f saga and song ring down to our prosaic and materialistic
century.

CHAPTER VI

THE COMING OF THE MASTERSINGERS

After the lofty house of Hohenstaufen had been overwhelmed with
destruction, the _interregnum_, the time of anarchy, "_the emperorless,
the terrible time_," in Schiller's words, (1250-1273), and the reign of
Rudolf of the house of Habsburg mark the beginning of the era of the
decline in German culture. Princes and nobles had long ago ceased to
sing, for between arms the Muses are silent. Tenderness and refinement
of feeling gradually drifted into the commonplace if not into downright
coarseness. We are obliged to record a cheerless period of mediocrity
and degradation lasting almost four centuries, though, of course,
interwoven here and there with illuminating stars that shoot up to the
heavens from this dreary waste, and continuing until about the middle of
the eighteenth century, when the second classical bloom came into
florescence and intensified strongly the classical era of the Middle
Ages.

The decline that found its perigee in the period of the Mastersingers
went on gradually. It was the result of various political and social
causes. The aesthetic ideals, because of which in the time of the
Hohenstaufens women were revered, vanished. With the decadence of
culture superstition asserted itself more strongly. Women were burned as
witches; and the general references to them in the literature of the
period of decline are usually vulgar, and not infrequently obscene.
Refined deportment toward women ceased. Saint Ruffian (_Sanct
Grobianus_) became the idol of the era of decadence, and the vulgarities
of _Till Eulenspiegel_ furnished amusement. "Shamelessness celebrated a
boisterous carnival." The classics alone, though diluted by pitiful
scholasticism until rescued and raised to a higher plane by the
Humanists of the Renaissance, became the only oasis in the dreary waste
of the decadence.

In most of the cities that were centres of intellectual life, the
plebeians arose and replaced the formerly highly cultured patricians.
The burghers began to tune the melodies of a new music: a banausic
artisan song. The comic anecdote and the dramatic farce pleased the
people best and, therefore, prevailed. There was a general delight in
comical, farcical roles, and such elements were even introduced into
religious plays. For example, Saint Mary complains that she has no
diapers to protect the Holy Child f