tant of these courts--that of the Swabian League's
jurisdiction, which sat at Memmingen--in the dispute between the
prince-abbot of Kempten and his villeins is given in full in Baumann's
_Akten_, pp. 329-46. Here, however, the peasants did not come off so
badly as in some other places. Meanwhile, all the other evils of the
time, the monopolies of the merchant-princes of the cities and of the
trading-syndicates, the dearness of living, the scarcity of money,
etc., did not abate, but rather increased from year to year. The
Catholic Church maintained itself especially in the South of Germany,
and the official Reformation took on a definitely aristocratic
character.

According to Baumann (_Akten, Vorwort_, v, vi), the true soul of the
movement of 1525 consisted in the notion of "Divine justice," the
principle "that all relations, whether of political, social, or
religious nature, have got to be ordered according to the directions
of the 'Gospel' as the sole and exclusive source and standard of all
justice." The same writer maintains that there are three phases in the
development of this idea, according to which he would have the scheme
of historical investigation subdivided. In Upper Swabia, says he,
"Divine justice" found expression in the well-known "Twelve Articles,"
but here the notion of a political reformation was as good as absent.

In the second phase, the "Divine justice" idea began to be applied to
political conditions. In Tyrol and the Austrian dominions, he
observes, this political side manifested itself in local or, at best,
territorial patriotism. It was only in Franconia that all territorial
patriotism or "particularism" was shaken off and the idea of the unity
of the German peoples received as a political goal. The Franconian
influence gained over the Wuertembergers to a large extent, and the
plan of reform elaborated by Weigand and Hipler for the Heilbronn
Parliament was the most complete expression of this second phase of
the movement.

The third phase is represented by the rising in Thuringia, and
especially in its intellectual head, Thomas Muenzer. Here we have the
doctrine of "Divine justice" taking precedence of all else and
assuming the form of a thoroughgoing theocratic scheme, to be realized
by the German people.

This division Baumann is led to make with a view to the formulation of
a convenient scheme for a "codex" of documents relating to the
Peasants' War. It may be taken as, in the main, t