[German Culture Past and Present by Ernest Belfort Bax]@TWC D-Link bookGerman Culture Past and Present PREFACE 43/57
This notion or mystical hope took increasing root during the fifteenth century, and is to be found in many respects embodied in the spurious constitutions mentioned, which bore respectively the names of the Emperors Sigismund and Friedrich. It was in this form that the Hussite theories were absorbed by the German mind.
The hopes of the Messianists of the "Holy Roman Empire" were centred at one time in the Emperor Sigismund.
Later on the role of Messiah was carried over to his successor, Friedrich III, upon whom the hopes of the German people were cast. _The Reformation of Kaiser Sigismund_, originally written about 1438, went through several editions before the end of the century, and was as many times reprinted during the opening years of Luther's movement. Like its successor, that of Friedrich, the scheme attributed to Sigismund proposed the abolition of the recent abuses of feudalism, of the new lawyer class, and of the symptoms already making themselves felt of the change from barter to money payments.
It proposed, in short, a return to primitive conditions.
It was a scheme of reform on a Biblical basis, embracing many elements of a distinctly communistic character, as communism was then understood.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|