In the 15th century, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was in theory King of Germany and Italy had no power in Italy and often had a hard time of it in Germany and Bohemia.  This was not so much because of outsiders muscling into his territory, but chiefly because his own vassals ignored him. The empire was a constellation of dukedoms and principalities, scarcely subject in any sense to the emperor's rule.  He had no central government, no crown lands, no guarantee that his son would succeed to his title.

The weakness of the imperial power was so evident to everyone in the Later Middle Ages that even emperors spent most of their time acting as princes instead of imperial overlords.  From the 13th century, any emperor's priority was acquiring inheritable family property. An emperor of this sort, however successful, was not the over-all leader of Germany or any other nation.

The lack of unifying institutions, made German politics exceptionally complicated.  On one hand, princely dynasties fought to preserve and extend their dominions.  On the other, the subjects of the princes struggled to break free of their overlords, much as the princes had broken free of the emperor.  In an area like Swabia in south Germany, formerly a center of imperial power, every knight had some claim to be a direct vassal of the emperor, as good as any prince.

The chaotic situation also allowed the development of regional identities, identities that had the potential to become nationalities.  There was a revival and renewal of Czech national feeling. The Low Countries, modern Netherlands and Belgium, were increasing differentiated from the rest of the empire.    The fifteenth century also saw the Swiss confederation come to
prominence. Swiss military power, based on sturdy mountaineers using pikes in formation, became considerable in the
15th century, and alliance with the Swiss, or at least access to Swiss mercenary troops, became very desirable to Italian and German princes.  Switzerland was becoming important because South Germany was becoming the crossroads of Europe.  Constance and Basel, the two big 15th c. church councils, were in this area, and Nurnburg and Augsburg were centers of trade and industry.

The period was one of urban prosperity in much of Germany and the Low Countries.  The prime example of what was possible is given by the Fugger family of Augsburg.  (Details in class.)

The political connection with the imperial Habsburgs, whose bankers they remained, is one reason that the Fuggers
overshadowed all of the other merchant-bankers of Europe, even the Medici; but their location was strategic, too.  An element in the success of the German and Flemish merchants was the wide autonomy that their home cities enjoyed in the fifteenth century.  Subject to no strong princes, their wealth was not likely to be taxed or confiscated away.

Another indication of the vitality of the German town can be seen in the most important innovation of the 15th century, the printing press.   During the 1400s, experiments in printing words took place in a variety of places, but the breakthrough was made in the German Rhineland in the 1450s.  In this decade, Johannes Gutenburg, a metalworker from Mainz, after years of experimentation, produced a Bible, a Psalter, and other works.

Though Italy and France were very active in the new industry, Germany kept something of a lead in the 15th century.  The country produced 18 different editions of the bible in the German language, and 71 of the 133 editions of the Latin bible printed in all of Europe [Matthew, 218-19].  The demand for books is as significant as the ingenuity of the early printers.  It is worth noting, that during this same century, Germany went from having five universities to sixteen.  Universities stand for clerical learning:  perhaps the 18 vernacular bibles are more impressive.

It is certainly the case that Germany and the Low Countries were second only to Italy as a home for the new, classically-inspired learning.   But the north did not need to imitate; it had its own very sophisticated artistic traditions, which were developed in particular under Burgundian sponsorship.  The Northern Renaissance, as cultural growth beyond the Alps is often called, also had its own distinctive concern with church reform. In the North, unlike in Italy, the same people who studied the classics were very interested in how the non-clerical members of the church might contribute to its life and gain a respectable place within it.

An important late-medieval group focused on lay piety was the Dutch Brethern of the Common Life.  It was started by a talented academic drop-out named Gerhard Groote, who abandoned his doctoral program for a quiet religious
life in the 1370s.  Rather than being part of the privileged clerical elite, Groote wanted a simple life, based on work, prayer,
contemplation.

Over the next century the Groote's Brethern preserved their organization and their desire for independence from the establishment.  In 1490, one of their leaders, in answering a complaint from a Common Life house about men who
had "deserted" back to the world, reaffirmed Groote's rejection of permanent, legally enforceable vows:

     If we get a papal order compelling those who leave us either to return
     to us or to enter another Order, we shall be sellin our liberty --
     that liberty which is the singular glory of the Christian religion --
     to buy chains and prison walls, in order to fall into line and conform
     to the religious Orders.  We too will then be subject to servitude,
     like slaves who can be corrected only by punishment [Southern, 344-5].

The letter goes on to show some formal respect for the religious orders, but the passage I've just quoted says something very important about the state of organized religion in 1490.

The Brethern of the Common Life have a direct connection to the Northern Renaissance.  The Brethern believed that work, real work not phoney manual labor for ritual purposes, was good for the soul.  But it was hard, in Dutch and German towns, to find a niche that some guild did not already monopolize.   One area where such restrictions did not apply was the production of books.  In a society where literacy was more important all the time, there was a demand for books, and the Brethern, with great energy and efficiency took a large part of the market.   When the press came along, the Brethern quickly adopted printing.  A second area of business was teaching elementary subjects to children.  The Brethern therefore were in touch with learning on a daily basis.  When classical learning came to the North, they were among the earliest to take it up -- though it appealed
also to their not-quite-so pious neighbors.

The best example of a Northern, learned religious reformer is  Erasmus of Rotterdam,  at one point the most respected
intellectual in Europe.  He was Dutch, born in Gouda around 1469.  His personal background was symbolic of the unreformed state of the church:  he was the illegitimate son of a priest who lived with a woman he was not allowed to marry.  The priest was not badly off, and left enough money at his early death to give Erasmus a decent education.  Erasmus went to the school run by the Brethern at Deventer, their chief center.  He didn't like the school much, since it was rote learning enforced with the switch, like all other schools of the time.  By the early 1480s, humanism was reaching even Deventer in Utrecht province.  Two humanists ran the place in Erasmus's last years there, and one brought the famous classical scholar Rudolf Agricola to lecture weekly on the new learning.  One thing that may have impressed the young Erasmus is that Agricola, who was something of a
fifteenth century hippie, was also the son of a priest and had overcome the handicap to become not just a learned man, but one who had overcome Dutch "obscurantism, dullness and pettiness [Faludy, 24]."

Erasmus's road to humanism was not a straight one.  In 1487 he joined a monastery, something he regretted almost immediately.  His experience of the dull spirits and narrow horizons of his abbey turned him against religious formalism forever.  He was lucky to escape, ostensibly to study theology at Paris, but actually to try to make his way as a humanist writer.  And he succeeded; eventually he became the sort of person who could write good Latin prose 14 hours a day.  His talent and his
personality made him friends in France, England, Germany and eventually Italy.

Erasmus was a serious man with a serious committment to Christianity.  Having absorbed the classical philosophers and moralists, he conceived the idea of a "philosophy of Christ,"  a pruned-down Christianity, a simple life of piety, free of clerical structures, but informed by a good education in both pagan and Christian classics.  Many people had argued for such things
before Erasmus, but he expressed these aims well and coherently in books aimed both at scholars and ordinary literate lay people.

As Erasmus went on, he became dedicated to bringing the best literature of the past to those who needed it.  He wrote handbooks of devotion, basic textbooks, and scholarly editions of the ancient Church fathers, and in 1516, a new translation of the  the New Testament from Greek to Latin. It was the first translation for over a thousand years, and included an introduction and commentary that argued that Scripture itself demanded a simpler, less superstitious Christianity.

Erasmus was the very first scholar, the very first church reformer, to use the printing press as it could be used.  He wrote with a big, immediate audience in mind, and he did it so well that he became quite wealthy, once he figured out how to avoid being cheated by publishers.  He successfully reached the people he wanted to reach:  people of no great standing in life who wanted access to wisdom, both secular and Christian.  In 1514, as he travelled from England to Basel up the Rhine, he was greeted at every stop by delegations of German humanists and ordinary townsmen who knew him as the prophet of a purer Christianity.

Poor Erasmus, in the words of a recent biographer, thought the trip signified "the advent of eternal spring; later he was to look back on this time as the Indian summer before an endless winter [Faludy, 145]."

The European climate was changing at the end of the 15th century. Europe was going from a confusing but fruitful decentralizaton to an era of intense competition between contending princes and religious leaders.  This transformation took place in Italy first, so it is time to return there.
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
George Faludy,  Erasmus of Rotterdam.
 
Donald Matthew,  Atlas of Medieval History.

Richard Southern,  Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages .
 
 

Copyright (C) 1999, Steven Muhlberger.