But a profound change was coming over society, which wiped out all vestiges of chivalric song. The complete failure of the Crusades was one of the obvious blows dealt the institution of Chivalry. The religious upheavals against the dominance of the church of Rome--those of the Hussites in Bohemia, in the fifteenth century; of the Lutherans in Germany and of the English under Henry VIII in the sixteenth--these, apart from their religious aspect, denoted a spirited rising of the populace to self-consciousness and concerted action. The spread of knowledge and intellectual curiosity established lines of communication all over Europe and diminished the importance of the courts as centres of culture. With this came a growth of manufacture and commerce which raised to importance people very different from the gentle Minnesingers. In the Germany of the sixteenth century the mercantile middle class came to be of social importance, and around them grew up a new art of song. IV The era of the middle-class or Burgher dominance in the German cities is represented, in music, by the institution of the _Meistersang_ (master song). The Meistersang was the middle-class replica of the Minnesang. It arose shortly after the natural death of the Minnesang, early in the fourteenth century, originating, strangely enough, at Mayence, where Heinrich Frauenlob, the last of the great Minnesingers, died. The Minnesang, in fact, provided most of the forms and ideals for the Mastersong--at least in the beginning. But the era of isolated castles and wandering minstrels was not that of mercantile Germany, with strongly walled and independent cities, serving as stopping places for immense caravans coming from Italy and the far east. For these cities the merchant and artisan class held the purse-strings. They were the urban aristocrats. The Muses had perforce to eat from their hands.