The subject of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages, characterized by what is known as the revival of learning and the Reformation, is so important for an understanding of later German history and the especial characteristics of the German culture of later times, that we propose, even at the risk of wearying some readers, to recapitulate in as short a space as possible, compatible with clearness, the leading conditions of the times--conditions which, directly or indirectly, have moulded the whole subsequent course of German development. Owing to the geographical situation of Germany and to the political configuration of its peoples and other causes, mediaeval conditions of life as we find them in the early sixteenth century left more abiding traces on the German mind and on German culture than was the case with some other nations. The time was out of joint in a very literal sense of that somewhat hackneyed phrase. At the opening of the sixteenth century every established institution--political, social, and religious--was shaken and showed the rents and fissures caused by time and by the growth of a new life underneath it. The empire--the Holy Roman--was in a parlous way as regarded its cohesion. The power of the princes, the representatives of local centralized authority, was proving itself too strong for the power of the Emperor, the recognized representative of centralized authority for the whole German-speaking world. This meant the undermining and eventual disruption of the smaller social and political unities,[4] the knightly manors with the privileges attached to the knightly class generally. The knighthood, or lower nobility, had acted as a sort of buffer between the princes of the empire and the Imperial power, to which they often looked for protection against their immediate overlord or their powerful neighbour--the prince. The Imperial power, in consequence, found the lower nobility a bulwark against its princely vassals. Economic changes, the suddenly increased demand for money owing to the rise of the "world-market," new inventions in the art of war, new methods of fighting, the rapidly growing importance of artillery, and the increase of the mercenary soldier, had rendered the lower nobility, as an institution, a factor in the political situation which was fast becoming negligible. The abortive campaign of Franz von Sickingen in 1523 only showed its hopeless weakness. The _Reichsregiment_, or Imperial governing council, a body instituted by Maximilian, had lamentably failed to effect anything towards cementing together the various parts of the unwieldy fabric. Finally, at the Reichstag held in Nuernberg, in December 1522, at which all the estates were represented, the _Reichsregiment_, to all intents and purposes, collapsed.