s, or singers of
love songs, and as early as the middle of the twelfth century
the minnesingers were already a powerful factor in the life
of the epoch, counting among their number many great nobles
and kings. The German minnesingers differed from the French
troubadours in that they themselves accompanied their songs on
the viol, instead of employing _jongleurs_. Their poems, written
in the Swabian dialect, then the court language of Germany,
were characterized by greater pathos and purity than those of
the troubadours, and their longer poems, corresponding to the
_chansons de geste_ of the north of France, were also superior
to the latter in point of dignity and strength. From the French
we have the "Song of Roland" (which William the Conqueror's
troops sang in their invasion of England); from the Germans the
"Nibelungen Song," besides Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival"
and Gottfried von Strasburg's "Tristan." In contradistinction
to the poetry of the troubadours, that of the minnesingers
was characterized by an undercurrent of sadness which seems
to be peculiar to the Germanic race. The songs are full of
nature and the eternal strife between Winter and Summer and
their prototypes Death and Life (recalling the ancient myths
of Maneros, Bacchus, Astoreth, Bel, etc.).

After the death of Konrad IV, the last Swabian emperor of the
House of Hohenstaufen, minnesinging in Germany declined, and
was succeeded by the movement represented by the _meister_ or
mastersingers. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when Germany was broken up into countless small duchies and
kingdoms, many of the German nobles became mere robbers and took
part in the innumerable little wars which kept the nation in
a state of ferment. Thus they had neither time nor inclination
to occupy themselves with such pursuits as poetry or music. In
the meanwhile, however, the incessant warfare and brigandage
that prevailed in the country tended to drive the population
to the cities for protection. The latter grew in size, and
little by little the tradespeople began to take up the arts
of poetry and music which had been discarded by the nobles.

Following their custom in respect to their trades, they formed
the art companies into guilds, the rules for admittance to which
were very strict. The rank of each member was determined by
his skill in applying the rules of the "Tabulatur," as it was
called. There were five grades of membership: the lowest