THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 777
losses which the common and unsuspecting investor had to bear. The confusion was increased by the readiness of town aldermen and city councillors to take stock in the concerns. It also happened that the great traders, whose ventures involved others in loss, were conspicuous in church affairs.
To the wealth, arising from manufactures and foreign commerce, were added the riches which were being dug up from the newly opened mines of silver, copper and iron in Bohemia and Saxony. Avarice was cried down as the besettingsin of the age and, in some quarters, commerce was denounced as being carried on in defiance of the simplest precepts of the Gospel.^
With wealth came extravagance in dress and at the table. M unicipalities legislated against it and imperial parliaments sought to check it by arbitrary rules. Wimpheling says, table services of gold were not unusual and that he himself had eaten from golden plates at Cologne. Complaint was frequently made at the diets that men were being brought to poverty by their expenditures for dress upon themselves and the expenditures of the female members of their households.
In Germany, peasants were limited to a certain kind of cloth for their outer garments and to a maximum price. ^ The women had their share in making the disturbance and dignified town councils sat in judgment upon the number of gowns and other articles of apparel and ornament the ladies of the day might possess without detriment to the community or hurt to the solvency of their indulgent husbands. The council of Ratisbon, for example, in 1485 made it a rule that the wives and daughters of distinguished burghers should be limited to 8 dresses, 6 long
1 A preacher in 1515 declared the spirit of speculation then prevailing to be of recent growth, only ten years old, and that it had not existed in former times. Janssen, II. 87.
2 The diets of 1498 and 1500 forbade artisans to wear gold, silver, pearls, velvet and embroidered stuffs. They were forbidden to pay more than one-half a florin a yard for the cloth of their coats and mantles. Laws regulating dress were also passed in Italy. Elastic beds, false hair and other fashions came into vogue. Women sat in the sun all day to bleach their hair. In Florence, money was scented. See Burckhardt-Geiger, II. 87 sqq. John of Arundel, who was drowned at sea, 1379, had 52 new suits of cloth of gold or tissue. By a parliamentary act of 1463, no knight or other person might wear shoes or boots having peaks longer than two inches, Soc. Engl., II. 426 sqq.
778 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
cloaks, 3 dancing gowns, one plaited mantle with not more than 3 sets of sleeves of silk velvet and brocade, 2 pearl hair bands not to cost more than 12 florins, one tiara of gold set witli pearls, not more than three veils costing 8 florins each, etc. But why enumerate the whole list of articles? It is supposable the women conformed, even if they were inclined to criticise the aldermen for not sticking to their legitimate municipal business. Geiler of Strassburg had his word to say for these innovations of an extravagant age, the women with two dresses for a single day, their long trains trailing in the dust, the cocks' feathers worn in the women's hats and the long hair falling down over their shoulders. The times were cried down as bad. It is, however, pleasant to recall that a contemporary annalist commended as praiseworthy the habit of bathing at least " once every two weeks."
Among the artisans and the peasants, the unrest asserted itself in strikes and uprisings, strikes for shorter hours, for better food and for better wages. Sometimes a municipality and a gild were at strife for years. Sometimes a city was bereft at one stroke of all the workers of a given craft, as was Niirnberg of her tin workers in 1475. The gilds of tailors are said to have been most given to strikes.
The new social order involved the peasant class in more hardship than any other. The peasants were made the victims of the rapacity and violence of the landowners, who encroached upon their fields and their traditional but unwritten rights, and deprived them of the right to fish and hunt and gather wood in the forests. The Church also came in for its share of condemnation. One-fifth of the soil of Germany was in the possession of convents and other religious establishments and the peasant leaders called upon the monks and priests to distribute their lands. In their marching songs they appealed to Christ to keep them from putting tlie priests to death. The Feasant War of 1525 was not the product of the abuse of the principle of personal freedom introduced by the Reformation. It was one of a long series of uprisings and it has been said that, if tlie Reformation had not come and diverted the attention of the people, it is likely Germany