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Popular and elite culture interlacing in the middle ages
European Ideas, Vol.IO,No.I,
Hisrory of Printed in Great
pp. 1-I I, 1989
Britain
01914599/89 $3.00 + 0.00 Q 1989 Pergamon Press plc.
POPULAR AND ELITE CULTURE INTERLACING IN THE MIDDLE AGES* H. BIRKHAN? Norbert Elias’ defines the process of acculturation as an increase in the mastery of primitive physiological functions such as aggression, intake of food, excretion, sexuality and the like. Higher degrees of task specialization also result in a refinement of social structure. Greater differentiation in the assignment of tasks is accompanied by the lower social class’ acquisition and adaptation of the cultural achievements of the higher social class it emulates. Folklorists refer to this phenomenon as ‘sunken cultural heritage’ (John Meier), thereby denoting a cultural element which was originally characteristic of higher social classes and hence charged with prestige, but which descended to and was acquired by lower social classes. The lower class’ tendency to adopt the higher class’ culture and civilization is considered to be an invariable, and this assumption is justifiable in most cases. Only a few examples, which we can all understand from personal experience, are sufficient to illustrate this notion. First of all, social classes in Western democracies are primarily defined economically. Not only the capitalist, but also the proletarian wishes to consume caviar and champagne. Going to the opera, formerly reserved exclusively for the upper crust, has, since the 18th century, increasingly become a form of entertainment also accessible to the middle classes. In fact, it is interesting to note that the middle class is far more knowledgable about the quality of a performance than the social elite, which even today still occupies the expensive seats. When a cultural asset becomes available to lower social classes, it is often altered. Caviar tends to be substituted by an imitation of the original product so thereby creating a new distinction in that it is also affordable for larger groupsstatus based on ‘genuine’ vs ‘imitation’. One might ask of what significance it is if the elite whose cultural achievements are passed on is an open or a closed social class per se. An example of an open society is the Church, a member of which one becomes by being baptized and in which its members-at least its male members-theoretically (!) have access to any function. It is interesting to note the absence of any tendency, in general, to usurp specifically clerical cultural assets even in those cases-such as in the *This paper was read at the Amsterdam Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas on ‘Turning Points in History’. I have left it in the original form, only adding a few notes on bibliographical items without any attempt to complete documentation of the discussion. I have to thank my friend, Dr Elisabeth Bertol-Raffin, for translating this paper into English. Perhaps no one will ever bother so much with the question of what I might have meant as she did. That is why I should like to dedicate this paper to her instead of a Festschrift and should be glad if she liked it. TInstitut fur Germanstik an der Universitat Wien, Universitltstrasse 7, A-1010, Wien, Austria. I
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Middle Ages-in which the Church is an institution with a great deal of prestige. In our century children might dress up as priests and use make-believe chalices, patens, tabernacles, etc. as props, but I have never known adults to adopt priestly status symbols. The aristocracy is different in that it is precisely this group that was repeatedly emulated by the lower classes. Imitation of the nobility begins in the Middle Ages with respect to attire, hair-styles, weapons, duels, and in Vienna it went so far as to simulate the nasal manner of speech characteristic of the more prestigious French language.2 Nowadays the aristocracy gravitates to the lower social classes or to those that used to be the lower classes. Modern aristocrats emphasize casual attire. In Austria they most often wear a (wrinkled) Styrianstyle suit made of grey wool and the so-called ‘Hubertus’ coat-in other words, the previous century’s peasant attire. Of course, during the Middle Ages there is also the tendency on the part of the lower classes to adopt the elite’s cultural characteristics, the precondition being that the lower class was able to do so. This presupposes a certain economical standard as well as freedom from fear of punishment for having violated a we can observe the domestic officials’ cultural monopoly. For example, (ministeriales) rise in social status within the Empire and how they, who were serfs legally until the 13th century and thus not eligible to own property, eventually acquired more and more of the nobility’s privileges, finally becoming squires and thereby diminishing the status of the established aristocracy. They are now qualified to joust, they can be lord of the manor, they can bestow fiefs on lower-ranking domestic officials (impoverished knights, ‘Einschildritter’), they can bequeath whatever they please and marry as they see fit. The rise of the Liechtensteins gives us a good example of how a certain type of insignia was usurped. Recently medieval Germanics has developed an entire branch of study that strives to view the literature of the Middle Ages as a part of the process of social change. In this light, medieval literature becomes a means of programmatic self-expression as to the domestic officials’ and the established nobility’s social identity.3 The domestic officials having risen in social rank and acquired equal rights with respect to the aristocracy, some of the prosperous peasants in various areas of the Empire also began to acquire a taste for more social prestige around the beginning of the 13th century, with the exception of those who had previously advanced to the status of domestic official. At least that is the impression we get from the literature of the period. A poet called Neidhart4 by his contemporaries, who refers to his home with the probably allegorical name of Reuental, created the fashion of having peasants as the main figures in his poetry. Neidhart sees himself as a ‘knight’, and from his elevated position he looks down on the peasants striving to acquire higher social status. In his poems that take place during the summer, the peasant girls vie for the minstrel’s attention although their mothers caution them. The aura of the court is simply irresistible. The situation is much more complicated in the poems that take place during the winter. The lyrical part of the poems laments the minstrel’s unrequited love of a woman, possibly a peasant woman but more probably a noblewoman. His love is unfulfilled because some country bumpkins, who invaded the courtly gathering, are now enticing the lady away from him. The poems always close with a fairly broad and ironical description of these individuals’ behaviour. Throughout the
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poem we can see how the peasants assert knightly privileges. Although their hair should be cut short, it is long like a knight’s They should be wearing simple darkcolored clothing, but they are dressed up in bright colours. Their only weapon is supposed to be a stick, but they are armed to the teeth. Of course, every now and then some detail betrays their lowly birth-for example, when one of them worries about someone discovering a feather on his clothes because he obviously shares his sleeping quarters with the chickens. An important question that has given rise to dispute is whether Neidhart is depicting reality;s that is, were the peasants who pretended to be aristocrats really a threat to the knights, if only as to winning the heart of a lady, or are we dealing with a gross exaggeration of minor incidents? The answer seems to lie midway between the two possibilities, but probably more on the side of the latter. In this case, it is all the more remarkable that Neidhart’s grotesquely exaggerated depiction was so popular that he is to be considered the inventor of a whole new style of minstrelsy, the so-called Neidhart-School,6 that he was emulated by so many poets, some of whom copied his style so perfectly that my colleagues are often unable to distinguish ‘genuine’ Neidhart poems from those of his imitators. It is even more astonishing that the poet, who stands for the Court, is always defeated by the peasants in those winter poems which are among the earliest according to Manuscript Rand which must be attributed to Neidhart himself. Although the grotesque comedy of his style, above all in his description of peasants, indicates that Neidhart was court jester in Bavaria, in Berchtesgaden7 and in Vienna, the aristocratic audience’s masochistic enjoyment of his poetry does seem astonishing. In addition, most Germanics scholars and musicologists believe that Neidhart’s poems were songs to which the audience could and did dance. The content of the poems indicates that the dances were boisterous and that they were executed in pairs or as round dances. Nothing is known about their rhythms or steps from Neidhart’s period, which is the first half of the 13th century. It is generally assumed that these dances were adopted by the Court. Thus, for the first time we encounter an example of ‘rising’ instead of ‘sunken cultural heritage’. This is by no means a singular event in this period. Almost all the later ballroom dances of the nobility originated in a rural environment-that is, in the lower social classes: the polka, polonaise and mazurka come from Poland, the ‘Landler’ and the waltz were peasant dances in Austria. The classical baroque suite’s Allemande, Sarabande and Gigue contain modified folk dances of German, Spanish and Scotch origins. This does not necessarily mean that the creators of the music and dances adopted by the higher social classes were respected for their achievements. American jazz and our modern dance music provide good examples: The American black were, and probably still are to some degree, shunned just as much as the medieval peasant was. To illustrate the Neidhart situation, let us assume that we dance to and sing Boogie and Rockand-Roll songs that are exclusively about blacks who take white women away from their men, who squeeze and fondle them, who rip the ladies’ scarves from their necks, and that we enjoy these hits so much that we try to imitate them as much as possible. Let us furthermore imagine that we still attach specific symbolical meanings to attire and hair-style, which determine one’s rank on a pre-ordained social ladder so that we feel disturbed by a black man wearing a
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European-style suit instead of a loincloth. Only in light of this can we understand how strange the enthusiasm of Neidhart’s contemporaries for his poetry seems. However, in studying the documents of southern Germany, we do see that some of the names of peasants caricatured by Neidhart, particularly Engelmar, appear to become less popular around 1200 than they were previously; nor is the name of Neidhart, which also denotes the devil, encountered very frequently. We do not know if the odd relationship between contempt for the peasants on the one hand and a masochistic* enjoyment in being inferior to these lowly, uncouth individuals on the other lasted longer than a human life-span. Neidhart himself occasionally indicates that his audience no longer seems to appreciate his work’ although these remarks may only be understatements that reflect literary coquettishness. For Neidhart there were two possible ways of getting out of the situation into which he had manoeuvered himself: Either he emulated the peasants, thereby relinquishing his aura of courtly culture-he does this in the poems in which he attacks the woman, who is obviously a peasant; or the masochism is converted to sadism. The later works in the enormous Neidhart collection always depict the nobility as defeating the hillbillies. Masochism is substituted by sadism when the audience laughs’at the peasant whose leg or finger is chopped off or when one knocks out the other’s teeth and the amputated members twitch like grasshoppers.. . At the same time the element of eroticism recedes to the background-that is, the only remaining remnants are vulgar jokes that Neidhart plays on the peasants, who are always the dumb ones.‘O The Tannhauser” was a contemporary of Neidhart’s at the Vienna Court during a portion of the latter’s last years there. According to his own statements, the Tannhauser was very successful there because Duke Frederick the Bellicose supported him very generously, apparently much more so than he did Neidhart. The Tannhauser, too, wrote dance music and highly esteemed lyrics to go with it, yet he did not use the poetic form chosen by Neidhart, but the ‘Leich’, a large form that was set to music and with responsories, much like the liturgical antiphons, which also seemed to allow for changes in rhythm. Towards the end this dance music becomes more and more frenetic, finally an orgiastic twitching that comes to an abrupt end because the fiddle’s strings tear or the bow breaks. The initial part of these dance ‘Leichs’ may describe a lovers’ tryst in a picturesque setting (111.7). As to their stylistic features I doubt whether the following verse could be adequately translated into English: Ein riviere ich da gesach: durch den forest gienc ein bath ze tal iibr ein planiure. ich sleich ir nach, unz ich si vant, die schoenen creatiure: bi dem fontane saz diu klare, siieze von faitiure.
Or he steals from Courtly epics and novels, combines elements that have nothing to do with one another-for example, Parzival breaks into Hector’s castle to rob the Grail despite Achilles’ unsuccessful attempt to intervene. Then the girls are called upon to perform ecstatic dances. The names that appear here (Jutze, Matze, Elle . . .) are also those of peasant girls in Neidhart’s poetry. Although the Tannhauser’s dance ‘Leichs’ were not written for the peasants-how could they
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have understood the parodical allusions or the fashionable French loanwords?-it does seem probable that at least the ladies appear in the guise of country girls, perhaps as shepherdesses. Hence, scholars have not infrequently spoken of Rococo elements in the Tannhauser’s dance poetry. This, however, presupposes some willingness to identify with the peasant girls. Here we see yet another example of the gender distinction common to all of the European cultures. To the Neidhart of the summer poems, it seems totally in order for the country girl to worship the knight, who can then easily seduce her (despite the mother’s desperate but fruitless warning). The reverse relationship, even if instigated by the noblewoman instead of by the peasant (as in Neidhart’s winter poems) would not be possible. This gender distinction is still valid in the tragic drama of the common man during the ‘Storm and Stress' period, and a youth of lowly descent must definitely display a great deal of nobility of mind before he is permitted to woo a woman superior to him in rank. The reason for this, of course, lies in the belief that the nobleman’s genes-if I may put it like this-are of greater value; although German law defines a child’s social status according to the ‘poorer hand’, the courtly society considers a peasant girl who has conceived a child by a knight to be elevated in rank. A young noblewoman who bears a peasant’s child would be desecrated. Since Antiquity and in the Middle Ages women are seen merely as vessels, as a mould, for the sole purpose of nurturing the sperm, which actually contains human life. Courtly society does not lose face when the lady appears in shepherd’s garb. The peasant girl is easy prey to male lust, and the seducer boasts about his effortless conquest. This is precisely the advice Andreas Capellanus’* gives his readers with respect to peasant girls or what the Carmina Burana13 celebrate (I was such a lovely young girl, as long as a virgin I was. . . ) as well as Kol von Niunzen,r4 who rapes a young woman in the woods. Medieval literature’s diversified attitude toward peasants is often striking: the peasant youth is not merely depicted as a dunce or a simpleton, he is often closely associated with devils and demons. Neidhart calls one of the young peasants ‘the Unnamed’, and it is not surprising that he also limps. The Wild Man, who shows Yvain the way and whose inhuman ugliness Chrestien (v.288sqq.) and Hartmann (v.403sqq.) describe in detail, is just as much a villain-a villanous ‘peasant’-as the scoundrel who hounds a lion on Gauvain in Chaste1 Marveille (Parzival 569,30). ‘Gebfir’ ‘peasant’ is an insult in Middle High German, too, and Henry Wittenwiler,rs the author of a manual on wordly wisdom, states: ‘To me, he who does wrong and behaves stupidly is a “peasant”.’ The peasant girls, however, are not even depicted as being ridiculous, much less evil, up into the 14th century. The above-mentioned Wittenwiler is one of the first to include equally disgusting girls and women as counterparts to the frightfully ugly male peasants. It is not possible to determine-apart from the ecstatic dancing and the women in peasant attire-to what extent the Tannhauser incorporated ‘rising cultural heritage’ in his works. The picturesque rural scene is an ancient motif encountered in idyllic descriptions of nature dating back to Antiquity, and it is thus of learned origins. In comparison to Neidhart, the absence of any threat to the poet’s own social status is remarkable and only possible because male peasants do not appear. In 1285 the musical drama ascribed to Adam de la Halle, ‘Robin and
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Marion’,16 was performed at the Court of Naples. The young shepherdess Marion and the shepherd Robin live together happily. One day a knight, Aubert, bearing a falcon on his arm, comes by on his way home from a joust. He wishes to include Marion in his prey. She listens to him tell her about the falcon, but she rejects his attempts to woo her. He responds, ‘Take care not to make fun of me. I am a knight, and you are a shepherdess.’ She says, ‘I am but a shepherdess, but my beloved is handsome and good and cheerful.’ The knight departs. Now Robin appears, he and Marion assure each other of their mutual love, and they dance some of their peasant dances. While Robin invites other shepherds to a feast, the persistent Aubert reappears. He encounters Robin, whom he gives a sound thrashing, just as Don Giovanni later does to Masetto. Aubert wants to abduct Marion, and the battered Robin cannot keep him from doing so. But the guests at the feast (shepherds) free Marion, and the humiliated knight disappears from the scene. Now the shepherds celebrate their feast with Marion, for ‘in such company one must be joyful’ (‘avec tele compaignie on bien joie mener’). Here the courtly audience does not identify with the boastful knight, no more than the audience of city dwellers identifies with Pontius Pilate’s loudmouthed knights who guard Christ’s tomb in the Passion plays. The audience definitely sides with the young peasant lovers. If one bears in mind with how much contempt peasants-and shepherds are also peasants-were regarded, it is surprising that there were pastoral plays about a defeated knight for an aristocratic audience. Let us now turn to a character that frequently appears in medieval texts, but most of all on works of art: the Wild Man. Already in 1952 Richard Bernheimer wrote a highly interesting book titled ‘Wild Men in the Middle Ages’. In it he studies the origin of the motif of Wild Men in antique mythology. He associates the woodwose pageants with initiation rituals, and he delivers an impressing explanation for the polyvalence of the ‘Myth of Wild Men’, as he calls it. The Wild Man, half animal, who can be captured and tamed, may have his origins in the forest. One could ask, as with the Antipodes, if he descends from Adam, if he has original sin, if he has to be baptized, if Christ died for him, too, and if he could become a saint. The answers to the questions vary, but they always reveal that the existence of such creatures was taken for granted. Heinrich von Hesler (around 1300) wrote in his ‘Apocalypse’ (v. 20057 ff.). .” ‘Those who could never hear the word of God because it was not taught to them, . . . those are the Wild Men, whom we may find in a variety of forms in the moor, the forests, near streams and in the mountains, where they can hide from us humans in caves and in the bushes. . .’ A person who lost his mind out of grief so that he became animal-like, growing a pelt, could also become a Wild Man. The knight Yvain changes into this type of being after having been cursed by his wife. As sanity returns, the pelt begins to recede. Besides this type of Wild Men, there are also the happy ones, who live together in herds oder clans and who, in their state of blissful innocence, hardly cover their nakedness, if at all. Certainly Bernheimer is correct in seeing genetic and typological similarities to the Gymnosophists of India, who appear in the Alexander story, and in assuming dislocation of the ‘blissful savage’ to remote islands. On one of his journeys Saint Brandan encountered a hermit on a cliff, who was entirely covered with white hair, and Brandan, who was wearing a monk’s habit, accused himself of the sin of luxuria. Saint Gregory, who, tied to a cliff, does penance for the sin of twofold incest, is also covered with hair and has
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become a Wild Sinner, so to speak- likewise Mary of Egypt. The naked who reside on the outskirts of the world are men close to God. God clothes and nurtures them like the birds in the heavens and the lilies of the field. In other words, the Wild Men went much farther in their climb up the social ladder than medieval and Rococo shepherds. In the 14th century the following rebellious saying is heard: ‘When Adam dug and Eve span who was then a nobleman’. The noblemen responded, ‘I am a man like other men, except that God bestowed honor on me.‘18 These are the very words which much later Emperor Maximilian I scratched on the wall of his castle at Meran when he discovered the rebellious verses an anonymous guest had scribbled on the same place before. Nevertheless, aristocratic self-confidence seems to have been weakened, for in the course of this century a movement that probably began in the 13th century gains substantial momentum: this was the period of a large-scale search for alternative ways of life, as one would say today. Rulman Merswin,lg a wealthy merchant and money-changer in StraDburg, forsakes the world at age 43, he founds the Monastery of Griinewerth-incidentally with a great deal of financial astuteness, which reveals the shrewd merchant in him-and he spends the rest of his life there contemplating the visions of ‘God’s Friend from the Oberland’: 100 years later Nikolaus von Flue withdraws from the world in a far more spectacular manner.2o Hermitism, omnipresent at the height of and in the late Middle Ages, was probably the purest form of widespread escapism of the time. The most important motives were, amongst others, discontent with adverse worldly as well as clerical conditions, the increasing loss in meaning of the Crusaders’and Minne ideals, from the second half of the 14th Century also the plague. In the didactic poem, ‘The Devil’s Net’,2l written shortly after 1400, the only group worthy of respect are the hermits. In the Middle Ages, when there were still dense junglelike forests, the Other Life, the Other World of the Wild Men and hermits began where civilization stopped-that is, at the edge of the forest. Hence, it is easy to understand what makes the Wild Men, who live close to us though hidden from sight (in moors, forests, etc.), so appealing. In a way they were worldly hermits-hermits because they had no material desires, their food consisted of herbs, berries and wild animals-worldly because they were very active sexually; in fact they were often exemplary in that respect. The tapestries depict the Wild Men’s polygamous and polyandrous life as being simple, yet not entirely primitive. Presentday nudist beaches come to mind. This consciously chosen abstinence from civilization stems from an age-old sentimental search for the Golden Age, and it would hardly have been possible without Christian mythology, which also invokes memories of innocence and nakedness, of an intimate relationship with fauna and flora. Hence, it is no coincidence that we see the Wild Men mostly hunting wild boars- for the boar is generally a symbol of evil in Christianity. On the other hand, the Wild Men ride deer, unicorns or lions, all three of which symbolize Christ and are consequently good omens. These are also the wildest of animals, and it is no coincidence that the Wild Men easily tame them. Behind these motifs lies the idea of ‘Master over all Beasts’ although the surface structure conveys the thought of ‘how innocent, almost saintly these creatures must be to ride the unicorn, which otherwise lies hidden in the womb of a chaste virgin!’
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In the late Middle Ages one is readily disposed to identify with the Wild Men-if only in plays. Our surnames reflect this tendency in rudiments: the Vienna Telephone Directory lists more than 20 persons with the name of ‘Wildmann’. Toward the end of the Middle Ages the chronicals are full of descriptions of festivities at which the participants dressed up as Wild Men. The most famous of these occasions is the disastrous Bal des Ardents, which took place on 28 January 1392, the wedding day of a lady-in-waiting. The French King Charles VI himself, together with 5 other high-ranking gentlemen, participated totally disguised as Wild Men. They wore expertly tailored costumes of linen that had been made shaggy with the aid of black oakum. In an attempt to penetrate their incognito, the Duke of Orleans fumbled around with a torch and set the Wild Men, who were shackled to one another, on fire. The King and one of the others escaped death, but the remaining 4 perished in the flames. On this occasion the Wild Men were obviously supposed to instill fear in the other participants. They were in shackles-perhaps to symbolize the bonds of love, a popular notion-yet at the beginning of.the 15th century in Burgundy we already encounter Wild-Men festivities that are considerably more subdued. The ladies had removed their eyebrows, as was the fashion of the period, they wore pointed hats, and the shaggy costume just barely showed from underneath. The games shown, such as felling each other by using one’s foot, blindman’s buff and the like, reflect the definitely sociable nature of these festivities. On one of the Alsatian tapestries, we even see the Nativity scene with the Magi transferred to the world of the Wild Men in the woods. Yet the first play about a Wild Man was performed as early as 1208, on the occasion of the feast of Pentecost in Padua, where old and young alike, regardless of social status, frolicked on the festival grounds and where they ‘merrily rejoiced in singing and making music as if they were a large family-yes, even as if they all shared mutual bonds of great love.’ Perhaps the Wild Man appeared at this medieval Woodstock Festival as a sort of spoil-sport, who was a threat to the others’ joy, and he was consequently overwhelmed. Yet possibly his wildness was already a symbol of blissful innocence as in later times. To me it seems questionable if it is possible to explain the appearance of pastoral idylls in the Tannhauser’s poetry in the first half of the 13th century and previously in Romance pastorals solely on the basis of the cultural pessimism characteristic of late Antiquity. In this context, I am only referring to popular lay culture and a spontaneous appearance of cultural pessimism. Latin monastic culture was, of course, familiar with the works of Virgil, Ovid and Juvenal, but these would hardly have had any effect on the illiterate population if there had not already been a basis for a new concept of nature. A form of cultural pessimism independent of or influenced by late Antiquity seems possible to me only from the turn of the 14th Century, but above all in the Burgundian ‘Waning of the Middle Ages’. This phenomenon could be called a sense of ‘cultural discontent’. In his moving speech ‘Lament of the Wild Men about the False World’, the famous Hans Sachs (1530) describes all the reasons that justify escapism at the time.22 The 13th century was a more optimistic age-though perhaps less so than the 12th century-and had attained a new concept of nature. Philosophers and theologians, first and foremost Hugo von St. Victor, had taught that taking
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pleasure in the beauty and aroma of flowers and in nature in general did not, as Saint Anselm of Canterbury had cautioned, distract man in his relationship with God, but, on the contrary, lead him to God. ‘At times the physical sensation of pleasure may remind man of invisible values, and hence he begins to desire with great intensity those things of which he feels he has caught but a glimpse through that physical sensation.. . No man should think that the sight of visible objects does harm to a chaste heart. Nature, made to serve man, leads to her Creator. . .’ The School of Chartre’s23 philosophy of nature does not merely rely on the Bible’s account of Creation: Bernard Silvestris strives to explain natura, which in late Antiquity had been the link between God and the world, as the key to solving the mystery of Creation. Plato’s ‘hyle’, also meaning ‘forest’and thus a symbol of chaos, is beautified by the exornatio mundi, the adornment of the world. The philosophers of Chartres repeatedly refer to the ‘ornatus’, to beauty, which the Soul of the World ‘Tagathon’ created from ‘Silva’, the forest. Not only the allegorical content of Nature’s phenomena justifies a preoccupation with the world as an attempt to attain the only worthy goal in life-knowledge of God-according to the teachings of late Antiquity and the Carolingian period; the world itself reveals the mysteries of its origins, and God-besides Physis and Nous-is an entity which determines Creation, yet not the sole object of knowledge. In Bernard’s writing, Natura, like Mous and Physis, is an element that brings forth the exornatio mundi from ‘Silva’. According to Plato, to whom the School of Chartre is so deeply indebted, the Soul of the World uses these three elements to beautify the universe; in Alain de Lille Natura is the Soul of the World. Some of these philosophers’ ideas are adopted in German minstrelsy by Henry Frauenlob. 24 The travelling poets and Goliards educated in philosophy, whom we know to have been particularly acid in their criticism of the peasant population, also propagated the laudation of nature and of young girls. Once the specifically peasant aspects of pastoral themes were eliminated, only the picturesque scenery with the pretty shepherdess was left. It is not until the end of the 14th century that the Monk of Salzburg and Oswald von Wolkenstein place the peasant girl and her work at the center of attention. Tristan and Isolde have a particularly interesting intermediate position. The French texts depict their life together in the Forest of Morois as being quite laborious. The courtly lovers go through an acculturation with lower classes as they are compelled to provide for the necessities of life themselves-in so doing, Tristan invents the fishing rod. In Gottfried’s German epic, the two live like the blissful Wild Men, interestingly enough in a cave that had been constructed ages ago by some lovesick giants. They do not want for material goods. The joy of their love makes food and drink unnecessary. Life in the woods bears no hardship for them. There is no process of acculturation with a lower class of society, just as there is none in the Titurel fragment by Wolfram von Eschenbach, who probably used the love grotto in the Tristan epic as a paragon in his description of Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s happy life together. However, none of these lovers is ready to seek alternative forms of life: Tristan and Isolde cannot live without the privileges of courtly life. Sigune and Schionatulander need aventiure, which will eventually kill Sigune’s lover. Even the later wood-carvings and tapestries showing the Wild Men reveal a lack of ability to lead a totally primitive life because the scenes are always set in a courtly
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environment. Not until Hans Sachs do these Wild Men of the Wood return to the blissful state of primitive man and reverse, at least symbolically, the process of civilization: Since the world has become so evil and full of dishonesty and lies, we have left it and now live out in the wilderness of the woods with our ignorant children. . .
H. Birkhan University of Vienna
NOTES 1. In his well-known book: iiber den ProzeB der Zivilisation, 2 vols, Bern (1969). 2. It has even been alleged that the nasal quality of the nobility’s language was due to a slavish emulation of Emperor Francis Joseph’s nasal voice, who is said to have suffered from nasal polyps. This could be a humorous example of ‘sunken cultural heritage’, but the explanation is definitely incorrect because recordings of the Emperor’s voice clearly show that his speech was not nasal. 3. The classical approach from whence the whole series of works was inspired was Gerhard Kaiser’s ‘Textauslegung und gesellschaftliche Selbstdeutung’, 2nd edn. (Wiesbaden, 1978). Among those who follow similar tracks, be they influenced by Kaiser, be they more independently inspired by the zeitgeist, I only mention Helmut Brall, Petra Giloy-Hirtz, Bernd Thum, Volker Mertens, Jan-Dirk Miiller, Horst Wenzel. Joachim Bumke, Ministerialitiit und Ritterdichtung (Miinchen, 1976), distinguished himself not so much as a critic of the overall approach of sociology and literature, but rather held that the role of the ministeriales played in these interpretations was greatly overrated. As a harbinger of the increasing interest in the official servants also in connection with literature, we should mention P. Kluckhon, Ministerialitat und Ritterdichtung, in: Zeitschriffiirdeutsches AItertum 52 (19 IO), pp. 135-168. The historian Karl Bosl, Staat, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft im deutschen Mittelalter, in Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte Z, 9th edn. (Stuttgart, 1970), did much to establish the importance of ministeriales in such research. Other forerunners of the modern sociological interpretation of literature were the eminent Romance scholar Erich Kohler, Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der hoj?schen Epik, 2nd edn. (Tubingen, 1970), and to some extent Karl Bertau, Deutsche Literatur im europdischen Mittelalter, 2 vols (Miinchen 1972sq). 4. Neidharts Lieder, ed. M. Haupt, 2nd edn., by E. Wiessner (Leipzig, 1923: reprint Stuttgart, 1986). It has been shown by Ulrich Mtiller, myself and others that songs and verses only to be found in the young manuscript c may belong to the original Neidhart-Corpus which has been identified rather rashly with that of manuscript R by Haupt and Wiessner. Manuscript c is now easily accessible: Neidhart. Die Berliner Neidhart-Handschrif c. Transkription der Texte und Melodien durch Zngrid BennewitzBehr, Giippinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 356 (198 1). 5. Cf. e.g. Petra Giloy-Hirtz, Deformation des Minnesangs (Heidelberg, 1982): H.-J. Behr, Zch gevriesch b? mAen jriren nie gebliren also geile, . . . in: Neidhart von Reuental. Aspekte einer Neubewertung. Philologica Germanica 5 (Wien, 1983), lsqq.
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6. R. Brill, Die Schule Neidharts. Eine Stiluntersuchung. Palaestra 37, (Berlin 1908). 7. K. Bertau, Neidharts ‘Bayrische Lieder’ und Wolframs ‘Willehalm’, Zeitschrtft fiir deutsches Alterturn 100 (197 l), 296sqq. 8. H. Birkhan, Neidhart von Reuental und Sigmund Freud. Allgemeines und Spezielles zur psychoanalytischen Interpretation mittelalterlicher Texte, in: Neidhart von Reuental (cf. n.S), 34sqq. But see also H. Birkhan, Neidhart von Reuentalund Sigmund Freud (Londoner Fassung). Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologic (Wien, 1983), 25sqq. 9. Cf. K. Bertau, Stil und Klage beim spaten Neidhart, Deutschunterricht 19 (1967), 76sqq. 10. Cf. Petra Herrmann, Karnevaleske Strukturen in der Neidhart-Tradition. Giippinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 406 (1984) who provides access to the works of E. Simon, E. J&t and others. 11. Der Dichter Tannhluser, ed. J. Siebert (Halle/Saale, 1934). With regard to the relationship between the two court poets cf. E. Wiessner, Die Preislieder Neidharts und des Tannhausers auf Herzog Friedrich II. von Babenberg, Zeitschrtft fiir deutsches Altertum 73 (1936), 117-130; H. Birkhan, Zur Datierung, Deutung und Gliederung einiger Lieder Neidharts von Reuental (= Sitzungsberichte der osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Kl. 273/l) (Wien-Koln, 1971). 12. Andreas Capellanus, On Love, ed. with English translation P.G. Walsh (London, 1982), 222sq. 13. Carmina Burana, ed. A. Hilka, 0. Schumann and B. Bischoff, (Miinchen, 1974), Nr. 185. 14. Deutsche Liederdichter des 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. C. v. Kraus, I, (Tubingen, 1952) 218. 15. Heinrich Wittenwiler, Der Ring, ed. E. Wiessner (Leipzig, 1931) (= Reprint 1964). 16. Le Jeu de Robert et de Marion, ed. E. Langlois, 1924. 17. Die Apokalypse Heinrichs von Hesler, ed. K. Helm, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters 8 (Berlin, 1907). 18. This seems to originate with Heinrich Frauenlob, ed. K. Stackmann and K. Bertau, I (Gottingen, 1981), 479 (VII,21). Frauenlob says: ‘A noble man is like any other man except that God bestowed sovereignty on him. But he is nothing if he does not love Honour.’ 19. Cf. G. Steer, Rulman Merswin, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, VI 1985, c.42Osqq. 20. H. Stirnimann, Nikoluus von Flue, Die deutsche Literatur (cf. n.19), c.1069sqq. 21. Des Teufels Netz, ed. K.A. Barack, Bibliothek des Stuttgarter Lit. Vereins 70 (1863). 22. Hans Sachs, ed. A.V. Keller, III. Bibliothek des Stuttgarter Lit. Vereins 104 (Tubingen, 187i)), 561sqq. 23. For the concept of nature in that period cf. e.g. Brian Stoke, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 1972). 24. Notably in VII,9 (cf. n. 18), where holz (hyle) is regarded as a hypokeimenon against which one shouldproject (in the alchemical sense) the wesen (probably in the sense of forma), thus producing the unity of creation.
Hisrory of Printed in Great
pp. 1-I I, 1989
Britain
01914599/89 $3.00 + 0.00 Q 1989 Pergamon Press plc.
POPULAR AND ELITE CULTURE INTERLACING IN THE MIDDLE AGES* H. BIRKHAN? Norbert Elias’ defines the process of acculturation as an increase in the mastery of primitive physiological functions such as aggression, intake of food, excretion, sexuality and the like. Higher degrees of task specialization also result in a refinement of social structure. Greater differentiation in the assignment of tasks is accompanied by the lower social class’ acquisition and adaptation of the cultural achievements of the higher social class it emulates. Folklorists refer to this phenomenon as ‘sunken cultural heritage’ (John Meier), thereby denoting a cultural element which was originally characteristic of higher social classes and hence charged with prestige, but which descended to and was acquired by lower social classes. The lower class’ tendency to adopt the higher class’ culture and civilization is considered to be an invariable, and this assumption is justifiable in most cases. Only a few examples, which we can all understand from personal experience, are sufficient to illustrate this notion. First of all, social classes in Western democracies are primarily defined economically. Not only the capitalist, but also the proletarian wishes to consume caviar and champagne. Going to the opera, formerly reserved exclusively for the upper crust, has, since the 18th century, increasingly become a form of entertainment also accessible to the middle classes. In fact, it is interesting to note that the middle class is far more knowledgable about the quality of a performance than the social elite, which even today still occupies the expensive seats. When a cultural asset becomes available to lower social classes, it is often altered. Caviar tends to be substituted by an imitation of the original product so thereby creating a new distinction in that it is also affordable for larger groupsstatus based on ‘genuine’ vs ‘imitation’. One might ask of what significance it is if the elite whose cultural achievements are passed on is an open or a closed social class per se. An example of an open society is the Church, a member of which one becomes by being baptized and in which its members-at least its male members-theoretically (!) have access to any function. It is interesting to note the absence of any tendency, in general, to usurp specifically clerical cultural assets even in those cases-such as in the *This paper was read at the Amsterdam Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas on ‘Turning Points in History’. I have left it in the original form, only adding a few notes on bibliographical items without any attempt to complete documentation of the discussion. I have to thank my friend, Dr Elisabeth Bertol-Raffin, for translating this paper into English. Perhaps no one will ever bother so much with the question of what I might have meant as she did. That is why I should like to dedicate this paper to her instead of a Festschrift and should be glad if she liked it. TInstitut fur Germanstik an der Universitat Wien, Universitltstrasse 7, A-1010, Wien, Austria. I
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Middle Ages-in which the Church is an institution with a great deal of prestige. In our century children might dress up as priests and use make-believe chalices, patens, tabernacles, etc. as props, but I have never known adults to adopt priestly status symbols. The aristocracy is different in that it is precisely this group that was repeatedly emulated by the lower classes. Imitation of the nobility begins in the Middle Ages with respect to attire, hair-styles, weapons, duels, and in Vienna it went so far as to simulate the nasal manner of speech characteristic of the more prestigious French language.2 Nowadays the aristocracy gravitates to the lower social classes or to those that used to be the lower classes. Modern aristocrats emphasize casual attire. In Austria they most often wear a (wrinkled) Styrianstyle suit made of grey wool and the so-called ‘Hubertus’ coat-in other words, the previous century’s peasant attire. Of course, during the Middle Ages there is also the tendency on the part of the lower classes to adopt the elite’s cultural characteristics, the precondition being that the lower class was able to do so. This presupposes a certain economical standard as well as freedom from fear of punishment for having violated a we can observe the domestic officials’ cultural monopoly. For example, (ministeriales) rise in social status within the Empire and how they, who were serfs legally until the 13th century and thus not eligible to own property, eventually acquired more and more of the nobility’s privileges, finally becoming squires and thereby diminishing the status of the established aristocracy. They are now qualified to joust, they can be lord of the manor, they can bestow fiefs on lower-ranking domestic officials (impoverished knights, ‘Einschildritter’), they can bequeath whatever they please and marry as they see fit. The rise of the Liechtensteins gives us a good example of how a certain type of insignia was usurped. Recently medieval Germanics has developed an entire branch of study that strives to view the literature of the Middle Ages as a part of the process of social change. In this light, medieval literature becomes a means of programmatic self-expression as to the domestic officials’ and the established nobility’s social identity.3 The domestic officials having risen in social rank and acquired equal rights with respect to the aristocracy, some of the prosperous peasants in various areas of the Empire also began to acquire a taste for more social prestige around the beginning of the 13th century, with the exception of those who had previously advanced to the status of domestic official. At least that is the impression we get from the literature of the period. A poet called Neidhart4 by his contemporaries, who refers to his home with the probably allegorical name of Reuental, created the fashion of having peasants as the main figures in his poetry. Neidhart sees himself as a ‘knight’, and from his elevated position he looks down on the peasants striving to acquire higher social status. In his poems that take place during the summer, the peasant girls vie for the minstrel’s attention although their mothers caution them. The aura of the court is simply irresistible. The situation is much more complicated in the poems that take place during the winter. The lyrical part of the poems laments the minstrel’s unrequited love of a woman, possibly a peasant woman but more probably a noblewoman. His love is unfulfilled because some country bumpkins, who invaded the courtly gathering, are now enticing the lady away from him. The poems always close with a fairly broad and ironical description of these individuals’ behaviour. Throughout the
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poem we can see how the peasants assert knightly privileges. Although their hair should be cut short, it is long like a knight’s They should be wearing simple darkcolored clothing, but they are dressed up in bright colours. Their only weapon is supposed to be a stick, but they are armed to the teeth. Of course, every now and then some detail betrays their lowly birth-for example, when one of them worries about someone discovering a feather on his clothes because he obviously shares his sleeping quarters with the chickens. An important question that has given rise to dispute is whether Neidhart is depicting reality;s that is, were the peasants who pretended to be aristocrats really a threat to the knights, if only as to winning the heart of a lady, or are we dealing with a gross exaggeration of minor incidents? The answer seems to lie midway between the two possibilities, but probably more on the side of the latter. In this case, it is all the more remarkable that Neidhart’s grotesquely exaggerated depiction was so popular that he is to be considered the inventor of a whole new style of minstrelsy, the so-called Neidhart-School,6 that he was emulated by so many poets, some of whom copied his style so perfectly that my colleagues are often unable to distinguish ‘genuine’ Neidhart poems from those of his imitators. It is even more astonishing that the poet, who stands for the Court, is always defeated by the peasants in those winter poems which are among the earliest according to Manuscript Rand which must be attributed to Neidhart himself. Although the grotesque comedy of his style, above all in his description of peasants, indicates that Neidhart was court jester in Bavaria, in Berchtesgaden7 and in Vienna, the aristocratic audience’s masochistic enjoyment of his poetry does seem astonishing. In addition, most Germanics scholars and musicologists believe that Neidhart’s poems were songs to which the audience could and did dance. The content of the poems indicates that the dances were boisterous and that they were executed in pairs or as round dances. Nothing is known about their rhythms or steps from Neidhart’s period, which is the first half of the 13th century. It is generally assumed that these dances were adopted by the Court. Thus, for the first time we encounter an example of ‘rising’ instead of ‘sunken cultural heritage’. This is by no means a singular event in this period. Almost all the later ballroom dances of the nobility originated in a rural environment-that is, in the lower social classes: the polka, polonaise and mazurka come from Poland, the ‘Landler’ and the waltz were peasant dances in Austria. The classical baroque suite’s Allemande, Sarabande and Gigue contain modified folk dances of German, Spanish and Scotch origins. This does not necessarily mean that the creators of the music and dances adopted by the higher social classes were respected for their achievements. American jazz and our modern dance music provide good examples: The American black were, and probably still are to some degree, shunned just as much as the medieval peasant was. To illustrate the Neidhart situation, let us assume that we dance to and sing Boogie and Rockand-Roll songs that are exclusively about blacks who take white women away from their men, who squeeze and fondle them, who rip the ladies’ scarves from their necks, and that we enjoy these hits so much that we try to imitate them as much as possible. Let us furthermore imagine that we still attach specific symbolical meanings to attire and hair-style, which determine one’s rank on a pre-ordained social ladder so that we feel disturbed by a black man wearing a
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European-style suit instead of a loincloth. Only in light of this can we understand how strange the enthusiasm of Neidhart’s contemporaries for his poetry seems. However, in studying the documents of southern Germany, we do see that some of the names of peasants caricatured by Neidhart, particularly Engelmar, appear to become less popular around 1200 than they were previously; nor is the name of Neidhart, which also denotes the devil, encountered very frequently. We do not know if the odd relationship between contempt for the peasants on the one hand and a masochistic* enjoyment in being inferior to these lowly, uncouth individuals on the other lasted longer than a human life-span. Neidhart himself occasionally indicates that his audience no longer seems to appreciate his work’ although these remarks may only be understatements that reflect literary coquettishness. For Neidhart there were two possible ways of getting out of the situation into which he had manoeuvered himself: Either he emulated the peasants, thereby relinquishing his aura of courtly culture-he does this in the poems in which he attacks the woman, who is obviously a peasant; or the masochism is converted to sadism. The later works in the enormous Neidhart collection always depict the nobility as defeating the hillbillies. Masochism is substituted by sadism when the audience laughs’at the peasant whose leg or finger is chopped off or when one knocks out the other’s teeth and the amputated members twitch like grasshoppers.. . At the same time the element of eroticism recedes to the background-that is, the only remaining remnants are vulgar jokes that Neidhart plays on the peasants, who are always the dumb ones.‘O The Tannhauser” was a contemporary of Neidhart’s at the Vienna Court during a portion of the latter’s last years there. According to his own statements, the Tannhauser was very successful there because Duke Frederick the Bellicose supported him very generously, apparently much more so than he did Neidhart. The Tannhauser, too, wrote dance music and highly esteemed lyrics to go with it, yet he did not use the poetic form chosen by Neidhart, but the ‘Leich’, a large form that was set to music and with responsories, much like the liturgical antiphons, which also seemed to allow for changes in rhythm. Towards the end this dance music becomes more and more frenetic, finally an orgiastic twitching that comes to an abrupt end because the fiddle’s strings tear or the bow breaks. The initial part of these dance ‘Leichs’ may describe a lovers’ tryst in a picturesque setting (111.7). As to their stylistic features I doubt whether the following verse could be adequately translated into English: Ein riviere ich da gesach: durch den forest gienc ein bath ze tal iibr ein planiure. ich sleich ir nach, unz ich si vant, die schoenen creatiure: bi dem fontane saz diu klare, siieze von faitiure.
Or he steals from Courtly epics and novels, combines elements that have nothing to do with one another-for example, Parzival breaks into Hector’s castle to rob the Grail despite Achilles’ unsuccessful attempt to intervene. Then the girls are called upon to perform ecstatic dances. The names that appear here (Jutze, Matze, Elle . . .) are also those of peasant girls in Neidhart’s poetry. Although the Tannhauser’s dance ‘Leichs’ were not written for the peasants-how could they
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have understood the parodical allusions or the fashionable French loanwords?-it does seem probable that at least the ladies appear in the guise of country girls, perhaps as shepherdesses. Hence, scholars have not infrequently spoken of Rococo elements in the Tannhauser’s dance poetry. This, however, presupposes some willingness to identify with the peasant girls. Here we see yet another example of the gender distinction common to all of the European cultures. To the Neidhart of the summer poems, it seems totally in order for the country girl to worship the knight, who can then easily seduce her (despite the mother’s desperate but fruitless warning). The reverse relationship, even if instigated by the noblewoman instead of by the peasant (as in Neidhart’s winter poems) would not be possible. This gender distinction is still valid in the tragic drama of the common man during the ‘Storm and Stress' period, and a youth of lowly descent must definitely display a great deal of nobility of mind before he is permitted to woo a woman superior to him in rank. The reason for this, of course, lies in the belief that the nobleman’s genes-if I may put it like this-are of greater value; although German law defines a child’s social status according to the ‘poorer hand’, the courtly society considers a peasant girl who has conceived a child by a knight to be elevated in rank. A young noblewoman who bears a peasant’s child would be desecrated. Since Antiquity and in the Middle Ages women are seen merely as vessels, as a mould, for the sole purpose of nurturing the sperm, which actually contains human life. Courtly society does not lose face when the lady appears in shepherd’s garb. The peasant girl is easy prey to male lust, and the seducer boasts about his effortless conquest. This is precisely the advice Andreas Capellanus’* gives his readers with respect to peasant girls or what the Carmina Burana13 celebrate (I was such a lovely young girl, as long as a virgin I was. . . ) as well as Kol von Niunzen,r4 who rapes a young woman in the woods. Medieval literature’s diversified attitude toward peasants is often striking: the peasant youth is not merely depicted as a dunce or a simpleton, he is often closely associated with devils and demons. Neidhart calls one of the young peasants ‘the Unnamed’, and it is not surprising that he also limps. The Wild Man, who shows Yvain the way and whose inhuman ugliness Chrestien (v.288sqq.) and Hartmann (v.403sqq.) describe in detail, is just as much a villain-a villanous ‘peasant’-as the scoundrel who hounds a lion on Gauvain in Chaste1 Marveille (Parzival 569,30). ‘Gebfir’ ‘peasant’ is an insult in Middle High German, too, and Henry Wittenwiler,rs the author of a manual on wordly wisdom, states: ‘To me, he who does wrong and behaves stupidly is a “peasant”.’ The peasant girls, however, are not even depicted as being ridiculous, much less evil, up into the 14th century. The above-mentioned Wittenwiler is one of the first to include equally disgusting girls and women as counterparts to the frightfully ugly male peasants. It is not possible to determine-apart from the ecstatic dancing and the women in peasant attire-to what extent the Tannhauser incorporated ‘rising cultural heritage’ in his works. The picturesque rural scene is an ancient motif encountered in idyllic descriptions of nature dating back to Antiquity, and it is thus of learned origins. In comparison to Neidhart, the absence of any threat to the poet’s own social status is remarkable and only possible because male peasants do not appear. In 1285 the musical drama ascribed to Adam de la Halle, ‘Robin and
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Marion’,16 was performed at the Court of Naples. The young shepherdess Marion and the shepherd Robin live together happily. One day a knight, Aubert, bearing a falcon on his arm, comes by on his way home from a joust. He wishes to include Marion in his prey. She listens to him tell her about the falcon, but she rejects his attempts to woo her. He responds, ‘Take care not to make fun of me. I am a knight, and you are a shepherdess.’ She says, ‘I am but a shepherdess, but my beloved is handsome and good and cheerful.’ The knight departs. Now Robin appears, he and Marion assure each other of their mutual love, and they dance some of their peasant dances. While Robin invites other shepherds to a feast, the persistent Aubert reappears. He encounters Robin, whom he gives a sound thrashing, just as Don Giovanni later does to Masetto. Aubert wants to abduct Marion, and the battered Robin cannot keep him from doing so. But the guests at the feast (shepherds) free Marion, and the humiliated knight disappears from the scene. Now the shepherds celebrate their feast with Marion, for ‘in such company one must be joyful’ (‘avec tele compaignie on bien joie mener’). Here the courtly audience does not identify with the boastful knight, no more than the audience of city dwellers identifies with Pontius Pilate’s loudmouthed knights who guard Christ’s tomb in the Passion plays. The audience definitely sides with the young peasant lovers. If one bears in mind with how much contempt peasants-and shepherds are also peasants-were regarded, it is surprising that there were pastoral plays about a defeated knight for an aristocratic audience. Let us now turn to a character that frequently appears in medieval texts, but most of all on works of art: the Wild Man. Already in 1952 Richard Bernheimer wrote a highly interesting book titled ‘Wild Men in the Middle Ages’. In it he studies the origin of the motif of Wild Men in antique mythology. He associates the woodwose pageants with initiation rituals, and he delivers an impressing explanation for the polyvalence of the ‘Myth of Wild Men’, as he calls it. The Wild Man, half animal, who can be captured and tamed, may have his origins in the forest. One could ask, as with the Antipodes, if he descends from Adam, if he has original sin, if he has to be baptized, if Christ died for him, too, and if he could become a saint. The answers to the questions vary, but they always reveal that the existence of such creatures was taken for granted. Heinrich von Hesler (around 1300) wrote in his ‘Apocalypse’ (v. 20057 ff.). .” ‘Those who could never hear the word of God because it was not taught to them, . . . those are the Wild Men, whom we may find in a variety of forms in the moor, the forests, near streams and in the mountains, where they can hide from us humans in caves and in the bushes. . .’ A person who lost his mind out of grief so that he became animal-like, growing a pelt, could also become a Wild Man. The knight Yvain changes into this type of being after having been cursed by his wife. As sanity returns, the pelt begins to recede. Besides this type of Wild Men, there are also the happy ones, who live together in herds oder clans and who, in their state of blissful innocence, hardly cover their nakedness, if at all. Certainly Bernheimer is correct in seeing genetic and typological similarities to the Gymnosophists of India, who appear in the Alexander story, and in assuming dislocation of the ‘blissful savage’ to remote islands. On one of his journeys Saint Brandan encountered a hermit on a cliff, who was entirely covered with white hair, and Brandan, who was wearing a monk’s habit, accused himself of the sin of luxuria. Saint Gregory, who, tied to a cliff, does penance for the sin of twofold incest, is also covered with hair and has
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become a Wild Sinner, so to speak- likewise Mary of Egypt. The naked who reside on the outskirts of the world are men close to God. God clothes and nurtures them like the birds in the heavens and the lilies of the field. In other words, the Wild Men went much farther in their climb up the social ladder than medieval and Rococo shepherds. In the 14th century the following rebellious saying is heard: ‘When Adam dug and Eve span who was then a nobleman’. The noblemen responded, ‘I am a man like other men, except that God bestowed honor on me.‘18 These are the very words which much later Emperor Maximilian I scratched on the wall of his castle at Meran when he discovered the rebellious verses an anonymous guest had scribbled on the same place before. Nevertheless, aristocratic self-confidence seems to have been weakened, for in the course of this century a movement that probably began in the 13th century gains substantial momentum: this was the period of a large-scale search for alternative ways of life, as one would say today. Rulman Merswin,lg a wealthy merchant and money-changer in StraDburg, forsakes the world at age 43, he founds the Monastery of Griinewerth-incidentally with a great deal of financial astuteness, which reveals the shrewd merchant in him-and he spends the rest of his life there contemplating the visions of ‘God’s Friend from the Oberland’: 100 years later Nikolaus von Flue withdraws from the world in a far more spectacular manner.2o Hermitism, omnipresent at the height of and in the late Middle Ages, was probably the purest form of widespread escapism of the time. The most important motives were, amongst others, discontent with adverse worldly as well as clerical conditions, the increasing loss in meaning of the Crusaders’and Minne ideals, from the second half of the 14th Century also the plague. In the didactic poem, ‘The Devil’s Net’,2l written shortly after 1400, the only group worthy of respect are the hermits. In the Middle Ages, when there were still dense junglelike forests, the Other Life, the Other World of the Wild Men and hermits began where civilization stopped-that is, at the edge of the forest. Hence, it is easy to understand what makes the Wild Men, who live close to us though hidden from sight (in moors, forests, etc.), so appealing. In a way they were worldly hermits-hermits because they had no material desires, their food consisted of herbs, berries and wild animals-worldly because they were very active sexually; in fact they were often exemplary in that respect. The tapestries depict the Wild Men’s polygamous and polyandrous life as being simple, yet not entirely primitive. Presentday nudist beaches come to mind. This consciously chosen abstinence from civilization stems from an age-old sentimental search for the Golden Age, and it would hardly have been possible without Christian mythology, which also invokes memories of innocence and nakedness, of an intimate relationship with fauna and flora. Hence, it is no coincidence that we see the Wild Men mostly hunting wild boars- for the boar is generally a symbol of evil in Christianity. On the other hand, the Wild Men ride deer, unicorns or lions, all three of which symbolize Christ and are consequently good omens. These are also the wildest of animals, and it is no coincidence that the Wild Men easily tame them. Behind these motifs lies the idea of ‘Master over all Beasts’ although the surface structure conveys the thought of ‘how innocent, almost saintly these creatures must be to ride the unicorn, which otherwise lies hidden in the womb of a chaste virgin!’
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In the late Middle Ages one is readily disposed to identify with the Wild Men-if only in plays. Our surnames reflect this tendency in rudiments: the Vienna Telephone Directory lists more than 20 persons with the name of ‘Wildmann’. Toward the end of the Middle Ages the chronicals are full of descriptions of festivities at which the participants dressed up as Wild Men. The most famous of these occasions is the disastrous Bal des Ardents, which took place on 28 January 1392, the wedding day of a lady-in-waiting. The French King Charles VI himself, together with 5 other high-ranking gentlemen, participated totally disguised as Wild Men. They wore expertly tailored costumes of linen that had been made shaggy with the aid of black oakum. In an attempt to penetrate their incognito, the Duke of Orleans fumbled around with a torch and set the Wild Men, who were shackled to one another, on fire. The King and one of the others escaped death, but the remaining 4 perished in the flames. On this occasion the Wild Men were obviously supposed to instill fear in the other participants. They were in shackles-perhaps to symbolize the bonds of love, a popular notion-yet at the beginning of.the 15th century in Burgundy we already encounter Wild-Men festivities that are considerably more subdued. The ladies had removed their eyebrows, as was the fashion of the period, they wore pointed hats, and the shaggy costume just barely showed from underneath. The games shown, such as felling each other by using one’s foot, blindman’s buff and the like, reflect the definitely sociable nature of these festivities. On one of the Alsatian tapestries, we even see the Nativity scene with the Magi transferred to the world of the Wild Men in the woods. Yet the first play about a Wild Man was performed as early as 1208, on the occasion of the feast of Pentecost in Padua, where old and young alike, regardless of social status, frolicked on the festival grounds and where they ‘merrily rejoiced in singing and making music as if they were a large family-yes, even as if they all shared mutual bonds of great love.’ Perhaps the Wild Man appeared at this medieval Woodstock Festival as a sort of spoil-sport, who was a threat to the others’ joy, and he was consequently overwhelmed. Yet possibly his wildness was already a symbol of blissful innocence as in later times. To me it seems questionable if it is possible to explain the appearance of pastoral idylls in the Tannhauser’s poetry in the first half of the 13th century and previously in Romance pastorals solely on the basis of the cultural pessimism characteristic of late Antiquity. In this context, I am only referring to popular lay culture and a spontaneous appearance of cultural pessimism. Latin monastic culture was, of course, familiar with the works of Virgil, Ovid and Juvenal, but these would hardly have had any effect on the illiterate population if there had not already been a basis for a new concept of nature. A form of cultural pessimism independent of or influenced by late Antiquity seems possible to me only from the turn of the 14th Century, but above all in the Burgundian ‘Waning of the Middle Ages’. This phenomenon could be called a sense of ‘cultural discontent’. In his moving speech ‘Lament of the Wild Men about the False World’, the famous Hans Sachs (1530) describes all the reasons that justify escapism at the time.22 The 13th century was a more optimistic age-though perhaps less so than the 12th century-and had attained a new concept of nature. Philosophers and theologians, first and foremost Hugo von St. Victor, had taught that taking
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pleasure in the beauty and aroma of flowers and in nature in general did not, as Saint Anselm of Canterbury had cautioned, distract man in his relationship with God, but, on the contrary, lead him to God. ‘At times the physical sensation of pleasure may remind man of invisible values, and hence he begins to desire with great intensity those things of which he feels he has caught but a glimpse through that physical sensation.. . No man should think that the sight of visible objects does harm to a chaste heart. Nature, made to serve man, leads to her Creator. . .’ The School of Chartre’s23 philosophy of nature does not merely rely on the Bible’s account of Creation: Bernard Silvestris strives to explain natura, which in late Antiquity had been the link between God and the world, as the key to solving the mystery of Creation. Plato’s ‘hyle’, also meaning ‘forest’and thus a symbol of chaos, is beautified by the exornatio mundi, the adornment of the world. The philosophers of Chartres repeatedly refer to the ‘ornatus’, to beauty, which the Soul of the World ‘Tagathon’ created from ‘Silva’, the forest. Not only the allegorical content of Nature’s phenomena justifies a preoccupation with the world as an attempt to attain the only worthy goal in life-knowledge of God-according to the teachings of late Antiquity and the Carolingian period; the world itself reveals the mysteries of its origins, and God-besides Physis and Nous-is an entity which determines Creation, yet not the sole object of knowledge. In Bernard’s writing, Natura, like Mous and Physis, is an element that brings forth the exornatio mundi from ‘Silva’. According to Plato, to whom the School of Chartre is so deeply indebted, the Soul of the World uses these three elements to beautify the universe; in Alain de Lille Natura is the Soul of the World. Some of these philosophers’ ideas are adopted in German minstrelsy by Henry Frauenlob. 24 The travelling poets and Goliards educated in philosophy, whom we know to have been particularly acid in their criticism of the peasant population, also propagated the laudation of nature and of young girls. Once the specifically peasant aspects of pastoral themes were eliminated, only the picturesque scenery with the pretty shepherdess was left. It is not until the end of the 14th century that the Monk of Salzburg and Oswald von Wolkenstein place the peasant girl and her work at the center of attention. Tristan and Isolde have a particularly interesting intermediate position. The French texts depict their life together in the Forest of Morois as being quite laborious. The courtly lovers go through an acculturation with lower classes as they are compelled to provide for the necessities of life themselves-in so doing, Tristan invents the fishing rod. In Gottfried’s German epic, the two live like the blissful Wild Men, interestingly enough in a cave that had been constructed ages ago by some lovesick giants. They do not want for material goods. The joy of their love makes food and drink unnecessary. Life in the woods bears no hardship for them. There is no process of acculturation with a lower class of society, just as there is none in the Titurel fragment by Wolfram von Eschenbach, who probably used the love grotto in the Tristan epic as a paragon in his description of Sigune’s and Schionatulander’s happy life together. However, none of these lovers is ready to seek alternative forms of life: Tristan and Isolde cannot live without the privileges of courtly life. Sigune and Schionatulander need aventiure, which will eventually kill Sigune’s lover. Even the later wood-carvings and tapestries showing the Wild Men reveal a lack of ability to lead a totally primitive life because the scenes are always set in a courtly
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environment. Not until Hans Sachs do these Wild Men of the Wood return to the blissful state of primitive man and reverse, at least symbolically, the process of civilization: Since the world has become so evil and full of dishonesty and lies, we have left it and now live out in the wilderness of the woods with our ignorant children. . .
H. Birkhan University of Vienna
NOTES 1. In his well-known book: iiber den ProzeB der Zivilisation, 2 vols, Bern (1969). 2. It has even been alleged that the nasal quality of the nobility’s language was due to a slavish emulation of Emperor Francis Joseph’s nasal voice, who is said to have suffered from nasal polyps. This could be a humorous example of ‘sunken cultural heritage’, but the explanation is definitely incorrect because recordings of the Emperor’s voice clearly show that his speech was not nasal. 3. The classical approach from whence the whole series of works was inspired was Gerhard Kaiser’s ‘Textauslegung und gesellschaftliche Selbstdeutung’, 2nd edn. (Wiesbaden, 1978). Among those who follow similar tracks, be they influenced by Kaiser, be they more independently inspired by the zeitgeist, I only mention Helmut Brall, Petra Giloy-Hirtz, Bernd Thum, Volker Mertens, Jan-Dirk Miiller, Horst Wenzel. Joachim Bumke, Ministerialitiit und Ritterdichtung (Miinchen, 1976), distinguished himself not so much as a critic of the overall approach of sociology and literature, but rather held that the role of the ministeriales played in these interpretations was greatly overrated. As a harbinger of the increasing interest in the official servants also in connection with literature, we should mention P. Kluckhon, Ministerialitat und Ritterdichtung, in: Zeitschriffiirdeutsches AItertum 52 (19 IO), pp. 135-168. The historian Karl Bosl, Staat, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft im deutschen Mittelalter, in Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte Z, 9th edn. (Stuttgart, 1970), did much to establish the importance of ministeriales in such research. Other forerunners of the modern sociological interpretation of literature were the eminent Romance scholar Erich Kohler, Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der hoj?schen Epik, 2nd edn. (Tubingen, 1970), and to some extent Karl Bertau, Deutsche Literatur im europdischen Mittelalter, 2 vols (Miinchen 1972sq). 4. Neidharts Lieder, ed. M. Haupt, 2nd edn., by E. Wiessner (Leipzig, 1923: reprint Stuttgart, 1986). It has been shown by Ulrich Mtiller, myself and others that songs and verses only to be found in the young manuscript c may belong to the original Neidhart-Corpus which has been identified rather rashly with that of manuscript R by Haupt and Wiessner. Manuscript c is now easily accessible: Neidhart. Die Berliner Neidhart-Handschrif c. Transkription der Texte und Melodien durch Zngrid BennewitzBehr, Giippinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 356 (198 1). 5. Cf. e.g. Petra Giloy-Hirtz, Deformation des Minnesangs (Heidelberg, 1982): H.-J. Behr, Zch gevriesch b? mAen jriren nie gebliren also geile, . . . in: Neidhart von Reuental. Aspekte einer Neubewertung. Philologica Germanica 5 (Wien, 1983), lsqq.
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6. R. Brill, Die Schule Neidharts. Eine Stiluntersuchung. Palaestra 37, (Berlin 1908). 7. K. Bertau, Neidharts ‘Bayrische Lieder’ und Wolframs ‘Willehalm’, Zeitschrtft fiir deutsches Alterturn 100 (197 l), 296sqq. 8. H. Birkhan, Neidhart von Reuental und Sigmund Freud. Allgemeines und Spezielles zur psychoanalytischen Interpretation mittelalterlicher Texte, in: Neidhart von Reuental (cf. n.S), 34sqq. But see also H. Birkhan, Neidhart von Reuentalund Sigmund Freud (Londoner Fassung). Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologic (Wien, 1983), 25sqq. 9. Cf. K. Bertau, Stil und Klage beim spaten Neidhart, Deutschunterricht 19 (1967), 76sqq. 10. Cf. Petra Herrmann, Karnevaleske Strukturen in der Neidhart-Tradition. Giippinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 406 (1984) who provides access to the works of E. Simon, E. J&t and others. 11. Der Dichter Tannhluser, ed. J. Siebert (Halle/Saale, 1934). With regard to the relationship between the two court poets cf. E. Wiessner, Die Preislieder Neidharts und des Tannhausers auf Herzog Friedrich II. von Babenberg, Zeitschrtft fiir deutsches Altertum 73 (1936), 117-130; H. Birkhan, Zur Datierung, Deutung und Gliederung einiger Lieder Neidharts von Reuental (= Sitzungsberichte der osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Kl. 273/l) (Wien-Koln, 1971). 12. Andreas Capellanus, On Love, ed. with English translation P.G. Walsh (London, 1982), 222sq. 13. Carmina Burana, ed. A. Hilka, 0. Schumann and B. Bischoff, (Miinchen, 1974), Nr. 185. 14. Deutsche Liederdichter des 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. C. v. Kraus, I, (Tubingen, 1952) 218. 15. Heinrich Wittenwiler, Der Ring, ed. E. Wiessner (Leipzig, 1931) (= Reprint 1964). 16. Le Jeu de Robert et de Marion, ed. E. Langlois, 1924. 17. Die Apokalypse Heinrichs von Hesler, ed. K. Helm, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters 8 (Berlin, 1907). 18. This seems to originate with Heinrich Frauenlob, ed. K. Stackmann and K. Bertau, I (Gottingen, 1981), 479 (VII,21). Frauenlob says: ‘A noble man is like any other man except that God bestowed sovereignty on him. But he is nothing if he does not love Honour.’ 19. Cf. G. Steer, Rulman Merswin, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, VI 1985, c.42Osqq. 20. H. Stirnimann, Nikoluus von Flue, Die deutsche Literatur (cf. n.19), c.1069sqq. 21. Des Teufels Netz, ed. K.A. Barack, Bibliothek des Stuttgarter Lit. Vereins 70 (1863). 22. Hans Sachs, ed. A.V. Keller, III. Bibliothek des Stuttgarter Lit. Vereins 104 (Tubingen, 187i)), 561sqq. 23. For the concept of nature in that period cf. e.g. Brian Stoke, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 1972). 24. Notably in VII,9 (cf. n. 18), where holz (hyle) is regarded as a hypokeimenon against which one shouldproject (in the alchemical sense) the wesen (probably in the sense of forma), thus producing the unity of creation.