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Besides torture was a very common thing in those times and a man who belonged to a country that happened to be at war for the moment, might very easily be subjected to torture for some reason or another with the idea of securing important information from him. If the members of Hansa wanted to be reasonably assured that new members would not give up their secrets without a brave struggle, they had no better way than by these tests, for which there was therefore some excuse. As to the brutality of the tests perhaps Miss Zimmern in maidenly way has said too much. We commend her paragraphs to the modern committees of reception of college secret societies, because here as elsewhere this generation may get points from the Thirteenth Century.
MINSTER (CHORIN, GERMANY)
CITY GATE (NEUBRANDENBURG)
"We cannot sully our pages by detailing the thirteen different games or modes of martyrdom that were in use at Bergen. Our more civilized age could not tolerate the recital. In those days they attracted a crowd of eager spectators who applauded the more vociferously the more cruel and barbarous the tortures. The most popular were those practices known as the smoke, water and flogging games; mad, cruel pranks calculated to cause a freshman to lose health and reason. Truly Dantesque hell tortures were these initiations into Hansa mysteries. Merely to indicate their nature we will mention that for the smoke game the victim was pulled up the big chimney of the Schutting while there burned beneath him the most filthy materials, sending up a most nauseous stench and choking wreaths of smoke. While in this position he was asked a number of questions, to which he was forced, under yet more terrible penalties, to reply. If he survived his torture he was taken out into the yard and plied under the pump with six tons of water." (Even the "Water Cure" is not new).
There was a variety about the tests at different times and places that show no lack of invention on the part of the members of Hansa. With regard to other water tests Miss Zimmern has furnished some interesting details:
"The 'water' game that took place at Whitsuntide consisted in first treating the probationer to food, and then taking him out to sea in a boat. Here he was stripped thrown into the ocean, ducked three times, made to swallow much sea-water, and thereafter mercilessly flogged by all the inmates of the boats. The third chief game was no less dangerous to life and limb. It took place a few days after, and was a rude perversion of the May games. The victims had first to go out into the woods to gather the branches with which later they were to be birched. Returned to the factory, rough horse play pranks were practised upon them. Then followed an ample dinner, which was succeeded by mock combats, and ended in the victims being led into the so-called Paradise, where twenty-four disguised men whipped them till they drew blood, while outside this black hole another party made hellish music with pipes, drums and triangles to deafen the screams of the tortured. The 'game' as considered ended when the shrieks of the victims were sufficiently loud to overcome the pandemonic music." Some of the extreme physical cruelties of the initiations our modern fraternities have eliminated, but the whole story has a much more familiar air than we might have expected.
Probably the most interesting feature of the history of the Hanseatic League is the fact that this great combination for purposes of trade and commerce proved a source of liberty for the citizens of the various towns, and enabled them to improve their political status better than any other single means at this precious time of development of legal and social rights. This is all the more interesting because great commercial combinations with similar purposes in modern times have usually proved fruitful rather of opposite results. A few persons have been very much benefited by them, or at least have made much money by them, which is quite another thing, though money is supposed to represent power and influence, but the great mass of the people have been deprived of opportunities to rise and have had taken from them many chances for the exercise of initiative that existed before.
There is a curious effect of Hansa upon the political fortunes of the people of the cities that were members of the League which deserves to be carefully studied. As with regard to so many other improvements that have come in the history of the race, it was not a question so much of the recognition of great principles as of money and revenues that proved the origin of amelioration of civic conditions. These commercial cities accumulated wealth. Money was necessary for their rulers for the maintenance of their power and above all for the waging of war. In return for moneys given for such purposes the cities claimed for the inhabitants and were granted many privileges. These became perpetuated and as time went on were added to as new opportunities for the collection of additional revenues occurred, until finally an important set of fundamental rights with documentary confirmation were in the hands of the city authorities. One would like to think that this state of affairs developed as the result of the recognition on the part of the ruling sovereign, of the benefits that were conferred on his realm by having in it, or associated with it, an important trading city whose enterprising citizens gave occupation to many hands. This was very rarely the case, however, but as was true of the legal rights obtained by England's citizens during the Thirteenth Century, it was largely a question of the coordination of taxation and legislative representation and the consequent attainment of privileges.
The most important effect on the life of Europe and the growth of civilization that the Hanseatic League exerted, was its success in showing that people of many different nations and races, living under very different circumstances, might still be united under similar laws that would enable them to accomplish certain objects which they had in view. Germans, Slavs and English learned to live in one another's towns and while observing the customs of these various places maintained the privileges of their homes. The mutual influence of these people on one another, many of them being the most practical and enterprising individuals of the time, could scarcely fail to produce noteworthy effects in broadening the minds of those with whom they came in contact. It is to this period that we must trace the beginnings of international law. Hansa showed the world how much commercial relations were facilitated by uniform laws and by just treatment of even the citizens of foreign countries. It is to commerce that we owe the first recognition of the rights of the people of other countries even in time of war. If the Hanseatic League had done nothing else but this, it must be considered as an important factor in the development of our modern civilization and an element of influence great as any other in this wonderful century.
HINGE FROM CATHEDRAL, SCHLESTADT
APPENDIX I
SO-CALLED HISTORY.
RULERS
EVENTS
1202 Fourth great crusade under Boniface, marquis of Montferrat.
1204 The English stripped of Normandy, etc., by Philip Augustus of France.
1206 Jenghis-Khan: foundation of the great empire of the Moguls.
1212 Battle of Ubeda: defeat and fall of Almohads of Africa.
1213 John Lackland acknowledges himself vassal of the pope.
1213 Battle of Bouvines won by Philip Augustus.
1215 Magna Charta. The palatinate of the Rhine goes to the house of Wittelsbach.
1217 Crusade of Andrew II., King of Hungary.
1218 Extinction of the dukes of Zarringuia: Switzerland becomes an immediate province of the empire.
1222 Charter or decree of Andrew II., basis of the Hungarian constitution.
1226 Renewal of the League of Lombardy to oppose the Emperor Frederick II.
1227 Battle of Bornhoeved in Holstein: Waldemar II., King of Denmark, loses his conquests on the southern coast of the Baltic.
1228 Crusade of the Emperor Frederick II.
1230 The Teutonic order establishes itself in Prussia. Conquest of the Balearic islands by the King of Aragon.
1235 Formation of the Duchy of Brunswick in favor of the house of the Guelphs.
1236 Conquest of the Kingdoms of Cordova, Murcia and Seville by the Castilians.
1237 Conquest of Russia by Baton-Khan: origin of the Mogul or Tartar horde of Kaptschak.
1241 Invasion of Poland, Silesia, and Hungary by the Moguls.
1248 Crusade of St. Louis, King of France.
1250 Beginning of the great interregnum in Germany.
1254 Accessions of the emperors of different houses in Germany. End of the dominion of the Agubites in Egypt and Syria; beginning of the empire of the Mamelukes.
1256 Enfranchisement of the serfs at Bologna in Italy.
1261 Michel Paleologus, emperor of Nice, takes Constantinople; end of the empire of the Latins.
1265 Accession of the house of Anjou to the throne of the Two Sicilies.
1266 Admission of the Commons to the Parliament of England.
1268 Corradino decapitated at Naples; extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen. Suabia and Franconia become immediate provinces of the empire.
1271 The county of Toulouse passes to the King of France, and the Venaissin to the Pope.
1273 Accession of the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg to the throne of the empire: first election by the seven electors.
1282 Conquest of Wales by the King of England.
1282 The Sicilian Vespers, the kingdom of Sicily passes to the King of Aragon. The Emperor Rudolph gives to his sons the duchies of Austria; foundation of the house of Hapsburg.
1283 The Teutonic order completes the conquest of Prussia.
1289 Extinction of the male line of the old race of Scotch kings. Contest of Baliol and Bruce.
1290 Decline of the republic of Piza. Aggrandizement of that of Genoa.
1291 Taking of Ptolemais and Tyre by the Mamelukes. End of the crusades.
1294 Decline of the Mogul empire at the death of Kublai-Khan.
1298 Introduction of an hereditary aristocracy at Venice.
1300 Foundation of the modern Turkish empire by Ottoman I. First Jubilee proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII.
APPENDIX II.
TWENTY-SIX CHAPTERS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
I. AMERICA IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
To most people it would seem quite out of the question that a chapter on America in the Thirteenth Century might have been written. One of the most surprising chapters for most readers in the previous edition was that on Great Explorers and the Foundation of Geography, for it was a revelation to learn that Thirteenth Century travelers had anticipated all of our discoveries in the Far and in the Near East seven centuries ago. Certain documents have turned up, however, which make it very clear that with the same motives as those which urged Eastern travelers, Europeans went just as far towards the West at this time. Documents found in the Vatican Archives in 1903 and exhibited at St. Louis in 1904, have set at rest finally and absolutely the long disputed question of the discovery of America by the Norsemen, and in connection with these the story of America in the Thirteenth Century might well have been told. There is a letter from Pope Innocent III., dated February 13, 1206, addressed to the Archbishop of Norway, who held jurisdiction over Greenland, which shows not only the presence of the Norsemen on the American Continent at this time, but also that they had been here for a considerable period, and that there were a number of churches and pastors and large flocks in whom the Roman See had a lively interest. There are Americana from three other Popes of the Thirteenth Century. John XXI. wrote, in 1276, Nicholas III. two letters, one dated January 31, 1279, and another June 9, 1279, and Martin III. wrote 1282. We have inserted on the opposite page a reproduction of a portion of the first Papal document extant relating to America, the letter of Pope Innocent III., taken from "The Norse Discovery of America" (The Norraena Society, N. Y., 1908). The word Grenelandie, underscored, indicates the subject. The writing as an example of the chirography of the century is of interest.
II. A REPRESENTATIVE UPPER HOUSE
In most historical attempts at government by the people it has been recognized that legislation is better balanced if there are two chambers in the law-making body, one directly elected by the people, the other indirectly chosen and representing important vested interests that are likely to make its members conservative. The initiative for legislation comes, as a rule, from the direct representatives of the people, while the upper chamber represses radical law-making or sudden changes in legislative policy, yet does not hamper too much the progress of democracy.
PART OF LETTER OF POPE INNOCENT III. MENTIONING GREENLAND.
During the last few years a crisis in English politics has led to a very general demand for a modification of the status of the House of Lords, while almost similar conditions have led to the beginning at least of a similar demand for the modification of our Senate in this country. Both these upper chambers have come to represent vested interests to too great a degree. The House of Lords has been the subject of special deprecation. The remark is sometimes made that it is unfortunate that England is weighted down by this political incubus, the House of Lords, which is spoken of as a heritage from the Middle Ages. The general impression, of course, is that the English House of Lords, as at present constituted, comes down from the oldest times of constitutional government in England. Nothing could well be more untrue than any such idea.
The old upper chamber of England, the medieval House of Lords, was an eminently representative body. Out of the 625 or more of members of the English House of Lords at the present time about five hundred and fifty hold their seats by heredity. Only about seventy-five are in some sense elective. At least one-half of these elected peers, however, must be chosen from the hereditary nobility of Ireland and Scotland. Nearly nineteen-twentieths of the membership of the House of Lords, as at present constituted, owe their place in national legislation entirely to heredity. Until the reformation so-called this was not so. More than one-half of the English House of Lords, a good working majority, consisted of the Lords spiritual. Besides the Bishops and Archbishops there were the Abbots and Priors of monasteries, and the masters of religious orders. These men as a rule had come up from the people. They had risen to their positions by intellectual abilities and by administrative capacity. The abbots and other superiors of religious orders had been chosen by their monks as a rule because, having shown that they knew how to rule themselves, they were deemed most fitting to rule over others.
Even in our day, when the Church occupies nothing like the position in the hearts of the masses that she held in the ages of faith, our Catholic Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, both here and in England, are chosen as members of arbitration boards to settle strikes and other social difficulties, because it is felt that the working class has full confidence in them, and that they are thoroughly representative of the spirit of democracy. In England Cardinal Manning served more than once in critical social conditions. In this country we have had a series of such examples. From these we can better understand what the Lords spiritual represented in the English House of Lords. There were abuses, though they were not nearly so frequent as were thought, by which unworthy men sometimes reached such positions, for men abuse even the best things, but in general these clerical members of the House of Lords were the chosen intellectual and moral products of the kingdom. Since they were without families they had less temptation to serve personal interests and, besides, they had received a life-long training in unselfishness, and the best might be expected of them. For an ideal second chamber I know none that can compare with this old English House of Lords of the Middle Ages. How much it was responsible for the foundation of the liberties of which the English-speaking people are deservedly so proud, and which have been treated in some detail in the chapter on Origins in Law, would be interesting to trace.
III. THE PARISH, AND TRAINING IN CITIZENSHIP
Mr. Toulmin Smith, in his book on "The Parish," and Dom Gasquet, in his volume on "The Parish Before the Reformation," have shown what a magnificent institution for popular self-government was the English medieval parish, and how much this contributed to the solution of important social problems and to the creation of a true democratic spirit. Mr. Toulmin Smith calls particular attention to the fact that when local self-government gets out of the hands of the people of a neighborhood personal civic energy goes to sleep. The feeling of mutual responsibility of the men of the place is lost, to the great detriment of their larger citizenship in municipality and nation. In the parish, however, forming a separate community, of which the members had rights and duties, the primal solid basis for government, the parish authorities took charge of the highways, the roads, the paths, the health, the police, the constabulary, and the fires of their neighborhood. They kept, besides, a registry of births and deaths and marriages. When these essentially local concerns are controlled in large bodies the liability to abuse at once becomes easy and political corruption sets in. He mentions, besides many parochial institutions, a parochial friendly society for loans on security, parish gilds for insurance, and many other phases of that thoroughly organized mutual aid so characteristic of the Middle Ages.
These parishes became completely organized, so as to be thoroughly democratic and representative of all the possibilities of local self-government under King Edward at the end of the Thirteenth and the beginning of the Fourteenth Century. Rev. Augustus Jessopp, in "After the Great Pillage," tells the story of how the parishes were broken up as a consequence of the confiscation of their endowment during the so-called reformation. The quotation from him may be found in Appendix III. in the section on "How it all stopped."
Toulmin Smith is not so emphatic, but he is scarcely less explicit than Jessopp. "The attempts of ecclesiastical authority to encroach on the civil authorities of the parish have been more successful since the reformation." As a matter of fact, at that time all government became centralized, and complete contradiction though it may seem to be of what is sometimes declared the place of the reformation in the history of human liberty, the genuine democratic institutions of England were to a great extent impaired by the reform, and an autocracy, which later developed into an autocratic aristocracy, largely took its place. Out of that England has gradually lifted itself during the Nineteenth Century. Even now, however, as pointed out in the preceding chapter that might have been, the House of Lords is not at all what it was in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries when the majority of its members were Lords spiritual, men who had come up from the masses as a rule.
IV. THE CHANCE TO RISE
We are very prone to think that even though there may have been excellent opportunities for the higher education in the Thirteenth Century and, in many ways, an ideal education of the masses, still there was one great social drawback in those times, the lack of opportunity for men of humble birth to rise to higher stations. Nothing, however, is less true. There probably never was a time when even members of the poorest families might rise more readily or rapidly to the highest positions in the land. The sons of village merchants and village artisans, nay, the sons and grandsons of farmers bound to the soil, could by educational success become clergymen in various ranks, and by attaining a bishopric or the position of abbot or prior of a monastery, reach a seat in the House of Lords. Most of the Lord High Chancellors of England during the Middle Ages—and some of them are famous for their genius as canon and civil lawyers, for their diplomatic abilities and their breadth of view and capacity as administrators—were the sons of humble parents.
Take the single example of Stratford, the details of whose inhabitants' lives, because of the greatness of one of them, have attracted more attention than those of any other town of corresponding size in England. At the beginning of the Fourteenth Century it is only what we would call a village, and it probably did not have 3,000 inhabitants, if, indeed, the number was not less than 2,000. In his book, "Shakespeare the Boy," Mr. Rolfe calls attention to certain conditions that interest us in the old village. He tells us of what happened as a result of the development of liberty in the Thirteenth Century:
"Villeinage gradually disappeared in the reign of Edward VII. (1327-1337), and those who had been subject to it became free tenants, paying definite rents for house and land. Three natives of the town, who, after the fashion of the time, took their surnames from the place of their birth, rose to high positions in the Church, one becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others respectively Bishops of London and Chichester. John of Stratford and Robert of Stratford were brothers, and Ralph of Stratford was their nephew. John and Robert were both for a time Chancellors of England, and there is no other instance of two brothers attaining that high office in succession."
To many people the fact that the avenue to rise was through the Clergy more than in any other way will be disappointing. One advantage, however, that the old people would insist that they had from their system was that these men, having no direct descendants, were less likely to pursue selfish aims and more likely to try to secure the benefit of the Community than are those who, in our time, rise through the legal profession. The Lord High Chancellors of recent time have all been lawyers. Would not most of the world confess that the advantage was with the medieval peoples?
President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton realized sympathetically this great element of saving democracy in the Middle Ages, and has paid worthy tribute to it. He said: "The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under the aristocratic systems which then prevailed was that the men who were efficient instruments of government were drawn from the church—from that great church, that body which we now distinguish from other church bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, was a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope of Christendom, and every chancellery in Europe was ruled by those learned, trained and accomplished men—the priesthood of that great and then dominant church; and so, what kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open channels of the Roman Catholic priesthood."
