Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/307

 PROSE AND POPULAR READING 295 found in priest or layman. The advice given in ' The Soul's Guide ' was as applicable to them as to other historians of the century : * The powerful ones of the earth, laymen and ecclesiastics, should learn from times gone by to be earnest, humble, and good. The frivolous come to want and evil, the haughty shall be smitten by God, but peace and grace shall flow to the humble well-doer. There is a Prince above earthly princes, a Judge above earthly judges, who rewards and punishes. These are the lessons to be learned from the past, and be it known that every sin brings its own punishment.' Like the best artists of the age, the chroniclers did not aim at wielding personal influence. Their desire was that the matter of their work should instruct, animate, and purify. They were too deeply impressed with the true object of history and the noble mission of the historian — 'Like a mirror of Divine justice, to honour and praise the good men of the past, to brand the acts of the wicked, and to lead the living to paths of well-doing ' — to employ any of the artifices of rhetoric. We often find in the old chronicles warnings similar to that addressed by Hans Ebran von Wildemberg to the princes : ' rulers, lay as well as cleric, turn from your sins, lest the punishment of God fall on all Christendom ! You will be held responsible at the Last Judgment.' In almost all the old chronicles we are struck by the writers' loyalty to the people, to the Fatherland, and to the Eoman Emperor of the Germans, whom Burkard Zink calls « the prince above all Christian princes and rulers.' ' The Book of Chronicles,' which appeared in 1493, says : ' Germany, converted through