But it is only natural that among the thousands of women in religious life many failed in their mission, having mistaken their vocation. They became unhappy in their solitude without love, especially such as had been forced into the nunnery against their will and inclination. In such cases their conduct sometimes stands in glaring contrast with their vows of chastity.
The centuries leading up to the Reformation are full of complaints of priestly debauchery, which naturally reflected also upon the nuns. The cloister of Gnadenzell is reported to have been a pleasure resort for the neighboring nobility, who there celebrated nightly orgies and infamous dances; Count Hans von Lupfen, A. D. 1428, chided the prioress, in a document of historical interest, for having failed to remove in time the nuns who had become pregnant, and for having thus given cause to the neighbors to complain that "the cloister walls were resounding with the cries of babies." Bishop Gaimbus, of Castell, reports to the Pope (June 20, 1484) of the nunnery of Loflingen, near Ulm, that, at an investigation for reforms, the majority of the nuns were found "in an advanced state of motherhood" (in gesegneten Leibesumstanderi).
Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (1494) gives a terrible picture of the sins and follies of the era; never has there been such a heavy freight of perverse and wicked fools from all ranks and walks of life.
Thomas Murner's Conjuration of Fools (Narrenbeschworung), fourteen years later, shows the mediaeval ideals in the caricature to which they had degenerated. The old conditions that had produced lofty and genuine ideals had died away, nothing remained but the shell, the mere form and outline. The satire against the dissolute world, the chastisement of it by stinging words and sarcastic writings, proves simply the righteous anger which the good and patriotic men of the time felt regarding the national degradation; a total reform became a dire necessity. This was a Titanic task indeed, for during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries intellectual barrenness, spiritual corruption, and luxuriant debauchery prevailed. The worst feature was the chain of vice which, through apish imitation, was transmitted from the debased women of the upper classes to the women of the bourgeoisie, and from the latter to the peasants.
The new fashions were not only hideous, but became even obscene: "What nature wants to be concealed, that do they expose and prostitute. Shame upon the German nation!" are Brant's harsh words. The famous preacher Geiler von Kaisersberg thunders from the pulpit words hardly expressible in modern language: "Women's dresses are so short that they conceal nothing in front or behind, the upper garments are so cut down that the bosom is visible. Then again the trains are as long as tails. Women imitate man's foolish garb: the ridiculous high pointed shoes and tinkling bells on their garments." The pictures of the time and the attempts of cities and princes to regulate these monstrosities prove to us that the portraits of the satirists and the preachers are not overdrawn.
In order to illuminate a cultural epoch in the history of any nation it is, however, always safest to recur to the sources themselves, for they spring, knowingly or unknowingly, from the social soil upon which they thrive.
One of the most characteristic, though not edifying, "human documents" is the collection of contemporary poetry by a female author, Klara Hatzlerin, who was, according to her editor, Karl Haltaus, undoubtedly a nun from Augsburg, and who filled her leisure hours as was customary in the nunneries of her time in copying songs and poems. Evidently, though a cultured woman, she was not a pietist. This is apparent from the erotic and obscene matter found in her work, which even recalls Roswitha of Gandersheim's plays written more than five hundred years earlier. The work is undoubtedly genuine. It is signed: "A. 0.1471. Augsburg. Clara Hatzlerin." The manuscript contains two hundred and nineteen poems, besides ditties and sententious sayings. It marks the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, and is therefore of very great cultural value. The poems do not yet bear the scholastic, not to say pedantic, character of the best mastersingers; their type is, on the contrary, strictly popular, and frequently vulgar. The subjects of Klara Hatzlerin's collection of lyric poetry coincide with those of the minne: there are night songs and watch songs, songs of the love of the fair one, songs describing her virtues and her beauty, songs telling of fears of the light and the spies, rhythmical entreaties for slight favors of love, a glance, an embrace to appease the lover's sorrow or to give him strength to be constant.
Very characteristic of the time, especially as selections by a nun, betraying her interests and occupations, are the rustic caricatures and exaggerations of the coarseness of the peasant classes.
It must not be forgotten that as to material wealth the burghers and the peasant classes were never better off in Germany than during the two centuries preceding the Thirty Years' War, while the nobility had sunk into poverty, ruffianism, brigandage. What shall be said of a time when a prince of the highest rank, Duke Ernst of Bavaria, A. D. 1436, brutally murdered fair Agnes Bernauerin, the lawful wife of his son. To this very day the martyred woman is sung in German romance and poetry. She was the daughter of a barber and surgeon of Augsburg, where prince Albert, son of Duke Ernst, learned to know and to love her because of her almost unearthly beauty and charm. He made her in due form his lawful wife; but the old duke would not recognize the marriage. In the absence of her husband, Agnes was seized in the castle of Straubing, dragged upon the bridge of the Danube, and hurled into the stream. She drifted toward the bank, where one of the hangmen seized her with his hooked pole by her gold-colored hair, plunged her into deep water, and held her beneath its surface until she was drowned.
But let us return to Klara Hatzlerin, the nun, who so frequently chooses scenes from the most licentious poets. The Song of the Seven Greatest Pleasures is original, but extremely coarse. Eating, drinking, minne play of the most bestial kind, the natural functions of stomach and kidneys, sleeping, bathing (as described by Poggio), are the ideals of fifteenth century materialism.