Link to Chronology
When faith turns into good business
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter II
The Reformation
1. Lutheranism
Continued
p559 ...it was the weakness of the monarchical power [in Germany], and the backward and particularistic character of its institutions that saved Lutheranism, or at all events assured it of its rapid and easy diffusion, compared with the formidable conflicts in which Calvinism, in more advanced and powerful States, was involved from its very beginning.
p560 [Charles V is thwarted in Germany, unable to take on a German religious war at the same time he is at war with France.]...But what he could not do in the Empire he could do in the Low Countries... As early as 1520 he had promulgated a first "bill" against heresy... This was only a prelude to what he had in mind... to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into his Burgundian provinces... until the end of his reign, a series of more and more violent and merciless "bills" were promulgated, which even went to the length of compelling the lay courts to prosecute and sentence to death persons who, not being theologians, had discussed questions of faith, or who, being acquainted with heretics, did not denounce them.
...it was reserved for the Low Countries to furnish the Reformation with its first martyrs. On July 1st, 1523, two Augustinians of Antwerp, Henri Voes and Jan van Essen, were burned alive in the great market-place of Brussels...
p561 ...he [Luther] was a revolutionary only in religious matters, and his furious attacks upon the authority of Rome were in strange contrast with his docility in respect of the secular authorities. But when it reached the heart of the masses his propaganda was bound, before long, to awaken the confused emotions born of extreme poverty; a formidable force, which, once unleashed, escapes all guidance, obeying only itself.
Edmund Burke would understand what Pirenne is saying here. Also the government of China, which always has recollections of the Boxer Rebellion in mind.
p562 ...In the German art and literature of the 16th century the Bauer was treated with extraordinary disdain. He was apparently regarded merely as a disgusting or ridiculous brute; where he was concerned, anything was permissible... Against the feudal Burg which oppressed them the poor people of each seigneurie were quite defenseless... Religion was the most ancient and the most sacred of habits... the very foundation of existence, and they saw it attacked with impunity, derided and defied. Their dread of and respect for the clergy disappeared. How then should they continue to dread and respect their lords? [This sounds like Dostoevsky] The abuses of which the Church was accused were much less obvious to them than the injustice which they had to suffer at the hands of the nobles... Moved by the same passions, they became conscious of their strength, and in 1528 [this can't be right. Wiki says 1524-1525. Wiki also says the Anabaptists were behind this insurrection as well as the one in Holland.] the first riots suddenly revealed the magnitude of a peril which no one had foreseen because it had been so utterly disdained.
The movement rapidly spread through the whole of Southern Germany... Their demands, which were advanced in the "Twelve Articles of the Peasants," were far more social than religious. They called for a return to the Gospel, but above all they demanded liberty, liberty as they understood it, which meant the liberty to enjoy the free use of forest and field, and to rid themselves of the illegal corvees and the arbitrary tyranny of the landlords... the terror which they excited paralyzed all resistance... counts, princes, and Electors humbled themselves to the extent of negotiating with the insurgent masses and agreeing to the "Twelve Articles." But already these seemed insufficient to hopes excited and passions fired by success. Once more the old dreams of a mystical communism, which had lingered amongst the people ever since the Middle Ages, had taken possession of their minds. Thomas Munzer, in Thuringia, excited the fanaticism of the peasants by the promise of a world of love and justice, in conformity with the Divine will, whose realization demanded the massacre of the unrighteous. The effect of such preaching upon simple and violent souls was to transform the agrarian revolt into a sort of mystical Terror... The nobles united their forces against those of the peasants. The peasants accepted battle, and on May 15th, 1525, they were cut to pieces at Frankenhausen. The conquerors were pitiless in proportion to the terror they had suffered... The yoke imposed upon the peasants was heavier than ever, and henceforth they were to bear it with docile resignation, until the beginning of the 19th century.
p563 The crisis of Anabaptism was even greater proof of the religious confusion into which the too sudden disappearance of ecclesiastical authority had plunged the soul of the people. Accepting Luther's preaching literally, the first Anabaptists, who before 1525 had made their appearance in Switzerland, claimed that not only their faith, but society itself must be reformed in accordance with Holy Scripture. Since the Bible contained the Word of God they must conform to it strictly in all things. What need was there of a Church or State? Obedience to the Word of God should suffice to save men's souls as well as to regulate their mutual relations... The popular form of Manichaeism, based on the opposition of flesh and spirit, had never completely disappeared since the days of the Albigenses. Now it was revived, mingled with the apocalyptic visions and the mystical tendencies which had become so widespread since the 14th century. The religious believed that they were called upon to create a new world, in which all things would be fraternally held in common, wives as well as property. This notion found very ready acceptance in the lower classes of the urban populations, among the journeymen of the guilds and the wage-earning workers in the nascent capitalistic industries. Spreading by contagion among the manual workers, it soon reached the Low Countries, where industry... had prepared a most fertile soil for such a movement. It is not surprising that its adepts were savagely prosecuted by the public authorities. Catholics and Lutherans vied with one another in their ferocious suppression of this revolutionary heresy... Utopian though it had been in the beginning, Anabaptism now became a doctrine of hatred and conflict. The poor looked to it not only for deliverance, but for divergence... About 1530 a sort of mystico-social delirium seems to have seized upon Holland. Nearly all the lower classes of the cities became a prey to it... It was from Amsterdam and its suburbs that those prophets came, in 1534, who, taking advantage of the fact that the city of Munster had rebelled against its bishop, went thither to establish the "Kingdom of God." At no other moment of history, perhaps, has there been a more striking example of the lengths to which the masses may be driven by passion, religious illusion, and the hope of realizing social justice. For twelve months, blockaded by the troops of the neighboring princes, Protestant and Catholics, the Anabaptists of Munster organized... their "New Jerusalem." Polygamy and communism were instituted and practiced by the whole population. For a moment a mystical and socialistic Utopia became a reality. The city was taken by storm on June 24th, 1535, and this access of collective madness was quenched in blood. Not until our own days were the iron cages brought down from the tower of the cathedral in which the charred bones of the prophet John of Leyden and the Burgomaster Knipperdalling had so long swung in the wind... Until almost the close of the 16th century its [Anabaptism's] revolutionary ferment continued to work in the hearts of the people... But among the majority of its adherents it reverted to the evangelical simplicity of its beginnings, and it is in this form that it has been perpetuated down to our own days in the heart of the Protestant world of Europe and America.
p565 The Peasant War, and the tragedy of Anabaptism, resulted in turning the humanists and the Erasmians away from Luther; horrified by so much violence, they moved in the direction of the Church. Luther was no less dismayed. He violently attacked the rebels and pitilessly applauded their defeat. This was the end of the popular tendencies which he had revealed in the beginning. It seemed to him that the only means of saving the Reformation was to place it under the protection and control of the princes... With the exception of the Dukes of Bavaria, who were as firmly Catholic as the Habsburgs, they [the princes] were inclined to make their faith conform to their interests... by proclaiming themselves, in their own principalities, the heads of their territorial Churches, they acquired a twofold authority and influence over their subjects. Such were the wholly mundane considerations which determined the conduct of these defenders of the new faith. Of all religious confessions, Lutheranism is the only one which... offered itself to them as a profitable business transaction.
p566 The elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse first trod the path which others were soon to follow. In 1525 the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Brandenberg, supported the Reformation so that he might secularize the Order and transform it, to his own advantage, into a lay principality. The Dukes of Anhalt, Luneburg, and Friesland, and the Margraves of Brandenberg and Bayreuth, also declared for the Gospel. After its beginnings in the heart of the bourgeoisie in the South of Germany, Lutheranism thus became, through the adhesion of the princes, the religion of the North. For the confession of the princess determined that of their subjects, just as formerly, during the Great Schism, it had determined their obedience to the Pope of Rome or the Pope of Avignon. The question of conscience was therefore treated as a question of discipline. One would hardly have expected this of a religion that proclaimed justification by faith and saw a priest in every Christian. There is surely a contradiction here, which can only be explained by the necessity, of which Luther was becoming more and more conscious, of safeguarding the future of his followers by the protection of the temporal power. As for the people, they allowed their religion to be imposed upon them by the temporal authority with a docility which sufficiently proves the truth of the old literary cliche concerning Germanic individualism. The most sacred convictions of the individual were at stake, yet there was no rebellion, no resistance. The German Catholics seem to have adopted Lutheranism in obedience to the commands of their princes as readily as the Franks of the 5th century renounced their gods when Clovis was baptized. [Funny, I don't recall hearing about this in Lutheran Sunday school] We must conclude... that their faith was not very fervent, but another reason for their attitude may be found in the complete stagnation of political life in Germany. No one dreamed of contesting the rights of the princes. The people were accustomed to obeying their commands... They were... allowed, without protest, to put themselves in the place of the bishops, appoint superintendents of the clergy, suppress the ecclesiastical foundations, close the monasteries, secularizes their properties, and organize the schools: in short each of them, in his own principality, replaced the universal Church, subject to the Pope, by a territorial Church (Landeskirche) subject to the secular power.
So the princes achieved what the Empire had always failed to achieve?
p567 ... [Charles V's] war against Francis I kept him out of Germany and compelled him to bide his time. His brother Ferdinand, to whom he had ceded the hereditary domains of the House of Habsburg, and who represented him in his absence, was himself too occupied by the attacks of the Turks in the valley of the Danube, and the difficulty of getting the Hungarians to recognize him as the successor of their king Louis, who had perished in the battle of Mohacz (1526), to think of impeding the progress of the Reformation... In 1526 the Diet of Spire decreed that pending the arrival of the Emperor all could claim freedom of action in the matters judged by the Edict of Worms. When three years later Charles attempted to make it revoke this decision, five princes and certain of the cities immediately formulated a protest, and from that time onward the partisans of the new faith were known by the name of Protestants.
Again, I don't think our Sunday school teachers mentioned that we were protesting the rights of princes to control their local Churches.
I have to note here one of the most puzzling events of this confusing time. In 1527 an Imperial army -- commanded by Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, but fighting for the Emperor Charles V -- sacked Rome and took the Pope hostage because they had run out of funds.
p568 It was not until 1530, at the Diet which Charles had convoked at Augsburg after his coronation, that the inevitable break occurred. The theological debate, in the course of which Melanchthon read aloud the "Augsburg confession," could only have the result of confirming each party in its own belief. It was too late to hope for a reconciliation... The Protestant princes quitted the assembly, of which the majority, encouraged by the Emperor, solemnly ratified the Edict of Worms, condemned all religious innovations, and ordained a general return to the Church.
...In 1531... [the Protestant princes] formed a confederation at Smalkalde, in association with a certain number of the cities... In the following year... [Charles] proclaimed the Nuremburg Peace of Religion, forbidding any religious war until a Council, or the impending Diet, had assembled... Philip of Hesse, the most turbulent... [of the princes] profited by the situation to do his utmost to undermine the power of the House of Habsburg. Supported by the subsidies of the King of France, he restored the Duke of Wurttemberg to the possession of his Duchy, which Ferdinand had united with Austria, and Protestantism was immediately introduced into the Dutchy (1534)... Already [before 1542?] the Archbishop of Cologne had expressed his intention of going over to the Reformation. The archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt were secularized.
At last, having concluded peace with France at Crespy (1544), Charles V was able to attend to affairs in Germany...
...nothing was easier than to secure the neutrality or even the co-operation of many of... [the Protestant princes] against their co-religionists by promises of aggrandizement. The Lutheran Maurice of Saxony won particular distinction as the ally of the Catholic sovereign in this war upon the Lutherans. The Spanish bands of the Duke of Alva did the rest. The battle of Muhlberg annihilated the League of Smalkalde (April 24th, 1547). The Electorate of Johann Friedrich of Saxony was given to Maurice. Philip of Hesse made his submission. In the same year Charles made the Diet of Augsburg accept an interim, which, pending the decision of the Council, established the religious position of the reformed estates.
p569 It was not the triumph of Catholicism, it was the triumph of the Emperor that terrified the vanquished. They were much more afraid of falling under the yoke of Charles, and losing their princely autonomy, than of once more submitting to the jurisdiction of Rome. [Now joined by Maurice, the German princes]...did not hesitate to buy the aid of the Catholic King of France, Henri II... By the Treaty of Chambord (1552) they recognized his right to annex the three Western bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun...
Once again, then, Lutheranism was saved by France. Charles, obliged to hasten to the Lorraine frontier, left it [Lutheranism] in possession of the field, and never, until his abdication, had he an opportunity of returning to the attack. As Catholic as himself, his brother and successor Ferdinand, still menaced by the Turks in Hungary, hastened to pacify Germany. The Peace of Religion concluded by the Diet of Augsburg on September 25th, 1555, settled the problem. It acknowledged the jus reformandi of the princes -- that is to say, their right to embrace the Reformation -- whether they had already done so, or whether they wished to do so in the future. Subjects were required to profess the religion of their princes, except that they were allowed to emigrate after selling their possessions. An exception was established in favor of the ecclesiastical principalities... There the prince's change of confession could only result in his abdication.
p570 Thus conceived, the Peace of Augsburg appeared to be much less a peace of religion than a mere political compromise. It would have been impossible to show more absolute disrespect for liberty of conscience... The privilege of a free profession of belief was admitted only in the case of crowned heads; the masses had no privilege but that of obedience... the new religion was no more inclined than the old to suffer dissidence in its midst...
...The majestic unity of Christendom was officially shattered. [he means Roman Christendom] The Church, because it had not reformed itself with sufficient promptitude, had to watch the erection of a rival Church. Hitherto it had mercilessly crushed heresy, and henceforth it would be forced to suffer its presence. The fact was that the secular power, ceasing to fight for the Church, had itself gone over to the heretics. Not only did it recognize heresy as the religious truth, but it even profited by the heretics' need of its protection in order to impose upon it an ecclesiastical organization of which it was the master. With Lutheranism... it was a State Church that made its appearance, rather than a State religion... Through the clergy it would obtain that control over education which had hitherto evaded it. From the 17th century onwards it would make education compulsory, and its functions would be extended -- we can divine with what benefit to itself -- to the formation and control of ideas.
p571 Obedience to the prince was inculcated as effectively by the pastors as obedience to the Pope by the Jesuits. The civil power benefited by the progress of the new faith in proportion as it gained empire over men's minds. Discipline, respect for authority, and belief in power were among the characteristics which were finally transmitted to modern Germany... it was the new faith that rendered possible such a State as Prussia: that is a State in which the virtues of the subject, the official, and the soldier coincide, but where we shall look in vain for the virtues of the citizen.
Juneteenth
I had to explain to one of our young workers what "Juneteenth" was about. This was the first time we had worked the event, and there was not much to do. They shut down Fillmore Street through what was the heart of the African-American section of the Western Addition, after the Japanese were shipped off to the camps and workers from the South were brought in to work in the shipyards. When I lived a few blocks to the north, back in the 1970s, this area was a mix of vacant blocks -- cleared by our version of Robert Moses back in the 1960s to improve the City by displacing the Blacks -- some Projects, and a few surviving buildings from the old days. This is where I would come -- only in daylight -- to buy the day-old bread and pastries that were the key component of my modest diet at that time. It was actually a good German bakery, but they always had lots left over at the end of the day.
Since then, very slowly, the promised urban development did occur, without really revitalizing the neighborhood. This little festival is an attempt to create a new neighborhood identity, but there is still no "there" there. Curiously, with that "there" quote in mind, we were all comparing Juneteenth (unfavorably) with the Art and Soul Festival in Oakland. There there is still enough of a local African-American community to support the event. And Oakland's downtown redevelopment is actually further along, and slightly more successful than the Western Addition.
We had a little more than three blocks to keep in order and I -- as usual -- had the comparatively busiest block on the north end, where all the food stands were located. And still it was ridiculously slow. A good day for me is when I can go through multiple rolls of compost bags. Yesterday I went through less than one and didn't fill my first bag until an hour or so into the event. Until near the end (when the vendors started surrendering their waste to us) I was going through more landfill bags than compost bags. Not because there was a huge amount of landfill, but because my boss has a dream... a dream that if we only put out little landfill containers, along with the larger compost and recycling containers, people will see what we are trying to do and put their waste in the correct place. It's kind of charming how she can still think this. But no. What actually happens is that we have to spend more time emptying out (and sorting the mix of stuff people continue to toss into) the little containers. Normally, with full size containers, I don't have to pull the landfill until the end of the day, but with the tiny containers I have to empty them every hour or so or they will start overflowing and the plastic and other junk will blow out into the street.
As it was, our large boxes for compost and recycling were blowing over and down the street unless they were maybe a third full. I was carefully pulling just enough to keep them functioning without making them too light, but then someone from another section (they were even more bored than we were) would wander in and pull the entire bag just to give them something to do. Which would be fine except for the wind.
I will NOT rage against the food vendors again.
Except to say that they were at least as bad as usual.
I mean, who would think a half full recycling container was the place to dump a huge amount of garlic? And less than an hour later, an even larger amount of noodles?
Because there was also a Juneteenth parade that ended at the festival, there were some horses riding around the event. Or it would be more accurate to say that one particular guy was riding a horse around the area showing off. Unfortunately, no one thought to provide us with shovels.
My favorite site all day was this ferocious, tiny dog who was barking and lunging at a horse.
Father's Day
Now it's Father's Day and I've come out to Lincoln Park to visit my dad's ashes. Turned out to be a beautiful day, which I wasn't expecting after listening carefully to the weather report this morning, while still in bed. I realized that my dad was my present age when he and my mother visited thirty years ago, when I was still working at the Apple Multimedia Lab and when I was interviewing for a job at Skywalker Ranch. At that time he had about ten years left to live.
I actually don't remember much about him at that time -- I remember more of some of the later visits when we spent more time together and his lack of mobility was a constant problem. It is interesting how my list of questions I would love to ask him grows over time. And only some of them are questions about ME.
Because I'm still dealing with a temporary crown, I avoided my favorite Burmese/Thai restaurant and their so tempting Tea Leaf Salad (with peanuts) for my favorite Thai restaurant (that always has brown rice). Strangely, I had the place to myself except for a massive party against the wall. Despite this being Father's Day, I was unsure of the nature of the group until this young woman joined the table who was something of a hottie while acting like a four year old. She may have been a teen -- she ended up sitting by herself in the un-insulated section of the restaurant overlooking the street. Only a family party would tolerate this kind of behavior.
Link to Chronology
Capitalism transforms society again
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century
2. The Renaissance in the Rest of Europe
Continued...
p525 The great wars of the beginning of the 16th century gave a fresh impetus to the spirit of capitalism. Charles V especially... was an extraordinary client for the financiers. Without the development of capitalism it may be said that his reign, which set so many armies on the march and launched so many fleets, would have been impossible... the profits of the bankers were fully comparable to the services which they rendered him. The prosperity of the Low Countries was largely responsible for maintaining the Emperor's credit, enabling him to reimburse his creditors, despite the fact he had to pay from 12 to 50 per cent interest. The Fuggers owed a great part of their fortune to the advances which they made to him... The bankruptcies of Philip II in 1575 and 1596 put an end to the alliance of private capitalism and monarchical policy.
p526 At this moment, however, another source of gain offered itself to the insatiable financiers. About 1550 the silver mines of Peru and Mexico began to furnish Spain with ingots which presently found their way all over Europe in the form of silver coins. This inundation of precious metals reduced the purchasing power of the currency, the result being a general rise of prices. Trade, and especially industry, received a powerful stimulus, and had yet one more motive for enfranchising themselves from the insupportable control of the guilds and corporations. Manufacture -- that is, the form of production in which the artisan worked under his own roof, and was paid and given orders by a contractor -- became, from the middle of the 16th century, the typical form of industrial organization; and so it remained until the appearance of the modern factory, of which... some precocious examples might already be found here and there.
Remarkable as the development of capitalism may have been, we must not exaggerate its scope. It was superimposed on the old economic organization of the privileged cities, but it did not abolish this organization. The petite bourgeoisie continued to live in the shelter of the trade corporations and to supply the local market. Bakers, butchers, cabinetmakers, shoemakers, etc., remained faithful, until the end of the ancien regime, to the protectionism which reserved for them the exploitation of the municipal clientele. In no case did the governments think it wise or prudent to make them amenable to the common law... their fear of democracy persuaded them to tolerate these defects as the best means of keeping the "compagnons" in a docile mood... they... [did begin] to abolish the political privileges of the guilds, and to keep a tight hand, or at least of close watch, over the urban administrations... The cities could have retained their political and economic autonomy intact only be retaining their military strength. But what could their guilds and corporations do against regular armies, and what could their ancient walls avail against artillery? Only where the State was powerless, as in Germany, did they hold their own... The few attempts at resistance, such as that of the Liegois [people of Liege? I believe so.] against the Dukes of Burgundy, the people of Gand against Charles V and the people of La Rochelle against Francis I, showed that their claims were inspired only by a past which was indeed the past. The democratic policy which the petite bourgeoise had so ardently supported in the 14th century was henceforth a lost cause. Just as capitalism was supreme in the domain of wholesale trade, so the State was supreme in the domain of politics.
p527 Under the influence of the new conditions which were transforming social life the conception of the bourgeoisie was transformed in its turn. The political and juridical characteristics which had given it its special position in the society of the Middle Ages, beside the clergy and the noblesse, were gradually becoming less marked. From the beginning of the 16th century the bourgeoisie had become essentially a class of men living by exploitation or by the revenues of their wealth. The mere manual worker, according to current ideas, had ceased to belong to the bourgeoisie. It now rejected the artisans in whom its strength had formerly resided. It began to affect definitely plutocratic manners, which distinguished it from the petite bourgoisie and brought it nearer the noblesse. In each country... it developed its special features... It is enough to say that henceforth wealth was everywhere [the Low Countries, France, England] the sign par excellence of the bourgeoisie. The bourgoisie of the Middle Ages was privileged by law; the modern bourgeois is privileged by virtue of his economic situation... In the Middle Ages the bourgeois depended on his city for his livelihood, and existed for his city; the commune of which he was a member was the indispensable guarantee of his person and his interests; his mode of life and his ideas alike were dominated by the municipal group to which he belonged. But after the Middle Ages these conditions disappeared. For the modern bourgeois the city is merely a place of residence and a business center; it is no longer the center of his affections, his ideas and his interests. The sources of his wealth are widely dispersed... If he is a manufacturer his factories may be in the country; if he is a merchant his correspondents and his merchandise are distributed over distant ports and markets; if he lives on his dividends his money may be invested in distant countries, in loans, or in commercial or industrial enterprises of every kind. His livelihood is now... implicated in the existence of the nation as a whole, and its relations to foreign nations. He has to know what is happening in all parts of the world. Hence the development of the post, and presently, of the Press, whose object, in the beginning, was merely to bring within reach of all the news which until then had been translated only by private correspondence.
I can't help thinking of Voltaire here. He not only abandoned the city, he was all but indistinguishable from a nobleman -- though Proust's Baron would not have agreed, I'm sure. But this is a trend Pirenne has already mentioned a number of times.
p528 Economic liberty... immediately imposed its consequences upon the world of workers... The regulations of the guilds determined the worker's rights, safeguarded his wages, and guaranteed him against too glaring abuses; they often granted him aid in case of sickness or old age... But there was no trace of all this in the new system of manufacture. Here, in conformity with the "common law," the employer and employee entered into contracts directly... The one sold his labor, the other bought it, and the price depended on their "free will."... Completely unorganized... the workers in the new industries had to submit to the law of the capitalist... from the beginning of the 16th century there is abundant evidence of the wretchedness of... [the worker's] conditions, and of their discontent. The rise of prices in the middle of the century exasperated them still further, and contributed largely to the success of the semi-social, semi-religions propaganda of the Anabaptists. As for the government, it did nothing for them, ignoring them as long as they did not trouble the public peace.
p529 Here again we have striking evidence of the degree in which social changes had weakened the influence of the Church... as the ascetic spirit declined, the halo of sanctity which surrounded the mendicant faded. People began to regard him as a vagabond, dangerous to the public peace, a professional loafer... [various factors] so multiplied the numbers of wandering men who had no other resources than alms, that towards the beginning of the 15th century they had become a veritable social plague. The authorities therefore began to persecute them mercilessly, in the hope of compelling at least the able-bodied among them to work. The first administrative regulations directed against mendicity authorized it only in the case of children, the aged, and the infirm, and sought to prevent the others from begging by the threat of corporal punishment... It was well understood, from the beginning of the 16th century, that it would be necessary to attack the root of the evil and abolish mendicity by removing its cause... the reforms introduced at Ypres in 1525, under the influence of Vives... by concentrating the resources of all the charitable establishments of the city, appointing visitors to the poor, and sending children in receipt of charity to school, or apprenticing them to a trade, sought to abolish pauperism by enabling the poor man to earn a living... It is interesting to note that... [these attempts] were especially numerous and effective where the development of capitalism and manufactures enabled the charitable societies to find situations for their charges. The example of Holland, and above all of England, is particularly significant in this respect. The English laws of 1551 and 1562 relating to the employment of the poor were the precursors of the famous Act for the relief of the poor of 1601, which was so admirably adopted to the needs of modern industry that in its essential features it has survived to this day.
I have to say, this section could not be more relevant today. The main differences being that the problem now is the reduction in the number of jobs for the unskilled (or even the skilled) and possibly the degree to which mental illness or diminished mental capacity is involved.
p530 ...Society contented itself with compelling the poor man to work; it did not attempt, as the cities of the Middle Ages would have done, to regulate the work itself. Until the 19th century it subjected labor to no restrictions, and this fact is eloquent of the capitalistic character which was henceforth the essential feature of the economic world.
It would be interesting to know how, back then, the successful capitalist justified to himself the exploitation of the workers. Was this perhaps where Calvinism played a role? Or were attitudes the same among Catholics?
p531 It is... not surprising that from the second half of the 15th century, contemporaneously with free industry, and increasing with its expansion, a proletariat made its appearance whose history has yet to be written. It is true that there existed, in the Middle Ages... a class of wage-earners whose condition was very nearly that of the proletariat.... the modern proletarian was completely at the mercy of his employer... Moreover, they were too wretched and too uneducated to organize themselves... during the three centuries that began about 1450... manufacture, even in those countries in which it was most advanced, still played only a limited part in the activities of the nation... It was far less important than commerce, and above all, than agriculture, which everywhere remained the essential branch of production.
God, this is a long, but interesting, chapter.
p532 ... Here too [in agriculture] the advance of capitalism was profoundly felt. In some counties it had the effect of enfranchising the peasant, while in others it forced him back into a state of servitude far completer, and... much harsher than that of the Middle Ages... In those counties which were economically the most advanced, like Italy and the Low Countries, the landowners... were inclined systematically to favor free labor.
...as early as the beginning of the 15th century we see that in Italy what was left of the ancient servitude was replaced by personal liberty. As early as 1415 a Florentine statute decreed the obligatory suppression of serfdom... In the Low Counties, from 1515 onwards, the prince issued a number of edicts whose purpose was to enfranchise both the man and the soil... The enfranchisement of the peasants was in reality the enfranchisement of the landowner, who, having henceforth to deal only with free men who were not attached to his land, could dispose of the latter by means of simple revocable contracts...
p533 Further, as serfdom disappeared... the technical methods of agriculture were improved and modernized. In the 15th century the cultivation of rice was introduced in the Lombard plain; the rearing of silkworms became general in the Midi in the reign of Louis XI. In Flanders... Fallow land was sown with clover, so that it no longer lay idle... Spain and England sacrificed the cultivation of cereals to sheep-farming... It was the flocks of sheep that gradually made Castile the stony, treeless desert which it has become, and it was owing to sheep-farming that pastures began to cover a larger and larger area of the English soil, where the sheep replaced the peasant and his plough. From the reign of Henry VI onwards Parliament was continually passing Enclosure Acts, which authorized the conversion of arable soil into pasturage, driving evicted tenants into the ranks of the proletariat, from which the manufacturers recruited their workers.
I guess the Highland Clearances are later in time, though the same idea. Actually they run together. The Clearances start in the first decades of the 18th century and are mostly complete by the middle of the 19th century while the first Inclosure Act is 1773 and the last not until near the end of the 19th century. Wiki says "Between 1604 and 1914" for the Inclosure Acts. Which is a century after Henry VII (1457-1509). This may be where Pirenne's inability to consult his books lead him a bit astray. At least in Britain, this effect of capitalism and modern methods seems to have occurred a century or more later than the period he's discussing.
p534 While in Western Europe the evolution of capitalism tended to make the peasant a farmer or a worker for wages, in Germany it created a new form of serfdom. The essential cause of this phenomenon... must be sought in the omnipotence and brutality of the nobles, whom the territorial princes did not dare to oppose... the nobles took advantage of the distress caused by the excess of population in order to oppress the rural class. If agriculture had been further advanced, or if industry had been more extensively developed, the peasant might have discovered new resources on the spot. But the feeble economic development of Germany delivered him, defenseless, into the hands of his seigneurs... beyond the... [Elbe], in Brandenburg, Prussia, Silesia, Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, the most merciless advantage was taken of... [the situation.] The descendants of the free colonists of the 13th century were systematically deprived of their land and reduced to the condition of personal serfs (Leibeigene). The wholesale exploitation of estates absorbed their holdings and reduced them to a servile condition which so closely approximated to that of slavery that it was permissible to sell the person of the serf independent of the soil. From the middle of the 16th century the whole of the region to the east of the Elbe and the Sudenten mountains became covered with Ritterguter exploited by Junkers, who may be compared, as regards the degree of humanity displayed in their treatment of their white slaves, with the planters of the West Indies. The negro in the New World, and the German peasant in the Old World, were the most typical victims of modern capitalism, and they both had to wait until the 19th century for their enfranchisement. [The Junkers represent "modern capitalism"?]... There were still periods of dearth, but there were no more famines... [Check the climate data.] there may have been something like forty inhabitants per square kilometer in the two regions that were then most densely populated: Italy and the Low Countries. France, about 1550, seems to have had a population of something like 18,000,000. At the same date the commercial metropolis of the West, Antwerp... did not contain more than 100,000 inhabitants.
p535 ...The total amount of wealth had increased, but this increase was distributed in a very unequal manner. Practically no one profited by it excepting the great landowners, the nobles, the Church, the wholesale merchants, and the manufacturers. That middle class which was composed of small independent producers, which was so widely distributed in the 13th century... was visibly declining... If the noblesse of the modern era seems in many respects to have been even prouder and more arrogant that [than?] that of the Middle Ages, that is because it felt the need of maintaining the social distinction, in respect of the "nouveaux riches," which the similarity of fortune, education, and interests might easily have led the latter to overlook. However, nothing could have been easier than for the new men to obtain letters patent which would enable them to enter the ranks of the noblesse, and share in the prestige which it owed to tradition, but which was maintained by its wealth. Aristocracy and plutocracy -- these, in the last resort, are perhaps the two words which best characterize the social transformation which was accomplished at the time of the Renaissance.
Haven't we seen the same thing going back to the Carolingian period? How is this any different? I appreciate the importance of the upper class always being permeable to new people of wealth, but if you are going to keep talking about it you either have to make clear how this differs from period to period or how it is identical.
I'm now caught up again, and I'm reading a new book club book. There will be another break before I return to Pirenne.
Link to Chronology
Finally, back to reading Pirenne
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)
The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War
Additional notes:
So thinking about how the Third Estate and then "The People" came to power in Europe, makes me wonder if we aren't in a variation on that theme today. And as always, you have to look for the group getting the short end of the stick to see who is going to struggle to gain power. At this time in history, that's people of limited intelligence and people with mental health problems. No idea what percentage of the population this would be, but, for the sake of convenience, let's call them the 49% (people of literally below average intelligence).
It's my belief that these are the people who have elected Trump, and that Trump represents them. Of course, Trump isn't really going to do them any good, except in so far as he makes the political establishment aware that they have to consider this constituency. What politicians are good at is attempting to act in the interest of any identifiable constituency. Politicians may be whores, but the good thing about whores is that they will service anybody if there's something in it for them.
Now all the mainstream politicians have to do is discover a new blend of policies that appeals to the 49% without offending their existing constituencies too much. It's what they should have been doing all along, because it's the right thing to do, but that kind of foresight would be remarkable in a politician.
Trump, so far, is democracy working the way it should. This is a test of American democracy but probably no uglier a test than some that happened in the 19th century. Trump is also a test of the current balance of power between the three branches of government in the U.S.A. This is trickier because the Executive has accumulated so much power during the past century. It wouldn't be a bad thing if that process was reversed now, and I can also see that happening. There's still a chance that we will come out of this crisis with a more inclusive democracy and a newly limited Executive branch. I could live with that.
Chapter III
The Empire. The Slav States and Hungary
1. The Empire
p448 Germany, during the great interregnum, had assumed the political form which she was to retain down to modern times. It is not very easy to define her constitution, in which were comprised, without any real coherence, a monarchy which possessed none of the attributes of sovereignty, a multitude of ecclesiastical or lay princes, urban republics (Free Cities), and "immediate" (unmediated) nobles, enjoying complete independence... An anarchy in monarchical form: that perhaps is the best description of this extraordinary political entity... The necessity of an Emperor, who no longer corresponded to any existing reality, was imposed by tradition. And since the King of Germany was the Emperor-designate, to suppress him would have been to abolish the Empire. He therefore continued to exist...
...
p449 Rudolf of Hapsburg never found time, during his long reign (1273-1291, to go to Rome in order to receive the Imperial crown...
...
p457 ... [Sigismond, House of Luxembourg, King of Hungary 1387-, King of Germany 1411-, Emperor 1433-1437] died... 1437, and his Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary passed to his son-in-law, Albert of Austria. Thus the vast territories of the House of Luxembourg were added to the Duchies of Austria and Styria. The aim envisaged by the House of Habsburg since its establishment in the valley of the Danube was achieved... All the efforts of so many kings to establish the power of their families had the final result of promoting the Habsburgs to the rank of the most powerful sovereigns in Europe...
...
p461 ... If there were assemblies of the Estates, the bourgeoisie was nowhere powerful enough to counterbalance the nobility, which had the say in everything and enforced its will upon the country. A large proportion of the nobles were not the descendants of freemen... The peasants, who from the middle of the 14th century were entirely at the mercy of the nobles, were beginning to relapse into serfdom... [Footnote: In Flanders serfdom disappeared in the 13th century. In France it was largely abolished in the 14th century.] One of the most striking features of German life was this regression of the people into servitude under nobles of whom many were themselves of servile origin. Here and there the peasants resisted the nobles. The origin of the Swiss Confederation may be referred to such resistance: the three original cantons, Schwiz, Uri and Unterwalden, defeated Leopold of Austria at Morgahten in 1315. This was the beginning of a federation which was joined by Lucerne (1332), Zurich (1351), and Berne (1353), and which was further consolidated by the battle of Sempach, which was fought against Leopold III of Austria in 1386.
I have to confess here that I thought Swiss independence was related to the rise of Calvinism. Perhaps it was the other way round: Calvinism was able to develop in Switzerland because of its independence from the religious authorities of the time.
p462 ...the economic life of the country, down to the middle of the 15th century, was very poorly developed...
In the center of the country there were no important cities. On the whole, the greater part of the country was still rural...
2. The Slav States and Hungary
p463 ... The economic organization of this country [around Kiev after the 5th century] presented a character which was not to be found elsewhere in the territory of any other Barbarian people. It was essentially commercial. The Vikings, who where gathered round their princes in the fortified enclosures (Gorod) established along the Dnieper and its affluents, subjected the Slav population... In the spring of each year their boats assembled at Kiev and carried this merchandise to Constantinople.... When at the beginning of the 11th century the Scandinavians became Slavized, these commercial practices, together with the political exploitation of the rural population, did not disappear, but the aristocracy of boyars, at once military, mercantile and urban, dominated the rest of the nation...
...
p465 ... In 1096... [the Kuman] Khan advanced to the very walls of Kiev; and from that time onwards the attacks of these ferocious Barbarians never ceased. By the middle of the 12th century it was becoming impossible to resist them. The region of Kiev, hitherto so flourishing, was becoming impoverished and depopulated. When the Barbarians occupied the mouths of the Dnieper there was an end of the trade with Constantinople. Gradually the country was deserted, some of the inhabitants migrating to Galicia and Vollynia, and others, more numerous, moving off in a north-easterly direction toward the upper reaches of the Volga (Sousdal).
This migration from south to north determined the future of the Russian people... The Slav colonists of Sousdalia mingled with the Finns, who had hitherto been the sole inhabitants of its immense forests, and from that mingling of peoples modern Russia (Great Russia) emerged. At the same time a purely agricultural life replaced the old commercial activity. Henceforth deprived of all communication with the sea, the Russians were restricted for long centuries to a purely rural economy, which had no outlets. ...the fatality of circumstances made them abandon... [commerce] just when it was beginning to develop in the West... the towns of central Russia -- like the castles of the West in the early Middle Ages -- were merely the residences of the princes, their boyars, and their servants necessary for their maintenance... Novgorod alone, which was assiduously frequented, from the beginning of the 13th century, by the merchants of the Hansa, was a center of commercial importance, and this importance it owed entirely to the foreigner. It was a German factory in Russia...
p466 ...The Greek orthodoxy which the Russians brought from the banks of the Dnieper kept them isolated from Europe, while the civilizing influence of Byzantium... could no longer remedy the disastrous result of this isolation.
And then there was the Mongol invasion of the 13th century.
...In 1223 Juji, the son of Jenghiz Khan, conquered the whole region occupied by the Kumans between the Don and the Volga. His son, Batu, pushed further west, capturing Moscow in 1234 and Kiev in 1240... Their Khan contented himself with imposing overlordship upon the Russian princes and subjecting them to tribute... [Ivan III (1462-1505) annexes principalities around Moscow.] Ivan, allied with the Khan of the Crimea, made an end of what was still left of the Mongol domination. With his reign a new era of Russian history began.
As in the case of the Russians, it was the invasion of an Asiatic people, the Hungarians, which determined the destiny of the Slavs of the South and West... the sudden and unexpected arrival of the Hungarians altered the course of [Slav] history. Making their way into the valley of the Danube, they interposed themselves between the Slav peoples, dividing them into two groups, which henceforth had nothing in common. Cut off from Byzantium, and at the same time separated from the Serbs and Bulgars, the Czechs and the Poles, like the Hungarians themselves, naturally went over to the Roman Church.
...
p468 ...In consequence of the remoteness of the Western Slavs it was long before they emerged from the narrowness and poverty of their isolated existence... The power of the great landed nobility, both in Bohemia and in Poland, was exercised from the beginning by the participation of each of its members in the government of the whole country. This did not lead to the division of the country, for its political and national unity were preserved by the very weakness of a central authority which was dependent on the aristocracy. It should be added that these peoples, being cut off from the sea, had no bourgeoisie until a very late stage in their history.
p469 ... If Rudolph [of Habsburg] had been forced to rely on his own resources he could not have coped with his adversary [Ottocar II of Bohemia]. But now the Hungarians, for the first time, played the part which they were so often to play afterwards, assisting the Germans against the Czechs. Ottocar was defeated and killed in 1274, at the battle of Marchfeld. The Danubian duchies became the property of the Habsburgs, who never ceased to covet Bohemia...
We get the history of this region from the perspective of the Slavs that we've already covered from the German side.
p473 ... The Germans did not settle in great numbers except in Silesia... [around 1241, after the Mongols withdrew] Those who penetrated into the interior introduced urban life there and constituted a bourgeoisie, which... retained its [German] nationality for centuries. It found itself juxtaposed with the Jews, whom the persecution of the era of the Crusades had swept out of Germany and Hungary into Poland in the 11th and 12th centuries.
p474 ... Casimir (the Great) was to Poland much what his contemporary, Charles IV (1333-1370), was to Bohemia... He wished to make of Cracow what Charles had made of Prague, and following the latter's example he established a university there (1364) [University of Prague 1348]... In consequence of a much simpler historical evolution, [than elsewhere] the [Polish] nobles were directly related to the freemen of the Barbaric epoch; they retained the pride of the freemen, and claimed for themselves that they alone constituted the nation. Apart from the nobles [and the scattered, German bourgeoisies] there were only the servile peasants whom they exploited and despised. Above them there was only the king, whose authority they acknowledged on the condition of his reigning only for them and with them. The spirit which inspired the nobility, and never ceased to inspire it, was a spirit of liberty, but a liberty of caste which was to give the Polish State, more and more definitely, until its final collapse, the paradoxical character of an aristocratic democracy.
Casimir III defeats the Teutonic Knights at the battle of Tannenberg (July 15th, 1410) and Poland -- and the Slavs -- regain control over Prussia.
p478 The Slavs of the South -- the Croats, Slovenes, Serbs and Bulgars -- presented a very different spectacle from that of the Poles and Bohemians. In consequence of their weakness, the Croats and the Slovenes soon fell under the domination of Hungary, who took care to deny them the least measure of political autonomy. The Serbs and Bulgars... established on the south of the Danube on the territory of the Greek Empire, and faithful to the Greek Church, profited by the weakness of the Empire, after the reign of Justinian, to penetrate deeply into Macedonia, and even into Greece. While in the long run they became Hellenized, the Slavs of Macedonia preserved their language and their customs, as did the Germans who had occupied the north of the Empire.
The Bulgars threaten the Empire. The Serbs create their own little empire under "Tsar" Stephen IV (1346) which dominates the Bulgars, Macedonia, and Albania.
p479 If one wished to invoke an example in order to prove the unimportance of race in historical development, such an example is certainly provided by the Hungarians. By their origin, and by virtue of their language, these Finns, who were related to the Turks and the Mongols, were completely alien to the ethnographical group of the Indo-European peoples. However, they had barely taken their place in the midst of these peoples and adopted Christianity, when, despite the nature of the blood that flows in their veins, their cephalic index, and the linguistic characteristics of their idiom, their social lives became so similar to that of their neighbors that it would be quite impossible, if one didn't know the facts beforehand, to recognized them as intruders. The fact is that the physical individuality of a people is entirely subordinated to its moral existence... Having become Christians, they were bound to enter the European community, and so prove that they too possessed that pretended "faculty of assimilation" which a certain school of ethnologists claim as peculiar to the "German race," though it is really a characteristic of all Barbarians......
p483 ...These peoples [the Slavs and Hungarians up to the middle of the 15th century] knew nothing of the domainal organization, nor of the feudal system; they played no part in the War of Investitures, nor in the Crusades. For them the only consequence of the great epopee was the advent of the Jews who sought refuge in their territories, having been driven across the Elbe by the followers of Christ... Placed at a disadvantage by their old agricultural institutions, they yielded to the German pressure; retreating along the Elbe before the invaders, they allowed the latter to establish themselves among them, and to found cities which were like foreign islands in the midst of the national population. With the arrival of these newcomers, who looked down upon them but were a necessity for them, there began a period of superficial Germanization which continued until the middle of the 14th century. Then a reaction began to make itself felt... and there was a sudden awakening of national energy. This was manifested... by the explosive outbreak of Hussitism in Bohemia, the conquest of Prussia by Poland, and Hungary's advance toward the Adriatic. It seemed as though the moment had come for the Western Slavs and Hungarians to play an active part in European civilization. But the Turks were advancing across the Balkan peninsula, and the Slavs and Hungarians had to meet the thrust, turning back to the East in order to defend the civilization of the West instead of beginning to collaborate with it.
Germany under weak Emperors
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter II
The Papacy, Italy, and Germany
3. Germany
p320 ...at the moment when in France the king was beginning to impose his power upon his great vassals, in Germany he was becoming subordinate to them... Frederick II in 1231, merely recognized in law what already existed in fact... by recognizing... [the princes] as the lords of their estates (domini terrae), and by renouncing the right to build fortresses on their domains or to appoint judges, or to mint money, or to regulate trade and circulation. Henceforth Germany was merely a federation of individual sovereigns whom the Emperor left to their own devices...
p321 ...[After the death of William of Holland in 1256] The national ideal was so completely alien to the German princes, and the monarchy seemed to them of such secondary importance, that their one thought was to sell it on the most favorable terms. Some allowed themselves to be bought by Alfonso of Castile, others by Richard of Cornwall, and in 1257 both princes received the crown, as though it had been a parcel of merchandise. Seven princes had taken part in this double election. This was the origin of the College of Electors, which henceforth exercised the right of electing the king of the Romans? [He couldn't name them? I believe they were: Archbishop of Cologne, Archbishop of Mainz, Archbishop of Trier, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg and King of Bohemia.
Following the death of both of these individuals, the Electors in 1273] ...gave the crown to Rudolf of Habsburg, whose talents, as mediocre as his fortune, were not such as to cause them any disquietude. The period of the "great interregnum" which had begun with the nomination of Henry Raspon [1246?] was at last ended.
...
p324 ... The kingdom of Burgundy... detached itself... from the Imperial bloc... Marseilles and Lyon had never felt that they belonged to the Empire, nor did the Counts of Provence, Dauphine and Franche Comte ever trouble their heads about the nomenal suzerainty which it excercised over them. Thus, the old frontier, drawn on the map at a period of economic stagnation, was erased... by the friction of a more intensive civilization and more complex interests...
p325 ...As the princes of the [Imperial] frontier forgot the Emperor they turned toward the kings of France...
While in the West Germany was gradually crumbling under the influence of a civilization superior to her own, in the East she was expanding largely at the cost of the Barbarians... The fact is that this great effort of expansion, which was afterwards to exert so essential an influence over the destinies of the German people, owned nothing to the Emperors. It was accomplished without their participation... the princes on the banks of the Lower Elbe, and above all Henry the Lion, and the Margrave of Brandenberg, Albert the Bear (1170), energetically furthered the Germanization of the Wendish lands along the Baltic shore. There was no question here of a purely political conquest, but rather of a veritable work of colonization, thanks to which... the Germans took the place of the Slavs in the countries which they had abandoned at the time of the great invasions of the 4th century... Thanks to... a surplus population and the spirit of enterprise. As the raids of the Duke of Saxony's and the Margrave of Brandenberg's knights drove back the Slavs and massacred them, the colonists... took possession of the regions thus cleared... Along the rivers the cities were founded which furnish the peasants with the necessary supplies and served as markets for the surrounding countryside: Brandenburg, Stendal, Spandau, Tangermunde, Berlin, and Frankfort-on-the-Oder.
...
p328 ...The paganism which had disappeared... between the Elbe and the Oder still persisted throughout the plain that extends from the shores of the Baltic between the Elbe and the Niemen. Its inhabitants, the Prussians, a people of Slavic origin, resisted the attempts at their conversion... At the beginning of the 13th century the Polish Duke of Mazovia summoned the knights of the Teutonic Order to undertake the conversion of these obstinate heathen... The poor Prussians with their bows and their wicker shields, could not resist the heavily-armed knights who came to conquer with the sword a new land for Catholicism, but not a new people. For there was no question of converting the Prussians. They were treated as the enemies of Christ and the Pope, though they knew nothing of either... this Holy War was a war of extermination. It ended only in 1283, when there was no more pagans to massacre. As the Teutonic Knights advanced they organized the country. Fortresses... marked the stages of the conquest, and there too, as between the Elbe and the Oder, Germanization was the consequence of war. Nothing was left of the Prussians but the name, which was now borne by the invaders. The knights retained lordship of the country, which they received as a fief from Pope Gregory IX in 1234.
p329 While the Germans were thus colonizing the great plain to the south of the Baltic, they were also swarming along the shores of this sea... Here the movement started from Lubeck... In 1201 a bishopric was established at Riga, and there Bishop Albert of Bienne created the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, whose mission was to fight the pagans of Livonia and Esthonia... in the north Dorpat, captured from the Russians by the Brothers of the Sword, became, like Riga, the seat of a bishopric.
p331 [Discussing the trade of the Baltic] ... These economic relations were the origin of the Hansa: that is to say, the confederation not of the merchants alone, but of the cities of which they were burgesses, from Riga to Cologne... Lubeck, in the middle... became the headquarters of the Hansa as early as the middle of the 13th century. The commercial interest of all the members of the League were sufficiently homogeneous to ensure the maintenance of a good understanding between them... thanks to the Hansa, German navigation retained its preponderance in the two northern seas until the middle of the 15th century.
The contrast with the competition to the death of the Northern Italian maritime cities is striking. I suppose this is because the Hansa were mostly trading among themselves rather than competing for the same trade (with the Near East).
Pirenne tries to argue for the importance of geography -- lack of solid geographical features to separate competing populations -- as the reason for the vicious nature of warfare on the east border of Europe (defined in Carolingian terms). I'm not sure I buy this. This was clearly (he asserts) based more on ethnicity or religion. The lack of major geographical features did play a role in making the area more subject to attack, but it didn't determine how that attack would manifest.
He then goes on to note that there was no intellectual culture in this region, because they had,
...no energy to spare for anything but work and warfare. In the Margraves of Brandenberg and the Teutonic Knights of the 13th century, in the petty nobles who employed the knights and fought for them, were emerging the first characteristics of what was one day to be known as the Prussian spirit.
It's worth noting here that, at the time he wrote this, Pirenne was being held captive by "the Prussian spirit" in a dull town in this very region of Europe.
