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Tensions between Clergy and Laity in some Western German Cities in the Later Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

D. A. Eltis
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Repeatedly in the course of the later Middle Ages latent resentment against the clergy, its privileges and behaviour exploded in outbursts of hatred and violence in the German cities. Late medieval Magdeburg saw some of the ugliest manifestations of this kind. In 1325 its citizens murdered their archbishop. In 1402 they surged looting and burning through the ecclesiastical quarter of the city, threatening violence to the clergy. Magdeburg was no isolated case. The bishop, chapter and clergy of Worms informed the council of Frankfurt in the Spring of 1386 how the citizens of Worms had beaten and thrown in prison priests and prelates, set fire to chapels, monasteries and churches and stolen religious items of great value. During the heyday of the Leagues of the Rhenish and Swabian Cities in the 1380s the laity in Basle, Cologne, Worms, Speyer and Mainz, no longer fearing the clergy's powerful friends, vented their pent-up hatreds. As the clerical author of the Chronicon Moguntinum explained they took revenge on the clergy ‘and thus they persecuted them more than the Jews, not caring for the princes of the land, but following their own volitions’. Time and again tempers flared and ecclesiastical property was burned, ecclesiastics were beaten or faced with a choice between self-imposed exile and abridgement of their privileges.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 231 - 248
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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33 They became, with the bishops and the Roman curia, the butt of the humanist satirists and moralists. See in particular Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, Pfaffenhass und Grossgeschrei. Die reformatorischen Bewegungen in Deutschland 1517–1529, Munich 1987, 54.Google Scholar

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37 The use of vicars developed swiftly in the thirteenth century simultaneously with the expanding use of private lodgings by the clerics who employed them: Ludwig, Falck, Mainz imfrühen und hohen Mittelalter (Mitte 5. Jahrhundert bis 1244), Düsseldorf 1972, 167.Google Scholar

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39 These interests were by the late fifteenth century almost entirely financial as a perusal of the thirteen folio sheets of the 1459 electoral capitulation of Archbishop Diether von Isenburg reveals: Bayer, Staatsarchiv Wurzburg, Mainz Domkap. Urk. Libell 2 (1459). Already in the first half of the fourteenth century the cathedral chapter had wrested the wholly uncanonical concession from its archbishop that it should be exempt from synodal decrees as well as carte blanche to be non-resident: Manfred, Stimming, Die Wahlkapitulalionen der Erzbischöfe und Kurfürsten von Mainz (1233–1788), Diss., Göttingen 1909, 31.Google Scholar

40 Brandt, ‘Magdeburg’, 98.

41 The importance of these aristocratic connections should not be underrated. Bishop Lamprecht of Strassburg (1371–4) lacked them and, as a contemporary observed, paid a terrible price: ‘Because he was neither count nor baron he was so hated by all nobles that he became defenceless and could not protect his territory’: Wilhelm, Kothe, Kirchliche Zustände Strassburgs im 14. Jahrhundert, Freiburg-im-Breisgau 1903, 23.Google Scholar By practising nepotism and allowing several members of the same noble or princely family to hold benefices simultaneously it was not difficult for the chapters to build up formidable external support: ibid. 11–12.

42 Irmtraud, Liebeherr, Der Besitz des Mainzer Domkapitels im Spälmittelalter, Mainz 1971, 61Google Scholar

43 Kothe, , Strassburg, 16–17.Google Scholar

44 Some elements of the city communities would not have given a fig for the clergy's departure, as the following late medieval ballad reveals. The Würzburg guild leader Kraus Proclaims: ‘If mass were never sung, / That would not weigh heavily with me.’ / With this his colleague Hans Sensenschmidt agrees: ‘I wouldn't give a pound / To have it all sung and read / That could happen for thirty years / At Würzburg here in our city / We'll eat and drink our fill all the same / Unsung and unread’Google Scholar: Liliencron, R. von, Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1865, i. 171. Such individuals are unlikely to have ever been more than a small minority.Google Scholar

45 For a typical such union see Stadtarchiv Mainz, 19 Sept. 1382.

46 Heinrich, Boos, Geschichte der rheinischen Städtekultur, Berlin 1897, ii. 250–1.Google Scholar

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48 Ibid. 107.

49 Of forty-eight surviving Strassburg wills from the period 1289–1332 twenty-four make grants to the Dominicans and twenty-one to the Franciscans, only twenty making a grant to neither: Kothe, Strassburg, 91. By the fifteenth century the Brethren of the Common Life began to make ground in the hearts of their host towns at the expense of the mendicants: Theodor, Apel, ‘Stadt und Kirche im mittelalterlichen Marburg’, Zeitschrift der Savigny – Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung xii (1922), 246–7.Google Scholar

50 Francis, Rapp, ‘Die Mendikanten und die Strassburger Gesellschaft am Ende des Mittelalters.’, in Kaspar Elm (ed.), Stellung und Wirksamkeit der Bettelorden in der städtischen Gesellschaft, Berlin 1981, 92.Google Scholar

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53 Already in 1300 the mendicant orders were enjoying the peace of the city of Mainz: Dieter, Demandt, Stadtherrscha.fi und Stadtfreiheit im Spannungsfeld von Geistlichkeit und Bürgerschaft in Mainz (11.–15. Jahrhundert), Wiesbaden 1977, 116.Google Scholar In Worms the mendicants were rewarded with citizenship in 1385 for their support in the city's struggle with the rich foundations: Friedrich Zorn Wormser Chronik, ed. Wilhelm Arnold, Stuttgart 1857, 148.Google Scholar

54 The bishops, jealous of their authority, were more prepared to support their subordinate parish clergy than the independent mendicants. In 1254–5 the archbishop of Mainz repeatedly stepped in to protect the ecclesiastical business of his parish clergy from their encroachments: Wiesehoff, Beltelorden, 21.

55 Wormser, Chronik, 154. The resulting settlement of 1407 was less satisfactory than those of 1386 and 1509, which were won after long interdicts with the full support of the mendicants throughout: Wiesehoff, Bettelorden, 107–8.Google Scholar

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57 Ibid. 114.

58 Störmann, Gravamina, 154.

59 Schaab, Stätebund, ii. no. 322.

60 Bayer Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich, Mainzer Urkunden 4474.

61 Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 116, 124–5, 133–4.

62 Natale, Frankfurt, 31–2. There can be no greater contrast to the sheer professionalism of Frankfurt council's assault on the privileges of its clergy than Speyer council, which found itself repeatedly duped through its self-confessed lack of learning: Voltmer, Speyer, 158.

63 Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 133–4.

64 CDS xviii. 62; Erler, A., Die Mainzer Stiftsfehde 1459–63 im Spiegel mittelalterlicher Rechtsgutachten, Wiesbaden, 1963, 10.Google Scholar

65 An excellent survey is Elisabeth, Rütimeyer, Stadtherr und Stadtherrschqft in den rheinischen Bischofsstädten. Ihr Kampf urn die Hoheitsrechte im Hochmittelalter (VSWG Beiheft XIII), Stuttgart 1928.Google Scholar

66 As good an introduction as any to the issues commonly at stake is the answer of the council of Mainz of 1443 to the complaints levelled against the city by Archbishop Dietrich: Stadtarchiv Mainz 1443 Dez 4. Dietrich had among other things laid claim to an ‘imperium directum et utile’ over a city which was then celebrating its 199th year of independence.

67 ‘One should resist the bishop, fight him, risk life and goods, die and recover rather than do such a thing. So swore rich and poor together.’ Thus a contemporary of the bitterness engendered among the people of Augsburg by their bishop's mid-fifteenth century struggle over the courts, the keys to the city, financial and other matters: Störmann, Gravamina, 301.

68 All the archbishops of Cologne from the mid-thirteenth century onwards were drawn from the cathedral chapter. Roughly two-thirds of the archbishops of Mainz and Trier in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages were likewise local cathedral canons. The third who came from elsewhere were papal nominees. This was most untypical. From the twelfth century in general the cathedral chapters of the empire were free to choose their bishops without external interference: Wilhelm, Kisky, Die Domkapitel der geistlichen Kurfürsten in ihrer persönlichen Zusammensetzung im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, Weimar 1906, 8–12.Google Scholar

69 As for instance the patrician brothers zum Widenhofe, who entered Archbishop Johann II's service in 1412: Würdtwein, S. A., Nova subsidia diplomatica, Heidelberg 1781–1792, iv. 314.Google Scholar The same archbishop made a determined attempt to regain sovereignty over the city of Mainz at the Council of Constance in 1416: Huckert, E., Die Politik der Stadt Mainz während der Regierungszeit des Erzbischofs Johann II, Mainz 1878, 101.Google Scholar

70 Wormser Chronik, 154.

71 For vehement protests about the use of the latter by the Mainz clergy see Schaab, , Stddtebund, ii. no. 322.Google Scholar

72 The Mainz chapter passed such a statute in 1326, Speyer in 1309, Cologne and Trier even earlier: Falck, Blütezeit, 151; Voltmer, Speyer, 106.

73 For the degree of patrician penetration of monasteries in Strasburg see Rapp, F., Reformes et Reformation à Strasbourg: église et société dans le diocèse de Strasbourg 1450–1525, Paris 1974, 285.Google Scholar

74 Boulay, F. Du, Germany in the Later Middle Ages, London 1983, 189.Google Scholar

75 The majority of the monks of St Thomas's and of St Peter's in Strassburg were the sons of rich patrician dynasties: Kothe, Strassburg, 82–3. It was in general easier for the urban aristocracy to provide for their daughters in this way than their sons.

76 In a political poem of the period the following words are put into the mouth of a Würzburg guildsman: ‘When we drive the priests out / And become lords in the monasteries, / When we make our sons deacons, / They will scarce laugh then. / Let's lay a hand on the sisters’ houses. / Our daughters belong therein / That will do us all little harm / We want to be spared the nobility / All their corn and wine / That must be our own.’: Liliencron, Volkslieder, i. 171.

77 Such posts were both numerous and ill-paid. At the parish church of Ulm in c. 1500 fifty-seven individuals received payment for the masses they said for their taskmasters under formal contract: Gottfried, Geiger, Die Reichsstadt Ulm vor der Reformation. Städtisches und kirchliches Leben am Ausgang des Mittelalters, Ulm 1971, 87. These men of humble origin who read the masses received only a small fraction of the money paid in the contract, or Seelgerälhe, the bulk of which went to the parish priest or, in the case of the cathedral, the often non-resident canons. With little incentive to do work for which others received most of the reward these individuals often let it come to a court case before they performed the contracted masses: Kothe, Strassburg, 110–11.Google Scholar

78 Hermann, Meinert, Frankfurts Geschichte, Frankfurt-am-Main 1977, 30, 40.Google Scholar

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80 Natale, Frankfurt, 15.

81 Ibid. 34ff; Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 134ff.

82 Hennes, , Erzbischöfe, 198. The city was still struggling with the financial consequences of its action in 1443: Stadtarchiv Mainz, 1443 Dez. 4, fo. 31.Google Scholar

83 A contemporary polemic put the blame for the severe financial troubles of the early fifteenth century firmly on the war policy the guilds had supported in the past: ‘thus the people of Mainz entered the war without the advice of our friends…through which action the city has come into great debt, in which it unfortunately still remains’: CDS xvii, 373. The cost of the preparations the city was forced to make in 1444 on account of the Armagnac threat added further to the city's difficulties sixteen years after this polemic was written: Seidenberger, ‘Kirchenpolitische Literatur’, 110.

84 The system of dues is outlined in great detail in a contemporary manuscript: Bayer. Staatsarchiv Würzburg, Mainz Bücher versch. Inh. 2. The principal levies were on wine [fos 14–16V] and corn [fos 22V–25].

85 This was a hammer blow to the prosperity of the city. These families represented by far the greatest potential reserves of taxable revenue to be tapped in the city. In late medieval Constance 143 families held 76% of the property in the city: Gerd, Wunder, ‘Die Sozialstruktur der Reichsstadt Schwäbisch Hall im Spätmittelalter’, in Theodor Mayer (ed.), Unlersuchungen zur gesellschaftlichen Struktur der mittelalterlichen Städte in Europa, Stuttgart 1966, 30.Google Scholar The livelihood of the armies of servants went along with the departing Geschlechter. For the number of servants in the German cities see Czacharowski, A., ‘Forschungen über die sozialen Schichten in den Städten des deutschen Ordenslandes’, in B. Diestelkamp (ed.), Beiträge zum spätmittelalterlichen Städtewesen, Cologne 1982, 104, 126–7.Google Scholar

86 The great urban families of the empire often married outside their own cities, supplementing far-flung business contacts with ties of kinship to their like in other cities: Wunder, ‘Schwäbisch Hall’, 36 n. 30; F. Irsigler, Die wirtschaftliche Stellung der Stadt Köln im 14. und 75. Jahrhundert, (VSWG Beiheft XIII), 1979, 286, map 7 and text.

87 Seidenberger, J. B., ‘Die Kämpfe der Mainzer Zünfte gegen die Geistlichkeit und Geschlechter im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert’, Historisches Jahrbuch ix (1888), 3;Google ScholarFischer, J., Frankfurt und die Bürgerunruhen in Mainz 1332–1462, Mainz 1958, 27.Google Scholar

88 It was not just the departing families’ servants who found themselves without a living but the luxury craftsmen and ordinary suppliers to their households. In 1332 the Mainz cloth dealers, glove-makers, canvas workers and jerkin-makers formed independent guilds. By 1444 they had disappeared, as had other guilds whose survival was closely linked to the fortunes of the wealthy: Seidenberger, 15. Jahrhundert, 20 n. 1.

89 CDS xvii, 55 n. 1.

90 The fraction of Mainz's revenues needed to service the city debt soared from one half in early century to three-quarters in 1437. From 1410–36 the city's income fell by almost a quarter: Fischer, Frankfurt, 31.

91 Demandt, Stadtherrschafl, 141.

92 In this way they would ease the ‘debt with which the honourable city is burdened at this time’: CDS xvii, 326.

93 CDS xvii, 339. The clergy had long made a habit of using interdicts in private disputes, disrupting the life of a whole community because of a quarrel, usually of a financial nature, with a few of its members. In August 1423 the archbishop of Mainz insisted this practice should stop in his see: Stadtarchiv Darmstadt, A2 (Alt) Mainz Generalia 1423 Aug. 31 [fiche 516], fo. 3. This case, in which the chapter's quarrel was with the council, would have justified the use of ecclesiastical sanctions.

94 As the cathedral chapter of Verden observed in the thirteenth century, canon law decreed ‘that no secular judge has the power of judging any cleric for any crime, unless he is first convicted of the alleged crime before his bishop’ and then formally handed over to the secular authorities: Konrad Hoffman, Die engere Immunität in deutschen Bisckofsstädten im Mittelalter, Paderborn 1914, 15.

95 Occasionally a small triumph was possible, as when Mainz forced the nunnery of St Mary Magdalen to abandon plans to take a citizen before the archiepiscopal court in 1416 by preventing it from baking bread until it showed a change of heart: Huckert, Politik, 101. In 1424 the city went one further and won the right to arrest clerical offenders from the archbishop, but not the right to try them: Heinrich, Schrohe, Mainz in seinen Beziehungenzu den deutschen Königen und den Erzbischöfen der Stadt bis zum Untergang der Sladtfreiheit (1462), Mainz 1915, 175.Google Scholar

96 Vogelsang, , Göttingen, 60Google Scholar; Jürgen, Lindenberg, Stadt und Kirche im spätmittelalterlichen Hildesheim, Hildesheim 1963, 60.Google Scholar In 1382 the councils of Hannover, Lüneburg, Goslar, Brunswick and Hildesheim agreed not to cite each other's citizens before ecclesiastical courts: ibid. 67.

97 Hans, Knies and Fritz, Hermann, Die Protokolle des Mainzer Domkapitels, Erster Band. Die Protokolle aus der Zeit 1450–1488, Darmstadt 1976, 380.Google Scholar

98 Hoffmann, Immunität, 35.Google Scholar

99 Wormser Chronik, 150; Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 108–9.

100 Wiesehoff, Bettelorden, 49.

101 Schaab, Städtebund, ii, no. 322. The fruit trees were still the subject of bitter contention over twenty years later: Stadtarchiv Mainz, 1458 Mai 8.

102 Bernd, Moeller, ‘Kleriker als Bürger’, in Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte (ed.), Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel, 3 vols, Göttingen 1971–2, ii. 210 n. 92.Google Scholar For an introduction to Geiler's work see Jane, E.Douglas, D., Justification in late medieval preaching: a study of John Geiler of Keiserberg, Leiden 1966.Google Scholar

103 Lindenberg, Hildesheim, 20.

104 Opladen, P., Gross St. Martin. Geschichte einer stadtkölnischen Abtei, Düsseldorf 1954, 44.Google Scholar

105 Strauss, G., Manifestations of discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, London 1971, 140.Google Scholar

106 In a letter of 12 Jan. 1432 a papal legate crystallised his anxiety for the future of Germany, remarking ‘it is much to be feared that unless the clerics amend their ways the lay community will rise against the entire clergy after the manner of the Hussites, as they say in public’. He of course exaggerated. But his comment deserves reflection: Goodrich, F., Beiträge zur Geschichte der öffentlichen Meinung in Deutschland um die Wende des xv. Jahrhunderts, Halle 1893, 8 n. 119.Google Scholar