Resisting Pluralization and Globalization in German Culture, 1490–1540

Visions of a Nation in Decline

Peter Hess

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783110674620
• eBook ISBN: 9783110675009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German Literary Criticism
• Index: History

A critical reading of both literary and non-literary German texts published between 1490 and 1540 exposes a populist backlash against perceived social and political disruptions, the dramatic expansion of spatial and epistemological horizons, and the growth of global trade networks. These texts opposed the twin phenomena of pluralization and secularization, which promoted a Humanist tolerance for ambiguity, boosted globalization and spatial expansion around 1500, and promoted new ways of imagining the world. Part I considers threats to the political order and the protestations against them, above all a vigorous defense of the common good. Part II traces the intellectual and epistemological upheaval triggered by the spatial discoveries and the new methods of visual and verbal representation of space. Part III examines the nationalistic backlash triggered by the rising global trade and related abusive trading practices and by perceived undue foreign influences. It is the basic premise of this book that the texts examined here protested the observed disruptions of the status quo and sought to reestablish a stable imperial order in the face of political and social upheaval and of the felt cultural decline of the German nation.

Part I: A World in Decline: Anxieties about Social and Political Order

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

Discourses about social order and its disruptions abounded in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were fueled by the social, political, and economic transformations that accompanied the exponential growth of spatial knowledge and the establishment of global trade networks around 1500. Trade and commerce started to evolve rapidly, starting with the evolution of a proto-capitalist economy that began in Italy in the thirteenth century and took hold in Germany in the fifteenth century. Generally, economic development outpaced economic attitudes and moral norms relating to economic activity.¹ It is this tension between economic development and attitudes toward economic processes that led to concern about the stability of the social and political structures. Part I of this book traces responses to political transformations triggered by the rise of the long-distance merchant class and to corresponding shifts in the value system that governed political thinking. Literary texts covering all genres across the board, from church hymns to narrative prose, were dwelling heavily on this theme, which is an indication that writers were concerned about a threat to the order.

Historically, the conventional order was based on the organization of society into three classes or groups, namely those who pray (oratores), those who fight (bellatores) and those who produce (laboratores), as the monk Aelfric Grammaticus (955–1020) formulated it.² This was the foundation of the three basic estates in medieval society: clergy, nobility, and the third estate consisting of merchants, artisans and peasants. The estates were configured as “social corporations,” each defined by its own set of privileges.³ While this tripartite system remained operative in France until the French Revolution and was discussed by theoreticians of the Revolution, like Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836),⁴ it did not find much attention in Germany past 1200.⁵

Many German cities liberated themselves from landed princes in the Middle Ages and were given vast privileges as free cities by the emperor. The self-confident citizens created their own urban social structures that were typically dominated by the patriciate. Other social categories were small merchants and shopkeepers, artisans and craftsmen, then disenfranchised groups like day laborers, servants, members of dishonest occupations, and Jews. In some cities, in particular in southern Germany and Switzerland, the guilds managed to amass considerable political power. Furthermore, noblemen and members of the clergy enjoyed special privileges in cities but were not involved in their governance. Therefore, describing German society in terms of the three estates is not very useful. Rather, a differentiation in clergy, nobility, merchants, artisans and peasants was common, with the caveat that nobility and clergy formed their own hierarchy in urban contexts. Furthermore, variations allowed for further differentiation among urban citizens.

German cities in the fifteenth century enjoyed a system of self-governance that allowed many cities to operate like sovereign states. The economic recovery after the plague outbreaks of the fourteenth century led to economic opportunity for an expanding and ever more powerful class of merchants and artisans in German cities.⁶ Local merchants typically formed the governing patriciate, but in many southern German cities the guild system was politically powerful as well. The growth of trading cooperatives and of large trading corporations in the fifteenth century gave rise to a class of wealthy long-distance merchants that threatened the existing power structure. Part I examines discourses that project visions of an ideal order as well as express anxieties about its demise.

Chapter 1 Order and Discipline: Visions and Anxieties

In the early sixteenth century, there was broad consensus that order was part of a divine plan and therefore represented an innate human need.⁷ Christian Egenolff argued this in his Chronic von an vnd abgang aller Welt wesenn (Chronicle of the Beginning and End of All Beings in the World) from 1533: “And a divine order, as Paul teaches, is implanted into nature and reason, to protect the pious and to punish the evil.”⁸ The first threat to this natural order was the ejection from paradise. Yet, humans managed to live side by side in simple settlements following the norms of natural law for some time after that: “Thus they built houses, invented all kinds of arts, led a sweet sociable life and a civil and amicable coexistence, without any walls, defenses, armor, rule, authority, and war.”⁹ But soon some broke the peace and started to practice violence. Envy, disloyalty, theft, robbery, and murder became commonplace, and many left the path of virtue. Thus, the need arose to choose a leader who could protect people against evil deeds and keep the peace. Very soon, peoples chose their kings, built castles and walls around their villages, and armed themselves.¹⁰ Conflicts and wars emerged and grew among these kingdoms, and the need arose to create a supreme monarchy, an imperial majesty, to control the other rulers.¹¹

Egenolff made two important points here. First, he explained and justified the existence of the empire, which exercised control over other monarchies. Second, and more importantly, he argued that humans needed authoritarian rule in order to live together communally in peace. The pessimistic view was that humans ever since the fall from Paradise were not able to freely organize their affairs according to natural law. A functioning nobility and ruling monarchs were required to regulate coexistence among humans and to guarantee peace and prosperity. This is a key reason, according to Egenolff and others, that the natives of the West Indies had no kings nor any reliable system of governance and as such had to be classified as uncivilized.¹² Having a monarch or strong ruler who imposed order was an indispensable part of the divine order and thus represented the end stage of the development of human societies. As we will see in Chapter 6, the Holy Roman Empire of Maximilian I and Charles V therefore was seen as the ideal final stage of history.

Similarly, the historian and astrologer Johannes Carion (1499–1537), in his Chronica from 1532, viewed the divine imposition of order a historical necessity for the world to emerge from its original bleak and disordered condition. Based on Elijah’s prophecy of the earth’s six-thousand-year existence, the Vaticinium Eliae, Carion subdivided human history into three periods of two thousand years each:

The world will last six thousand years, and then it will fracture. […] That is for two thousand years the world shall stand desolate, that is without a government ordained by God’s word. Then shall come the contraction and the law, and a government and service to God will be ordered anew through God’s word, and this shall also last two thousand years. Then Christ shall come, and the period of the Gospel shall also last two thousand years.¹³

In its origins, the state of the world was thought to be desolate because it was without governance. Only in the second period God imposed his order, which allowed for the flourishing of the Assyrian, Persian, and Greek monarchies and later launched the Roman Empire that in its German reincarnation dominated the third and last period of the gospel. This allowed Carion to integrate the doctrine of the translatio imperii into the sequence of the four monarchies and simultaneously justify the Christian Occident’s emerging leadership of the world.¹⁴ Divinely inspired governance thus was not just important for human society to flourish, but it also was a prerequisite for the second coming of Christ and the subsequent end of history, culminating in the last judgment. To Carion, governance was the expression of divine will:

I noted in the introduction that God conceived the world in four monarchies in order to sustain order, law, and punishment in the world. I reported this so that one can learn to recognize and honor God’s works in the authorities. This is why Scripture preaches to us so much about these monarchies.¹⁵

God’s will and God’s works were recognizable in the authorities he created. Thus, the value of the study of history, as Carion performed it in this Chronicle, was that it revealed God’s hand behind it.¹⁶ The characterization of God as the master of history, as envisioned in the Book of Daniel, thus rang true to Carion.¹⁷ As its master, God also could ensure its end, which to Carion was very much the point of Daniel’s vision.¹⁸

The radical reformer Sebastian Franck (1499–1542/43) was an unwavering advocate for the unlimited powers of the authorities. In his Chronica, Zeytbuch vnd geschychtbibel von anbegyn biß inn diß gegenwertig MDXXXI. Jar (Chronicle, Annals and Bible of History from the Beginnings up to this Present Year 1531), he argued that God had been using tyrannical governments as punishment for unruly societies since the Deluge. Worldly authorities were installed by God, and they could be good or tyrannical, depending on whether God intended it to be an instrument to maintain peace and welfare in the world or to punish the evil ones. This is why it was an act of heresy to resist worldly authorities, as the peasants had done in their revolt of 1524–1525:

In sum, this is why the authorities are nothing other than a rod and servant of God to avenge the one who did evil, for the benefit of the good. This is why Paul […] recommends that the Christians should obey in all ways the godless heathen powers who were sovereigns over their territory, tyrannized it and led it violently. […] For there is no power, if it is not ordained by God, so that whoever opposes that power resists God’s order.¹⁹

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1524–1525 therefore held a real lesson for Franck. He described its horror and destruction with a purpose:

Enough said about all rebellion by way of example and deterrence, so that we should know that rebellion never was pleasing to God, and that the Gospel teaches us to suffer oppression and not to rise up.²⁰

Like Luther, Franck held that the peasants were wrong to take matters into their own hands as it was up to God to punish the tyrants.²¹ However, Franck remained an inconsequential outlier in the discussion of the nature of secular authority and political order as his spiritualist and mystical message was broadly and vigorously rejected in the Protestant world, including by Luther.

Urban self-rule, within the confines of the Holy Roman Empire, was commonly framed as a legitimate variant of monarchic rule within this system of order. Many political writers specifically addressed urban political structures within this larger context. Georg Lauterbeck (c. 1505–1578) in his Regentenbuch Aus vielen trefflichen alten vnd newen Historien/ mit sonderm fleis zusammen gezogen (Regent Book, Drawn from Splendid Old and New Histories with Special Diligence) from 1556, for instance, came up with a fairly differentiated urban structure that reflects the growing complexities of urban life and the nuances of urban governments. Lauterbeck stated that his text was modeled after Aristotle’s Politics.²² But it is not a mere translation as Lauterbeck specifically tailored it to the needs of cities and as h...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: A World in Decline: Anxieties about Social and Political Order
• Part II: Staying Home: Resistance to Expanding Spatial Horizons
• Part III: Globalization and the Nationalistic Backlash in Germany
• Index