Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/germansocietyatc00baxeiala Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). The Social Side of the Reformation in Germany GERMAN SOCIETY AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES Aberdeen University Press. GERMAN SOCIETY AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES by E. BELFORT BAX Author of "The Story of the French Revolution," "The Religion of Socialism," "The Ethics of Socialism," "Handbook of the History of Philosophy," etc., etc. [Illustration: Logo] London Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1894 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION, 1 I. FIRST SIGNS OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT, 43 II. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT, 92 III. LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD, 114 IV. FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION, 139 V. THE GERMAN TOWN, 156 VI. THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD, 165 VII. COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 194 VIII. THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE, 219 APPENDIX A, 231 " B, 260 " C, 272 PREFACE. The work, of which the present volume is the first instalment, aims at giving English readers a general view of the social condition and the popular movements of Germany during the period known as that of the Reformation. In accordance with this plan, I have only touched incidentally upon the theological disputes then apparently uppermost in the thoughts of men, or upon the purely political side of things. They are dealt with merely in so far as they immediately strike across the path of social and internal affairs. The present volume, which has a more general character than its successors, deals with a period limited, roughly speaking, by the closing years of the fifteenth century on the one side, and by 1525, the year of the great Peasant rising, on the other. It contains a narrative of the earlier popular revolutionary movements at the close of the Middle Ages, the precursors of the Peasants' War; and it also deals with the underlying causes, economic, social and juridical, of the general disintegration of the time. The next volume will treat more in detail the events of the years 1524 to 1526. The third will contain a history of the Anabaptist Movement in Central Europe from its rise at Zwickau in 1522 to its decline after the capture of Münster by the Archiepiscopal and Imperial troops in 1536. The reign of the Saints in Münster naturally forms the leading feature of this portion of the work.