The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag
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to the following Whitsuntide, a great many fresh scholars arrived, so that there was not sufficient to support us all; and we went off to Solothurn, where there was a tolerably good school, and more food; but we were obliged to be so constantly in church that we lost all our time; therefore we returned home.
"The following spring I went off again with my two brothers. When we took leave of our mother, she wept and said, 'Am I not to be pitied, to have three sons going to lead this miserable life?' It was the only time I ever saw my mother cry, for she was a brave, strong-minded woman, respected by every one as honourable, upright, and pious.
"I came to Zurich, and went to the school of the monastery of our Lady. About this time it was reported that a thoroughly good and learned but severe schoolmaster was coming from Einsiedeln. I seated myself in a corner not far from the schoolmaster's chair, and I thought to myself, in this corner will I study or die. When he (Father Myconius) entered, he said, 'This is a fine school (it had only just been built); but methinks you are a set of ignorant boys: but I will have patience with you, if you will only be industrious.' I knew that if it had cost me my life I could not have declined a word, even of the first declension; but I could repeat the Donat by heart from beginning to end, for when I was in Schlettstadt, Sapidus had a bachelor who plagued the Bacchanten so grievously with the Donat, that I thought it must be such a good book, I had better learn it by heart. I got on well with Father Myconius: he read Terence to us, and we had to conjugate and decline every word of a whole play; and it often happened that my shirt became quite wet, and my sight seemed to fail me with fear; and yet he had never given me a blow, except once with the back of his hand on my cheek. He read also the Holy Scriptures, and to these readings many of the laity came, for it was the time when the light of the holy Gospel was beginning to dawn. If at any time he was severe with me, he would take me home and give me something to eat, and he liked to hear me relate how I had gone all through Germany, and how it had fared with me.
"Myconius was obliged to go with his pupils to church at the monastery of our Lady, to sing at vespers, matins, and mass, and conduct the chanting. He said to me once, 'Custos (for I was his custos), I would rather hold four lectures than sing one mass. Dear son, if you would sometimes chant the easy masses for me, requiems, and the like, I will requite it to you.' I was well content with this, for I had been accustomed to it, and everything was still regulated in the popish manner. As custos, I had often not enough wood to burn in the school, so I observed which of the laymen who came to it had piles of wood in front of their houses: there I went about midnight and secretly carried off wood to the school. One morning I had no wood; Zwinglius was to preach at the monastery early that morning, and when they were ringing the bells, I said to myself, 'Thou hast no wood, and there are so many images in the church that no one cares about them.' So I went to the nearest altar in the church, and carried off a St. John, and took him to the stove in the school, and said to him, 'Jögli, now thou must bend and go into the stove.' When he began to burn, the paint made a great hissing and crackling, and I told him to keep quiet, and said, 'If thou movest, which however thou wilt not do, I will close the door of the stove: thou shalt not get out unless the devil carry thee away.' In the mean time came Myconius' wife; she was going to hear the sermon in the church, and in passing by the door, said, 'God be with you, my child, have you heated the stove?' I closed the door of the stove, and answered, 'Yes, mother, I have already warmed it;' but I would not tell her how, for she might have tattled about it, and had it been known, it would have cost me my life. Myconius said to me in the course of the lesson, 'Custos, you have had good wood to-day.' When we were beginning to chant the mass, two Pfaffs were disputing together in the church; the one to whom the St. John belonged said to the other, 'You rogue, you have stolen my St. John;' and this dispute they carried on for some time.
"Although it appeared to me that there was something not quite right about Popery, I still intended to become a priest. I wished to be pious, to administer my office faithfully, and to ornament my altar. I prayed much, and fasted more than was good for me. I had also my saints and patrons, and prayed to each for something especial; to our Lady, that she would be my intercessor with her child; to St. Catherine, that she would help me to learning; to St. Barbara, that I might not die without the sacrament; and to St. Peter, that he would open the door of heaven to me; and I wrote down in a little book what prayers I had neglected. When I had leave of absence from the school on Thursdays or Saturdays, I went into a confessional chair in the monastery, and wrote the omitted prayers on a chair, and counted out every sin one after another; then rubbed them out, and thought I had done my duty. I went six times from Zurich with processions to Einsiedeln, and was diligent in confession. I often contended with my associates for the Papacy, till one day M. Ulrich Zwinglius preached on this text from the gospel of St. John:--'I am the good shepherd.' He explained it so forcibly, that I felt as if my hair stood on end; and he showed how God will demand the souls of the lost sheep at the hands of those shepherds who caused their perdition. I thought, if that is the true meaning, then adieu to priestcraft, I will never be a Pfaff. I continued my studies, began to dispute with my companions, listened assiduously to the sermons and to my preceptor Myconius. There still continued to be mass and images at Zurich."
Thus far Thomas Platter. His struggle in life lasted some time longer: he had to learn rope-making in order to support himself; he studied at night, and when Andreas Kratander, the printer at Basle, had sent him a Plautus, he fastened the separate sheets on the rope by means of a wooden prong, and read whilst he was working. Later he became a corrector of the press, then citizen and printer, and lastly rector of the Latin school at Basle. The unsettled life of his childhood was not without its influence on the character of the man; for however great his capacities, he displayed neither energy nor perseverance in his undertakings.
It was among the thousands who, like the boy Thomas, thronged to the Latin schools, that the new movement won its most zealous followers. These children of the people carried from house to house with unwearied activity their new ideas and information. Many of them never arrived at the university; they endeavoured to support themselves by private tuition, or as correctors of the press. Most of the city, and in later times the village schools were occupied by those who could read Virgil, and understand the bitter humour of the Klagebriefes, de miseria plebenorum. So great were their numbers that the reformers soon urged them to learn, however late, some trade, in order to maintain themselves honestly. Many members of guilds in the German cities were qualified to furnish commentaries to the papal bulls, and translate them to their fellow-citizens; and subtle theological questions were eagerly discussed in the drinking-rooms. Great was the influence exercised by these men on the small circles around them. Some years afterwards they, together with the poor students of divinity who spread themselves as preachers over all Germany, became a great society; and it was these democrats of the new teaching who represented the Pope as antichrist in the popular plays, harangued the armed multitudes of insurgent peasants, and made war on the old Church in printed discourses, popular songs, and coarse dialogues.
In this way they made preparation for what was coming. But however clearly it had been shown by the Humanitarians that the Church had in many places falsified the Holy Scriptures, however humorously they had derided the tool of the Inquisition--the baptized Jew Pfefferkorn, with his pretty little wife--and however zealously the small school teachers had carried among the people the colloquies of Erasmus on fasting, &c., and his work on the education of children, yet it was not their new learning alone that gave birth to the Reformation and the spiritual freedom of Germany. Deeper lay the sources of this mighty stream; it sprang from the foundation of the German mind, and was brought to light by the secret longings of the heart, that it might, by the work of destruction and renovation, transform the life of the nation.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MENTAL STRUGGLES OF A YOUTH, AND HIS
ENTRANCE INTO A MONASTERY.
(1510.)
Great was the wickedness of the world, heavy the oppression under which the poor suffered, coarse the greed after enjoyment, boundless the covetousness both of ecclesiastics