and meadow lands were common property; that all men were brethren, and should share alike. When his sermon was finished the crowd of devotees knelt round the “holy youth,” and he, blessing them, pardoned their sins in God's name. Then the crowd surged round him, tearing at his clothes to get some scrap of cloth to take home and worship as a relic; and the Niklashausen chapel became rich with the offerings of the thousands of pilgrims.
The authorities, lay and clerical, paid little attention to him at first. Some princes and some cities (Nürnberg, for example) prohibited their subjects from going to Niklashausen; but the prophet was left untouched. He came to believe that his words ought to be translated into actions. One Sunday he asked his followers to meet him on the next Sunday, bringing their swords and leaving their wives and children at home. The Bishop of Würzburg, hearing this, sent a troop of thirty-four horsemen, who seized the prophet, flung him on a horse, and carried him away to the bishop's fortress of Frauenberg near Würzburg. His followers had permitted his capture, and seemed dazed by it. In a day or two they recovered their courage, and, exhorted by an old peasant who had received a vision, and headed by four Franconian knights, they marched against Frauenberg and surrounded it. They expected its walls to fall like those of Jericho; and when they were disappointed they lingered for some days, and then gradually dispersed. Hans himself, after examination, was condemned to be burnt as a heretic. He died singing a folk-hymn in praise of the Blessed Virgin.
His death did not end the faith of his followers. In spite of severe prohibitions, the pilgrimages went on and the gifts accumulated. A neighbouring knight sacked the chapel and carried away the treasure, which he was forced to share with his neighbours. Still the pilgrimages continued, until at last the ecclesiastical authorities removed the priest and tore down the building, hoping thereby to destroy the movement.
The memory of Hans Böhm lived among the common people, peasants and artisans; for the lower classes of Würzburg and the neighbouring towns had been followers of the movement. A religious social movement, purely German, had come into being, and was not destined to die soon. The effects of Hans Böhm's teaching appear in almost all subsequent peasant and artisan revolts.60 Even Sebastian Brand takes the Niklashausen pilgrims as his type of those enthusiasts who are not contented with the revelations of the Old and New Testaments, but must seek a special prophet of their own:
“Man weis doch aus der Schrift so viel,
Aus altem und aus neuem Bunde,
Es braucht nicht wieder neuer Kunde.
Dennoch wallfahrten sie zur Klausen
Des Sackpfeifers von Nicklashausen.”61
And the Niklashausen pilgrimage was preserved in the memories of the people by a lengthy folk-song which Liliencron has printed in his collection.62
From this time onwards there was always some tinge of religious enthusiasm in the social revolts, where peasant and poor burghers stood shoulder to shoulder against the ruling powers in country and in town.
The peasants within the lands of the Abbot of Kempten, north-east of the Lake of Constance, had for two generations protested against the way in which the authorities were treating them (1420–1490). They rose in open revolt in 1491–1492. It was a purely agrarian rising to begin with, caused by demands made on them by their over-lord not sanctioned by the old customs expressed in the Weisthümer; but the lower classes of the town of Kempten made common cause with the insurgents. Yet there are distinct traces of impregnation with religious enthusiasm not unlike that which inspired the Hans Böhm movement. The rising was crushed, and the leaders who escaped took refuge in Switzerland.
§ 7. Bundschuh Revolts.
In the widespread social revolt which broke out in Elsass in 1493, the peasants were supported by the towns; demands were made for the abolition of the imperial and the ecclesiastical courts of justice, for the reduction of ecclesiastical property, for the plundering of Jews who had been fattening upon usury, and for the curbing of the power of the priests. The Germans had a proverb, “The poor man must tie his shoes with string,” and the “tied shoe” (Bundschuh), the poor man's shoe, became the emblem of this and subsequent social revolts, while their motto was, “Only what is just before God.” This rebellion, which was prematurely betrayed, did not lack prominent leaders. One of them was Hans Ulman, the burgomeister of Schlettstadt, who died on the scaffold affirming the justice of the demands which he and his companions had made, and predicting their future triumph.
In 1501 the peasants of Kempten and the neighbouring districts again rose in rebellion, and were again joined by the poorer townspeople. In the year following, 1502, a revolt was planned having for its headquarters the village of Untergrombach, near Speyer; it spread into Elsass, along the Neckar and down the Rhine. The Bundschuh banner was again unfurled. It was made of blue silk, with a white cross, the emblem of Switzerland, in the centre. It was adorned with a picture of the crucified Christ, a Bundschuh on the one side, and a kneeling peasant on the other. The motto was again, “Only what is just before God.” Every associate promised to repeat five times a day the Lord's Prayer and the Ave Maria. The patron saints were declared to be the Blessed Virgin and St. John. The movement was strongly anti-clerical. The leaders taught that there could be no deliverance from oppression until the priests were driven from the land, and until the property of the nobles and the priests was confiscated and their power broken. Tithes, feudal exactions of all kinds, and all social inequalities were denounced; water, forest and pasture lands were declared to be the common property of all. The leaders recognised the rule of the Emperor as over-lord, but denounced all intermediate jurisdictions. The plan was to raise the peasants and the townspeople throughout all Germany, and to call upon the Swiss to aid them in winning their deliverance from oppression. The revolt was put down with savage cruelty; most of the leaders were quartered. Many escaped to Switzerland, and lay hid among the Alpine valleys.
One of these was Joss Fritz, who had been a soldier (landsknecht)—a man with many qualities of leadership. He had tenacity of purpose, great powers of organisation, and gifts of persuasion. He vowed to restore the Bundschuh League. He remained years in hiding in Switzerland, maturing his plans. Then he returned secretly to his own people. He seems to have secured an appointment as forester to a nobleman whose lands lay near the town of Freiburg in the Breisgau; and there, in the small village of Lehen, he began to weave together again the broken threads of the Bundschuh League. He mingled with the poorer people in the taverns, at church ales, on the village greens on festival days. He spoke of the justice of God and the wickedness of the world. He expounded the old principles of the Bundschuh with some few variations. Indiscriminate hatred of priests seems to have been abandoned. Most of the village priests were peasants, and suffered, like them, from overbearing superiors. The parish priest of Lehen became a strong supporter of the Bundschuh, and told his parishioners that all its ideas could be proved from the word of God. Joss Fritz won over to his side the “gilds” of beggars, strolling musicians, all kinds of vagrants who could be useful. They carried his messages, summoned the people to his meetings in quiet spaces in the woods, and were active assistants. At these meetings Joss Fritz and his lieutenant Jerome, a journeyman baker, expounded the Scriptures “under the guidance of the Holy Spirit simply,” and proved all the demands of the Bundschuh from the word of God.
When the country seemed almost ripe for the rising, Joss Fritz resolved to prepare the banner as secretly as possible. It was easy to get the blue silk and sew the white cross on its ground; the difficulty was to find an artist sympathetic enough to paint the emblems, and courageous enough to keep the secret. The banner was at last painted. The crucified Christ in the centre, a peasant kneeling in prayer on the one side and the Bundschuh on the other, the figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, and the pictures of the Pope and the Emperor. The motto, “O Lord, help the righteous,” was added, and the banner with its striking symbolism was complete. The League had the old programme with some alterations:—no masters but God, the Pope, and the Emperor, no usury, all debts to be cancelled, and the clauses mentioned above. The leaders boasted that their league extended as far as the city of Köln (Cologne), and