functions on a larger scale (especially
with reference to foreign trade), came to be regarded as particularly
obnoxious robbers, because interlopers to boot. Unlike the knights, they
were robbers with a new face.

The lawyers were detested for much the same reason (cf. _German
Society at the Close of the Middle Ages_, pp. 219-28). The
professional lawyer class, since its final differentiation from the
clerk class in general, had made the Roman or civil law its
speciality, and had done its utmost everywhere to establish the
principles of the latter in place of the old feudal law of earlier
mediaeval Europe. The Roman law was especially favourable to the
pretensions of the princes, and, from an economic point of view, of
the nobility in general, inasmuch as land was on the new legal
principles treated as the private property of the lord; over which he
had full power of ownership, and not, as under feudal and canon law,
as a _trust_ involving duties as well as rights. The class of jurists
was itself of comparatively recent growth in Central Europe, and its
rapid increase in every portion of the empire dated from less than
half a century back. It may be well understood, therefore, why these
interlopers, who ignored the ancient customary law of the country, and
who by means of an alien code deprived the poor freeholder or
copyholder of his land, or justified new and unheard-of exactions on
the part of his lord on the plea that the latter might do what he
liked with his own, were regarded by the peasant and humble man as
robbers whose depredations were, if anything, even more resented than
those of their old and tried enemy--the plundering knight.

The priest, especially of the regular orders, was indeed an old foe,
but his offence had now become very rank. From the middle of the
fifteenth century onwards the stream of anti-clerical literature waxes
alike in volume and intensity. The "monk" had become the object of
hatred and scorn throughout the whole lay world. This view of the
"regular" was shared, moreover, by not a few of the secular clergy
themselves. Humanists, who were subsequently ardent champions of the
Church against Luther and the Protestant Reformation--men such as
Murner and Erasmus--had been previously the bitterest satirists of the
"friar" and the "monk." Amongst the great body of the laity, however,
though the religious orders came in perhaps for the greater share of
animosity, the secular priesthood was no