Every one of these laws ended with: “morte moriatur” (be doomed).
Now, the foundation had been laid, the way was open for the German people to move into the Middle-Ages, a very Christian, but also a very bloody period.
On the topic of tithing, even Alconius Alkuin, a prominent friend of and advisor to Charlemagne in all matters of religion, lamented in a letter:
“Did the Apostles, when Christ sent them to teach Christianity to the whole world, ask for the tithe? Possibly, the tithe is necessary, how-ever, its forfeiture is insignificant compared to the loss in Faith”.
It was Charlemagne policy to divide his conquests into counties, each governed by a bishop or archbishop. The bishopric of Osnabrück with bishop Wiho was the first in the land of the Saxons.
It can be assumed that the erection of local chapels outside of Osnabrück was started shortly thereafter: one in the west, the West-Chapel (= Westerkappeln), and one in the east, the East-Chapel (= Osterkappeln). Charlemagne also issued the Franconian-Land-Order and installed regional administrators, named Gaugrafen = district-counts). He named the place“Ossenbrügge”, where – as the saying goes - the Franconian-Christian army, while struggling with the Saxons, managed to cross the river Hase with the help of an ox which showed them a ford (Furt) to cross the waters.
The place was secured with a wall and a ditch and given the Franconian law. That’s how “Ossenbrügge” became modern day “Osnabrück”.
He installed a bishop and gave him the tithe on fields, forests and all pastures around.
The annual contribution enforced and delivered by all the farms in our territory to the clergy and/or secular ruler runs like a red thread throughout the Middle-Ages till the final collapse of the “Holy Roman Empire of German Nation” around 1806 A.D.
These miscellaneous taxes are historically verified over the following centuries, and are subject to further considerations later on.
Charlemagne and later his sons had established a pattern to give grants to their meritorious military leaders and other deserving confidents in form of estates and land as well as special privileges over assets and life of their subjects. This was considered in part a gratitude as well as commitment for duty in the future.
Initially, those persons concerned, the honoured and so named counts and dukes, had to use their entrusted power in the name of the emperor or king. At the same time, the bishops were supposed to be only responsible for the religious/clerical matters and questions of morality.
However, the Imperial Court or his herolds had to intervene rather regularly in those many disputes and struggles for power between the clerical (bishops) and secular (dukes, counts) authorities. Thus, within this kind of medley, the initially granted privileges became over the following centuries hereditary.
Although Charlemagne had according to the Franconian Statutes not formerly renounced private property per se, the handwriting of history had taken a somewhat other turn:
Another pillar of Feudalism had established itself,
Resulting in a two class-society that lasted nearly 1000 years and put its face onto the history of Europe:
A society of those with power and the might of control – and the remaining others,
who had to live their every-day-life or just endure it.
These were the centuries where the structures of the secular power concoction and the clerical interests found opportunities and time to solidify themselves to last way into the Renaissance with different results to be classified as good and bad:
The “good” – part, beginning with the 15th century, was especially the rapid development of civilization, the discovery of the world-wide globe, the letter-printing, and above all the new dimensions in art and philosophy.
The “bad”- part were the many skirmishes of those many small potentates, the rule of the mercenaries, and those many courtiers serving the sovereigns to show their glitter and pomp to the world.
And yet, despite those contradicting conditions, this period was nevertheless a deeply religious epoch which included both, Martin Luther with the Bible as well as Savonarola burning pictures on Italian market places.
What then followed, after 1500 A.D., can be confidently called the “bloody Renaissance”. It was not the idealistic humanity anymore that dominated, but rather the fanned fear of Hell and Devil, growing into a militant intolerance against any deflection in religion and believe and ending in multiple religious conflicts throughout Europe. And as if this wasn’t already enough, there were epidemic events like the “Black Plague”, also called the “Black Death”, which swept the world in the 14th century, reaching Europe at its peak around 1350 A.D. and reducing the population there by one third. Two other events, even more profound, caused thereafter dramatic spititual, economic and social changes:
These two carnages, the “Thirty-Year-War” (1618 -1648 A.D.) and the “Witch-Hunt” or “Witch-Cremation” period of the 16th and 17th centuries, were undoubtedly the ultimate peak where mercenaries and soldiers massacred the population as never before – under the jubilations of theologians on both sides. Both events perpetuated the egoistic politics of the Central European powers and firmly established the split between Catholoc and Protestant Europe. At the end, Spain lost its military supremacy it had enjoyed before.
Humanity suffered through-out and was in certain areas not even existing anymore. Central Europe experienced an awesome long period of two belligerent parties – the Clericals (Pope, bishops, etc.) on one hand and the Seculars (Emperor, nobility, etc.) on the other – fighting stubbornly and mercilessly, without pitty, about their predominance in power and faith. All this happened on the back of mostly uneducated people.
Thus, and with hinsight, several hundred years later, it’s more easily to clarify many particulars and courses of the time: Was the “Reformation” just a lucky btreak or a misadventure of history?
It depends on one’s particular point of view. Within this framework, Luther and the Reformation were at the time only a part of this development. Others were climate change (“Little ice-age”), resulting in crop failure, inflation, hunger, general poverty and a high mortality as additional contributing elements.
At the same time, however, while Richelieu modernized France and England lived through a golden age under Queen Elisabeth, the bulk of the people – mostly uneducated – suffered in an unknown monstrosity under the century old quarrels between the Clerical and Secular powers. The Church used this framework to denounce and eradicate the so called “leftovers of the old paganism”: Many thousands of people lost their lives in the subsequent purgatory of witch-hunt. It was the wilful intention to subjugate the people to the “Only blessed Creed” – or turn them fugitive. Church and history called it Inquisition.
This, by all means, is a situation comparable to the dictatorships of the
20th century as well as those most recent events in the Middle East.
The property and other assets of the ”cleaned” or just burned in the inferno of the purgatory turned up as an additional fortune at the cash-register of the Church.
When tourists from around the world visit today those wonderful monasteries, churches and other buildings of the baroque period, it should not be forgotten that this splendour is owned in part to the extortions of the witch-hunt during the 16th and 17th centuries. Thus, the many sorrows of the persecutors did help the “Only blessed Church” to shine again with new saints and lots of gold and glitter.
All this was generally speaking, an ideal presupposition for the exodus of millions of people, leaving their home base in Europe to venture for the newly discovered “New-World”.
Following the timetable over centuries, the “Tithe” was initially only a tax or an assessment and later turned into different