‘Germany in the Age of the Reformation’
Socio-Economic and Cultural Life in the Late Middle Ages
Lecture Autumn Week 2
Structure, keywords and terms
1. German Society on the eve of the Reformation
· Population: after great losses of mid 14thC Black Death recovery from c. 1500
· ‘Society of Estates’: clergy, nobility, (rural/urban) commons (all differentiated)
· Town and country: socio-economically and legally distinct, but interdependent
· Gender roles: reassertion of patriarchy, but informal/religious roles for women
Ständebaum; secular religious clergy; Georg III Truchseβ von Waldburg
; Götz von Berlichingen; Duke Ulrich of Württemberg; yeomen, cottagers; Tom Scott, Peter Blickle; coniuratio; Jakob Fugger; Albrecht von Brandenburg; Fuggerei; Cazis (Grisons).
2. The Late Medieval Economy
· Three landscapes: mixed general agriculture; specialized crops; mining (T. Scott)
· 16thC price rise; regional differences; growth of rural (proto-)industry
· Urban economy: occupational diversification and struggle for political influence
Viticulture, flax, linen; impartible / partible inheritance patterns; three-field rotation system; Wilhelm Abel; ‘Little Ice Age’; Frisia, Thuringia, Rhine, Mosel, Swabia, Tyrol; West / East of river Elbe: manorial vs demesne system (Grundherrschaft vs Gutsherrschaft); ‘putting-out’ system / protoindustry; Hanseatic League; crafts/gild revolutions
3. Cultural Life
· German identity: amorphous, partly in opposition to France, pope and Ottomans
· Education: improvements in towns and for social elites (grammar schools)
· Print: Germany, where technique ‘invented’ in mid-15thC, assumes a leading role
· Craving for reform: discontent expressed in pamphlets and Imperial Diets
· Humanism: focus on philology (text critique), Antiquity & human betterment
· Peasant risings: against violations of custom and encroachments by emerging state
Nicholas of Cusa; Tacitus; scholasticism; Willibald Pirckheimer; Copernicus; Johann Gutenberg; incunabula; Upper Rhenian Revolutionary; Bernd Moeller; philology; Erasmus of Rotterdam; Joß Fritz; Bundschuh
Conclusions
· A society of (heterogeneous) estates with distinctive roles, rights and functions
· A predominantly agricultural economy, but with growing market involvement
· Importance of towns and commerce; some areas with (proto-)industrial production
· Significant cultural impact of print and pressing calls for imperial/church reform
BK 10/17