Lay in my arms,” etc.
Who was the impertinent German that dared to fall in love with a Queen of England? We do not know. But there can be no doubt that the Queen of England whom he adored was the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Poitou, the Queen of Henry II., who filled the heart of many a Crusader with unholy thoughts. Her daughter, too, Mathilde, who was married to Henry the Lion of Saxony, inspired many a poet of those days. Her beauty was celebrated by the Provençal Troubadours; and at the court of her husband, she encouraged several of her German vassals to follow the example of the French and Norman knights, and sing the love of Tristan and Isolt, and the adventures of the knights of Charlemagne. They must have been happy times, those times of the Crusades! Nor have they passed away without leaving their impress on the hearts and minds of the nations of Europe. The Holy Sepulchre, it is true, is still in the hands of the Infidels, and the bones of the Crusaders lie buried in unhallowed soil, and their deeds of valor are well-nigh forgotten, and their chivalrous Tournaments and their Courts of Love are smiled at by a wiser generation. But much that is noble and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots in the thirteenth. Gothic architecture and Gothic poetry are the children of the same mother; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart, the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are still listened to by the nations of Europe; and if what is called the Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against the classical taste and its royal patrons, such as Louis XIV., Charles II., and Frederick the Great,—we owe it to those chivalrous poets who dared for the first [pg 061] time to be what they were, and to say what they felt, and to whom Faith, Love, and Honor were worthy subjects of poetry, though they lacked the sanction of the Periclean and Augustan ages.
The new edition of the Poems of the “Minnesänger” is a masterpiece of German scholarship. It was commenced by Lachmann, the greatest critic, after Wolf, that Germany has produced. Lachmann died before the work was finished, and Professor Haupt, his successor at Berlin, undertook to finish it. His share in the edition, particularly in the notes, is greater than that of Lachmann; and the accuracy with which the text has been restored from more than twenty MSS., is worthy of the great pupil of that great master.
1858.
III. YE SCHYPPE OF FOOLES.[9]
The critical periods in the history of the world are best studied in the lives of a few representative men. The history of the German Reformation assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biographies of the Reformers; and no historian would imagine that he understood the secret springs of that mighty revolution in Germany without having read the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon, and the sermons of Zwingle. But although it is easy to single out representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from 1450 to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,—nay, to the thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation, of dissatisfaction and hesitation. Like the whole of the fifteenth century, “It was rich in scholars, copious in [pg 063] pedants, but poor in genius, and barren of strong thinkers.” We must not look for heroes in so unheroic an age, but be satisfied with men if they be but a head taller than their contemporaries.
One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of the preliminary age of the German Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian Brant, the famous author of the famous “Ship of Fools.” He was born in the year 1457. The Council of Basle had failed to fulfill the hopes of the German laity as to a reformatio ecclesiæ in capite et membris. In the very year of Brant's birth, Martin Meyer, the Chancellor of Mayence, had addressed his letter to his former friend, Æneas Sylvius,—a national manifesto, in boldness and vigor only surpassed by the powerful pamphlet of Luther, “To the Nobility of the German Nation.” Germany seemed to awaken at last to her position, and to see the dangers that threatened her political and religious freedom. The new movement which had taken place in Italy in classical learning, supported chiefly by Greek refugees, began to extend its quickening influence beyond the Alps. Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., 1458, writes in one of his letters, that poets were held in no estimation in Germany, though he admits that their poetry is less to be blamed for this than their patrons, the princes, who care far more for any trifles than for poetry. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor for a knowledge of classical literature, and they have hardly heard the name of Cicero or any other orator. In the eyes of the Italians, the Germans were barbarians; and when Constantine Lascaris saw the first specimen of printing, he was told by the Italian priests that this invention had lately been made apud barbaros in urbe [pg 064] Germaniæ. They were dangerous neighbors—these barbarians, who could make such discoveries as the art of printing; and Brant lived to see the time when Joh. Cæsarius was able to write to a friend of his: “At this moment, Germany, if she does not surpass Italy, at least need not, and will not, yield to her, not so much on account of her empire, as for her wonderful fecundity in learned men, and the almost incredible growth of learning.”
This period of slow but steady progress, from the invention of printing to the Council of Worms, is bridged over by the life of Sebastian Brant, who lived from 1457 to 1521. Brant was very early the friend of Peter Schott, and through him had been brought in contact with a circle of learned men, who were busily engaged in founding one of the first schools of classical learning at Schlettstadt. Men like Jac. Wimpheling, Joh. Torrentinus, Florentius Hundius, and Johannes Hugo, belonged to that society. Brant afterwards went to Basle to study law. Basle was then a young university. It had only been founded in 1459, but it was already a successful rival of Heidelberg. The struggle between the Realists and Nominalists was then raging all over Europe, and it divided the University of Basle into two parties, each of them trying to gain influence and adherents among the young students. It has been usual to look upon the Realists as the Conservative, and upon the Nominalists as the Liberal party of the fifteenth century. But although at times this was the case, philosophical opinions, on which the differences between these two parties were founded, were not of sufficient strength to determine for any length of time the political and religious bias of either school. The Realists were chiefly supported [pg 065] by the Dominicans, the Nominalists by the Franciscans; and there is always a more gentle expression beaming in the eyes of the followers of the seraphic Doctor, particularly if contrasted with the stern frown of the Dominican. Ockam himself was a Franciscan, and those who thought with him were called doctores renovatores and sophistæ. Suddenly, however, the tables were turned. At Oxford, the Realists, in following out their principles in a more independent spirit, had arrived at results dangerous to the peace of the Church. As philosophers, they began to carry out the doctrines of Plato in good earnest; as reformers, they looked wistfully to the early centuries of the Christian Church. The same liberal and independent spirit reached from Oxford to Prague, and the expulsion of the German nation from that university may be traced to the same movement. The Realists were at that time no longer in the good odor of orthodoxy; and, at the Council of Constanz, the Nominalists, such as Joh. Gerson and Petrus de Alliaco, gained triumphs which seemed for a time to make them the arbiters of public opinion in Germany, and to give them the means of securing the Church against the attacks of Huss on one side, and against the more dangerous encroachments of the Pope and the monks on the other. This triumph, however, was of short duration. All the rights which the Germans seemed to have conquered at the Councils of Constanz and Basle were sacrificed by their own Emperor. No one dared to say again what Gregory von Heimburg had said to the Italian clergy,—“Quid fines alienos invaditis? quid falcem vestram in messem alienam extenditis?” Under Æneas Sylvius, the power of the Pope in Germany was as absolute as ever. The Nominalist party lost all [pg 066] the ground which it had gained before. It was looked upon with suspicion by Pope and Emperor. It was banished from courts and universities, and the disciples of the Realistic school began a complete crusade against the followers of Ockam.