PROCESOS EN ESTADO FUNDIDO Y SEMIFUNDIDO

Turning now to the early political commentaries published by Gengenbach around 1513, although he was much more forthright than Brant their ideas still show a considerable affinity. This section discusses Gengenbach’s Lied about the Bimdschith uprising in 1513 in the nearby town of Lehen (now part of Freiburg-im-Breisgau) and the subsequent execution o f two o f its leaders by the Basel authorities.

The Butidschuh, the typical peasant’s wooden footwear, had been a symbol o f revolt that had been appearing on peasant banners since 1439: ‘[...] signifying the unity o f protesting commoners and as a symbol o f conspiratory rebellion and its name was given to other major uprisings that took place on the Upper Rhine in 1493, 1502 and in 1517. ’^ Scott has given a recent account o f the rising in Lehen in 1513 and its leader Joss Fritz, who was a survivor o f the events of 1502 that had centred on his home town o f

Untergrombach.'^® The rising planned in 1513 was discovered before it began and

smashed by the Margrave o f Baden and the Freiburg authorities. Its leaders fled and three o f them - Jacob Huser, Kilian Meiger and Fritz - were captured outside Basel. Fritz escaped again and went on to help organise the 1517 rising, but his two comrades were tried and executed in the city three days before Christmas. Gengenbach published the first edition o f the song shortly after.

The opening lines o f Gengenbach’s rhyming foreword of Der Bundschuh make clear his reaction to the events:

I

/

Adolf Laube, ‘Precursors o f the Peasant War: Bundschuh and Armer Konrad: Popular Movements at the Eve o f the Reformation,’ in The German Peasant War o f 1525, ed. by J.Bak (London: Frank Cass, 1976), pp.49-53, p.49.

For a comprehensive history: Albert Rosenkranz, Der Bundschuh. Die Erhebungen des siidu’estdeutschen Bauernstandes in den Jahren 1495-1517, Schriften des

Wissenschaftlichen Instituts der ElsaB-Lothringer im Reich 12, 2 vols (Heidelberg: 1927).

Tom Scott, Freiburg and the Breisgau - Town-Country Relations in the Age o f Reformation and Peasants' War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 176-85.

So ich betracht yetzüd die welt findt ich ei dig dz mir miBfelt Dz ist die groB ungehorsâkeitt Die in d’ welt ist wyt uh breit Nymands mer wil gehorsam sein Ein yeder macht nach gedencken hin Kein oberkeit sech man me an Darumb es muss so ubel gon (p.Air)

After a justification o f obedience to authority based on the Old Testament more than one hundred lines long (lines 51-165) it finishes by urging the need for obedience by city dwellers as much as by the peasantry:

Und auch den buren nit allein Sunder den burgem in der stat Das sie gehorsam syen dem rat Und uff einander haben acht So ist gott bey in tag und nacht [p.Av/].

This stress on obedience to constituted authority refers specifically to the city council and beyond that to the Emperor, but presumably did not extend to obeying the Pope as he is not mentioned. Gengenbach reminds the priesthood of the need to obey God’s laws. What is intriguing is just who were the citizens o f Basel that had been disobedient and what was it they had done to be linked with the rebels o f the Bundschuh. The poem had already referred to them quite early on:

So vil zwytracht als yetzund ist Vnd sich erhebt zu aller frist Bey fursten herren nit allein Sunder in stetten ists gemain Die burner seind wider den rat (p.Aif).

"Zwytrachf {Zweitracht) - sowing dissension and creating conflict - gets a whole chapter in Das Narrenschiff, chapter 7, entitled ‘ Vom zwytracht machen’. On the whole Brant avoids giving specific examples o f particular Christians who have been disobedient and is more worried about the ideological issues surrounding disobedience. To tolerate

disobedience is to tolerate a slide in the high standard of Christian belief that the world desperately needs to save humanity from the apocalypse. Gengenbach in his discussion,

on the other hand, aims his strictures specifically at the Bundschuh peasants and (certain) citizens of towns. Perhaps Gengenbach was referring to the citizens in Berne, Lucerne and Solothurn who that year had executed some of their councillors and forced others into exile for taking payments from the French. Or perhaps it was a more general comment like that made by Brant in a letter to his friend Konrad Peutinger in 1504;

No unity is left in our land, no peace, no law, no friendship. Like lions we prowl on each other; we rob and plunder like wolves. Our bitter internal conflicts fill me with fear and shame.

But despite his deep concern for social stability Brant did not feel the various peasants’ risings to be important enough to write about. Only in his last major poem, the

^Freiheitstafel\ written in about 1516, is there a direct mention o f the Bundschuh . Was man uns thut von Fryheit sagen

behertzigen nicht viel bei unszern tagen; stehts thut man teutschlands mehr inbeiszen von alter libertet und wiszen;

wihr kommen gar in welsch manier, das wurdt dem Bundtschuch leiden schier: ich sorg er sy bald an der thiir.'^^

Brant regarded disobedience as but one problem in a whole catalogue. It enjoyed no special place unlike the sin of avarice and fixation on money and its widespread corrosive impact, which was a recurrent concern for Brant. A particularly negative effect o f avarice on the peasantry was their using money to try and rise above their proper station in society. Brant wrote about this in two different chapters o f Das Narrenschiff - in chapter 82, ‘von burschem uffgang’ and in chapter 73, ‘Von geystlich werdê’. In chapter 82 Brant portrayed the peasantry as wealthy - ‘Die buren stecken gantz voll gelt’ (p.215) - which they spent on clothes and new fashions; ostentation that was clearly an effort to show

Manifestations o f Discontent, trans. by G. Strauss (London: Indiana University Press, 1971) p. 224. The original letter is in: KonradPeutingers Briefwechsef ed. by Erich Konig (Munich: Beck, 1923), pp.32-38.

Joachim Knape, Dichtung, Recht und Freiheit - Studien zu Leben und Werk Sebastian Brants 1457-1521 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1992), p.499.

superiority over social groups higher placed in society/^ The poor peasants who flooded into the towns in times o f hardship to swell the ranks o f the beggars were not a class o f people that Brant recognised as worthy of consideration.

Der Bmidschuh is the work by Gengenbach most focussed on the theme o f disobedience. He does return to it from time to time in other writings, but not in quite the same insistent way. Brother Nollhart in Der Nollhart, for example, says:

So nim von mir hie ein verstand Sachs ding zerstoren alle land. Das ist hoffart / Vngehorsamkeit Dar ZÛ nyd vnd lychtfertigkeit / Verzwyfflung vnd auch gydt / Zerstoren gar vyl land vnd lût. (pp.66-67, lines 1135-1140)

Basel’s ruling elite may have made common cause with landlords to defend their feudal rights against peasant protest, but the ruling guilds-men o f Basel had little sympathy for maintaining the political status quo when it suited. Only 15 months later in March 1515 they eliminated the right of the hohen Stube (the ‘guild’ o f the Basel patriciate) to choose eight members o f the inner council of the city, the Kleinrat. The following year they elected their first ever non-noble burgomaster, Jakob Meyer; and the Ritter - the Basel nobility - shortly lost their right to four places on the city council. Gengenbach reflected this hostility to the nobility in Alt Eydgnosz when he wrote about the Swiss liberation from overlordship:

Also die alten schwitzer hand In grosser gotzforcht thun reihen Von alien herren warens fry Der gerechtigkeit stunden sie by Kein dienstgelt dettens nàmen Wo man syB soit gezigen ban Sie hettens sich thun schamen.

[p.Ain.

This was frequently illegal. The only book on the topic does not reveal if it was in Basel at this time: John Martin Vincent, Costume and Conduct in the laws o f Basel, Bern and Zurich 1370-1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkin Press, 1935).

It went on to refer to a widespread breaking-down o f relationships: Als mich die sach ansehen wil

So ist der vntrew also vyl Under fursten vnd ouch herren Vnd ouch dar zu vnder der gmein Man acht jetz keiner eren.

[pp.Aiif-Aiin.

On the same theme, Brant was more detailed than Gengenbach about the ‘foolish’ ways in which the nobility disrupt society: they were not impartial in their implementation o f the law (chapter 46, ‘Vo dë gewalt der narre’); they allowed corruption among their advisors (chapter 46); they desired to rise in the aristocratic hierarchy (chapter 82); and they failed to provide moral Christian leadership (chapter 99). Neither Brant nor Gengenbach were willing to extend these criticisms to the Emperor himself, however, whom both regarded as above the failings o f the other nobility and to whom they looked to institute necessary change. In Der Nollhart (1517) Gengenbach expressed a vision that suggests reforms by the Emperor would dispose o f nobility and rulers:

All stand wirt er do reformieren Dan wirt ein volck on houbt regieren (p.33, lines 235-36).

This could be interpreted as a revolutionary call, but it is more likely to be Gengenbach calling for a Swiss-style solution to end the independent power o f the aristocracy. If he was actively advocating the imitation o f the confederate states by their neighbours then Gengenbach may have had greater sympathy for the Lehen peasants rising than is otherwise apparent from Der Bundschuh. Thomas Brady Jr. has discussed the influence I that the Swiss had as a model of freedom from noble oppression on peasant communities

outside Switzerland. He argues that the political arrangements in the Confederacy: ‘[...] appeared subversive o f law and order to the nobles, who believed that they alone could rightly rule.

There is no evidence o f the confederates actively living up to this image and undermining

Thomas Brady Jr., Turning Swiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.36.

the nobility - they were certainly not in the business of exporting peasants’ rights. Serfdom had not been abolished in Switzerland. The member states o f the Confederacy owned land and peasants o f their own in the common lordships and in the rural

hinterlands o f the city cantons. These peasants, in contrast to those o f the self-governing rural cantons, were tied into the same sort o f traditional feudal contracts as they might be with any noble landlord. From time to time the Swiss cantons had to suppress their own peasant uprisings. The Compact o f Stans of 1481 was an early example o f the

Confederacy's distaste for popular protest and Basel had no problem about executing Fritz’s co-conspirators o f the Lehen Bundschuh - Gengenbach’s Lied is in tune with the opinion o f the Basel ruling elite.

There are two further poems and a piece of prose about the Bundschuh^ which Goedeke believed may have been written by G engenbach.A s he did not print them and the attitudes expressed in them were not consistent this is not likely.

In the prose piece the writer outlines the main demands o f the Bundschuh and adopts a tone that is often descriptive rather than hostile, more like a news report. What is interesting about the poems is that both make explicit reference to Brant; one in its title Das Narrenschiff vom Bundschuh and the other poem. Das Lied vom Bundschuh,

mentions Das Narrenschiff ; 'dz narrenschiff ein closter ist irs orden’.'^^ This latter poem’s approval of the wise executions and retribution exacted on the Bundschuh was a foretaste of the brutal revenge that Luther was to end up demanding against the peasant rebels o f

1525."^^ Its punitive tone contrasts with Gengenbach in Der Bundschuh who admonished

Goedeke, Gengenbach, pp.28-31, pp. 387-403, pp. 546-56. The texts are printed as ‘Zugabe’ and not as one o f the twenty-four listed by him as by Gengenbach. Hüpfuff (in Strassburg) linked the pieces when he printed Gengenbach’s poem together with the prose as early as 1514 (BL;11515.b.25). For a detailed discussion o f these pieces and who may have written them; Peter Seibert, Aufstandsbewegungen in DeiUschland 1476- 1517 in der zeitgenossischen Re im literatur, Reihe Siegen: Beitràge zur Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft, 11 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1978), pp. 180-231.

Goedeke, Gengenbach, p.387, line 11. For a short discussion see p.281.

the disobedient, but proposed no punishment.

The next chapter continues the exploration o f Gengenbach’s literary roots and influences, examining his carnival plays, which made him famous. While Brant used the carnival character of the fool, der Narr, he did not venture to write any plays o f his own.

CHAPTER 3; CARNIVAL AND THE FIRST TWO POLITISCHE MORALITÀTEN

The im derlim d reference indicates the version o f the work used in the text from which any quotes are drawn. A name in brackets at the end o f the reference indicates the shortened title used fo r it in the text.

2. Anon., Ein neues hiibsches Lied von dent Krieg zwischen Papst, Kaiser, Konig von Frankreich und den Venedigern. (1511/12?).

No original copy known. Goedeke. pp.536-40. (Adda-Schlacht). 4. Pam philus Gengenbach, Gliicksrad-Blatt Çuüq 1513). No original copy known. Priebsch. pp.263-65.

7. Anon, Copia, Von der erlichen vnd kostli\\chen enfahOg ouch fruntliche erbietung desz kiings || von EngellandKeyser Maximiliâjn Bickar-\\dy geth on /{diüer 6th Sept. 1513).

BL: 9200.C.26. (Empfang).

10/11. Pam philus Gengenbach, Der welsch flu sz (End 1513). BL: C.107.b.41 .(Welsch Flusz).

17. Pam philus Gtagtnhstch, Der alt Eydgnosz (April-July 1514).

Kohler MF: 933/2326. No copies available in Britain or Switzerland. The only original is at Wolfenbüttel. {Alt Eydgnosz).