252 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



English and French plays, they are inserted for illustra- 

 tration ; they are a few among the many sources from 

 which a conception of mediseval Catholicism can be 

 drawn, even to its smaller dramatic details. 



But beyond the intellectual value of the mediaeval 

 factor to modern culture, has not the study of the life of 

 the Middle Ages a practical value for to-day ? Is there 

 not much directly bearing on our great machine age 

 which can be learnt from the old religious socialism ? 

 For our capitalistic society may not it be suggestive 

 to study a civilisation in which labour had not been 

 reduced to a market commodity, nor the craftsman to a 

 tool ? The self-assertion of the individual was in those 

 days checked by a strong religious sense ; the awe of 

 an active ecclesiastical system prevented the anti-social 

 from complete domination over the weaker and more 

 ignorant. 1 Protestant writers are apt to treat the 

 Keformation as if its first and greatest effect was the 

 freedom of the intellect from the tyranny of dogma. 

 This may have been an after-effect, but that it was not 

 the aim of the Eeformers themselves their treatment of 

 Erasmus and Servetus amply testifies. The first and 

 greatest effect of the Reformation was the destruction, 



1 In this respect the Canon Law compares favourably with the Roman Law, 

 the spread of which was one of the causes of the Peasant War. The extent to 

 which the Church, even in the fifteenth century, endeavoured to hold in check 

 the oppressors of the poor and weak is manifest in the confessional books of the 

 period. Not only usurers and false traders were denounced, but princes and 

 magistrates boldly reproved. It may suffice to mention, among many instances, 

 Der Spiegel des Sunders (Augsburg, c. 1470) and Daf, Licht der Sele (Liibeck, 

 1484). Both, in small part only, are reprinted in Geffcken, Der Bildercate- 

 chismus des filnfzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1855). In this respect Luther 

 remained true to Catholic traditions, and a study of his sermons (e.g. Von 

 Kauffslmndlung und Wucher, 1524) would surprise many as showing him more of 

 a socialist than the most advanced of the moderns. 



