The Age of the Reformation

by Preserved Smith

SECTION 2. WEALTH AND PRICES

[Sidenote: Gigantic increase in wealth since 16th century]

If the number of Europe's inhabitants has increased fourfold since Luther's time, the amount of her wealth has increased in a vastly greater ratio. The difference {459} between the twentieth and the sixteenth centuries is greater than anyone would at first blush believe possible. Moreover it is a difference that is, during times of peace, continually increasing. During the century from the close of the Napoleonic to the opening of the Great War, the wealth of the white races probably doubled every twenty-five years. The new factors that made this possible were the exploited resources of America, and the steam-engine. Prior to 1815 the increase of the world's wealth was much slower, but if it doubled once a century,—as would seem not improbable—we should have to allow that the world of 1914 was one hundred and twenty-eight times as rich as it was in 1514.

[Sidenote: Change from poverty to affluence emphasized]

Of course such a statement cannot pretend to anything like exactitude; the mathematical figure is a mere figure of speech; it is intended only to emphasize the fact that one of the most momentous changes during the last four centuries has been that from poverty to affluence. That the statement, surprising as it may seem, is no exaggeration, may be borne out by a few comparisons.

[Sidenote: War a test of a nation's financial strength]

One of the tests of a nation's financial strength is that of war. Francis I in time of war mustered at most an army of 100,000, and he reached this figure, or perhaps slightly exceeded it, only once during his reign, in the years 1536-7. This is only half the number of soldiers, proportionately to the population, that France maintained in time of peace at the opening of the twentieth century. And for more than four years, at a time when war was infinitely more expensive than it was when Pavia was fought, France kept in the field about an even five millions of men, more than an eighth of her population instead of about one one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Similar figures could be given for Germany and England. It is true that the power of {460} modern states is multiplied by their greater facilities for borrowing, but with all allowances the contrast suggests an enormous difference of wealth.

[Sidenote: Labor power of the world]

Take, as a standard of comparison, the labor power of the world. In 1918 the United States alone produced 685,000,000 tons of coal. Each ton burned gives almost as much power as is expended by two laborers working for a whole year. Thus the United States from its coal only had command of the equivalent of the labor of 1,370,000,000 men, or more than thrice the adult male labor power of the whole world; more than fifty times the whole labor power of sixteenth-century Europe. This does not take account of the fact that labor is far more productive now than then, even without steam. The comparison is instructive because the population of the United States in 1910 was about equal to that of the whole of Europe in 1600.

The same impression would be given by a comparison of the production of any other standard product. More gold was produced in the year 1915 than the whole stock of gold in the world in 1550, perhaps in 1600. More wheat is produced annually in Minnesota than the granaries of the cities of the world would hold four centuries ago.

[Sidenote: Poverty of the Middle Ages]

In fact, there was hardly wealth at all in the Middle Ages, only degrees of poverty, and the sixteenth century first began to see the accumulation of fortunes worthy of the name. In 1909 there were 1100 persons in France with an income of more than $40,000 per annum; among them were 150 with an income of more than $200,000. In England in 1916 seventy-nine persons paid income taxes on estates of more than $125,000,000. On the other hand the richest man in France, Jacques Coeur, whose fortune was proverbial like that of Rockefeller today, had in 1503 a capital of only {461} $5,400,000. The total wealth of the house of Fugger about 1550 has been estimated at $32,000,000, though the capital of their bank was never anything like that. The contrast was greatest among the very richest class, but it was sufficiently striking in the middle classes. Such a condition as comfort hardly existed.

The same impression will be given to the student of public finance. As more will be said in another paragraph on the revenues of the principal states, only one example need be given here for the sake of contrast. The total revenue of Francis I was $256,000 per annum, that of Henry II even less, $228,000. The revenue of France in 1905 was $750,000,000. Henry VIII often had more difficulty in raising a loan of L50,000 than the English government had recently in borrowing six billions.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

It is impossible to say which is the harder task, to compare the total wealth of the world at two given periods, or to compare the value of money at different times. Even the mechanical difficulties in the comparison of prices are enormous. When we read that wheat at Wittenberg sold at one gulden the scheffel, it is necessary to determine in the first place how much a gulden and how much a scheffel represented in terms of dollars and bushels. When we discover that there were half a dozen different guldens, and half a dozen separate measures known as scheffels, varying from province to province and from time to time, and varying widely, it is evident that great caution is necessary in ascertaining exactly which gulden and exactly which scheffel is meant.

When coin and measure have been reduced to known quantities, there remains the problem of fixing the quality. Cloth is quoted in the sixteenth century as of standard sizes and grades, but neither of these important factors is accurately known to any modern {462} economist. One would think that in quoting prices of animals an invariable standard would be secured. Quite the contrary. So much has the breed of cattle improved that a fat ox now weighs two or three times what a good ox weighed four centuries ago. Horses are larger, stronger and faster; hens lay many more eggs, cows give much more milk now than formerly. Shoes, clothes, lumber, candles, are not of the same quality in different centuries, and of course there is an ever increasing list of new articles in which no comparison can be made.

[Sidenote: Fluctuation in coinage]

Nevertheless, some allowance can be made for all factors involved, as far as they are mechanical; some comparisons can be given that bear a sufficiently close relation to exactitude to form the basis from which certain valid deductions can be drawn. Now first as to the intrinsic value, in amounts of gold and silver in the several coins. The vast fluctuation in the value of the English shilling, due to the successive debasements and final restitution of the coinage, is thus expressed:

Year Troy grains Year Troy grains 1461 . . . . . . 133 1551 . . . . . . 20 1527 . . . . . . 118 1552 . . . . . . 88 1543 . . . . . . 100 1560 . . . . . . 89 1545 . . . . . . 60 1601 . . . . . . 86 1546 . . . . . . 40 1919 . . . . . . 87.27

A similar depreciation, more gradual but never rectified, is seen in the value of French money. The standard of reckoning was the livre tournois, which varied intrinsically in value of the silver put into it as follows:

Years Intrinsic value of silver
1500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 cents
1512-40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 cents
1541-60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents
1561-72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 cents
{463}
1573-79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 cents
1580-1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 cents

[Sidenote: Value of Spanish coins]

The standard Spanish gold coin after 1497 was the ducat, which had 3.485 grammes of gold (value in our money $2.40). This was divided into 375 maravedis, which therefore had a value of about two-thirds of a cent each. A Castilian marc of gold had 230 grammes or a value of about $16. After 1537 a handsome silver coin, known as the peso fuerte or "piece of eight" because each contained eight reals, was minted in America. Its value was about $1.06 of our money, it being the predecessor of our dollar.

The great difficulty with the coinage of Germany and Italy is not so much in its fluctuation as in the number of mints. The name gulden [Sidenote: Gulden a general term] was given to almost any coin, originally, as its etymology signifies, a gold piece, but later also to a silver piece. Among gold guldens there was the Rhenish gulden intrinsically worth $1.34; the Philip's gulden in the Netherlands of 96 cents and the Carolus gulden coined after 1520 and worth $1.14. But the coin commonly used in reckoning was the silver gulden, worth intrinsically 56 cents. This was divided into 20 groschen. Other coins quite ordinarily met with in the literature of the times are pounds (7.5 cents), pfennigs (various values), stivers, crowns, nobles, angels ($2), and Hungarians ducats ($1.75). Since 1518 the chief silver coin was the thaler, at first considered the equal of a silver gulden. The law of 1559, however, made them two different coins, restoring the thaler to what had probably been its former value of 72 cents, and leaving the imperial gulden in law, what it had commonly become in fact, a lesser amount of silver.

The coinage of Italy was dominated by the gold gulden or florin of Florence and the ducat of Venice, {464} each worth not far from $2.25 of our money. Both these coins, partly on account of their beauty, partly because of the simple honesty with which they were kept at the nominal standard, attained just fame throughout the Middle Ages and thereafter, and became widely used in other lands.

[Sidenote: Wheat]

The standard of value determined, it is now possible to compare the prices of some staple articles. First in importance comes wheat, which fluctuated enormously within short periods at the same place and in terms of the same amounts of silver. From Luther's letters we learn that wheat sold at Wittenberg for one gulden a scheffel in 1539 and for three groschen a scheffel in 1542, the latter price being considered "so cheap as never before," the former reached in a time almost of famine and calling for intervention on the part of the government. However we interpret these figures (and I believe them to mean that wheat sold at from twelve cents to eighty cents a bushel) they certainly indicate a tremendous instability in prices, due to the poor communications and backward methods of agriculture, making years of plenty alternate with years of hunger. In the case of Wittenberg, the lower level was nearer the normal, for in 1527 wheat was there sold at twenty cents a bushel. In other parts of Germany it was dearer; at Strassburg from 1526-50 it averaged 30 cents a bushel; from 1551-75 it went up to an average of 58 cents, and from 1576-1600 the average again rose to 80 cents a bushel.

Prices also rose in England throughout the century even in terms of silver. Of course part of the rise in the middle years was due to the debasement of the coinage. Reduced to bushels and dollars, the following table shows the tendency of prices:

1530 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 cents a bushel
1537 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 cents
{465}
1544 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 cents
1546 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 cents
1547 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 cents
1548 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 cents
1549 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 cents
1550 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 cents
1572 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents
1595 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1.14

Wheat in France averaged 23 cents a bushel prior to 1540, after which it rose markedly in price, touching $1.50 in 1600, under exceptional conditions. In order to compare with prices nowadays we must remember that $1 a bushel was a remarkably good price before the late war, during which it was fixed at $2.20 by the American government. Barley in England rose from 6 cents a bushel in 1530 to 10 cents in 1547 and 33 cents in 1549. It was in 1913 70 cents a bushel. Oats rose from 5 cents a bushel in England in 1530 to 18 cents in 1549; in 1913 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Animals]

Animals sold much lower in the sixteenth century than they do now, though it must be remembered that they are worth more after several centuries of careful breeding. Horses then sold at $2.50 in England and at $4 to $11 in France; the average price in 1913 was $244 for working animals. Cows were worth $2 in England in 1530; from $4 to $6.40 in France; oxen apparently came considerably higher, averaging in England $10 a head in 1547 and in France from $9 to $16 a yoke. At present they are sold by weight, averaging in 1913 9 cents per lb., or $90 for one weighing a thousand pounds. Beef then cost about 2/3 of a cent a pound instead of 40 cents as in 1914. A sheep was sold in 1585 at $1.60, a large swine at $5, and pigs at 26 cents apiece. Pork cost 2 cents a pound; hens sold in England at 12 cents a piece and geese and ducks for the same; at Wittenberg geese fetched only 6 cents in 1527. Eggs might have been bought at 2 cents a dozen.

{466} [Sidenote: Groceries]

Wholesale prices of groceries, taken mostly from an English table drawn up about 1580, were as follows: Oil was $140 the ton, or 55 cents a gallon; train-oil was just half that price; Newfoundland fish cost then $2.50 the quintal dry, as against $7.81 in 1913. Gascon wines (claret) varied according to quality, from 16 cents to 24 cents a quart. Salt fetched $7.50 a ton, which is very close to the price that it was in 1913 ($1.02 per bbl. of 280 lbs.). Soap was $13 the hundredweight. Pepper and sugar cost nearly the same, about $70 the hundredweight, or far higher than they were in 1919, when each cost $11 the hundredweight. Spices also cost more in the sixteenth century than they do now, and rose throughout the century. By 1580 the wholesale price per hundredweight was $224 for cloves, the same for nutmegs, $150 for cinnamon, $300 for mace. Ginger was $90 the hundredweight, and candles 6.6 cents the lb. as against 7.25 cents now.

[Sidenote: Drygoods]

Drygoods varied immensely in cost. Raw wool sold in England in 1510 for 4 cents per lb., as against 26 cents just four hundred years later. Fine cloth sold at $65 "the piece," the length and breadth of which it is unfortunately impossible to determine accurately. Different grades came in different sizes, averaging a yard in width, but from 18 yards to 47 yards in length, the finer coming in longer rolls. Sorting cloths were $45 the piece. Linen cost 20 cents a yard in 1580; Mary, Queen of Scots, five years later paid $6.50 the yard for purple velvet and 28 cents the yard for buckram to line the same. The coarse clothes of the poor were cheaper, a workman's suit in France costing $1.80 in 1600, a child's whole wardrobe $3.40, and a soldier's uniform $4.20. The prices of the poorest women's dresses ranged from $3 to $6 each. In 1520 Albert Dürer paid in the Netherlands 17 cents for one pair of shoes, 33 cents for another and 20 cents for a {467} pair of woman's gloves. A pair of spectacles cost him 22 cents, a pair of gloves for himself 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Metals]

Metals were dearer in the sixteenth century than they are now. Iron cost $60 a ton in 1580 against $22 a ton in 1913. Lead fetched $42 the ton and tin $15 the cwt. The ratio of gold to silver was about 1 to 11. The only fuel much used was wood, which was fairly cheap but of course not nearly as efficient as our coal.

[Sidenote: Interest]

Interest, as the price of money, varied then as it does now in inverse ratio to the security offered by the debtor, and on the whole within much the same range that it does now. The best security was believed to be that of the German Free Cities, governed as they were by the commercial class that appreciated the virtue of prompt and honest payment. Accordingly, we find that they had no trouble in borrowing at 5 per cent., their bonds taking the form of perpetual annuities, like the English consols. So eagerly were these investments sought that they were apportioned on petition as special favors to the creditors. The cities of Paris and London also enjoyed high credit. The national governments had to pay far higher, owing to their poverty and dishonesty. Francis I borrowed at 10 per cent.; Charles V paid higher in the market of Antwerp, the extreme instance being that of 50 per cent. per annum. In 1550 he regularly paid 20 per cent., a ruinous rate that foreshadowed his bankruptcy and was partly caused by its forecast. Until the recent war we were accustomed to think of the great nations borrowing at 2-4 per cent., but during the war the rate immensely rose. Anglo-French bonds, backed by the joint and several credit of the two nations, sold on the New York Stock Exchange in 1918 at a price that would yield the investor more than 12 per cent., and City of Paris bonds at a rate of more than 16 per cent.

{468} Commercial paper, or loans advanced by banks to merchants on good security, of course varied. The lowest was reached at Genoa where from time to time merchants secured accommodation at 3 per cent. The average in Germany was 6 per cent. and this was made the legal rate by Brandenburg in 1565. But usurers, able to take advantage of the necessities of poor debtors, habitually exacted more, as they do now, and loans on small mortgages or on pawned articles often ran at 30 per cent. On the whole, the rate of interest fell slightly during the century.

[Sidenote: Real estate]

The price of real estate is more difficult to compare than almost anything, owing to the individual circumstances of each purchase. Land in France sold at rates ranging from $8 to $240 the acre. Luther bought a little farm in the country for $340, and a piece of property in Wittenberg for $500. After his death, in 1564, the house he lived in, a large and handsome building formerly the Augustinian Cloister, fetched $2072. The house can be seen today[1] and would certainly, one would think, now bring fifteen times as much.

[Sidenote: Books]

Books were comparatively cheap. The Greek Testament sold for 48 cents, a Latin Testament for half that amount, a Latin folio Bible published in 1532 for $4, Luther's first New Testament at 84 cents. One might get a copy of the Pandects for $1.60, of Vergil for 10 cents, a Greek grammar for 8 cents, Demosthenes and Aeschines in one volume at 20 cents, one of Luther's more important tracts for 30 cents and the condemnation of him by the universities in a small pamphlet at 6 cents. One of the things that has gone down most in price since that day is postage. Dürer while in the Netherlands paid a messenger 17 cents to deliver a {469} letter (or several letters?), presumably sent to his home in Nuremberg.

[Sidenote: Wages]

In accordance with the general rule that wages follow the trend of prices sluggishly, whether upwards or downwards, there is less change to be observed in them throughout the sixteenth century than there is in the prices of commodities. Subject to government regulation, the remuneration of all kinds of labor remained nearly stationary while the cost of living was rising. Startling is the difference in the rewards of the various classes, that of the manual laborers being cruelly low, that of professional men somewhat less in proportion to the cost of living than it is today, and that of government officers being very high. No one except court officials got a salary over $5000 a year, and some of them got much more. In 1553 a French chamberlain was paid $51,000 per annum.

A French navvy received 8 cents a day in 1550, a carpenter as much as 26 cents. A male domestic was given $7 to $12 a year in addition to his keep and a woman $5 to $6. As the number of working days in Catholic countries was only about 250 a year, workmen made from $65 to as low as $20. If anything, labor was worse paid in Germany than it was in France. Agricultural labor in England was paid in two scales, one for summer and one for winter. It varied from 3 cents to 7 cents a day, the smaller sum being paid only to men who were also boarded. In summer freemasons and master carpenters got from 8 cents to 11 cents for a terribly long day, in winter 6 cents to 9 cents for a shorter day. The following scale was fixed by law in England in 1563: A hired farmer was to have $10 a year and $2 for livery; a common farm hand was allowed $8.25 and $1.25 extra for livery; a "mean servant" $6 and $1.25 respectively, a man child {470} $4 and $1; a chief woman cook $5 and $1.60, a mean or simple woman $3 and $1; a woman child $2.50 and $1. All were of course boarded and lodged.

The pay of French soldiers under Francis I was for privates $28 a year in time of war; this fell to $1 a year in time of peace; for captains $33 a month in time of peace and $66 in time of war. Captains in the English navy received $36 a month; common seamen $1.25 a month for wages and the same allowance for food.

[Sidenote: Pay of clergymen]

The church fared little better than the army. In Scotland, a poor country but one in which the clergy were respected, by the law of 1562, a parson if a single man was given $26 a year, if a married man a maximum of $78 a year; probably a parsonage was added. Doubtless many Protestant ministers eked out their subsistence by fees, as the Catholic priests certainly did. Dürer gave 44 cents to a friar who confessed his wife. Every baptism, marriage and burial was taxed a certain amount. In France one could hire a priest to say a mass at from 60 cents to $7 in 1500, and at from 30 to 40 cents in 1600. At this price it has remained since, a striking instance of religious conservatism working to the detriment of the priest, for the same money represents much less in real wages now than it did then.

[Sidenote: Physicians]

Fees for physicians ranged from 33 to 44 cents a visit in Germany about 1520. Treatment and medicine were far higher. At Antwerp Dürer paid $2.20 for a small quantity of medicine for his wife. Fees were sometimes given for a whole course of attendance. In England we hear of such "cures" paid for at from $3.30 to $5. Very little, if any, advice was given free to the poor. The physicians for the French king received a salary of $200 a year and other favors. William Butts, physician to Henry VIII, had $500 per {471} annum, in addition to a knighthood; and his salary was increased to over $600 for attending the Duke of Richmond.

[Sidenote: Teachers]

Teachers in the lower schools were regarded as lackeys and paid accordingly. Nicholas Udal, head master of Eton, received $50 per annum and various small allowances. University professors were treated more liberally. Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg got a maximum of $224 per annum, which was about the same as the stipend of leading professors in other German universities and at Oxford and Cambridge. The teacher also got a small honorarium from each student. When Paul III restored the Sapienza at Rome he paid a minimum of $17 per annum to some friars who taught theology and who were cared for by their order, but he gave high salaries to the professors of rhetoric and medicine. Ordinarily these received $476 a year, but one professor of the classics reached the highwater-mark with nearly $800.

[Sidenote: Royalties]

The rewards of literary men were more consistently small in the sixteenth century than they are now, owing to the absence of effective copyright. An author usually received a small sum from the printer to whom he first offered his manuscript, but his subsequent royalties, if any, depended solely on the goodwill of the publisher. A Wittenberg printer offered Luther $224 per annum for his manuscripts, but the Reformer declined it, wishing to make his books as cheap as possible. In 1512 Erasmus got $8.40 from Badius the Parisian printer for a new edition of his Adages. In fact, the rewards of letters, such as they were, were indirect, in the form of pensions, gifts and benefices from the great. Erasmus got so many of these favors that he lived more than comfortably. Luther died almost a rich man, so many honoraria did he collect from noble admirers. Rabelais was given a benefice, though {472} he only lived two years afterwards to enjoy its fruits. Henry VIII gave $500 to Thomas Murner for writing against Luther. But the lot of the average writer was hard. Fulsome flattery was the most lucrative production of the muse.

[Sidenote: Artists]

Artists fared better. Dürer sold one picture for $375 and another for $200, not counting the "tip" which his wife asked and received on each occasion from the patron. Probably his woodcuts brought him more from the printers than any single painting, and when he died he left the then respectable sum of $32,000. He had been offered a pension of $300 per annum and a house at Antwerp by that city if he would settle there, but he preferred to return to Nuremberg, where he was pensioned $600 a year by the emperor. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both received $129 a month for work done for a prince, and the latter was given a pension of $5200 a year by Paul III. Raphael in 1520 left an estate of $140,000.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

If a comparison of the value of money is made, the final impression that one gets is that an ounce of gold was in 1563, let us say, expected to do about ten times as much work as the same weight of precious metal performed in 1913.[2] If a few articles were then actually dearer, they were comparatively unimportant and were balanced by other articles even more than ten times as cheap. But a dollar will buy so many articles now which did not exist in former ages that a plausible case can be made out for the paradox that money is now worth more than it ever was before. If an ounce of gold would in Luther's time exchange for a much larger quantity of simple necessaries than it will purchase now, on the other hand a man with an income of $5000 a year is far better off than a man with the {473} same income, or indeed with any income, was then.

[Sidenote: Trend of prices]

Notwithstanding the great difficulties of making out any fair index number representing the cost of living and applicable to long periods, owing to the fact that articles vary from time to time, as when candles are replaced by gas and gas by electricity, yet the general trend of prices can be pretty plainly ascertained. Generally speaking, prices—measured in weight of gold and not in coin—sank slowly from 1390 till 1520 under the influence of better technical methods of production and possibly of the draining of gold and silver to the Orient. From 1520 till 1560 prices rose quite slowly on account of the increased production of gold and silver and its more rapid circulation by means of better banking. From 1560 to 1600 prices rose with enormous rapidity, partly because of the destruction of wealth and increase in the cost of production following in the wake of the French and Dutch wars of religion, and still more, perhaps, on account of the torrent of American silver suddenly poured into the lap of Europe. Taking the century as a whole, we find that wheat rose the most, as much as 150 per cent. in England, 200 per cent. in France and 300 per cent. in Germany. Other articles rose less, and in some cases remained stationary, or sank in price. Money wages rose slowly, far less than the cost of living.

[Sidenote: Increase in volume of precious metals]

Apart from special circumstances affecting the production of particular classes of goods, the main cause of the general trend of prices upwards was probably the increase in the volume of the precious metals. Just how great this was, it is impossible to determine, and yet a calculation can be made, yielding figures near enough the actual to be of service. From the middle of the fifteenth century there had been a considerable increase in the production of silver from German, Bohemian and Hungarian mines. Although this {474} increase was much more than is usually allowed for—equalling, in the opinion of one scholar, the produce of American mines until nearly the middle of the sixteenth century—it was only enough to meet the expanding demands of commerce. Before America entered the market, there was also a considerable import of gold from Asia and Africa. The tide of Mexican treasure began to flood Spain about 1520, but did not reach the other countries in large quantities until about 1560. When we consider the general impression concerning the increase of the currency immediately following the pillage of the Aztecs and Incas, the following statistics of the English mint are instructive, if they are not enigmatical. During the first fourteen years of Henry VIII (1509-23) the average amount of gold minted in England was 24,666 troy pounds per annum, and of silver 31,225 troy pounds. But in the years 1537-40, before the great debasement of the currency had taken place, the amount of gold coined fell to 3,297 Troy pounds per annum, and that of silver rose only to 52,974 troy pounds. As each pound of gold was at that time worth as much as eleven pounds of silver, this means that the actual amount of new money put into circulation each year in the latter period was less than a third of that minted in the earlier years. The figures also indicate the growing cheapness of silver, stimulating its import, while the import of gold was greatly restricted, according to Gresham's law that cheap money drives out dear.

[Sidenote: Estimates of gold and silver products]

The spoil of Mexico and Peru has frequently been over-estimated, by none more extravagantly than by the Conquistadores and their contemporaries. But the estimates of modern scholars vary enormously. Lexis believes that the total amount of gold produced by Europe and America from 1501 to 1550 (the greater part, of course, by America) amounted to $134,000,000. {475} F. de Laiglesio, on the other hand, thinks that not more than $4,320,000 was mined in America before 1555. The most careful estimate, that made by Professor Haring, arrives at the following results, [Sidenote: Haring's estimate] the amounts being given in pesos each worth very nearly the same as our dollar. Mexican production:

1521-44 1345-60 Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,348,900 343,670 Silver . . . . . . . . . . . 4,130,170 22,467,111

For Peru the proportions of gold and silver cannot be separated, but the totals taken together from 1531-1560 amounted to probably 84,350,600 pesos. Other small sums came from other parts of the New World, and the final total for production of gold and silver in America until 1560 is given at 139,720,000 pesos. This is a reduction to 70 per cent. of the estimate of Lexis. Assuming that the same correction must be made on all of the estimates given by Lexis we have the following figures for the world's production of precious metals in kilogrammes and in dollars:[3]

Gold Silver
Average per annum Average per annum
in
pesos or
dollars
of 25

in kilos in dollars kilos grammes 1493-1520 . . . 4270 3,269,000 31,570 1,262,800 1521-44 . . . 4893 3,425,000 52,010 2,080,400 1545-60 . . . 4718 3,302,600 184,730 7,389,200 1561-80 . . . 4718 3,302,600 185,430 7,417,200 1581-1600 . . . 4641 3,268,700 230,480 9,219,200

{476} Combining these figures we see that the production of gold was pretty steady throughout the century, making a total output of about $330,000,000. The production of silver, however, greatly increased after 1544. From the beginning of the century to that year it amounted to $75,285,600; from 1545 to 1600 inclusive it increased to $450,955,200, making a total output for the century of $526,240,800. Of course these figures only roughly approximate the truth; nevertheless they give a correct idea of the general processes at work. Even for the first half of the century the production of the precious metals was far in excess of anything that had preceded, and this output, large as it was, was nearly tripled in the last half of the century. These figures, however, are extremely modest compared with those of recent times, when more gold is mined in a year than was then mined in a century. The total amount mined in 1915 was $470,000,000; in 1917 $428,000,000; for the period 1850 to 1916 inclusive the total amount mined was $13,678,000,000.

[1] See the photograph in my Life and Letters of Luther, p. 364.

[2] No valid comparison can be made for the years after 1913, for in most nations paper currencies have ousted gold.

[3] These figures are based on those of Sommerlad in the Handwörter-buch der Staatswissenschaften, s.v. "Preis," taken from Wiebe, who based on Lexis. Figures quite similar to those of Sommerlad are given by C. F. Bastable in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. "Money." I have incorporated Haring's corrections.

SECTION 3. INSTITUTIONS

[Sidenote: The monarchies]

For a variety of reasons the sixteenth century was as monarchical in mind as the twentieth century is democratic. Immemorial prescription then had a vigor since lost, and monarchy descended from classical and biblical antiquity when kings were hedged with a genuine divinity. The study of Roman law, with its absolutist maxims, aided in the formation of royalist sentiment. The court as the center of fashion attracted a brilliant society, while the small man satisfied his cravings for gentility by devouring the court gossip that even then clogged the presses. It is probable that one reason why the throne became so popular was that it was, next to the church, the best advertised {477} article in the world. But underlying these sentimental reasons for loyalty there was a basis of solid utility, predisposing men to support the scepter as the one power strong enough to overawe the nobles. One tyrant was better than many; one lion could do less harm than a pack of wolves and hyaenas. In the greater states men felt perfectly helpless without a king to rule the anarchical chaos into which society would have dissolved without him. When the Spanish Communes rebelled against Charles V they triumphed in the field, but their attempt simply collapsed in face of their utter inability to solve the problem of government without a royal governor. They were as helpless as bees without a queen. Indeed, so strong was their instinct to get a royal head that they tried to preserve themselves by kidnapping Charles's mother, poor, mad Joanna, to fill the political vacuum that they had made. So in the civil wars in France; notwithstanding the more promising materials for the formation of a republic in that country, all parties were, in fact, headed by claimants to the throne.

[Sidenote: Councils of State]

Next to the king came the Council of State, composed of princes of the blood, cardinals, nobles and some officers and secretaries of state, not always of noble blood but frequently, especially in the cases of the most powerful of them, scions of the middle class. What proportion of the executive power was wielded by the Council depended on the personal character of the monarch. Henry VIII was always master; Elizabeth was more guided than guiding; the Councils of the Valois and Hapsburgs profited by the preoccupation or the stupidity of their masters to usurp the royal power for themselves. In public opinion the Council occupied a great place, similar to that of an English Cabinet today. The first Anglican prayerbook {478} contains petitions for the Council, though it did not occur to the people to pray for Parliament until the next century.

The countries were governed no longer by the nobles as such but by officials appointed by the crown. It is an indication of the growing nationalization of policy that the sixteenth century saw the first establishment of permanent diplomatic agents. The first ambassadors, selected largely from a panel of bishops, magistrates, judges and scholars, were expected to function not only as envoys but also as spies. Under them was a host of secret agents expected to do underhand work and to take the responsibility for it themselves so that, if found out, they could be repudiated.

[Sidenote: Parliaments]

Very powerful was the national popular assembly: the Parliament, the Diet, the States General, or the Cortes. Its functions, prescriptive and undefined, were commonly understood to include the granting of taxes. The assent of the body was also required, to a varying degree, for the sanction of other laws. But the real power of the people's representatives lay in the fact that they were the chief organ for the expression of that public opinion which in all countries and at all times it is unsafe for governments to disregard. Sitting in two or more chambers to represent the several estates or sometimes—as in the German Diet—subdivisions of these estates, the representatives were composed of members of the privileged orders, the clergy and nobility, and of the elected representatives of the city aristocracies. The majority of the population, the poor, were unrepresented. That this class had as great a stake in the commonwealth as any other, and that they had a class consciousness capable of demanding reforms and of taking energetic measures to secure them, is shown by a number of rebellions of the proletariat, and yet it is not unfair to them, or {479} disdainful, to say that on most matters they were too uninstructed, too powerless and too mute to contribute much to that body of sentiment called public opinion, one condition of which seems to be that to exist it must find expression.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Estates General]

The Estates General, by whatever name they were called, supplemented in France by provincial bodies called Parlements partaking of the nature of high courts of justice, and in Germany by the local Diets (Landtag) of the larger states, exercised a very real and in some cases a decisive influence on public policy. The monarch of half the world dared not openly defy the Cortes of Aragon or of Castile; the imperious Tudors diligently labored to get parliamentary sanction for their tyrannical acts, and, on the few occasions when they could not do so, hastened to abandon as gracefully as possible their previous intentions. In Germany the power of the Diet was not limited by the emperor, but by the local governments, though even so it was considerable. When a Diet, under skilful manipulation or by unscrupulous trickery, was induced by the executive to pass an unpopular measure, like the Edict of Worms, the law became a dead letter. In some other instances, notably in its long campaign against monopolies, even when it expressed the popular voice the Diet failed because the emperor was supported by the wealthy capitalists. Only recently it has been revealed how the Fuggers of Augsburg and their allies endeavored to manipulate or to frustrate its work in the matter of government regulation of industry and commerce.

[Sidenote: Public finance]

The finances of most countries were managed corruptly and unwisely. The taxes were numerous and complicated and bore most heavily on the poor. From ordinary taxes in most countries the privileged orders were exempt, though they were forced to contribute {480} special sums levied by themselves. The general property tax (taille) in France yielded 2,400,000 livres tournois in 1517 and 4,600,000 in 1543. The taxes were farmed; that is, the right of collecting them was sold at auction, with the natural result that they were put into the hands of extortioners who made vast fortunes by oppressing the people. Revenues of the royal domain, excises on salt and other articles, import and export duties, and the sale of offices and monopolies, supplemented the direct taxes. The system of taxation varied in each country. Thus in Spain the 10 per cent. tax on the price of an article every time it was sold and the royalty on precious metals—20 per cent. after 1504—proved important sources of revenue. Rome drove a lucrative trade in spiritual wares. Everywhere, fines for transgressions of the law figured more largely as a source of revenue than they do nowadays.

[Sidenote: Wasteful expenditures]

Expenditures were both more wasteful and more niggardly than they are today. Though the service of the public debt was trifling compared with modern standards, and though the administration of justice was not expensive because of the fee system, the army and navy cost a good deal, partly because they were composed largely of well paid mercenaries. The personal extravagances of the court were among the heaviest burdens borne by the people. The kings built palaces: they wallowed in cloth of gold; they collected objects of art; they squandered fortunes on mistresses and minions; they made constant progresses with a retinue of thousands of servants and horses. The two greatest states, France and Spain, both went into bankruptcy in 1557.

[Sidenote: Public order]

The great task of government, that of keeping public order, protecting life and property and punishing the criminal, was approached by our forbears with more gusto than success. The laws were terrible, but they {481} were unequally executed. In England among capital crimes were the following: murder, arson, escape from prison, hunting by night with painted faces or visors, embezzling property worth more than 40 shillings, carrying horses or mares into Scotland, conjuring, practising witchcraft, removing landmarks, desertion from the army, counterfeiting or mutilating coins, cattle-lifting, house-breaking, picking of pockets. All these were punished by hanging, but crimes of special heinousness, such as poisoning, were visited with burning or boiling to death. The numerous laws against treason and heresy have already been described. Lesser punishments included flogging, pillory, branding, the stocks, clipping ears, piercing tongues, and imprisonment in dungeons made purposely as horrible as possible, dark, noisome dens without furniture or conveniences, often too small for a man to stand upright or to lie at full length.

[Sidenote: Number of executions]

With such laws it is not surprising that 72,000 men were hanged under Henry VIII, an average of nearly 2,000 a year. The number at present, when the population of England and Wales has swollen to tenfold of what it was then, is negligible. Only nine men were hanged in the United Kingdom in the years 1901-3; about 5,000 are now on the average annually convicted of felony. If anything, the punishments were harsher on the Continent than in Britain. The only refuge of the criminal was the greed of his judges. At Rome it was easy and regular to pay a price for every crime, and at other places bribery was more or less prevalent.

[Sidenote: Cruel trial methods]

The methods of trying criminals were as cruel as their punishments. On the Continent the presumption was held to be against the accused, and the rack and its ghastly retinue of instruments of pain were freely used to procure confession. Calvin's hard saying that when men felt the pain they spoke the truth merely {482} expressed the current delusion, for legislators and judges, their hearts hardened in part by the example of the church, concurred in his opinion. The exceptional protest of Montaigne deserves to be quoted for its humanity: "All that exceeds simple death is absolute cruelty, nor can our laws expect that he whom the fear of decapitation or hanging will not restrain should be awed by imagining the horrors of a slow fire, burning pincers or breaking on the wheel."

The spirit of the English law was against the use of torture, which, however, made progress, especially in state trials, under the Tudors. A man who refused to plead in an English court was subjected to the peine forte et dure, which consisted in piling weights on his chest until he either spoke or was crushed to death. To enforce the laws there was a constabulary in the country, supplemented by the regular army, and a police force in the cities. That of Paris consisted of 240 archers, among them twenty-four mounted men. The inefficiency of some of the English officers is amusingly caricatured in the persons of Dogberry and Verges who, when they saw a thief, concluded that he was no honest man and the less they had to meddle or make with him the more for their honesty.

[Sidenote: Blue laws]

If, in all that has just been said, it is evident that the legislation of that period and of our own had the same conception of the function of government and only differed in method and efficiency, there was one very large class of laws spread upon the statute-books of medieval Europe that has almost vanished now. A paternal statesmanship sought to regulate the private lives of a citizen in every respect: the fashion of his clothes, the number of courses at his meals, how many guests he might have at wedding, dinner or dance, how long he should be permitted to haunt the tavern, and how much he should drink, how he {483} should spend Sunday, how he should become engaged, how dance, how part his hair and with how thick a stick he should be indulged in the luxury of beating his wife.

The "blue laws," as such regulations on their moral side came to be called, were no Protestant innovation. The Lutherans hardly made any change whatever in this respect, but Calvin did give a new and biting intensity to the medieval spirit. His followers, the Puritans, in the next century, almost succeeded in reducing the staple of a Christian man's legitimate recreation to "seasonable meditation and prayer." But the idea originated long before the evolution of "the non-conformist conscience."

The fundamental cause of all this legislation was sheer conservatism. [Sidenote: Spirit of conservatism] Primitive men and savages have so strong a feeling of the sanction of custom that they have, as Bagehot expresses it, fairly screwed themselves down by their unreasoning demands for conformity. A good deal of this spirit has survived throughout history and far more of it, naturally, was found four centuries ago than at present, when reason has proved a solvent for so many social institutions. There are a good many laws of the period under survey—such as that of Nuremberg against citizens parting their hair—for which no discoverable basis can be found save the idea that new-fangled fashions should not be allowed.

Economic reasons also played their part in the regulation of the habits of the people. Thus a law of Edward VI, after a preamble setting forth that divers kinds of food are indifferent before God, nevertheless commands all men to eat fish as heretofore on fast days, not as a religious duty but to encourage fishermen, give them a livelihood and thus train men for the navy.

A third very strong motive in the mind of the {484} sixteenth-century statesmen, was that of differentiating the classes of citizens. The blue laws, if they may be so called in this case, were secretions of the blue blood. To make the vulgar know their places it was essential to make them dress according to their rank. The intention of An Act for the Reformation of excess in Apparel, [Sidenote: Apparel according to rank] passed by the English Parliament in 1532, was stated to be,

the necessary repressing and avoiding and expelling of the excess daily more used in the sumptuous and costly apparel and array accustomably worn in this Realm, whereof hath ensued and daily do chance such sundry high and notorious detriments of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estates, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother of all vices.

The tenor of the act prescribes the garb appropriate to the royal family, to nobles of different degree, to citizens according to their income, to servants and husbandmen, to the clergy, doctors of divinity, soldiers, lawyers and players. Such laws were common in all countries. A Scotch act provides "that it be lauchful to na wemen to weir [clothes] abone [above] their estait except howries." This law was not only "apprevit" by King James VI, but endorsed with his own royal hand, "This acte is verray gude."

Excessive fare at feasts was provided against for similar reasons and with almost equal frequency. By an English proclamation [Sidenote: 1517] the number of dishes served was to be regulated according to the rank of the highest person present. Thus, if a cardinal was guest or host, there might be nine courses, if a lord of Parliament six, for a citizen with an income of five hundred pounds a year, three. Elsewhere the number of guests at all {485} ordinary functions as well as the number and price of gifts at weddings, christenings and like occasions, was prescribed.

[Sidenote: 1526]

Games of chance were frequently forbidden. Francis I ordered a lieutenant with twenty archers to visit taverns and gaming houses and arrest all players of cards, dice and other unlawful games. This did not prevent the establishment of a public lottery, [Sidenote: 1539] a practice justified by alleging the examples of Italian cities in raising revenue by this means. Henry III forbade all games of chance "to minors and other debauched persons," [Sidenote: 1577] and this was followed six years later by a crushing impost on cards and dice, interesting as one of the first attempts to suppress the instruments of vice through the taxing power. Merry England also had many laws forbidding "tennis, bowles, dicing and cards," the object being to encourage the practice of archery.

Tippling was the subject of occasional animadversion by the various governments, though there seemed to be little sentiment against it until the opening of the following century. The regulation of the number of taverns and of the amount of wine that might be kept in a gentleman's cellar, as prescribed in an English law, [Sidenote: 1553] mentions not the moral but the economic aspect of drinking. The purchase of French wines was said to drain England of money.

Though the theater also did not suffer much until the time of Cromwell, plays were forbidden in the precincts of the city of London. The Book of Discipline in Scotland forbade attendance at theaters. [Sidenote: 1574] Calvin thoroughly disapproved of them, and even Luther considered them "fools' work" and at times dangerous.

Commendable efforts to suppress the practice of duelling were led by the Catholic church. Clement {486} VII forbade it in a bull, [Sidenote: 1524] confirmed by a decree of Council of Trent. [Sidenote: 1563] An extraordinarily worded French proclamation of 1566 forbade "all gentlemen and others to give each other the lie and, if they do give each other the lie, to fight a duel about it." Other governments took the matter up very sluggishly. Scotland forbade "the great liberty that sundry persons take in provoking each other to singular combats upon sudden and frivol occasions," without license from his majesty.

Two matters on which the Puritans felt very keenly, [Sidenote: 1551] blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking, were but scantily looked after in the century of the Reformation. Scotland forbade "grievous and abominable oaths, swearing, execrations and blasphemation," and somewhat similar laws can be found in other countries. Scotland was also a pioneer in forbidding on the Sabbath all work, "gaming, playing, passing to taverns and ale-houses and wilful remaining away from the parish kirk in time of sermon."

[Sidenote: Mail]

Government has other functions than the enforcement of the civil and criminal law. Almost contemporary with the opening of the century was the establishment of post offices for the forwarding of letters. After Maximilian had made a start in the Netherlands other countries were not slow to follow his example. Though under special government supervision at first these letter-carriers were private men.

[Sidenote: Sanitation]

In the Middle Ages there had been efforts to safeguard public sanitation. The sixteenth century did not greatly improve on them. Thus, Geneva passed a law that garbage and other refuse should not be allowed to lie in the streets for more than three days in summer or eight days in winter. In extreme cases quarantine was adopted as a precaution against epidemics.

{487} [Sidenote: War]

It is the most heart-breaking or the most absurd fact in human history, according as the elements involved are focused in a humane or in a cynical light, that the chief energies of government as well as the most zealous forces of peoples, have been dedicated since civilization began to the practice of wholesale homicide. As we look back from the experience of the Great War to the conflicts of other times, they seem to our jaded imaginations almost as childish as they were vicious. In the sixteenth century, far more than in the nineteenth, the nations boiled and bubbled with spleen and jealousy, hurled Thrasonical threats and hyperbolic boasts in each other's teeth, breathing out mutual extermination with no compunctious visitings of nature to stay their hungry swords—but when they came to blows they had not the power of boys. The great nations were always fighting but never fought to a finish. In the whole century no national capital west of Hungary, save Rome and Edinburgh, was captured by an enemy. The real harm was not done on the battlefield, where the carnage was incredibly small, but in the raids and looting of town and country by the professional assassins who filled the ranks of the hireling troops. Then, indeed, cities were burned, wealth was plundered and destroyed, men were subjected to nameless tortures and women to indescribable outrages, and children were tossed on pikes. Nor did war seem then to shock the public conscience, as it has at last succeeded in doing. The people saw nothing but dazzling glory in the slaughter of foemen on the stricken field, in the fanfare of the trumpets and the thunder of the captains and the shouting. Soldiers, said Luther, founding his opinion on the canon law, might be in a state of grace, for war was as necessary as eating, drinking or any other business. Statesmen like Machiavelli and Bacon were keen for the largest armies {488} possible, as the mainstay of a nation's power. Only Erasmus was a clear-sighted pacifist, always declaiming against war and once asserting that he agreed with Cicero in thinking the most unjust peace preferable to the justest war. Elsewhere he admitted that wars of self-defence were necessary.

[Sidenote: Arms]

Fire-arms had not fully established their ascendancy in the period of Frundsberg, or even of Alva. As late as 1596 an English soldier lamented that his countrymen neglected the bow for the gun. Halberdiers with pikes were the core of the army. Artillery sometimes inflicted very little damage, as at Flodden, sometimes considerable, as at Marignano, where, with the French cavalry, it struck down the till then almost invincible Swiss infantry. In battle arquebusiers and musketeers were interspersed with cross-bowmen. Cannon of a large type gave way to smaller field-guns; even the idea of the machine-gun emerged in the fifteenth century. The name of them, "organs," was taken from their appearance with numerous barrels from which as many as fifty bullets could be discharged at a time. Cannon were transported to the field on carts. Rifles were invented by a German in 1520, but not much used. Pistols were first manufactured at Pistoia—whence the name—about 1540. Bombs were first used in 1588.

The arts of fortification and of siege were improved together, many ingenious devices being called into being by the technically difficult war of the Spaniards against the Dutch. Tactics were not so perfect as they afterwards became and of strategy there was no consistent theory. Machiavelli, who wrote on the subject, based his ideas on the practice of Rome and therefore despised fire-arms and preferred infantry to cavalry. Discipline was severe, and needed to be, notwithstanding which there were sporadic and often very annoying {489} mutinies. Punishments were terrible, as in civil life. Blasphemy, cards, dicing, duelling and women were forbidden in most regular armies, but in time of war the soldiers were allowed an incredible license in pillaging and in foraging. Rings and other decorations were given as rewards of valor. Uniforms began first to be introduced in England by Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: Personnel of the armies]

The personnel of the armies was extremely bad. Not counting the small number of criminals who were allowed to expiate their misdeeds by military service, the rank and file consisted of mercenaries who only too rapidly became criminals under the tutelage of Mars. There were a few conscripts, but no universal training such as Machiavelli recommended. The officers were nobles or gentlemen who served for the prestige and glory of the profession of arms, as well as for the good pay.

[Sidenote: Size of armies compared]

But the most striking difference between armies then and now is not in their armament nor in their quality but in the size. Great battles were fought and whole campaigns decided with twenty or thirty thousand troops. The French standing army was fixed by the ordinance of 1534 at seven legions of six thousand men each, besides which were the mercenaries, the whole amounting to a maximum, under Francis I, of about 100,000 men. The English official figures about 1588 gave the army 90,000 foot soldiers and 9000 horse, but these figures were grossly exaggerated. In fact only 22,000 men were serviceable at the crisis of England's war with Spain. Other armies were proportionately small. The janizaries, whose intervention often decided battles, numbered in 1520 only 12,000. They were perhaps the best troops in Europe, as the Turkish artillery was the most powerful known. What all these figures show, in short, is that the phenomenon of nations with every man physically fit in {490} the army, engaging in a death grapple until one goes down in complete exhaustion, is a modern development.

[Sidenote: Sea power]

The influence of sea power upon history has become proverbial, if, indeed, it has not been overestimated since Admiral Mahan first wrote. It may be pointed out that this influence is far from a constant factor. Sea power had a considerable importance in the wars of Greece and of Rome, but in the Middle Ages it became negligible. Only with the opening of the seven seas to navigation was the command of the waves found to secure the avenues to wealth and colonial expansion. In Portugal, Spain, and England, "the blue water school" of mariners speedily created navies whose strife was apparently more decisive for the future of history than were the battles of armies on land.

When the trade routes of the Atlantic superseded those of the Mediterranean in importance, naturally methods of navigation changed, and this involved a revolution in naval warfare greater than that caused by steam or by the submarine. From the time that Helen's beauty launched a thousand ships until the battle of Lepanto, the oar had been the chief instrument of locomotion, though supplemented, even from Homeric times, by the sail. Naval battles were like those on land; the enemy keels approached and the soldiers on each strove to board and master the other's crew. The only distinctly naval tactic was that of "ramming," as it was called in a once vivid metaphor.

But the wild winds and boisterous waves of the Atlantic broke the oar in the galley-slave's hand and the muscles in his back. Once again man harnessed the hostile forces of nature; the free breezes were broken to the yoke and new types of sailing ships were driven at racing speed across the broad back of the sea. Swift, yare vessels were built, at first smaller than the {491} old galleons but infinitely more manageable. And the new boats, armed with thunder as they were clad with wings, no longer sought to sink or capture enemies at close quarters, but hurled destruction from afar. Heavy guns took the place of small weapons and of armed prow.

It was England's genius for the sea that enabled her to master the new conditions first and most completely and that placed the trident in her hands so firmly that no enemy has ever been able to wrest it from her. Henry VIII paid great attention to the navy. He had fifty-three vessels with an aggregate of 11,268 tons, an average of 200 tons each, carrying 1750 soldiers, 1250 sailors and 2085 guns. Under Elizabeth the number of vessels had sunk to 42, but the tonnage had risen to 17,055, and the crews numbered 5534 seamen, 804 gunners and 2008 soldiers. The largest ships of the Tudor navy were of 1000 tons; the flagship of the Spanish Armada was 1150 tons, carrying 46 guns and 422 men. How tiny are these figures! A single cruiser of today has a larger tonnage than the whole of Elizabeth's fleet; a large submarine is greater than the monsters of Philip.

SECTION 4. PRIVATE LIFE AND MANNERS

Of all the forces making for equality among men probably the education of the masses by means of cheap books and papers has been the strongest. But this force has been slow to ripen; at the close of the Middle Ages the common man was still helpless. The old privileged orders were indeed weakened and despoiled of part of their prerogatives, but it was chiefly by the rise of a new aristocracy, that of wealth.

[Sidenote: Nobility]

The decay of feudalism and of ecclesiastical privilege took the form of a changed and not of an abolished position for peer and priest. They were not cashiered, {492} but they were retained on cheaper terms. The feudal baron had been a petty king; his descendant had the option of becoming either a highwayman or a courtier. As the former alternative became less and less rewarding, the greater part of the old nobles abandoned their pretensions to independence and found a congenial sphere as satellities of a monarch, "le roi soleil," as a typical king was aptly called, whose beams they reflected and around whom they circled.

As titles of nobility began now to be quite commonly given to men of wealth and also to politicians, the old blood was renewed at the expense of the ancient pride. Not, indeed, that the latter showed any signs of diminishing. The arrogance of the noble was past all toleration. Men of rank treated the common citizens like dirt beneath their feet, and even regarded artists and other geniuses as menials. Alphonso, duke of Ferrara, wrote to Raphael in terms that no king would now use to a photographer, calling him a liar and chiding him for disrespect to his superior. The same duke required Ariosto to prostitute his genius by writing an apology for a fratricide committed by his grace. The duke of Mayenne poniarded one of his most devoted followers for having aspired to the hand of the duke's widowed daughter-in-law. So difficult was it to conceive of a "gentleman" without gentle blood that Castiglione, the arbiter of manners, lays down as the first prerequisite to a perfect courtier that he shall be of high birth. And of course those who had not this advantage pretended to it. An Italian in London noticed in 1557 that all gentlemen without other title insisted on being called "mister."

[Sidenote: Professions]

One sign of the break-up of the old medieval castes was the new classification of men by calling, or profession. It is true that two of the professions, the {493} higher offices in army and church, became apanages of the nobility, and the other liberal vocations were almost as completely monopolized by the children of the moneyed middle class; nevertheless it is significant that there were new roads by which men might rise. No class has profited more by the evolution of ideas than has the intelligentsia. From a subordinate, semi-menial position, lawyers, physicians, educators and journalists, not to mention artists and writers, have become the leading, almost the ruling, body of our western democracies.

[Sidenote: Clergy]

Half way between a medieval estate and a modern calling stood the clergy. In Catholic countries they remained very numerous; there were 136 episcopal or archiepiscopal sees in France; there were 40,000 parish priests, with an equal number of secular clergy in subordinate positions, 24,000 canons, 34,000 friars, 2500 Jesuits (in 1600), 12,000 monks and 80,000 nuns. Though there were doubtless many worthy men among them, it cannot honestly be said that the average were fitted either morally or intellectually for their positions. Grossly ignorant of the meaning of the Latin in which they recited their masses and of the main articles of their faith, many priests made up for these defects by proficiency in a variety of superstitious charms. The public was accustomed to see nuns dancing at bridals and priests haunting taverns and worse resorts. Some attempts, serious and partially successful, at reform, have been already described. Profane and amatory plays were forbidden in nunneries, bullfights were banished from the Vatican and the dangers of the confessional were diminished by the invention of the closed box in which the priest should sit and hear his penitent through a small aperture instead of having her kneeling at his knees. So depraved was public opinion on the subject of the confession that a {494} prolonged controversy took place in Spain as to whether minor acts of impurity perpetrated by the priest while confessing women were permissible or not.

[Sidenote: Conditions of the Protestant clergy]

Neither was the average Protestant clergyman a shining and a burning light. So little was the calling regarded that it was hard to fill it. At one time a third of the parishes of England were said to lack incumbents. The stipends were wretched; the social position obscure. The wives of the new clergy had an especially hard lot, being regarded by the people as little better than concubines, and by Parliament called "necessary evils." The English government had to issue injunctions in 1559 stating that because of the offence that has come from the type of women commonly selected as helpmates by parsons, no manner of priest or deacon should presume to marry without consent of the bishop, of the girl's parents, "or of her master or mistress where she serveth." Many clergymen, nevertheless, afterwards married domestics.

Very little was done to secure a properly trained ministry. Less than half of the 2000 clergymen ordained at Wittenberg from 1537-60 were university men; the majority were drapers, tailors and cobblers, "common idiots and laymen" as they were called—though the word "idiot" did not have quite the same disparaging sense that it has now. Nor were the reverend gentlemen of unusually high character. As nothing was demanded of them but purity of doctrine, purity of life sank into the background. It is really amazing to see how an acquaintance of Luther's succeeded in getting one church after he had been dismissed from another on well-founded charges of seduction, and how he was thereafter convicted of rape. This was perhaps an extreme case, but that the majority of clergymen were morally unworthy is the {495} melancholy conviction borne in by contemporary records.

[Sidenote: Character of sermons]

Sermons were long, doctrinal and political. Cranmer advised Latimer not to preach more than an hour and a half lest the king grow weary. How the popular preacher—in this case a Catholic—appealed to his audience, is worth quoting from a sermon delivered at Landau in 1550.

The Lutherans [began the reverend gentleman] are opposed to the worship of Mary and the saints. Now, my friends, be good enough to listen to me. The soul of a man who had died got to the door of heaven and Peter shut it in his face. Luckily, the Mother of God was taking a stroll outside with her sweet Son. The deceased addresses her and reminds her of the Paters and Aves he has recited in her glory and the candles he has burnt before her images. Thereupon Mary says to Jesus: "It's the honest truth, my Son." The Lord, however, objected and addressed the suppliant: "Hast thou never heard that I am the way and the door to life everlasting?" he asks. "If thou art the door, I am the window," retorted Mary, taking the "soul" by the hair and flinging it through the open casement. And now I ask you whether it is not the same whether you enter Paradise by the door or by the window?

There was a naïve familiarity with sacred things in our ancestors that cannot be imitated. Who would now name a ship "Jesus," as Hawkins's buccaneering slaver was named? What serious clergyman would now compare three of his friends to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, as did Luther? The Reformer also wrote a satire on the calling of a council, in the form of a letter from the Holy Ghost signed by Gabriel as notary and witnessed by Michael the Provost of Paradise and Raphael, God's Court Physician. At another time he made a lampoon on the collection of {496} relics made by his enemy the Archbishop of Mayence, stating that they contained such things as "a fair piece of Moses' left horn, a whole pound of the wind that blew for Elijah in the cave on Mount Horeb and two feathers and an egg of the Holy Ghost" as a dove. All this, of course, not in ribald profanity, but in works intended for edification. . . .

[Sidenote: The city]

Though beautiful, the city of our ancestors was far from admirable in other ways. Filth was hidden under its comely garments, so that it resembled a Cossack prince—all ermine and vermin. Its narrow streets, huddled between strong walls, were over-run with pigs and chickens and filled with refuse. They were often ill-paved, flooded with mud and slush in winter. Moreover they were dark and dangerous at night, infested with princes and young nobles on a spree and with other criminals.

[Sidenote: The house]

Like the exterior, the interior of the house of a substantial citizen was more pretty than clean or sweet smelling. The high wainscoting and the furniture, in various styles, but frequently resembling what is now known as "mission," was lovely, as were the ornaments—tapestries, clocks, pictures and flowers. But the place of carpets was supplied by rushes renewed from time to time without disturbing the underlying mass of rubbish beneath. Windows were fewer than they are now, and fires still fewer. Sometimes there was an open hearth, sometimes a huge tile stove. Most houses had only one or two rooms heated, sometimes, as in the case of the Augustinian friary at Wittenberg, only the bathroom, but usually also the living room.

[Sidenote: Dress]

The dress of the people was far more various and picturesque than nowadays. Both sexes dressed in gaudy colors and delighted in strange fashions, so that, {497} is Roger Ascham said, "he thought himself most brave that was most monstrous in misorder." For women the fashion of decolleté was just coming in, as so many fashions do, from the demi-monde. To Catharine de' Medici is attributed the invention of the corset, an atrocity to be excused only by her own urgent need of one.

[Sidenote: Food]

The day began at five in summer and at seven in winter. A heavy breakfast was followed by a heavier dinner at ten, and supper at five, and there were between times two or three other tiffins or "drinkings." The staple food was meat and cereal; very few of our vegetables were known, though some were just beginning to be cultivated. [Sidenote: 1585-6] The most valuable article of food introduced from the new world was the potato. Another importation that did not become thoroughly acclimatized in Europe was the turkey. Even now they are rare, but there are several interesting allusions to them in the literature of that time, one of the year 1533 in Luther's table talk. Poultry of other sorts was common, as were eggs, game and fish. The cooking relied for its highest effects on sugar and spices. The ordinary fruits—apples, cherries and oranges—furnished a wholesome and pleasing variety to the table. Knives and spoons were used in eating, but forks were unknown, at least in northern Europe.

[Sidenote: Drink]

All the victuals were washed down with copious potations. A water-drinker, like Sir Thomas More, was the rarest of exceptions. The poor drank chiefly beer and ale; the mildest sort, known as "small beer," was recommended to the man suffering from too strong drink of the night before. Wine was more prized, and there were a number of varieties. There being no champagne, Burgundy was held in high esteem, as were some of the strong, sweet, Spanish and Portuguese {498} wines. The most harmless drinks were claret and Rhine wine. There were some "mixed drinks," such as sack or hippocras, in which beer or wine was sophisticated with eggs, spices and sugar. The quantities habitually drunk were large. Roger Ascham records that Charles V drank the best he ever saw, never less than a quart at a draft. The breakfast table of an English nobleman was set out with a quart of wine and a quart of beer, liquor then taking the place of tea, coffee, chocolate and all the "soft" beverages that now furnish stimulation and sociability.

[Sidenote: Tobacco, 1573]

"In these times," wrote Harrison, "the taking-in of the smoke of an Indian herb called 'Tobaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladle . . . is greatly taken up and used in England against rewmes [colds] and some other diseases." Like other drugs, tobacco soon came to be used as a narcotic for its own sake, and was presently celebrated as "divine tobacco" and "our holy herb nicotian" by the poets. What, indeed, are smoking, drinking, and other wooings of pure sensation at the sacrifice of power and reason, but a sort of pragmatized poetry? Some ages, and those the most poetical, like that of Pericles and that of Rabelais, have deified intoxication and sensuality; others, markedly our own, have preferred the accumulation of wealth and knowledge to sensual indulgence. It is a psychological contrast of importance.

Could we be suddenly transported on Mr. Wells's time machine four hundred years back we should be less struck by what our ancestors had than by what they lacked. Quills took the place of fountain pens, pencils, typewriters and dictaphones. Not only was postage dearer but there were no telephones or telegrams to supplement it. The world's news of yesterday, which we imbibe with our morning cup, then sifted down slowly through various media of {499} communication, mostly oral. It was two months after the battle before Philip of Spain knew the fate of his own Armada. The houses had no steam heat, no elevators; the busy housewife was aided by no vacuum cleaner, sewing machine and gas ranges; the business man could not ride to his office, nor the farmer to his market, in automobiles. There were neither railways nor steamships to make travel rapid and luxurious.

[Sidenote: Travel]

Nevertheless, journeys for purposes of piety, pleasure and business were common. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Compostella, Loretto, Walsingham and many other shrines were frequent in Catholic countries. Students were perpetually wandering from one university to another: merchants were on the road, and gentlemen felt the attractions of sight-seeing. The cheap and common mode of locomotion was on foot. Boats on the rivers and horses on land furnished the alternatives. The roads were so poor that the horses were sometimes "almost shipwrecked." The trip from Worms to Rome commonly took twelve days, but could be made in seven. Xavier's voyage from Lisbon to Goa took thirteen months. Inns were good in France and England; less pleasant elsewhere. Erasmus particularly abominated the German inns, where a large living and dining room would be heated to a high temperature by a stove around which travelers would dry their steaming garments. The smells caused by those operations, together with the fleas and mice with which the poorer inns were infested, made the stay anything but luxurious. Any complaint was met by the retort, "If you don't like it, go somewhere else," a usually impracticable alternative. When the traveller was escorted to his bedroom, he found it very cold in winter, though the featherbeds kept him warm enough. He would see his chamber filled with other beds occupied by his travelling companions of both {500} sexes, and he himself was often forced to share his bed with a stranger. The custom of the time was to take one bath a week. For this there were public bath-houses, [Sidenote: Baths] frequented by both sexes. A common form of entertainment was the "bath-party."

[Sidenote: Sports]

With the same insatiable gusto that they displayed in other matters the contemporaries of Luther and Shakespeare went in for amusements. Never has the theater been more popular. Many sports, like bear-baiting and bull-baiting, were cruel. Hunting was also much relished, though humane men like Luther and More protested against the "silly and woeful beastes' slaughter and murder." Tennis was so popular that there were 250 courts in Paris alone. The game was different from the modern in that the courts were 121 feet long, instead of 78 feet, and the wooden balls and "bats"—as racquets are still called in England—were much harder. Cards and dice were passionately played, a game called "triumph" or "trump" being the ancestor of our whist. Chess was played nearly as now.

Young people loved dances and some older people shook their heads over them, then as now. Melanchthon danced, at the age of forty-four, and Luther approved of such parties, properly chaperoned, as a means of bringing young people together. On the other hand dances were regulated in many states and prohibited in others, like Zurich and Geneva. Some of the dances were quite stately, like the minuet, others were boisterous romps, in which the girls were kissed, embraced and whirled around giddily by their partners. The Scotch ambassador's comment that Queen Elizabeth "danced very high" gives an impression of agility that would hardly now be considered in the best taste.

[Sidenote: Manners]

The veneer of courtesy was thin. True, humanists, {501} publicists and authors composed for each other eulogies that would have been hyperboles if addressed to the morning stars singing at the dawn of creation, but once a quarrel had been started among the touchy race of writers and a spouting geyser of inconceivable scurrility burst forth. No imagery was too nasty, no epithet too strong, no charge too base to bring against an opponent. The heroic examples of Greek and Roman invective paled before the inexhaustible resources of learned billingsgate stored in the minds of the humanists and theologians. To accuse an enemy of atheism and heresy was a matter of course; to add charges of unnatural vice or, if he were dead, stories of suicide and of the devils hovering greedily over his deathbed, was extremely common. Even crowned heads exchanged similar amenities.

Withal, there was growing up a strong appreciation of the merits of courtesy. Was not Bayard, the captain in the army of Francis I a "knight without fear and without reproach"? Did not Sir Philip Sidney do one of the perfect deeds of gentleness when, dying on the battle field and tortured with thirst, he passed his cup of water to a common soldier with the simple words, "Thy need is greater than mine"? One of the most justly famous and most popular books of the sixteenth century was Baldessare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, called by Dr. Johnson the best treatise on good breeding ever written. Published in Italian in 1528, it was translated into Spanish in 1534, into French in 1537, into English and Latin in 1561, and finally into German in 1566. There have been of it more than 140 editions. It sets forth an ideal of a Prince Charming, a man of noble birth, expert in games and in war, brave, modest, unaffected, witty, an elegant speaker, a good dancer, familiar with literature and accomplished in music, as well as a man of honor {502} and courtesy. It is significant that this ideal appealed to the time, though it must be confessed it was rarely reached. Ariosto, to whom the first book was dedicated by the author, depicts, as his ideals, knights in whom the sense of honor has completely replaced all Christian virtues. They were always fighting each other about their loves, much like the bulls, lions, rams and dogs to whom the poet continually compares them. Even the women were hardly safe in their company.

Sometimes a brief anecdote will stamp a character as no long description will do. The following are typical of the manners of our forbears:

One winter morning a stately matron was ascending the steps of the church of St. Gudule at Brussels. They were covered with ice; she slipped and took a precipitate and involuntary seat. In the anguish of the moment, a single word, of mere obscenity, escaped her lips. When the laughing bystanders, among whom was Erasmus, helped her to her feet, she beat a hasty retreat, crimson with shame. Nowadays ladies do not have such a vocabulary at their tongue's end.

The Spanish ambassador Enriquez de Toledo was at Rome calling on Imperia de Cugnatis, a lady who, though of the demi-monde, lived like a princess, cultivated letters and art, and had many poets as well as many nobles among her friends. Her floors were carpeted with velvet rugs, her walls hung with golden cloth, and her tables loaded with costly bric-a-brac. The Spanish courtier suddenly turned and spat copiously in the face of his lackey and then explained to the slightly startled company that he chose this objective rather than soil the splendor he saw around him. The disgusting act passed for a delicate and successful flattery.

[Sidenote: 1538]

Among the students at Wittenberg was a certain Simon Lemchen, or Lemnius, a lewd fellow of the baser {503} sort who published two volumes of scurrilous epigrams bringing unfounded and nasty charges against Luther, Melanchthon and the other Reformers and their wives. When he fled the city before he could be arrested, Luther revenged himself partly by a Catilinarian sermon, partly by composing, for circulation among his friends, some verses about Lemnius in which the scurrility and obscenity of the offending youth were well over-trumped. One would be surprised at similar measures taken by a professor of divinity today.

[Sidenote: Morals]

In measuring the morals of a given epoch statistics are not applicable; or, at any rate, it is probably true that the general impression one gets of the moral tone of any period is more trustworthy than would be got from carefully compiled figures. And that one does get such an impression, and a very strong one, is undeniable. Everyone has in his mind a more or less distinct idea of the ethical standards of ancient Athens, of Rome, of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Puritan Commonwealth, the Restoration, the Victorian Age.

The sixteenth century was a time when morals were perhaps not much worse than they are now, but when vice and crime were more flaunted and talked about. Puritanism and prudery have nowadays done their best to conceal the corruption and indecency beneath the surface. But our ancestors had no such delicacy. The naïve frankness of the age, both when it gloried in the flesh and when it reproved sin, gives a full-blooded complexion to that time that is lacking now. The large average consumption of alcohol—a certain irritant to moral maladies—and the unequal administration of justice, with laws at once savage and corruptly dispensed, must have had bad consequences.

The Reformation had no permanent discernible {504} effect on moral standards. Accompanied as it often was with a temporary zeal for righteousness, it was too often followed by a breaking up of conventional standards and an emphasis on dogma at the expense of character, that operated badly. Latimer thought that the English Reformation had been followed by a wave of wickedness. Luther said that when the devil of the papacy had been driven out, seven other devils entered to take its place, and that at Wittenberg a man was considered quite a saint who could say that he had not broken the first commandment, but only the other nine. Much of this complaint must be set down to disappointment at not reaching perfection, and over against it may be set many testimonies to the moral benefits assured by the reform.

[Sidenote: Violence]

It was an age of violence. Murder was common everywhere. On the slightest provocation a man of spirit was expected to whip out a rapier or dagger and plunge it into his insulter. The murder of unfaithful wives was an especial point of honor. Benvenuto Cellini boasts of several assassinations and numerous assaults, and he himself got off without a scratch from the law, Pope Paul III graciously protesting that "men unique in their profession, like Benvenuto, were not subject to the laws." The number of unique men must have been large in the Holy City, for in 1497 a citizen testified that he had seen more than a hundred bodies of persons foully done to death thrown into the Tiber, and no one bothered about it.

[Sidenote: Brigandage]

Brigandage stalked unabashed through the whole of Europe. By 1585 the number of bandits in the papal states alone had risen to 27,000. Sixtus V took energetic means to repress them. One of his stratagems is too characteristic to omit mentioning. He had a train of mules loaded with poisoned food and then {505} drove them along a road he knew to be infested by highwaymen, who, as he had calculated, actually took them and ate of the food, of which many died.

Other countries were perhaps less scourged by robbers, but none was free. Erasmus's praise of Henry VIII, in 1519, for having cleared his realm of free-booters, was premature. In the wilder parts, especially on the Scotch border, they were still rife. In 1529 the Armstrongs of Lidderdale, just over the border, could boast that they had burned 52 churches, besides making heavy depredations on private property. When James V took stern measures to suppress them, [Sidenote: 1532] and instituted a College of Justice for that purpose, the good law was unpopular.

Bands of old soldiers and new recruits wandered through France, Spain and the Netherlands. The worst robbers in Germany were the free knights. From their picturesque castles they emerged to pillage peaceful villages and trains of merchandise going from one walled city to another. In doing so they inflicted wanton mutilations on the unfortunate merchants whom they regarded as their natural prey. Even the greatest of them, like Francis von Sickingen, were not ashamed to "let their horses bite off travellers' purses" now and then. But it was not only the nobles who became gentlemen of the road. A well-to-do merchant of Berlin, named John Kohlhase, was robbed of a couple of horses by a Saxon squire, and, failing to get redress in the corrupt courts, threw down the gauntlet to the whole of Electoral Saxony in a proclamation that he would rob, burn and take reprisals until he was given compensation for his loss. For six years [Sidenote: 1534-40] he maintained himself as a highwayman, but was finally taken and executed in Brandenburg.

[Sidenote: Fraud]

Fraud of all descriptions was not less rampant than force. When Machiavelli reduced to a reasoned {506} theory the practice of all hypocrisy and guile, the courts of Europe were only too ready to listen to his advice. In fact, they carried their mutual attempts at deception to a point that was not only harmful to themselves, but ridiculous, making it a principle to violate oaths and to debase the currency of good faith in every possible way. There was also much untruth in private life. Unfortunately, lying in the interests of piety was justified by Luther, while the Jesuits made a soul-rotting art of equivocation.

[Sidenote: Unchastity]

The standard of sexual purity was disturbed by a reaction against the asceticism of the Middle Ages. Luther proclaimed that chastity was impossible, while the humanists gloried in the flesh. Public opinion was not scandalized by prostitution; learned men occasionally debated whether fornication was a sin, and the Italians now began to call a harlot a "courteous woman" [Sidenote: c. 1500] (courtesan) as they called an assassin a "brave man" (bravo). Augustine had said that harlots were remedies against worse things, and the church had not only winked at brothels, but frequently licensed them herself. Bastardy was no bar to hereditary right in Italy.

The Reformers tried to make a clean sweep of the "social evil." Under Luther's direction brothels were closed in the reformed cities. When this was done at Strassburg the women drew up a petition, stating that they had pursued their profession not from liking but only to earn bread, and asked for honest work. Serious attempts were made to give it to them, or to get them husbands. At Zurich and some other cities the brothels were left open, but were put under the supervision of an officer who was to see that no married men frequented them. The reformers had a strange ally in the growing fear of venereal diseases. Other countries followed Germany in their war on the prostitute. In London the public houses of ill fame {507} were closed in 1546, in Paris in 1560. An edict of July 23, 1566 commanded all prostitutes to leave Rome, but when 25,000 persons, including the women and their dependents, left the city, the loss of public revenue induced the pope to allow them to return on August 17 of the same year.

[Sidenote: Polygamy]

One of the striking aberrations of the sixteenth century, as it seems to us, was the persistent advocacy of polygamy as, if not desirable in itself, at least preferable to divorce. Divorce or annulment of marriage was not hard to obtain by people of influence, whether Catholic or Protestant, but it was a more difficult matter than it is in America now. In Scotland there was indeed a sort of trial marriage, known as "handfasting," by which the parties might live together for a year and a day and then continue as married or separate. But, beginning with Luther, many of the Reformers thought polygamy less wrong than divorce, on the biblical ground that whereas the former had been practised in the Old Testament times and was not clearly forbidden by the New Testament, divorce was prohibited save for adultery. Luther advanced this thesis as early as 1520, when it was purely theoretical, but he did not shrink from applying it on occasion. It is extraordinary what a large body of reputable opinion was prepared to tolerate polygamy, at least in exceptional cases. Popes, theologians, humanists like Erasmus, and philosophers like Bruno, all thought a plurality of wives a natural condition.

[Sidenote: Marriage]

But all the while the instincts of the masses were sounder in this respect than the precepts of their guides. While polygamy remained a freakish and exceptional practice, the passions of the age were absorbed to a high degree by monogamous marriage. Matrimony having been just restored to its proper dignity as the best estate for man, its praises were {508} sounded highly. The church, indeed, remained true to her preference for celibacy, but the Inquisition found much business in suppressing the then common opinion that marriage was better than virginity. To the Reformers marriage was not only the necessary condition of happiness to mankind, but the typically holy estate in which God's service could best be done. From all sides paeans arose celebrating matrimony as the true remedy for sin and also as the happiest estate. The delights of wedded love are celebrated equally in Luther's table talk and letters and in the poems of the Italian humanist Pontano. "I have always been of the opinion," writes Ariosto, "that without a wife at his side no man can attain perfect goodness or live without sin." "In marriage there is one mind in two bodies," says Henry Cornelius Agrippa, "one harmony, the same sorrows, the same joys, an identical will, common riches, poverty and honors, the same bed and the same table. . . . Only a husband and wife can love each other infinitely and serve each other as long as both do live, for no love is either so vehement or so holy as theirs."

The passion for marriage in itself is witnessed by the practice of widows and widowers of remarrying as soon and as often as possible. [Sidenote: Remarriage common] Luther's friend, Justus Jonas, married thrice, each time with a remark to the effect that it was better to marry than to burn. The English Bishop Richard Cox excused his second marriage, at an advanced age, by an absurd letter lamenting that he had not the gift of chastity. Willibrandis Rosenblatt married in succession Louis Keller, Oecolampadius, Capito and Bucer, the ecclesiastical eminence of her last three husbands giving her, one would think, an almost official position. Sir Thomas More married a second wife just one month after his first wife's death.

{509} [Sidenote: Treatment of wives]

Sad to relate, the wives so necessary to men's happiness were frequently ill treated after they were won. In the sixteenth century women were still treated as minors; if married they could make no will; their husbands could beat them with impunity, for cruelty was no cause for divorce. Sir Thomas More's home-life is lauded by Erasmus as a very paragon, because "he got more compliance from his wife by jokes and blandishments than most husbands by imperious harshness." One of these jokes, a customary one, was that his wife was neither pretty nor young; one of the "blandishments," I suppose, was an epigram by Sir Thomas to the effect that though a wife was a heavy burden she might be useful if she would die and leave her husband money. In Utopia, he assures us, husbands chastise their wives.

[Sidenote: Position of woman]

In the position of women various currents crossed each other. The old horror of the temptress, inherited from the early church, the lofty scorn exhibited by the Greek philosophers, mingled with strands of chivalry and a still newer appreciation of the real dignity of woman and of her equal powers. Ariosto treated women like spoiled children; the humanists delighted to rake up the old jibes at them in musty authors; the divines were hardest of all in their judgment. "Nature doth paint them forth," says John Knox of women, "to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel and void of the spirit of council and regimen." "If women bear children until they become sick and eventually die," preaches Luther, "that does no harm. Let them bear children till they die of it; that is what they are for." In 1595 the question was debated at Wittenberg as to whether women were human beings. The general tone was one of disparagement. An anthology might be made of the {510} proverbs recommending (à la Nietzsche) the whip as the best treatment for the sex.

But withal there was a certain chivalry that revolted against all this brutality. Castiglione champions courtesy and kindness to women on the highest and most beautiful ground, the spiritual value of woman's love. Ariosto sings:

No doubt they are accurst and past all grace
That dare to strike a damsel in the face,
Or of her head to minish but a hair.

Certain works like T. Elyot's Defence of Good Women and like Cornelius Agrippa's Nobility and Excellence of the Female Sex, witness a genuine appreciation of woman's worth. Some critics have seen in the last named work a paradox, like the Praise of Folly, such as was dear to the humanists. To me it seems absolutely sincere, even when it goes so far as to proclaim that woman is as superior to man as man is to beast and to celebrate her as the last and supreme work of the creation.

[Sidenote: Children]

The family was far larger, on the average, in the sixteenth century than it is now. One can hardly think of any man in this generation with as many as a dozen children; it is possible to mention several of that time with over twenty. Anthony Koberger, the famous Nuremberg printer had twenty-five children, eight by his first and seventeen by his second wife. Albert Dürer was the third of eighteen children of the same couple, of whom apparently only three reached maturity. John Colet, born in 1467, was the eldest of twenty-two brothers and sisters of whom by 1499 he was the only survivor. Of course these families were exceptional, but not glaringly so. A brood of six to twelve was a very common occurrence.

Children were brought up harshly in many families, {511} strictly in almost all. They were not expected to sit in the presence of their parents, unless asked, or to speak unless spoken to. They must needs bow and crave a blessing twice a day. Lady Jane Grey complained that if she did not do everything as perfectly as God made the world, she was bitterly taunted and presently so nipped and pinched by her noble parents that she thought herself in hell. The rod was much resorted to. And yet there was a good deal of natural affection. Few fathers have even been better to their babies than was Luther, and he humanely advised others to rely as much on reward as on punishment—on the apple as on the switch—and above all not to chastise the little ones so harshly as to make them fear or hate their parents.

The patria potestas was supposed to extend, as it did in Rome, during the adult as during the callow years. Especially did public opinion insist on children marrying according to the wishes of their parents. Among the nobility child-marriage was common, a mere form, of course, not at once followed by cohabitation. A betrothal was a very solemn thing, amounting to a definite contract. Perfect liberty was allowed the engaged couple, by law in Sweden and by custom in many other countries. All the more necessary, in the opinion of the time, to prevent youths and maidens betrothing themselves without their parents' consent.

[Sidenote: Health]

Probably the standard of health is now higher than it was then, and the average longevity greater. It is true that few epidemics have ever been more fatal than the recent influenza; and on the other hand one can point to plenty of examples of sixteenth-century men who reached a crude and green old age. Statistics were then few and unreliable. In 1905 the death-rate in London was 15.6 per thousand; in the years 1861-1880 it averaged 23 per thousand. It has been {512} calculated that this is just what the death-rate was in London in a healthy year under Elizabeth, but it must be remembered that a year without some sort of epidemic was almost exceptional.

[Sidenote: Epidemics]

Bubonic plague was pandemic at that time, and horribly fatal. Many of the figures given—as that 200,000 people perished in Moscow in 1570, 50,000 at Lyons in 1572, and 50,000 at Venice during the years 1575-7, must be gross exaggerations, but they give a vivid idea of the popular idea of the prevalent mortality. Another scourge was the sweating sickness, first noticed as epidemic in 1485 and returning in 1507, 1517, 1528 and 1551. Tuberculosis was probably as wide-spread in the sixteenth as it is in the twentieth century, but it figured less prominently on account of worse diseases and because it was seldom recognized until the last stages. Smallpox was common, unchecked as it was by vaccination, and with it were confounded a variety of zymotic diseases, such as measles, which only began to be recognized as different in the course of the sixteenth century. One disease almost characteristic of former ages, so much more prevalent was it in them, due to the more unwholesome food and drink, was the stone.

Venereal diseases became so prominent in the sixteenth century that it has often been thought that the syphilis was imported from America. This, however, has been denied by authorities who believe that it came down from classical antiquity, but that it was not differentiated from other scourges. The Latin name variola, like the English pox, was applied indiscriminately to syphilis, small-pox, chicken-pox, etc. Gonorrhea was also common. The spread of these diseases was assisted by many causes besides the prevalent moral looseness; by lack of cleanliness in public baths, for example.

{513} Useless to go through the whole roster of the plagues. Suffice it to say that whatever now torments poor mortals, from tooth-ache to cold in the head, and from rheumatism to lunacy, was known to our ancestors in aggravated forms. Deleterious was the use of alcohol, the evils of which were so little understood that it was actually prescribed for many disorders of which it is a certain irritant. Add to this the lack of sanitary measures, not only of disinfection but of common cleanliness, and the etiology of the phenomena is satisfactorily accounted for.

[Sidenote: Medicine]

If even now medicine as a science and an art seems backward compared with surgery, it has nevertheless made considerable advances since it began to be empirical. In the Middle Ages it was almost purely dogmatic; men did not ask their eyes and minds what was the nature of the human body and the effect of this or that drug on it, they asked Aristotle, or Hippocrates, or Galen or Avicenna. The chief rivalries, and they were bitter, were between the Greek and the Arabian schools. [Sidenote: c. 1550] Galenism finally triumphed just before the beginnings of experiment and research were made. The greatest name in the first half of the century was that of Theophrastus Paracelsus, [Sidenote: Paracelsus, 1493-1541] as arrant a quack as ever lived, but one who did something to break up the strangle-hold of tradition. He worked out his system a priori from a fantastic postulate of the parallelism between man and the universe, the microcosm and the macrocosm. He held that the Bible gave valuable prescriptions, as in the treatment of wounds by oil and wine.

[Sidenote: Surgery]

Under the leadership of Ambroise Paré [Sidenote: Paré, 1510-90] surgery improved rather more than medicine. Without anaesthetics, indeed, operations were difficult, but a good deal was accomplished. Paré first made amputation on a large scale possible by inventing a ligature for {514} large arteries that effectively controlled hemorrhage. This barber's apprentice, who despised the schools and wrote in the vernacular, made other important improvements in the surgeon's technique. It is noteworthy that each discovery was treated as a trade secret to be exploited for the benefit of a few practitioners and not given freely to the good of mankind.

In obstetrics Paré also made discoveries that need not be detailed here. Until his time it was almost universal for women to be attended in childbirth only by midwives of their own sex. Indeed, so strong was the prejudice on this point that women were known to die of abdominal tumors rather than allow male physicians to examine them. The admission of men to the profession of midwife marked a considerable improvement in method.

[Sidenote: Lunacy]

The treatment of lunacy was inept. The poor patients were whipped or otherwise tormented for alluding to the subject of their monomania. Our ancestors found fun in watching the antics of crazed minds, and made up parties to go to Bedlams and tease the insane. Indeed, some of the scenes in Shakespeare's plays, in which madness is depicted, and which seem tragic to us, probably had a comic value for the groundlings before whom the plays were first produced.

[Sidenote: Hospitals]

As early as 1510 Luther saw one of the hospitals at Florence. He tells how beautiful they were, how clean and well served by honorable matrons tending the poor freely all day without making known their names and at night returning home. Such institutions were the glory of Italy, for they were sadly to seek in other lands. When they were finally established elsewhere, they were too often left to the care of ignorant and evil menials. The stories one may read of the Hôtel-Dieu, at Paris, are fairly hair-raising.

{515}