XIII.
ZURICH AN EXAMPLE OF A SWISS TOWN IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
(853-1357.)
We may perhaps do well to pause here awhile before proceeding to show how the various Swiss cantons were gathered into the fold of the Eidgenossenschaft—a long process, as a matter of fact—and devote a short chapter to a glance at an aristocratic city whose polity and development contrast with those of the Forest lands. Zurich presents a fair example of a city whose origin dates back to a remote age, and whose transition from the condition of a feudal territory into the position of an independent commonwealth can be clearly followed. That Turicum is a word of Celtic origin, and that the place was one of the lake settlements in prehistoric times, and a Roman toll-station later on, has been already shown.
The chief founders of this Alamannic, or Swabian, settlement, however, were the Carolinger. Louis the German had raised the Grand Abbey and Church of Our Lady (Fraumunsterabtei) in 853, to provide his saintly daughters, Hildegarde and Bertha, with positions and incomes equal to their rank. His ancestors, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, had founded or enlarged the minster, with its vast establishment of prebends, and the Carolinum, or clerical colleges. Both institutions were richly endowed with land, and granted many prerogatives, especially the immunity, most precious of all, viz., the severance from the county or local administration of Zurich. They thus came again under the immediate control of the empire, and there were developed, two distinct centres of feudal life. Yet a third nucleus was formed by the dependants of royalty, the fiscalini, and followers of the monarch and of the Swabian dukes. These were grouped around the imperial palace (Pfalz) on the Lindenhof, a fortified stronghold on the site of the Roman castrum, and a favourite residence of the German sovereigns, who were attracted thither by the natural beauty of the place. The houses of the Alamannic free peasantry were scattered over the slopes of Zurichberg, and reached down to the Limmat river. Gradually these four distinct settlements approached each other, and in the tenth century the inner core at the mouth of the lovely lake was girt with strong walls with towers, and the tout ensemble now looked like a picturesque mediæval city with its suburbs. The rights of high jurisdiction over the whole were exercised by a royal governor, or representative of the sovereign. This was the so-called Reichsvogtei, or Advocacia in imperio.
The noble counts of Lenzburg were imperial governors from about 970 to 1098, but when the Zaerings became the governors of the Swiss lands the Lenzburgs became their holders till their death. Then the Reichsvogtei, that is, the city and its vicinity, fell back into the hands of the Zaerings, and was held by them directly till the extinction of the dynasty, 1218. From that time the charge was entrusted to the city-board, as Vögte. In Zurich the Lady Abbess acknowledged as her superior none but the governing Zaeringen duke, and later on, that is, after the dynasty had come to an end, took the foremost position. Indeed Frederick and the Hohenstaufer created his Reichsfürstin, Princess Abbess, and thus the office became one of very special dignity, and was bestowed generally on ladies of noble birth. By the acquisition of territory—reaching into Alsacia and to the St. Gothard—by privileges acquired under successive monarchs, by monopolies (coinage, fees, and tolls on markets and fairs, &c.), the institution rose to an eminence and splendour truly royal. Dukes and counts visited the abbey to pay court to its illustrious abbess—die Hohe Frau von Zurich, as she was styled—and entrusted their daughters to her care. Yet it was for court-life these high-born damsels were to be prepared rather than for the religious vows. The inner life of this great monastery, though highly interesting in itself, cannot enter into a short sketch like the present. Not only was the Abbess Lady Paramount over her clergy and vast abbatial household, with its staff of officers and its law-court, but she also bore sway over the city itself. When the administration began to require increased attention she enlarged its council, and presided at its meetings. This curious state of things continued till the thirteenth century, which saw the rise of a general political emancipation in German cities. Though apparently under a thraldom, yet the citizens really grew beneath the mild and equitable female rule into a powerful and thriving body, and at length began to contest with their mistress for self-rule.
To Frederick II. they owed their emancipation. By him Zurich became a free imperial city, governed by its own council. Council and citizens gradually becoming alive to their own civic interests, step by step wrested the civil power from the hands of the Lady Abbess, and emerged into the condition of an independent commonwealth. By this time society within the city had arranged itself into three distinct classes. (1) The clergy, headed by the abbess and the provost. (2) The knights, owing military service to emperor and abbess, and the burghers, or chiefly free landowners, and important commercial men. This second order was the governing class, and out of it came the members of the council. (3) The craftsmen, who exercised their trades only with the permission of their masters, the governing class. The workers were excluded from all share in the government, and were even prohibited from forming guilds. The majority of the artisans and serfs lived without the gates, in the outer city or walled-in suburbs. These political inequalities at length met with violent opposition, and in 1336 there broke out a revolution.
The industry of the thrifty and energetic population increased the material wealth of the city, and commercial treaties were entered into with neighbouring countries, with Italy particularly, and Italian influence made itself felt ever since the twelfth century, through four hundred years, not only in trade, but also in architecture. Zurich became an emporium for silk, and the silk manufacture, introduced from Italy, became a speciality, and was found in no other German town.[29] The activity displayed in building churches and monasteries was simply astonishing. The present minster, in the Lombard style, on the type of San Michele at Pavia, was built in the twelfth century, and the abbey was restored by the noble ladies in the thirteenth. The frequent visits of kings and emperors, who held their diets here, naturally increased the importance of the city. Taking it altogether, Zurich must have been, even in the thirteenth century, a fine specimen of a mediæval town, for Barbarossa's biographer, Otto von Freysing, calls it the noblest city of Swabia ("Turegum nobilissimum Sueviae oppidum").[30] Her policy of entering into alliances with the Swabian and Rhenish towns, and with the vast South-German coalition, and the friendly political and commercial relations she maintained, show that she fully grasped the situation, and gave her that security which promoted her trade and industry, and allowed her to develop freely.
The thirteenth century spread enlightenment amongst the benighted people of the Middle Ages, and increased the growth of political freedom in the cities, thanks to the struggles between the Papacy and the Hohenstaufen. Zurich had early emancipated herself from the spiritual sway and influence of her abbess mistress. Already, in 1146, the people had listened with keen interest to the advanced religious teaching of Arnold of Brescia, and in the ensuing quarrels sided with the freethinking Frederick II. During the interdict of 1247-49 Frederick's staunch adherents boldly drove from the town those clergy who refused to perform their spiritual functions. On a second expulsion from the town the friars took sides with the citizens, and obeyed the order literally, for they went out by one gate of the town, and re-entered by another, and resumed their offices. That the Zurcher had grown strong and self-reliant is shown by their alliance with Rudolf of Habsburg, in the feuds against their common foes, the neighbouring nobles, whose raids they checked, and by openly resisting the heavy taxation imposed by the monarch on the city. On one occasion—it was at a drinking-bout—the chief magistrate denounced this oppressive policy most wrathfully in the very presence of the queen and her daughters.
The Staufen epoch, seething with social and political movements, was also full of the spirit of romanticism. The English and French met the Germans in the Crusades, and quickened in the Fatherland the love of poetry and romance. Then the great religious wars themselves opened out a whole new world of thought and fancy. The glorification of the brilliant exploits of the Staufen sovereigns, themselves poets, inspired many a grand or lovely song, the highest flights producing the Nibelungen and the Minnelieder. In Swiss lands also minstrelsy flowed richly, and Zurich stands out as a "Poets' Corner" in the thirteenth century. At the hospitable manor of Roger Manesse, a famous knight and magistrate of the city, or at the great Abbey Hall, a brilliant company of singers clustered round the Princess Abbess Elizabeth, an eminent woman, and her relatives, the Prince Bishop of Constance, Henry of Klingenberg, and his brother Albrecht, the famous chevalier. Then the Prince Abbots of Einsiedeln, and the abbots of Petershausen (Constance), the counts of Toggenburg, the barons of Regensberg, of Eschenbach, and Von Wart, together with many other lords, spiritual and temporal, and many a fair and illustrious lady—all these thronged the courtly circle to listen to the recital of the Minnelieder, or perchance to produce their own. The famous Codex Manesse, lately at Paris, and now in Germany,[31] bears witness to the romantic character of the age. It contains the songs of some hundred and fifty German and Swiss minstrels, who sang between the years 1200 and 1350. Manesse and his son, a canon at the minster, undertook the collection out of pure enthusiasm. Their amanuensis was a comely young fellow named Hadloub, the son of a freeman farmer from the Zurichberg. A pretty story is told how during his mechanical labour of copying there grew strong in him the love of poetry, and he became himself a poet. For he fell in love with a high-born lady at Manesse's court, who however noticed him not. Then he told his grief in love songs which Manesse added to his collection. Indeed these songs close the series of Swiss poems in the Codex Manesse. Gottfried Keller, of Zurich, one of the greatest German novelists of the present day, has treated of the period in his exquisite novel "Hadloub" (Zurcher Novellen). Space does not permit us to give any account of the story, and the reader must be referred to the fascinating tale as it stands. Hadloub was indeed the last Swiss minstrel belonging to that fertile age. The love and beauty of woman is the theme of his songs, and in depicting these he particularly excels—the real Minnegesang. Uhland, the great lyric poet says of him, "In the clear soul of this poet the parting minstrelsy has once more reflected its own lovely image."
But whilst poetry was rejoicing the hearts of the nobles, political clouds were fast gathering over the city, to break at length into a wild hurricane. As a matter of fact, a few distinguished families had established an oligarchy in the place of the city council in process of time. The craftsmen, excluded from any share in the administration, and moreover finding fault with the financial management of the state, and galled by the domineering conduct of the aristocracy, rose in fierce opposition. Rudolf Brun, an ambitious ruler, but a clever statesman, being at variance with his own patrician party, suddenly placed himself at the head of the malcontents. Overthrowing the government before it had time to bestir itself, Rudolf had himself elected burgomaster, an official in whom all power was to centre. In 1336 he presented a new constitution, making the whole assembly swear to it. To insure its validity this code (Geschworne Brief) was submitted to the sanction of the abbess and the provost, and was also approved by the emperor. This new constitution was quite in keeping with the political views of the age, and remained in its chief points the leading constitutional guide of the commonwealth down to the revolution of 1798. It was a curious blending of democratic with aristocratic and monarchical elements. The craftsmen, who up to the present had counted for nothing in politics, were now formed into thirteen corporations, each selecting its own guildmaster, who represented its members in the governing council. The nobility and the wealthy burghers who practised no profession, or the Geschlechter (patricians), and rentiers formed a highly aristocratic body known as the Constafel (Constables), and were likewise represented in the state council by thirteen members, six of whom Brun named himself. The position of the burgomaster was the most striking of all, and was, in fact, that of a Roman dictator of old, or resembling the Italian tyrannies of the Visconti or Medici. Elected for life, vested with absolute power, the burgomaster was responsible to none, whilst to him fealty was to be sworn by all on pain of losing the rights of citizenship. The idol of the people to whom he had granted political power, Brun was regarded as the true pilot and saviour in stormy times. The fallen councillors brooded revenge, and being banished the town, resorted to Rapperswyl, the Zurich extra muros, and at the other end of the lake. There they made chose commune with Count John of that place, who was desirous of evading payment of the debts he had contracted in Zurich. Feuds and encounters followed, and John was slain in battle in 1337. The emperor tried to restore peace, but the exiled councillors were bent on bringing back the old state of things, and on regaining their seats. They plotted against Brun's life, and those of his associates, and fixed upon the 23rd of February, 1350, for making an attack by night on the city, with the intention of seizing it by a single coup-de-main. They relied on the help of sympathisers within the town. The burgomaster, being apprized of the plot, summoned his faithful burghers to arms by the ringing of the tocsin. A bloody hand-to-hand fight in the streets took place, thence called the Zurcher Mordnacht. The conspiracy was crushed by the majority, and Count John of Rapperswyl, son of the above-mentioned count, was thrown into the tower of Wellenberg, a famous state prison. There he passed his time in the composition of Minnelieder.
Brun made a bad use of his victory. His cruelties to the prisoners and to Rapperswyl, which he burnt, are unjustifiable, and seem inexplicable in so far-sighted a statesman. He was ambitious, and desired not only his own advancement, but also that of his native city. He had depended on Austria, hoping to rise through her alliance and aid, but, suddenly forgetting all moderation, and disregarding all traditional liaisons with her, he laid waste the territory of the counts of Rapperswyl, cousins to the Habsburgs. This of course entangled Zurich in a war with Austria, who threatened to level her with the ground. Having estranged the neighbouring states by her cruel proceedings, or rather by those of Brun, Zurich stood alone, and was compelled to look around for aid and countenance. Though by no means friendly towards the bold Forest men, the dictator Brun concluded an alliance with them. The Waldstätten were quite ready to receive into their league a commonwealth so powerful and well-organized as Zurich, a state likely to be at once their bulwark and their emporium. They therefore willingly agreed to Brun's stipulations (May 1, 1351), and, further acquiesced in the proviso that Zurich should be allowed to conclude separate treaties. These treaties or alliances were very common at that time, and changeable as they were, they nevertheless gave additional security for the time being.
But though Brun had introduced a régime of force, he yet made concessions to the masses, giving them a share of political power. And his constitutional system answered the wants of the city, to a great degree, for some four centuries and a half.