the clergy; but, nevertheless, it remained the rule for the clergy in Germany, France, and Upper Italy to be married. During the tenth century the moral decay among the clergy and the fear of its increase, if the ordinances of celibacy were enforced, left priestly marriage undisturbed. But the theory of the greater sanct.i.ty of the priestly state, and the mediaeval spirit of the mortification of the flesh, as well as the growing conviction that only the sacraments administered by spiritually pure priests without carnal knowledge of woman had a saving grace and force, and prepared the way for the final stroke of entirely abolis.h.i.+ng priestly marriage. As the power of the Papacy increased, and as the necessity for an army of instruments severed from the binding ties of family life and consequent dependence upon the secular powers became ever more pressing, the great Gregory VII. ventured the decisive and final decree of 1074, according to which every married priest who administered the sacrament at the altar, and every layman who accepted it from his hand, should be excommunicated, Amid a fearful storm of protest, the order for priestly celibacy was carried out in Germany. But the overwhelming power of Gregory VII. and the weakness of the emperor, which drove the princes and bishops into the arms of the Pope, lessened the resistance, though for centuries the storm did not subside, and in the north of Germany it continued far into the fourteenth century. Celibacy became a strong weapon in the hands of the Papacy; it subjected the priesthood absolutely to the Church, and withdrew its members from subjection to the secular power; but celibacy did not at least during the first centuries redound to a higher morality of the clergy. The complaints of their immorality increased with the firm establishment of celibacy, and after the fourteenth century actually fill the literature of Germany. These complaints are indeed one of the primary forces and agencies in bringing about the great revolution against the Church, known in history as the Reformation. It is no less true, however, that, with the counter reformation within the Ancient Church, a purifying influence was exerted upon the clergy, that the Reformation was to the Church a blessing in disguise, and that no doubt celibacy had its redeeming features, inasmuch as it made the genuine, earnest, and honest part of the priesthood pure and independent and fearless in their uplifting mission to the people of the Catholic faith: a true ecclesia militans. But celibacy, like any other great inst.i.tution, is a two-edged sword! One needs only to trace the literary and historical sources of those centuries to become convinced that, on the whole, celibacy was a failure so far as the greater part of the clergy was concerned, and a still greater failure in so far as it affected the sphere of womanhood. The priestly farces (_Pfaffenschw.a.n.ke_), the popular wisdom as expressed in hundreds of proverbs and sententious references, as well as the history of the time in question, prove the truth of this a.s.sertion and testify to the low moral status of both the clergy and the laity.

CHAPTER V

THE DAYS OF THE MINNESINGERS

With the extinction of the Franconian dynasty we approach the golden era of the Hohenstaufen emperors. The ascent of that n.o.ble race was due to that German loyalty which they had borne to Henry IV. in his distress.

Their home was the lofty Suabian Staufen which towered over the wooded valley of the Rems and looked down on the beautiful land with its vineyards and continuous orchards. The Hohenstaufens belonged to the poetic, highly gifted race of the Suabians from which have sprung some of the greatest German poets and thinkers. Suabia is the cradle of many of the choicest spirits from antiquity down to Schiller and Uhland.

German history during the golden reign of the Hohenstaufen emperors is filled with the deeds of royal women no less than with those of their anointed husbands. Imperial women held the insignia at the death of the emperors. Kunigunde, consort of Henry II., at his death turned over to Konrad II., the first Salian Frank, the insignia of the empire, the crown, the sceptre, and the holy relics which belonged to the regalia; which the last Frank, Henry V. (1106-1125), on his deathbed, intrusted to his consort, requesting her to hand them to his successor, that she might win grat.i.tude and influence; for great weight was attributed to their possession, as they were deemed to contain mysterious forces and to give to their possessor the favor of the saints. Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, a cunning politician, induced the widowed empress to deliver the crown jewels to Frederic of Hohenstaufen, and then intrigued for the election of Lothaire the Saxon, who won the crown. At the next vacancy Konrad of Hohenstaufen (1138-1152) was elected, and founded the great Suabian dynasty. During its governance (1138-1254) the Germanic body politic displayed the highest degree of energy, and with that dynasty began and ended the most glorious period of mediaeval German social life and literature. By the magnificence of their rule, the Suabian emperors, in spite of many and great political errors, through which they exhausted much of their strength in Italian wars, carried the romanticism of the Middle Ages to its zenith. In the same proportion in which the nation was raised by a knowledge of its own power, the national productions of art and letters were stamped with a bold and original character. Great men of extraordinary genius arose to exalt their own names with the glories of the empire.

The Roman expeditions of Frederick Barbarossa, who sought to restore the grandeur of Charlemagne, and of Otto the Great brought to Germany a new, original culture that took a place beside the old Latin, monkish, scholarly culture, with its gloomy clericalism. Chivalry, courtliness, the "gay science" of the Romance peoples, were grafted upon a knotty, rugged, but intensely healthy trunk. The very foundation of the new society stood in contrast with the ascetic gloom of the former church philosophy. The highest praise was now to be "gay and joyous in chaste moderation"; life, vigor, beauty, courtly elegance in form and countenance and speech marked the gentleman and the lady of the age. The eye was delighted by beautiful features and lovely expression; by stately appearance, fine movements, harmonious rhythm and dance, by splendid processions and courtly functions. Grace, charm, and loveliness were ardently sought: the commonplace and the vulgar were avoided as rustic and ridiculous.

The Hohenstaufens are the impersonation of romantic chivalry. There is in all of them, especially in Frederick II. (1212-1250), a profound romantic tendency, a thirst for heroic greatness, glory, immortality. A vein of poetry pulses through their history, "to develop which says Scherr will be reserved perhaps to some future German Shakespeare." The power of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190) raised the nation to an intellectual elevation which created imperishable works of art and poetry. Glorious, though fruitless expeditions to Italy and crusades to the Orient extended mightily the limited horizon of the Germans: Southern and Oriental beauty penetrated the monachism of the North. The Italian and Sicilian courts of Frederick II. were thronged with the fairest ladies of Orient and Occident. Saracen beauties were intermingled with the loveliest women of the German and Roman and Greek world. All were bent upon gallantry, and song and poetry were the common accomplishments. The Orient once more fertilized the Occident; the fulness of Oriental fancy and symbolism poured over the Germans romance, wisdom and love, pa.s.sion and vice, and cast a roseate bloom over the coa.r.s.e actuality of the death struggle between Empire and Papacy, idealizing the "blood and iron" services of German warriors on Southern and Eastern battlefields.

The struggle for the Holy Sepulchre blended Christian monachism and Christian chivalry in the spiritual orders: the Knights Templars, the Knights of Saint John, the Teutonic Order. Their holy vows taken in the presence of ladies and princes "to honor and defer to the Church, to be true and obedient to the sovereign or feudal lord, to conduct no unjust feud, to defend widows and orphans," characterize sufficiently the ideal of their mission. The rules of honor are laid down in the new word Courtoisie, an essential part of which is devotion and service to ladies. Nevertheless, this service to ladies has a religious root: it is but the evolution to its final consequence of the old German veneration for women which Christianity crystallized in the cult of the Holy Virgin Mary. Religion is greatly dependent upon the emotions, thus making even this cult more sensuous than rational. Inasmuch as this religious affection is transferred to the entire s.e.x, we find the most beautiful side of knighthood expressed and codified in the _Minnedienst_, or love service. And, in so far as the delight of youthful life and feeling was considered as dependent upon the life of nature in general, the subject of the minnesongs dealt with love within the natural environment of fields and forests, rivers and mountains, spring and flowers, winter and ice. "In the month of May," runs Freytag's beautiful description, "when the trees were adorned with foliage, and the heath with flowers, when the birds sang, and the brooks, freed from ice and snow, trickled through the meadows, then began also for the courtly man the sunny time of joy. Then he prepared his arms and armour, thought of adornment and fine garments, and wandered away for love-wooing, to repasts, to wedding and tournament, or to earnest war to acquire honor or to serve his chosen lady, or to win estates. But when the winter approached, the little birds migrated away, the meadows faded, the leaves sank from the trees, frost hovered about the burgh, then the joyful activity in the district terminated, the German knight retired to the interior of the house, lived honorably with wife and children and dreamed golden dreams in the hope of the next awakening of life." This conception of a dualism of human life, a serene, sunny side, and a cold twilight pervades the entire chivalrous poetry. It is but a realization of the dualism of the human soul, as Goethe has wonderfully expressed it in his Faust:

"Two souls alas! reside within my breast, And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.

One with tenacious organs holds in love And clinging l.u.s.t the world in its embraces; The other strongly sweeps, this dust above, Into the high ancestral places.

Yet in each soul is born the pleasure Of yearning onward, upward and away, When o'er our heads, lost in the vaulted azure, The lark sends down his flickering lay."

The fantastic devotion to woman and the love for her at the time of the Minnesingers thus changed the entire life of the Teutonic race. Woman became the centre of the rich animated social circle. The love of woman controlled the hearts of the ruling cla.s.s and the imagination of the poets. Her power in state, court, and home was firmly rooted and remained great, even though the golden sheen and glimmer of the period of the minnesong vanished after a few generations. Her legal status, too, was raised; she became equal, and in many respects superior, to man. If the basis of her existence was the house, the family, she was the ruler of the units of which the fabric of the state is composed. The sacred flame of the hearth was nourished by her; the children were in her safekeeping; in her eye and heart rested the blessing or the curse of home and state.

The love of woman, the life of minne, during that epochal era s.h.i.+nes most brightly, though idealized, in the greatest lyric and epic poets Germany ever produced.

True poetry is, after all, the highest truth. To describe woman's life and love in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we cannot do better than view her reflection in the mirror of that poetry of which she is the almost exclusive subject. The minnesong is the especial history of women. Elevation and degeneracy appear as clearly in poetry as in life.

Woman, wine, and the eternal laws of nature are the essence of poetry.

Poetry, on the whole, is the history of love in all its aspects, and minne is especially the soul of the Middle High German poetry, which, in spite of its brilliancy, is, alas! too self-confined in this one, though supreme, all-pervading emotion.

In this respect, German minnesong is quite different from that of the Provencal troubadours, who sing also warlike strains of patriotism, of the sweet and glorious death for the fatherland, of revolution against an overbearing Church or political tyranny. Among the German minnesingers, Walter von der Vogelweide alone, the greatest of all, sings in the same strain.

One sided as the subject of that period is, its modulations are varied.

There is the language of the pensive heart, of the gay boundings of hope and happiness, of cheerfulness and melancholy, of depth of feeling, of buoyant spirits, and again there is a dirge bewailing a lover's fate in tones that breathe mystic feelings.

We cannot, therefore, agree with the harsh judgment of the great Schiller regarding the Minnesingers: "If the sparrows should ever chance to think of writing or publis.h.i.+ng an almanack of love and friends.h.i.+p, we might bet ten to one that it would be composed pretty much in the same manner. What a poverty of ideas in these minnesingers! A garden, a tree, a hedge, a forest, and a sweetheart! quite right! somewhat such are the objects which have a place in the head of a sparrow. And the flowers, they exhale! and the spring comes, and the winter goes, and nothing remains but _ennui_!"

The minnesongs of the greatest masters, nevertheless, whose treasures were unearthed after Schiller's time, enable us to form a true and vivid estimate of the regard in which women were held when this poetry flourished. Wolfram von Eschenbach sings the sorrows of unrequited love:

"Would I that lofty spirit melt Of that proud dame that dwells so high, Kind heaven must aid me, or unfelt By her will be its agony.

Joy in my soul no place can find: As well might I a suitor be To thunderbolts, as hope her mind Will turn in softer mood to me.

"Those cheeks are beautiful, are bright As the red rose with dewdrops grac'd; And faultless is the lovely light Of those dear eyes, that, on me plac'd, Pierce to my very heart, and fill My soul with love's consuming fires, While pa.s.sion burns and reigns at will; So deep a love that fair inspires!

"But joy upon her beauteous form Attends, her hues so bright to shed O'er those red lips, before whose warm And beaming smile all care is fled.

She is to me all light and joy, I faint, I die, before her frown; Even Venus, liv'd she yet on earth, A fairer G.o.ddess here must own."