Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries Volume I Part 15

[Footnote 57: Margaret Horng of Ernstkirchen was twice married, first to Dr. Johann von Glauburg at Lichtenstein, then to Weicker Frosch, both of Frankfort families.]

[Footnote 58: This refers to the presents of the bridegroom to the female relation of the bride.]

[Footnote 59: The bridegroom was a widower.]

[Footnote 60: After the marriage feast the shoes are taken from the feet of the bride and given to the best-man.]

[Footnote 61: Of the ceremonial of fetching home the bride, and the festive entrance into the city of Frankfort. This fetching home took place with a splendour which made an epoch in the patrician circles of Frankfort. 1598.]

 

[Footnote 62: Gotz's method of acting is characteristic: he enters into a quarrel with the rich Nurembergers, seeks for causes of quarrel, and waylays their merchants. The supposition that the Nurembergers hold a good comrade of his in durance is sufficient for him; of a like character is the ground of offence, that they had stabbed in another quarrel a servant whom he had wished to take into his service. There is nothing further said of Fitz von Littwach, than that Gotz was obliged to reconcile himself with the Nurembergers. The grounds upon which Gotz broke bounds are in themselves remarkable, as will be perceived in the following narrative.]

[Footnote 63: Hohenburg and Bissingen lay in the territory of Oettingen. The Counts of Oettingen claimed to be lords paramount over these properties.]

[Footnote 64: The princes stood by the members of their own order; and this family, as we know, belonged to the higher n.o.bility. Their struggle for seigniorial rights over property occasioned many battles in the sixteenth century; and the claims of Schartlin appeared to them particularly arrogant, as his n.o.bility by birth was more than doubtful.]

[Footnote 65: Bishop of Breslau, the crown commissary of Bohemia, under the supremacy of which Silesia was then incorporated.]

[Footnote 66: Winds are nothing but good and bad spirits.--'Table Talk.']

[Footnote 67: At one time Luther was inclined to think that he himself had one or two especial devils as opponents, who lurked about him and accompanied him to the dormitory in the cloister.--'Table Talk.']

[Footnote 68: 'The compact alliance of the world-famed Duke of Luxemburg--General and Court-Marshal to the King of France--with Satan, and the terrible catastrophe that followed.' Frankfort and Leipzig, 1716.]

[Footnote 69: The t.i.tle of the ma.n.u.script is, 'Wonderful Tidings of a Money Devil; a strange, incredible, yet true story. Published at Frankfort on the Oder, where it took place, 1538, 4.']

[Footnote 70: Pfaff was the nickname of the Roman Catholic priests in those days.]

[Footnote 71: This does not mean mushroom, still less bath sponge, as the Dean understood it; it is the Bavarian word _Schwaim_, p.r.o.nounced _Schwam_, "The Floating Shadow."]

END OF VOL. I.