The change in German music can also be traced to a secular source, but not only were the immediate results of this change, in terms of actual music, vastly different from those in Italy, but the controlling motive which molded its varied manifestations was alike different. The German Protestants were at once summoned to test the strength and sincerity of their new-found faith in the crucible of physical combat, and they were stirred as was possibly no other nation engaged in the complicated succession of religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As it was religious fervor that led them to take up the sword in defence, so it was religious sentiment and devotion that furnished the motive that lies back of the entire scheme of German musical art of the seventeenth century. To the rather austere German composers of this period music seemed to be too lovely and pure a thing to be used for histrionic tricks and trappings. So the most sincere and important utterances of German musical art of the seventeenth century are to be found in the field of religious music. It has been pointed out (page 79) that the chorale was the basis of the music which sprang into being as the natural expression of the Protestant movement in Germany. Since the rich mass of folk-song supplied such abundant material for the chorales used in the Lutheran service, the secular element through this channel entered into the very warp and woof of German music, and carried into it the quality of simple and fervid sincerity that in a marked degree has always characterized the German folk-song and the art-music that sprang from it. The secular element had wrought a complete change in Italian music within the short space of a half century and the impetuous Italians had given themselves over to the new tendency so whole-heartedly that the boundaries of the old ecclesiastical art were almost wholly obliterated. An unexpected caution and conservatism, however, manifested itself among the Germans and an entire century elapsed before a definite and distinctive art-fabric was evolved from the material at hand. Composers, now almost wholly forgotten, but who might have won more frequent historic mention had they chosen to tread the more brilliant path of histrionic art, worked contentedly and with pious enthusiasm to make chorales for the church service or to construct motets by using the chorale tunes as subjects and weaving voice-parts around them in expressive counterpoint or in imitative figures, with all the polyphonic skill they possessed.