In the early 1550s, the Nuremberg Meistersinger Georg Hager wrote:

Wer brauchen wil die löblich kunst, von einem meister sol ers leren,

Nicht von einem winckel[1] fechter; sunst hatt er die kunst nicht mit eren[2].

Which translates as:

Who wants to use the praised art shall learn it from a master,

Not from a bazaar fencer, else he has the art without honours.

Andre Paurnfeyndt in the first printed Fechtbuch of 1516 had written:

So du von ainem maiſter ſchwercz oder von ainem vermerten[3] freifechter lerñſt,

vnd nit von den winckel fechterñ

als wan ain plinter den anderñ furt vnd fallen ped in graben.

Which translates as:

May you learn from a sword master or from a sworn Freifechter,

And not from one of those bazaar fencers

as if one blind man leads another and they both fall into the ditch

The first obvious difference is that Paurnfeyndt straight out says that a Winkel­fechter will not teach you well; Hager’s approach is different – he acknowledges you may learn the art, but there is another quality that the student will lack.

Noble Honour

To translate the final phrase “sunst hatt er die kunst nicht mit eren” with the meaning of “else he has the art dishonourably” or “else he has the art but [the art is] without honour” in my view misses an essential element of “eren” (which is, after all in the plural).

The concept of “honour” in the innumerate, singulare tantum form emphasises the personal self-worth aspect, a condition which is binary (you have it or you don’t) rather than a palette of elements where “an honour” can be added or subtracted. The nobility’s identity tended to be closely linked with this concept of honour – loss of honour entailed loss of nobility and vice-versa[4].

In the Vorrede to the Zettel – 14th C and clearly addressed to the young nobleman – “ere” (in the singular) is mentioned twice in the first six (short) lines, as is “lere”; “kunst” is mentioned once[5]. No doubt, Hager was consciously and deliberately evoking the Zettel.

Bourgeois Honour

Considering that the Fechtmeister of the 16th Century were exploiting the desire of commoners on the make to elevate themselves to the nobility, it is entirely plausible that Hager’s verse feeds into this arriviste attitude[6]. However, bourgeois honour had its own nature and roots; additionally, members of the guilds would be betraying the system that elevated, protected and supported them[7] by patronising the Winkelfechter.

Ann Tlusty demonstrates that the notion of “bourgeois honour” is closely wrapped up with a free individual’s right to bear arms, and his actually wearing them as outward mark of his free status[8]. In the very rural Swiss estate (canton) of Appenzell Innerrhoden, cantonal votes and elections are since probably 1378 held by public assembly on the last Sunday in April on the Landsgemeindeplatz in Appenzell; male voters carry a side-arm to show their eligibility to vote[9]. These facts demonstrate the close connection between arms (especially swords), honour and status, and by extension skill in using them, but don’t as such help in interpreting the Vers.

With membership and office in guilds and other civic associations came eligibility for, and elevation to, civic office[10]. Civic office was not just an honour, it required honour and brought honour[11]. The 15th C had still seen constant warfare and epidemics, naturally thinning the ruling stratum and so allowing for social advancement. The 16th C brought stability, and a different phenomenon: The professionalisation of the ruling stratum; while a suitable pedigree may have been important for office, it was no longer the sole or even determining factor – proven competence became relevant. In Zurich, remuneration for councillors’ attending sessions was introduced to enable the not independently wealthy to participate in council business, and there was a conscious policy to appoint up-and-coming talent to lucrative positions so they could amass enough wealth to qualify for higher office[12].

How this worked in detail is not clear[13]; that the dynamic existed is emphasised by the preoccupation of law and literature with the opposite effect, the loss of honour. Early medieval criminal law saw a criminal accusation against an individual as a matter of honour for the whole clan, which either cleansed itself (including the perpetrator) by paying blood money, or fell into collective dishonour[14]. The modernisation of criminal law saw the individualisation of guilt and the removal of the option to liquidate the guilt through a blood money payment, while at the same time crystallising the dishonouring of the individual through mutilation[15]. The humanisation of criminal law in the 17 and 1800s saw the gradual abolition of mutilation, but its replacement with specific Ehrenstrafen[16] – with ultimately the same, and the same intended, effect: the individual’s bürgerlicher Tod (civic death)[17].

The obsession with social honours as a precondition for civic honours reached its apogee in the hothouse atmosphere of post-1848 Prussia and the Second Reich[18]. Into the 20th Century, certain felonies disqualified an individual from guild office. Ehrenstrafen were successively abolished in European legal codes after World War II[19].

Honour v. Honours

In Hager’s Vers, “eren” is in the plural – “honourS”, not “honour”; this suggests an incremental, not a binary property. In the legal terminology of the feudal order (which was the controlling legal order in all of Europe until various revolutions, constitutional movements and the Napoleonic and successive codifications began to replace it in the 19th Century[20]), Ehren are inextricably linked with the concepts of “office” (Amt) and “status” (Stand)[21] – not in the sense of one being a precondition (or a consequence) of the other, but in a hard to capture interdependency[22].

Certain offices – e.g. judgeships – were open only to certain social strata[23]. Depending on time and place, appointment to a judgeship either entailed as a consequence the elevation of that person to that stratum, or required the co-operation of the powers-that-be to concurrently perform the elevation, or precluded the individual from formally advancing to the office[24].

Understood in this manner, Ehren could be acquired incrementally[25]; one more Imperially sanctioned title, decoration or certification raised you up another rung in the feudal hierarchy, made you eligible for election or appointment to the next office, with its attendant privileges, emoluments, prospects – and honours[26].

Back to the Vers…

Cynically, one might say that when Hager (unlike Paurnfeyndt) does not promise victory in fencing, he might be taking into account that the advanced-in-age and no longer lithe guild master would likely lose a bout to an enterprising young blade, no matter that the guild master could afford an Imperially licensed Fechtmeister. But the proposition that our fictitious guild master is content to perpetually lose with honour, and the young blade to win without it, is not persuasive, and suggests that more is at play. It suggests that the successful student of a sworn, Imperially licensed and sanctioned Fechtmeister could accrue for himself marks of distinction that elevated his status in tangible, legally relevant respects – which a Winkelfechter, never mind his proficiency, never could.

To me, therefore, the phrase “sunst hatt er die kunst nicht mit eren” suggests that the licensed Fechtmeister, unlike the Winkelfechter, was able to endow his pupil with status – legally recognised, and therefore commercially relevant, status[27].

The situation is no different today – in England and Wales, for example, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (a quango) sets the examination on who can be a solicitor; and the law determines on what a solicitor can do and, conversely, which activities are reserved for solicitors[28]. In conveyancing – the transfer of title to real estate –, it is irrelevant how well an individual understands the law or the issues or is able to serve the client’s interests; the activity is reserved to licensed practitioners and that is the end of it.

Translated to modern times, the marketing jingle might therefore read: “Don’t go to a Winkelfechter – he can’t provide you with a recognised degree”.

A metacritique

Writing this note was supremely unsatisfactory from a research point of view – though the Vers originated in the early Renaissance, there is no literature dealing directly with the link between office and honour(s). The Germanistic sources[29] deal with noble v. bourgeois honour, but ignore the legal dimension. The legal literature deals extensively with the loss of honour and the inevitable loss of office that accompanies loss of honour, particularly in connection with the dishonouring effect of corporal or mutilating punishments[30] – but not with the corollary, the acquisition of honour and office.

The problem to some extent lies in the nature of feudal law: A nobleman is, more or less by definition, an estate, a feudal-law entity. A burgher is not; he is relevant to feudal law only by virtue of the fact that the city is a feudal law entity, and the burgher is relevant to the power and legal structure within the city.

Of course, such a neat, categorical separation was neither inherent in feudal law, nor was it realistic. Even if we posit that the city was, for feudal law purposes, a black box, its rights, privileges and prerogatives, as well as those of the city’s overlord, were exercised by individuals, whether as enfeoffed individuals or plenipotentiary representatives. Put in a different way, the feudal order had historically known the category of ministeriales, individuals whose feudal position arose from and depended on their bureaucratic function in the administration of feudal estates on behalf of a senior nobleman, town, prelate or monastery. Whereas in the Early Middle Ages, the ministerialis rose from the prince’s personal retinue, by the Renaissance, these functions were fulfilled by a rising commoner class often educated in law (i.e. public administration).

Though I believe my proposition is vindicated by references, I am conscious that they originate in such diverse times and sources that the meanings I attribute to them may not be borne out by detailed research, and I’ve had to drag in fairly modern sources and examples in order to illustrate my argument. While it is true that the Middle Ages and Feudal Law did not properly crystallise until the 18th Century and I stand by my thesis, the lack of literature to point is still annoying.

A great research opportunity beckons…

© Dr. Jürg Gassmann 2014 / Bleichelistr. 3 • CH-9055 Bühler / [email protected]