This respect for women and chaste family life was considered by the Romans the highest quality of the Germans. Even Christianity, which spread from the Roman to the German countries, could not place women and marriage on a higher footing; on the contrary, its ascetic tendencies served to lower them. The full enjoyment of the pleasures of the world were no longer allowed to man; passionate devotion to a beloved husband was easily mistaken for a wrong to heaven and the holy Redeemer. On the other hand men fixed their eyes on the heavenly Virgin, whose especial favour they might win by despising the women of earth. At the time of the Saxon Emperors this tendency of the mind reached its highest point. In those days education was confined to the cloister; there the daughters of the nobility were educated; there men weary of sin retired; and there also, enthusiasm sought for the highest enjoyment of love, which seemed unattainable in marriage without danger to the salvation of the soul. Secret sensuality mixed even with the worship of the highest objects of faith.
But the heart of man could not long rest satisfied with ideal love in heaven. When, under the first Hohenstaufen, education, manners, and good taste were only to be found among the feudal nobility, they hastened to transfer to the women of this world the devotion and veneration which had been exclusively confined to the Virgin Mary. The courtly worship of woman began, new conventional forms were introduced for the intercourse between man and woman, accompanied in Germany with a strong intermixture of Italian manners. The man had to give proof of his love by heroic deeds and adventures, and his lady-love was surrounded by an atmosphere of poetry, and veiled in ideal perfections, as we may perceive in the numerous minne-songs of that time. But neither the dignity of woman, nor the fundamental morality of marriage, was increased by this chivalrous devotion, and it became a cloak for reckless profligacy. Sometimes even a married woman had a knight devoted to her service; he was invested kneeling before his liege lady, and she, laying her hands between his, confirmed his allegiance by a kiss. From that time he wore her colours; he was bound to be faithful to her, and she to him, and in some cases they lived together as man and wife; and there were even instances in which the Church gave its sanction to these improper unions.
This knightly service often led men into the greatest follies. For instance, Pierre Vidal of Toulouse went about on all-fours in a wolfs skin, in honour of his lady, till he was beaten and bitten almost to death by the shepherds and sheep dogs; and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who rode through the whole country in woman's clothes, challenging all the knights, and had his finger and upper lip cut off in honour of his lady, drank the water in which she had washed, and when he returned from his expeditions, was nursed by his wife. These are not the worst examples of the horrible eccentricities to which this knightly devotion led. The result was such as might be expected,--the glitter of romance soon disappeared, and coarse profligacy remained in its nakedness.
The Church did little to improve this state of things. There were individual popular preachers who courageously advocated marriage and chastity, but it was at this very time that the celibacy of the secular clergy was established, and that the mass of the people were reduced to bondage by the feudal lords. The purity of marriage and the happiness of families were not promoted either by the position of the village priest living in his parish without a legal wife, nor by that of the proprietor who had to give his sanction to marriages, received tribute on account of them, and even laid shameful claims on the person of the bride.
On the other hand there arose in the cities a fresh and vigorous life, and from the fourteenth century, the citizens became the best representatives of German cultivation and manners, as once the ecclesiastics had been, and afterwards the nobles. Owing to the close proximity of the dwellings in the city, and the smallness of their houses, the intercourse between man and woman became more strictly defined, and on the whole a practical sound conception of life took the place of chivalrous fancies; citizen habits followed courtly manners; ladies were won by cautious wooing instead of by daring heroic deeds; maidenly modesty attracted more than haughty assumption; instead of the wild knightly life of the nobles, which frequently separated man and wife, and violently severed the marriage tie, the woman now obtained a quiet sway in the well-regulated house, and the bold courtesy of the knight was replaced by a considerate, though strictly regulated and sometimes rather formal, expression of heartfelt esteem.
The conception of propriety and purity was different, however, from what it is now. At the time of the Council of Constance, the refined Poggio relates with great satisfaction how at Baden near Zurich, the most fashionable bath of the fifteenth century, he had seen German men and women bathing together, and how delightfully naïve their familiarity was. And even a century later Hutten praises this German custom in contradistinction to the Italian morals, which would have made this practice impossible. So tolerant still were the German Humanitarians.
Marriage, however, was considered by our ancestors less as a union of two lovers, than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not only of married people towards one another, but also towards their relatives--as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. The relations of the wife became also the friends of the man, and they had claims on him as he had on them. Therefore in the olden time, the choice of husband and wife was always an affair of importance to the relatives on both sides, so that a German wooing, from the oldest times up to the last century, had the appearance of a business transaction, which was carried out with great regard to suitability. This perhaps takes away from German courtship, somewhat of the charm which we expect to find where the heart of man beats strongly; but this circumspect method of weighing things is a characteristic sign of an earnest and great conception of life. If a man desired to ask a woman in marriage he had to go through several solemn family negotiations. First the wooing, for which he had to employ a mediator; not always the lather or any other head of his family, but often some man of consideration in the town or country. This ambassador was generally accompanied by the wooer himself with a troop of his companions: if it took place in the country, they rode in solemn procession. If the family of the maiden was favourably disposed, they considered this as the preliminary step, and fixed a time for the negotiations between the families to take place. Formerly the man had to buy his wife from her family; but when this old custom fell into disuse, there still remained the arrangements concerning the dowry which the bride had to bring to her husband, and the jointure which he had to settle upon her. There were added to this, though not compulsory yet as a standing custom, presents of the man to the parents, brothers, and sisters of the bride, or from the bride to the family and best-men of the bridegroom. After this consultation, followed the betrothal, which had to take place in the presence of the rightful guardians: amidst the circle of witnesses, both parties had solemnly to declare that they would take each other in marriage; after which a ring was placed on the finger of the bride by the bridegroom; they embraced and kissed, thus showing the passing of the maiden into the family and guardianship of the man. After this betrothal, a certain space of time having elapsed, the termination of which was in many places legally fixed, the solemn fetching home of the bride to the house of the bridegroom took place. Again there was a solemn procession to the house of the maiden, and even if the bridegroom was present he was obliged to have a spokesman, who once more wooed her before the assembled family, and gave her over to the bridegroom; then she was taken in procession to the house of the latter, where the bridal feast was held. It was a bad custom in the middle ages, that this repast was got up with an extravagance which far surpassed the means of the bridal couple; and there were numerous police regulations endeavouring to limit the luxury in music, dishes, and the number of tables[[52]] and feast days.
Such was the marriage ceremonial of the Germans. The old custom of the bridal wreath, which was worn by both bride and bridegroom, was introduced into Germany from Rome. The consecration of marriage by the Church was only required from the time of the Carlovingians, and was seldom neglected by the nobility, but did not become general among the people till a later period. The Church had indeed raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament; but a feeling remained among the people that Christianity looked coldly and sternly on it. Even in the fifteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church was not entirely established, nor does it take place to this day in many places before the fetching home of the bride.
In this respect also, Luther and the Reformation had a great influence. From the sixteenth century the consecration of marriage by the Church became in the Protestant countries the essential part of the ceremony; from that time the old customs of betrothals and of fetching home the bride were secondary considerations. It was not till after Luther and the Council of Trent, that marriage became intimately connected with the Christian faith in the German mind; for then the different confessions endeavoured by educating and elevating the people, to make them comprehend the moral and domestic significance of marriage.
And how was it with the heart of lovers? The following example will show how true love germinated amidst all the various family interests.