A History of German Literature As Determined by Social Forces

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. (From the Middle of the Twelfth to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century.) Our story has now reached about the year 1200. What a change in the political, religious, and social aspect of Europe has been brought about during the six hundred years leading up to...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE HEIGHT OF CHIVALRIC CULTURE. (From the Middle of the Twelfth to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century.) Our story has now reached about the year 1200. What a change in the political, religious, and social aspect of Europe has been brought about during the six hundred years leading up to this date Instead of the surging mass of Germanic tribes flooding the face of Europe, we find the European nations firmly settled within almost the same boundaries which they occupy to-day; instead of the violent conflict between paganism and Christianity, we find the supremacy of the Catholic church universally acknowledged; instead of the social chaos brought about through the collision of the Roman and the Germanic world, we find a society organized under the complicated system of feudalism. Two features of this system appear to be of especial interest for us of the present day. The first is a remarkable absence of individual liberty. Only as a Absence of in- part of the social whole has the individual in dividual lib- mediaeval society any right of existence. Politi- Br' cally he is not an independent citizen, not a representative of popular sovereignty, but only a link in the long chain of social interdependence that stretches from the emperor through dukes, counts, lords, proprietors, to the serf. As a Christian he has communion with God, not through his own individual spirit, but through the interposition of priest, bishop, archbishop, pope; not he himself, but the church for him, administers the offices of grace. In the whole mediaeval organism man, as man, does not exist. But this lack of individual liberty in the feudal system is offset by a remarkable community of interest and purpose. It would be preposterous to believe that those t 8reat instituti...