German Culture Past and Present | Page 4

pens to defend it as a
legitimate means of aristocratic livelihood; since a knight must live in
suitable style, and this was often his only resource for obtaining the
means thereto.

The free cities, which were subject only to Imperial jurisdiction, were
practically independent republics. Their organization was a microcosm
of that of the entire empire. At the apex of the municipal society was
the Bürgermeister and the so-called "Honorability" (Ehrbarkeit), which
consisted of the patrician clans or gentes (in most cases), those families
which were supposed to be descended from the original chartered
freemen of the town, the old Mark-brethren. They comprised generally
the richest families, and had monopolized the entire government of the
city, together with the right to administer its various sources of income
and to consume its revenue at their pleasure. By the time, however, of
which we are writing, the trade-guilds had also attained to a separate
power of their own, and were in some cases ousting the
burgher-aristocracy, though they were very generally susceptible of
being manipulated by the members of the patrician class, who, as a rule,
could alone sit in the Council (Rath). The latter body stood, in fact, as
regards the town, much in the relation of the feudal lord to his manor.
Strong in their wealth and in their aristocratic privileges, the patricians
lorded it alike over the townspeople and over the neighbouring
peasantry, who were subject to the municipality. They forestalled and
regrated with impunity. They assumed the chief rights in the municipal
lands, in many cases imposed duties at their own caprice, and turned
guild privileges and rights of citizenship into a source of profit for
themselves. Their bailiffs in the country districts forming part of their
territory were often more voracious in their treatment of the peasants
than even the nobles themselves. The accounts of income and
expenditure were kept in the loosest manner, and embezzlement
clumsily concealed was the rule rather than the exception.
The opposition of the non-privileged citizens, usually led by the
wealthier guildsmen not belonging to the aristocratic class, operated
through the guilds and through the open assembly of the citizens. It had
already frequently succeeded in establishing a representation of the
general body of the guildsmen in a so-called Great Council (Grosser
Rath), and in addition, as already said, in ousting the "honorables" from
some of the public functions. Altogether the patrician party, though still
powerful enough, was at the opening of the sixteenth century already
on the decline, the wealthy and unprivileged opposition beginning in its

turn to constitute itself into a quasi-aristocratic body as against the
mass of the poorer citizens and those outside the pale of municipal
rights. The latter class was now becoming an important and turbulent
factor in the life of the larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the
body of non-patrician citizens, were naturally in general dominated by
their most wealthy section.
We may here observe that the development of the mediæval township
from its earliest beginnings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth
century was almost uniformly as follows:[1] At first the township, or
rather what later became the township, was represented entirely by the
circle of gentes or group-families originally settled within the mark or
district on which the town subsequently stood. These constituted the
original aristocracy from which the tradition of the Ehrbarkeit dated. In
those towns founded by the Romans, such as Trier, Aachen, and others,
the case was of course a little different. There the origin of the
Ehrbarkeit may possibly be sought for in the leading families of the
Roman provincials who were in occupation of the town at the coming
of the barbarians in the fifth century. Round the original nucleus there
gradually accreted from the earliest period of the Middle Ages the freed
men of the surrounding districts, fugitive serfs, and others who sought
that protection and means of livelihood in a community under the
immediate domination of a powerful lord, which they could not
otherwise obtain when their native village-community had perchance
been raided by some marauding noble and his retainers. Circumstances,
amongst others the fact that the community to which they attached
themselves had already adopted commerce and thus become a guild of
merchants, led to the differentiation of industrial functions amongst the
new-comers, and thus to the establishment of craft-guilds.
Another origin of the townsfolk, which must not be overlooked, is to be
found in the attendants on the palace-fortress of some great overlord. In
the early Middle Ages all such magnates kept up an extensive
establishment, the greater ecclesiastical lords no less than the secular
often having several castles. In Germany this origin of the township
was furthered by Charles the Great, who established schools and other
civil institutions, with a magistrate at