¹ Dwaine, Brandt, ‘The city of Magdeburg before and after the Reformation: a study in the process of historical change’, unpubl. PhD diss., Washington, University Microfilms 1975, 75, 79.Google Scholar

² Heinrich, Boos, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Worms, Berlin 1890, ii. 573.Google Scholar

³ Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte (hereinafter cited as CDS), Leipzig 1882, xviii. 209. The Limburg chronicle has a similar tale to tell. The Rhenish cities from Frankfurt to Mainz and those in Swabian territory ‘all made a league…and some cities undertook to oppress the clergy, foundations and monasteries greatly’Google Scholar: Karl Rossel (ed.), ‘Die Limburger Chronik des Johannes’, Annalen des Vereins fur nassauische Altertumskunde und Geschichtsforschung vi (1859), 477–8.Google Scholar

⁴ Hennes, J. H., Die Erzbischöfe von Mainz. Nebst der politischen und militärischen Geschichte der Stadt, Mainz 1879, 197–200.Google Scholar

⁵ Christoph, Lehmann, Chronica der Freyn Reichs Statt Speyr, Frankfurt-am-Main 1612, 890.Google Scholar

⁶ Münster-im-Westfalen 1916. Störmann's pioneering work concentrated chiefly on grievances against fiscal exactions by clerical powers and particularly the papacy. Neither his nor the fine studies by Lühe, W. and Harvey, A. E. on the link between piety and individual debt in the towns of the Empire recognises the importance of municipal debt as a source of conflict with the clergy or examines a wide range of other inflammatory factorsGoogle Scholar: Harvey, A. E., ‘Economic self-interest in the German anti-clericalism of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, The American Journal of Theology xix (1915), 512–15Google Scholar; Lühe, W., ‘Die Ablösung der ewigen Zinsen in Frankfurt am Main in den Jahren 1522–1562’, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst xxiii (1904), 36–47.Google Scholar

⁷ The most up-to-date bibliographical survey is to be found in Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Pfaffenkriege im spätmittelalterrlichen Hanseraum, 2 vols, Cologne–Vienna 1989, i. pp. xix–lix, 6–13.Google Scholar

⁸ All these cities lie in western Germany save Magdeburg.

⁹ Even a small town like Colmar, dwarfed by the larger communities on which this study is primarily based, went through periods of dramatic confrontation with its clergy: Dieter Demandt,’ Konflikte um die geistlichen Standesprivilegien im spätmittelalterlichen Colmar’, in Ingrid Batori (ed.), Städtische Gesellschaft und Reformation, Stuttgart 1980, 43.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Karl, Trüinger, Stadt und Kirche im spdtmittelalterlichen Würzburg, Stuttgart 1978, 24.Google Scholar

¹¹ Schaab, K. H., Geschichte des grossen Rheinischen Stadtebundes von 1254, 2 vols, Mainz 1845, ii. 48.Google Scholar

¹² In Frankfurt, Osnabriick and Münster the troubles of that year began for each city with the entry of mobs into monasteries and the clergy's private houses to eat and drink their fillGoogle Scholar: Otthein, Rammstedt, ‘Stadtunruhen 1525’, in Hans-Ulrich, Wehler (ed.), Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524–1526, Göttingen 1975, 251. In Mainz the mob drank almost two-thirds of the 100,000 litre wine tub holding the reserves of the Cistercian abbey of EberbachGoogle Scholar: Struck, Wolf-Heino, ‘Mittelrhein’, in Horst Buszello and others (eds), Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, Paderborn 1984, 183Google Scholar. See also Cohn, Henry J., ‘Anticlericalism in the German Peasants’ War 1525', Past and Present lxxxiii (1979), 17–18, 24.Google Scholar

¹³ Marianne, Gechter, Kirche und Klerus in der sladtkölnischen Wirtschafl im Spädtmittelalter, Wiesbaden 1983, 106.Google Scholar

¹⁴ There were even more in the sixteenth century: Fritz, Hermann, Die evangelische Bewegung zu Mainz im Reformationszeitalter, Mainz 1907, I n. IGoogle Scholar; Carl, Hegel, Die Verfassungsgeschichte von Mainz, Leipzig 1882, 193–4.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Reinhard, Vogelsang, Stadt und Kirche im mittelalterlichen Göttingen, Göttingen 1968, 17Google Scholar; Max, Jähns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften. Erste Abtheilung, Munich 1889, 688 n. I.Google Scholar

¹⁶ In the early thirteenth century the Naumburg immunity consisted of the cathedral, its courtyard and the cathedral curia. By 1402 it embraced personal servants, squires and maids ‘all of whom have come to inherit the freedom’: Rietschel, S., ‘Die engere Immunitat’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (hereinafter cited as VSWG) ix (1911), 214–15.Google Scholar

¹⁷ In Cologne the number of servants to the clerical community was as high as the number of clerics themselves, at 1,600 each in the late sixteenth century: Kellenbenz, H., ‘Zur Sozialstruktur der rheinischen Bischofsstädte in der frühen Neuzeit’, in F. Petri (ed.), Bischofs- und Kathedralstädte des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Cologne 1976, 125.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Georg, Kriegk, Frankfurter Bürgerzwiste, und zustände im Mittelalter, Frankfurt-am-Main 1862, 105 n. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Struck, ‘Mittelrhein’, 181; Hermann, , Evangelische Bewegung, 2Google Scholar; Hubert, Höing, Kloster und Stadt. Vergleichende Beiträge zum Verhältnis Kirche und Stadt im Spätmittelalter dargestellt besonders am Beispiel der Fraterherren in Münster, Münster 1981, 141.Google Scholar

²⁰ The mid fifteenth-century German reformer Nicholas of Cusa saw in mortmain, the inalienability of church land when once acquired, a danger no less mortal to the Church than to the cities affected by its cancer. In his view it led to an excessive accumulation of ecclesiastical property and in turn to an economically motivated rush into the priesthood. The priesthood itself was then devalued in the eyes of the world. His solution: to put the church's property in the hands of the lay power: Heinrich, Werner, ‘Kirchen- und sozialpolitische Publizistik im Mittelalter’, Deutsche Geschichtsblätter vi (1903), 106–7.Google Scholar

²¹ The later Middle Ages are filled with urban legislation, overwhelmingly unavailing, aimed at preventing the spread of mortmain: Höing, , Kloster und Stadt, 143. The councils were frustrated not only by the hostility of the clergy but by their own citizens’ desire for salvation. Mainz's efforts to stop the spread of mortmain with retroactive legislation contributed to its clergy's decision to leave the city in 1382: Stadtarchiv Mainz, 19 Sept. 1382.Google Scholar

²² Anton, Brück, Mainz vom Verlust der Stadtfreiheit bis zum Ende des Dreissigjährigen Krieges (1462–1648), Dusseldorf 1972, 12Google Scholar; Heinrich, Schrohe, Die Stadt Mainz unter kurfürstlicher Verwaltung (1462–1792), Mainz 1920, 122.Google Scholar

²³ Ernst, Voltmer, Reichsstadt und Herrschqft. Zur Geschichte der Stadt Speyer im hohen und späten Mittelalter, Trier 1981, 133–4.Google Scholar

²⁴ Frankfurt's interest payments in 1410 required the expenditure of 15,109 pounds heller or slightly over 12,000 gulden at the then prevailing exchange rate: Hegel, Verfassungsgeschichte, 91.

²⁵ Scribner, R. W., ‘Civic unity and the Reformation in Erfurt’, Past and Present lxvi (1975), 33Google Scholar; Boss, , Städtekultur, ii, 308–9.Google Scholar

²⁶ Eugen, Mack, Die Kirchen- und Reichsgesetzgebung über die geistliche Steuerfreiheit, im späteren Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1916, 17–18.Google Scholar

²⁷ Herbert, Natale, Das Verhältnis des Klerus zur Stadtgemeinde im spätmittelalterlichen Frankfurt, Diss., Frankfurt-am-Main 1957, 34.Google Scholar

²⁸ Dieter, Demandt and Christoph, Rublack, Stadt und Kirche in Kitzingen, Stuttgart 1978, 24.Google Scholar As the authors admit the evidence for this claim is not conclusive: ibid.

²⁹ E. Windeckes Denkwurdigkeiten zur Geschichte des zeitalters Sigismunds, ed. W. Altmann, Berlin 1893, 348–50.

³⁰ Seidenberger, J. B., ‘Die kirchenpolitische Literatur unter Ludwig dem Baiern und die Zunftkämpfe vornehmlich in Mainz’, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst viii (1889). 93–103.Google Scholar

³¹ Bernd, Moeller, Reichsstadt und Reformation, Gütersloh 1962, 9.Google Scholar Of the cities whose names feature most heavily in this study Mainz and Cologne remained in the Catholic fold, while Frankfurt, Magdeburg, Speyer, Strassburg and Worms turned Protestant. In Mainz opposition to the burning of Luther's books was so strong that the ceremony had to be called off in humiliating circumstances before an angry crowd in November 1520: Hermann, , Bewegung, 115–20.Google Scholar The citizens of Cologne were by no means all enemies of the Reform either; however, as in Mainz, their views were not the sole factor determining the city's religious development: Scribner, R. W., ‘Why was there no Reformation in Cologne’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xlix (1976), 235, 217–25.Google Scholar

³² See Brück, , Mainz, 22.Google Scholar

³³ They became, with the bishops and the Roman curia, the butt of the humanist satirists and moralists. See in particular Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, Pfaffenhass und Grossgeschrei. Die reformatorischen Bewegungen in Deutschland 1517–1529, Munich 1987, 54.Google Scholar

³⁴ Reuter, J. G., Albansgulden oder kurze Geschichte des Ritterstiftes zwn heil. Alban bey Mainz. 2. Teil: Urkundenbuch, Mainz 1790, 54–8.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid. 59.

³⁶ Fritz, Hermann, ‘Aus der Mainzer Chronik des Hebelin von Heimbach’, in Eduard Anthes (ed.), Beiträge zur Hessischen Kirchengeschichte. Neue Folge. Ergänzungsband 3, Darmstadt 1909, 198–201.Google Scholar

³⁷ The use of vicars developed swiftly in the thirteenth century simultaneously with the expanding use of private lodgings by the clerics who employed them: Ludwig, Falck, Mainz imfrühen und hohen Mittelalter (Mitte 5. Jahrhundert bis 1244), Düsseldorf 1972, 167.Google Scholar

³⁸ Gregor Hövelmann (ed.), Niederrheinische Kirchengeschichte, Kevelaer 1965, 60.

³⁹ These interests were by the late fifteenth century almost entirely financial as a perusal of the thirteen folio sheets of the 1459 electoral capitulation of Archbishop Diether von Isenburg reveals: Bayer, Staatsarchiv Wurzburg, Mainz Domkap. Urk. Libell 2 (1459). Already in the first half of the fourteenth century the cathedral chapter had wrested the wholly uncanonical concession from its archbishop that it should be exempt from synodal decrees as well as carte blanche to be non-resident: Manfred, Stimming, Die Wahlkapitulalionen der Erzbischöfe und Kurfürsten von Mainz (1233–1788), Diss., Göttingen 1909, 31.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Brandt, ‘Magdeburg’, 98.

⁴¹ The importance of these aristocratic connections should not be underrated. Bishop Lamprecht of Strassburg (1371–4) lacked them and, as a contemporary observed, paid a terrible price: ‘Because he was neither count nor baron he was so hated by all nobles that he became defenceless and could not protect his territory’: Wilhelm, Kothe, Kirchliche Zustände Strassburgs im 14. Jahrhundert, Freiburg-im-Breisgau 1903, 23.Google Scholar By practising nepotism and allowing several members of the same noble or princely family to hold benefices simultaneously it was not difficult for the chapters to build up formidable external support: ibid. 11–12.

⁴² Irmtraud, Liebeherr, Der Besitz des Mainzer Domkapitels im Spälmittelalter, Mainz 1971, 61Google Scholar

⁴³ Kothe, , Strassburg, 16–17.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Some elements of the city communities would not have given a fig for the clergy's departure, as the following late medieval ballad reveals. The Würzburg guild leader Kraus Proclaims: ‘If mass were never sung, / That would not weigh heavily with me.’ / With this his colleague Hans Sensenschmidt agrees: ‘I wouldn't give a pound / To have it all sung and read / That could happen for thirty years / At Würzburg here in our city / We'll eat and drink our fill all the same / Unsung and unread’Google Scholar: Liliencron, R. von, Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1865, i. 171. Such individuals are unlikely to have ever been more than a small minority.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For a typical such union see Stadtarchiv Mainz, 19 Sept. 1382.

⁴⁶ Heinrich, Boos, Geschichte der rheinischen Städtekultur, Berlin 1897, ii. 250–1.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Josef, Wiesehoff, Die Stellung der Bettelorden in den deutschen freien Reichsstädten im Mitlelalter, Leipzig 1905, 24.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid. 107.

⁴⁹ Of forty-eight surviving Strassburg wills from the period 1289–1332 twenty-four make grants to the Dominicans and twenty-one to the Franciscans, only twenty making a grant to neither: Kothe, Strassburg, 91. By the fifteenth century the Brethren of the Common Life began to make ground in the hearts of their host towns at the expense of the mendicants: Theodor, Apel, ‘Stadt und Kirche im mittelalterlichen Marburg’, Zeitschrift der Savigny – Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung xii (1922), 246–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Francis, Rapp, ‘Die Mendikanten und die Strassburger Gesellschaft am Ende des Mittelalters.’, in Kaspar Elm (ed.), Stellung und Wirksamkeit der Bettelorden in der städtischen Gesellschaft, Berlin 1981, 92.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ludwig, Falck, Mainz in seiner Blütezeit alsfreie Stadt (1244–1328), Düsseldorf 1973, 20.Google Scholar

⁵² Isabel, Grübel, Bettelorden und Frauenfrümmigkeit im 13. Jahrhundert. Das Verhältnis der Mendikanten zu Monnenklöstern und Beginen am Beispiel Strasburg und Basel, Munich 1987, 31.Google Scholar

⁵³ Already in 1300 the mendicant orders were enjoying the peace of the city of Mainz: Dieter, Demandt, Stadtherrscha.fi und Stadtfreiheit im Spannungsfeld von Geistlichkeit und Bürgerschaft in Mainz (11.–15. Jahrhundert), Wiesbaden 1977, 116.Google Scholar In Worms the mendicants were rewarded with citizenship in 1385 for their support in the city's struggle with the rich foundations: Friedrich Zorn Wormser Chronik, ed. Wilhelm Arnold, Stuttgart 1857, 148.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ The bishops, jealous of their authority, were more prepared to support their subordinate parish clergy than the independent mendicants. In 1254–5 the archbishop of Mainz repeatedly stepped in to protect the ecclesiastical business of his parish clergy from their encroachments: Wiesehoff, Beltelorden, 21.

⁵⁵ Wormser, Chronik, 154. The resulting settlement of 1407 was less satisfactory than those of 1386 and 1509, which were won after long interdicts with the full support of the mendicants throughout: Wiesehoff, Bettelorden, 107–8.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Analecta Franciscana ii (1887), 209, 215, cited ibid. 97.

⁵⁷ Ibid. 114.

⁵⁸ Störmann, Gravamina, 154.

⁵⁹ Schaab, Stätebund, ii. no. 322.

⁶⁰ Bayer Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich, Mainzer Urkunden 4474.

⁶¹ Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 116, 124–5, 133–4.

⁶² Natale, Frankfurt, 31–2. There can be no greater contrast to the sheer professionalism of Frankfurt council's assault on the privileges of its clergy than Speyer council, which found itself repeatedly duped through its self-confessed lack of learning: Voltmer, Speyer, 158.

⁶³ Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 133–4.

⁶⁴ CDS xviii. 62; Erler, A., Die Mainzer Stiftsfehde 1459–63 im Spiegel mittelalterlicher Rechtsgutachten, Wiesbaden, 1963, 10.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ An excellent survey is Elisabeth, Rütimeyer, Stadtherr und Stadtherrschqft in den rheinischen Bischofsstädten. Ihr Kampf urn die Hoheitsrechte im Hochmittelalter (VSWG Beiheft XIII), Stuttgart 1928.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ As good an introduction as any to the issues commonly at stake is the answer of the council of Mainz of 1443 to the complaints levelled against the city by Archbishop Dietrich: Stadtarchiv Mainz 1443 Dez 4. Dietrich had among other things laid claim to an ‘imperium directum et utile’ over a city which was then celebrating its 199th year of independence.

⁶⁷ ‘One should resist the bishop, fight him, risk life and goods, die and recover rather than do such a thing. So swore rich and poor together.’ Thus a contemporary of the bitterness engendered among the people of Augsburg by their bishop's mid-fifteenth century struggle over the courts, the keys to the city, financial and other matters: Störmann, Gravamina, 301.

⁶⁸ All the archbishops of Cologne from the mid-thirteenth century onwards were drawn from the cathedral chapter. Roughly two-thirds of the archbishops of Mainz and Trier in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages were likewise local cathedral canons. The third who came from elsewhere were papal nominees. This was most untypical. From the twelfth century in general the cathedral chapters of the empire were free to choose their bishops without external interference: Wilhelm, Kisky, Die Domkapitel der geistlichen Kurfürsten in ihrer persönlichen Zusammensetzung im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, Weimar 1906, 8–12.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ As for instance the patrician brothers zum Widenhofe, who entered Archbishop Johann II's service in 1412: Würdtwein, S. A., Nova subsidia diplomatica, Heidelberg 1781–1792, iv. 314.Google Scholar The same archbishop made a determined attempt to regain sovereignty over the city of Mainz at the Council of Constance in 1416: Huckert, E., Die Politik der Stadt Mainz während der Regierungszeit des Erzbischofs Johann II, Mainz 1878, 101.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Wormser Chronik, 154.

⁷¹ For vehement protests about the use of the latter by the Mainz clergy see Schaab, , Stddtebund, ii. no. 322.Google Scholar

⁷² The Mainz chapter passed such a statute in 1326, Speyer in 1309, Cologne and Trier even earlier: Falck, Blütezeit, 151; Voltmer, Speyer, 106.

⁷³ For the degree of patrician penetration of monasteries in Strasburg see Rapp, F., Reformes et Reformation à Strasbourg: église et société dans le diocèse de Strasbourg 1450–1525, Paris 1974, 285.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Boulay, F. Du, Germany in the Later Middle Ages, London 1983, 189.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ The majority of the monks of St Thomas's and of St Peter's in Strassburg were the sons of rich patrician dynasties: Kothe, Strassburg, 82–3. It was in general easier for the urban aristocracy to provide for their daughters in this way than their sons.

⁷⁶ In a political poem of the period the following words are put into the mouth of a Würzburg guildsman: ‘When we drive the priests out / And become lords in the monasteries, / When we make our sons deacons, / They will scarce laugh then. / Let's lay a hand on the sisters’ houses. / Our daughters belong therein / That will do us all little harm / We want to be spared the nobility / All their corn and wine / That must be our own.’: Liliencron, Volkslieder, i. 171.

⁷⁷ Such posts were both numerous and ill-paid. At the parish church of Ulm in c. 1500 fifty-seven individuals received payment for the masses they said for their taskmasters under formal contract: Gottfried, Geiger, Die Reichsstadt Ulm vor der Reformation. Städtisches und kirchliches Leben am Ausgang des Mittelalters, Ulm 1971, 87. These men of humble origin who read the masses received only a small fraction of the money paid in the contract, or Seelgerälhe, the bulk of which went to the parish priest or, in the case of the cathedral, the often non-resident canons. With little incentive to do work for which others received most of the reward these individuals often let it come to a court case before they performed the contracted masses: Kothe, Strassburg, 110–11.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Hermann, Meinert, Frankfurts Geschichte, Frankfurt-am-Main 1977, 30, 40.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Achill, , Augusti von Lersner, Nachgeholte, vermehrte und continuierte Chronica der weltberühmten freyen Reichs- Wahl- und Handelsstadt Franckfurth am Main. 2. Teil, Frankfurt-am-Main 1734, 343–5Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Natale, Frankfurt, 15.

⁸¹ Ibid. 34ff; Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 134ff.

⁸² Hennes, , Erzbischöfe, 198. The city was still struggling with the financial consequences of its action in 1443: Stadtarchiv Mainz, 1443 Dez. 4, fo. 31.Google Scholar

⁸³ A contemporary polemic put the blame for the severe financial troubles of the early fifteenth century firmly on the war policy the guilds had supported in the past: ‘thus the people of Mainz entered the war without the advice of our friends…through which action the city has come into great debt, in which it unfortunately still remains’: CDS xvii, 373. The cost of the preparations the city was forced to make in 1444 on account of the Armagnac threat added further to the city's difficulties sixteen years after this polemic was written: Seidenberger, ‘Kirchenpolitische Literatur’, 110.

⁸⁴ The system of dues is outlined in great detail in a contemporary manuscript: Bayer. Staatsarchiv Würzburg, Mainz Bücher versch. Inh. 2. The principal levies were on wine [fos 14–16V] and corn [fos 22V–25].

⁸⁵ This was a hammer blow to the prosperity of the city. These families represented by far the greatest potential reserves of taxable revenue to be tapped in the city. In late medieval Constance 143 families held 76% of the property in the city: Gerd, Wunder, ‘Die Sozialstruktur der Reichsstadt Schwäbisch Hall im Spätmittelalter’, in Theodor Mayer (ed.), Unlersuchungen zur gesellschaftlichen Struktur der mittelalterlichen Städte in Europa, Stuttgart 1966, 30.Google Scholar The livelihood of the armies of servants went along with the departing Geschlechter. For the number of servants in the German cities see Czacharowski, A., ‘Forschungen über die sozialen Schichten in den Städten des deutschen Ordenslandes’, in B. Diestelkamp (ed.), Beiträge zum spätmittelalterlichen Städtewesen, Cologne 1982, 104, 126–7.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ The great urban families of the empire often married outside their own cities, supplementing far-flung business contacts with ties of kinship to their like in other cities: Wunder, ‘Schwäbisch Hall’, 36 n. 30; F. Irsigler, Die wirtschaftliche Stellung der Stadt Köln im 14. und 75. Jahrhundert, (VSWG Beiheft XIII), 1979, 286, map 7 and text.

⁸⁷ Seidenberger, J. B., ‘Die Kämpfe der Mainzer Zünfte gegen die Geistlichkeit und Geschlechter im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert’, Historisches Jahrbuch ix (1888), 3;Google ScholarFischer, J., Frankfurt und die Bürgerunruhen in Mainz 1332–1462, Mainz 1958, 27.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ It was not just the departing families’ servants who found themselves without a living but the luxury craftsmen and ordinary suppliers to their households. In 1332 the Mainz cloth dealers, glove-makers, canvas workers and jerkin-makers formed independent guilds. By 1444 they had disappeared, as had other guilds whose survival was closely linked to the fortunes of the wealthy: Seidenberger, 15. Jahrhundert, 20 n. 1.

⁸⁹ CDS xvii, 55 n. 1.

⁹⁰ The fraction of Mainz's revenues needed to service the city debt soared from one half in early century to three-quarters in 1437. From 1410–36 the city's income fell by almost a quarter: Fischer, Frankfurt, 31.

⁹¹ Demandt, Stadtherrschafl, 141.

⁹² In this way they would ease the ‘debt with which the honourable city is burdened at this time’: CDS xvii, 326.

⁹³ CDS xvii, 339. The clergy had long made a habit of using interdicts in private disputes, disrupting the life of a whole community because of a quarrel, usually of a financial nature, with a few of its members. In August 1423 the archbishop of Mainz insisted this practice should stop in his see: Stadtarchiv Darmstadt, A2 (Alt) Mainz Generalia 1423 Aug. 31 [fiche 516], fo. 3. This case, in which the chapter's quarrel was with the council, would have justified the use of ecclesiastical sanctions.

⁹⁴ As the cathedral chapter of Verden observed in the thirteenth century, canon law decreed ‘that no secular judge has the power of judging any cleric for any crime, unless he is first convicted of the alleged crime before his bishop’ and then formally handed over to the secular authorities: Konrad Hoffman, Die engere Immunität in deutschen Bisckofsstädten im Mittelalter, Paderborn 1914, 15.

⁹⁵ Occasionally a small triumph was possible, as when Mainz forced the nunnery of St Mary Magdalen to abandon plans to take a citizen before the archiepiscopal court in 1416 by preventing it from baking bread until it showed a change of heart: Huckert, Politik, 101. In 1424 the city went one further and won the right to arrest clerical offenders from the archbishop, but not the right to try them: Heinrich, Schrohe, Mainz in seinen Beziehungenzu den deutschen Königen und den Erzbischöfen der Stadt bis zum Untergang der Sladtfreiheit (1462), Mainz 1915, 175.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Vogelsang, , Göttingen, 60Google Scholar; Jürgen, Lindenberg, Stadt und Kirche im spätmittelalterlichen Hildesheim, Hildesheim 1963, 60.Google Scholar In 1382 the councils of Hannover, Lüneburg, Goslar, Brunswick and Hildesheim agreed not to cite each other's citizens before ecclesiastical courts: ibid. 67.

⁹⁷ Hans, Knies and Fritz, Hermann, Die Protokolle des Mainzer Domkapitels, Erster Band. Die Protokolle aus der Zeit 1450–1488, Darmstadt 1976, 380.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Hoffmann, Immunität, 35.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Wormser Chronik, 150; Kriegk, Bürgerzwiste, 108–9.

¹⁰⁰ Wiesehoff, Bettelorden, 49.

¹⁰¹ Schaab, Städtebund, ii, no. 322. The fruit trees were still the subject of bitter contention over twenty years later: Stadtarchiv Mainz, 1458 Mai 8.

¹⁰² Bernd, Moeller, ‘Kleriker als Bürger’, in Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte (ed.), Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel, 3 vols, Göttingen 1971–2, ii. 210 n. 92.Google Scholar For an introduction to Geiler's work see Jane, E.Douglas, D., Justification in late medieval preaching: a study of John Geiler of Keiserberg, Leiden 1966.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Lindenberg, Hildesheim, 20.

¹⁰⁴ Opladen, P., Gross St. Martin. Geschichte einer stadtkölnischen Abtei, Düsseldorf 1954, 44.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Strauss, G., Manifestations of discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, London 1971, 140.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ In a letter of 12 Jan. 1432 a papal legate crystallised his anxiety for the future of Germany, remarking ‘it is much to be feared that unless the clerics amend their ways the lay community will rise against the entire clergy after the manner of the Hussites, as they say in public’. He of course exaggerated. But his comment deserves reflection: Goodrich, F., Beiträge zur Geschichte der öffentlichen Meinung in Deutschland um die Wende des xv. Jahrhunderts, Halle 1893, 8 n. 119.Google Scholar