led men into the greatest follies. For
instance, Pierre Vidal of Toulouse went about on all-fours in a wolfs
skin, in honour of his lady, till he was beaten and bitten almost to
death by the shepherds and sheep dogs; and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who
rode through the whole country in woman's clothes, challenging all the
knights, and had his finger and upper lip cut off in honour of his
lady, drank the water in which she had washed, and when he returned
from his expeditions, was nursed by his wife. These are not the worst
examples of the horrible eccentricities to which this knightly devotion
led. The result was such as might be expected,--the glitter of romance
soon disappeared, and coarse profligacy remained in its nakedness.

The Church did little to improve this state of things. There were
individual popular preachers who courageously advocated marriage and
chastity, but it was at this very time that the celibacy of the secular
clergy was established, and that the mass of the people were reduced to
bondage by the feudal lords. The purity of marriage and the happiness
of families were not promoted either by the position of the village
priest living in his parish without a legal wife, nor by that of the
proprietor who had to give his sanction to marriages, received tribute
on account of them, and even laid shameful claims on the person of the
bride.

On the other hand there arose in the cities a fresh and vigorous life,
and from the fourteenth century, the citizens became the best
representatives of German cultivation and manners, as once the
ecclesiastics had been, and afterwards the nobles. Owing to the close
proximity of the dwellings in the city, and the smallness of their
houses, the intercourse between man and woman became more strictly
defined, and on the whole a practical sound conception of life took the
place of chivalrous fancies; citizen habits followed courtly manners;
ladies were won by cautious wooing instead of by daring heroic deeds;
maidenly modesty attracted more than haughty assumption; instead of the
wild knightly life of the nobles, which frequently separated man and
wife, and violently severed the marriage tie, the woman now obtained a
quiet sway in the well-regulated house, and the bold courtesy of the
knight was replaced by a considerate, though strictly regulated and
sometimes rather formal, expression of heartfelt esteem.

The conception of propriety and purity was different, however, from