Dances of Death

St. Mary's Church, Lübeck, Germany, 1463

Death is everywhere.  Does not common sense and experience teach this?

St. Mary's Church, Berlin, c. 1485

So why should we wish to consider the fact over and over in our art, even in our entertainment?

St. Mary's Church, Beram, Croatia, 1474

Why should all our festivals and carnivals feature morality plays in which death leads us away to our respective fates?

Jesuit College, Lucern, Switzerland

Why should the Dance of Death have become so popular in art that no artist feels his career complete until he has painted or engraved one?

Merchant, Hans Holbein Dance of Death, 1538

It is the plague, some say. Since the plague, Europe is obsessed with Death.

Cemetery of the Innocents, Paris, c. 1424

But if we are, as a common mind, obsessed with Death, why should our art not provide an escape rather than a study of the subject?

Church of Nørre Alslev, Falster Island, Denmark, late 1400s

Perhaps, it is more like a builder who must walk the high rafters of the new granary or climb to the heights of the cathedral. How can he master his fear?

Anonymous--early 16th century

“You get used to it,” one fellow told me. “You just go as high as you dare, and, when you’re comfortable there, you go higher.”

Clusone, Italy

Perhaps this is why we look so much at death, study death, handle death in our imaginations. Perhaps go so far as to mock Death. That we might, by these safe encounters, be less afraid.

Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, 1517, Berne

I view a painting of Death. And then I go home and eat my lunch, and so, I have, once more, walked the high beam without incident. And I am a little less afraid.

St Nicolas' Church, Tallinn, Estonia, late 1400s

Perhaps, a very modern thinker might say: Macabre. Weird. Eerie.

Trinity Church, Hrastovlje, Slovenia, 1490

But, Gentle Reader, have you never read a scary book or viewed a frightening image purely for pleasure? Is there not a writer of great popularity known as Steven King?

Artist unknown, probably printed by Heinrich Knoblochtzer, Heidelberg, late 1400s

Could the popularity of all things terrifying be motivated by the same impulses that make our Dances of Death popular?

Chapelle Kermaria, France, 15th century

Just another way to walk on the highest rafter?

Local scene, yesterday

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Capito thanks that most excellent site: Death in Art for most of these images.  There the Reader can find information on the location and history of each Dance of Death and a discussion of the genre.  

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Joss Fritz Returns

In my last post, Gentle Reader, I told you what I knew of the planned peasant uprising of 1502, under the leadership of Joss Fritz.  Such a revolt, called a Bundschuh, is named for a poor man’s rough, rawhide footwear, sometimes bound to the leg as far as the calf by long, crossed leather thongs.  Bund means binding or gathering into a bundle.  So Bund can symbolize union.

After the 1502 Bundschuh was betrayed to the authorities before it could occur, Fritz went underground.  In ten years, there was no word of him.  It is now rumored that he was serving as a mercenary for the Swiss.  In this capacity, he could be always raising support among the Swiss for his next attempt at revolution for the German peasants.

Then, about two years ago, Fritz quietly settled in the village of Lehen, two miles west of Freiburg.  He was given the village position of field watch.  The peasants in this area, though serving various ecclesiastical and secular lords within overlapping  jurisdictions, are writhing under the harsh thumbs of overlords like Gabriel von Bollscheil, who told his serfs that they must do as he says or be cut to pieces.

For two years, Fritz carefully laid his plans and organized peasants in the many surrounding villages.  It is said that a priest of Lehen joined with Fritz in promoting the Bundschuh as a just and godly undertaking to restore the world to the order that God intended.

However, unlike the planned  Bundschuh of 1502, this revolt was not against only one Bishop but against many secular authorities as well.  So the participants swore only an oath of secrecy, without religious litanies.

Peasant armed with flail

And the password ran: God greet you, fellow.  How fares the world?

With the answer: In all the world, the common man can find no comfort.

It is said that the flag of 1502 had been preserved and was to be completed.  It bore a Bundschuh on one side, and, on the other, a peasant kneeling before Mary, John the Baptist and Christ crucified, as if to say that it was for the common man that He had come.  Beneath was the plea:  Lord, stand by Thy Divine Justice.

Peasants with hands raised in same sign as Fritz statue. Notice flag.

At the beginning of September, in the night, Fritz met with the conspirators in a secluded field outside Lehen, where they planned their organization and attack.  As many as possible were to attend the Biengen church ale on October 9.  There, the Bundschuh flag would be flown high.

They would besiege the small country towns, marching southwards to join the Swiss, with whose support they could attack the fortified towns of Freiburg and Breisach.  Then they would control the whole right bank of the Upper Rhine and sweep all southwest Germany.

But Fabri tells me that the authorities were alerted in the summer that another Bundschuh was in the offing.  It seems a painter named Theodosion promptly reported to them that he had been contacted about completing the rebel flag.  However, though Freiburg put its watch on alert, it had no names to arrest.

Only in this month of October did a conspirator named Michael Hanser reveal the entire plan to the margrave of Baden, who immediately informed the Freiburg authorities.  A full-scale effort of scouts and armed posses was launched to round up the rebels. Fritz and two of his lieutenants, Jakob Huser and Kilian Meiger, headed for Zurich to seek assistance from the Swiss.  On the way, they were captured.

But Fritz escaped.

 

 

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Capito recognizes a most excellent source: Freiburg and the Breisgau, Town-Country Relations in the Age of Reformation and Peasants’ War by Tom Scott.

Two woodcuts from “Images of the Peasant, 1514-1525″ by R.W. Scribner in The German Peasant War of 1525 published by Frank Cass & Company. 

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Bundschuh!

Bundschuh.  A common word that strikes fear into every noble heart.  Like the word Fire! in a crowded city.  Almost as terrifying as Plague.

Bundschuh.  It is only a laced peasant shoe.  Symbol of the common man since “Duke Bundschuh,” Count Eckhart of Scheyern, carried two red-laced boots to call the common man on a crusade to Jerusalem in the eleventh century.

But now, it stands for the common man united in revolt against his overlords, be they secular nobility or ecclesiastical “Cloister Lords.”  It symbolizes havoc, anarchy, famine, for without the peasants, how should we have food?

Peasants surrounding a knight

As I travel to Basel to meet with the Jew about Hebrew lessons, the entire land is ablaze with talk of Joss Fritz and a Bundschuh he planned to launch at a Church Ale near Freiburg in this very month.

I have learned much about this Joss Fritz since I moved to Bruchsal, for his first attempt to rally the common man to revolt occurred among the peasants belonging to the Bishop of Speyer, who, as the Reader remembers, called me to his service earlier this year.  It was in 1502 that revolt was attempted, under the previous Bishop, but the memory is still green among those who lived through it.  This was told me by a young man whose father had taken part:

“We lived in the village of Untergrombach, which is south of Bruchsal.  I was twelve years old, but I remember it well.

“The bishop kept encroaching on the rights of his tenants to graze their animals and to cut firewood.  His tax collectors were known for their lack of mercy.  The Bishop was constantly feuding with the Swabian League, who retaliated by ravaging his peasants.  Then he put a limit on the number of beasts a man could hold.”

“But,” someone else said, “Bishop Ludwig was known for his Christian charity, which was one reason that he was always in debt.”

“Be that as it may,” the boy said, “it was little comfort to the people who had to provide boon-services and pay tithes and tolls and taxes from which all clergy are exempt.”  He dropped his voice and leaned forward.  “So there rose up a bondsman of the Bishop named Joss Fritz.  And he called the people to a new world.  A world based on Divine Justice.

“They held secret meetings in the countryside.  I went with my father the night he swore allegiance to the Rebellion.  He said I could be proud that he had a part in cleansing the church and freeing the common man from bondage.  I wanted to join too, but he said I was too young, though there were others there no older than me.

“All who joined fell on their knees and recited the Lord’s Prayer five times and five Ave Marias.  Then they recited the password which ran: God greet you, fellow.  How fares the world?  And then the reply: We cannot rid ourselves of this plague of priests.

“Fritz was a great orator.  He had a complete plan, and he could make you see it.  All the Church’s power would be abolished, and it would return to apostolic poverty.  Hunting and fishing, pasture and forest, would be under the governance of the villages, not the nobles or the Church.  There would be no more tithes, rents, taxes, or tolls.”

“But how,” I asked, “could all that possibly be accomplished?”

“They would take the Bishop’s castle at Obergrombach, and that would be their stronghold.  Then they planned to take Bruchsal, where it was said that half the citizenry would support them.  They especially hoped for an alliance and aid from the Swiss, once the Bundschuh was begun and they could demonstrate how many were in their number.

“Fritz had forty agents who worked throughout the south.  He said they could raise an army of 20,000 and keep it ever ready for engagement.  He believed he could take Pforzheim and from there the whole of the upper Rhine.”

“What happened,” I asked, though I thought I knew.

“They were betrayed.  Someone confessed to his priest, who, though bound to secrecy, coughed it up to the authorities.”

(Although I also heard that one of the mercenaries Fritz hired informed the Bishop.  I guess he thought the Bishop would pay him better than Fritz.)

The boy licked his lips.  “The authorities began to seek out the conspirators and interrogate them under torture.  Ten were executed, many were banished.  Some were fined.

“But Joss Fritz escaped.”

And now, eleven years later, he appears again.

Statue of Fritz at Untergrombach

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For more on the plight of the peasants and the ideas fermenting revolt, see Capito’s posts:  The Dead Hand; In the Land of the Blind; City Air Makes Men Free; Everything Comes Down to Purgatory

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Bruchsal–Part 1

December 1512

Like most choices, my decision to leave the university and move to Bruchsal to work for the Bishop has not resulted in a perfect situation, though it is nice to eat with the sons of nobility and to wear robes equal to the ones Zasius provides Fabri.

But my position entails far more than I expected.  The Bishop sends me on frequent errands, (hence, the lateness of this post), and the duties are beyond the scope of my abilities.  The Bishop believes that, since I studied briefly under Zasius, I should be able to answer legal questions.  Nothing could be farther from the truth, and I am frequently dispatching a courier on a fast horse to appeal to Fabri for advice.  And, too, I hate litigation and conflicts, and so, do not enter into argumentation with the passion it requires.

Then, there are the endless chapter meetings in which the daily business of the foundation is discussed.  I care not what arrangements should be made for the upcoming feast or at what hour this or that should occur.  But my position requires me to attend.  So there I sit, as stuck as a pig on a spit, but at least the pig has a purpose.

The people who attend our services are woefully ignorant and superstitious, particularly with regard to ghosts, demons, witches, and saints.  This results from several sources.  The clergy are poorly trained and often superstitious themselves, and they encourage the superstitions of the people in order to keep the common herd content and keep everything in stat quo.  While the people are not to blame that they were raised with superstitions, they cling to them tenaciously, for is it not much easier to simply follow a superstitious formula than to undergo a transformation of heart?

So, you may have surmised from all this, Gentle Reader, that I find myself at odds with several of the clergy.  They accuse me of stirring up the populace, for some find my lessons refreshing and authentic, but some cling to their old thinking, and so the congregation is divided.  How I shocked them last Sunday when I answered that, no, the sight of an icon does not protect one from sudden death for the rest of the day.  Does not experience itself teach this?

Hubmaier writes that discussion among the people is always to be desired, as it opens minds.  But truly, I feel that I am having little positive effect.

I am besieged by a mass of trivial duties, and one would surmise that I am too busy to think.  But I do think.  In my solitude, I find myself revisiting troubling questions that go all the way back to my childhood and my father’s affinity for John Wycliffe.

Is Christ really Present in the Eucharist?  I don’t know.  And yet, in my position, I declare my belief in that doctrine every time I say Mass.

I have no one with whom to share these concerns—dangerous as they are.  Oh how I miss Hubmaier and Zell and the lively discussions we had over our ale at the Hog’s Snout.  How I miss Fabri’s unwavering logic.  And the innocent wisdom of the young monk Michael.

Bruchsal is an intellectual desert, and there are few here who can have—or who wish to have—an intelligent discussion about humanistic studies, languages, poetry, ethics, or anything else.  Again, preserve the status quo.  So, when I have a free moment, I seem to gravitate to solitary places where I spend the time brooding.

The one bright spot in the last several months was the recent visit of Conradus Pellicanus.  Although a Franciscan, Conradus leads all Germany in the study of Hebrew, though when he began to study, he had no grammar and no teacher.  But he taught himself the letters, and then Reuchlin lent him the grammar of Moses Kimhi, for Reuchlin is convinced that if one wishes to find the truth in Hebrew, one must follow the grammatical and exegetical tradition of the medieval rabbis.

In 1501, Conradus published the first Hebrew grammar in any European language, which was most helpful to Reuchlin when he later began to publish his works.  (Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel has been suppressed, Conradus told me, thanks to the efforts of that idiot, Pfefferkorn.  Let them try to take my copy.)

Conradus is a model of how a man can educate himself in any subject if he only be willing to study and make the effort to do all that he can.  He tells me that in Basel, there is a converted Jew from Spain living with the Amerbachs and teaching Hebrew.  I have asked the Bishop for permission to make the trip to Basel to meet this Jew.

Many are studying the New Testament in Greek, but few can read the Old Testament in its original language or understand the tradition from which it came.  This is due to a dearth of study material and to the suspicion and hatred of anything Jewish.  A great tragedy.

Jewish scholars wearing pointed hats are suckled by their wetnurse, the Devil's pig. Earliest extant anti-Semetic broadside. 1475

But I, Capito, find Hebrew fascinating, both for its own knowledge and for the light that it throws on the Bible.  If I could pursue Hebrew studies, my time here in Bruchsal might not seem so devoid of purpose.  So, I go to Basel to meet this Jew.  And we shall see what will be.

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