In the sixteenth century, the early modern world emerged, and this for many different reasons. In order to understand this phenomenon, scholars have resorted to a wide range of sources, both narrativess and visuls. But the literary works from that time still remain somewhat hidden their view, and yet they deserve to be studied more closely in that context because they often reveal much about the concrete life conditions on the ground and ordinary people’s existence at many different social and economic levels. This paper examines the great relevance of (German) jest narratives as literary and historical sources, focusing on one of the most popular and influential works, Georg Wickram’s Rollwagenbuchlein (1555), where we are exposed to a wide range of entertaining, ironic, satirical, at times even sarcastic and cynical narrative accounts about many different kinds of people, both high and low, and learn much about various professions.

We are generally fully aware of the global consequences of the paradigm shift moving the Middle Ages into the early modern age, traditionally identified as the Renaissance, as problematic as that term might be [1]. Of course, recently the realization has dawned upon us that there was no clear-cut division or separation. Despite the development of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz ca. 1450, the manuscript culture did not simply disappear although a growing book market with incunabula and then early modern prints certainly emerged and dominated popular culture since ca. 1470 [2]. However, the aristocratic courts witnessed a steady decline, whereas urban centers increasingly gained influence and soon dominated political life and especially the economy. Intriguingly, the military situation also changed since new weapon systems and strategies transformed the war operations all over Europe. Not only did the firearms radically replace knights as the major combatants, here not even talking about the development of the longbow and the crossbow, a new type of soldier appeared on the scene, the mercenary, or lansquenet. Social unrest also began to play a major role, whether we think of the Peasants’ Revolt in England in 1381 or the Peasants’ War in Germany in 1525. Moreover, the ‘discovery’ of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the strong protests against the traditional Catholic Church by Martin Luther since 1517, along with many companions, leading to the Protestant Reformation, exerted a huge impact on late medieval society. Another major factor was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, which changed the entire military situation in Southeastern Europe and led to a massive exodus of Greek scholars to Europe, who thus contributed to a strong influx of new or ancient ideas, the study of Greek, and a new familiarity with classical texts in the original language. Scholars have discussed those aspects and others already for a long time especially because paradigm shifts have always attracted the most attention since they shed significant light on social, medical, technological, economic, religious, aesthetic, and literary conditions and changes that affect them deeply. It is, however, not the purpose of this paper to examine the transformation of the late Middle Ages into the early modern age in such general terms. Instead, the focus will rest on the question regarding available sources to analyze what might have changed for the ordinary people who lived in the sixteenth century. It is one thing to observe those material or political aspects in global terms, but it is quite another one to probe the everyday-life conditions both in the countryside and in the city in that period. Historians would be well advised to accept also literary sources for their study of the basic situation on the ground if they want to gain a solid grasp of the common topics, ideas, values, fears, problems, conflicts, and also the prevalent discourse among the public at that time. While fictional texts do not necessarily present actual or factual conditions, they are certainly predicated on the real framework in many different situations. Literary scholars, on the other hand, can certainly profit from the insights provided by chronicles, letters, political statements, treatises, or art works as important background for the discussion of the fictional narratives. To state the obvious, interdisciplinary research thus constitutes the most productive approach to the task at hand if we want to gain really comprehensive perceptions of a certain culture, people, or economic and political system. These general reflections lead us directly to the focus of this paper, sixteenth-century entertaining literature, such as the anonymous Till Eulenspiegel (first printed in 1510/1511; perhaps written by the Brunswick tollkeeper Hermann Bote), the collection of sermon narratives by Johannes Pauli, his Schimpf und Ernst (1522), and Georg Wickram’s Das Rollwagenbüchlein (1555). Those German texts would have to be read in light of the older or contemporary European literature, such as Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1350), Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ca. 1400), the anonymous French Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (ca. 1460), or Marguerite de Navarre’s contemporary Heptaméron (1558/1559). But whereas high and late medieval literature normally profiled knightly protagonists, in this new body of secular narratives ? there were already late medieval antecedents, such as Der Stricker’s mæren (ca. 1220-1240) and the Old French fabliaux (thirteenth century) ? in the sixteenth century we suddenly face peasants, merchants, lansquenets, craftsmen, prostitutes, horse traders, or wagon drivers as the main figure we are invited to laugh about.

Georg Wickram

Georg Wickram’s Rollwagenbüchlein proves to be such a valuable source for social, economic, religious, and political history because here we encounter a fascinating panoply of ordinary people, as we would call them today, who operate within their own spaces and become the object of the audience’s laughter [3]. Comedy has always allowed us to see into a mirror reflecting ourselves, and then to recognize the world behind the mirror. The Alsace writer and poet Wickram (ca. 1505?ca. 1561), who is highly respected for his Shrovetide plays, novels, and some poems, pursued the same goal as countless other poets before him, providing entertainment to his audience, but in that process he turned to very ordinary material or people to make us laugh about their foolishness or smartness, their failures and ignorance, their strengths and weaknesses, their verbal skills and cleverness [4]. Hence, studying this work, written explicitly for travelers who need to fill empty time while seated in their coaches, offers not only entertainment, but also much insight into the pragmatic aspects of everyday life in the early modern period. It is worth noting the difference to the framework utilized by Geoffrey Chaucer where the storytellers are pilgrims moving along on their way to Canterbury riding on horseback. Already this great English author introduced many different characters from a non-aristocratic background, such as the Merchant, the Reeve, the (in) famous Wife of Bath, the Franklin, etc. We observe a fairly similar display of figures in Wickram’s Rollwagenbüchlein, though the register includes more people on the lower rung of society [5]. This might have been typical of sixteenth-century German literature because we discover the same phenomenon in Till Eulenspiegel and in Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst, or in the works by Wickram’s successors, such as Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof [6]. Considering the fact that Wickram’s Rollwagenbuchlein experienced such an impressive success in the book market, we face here a great opportunity to study very closely the discourse pertaining to the lives and experiences of peasants, lansquenets, merchants, widows, or prostitutes.

Peasants

Already the very first tale in Wickram’s collection highlights the new emphasis on people living in the countryside. We observe the same phenomenon in contemporary Shrovetide Plays, such as by the Nuremberg cobbler Hans Sachs (1494–1576), and also in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art, especially in images included in Books of Hours with their emphasis on the seasons of the year [7]. Pieter Brueghel’s (ca. 1525-1569) works, above all, come easily to mind regarding the depiction of peasants in paintings. In the first story of the Rollwagenbüchlein, a peasant falls badly ill and eventually pledges a pilgrimage to a church dedicated to Saint Vitus because he is not recovering. His pledge seems to help because he gets well fairly soon after that, but then he faces so much work in the fields and his vineyard that there is no time for him to go on that promised pilgrimage. However, he feels so bad about his involuntary negligence that he eventually hires a proxy to carry out that duty on his behalf. Unfortunately, that man who is really the butt of the joke, is completely ignorant of religious holidays, saints, and the history of the Christian Church, so he never reaches the desired site on the top of a steep hill, being too lazy to climb up all the way, and is content with having visited a monastery dedicated to All Saints at the bottom, especially because he keeps the donations destined for the saint for himself. Although the peasant is dissatisfied that his representative did not secure a certificate from Saint Vitus, he is content with the lame excuse and pays his proxy the sum of money agreed upon. The narrator laments the naïveté of the protagonist but takes him as a representative of many people who are ignorant of the true Christian teachings. Instead of turning their hearts to Christ and to demonstrate humility and love for their fellow people, poor and rich, they worship some saints, go on pilgrimages, donate money, etc. Of course, Wickram was a Protestant, so he easily embraced the new principles of the Lutheran Church, but his criticism at large, as we will see further, consistently hit those whom he charges of hypocrisy, arrogance, and foolishness. In the sixth story, for instance, we learn of two peasants who are constantly involved in bitter fighting each other. They constantly seek solutions from the Mayor as their arbiter, which irritates the poor official and also his wife. One day, while her husband is out, the two peasants appear again to ask for a decision regarding a fight between the two. The Mayor’s wife expresses her irritation about these two bothersome men, but then she explodes into a fury when one of them simply asks whether she is, by chance, a prostitute. She bitterly rejects that implication as utterly disrespectful, but then has to learn from that peasant that this question served only as an illustration of how they all tend to get into fights. However, as we also can conclude, although the focus rests on peasants, the larger meaning pertains to all people who so easily misunderstand each other and quickly face conflicts simply because they do not listen to each other and mistake the others’ words. The one peasant who teases the mayor’s wife, does not really think or even assume that she is a prostitute, but he illustrates to her, and thus to us, how easily people jump to unjustified conclusions, take statements in the wrong way, and hence badly miscommunicate, one of the fundamental reasons and causes for deep disagreements throughout time in all cultures [8]. Facetiously, the same topic is also addressed in the eighth tale where two friends seemingly get into a big fight because one of them, who owes money to the other, claims, that his friend equally owes him something. The two squabble badly for a while about this ‘false’ claim, but in the end the second man laughingly reveals that the debt consists of brotherly love and loyalty. This issue is also mirrored in economic exchanges, such as in the eleventh tale where an innkeeper seems to offer free food but really wants to charge the guests for the full meal by insisting that they only would have to pay for a fat capon, which costs as much as the entire meal. One man, however, hides that capon, asks for more food, and finally returns the capon so that they are all scot-free, and this to the innkeeper’s great irritation. 

Lying and deception prove to be key problems in all human communication, as the priest in the thirteenth story realizes. He laments that his parishioners accuse each other excessively of lying, which quickly erupts into violence. Hence, he urges them to resort to whistling when they believe that the other one has said an untruth, as if that would solve anything. But when the priest talks about Genesis during one of his sermons, and a contradiction seems to emerge ? allegedly God, having formed Adam out of a lump of clay, leaned that figure at a fence so that it would dry and become hard ? one peasant immediately whistles and exposes the priest’s own weakness in arguing about biblical matters, as silly as the entire issue might be ? how could there have been a fence prior to the creation of human beings? Ethics in general has always been interconnected with good communication, which might, however, result in deliberate miscommunication, as we learn in the fourteenth story, which actually carries several messages about human interactions. Two lansquenets return from the war, one of them majorly enriched, whereas the other one is as poor as he was before. The first one explains to and teaches his friend that in war the traditional values and ideals no longer apply. He himself robbed and pillaged from anyone he had power over, and now he encourages his friend to follow that model of behavior as well. Indeed, the poor mercenary takes him up upon that advice but he applies it directly to him when he steals from him a valuable necklace and a certain amount of money. Although he then departs secretly in the middle of the night, the other follows him and captures him, having the Nuremberg authorities throw him into prison on the charge of thievery. But the poor soldier defends himself effectively, pointing out that the friend had advised him to do what he then had done. The council, in its wisdom, decides, once having realized the truth of the defendant’s explanation, that he must return the necklace but can keep the money so that he would be able to return home in a decent fashion. At the same time, they strongly admonish the other man never to offer such evil advice. This also implies, of course, that the behavior of the rich lansquenet in war times is severely criticized, though a solution to avoid that is not offered. We face, in other words, the literary model of communication having gone awry. The poor man had observed his ethical ideals and had spared the innocent civilians, whereas the other one had abandoned all his principles and had taken from wherever it was possible for him. When the judges learn about this and understand the full truth, they partially blame him both for his bad communication style and his lack of morality. After all, which is not addressed explicitly but implied in the text, the war is over, peace has returned, and in civil society law and order must be observed. Yet, the narrator also criticizes rather sharply the crude, horrible, and violent behavior of those mercenaries who abuse their military power to steal from the peasants [9]. In essence, Wickram elaborates numerous situations in human life where problems occur, often as the result of miscommunication but also personal abuse and mismatching relationships, such as in the sixteenth tale where an old and miserly tailor is married to a young woman whom he does not allow to spend any money for herself. But she tries to undermine that command and pretends to have misunderstood him when he instructs her to purchase some thread at the market. He tolerates, though grudgingly, her excuses twice, but the third time, he beats her up badly and can thus force her to submit completely under his control.

At the same time, the authorities viewed domestic violence as a criminal behavior and prosecuted the culprits i.e., the husbands, as swiftly as possible, as the seventeenth tale illustrates, threatening the brutal and vicious husband with a severe punishment if he breaks the rules once again, hurting his innocent wife. More than ever before in pre-modern literature, Wickram thematizes this highly problematic violent relationship between the marriage partners, though a solid response does not seem to present itself considering the different outcomes in the various stories. The eighteenth tale carries considerable weight, first of all, because of the information about economic relationships between an impoverished nobleman and a rural community. Contrary to our expectations, he has borrowed money from them, and not the other way around, and yet when they ask for the repayment of their loan to him, he evades all their efforts and then even resorts to a linguistic trick to flee from the peasant’s representative who is empowered to ask the authorities to throw him into prison for non-payment. In other words, the nobleman relies on a communicative strategy to defy the latter who had promised him to wait for the money until the former’s beard would have been shaven off by the barber. Once they have reached that silly agreement, the nobleman interrupts the barber and leaves the shop although his beard is shaven only half-way. But this allows him to take the messenger’s words verbatim, which serves to his advantage because he can slip away and avoid the payment. Nevertheless, the narrator concludes with the significant admonishment that noblemen ought to lend money to the peasants, and not the other way around, especially because this could result in the nobleman’s default and the peasants’ loss of their money. Social tensions thus appear behind the seemingly purely entertaining story, indicating a significant shift in economic power relations in the sixteenth century. In future research, we would have to unpack the complex situation presented here further and correlate it with chronicle accounts and other historical documents. Language or verbal exchanges also matter in the twenty-first narrative where a former monk who has left his monastery and now works for a book printer, constantly brags about his theological knowledge. One of the angry journeymen invites him to engage in a debate about the proper interpretation of the Bible, which mirrors, in a way, the major debates between Martin Luther and some of his Catholic opponents, such as Johann Eck in Leipzig in 1519. But whereas the erstwhile monk believes that he would be able to argue on the basis of the various texts, the other journeyman resorts to his letter types (movable types) that he had placed in a bag, beats the opponent so hard that he wins the fight. The joke consists of the double meaning of the word “gschrifft” (Scripture, ed. Endres, 41), which seems to be clear enough for the monk due to his original education in the monastery. But the opponent refers to the material letters for printing texts and has thus a much more ‘effective’ tool in his hand to defeat the other man with physical violence. Everyone is pleased with the outcome because the former monk had irritated them all for a long time with his bragging and arrogance: “alle menschen ertaubt er mit seim disputieren” (Endres, ed., 40; all people he made deaf with his arguing). Communication itself proves to be the central issue at stake here. The erstwhile monk keeps monologues and tries to repress all other opinions. His hubris is finally punished because the opponent relies on the other meaning of the word ‘Scripture,’ standing for the actual letters out of metal. From that time on, whenever the former tries to speak up and to argue more forcefully, the others warn him with a reference to the tool used by his opponent to defeat him, making all his claims on intellectual superiority to a mockery.

In the twenty-fourth narrative, a poor lansquenet begs for money during his return home after the war. A peasant refuses to grant him any alms, but he invites him in to share their meal. The young man accepts this offer because he is simply hungry. The food makes him very grateful and from that time on he laughs about his own poverty because he had eaten it, in metaphorical terms, at the peasant’s table. He pays considerable respect to that man who looked out well for his own property but was sympathetic enough to invite the hungry man in to join their simple meal. Poverty was, of course, a significant problem for many people, such as students, as we learn in the one hundred and seventh story [10]. The young hungry man begs from a peasant woman and explains that he came from Paris. She, in her ignorance, misunderstands it and believes that he said ‘Paradis,’ i.e., ‘Paradise.’ Three years ago, she had lost her husband and has since remarried. The student quickly plays the role of being a messenger for those who live in the afterlife and pretends that her husband suffers from poverty over there. In her naiveté, she quickly puts together some pieces of clothing and money, and hands it all over to him to bring it to her first husband. When her second husband comes home and learns about this situation, he realizes quickly that she had been deceived, so he rides after the student to retrieve the package, but the latter is prepared and knows how to deceive him as well, gaining the peasant’s horse. Poverty and wealth, poor and rich peasants, tricksters and thieves, all those appear in Wickram’s narratives, and we are invited every time to think about the practical aspects and to correlate those to our own conditions. Of course, the author also includes some criticism of the student whom he identifies as lazy and lacking in interest in his studies, but the central topic is, just as in the version produced by Hans Sachs, the fact that the second husband proves to be as much prone to be tricked by the student as his wife.

At times, these two aspects oddly merge, such as in the twenty-eighth tale where an ignorant but kind peasant enters a church and observes with great empathy the sculpture of the suffering Christ after His flagellation. Once the man is done with his prayers, he urges the Lord to stay away from the Jews the next time, as if there would be such a next time. The narrative is clearly determined by antisemitism, predicated on the ancient myth that Jews had killed Christ, whereas in reality Roman soldiers carried out the crucifixion. However, the entire framework of this story points into the opposite direction because we are invited to laugh about this ignorant man who believes that the sculpture represents a living person; hence his recommendation to avoid the danger in the future. We also recognize that the irony of the peasant’s comment undermines the common prejudice against the Jews since it is form of primitive thinking stereotyping an entire group of people for religious reasons pertaining to an event in ancient times. Yet, we are also encouraged to respect the simple man’s empathy for a suffering individual, since that is what he perceives in the sculpture. Another noteworthy perspective comes to the foreground in the thirtieth tale where two peasants constantly fight against each other and seek adjudication from the Mayor who soon enough gets tired of their complaining. At one point, one of the peasants tries a new argument, accusing his opponent of being an Anabaptist, a heavy charge particularly in the sixteenth century when the Lutheran Church still worked hard to establish itself and faced numerous sectarian groups that were even more radical than the traditional Protestants and pursued, such as the Anabaptists, a more intensive religious life [11]. The other peasant makes a counter-charge and claims that the opponent adheres to Anabaptism and had even tried to convert him. The Mayor immediately realizes the falsity of both charges and simply dismisses both men, pointing out that neither one of them demonstrates a truly Christian attitude and would not submit under his command to be completely peaceful even in the case of a physical attack. The Mayor clearly characterizes them as envious and cantankerous people who do not deserve any support in their mutual blaming and charges. The narrator concludes his tale with the recommendation to all authority figures to dismiss such bickering individuals in a curt and resolute manner because no legal court or judge could ever help them. Wickram thus presents an intriguing case of a social conflict the reasons of which are not even discussed or worth mentioning. Instead, the story only illustrates what tensions there can exist even, or particularly, among neighbours due to envy or jealousy, and how badly two people can get into a fight against each other over foolish words or blames. A much worse situation is presented in the thirty-third narrative where a group of merchants is ambushed by a gang of robbers who cut open all their containers and take whatever pleases them. One of the merchants, however, witnessing how they use their halberds to tear apart the bales of cloth, he realizes that there is nothing he can do to prevent their brutal robbery. Instead, he burst forth laughing and then explains to them his reason for this reaction. He had been a merchant all his life, buying and selling cloth, which is always done with the help of a measuring stick. Looking at the way of how these robbers use their halberds, he compares those weapons with such sticks and finds them hilariously long. In fact, as he concludes, if they were measuring their textiles so generously at any market or fair, they would easily sell all their goods quickly. The robbers laugh about this comment and recognize in the merchant a witty character. They respect him for his hilarious words and then decide to return all his goods to him before they take off to avoid being caught by the authorities or soldiers.

Whenever people live together, both in the past and the present, there is always the likelihood that they can get into conflicts with each other. Hence, the great need for legal courts, judges, and lawyers, and this throughout time. However, we hardly hear about legal proceedings in medieval literature, apart from brief allusions in Boccaccio’s Decameron or in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Wickram, by contrast, places considerable emphasis on this topic, as numerous stories illustrate, such as the thirty-fifth one where we hear of a legal case in Venice involving a simple load carrier who is brought to court by a nobleman because they had collided in one of the narrow streets. It is the custom there, as the narrator points out, that those carriers shout out loudly to alert other people to make room to avoid such collisions. A lawyer voluntarily takes on the defense for the carrier and advises him to pretend to be a mute. Indeed, when questioned by the judges, he remains completely quiet, which irritates the nobleman so much that he points out that the carrier had uttered his warning words loudly in the street so that his muteness now at court cannot be believed. But the judges then realize that the plaintiff simply should have made room to let the carrier pass, so they mock the nobleman and let the poor carrier off the hook because he was falsely charged. In the thirty-sixth story, we face the same situation, and again the lawyer urges his defendant to say nothing but one meaningless word, “blee” (60). This strategy actually works and the judges are thus forced to dismiss the case because they believe the accused to be mentally incompetent. However, the man who had certainly done something wrong and was sure that he would have to pay a hefty fine, hence his effort to hire a lawyer, then does not pay the agreed amount of money. Ironically, the lawyer then takes him to court, but the defendant continues to say nothing but “blee.” Naturally, the judges only wonder why the lawyer would have forgotten the fact that this man is an imbecile, at least as far as his behavior indicates, and thus cannot be sued at court. Thus, the defendant beats both the judges and his own lawyer. In other stories (such as in no. 43), contractual conflicts are brought to trial, or payments are enforced (such as in no. 54). And we also hear of murder cases (such as in no. 55). Altogether, we recognize here in the Rollwagenbuchlein a remarkable literary document in which people’s ordinary lives and hence conflicts and strife are dealt with.

Let us consider the sixty-fifth story more in detail, where an ignorant German merchant from Swabia is trying to find a restaurant in some Italian city but ends up in a dentist’s office where they forcefully pull one of his teeth. They assume that he needs that operation since his lack of knowledge of Italian made them believe that his gesture toward his mouth (indicating his hunger) implied a toothache. The author thus introduces numerous topics we have not ever heard about in earlier literature: a German doing business in an Italian city; his ignorance of the Italian language, the man’s confusion of the dentist’s office as a restaurant, and his extreme pain that he suffered because of this deep miscommunication. Altogether, we can confirm that a true paradigm shift in the literary discourse has happened by the middle of the sixteenth century, if not earlier [12]. The reading audience was offered new literary material; new figures appeared on the narrative stage, especially from the lower social classes; economic, legal, ethical, and moral issues gained in importance and were discussed more broadly. Wickram can thus be identified as one of the leading sixteenth-century German authors who promoted the new perspectives by offering literary entertainment reflecting on the common life of the peasant class, the merchants, lawyers, judges, lansquenets, and others. When we hear of noblemen, they tend to be impoverished, haughty, silly, and even foolish. There are comments about monks and priests, but those are often the butt of the joke. In other words, the Rollwagenbuchlein can be studied profitably from a social-historical perspective as well since it proves to be an excellent mirror of the ordinary life in the countryside and in the city. Wickram obviously drew inspiration from his own experiences or from those of his contemporaries. While the tales offer entertainment, they also provide valuable insights into the common conditions for lansquenets, peasants, merchants, tailors, etc. Women do not figure very prominently, and if at all, then as wives who are mostly subdued or repressed. Intriguingly, at one point we even hear about children and their games, although in that case, because they innocently imitate the activities of a butcher, one of them, having assumed the role of a pig, is killed (no. 74). We tend to laugh because we regularly observe human shortcomings, failures of communication, deceptions, violence, lying, and other misdeeds. We cannot help to laugh, as was certainly the case also in the sixteenth century, because those people we are laughing about are, so to speak our own neighbours, or simply us as caricatures.

1. See the contributions to Paradigm Shifts during the Global Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen. Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 44. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.
2. Classen A. The Continuity of the middle Ages until Today: Literary Evidence from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Johannes Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst (1522). Sankalp J Multidisciplinary Studies. 2023.
3. See the contributions to Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, Its Meaning, and Consequences, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 5 Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
4. For a recent survey article, see Albrecht Classen, “Wickram” in the Literary Encyclopedia, 2023.
5. I am currently preparing an English translation of the text for Cambridge Scholars Publishing; for two solid editions of the original text, 2017.
6. Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof, Wendunmuth, ed. Hermann Oesterley. Rpt. 1 (1869; Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1980).
7. See, for instance, the contributions to Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: The Spatial Turn in Premodern Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen, with the collaboration of Christopher R. Clason. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 9 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012); cf. also Larry Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Albrecht Classen, “The World of Peasants in Early Modern German Literature: Peasants in the Works of Wickram and Kirchhof,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 48.3 (2013): 415-38; id., “Minority or Not?: The World of Peasants in the Context of Courtly and Entertaining Literature: The Emergence of a Marginalized Social Class in the Medieval Public Discourse,” Forefront in Sociology & Political Sciences 1.1. 2024.
8. Christiane Witthöft, Ritual und Text. Formen symbolischer Kommunikation in der Historiographie und Literatur des Spätmittelalters (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004); see also the contributions to Literarische Kommunikation und soziale Interaktion. Studien zur Institutionalität mittelalterlicher Literatur, ed. Beater Kellner, Ludger Lieb, Peter Strohschneider. Mikrokosmos, 64  (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2001); Literarische und religiöse Kommunikation in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. DFG-Symposion 2006, ed. Peter Strohschneider (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009); Textual Communities, Textual Selves: Essays in Dialogue with Brian Stock, ed. Sarah Powrie and Gur Zak. Papers in Mediaeval Studies (Toronto: PIMS, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2023).
9. In the late thirteenth century, the poet Wernher der Gartenaere had already presented a similar case in his verse narrative Helmbrecht. But there, the protagonist, the son of a rich peasant, turns into a robber knight and is not yet a mercenary or a lansquenet. Nevertheless, ultimately, Helmbrecht, although he originates from a low class, also turns against the peasants and steals whatever he can get his hands on. At the end, he and his fellow robbers are apprehended, and everyone is executed, except for Helmbrecht, who is blinded, and then they cut off his right arm and left leg so that he can never wield a sword or climb a horse again. A year later, peasants encounter him and lynch him as a punishment for his many evil deeds against them, their neighbors, and family members.
10. This story was added to the edition printed in Mulhouse sometime between 1557 and 1559, ed. Endres, 174?77. This was a popular motif, famously used, for example, by Hans Sachs in his Shrovetide play, “Der fahrendt Schuler in Paradeiß” (The Wandering Student in Paradise; 1550).
11. See, for instance, Geoffrey Dipple, Confessional Migration: Anabaptists – Mennonites, Hutterites, Baptists etc. (Mainz: Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte, 2015).
12. I have discussed similar phenomena already in the case of Johannes Pauli’s collection of tales; Albrecht Classen, “Recht, Unrecht und das Gerichtswesen aus der Sicht eines frühneuzeitlichen Predigers: Juristische Perspektiven in Johannes Paulis Schimpf und Ernst (1522),” Wirkendes Wort 3 (2023): 357-70; History of Early Modern Society and Everyday Life as Reflected in the Works of the Bestseller Author Johannes Pauli (1522),” Advances in Social Sciences and Management (ASSM) 1.7. 2023.