Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/541

Rh Hohen- staufen period. AGE OF cH1vALRY.] of Alcuin, in the excellence of its teaching. In the wars with the N orthmen, with the Magyars, and with the Slavs 11nder the later Carolingian kings, many of the ecclesiastical institutions were destroyed ; but they sprang up again under the protection of Henry I. Fron1 the time of his son Otto I. the Germans stood in direct relation with Italy; the marriage of Otto II. with the princess Theo- phano brought them into connexion with the learning a11d refinement of the Byzantine court ;_ and Gerbert, the friend of Otto III., afterwards Pope Silvester II., introduced them to some of the achievements of Arabian science. These inﬂuences quickened the energies of enlightened church- men, and originated an intellectual movement which to some extent continued during the vigorous reigns of the ﬁrst two Franconian sovereigns, Conrad II. and Henry III. The chief subject of study was the scholastic philosophy, to which, however, in its earlier stages, Germany made no supremely important contribution. The N eo-Platonic ten- dencies of Scotus Erigena were opposed by Hraba1111s .[aurus, who remained loyal to Aristotle and Boetius; and his example was generally followed, not only by his successorsin Fulda, but by the members of all other German schools. The school of St Gall was exceptionally active, and one of the monks, Notker Labeo, who died in 1022, wrote some original philosophical books, and translated into German the De C’o7zsoIaz‘2'one of Boetius and two of Aristotle’s works. In pure literature very little was done ; but there are several well-written Latin histories belonging to the 11th century, The best thought of the age was manifested in its Romanesque architecture, and in the then subordinate arts of painting, sculpture, and music. II. The Age of C/12'-val?‘-_2/.——Tl1e reign of Henry IV., dur- ing which the struggle between the empire and the papacy began, had a disastrous effect on the national culture; and the evil was not remedied under the disturbed rule of his two immediate successors. But 11nder the Hohenstaufen dynasty, during the period of Middle High German, the country passed through one of the greatest epochs of its literature. The more learned of the clergy interested them- selves deeply in the development of scholasticism through the nominalists and the realists; and in the 13th century Albertus Magnus, a native of Swabia, produced the ﬁrst systematic exposition of Aristotle, in the full light of Arabian research. It was, however, in poetry that Ger- many achieved the highest distinction ; and her most important poets were members of the knightly class, which at this time rose to its 11tmost power aml fame. There were many reasons why the members of this class became sensitive to the higher inﬂuences of the imagination. In the ﬁrst place, they had the elevating consciousness of a life shared with a vast community which set before itself the loftiest aims. Historians sometimes take a malicious pleasure in contrasting the mean performance of many knights with their high vows; but these vows at any rate introduced into the life of rough nobles an ideal element, and inclined them to take interest in the gentler and nobler aspects of existence. In the Italian wars of Frederick Bar- barossa the German knights saw more than they had ever before done of Southern civilization, and their minds were continually stimulated by the varying fortunes of their adventurous emperor. Of still greater importance was the influence of the crusades, in which the Germans ﬁrst took an active part under Frederick’s predecessor, Conrad III. The crusaders had a remote and unselﬁsh aim, connected with all that was most sacred and most tender in their religious ideas ; and this alone would have created a senti- ment favourable to poetic aspiration. But, besides this, the far-off Eastern lands, with their strange peoples and mystical associations, awoke dreams which could 11ot have other than harmonious utterance, and on the return of the GERMANY 523 warriors they stirred the fancy of their friends with reports of a new and greater world. Vhile the crusades lasted,the knights were forced into intimate acquaintance with the clergy, whose reﬁned culture inevitably to some extent softened their rudeness ; they also formed friendships with representatives of French chivalry. In France the works of the troubadours and the trouvcres formed one of the most prominent elements of the national life, and the French nobles did not forget in Palestine the songs and romances of their home. The better minds in the German armies caught the inspiration, and longed to distinguish themselves by like achievements. And their desire was deepened when, by the acquisition of the Free County of Burgundy, Frederick Barbarossa opened a new pathway by which intellectual inﬂuences might pass from the western to the eastern bank of the Rhine. The poetic impulse which thus entered Germany affected a wide circle; the highest princes as well as the humblest knights felt its power. Even the emperor Henry VI. him- self is said to have been moved by the prevailing feeling, and to have composed verses. At the imperial and princely courts poets were encouraged to give expression to their genius ; and the ladies whose beauty and virtues they de- lighted to praise stimulated their endeavours by marked appreciation. Thus the national imagination found in the whole temper of the age an atmosphere well adapted to the blooming of its ﬁrst spring—time. The most characteristic outcome of this active era is the Poetical series of poetical romances produced in the 12th and 13th 1‘°m311C9 centuries. The German poets might have found magni- ﬁcent material in their old, native legends; b11t for the most part they preferred subjects which had already been artistically wrought by the trouveres, whose methods and style they also closely imitated. Among the themes they selected may be mentioned the legends of Alexander the Great, of Charles the Great and his paladins, of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, with the allied legend of the Holy Grail. The fortunes of Tris- tram and lseult also exercised a powerful charm over many minds. These and all other chosen subjects were treated wholly in the spirit of chivalry. The poets of the Middle Age had no idea of being true to the characteristics of a particular epoch; their own time was the only one they attempted to understand. Ancient heroes became in their hands mediaeval knights; men who had died long before the rise of Christianity were transformed into devoted ser- vants of the Church. And in every romance the supreme aim was to present an idealized picture of the virtues of knighthood. One of those who prepared the way for the chief romance- Romance writers was Conrad, a priest in the service of Henry the Writers- Proud, who, before 1139, composed the Rolamlslied, setting forth, in imitation of the French Clzcmson cle Ifo/(md, the overthrow of Roland, the favourite paladin of Charles the Great, in the pass of Roncesvalles. He was followed by another priest, Lamprecht, who, also working upon a. French original, relates in the A IexamIc7'l2'e_rl the deeds of the Macedonian hero. Greater than either of these was Heinrich von Veldeke, the ﬁrst of the poets who may claim to rank as German trouveres. His great work was the 1;'72ez't, written bewecn 1175 and 1190. It is not only in armour and in dress that 'irgil's characters are here changed ; in thought and feeling they are recreated. The language of the poem is so carefully chosen, and the incidents are narrated with so much spirit, that it is still possible to understand the immense popularity it once enjoyed. themes that are extremely repulsive to modern feeling; bu he was endowed with genuinely plastic force, and interests us by touching certain mystical aspects of l])I3(l1.'D'8.l senti- Hartniann von Hart- Auc, in Der A2-me IIez'2z7'z'ck and other poems, selected "W" t von Aue.