featuring Pope John XXII and William of Ockham
This week we look at the central intellectual debate of the 14th century, did Jesus own property? If yes, then it was right and proper that the church owned land, privileges, entire counties and duchies, yes that the pope was not just the spiritual but also the secular ruler of all of Christianity. And if not, then the pope as a successor to the apostles should rescind all worldly possessions and all political power. The follow-on question from there was even more hair raising: if indeed power does not come from the grace of god as determined by the Holy church, then where does it come from. One thinker, Marsilius of Padua goes as far as stating the obvious, power comes from election by the people…
This is what pope John XXII, Michael of Cesena, William of Ockham and the cast of Umberto Eco’s the Name of the Rose discuss. But there was also a politician, Ludwig IV, elected emperor who took these ideas – and put them into actions….let’s find out just how radical this ruler they call “the Bavarian” really was.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 151 – The Kurverein zu Rhens – featuring William of Ockham, also episode 14 of season 8 # From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull, 1250-1356.
This week we look at the central intellectual debate of the 14th century, did Jesus own property? If yes, then it was right and proper that the church owned land, privileges, entire counties and duchies, yes that the pope was not just the spiritual but also the secular ruler of all of Christianity. And if not, then the pope as a successor to the apostles should rescind all worldly possessions and all political power. The follow-on question from there was even more hair raising: if indeed power does not come from the grace of god as determined by the Holy church, then where does it come from. One thinker, Marsilius of Padua goes as far as stating the obvious, power comes from election by the people…
This is what pope John XXII, Michael of Cesena, William of Ockham and the cast of Umberto Eco’s the Name of the Rose discuss. But there was also a politician, Ludwig IV, elected emperor who took these ideas – and put them into actions….let’s find out just how radical this ruler they call “the Bavarian” really was.
But before we start let me remind you that the history of the Germans is advertising free, and with good reason. Regular reminders to use online mental health services or invest in crypto currencies is the #1 irritation for many listeners and causes moral dilemmas for many podcasters. Being advertising free means this show is entirely dependent upon people sustaining it financially, either through one-time donations on historyofthegermans.com/support or as ongoing patreon sponsors on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. And special thanks to Michael K., Linda A., Robert B., Kevin Scott M., Chris Gesell, Tristan Benzing and Carsten D. who have already signed up. BTW., if you want your full name read out, please send me a message on patreon so I can make sure I get this right.
And with that, back to the show.
When we left the king of the Romans and emperor elect Ludwig IV last week, he had just won the battle of Mühldorf against his cousin and rival Frederick the Handsome from the house of Habsburg. He was now the uncontested ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, or at least he should be.
We have been here so many times that if you now say “to Rome, to Rome”, that would not give you the 10 points to Griffindor you were hoping for. Obviously, a coronation journey had to be the next step. And, again, same procedure as last time, Ludwig sought a papal invitation to be crowned above the grave of St. Peter.
Which gets us to the first of the key protagonists of this episode, the man who was to grant this invitation, the new pope, John XXII.
Pope John XXII was born Jacques Duèze in the city of Cahors, the son of a long distance merchant and banker. He studied law in Montpellier and became a lecturer in canon law and an advisor to the bishop of Toulouse. His career took quite some time to get going properly. He was well into his fifties before he caught the eye of king Charles II of Naples who made him his chancellor. In 1310 he became bishop of Avignon, part of the county of Provence which in turn was owned by his sponsor the king of Naples and at the time pretty much a provincial backwater.
His career got a further boost when the papal court appeared on his home turf, i.e., when pope Clement V set up shop in his city, the city of Avignon. In 1312 he was elevated to become a cardinal, just in time to get involved in the election of Clement’s successor when the old pope died in 1314.
By 1314 the composition of the college of cardinals looked quite unfamiliar. There were only 7 Italian cardinals left, who were broken down into various factions. The Italians had to contend with 10 gascons, most of them relatives of the excessively nepotistic Clement V and sympathetic to their duke, who happened to be king Edward II of England. Then there were a further 6 French cardinals supportive of the Capetian kings of France.
All this already made electing a new pope hard, but things got even more difficult when the heirs of king Philip the Fair died in quick succession, one of them a newborn who survived just four days.
The first conclave in Carpentras ended when a mob of Gascons attacked their fellow cardinals shouting, “death to the Italians” and “we want a pope”. The Italian cardinals ran for their lives and hid, whilst the nephew of pope Clement V raided the papal treasury and then disappeared. For 2 years there was no head to the church, no administration, just cardinals wandering around in southern France avoiding each other.
Finally, the younger son of Philipp the Fair had enough, rounded the cardinals up and locked them into a monastery in Lyon and starved them until they had selected a new pope. And that pope was Jacques Duèze, son of a moneylender from Cahors. The reason he was chosen had nothing to do with his considerable talents as a lawyer, but was purely a function of his advanced age, he was over seventy and his sickly appearance. Jacques took the papal name John XXII and would reign as pope for another 18 years, far longer than anyone had expected.
John XXII was a gifted administrator who massively expanded the papal government. He brought the church organizations across europe under tight central control and restored papal finances. Most of these funds were then ploughed back into the papal organization or were used to pay alms. John XXII personally lived a frugal lifestyle, though when he needed to represent the power of the papacy he did. At the wedding of his great niece he threw a banquet where guests consumed 9 oxen, 55 sheep, 8 pigs, 200 capons, 690 chickens, 580 partridges and lots more foodstuff. He established a working relationship with the French king that granted him significantly more independence than his predecessor Clement V had enjoyed.
That would net, net be maybe not a perfect but a pretty decent papacy. It definitely beats that of Clement V which included leaving Rome, becoming a plaything of the French king and suppressing, torturing and burning the Templars. Still, John XXII left such a black mark on the church, it would take until 1958 before a pope dared to again take the name John, the most common of papal names ever. In contrast, there were 9 more Clements after the Clement V.
What was it that pope John XXII did that made him so despised? Those of you who have read the Name of the Rose may remember the passage where the character William of Baskerville said about John XXII: “You must realize that for centuries a greedier man has never ascended the papal throne. The whore of Babylon against whom our Ubertino used to fulminate, the corrupt popes described by the poets of your country, like that Alighieri, were meek lambs and sober compared to John. He is a thieving magpie, a Jewish usurer; in Avignon there is more trafficking than in Florence!” end quote.
The reason John XXII ended up as “he who shall not be named” of the church was not just for allowing the monetary excesses of his cardinals, bishops and abbots to run out of control, but because he tried to justify their behaviour on legal and theological grounds. Basically before John XXII the church in general and the popes in particular were at least embarrassed about the fact that they were amassing vast fortunes for themselves and their families by exploiting the faithful. John XXII took the view that there was no need to be embarrassed since Jesus and the apostles owned property and so could the church. From there it is only a short hop to pope Leo X famous quote: “God gave us the papacy, now let us enjoy it”, which btw he did not thanks to the actions of a professor of bible studies at the university of Wittenberg called M. Luther.
Now this debate about whether the church and the pope should be poor had been going on for centuries. Wave after wave of reformers had demanded that priests, bishops and popes should live by the example of the apostles, meaning living a modest life without material possessions and dedicated to prayer. Most of these reformers ended up being condemned as heretics but those very few who did not became doctors of the church or founders of religious orders. Which one it was, burnt at the stake or sainthood was pretty much pot luck given the programs were at least initially quite similar.
Amongst those reformers who were co-opted by the church and were made saints, nobody embraced the idea of the poverty of the church as stringently as St. Francis. He laid it down in the rule of the Franciscans No Franciscan friar was to own anything, nor would the order itself hold property. Franciscan friars were allowed just one poor habit with a hood and a second one without a hood if they needed it. No shoes unless strictly necessary, no books, just a breviary. Certainly no coins or monies either directly or indirectly. And so on and so, St. Francis was pretty clear, Franciscans were supposed not to own anything more than the clothes on their backs, nothing at all.
But that ideal rapidly collided with reality. Rich donors believed that the prayers of these holy men would be an effective way to speed up the journey through the potentially millions of years of waiting in purgatory. Very soon the Franciscan were receiving gifts of lands and treasure from devout Christian and great Franciscan monasteries rose up all across europe, starting with the Sacro Convento in Assisi, that miracle of 13th and 14th century art. And now the question arose, how can the Franciscans have these monasteries when the whole order was banned from owning anything, except for their two habits.
To square this circle the church had devised the concept that all donations made to the Franciscans were automatically passed on to the pope who would then allow the Franciscans to use these assets on the basis of a legal concept called usufruct, basically a form of unpaid lease.
And this legal construct of the usufruct was the lever John XXII used to break the Franciscan doctrine of the poverty of Christ. Under roman and still modern law, usufruct gives a person the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property, short of the destruction or waste of its substance. John XXII argued that if for example a Franciscan received a loaf of bread from a parishioner and ate it, this could not be a form of usufruct since by eating it, he destroyed the loaf. If he held the bread without owning it, eating the loaf would be theft or willful destruction of property. The only way out of that conundrum was for the Franciscan to accept ownership of the donations they received, which meant the church as a whole was allowed to own things and that in turn meant that all the excessive display of wealth going on in Avignon was therefore fine.
Did I say that John XXII was an accomplished canon lawyer? Lawyers, and I can say that being one myself, come in three flavors, incompetent, clever or good. A good lawyer is someone who understands the spirit of the law and uses this to construct an equitable solution. A clever lawyer is one who uses the wording of the law to bend the spirit of the law to his benefit.
John XXII wasn’t a good lawyer, he was a clever lawyer. And that is why he took a concept from the law of property conveyancing to make a point about the moral standards of a religious institution. Perfectly convincing when one looks at the words on the page, complete nonsense if you look at the moral choices involved.
The Franciscans, led by their minister general, Michael of Cesena refused to breach the rule of St. Francis and end up in hell just in order to comply with the civil code. They wanted to live the life of the apostles as they saw it, caring for the sick and poor, praying and renouncing all worldly possessions. And if that made the pope and his filthy rich cardinals look bad, so be it.
This argument began as an exchange of learned treatises between the pope and the Franciscans before getting increasingly heated. And it drew in more and more of the medieval scholars, including the great English thinker, William of Ockham of razor’s fame. William was asked by Michael of Cesena to review the various statements made by pope John XXII about the subject. William of Ockham concluded the following (quote): “a great many things that were heretical, erroneous, silly, ridiculous, fantastic, insane, and defamatory, contrary and likewise plainly adverse to orthodox faith, good morals, natural reason, certain experience, and fraternal charity.” End quote. So much for balance. These accusations made the pope a heretic, and a heretic was automatically no longer pope. That was a pretty bold move by William and Michael, followed by the somewhat less bold move of running away from Avignon immediately after posting the report to the papal palace.
The Franciscan leadership, including Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham were now, in 1327, on the run and needed a protector, and they met this protector in Pisa, and that protector was none other than our friend, the survivor of monkey abductions and chivalric battles, Ludwig IV, called the Bavarian.
Ludwig took these learned and holy men in with great joy, because he too had a run-in with pope John XXII.
The problem had been that pope John XXII was not only intensely relaxed about bishops, abbots, cardinals and papal nephews getting filthy rich, he also believed that Boniface VIII had been right when he had declared that quote: “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff”. And specifically that nobody could be ruler of the Holy Roman Empire who had not been approved by the pope.
I will not go into the question whether previous emperors have or have not sought explicit approval for their elections from the pope. Answering that requires Latin language skills and patience I simply do not possess. The important point is that John XXII believed it was a requirement. And Ludwig did not. Ludwig had just fought for eight long years with his cousins, stretched his resources to breaking point to win the crown. He pointed at the dead and wounded at Mühldorf and asked, on what basis am I not the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
Ludwig and John XXII fell out properly over Northern Italy, and specifically Milan. John XXII believed that in the absence of papal approval of a King of the Romans, the throne was vacant. And during this vacancy it fell to the pope to keep order and specifically appoint the imperial vicars. So he relieved the Visconti of Milan, the Della Scala of Verona and the Este of Ferrara from their position as imperial vicars in Northern Italy that they had held since Henry VII’s fateful journey. When the city lords refused to bow down, the pope placed Milan under interdict and put together a crusade against the Visconti, which however failed. The Visconti appealed to the now established Ludwig the Bavarian who confirmed them as imperial vicar.
At that point John XXII did what every self-respecting pope thwarted in his political ambitions did and excommunicated Ludwig of Bavaria for disobedience. The excommunication revived the hopes of the Habsburgs, specifically duke Leopold that they could still gain the throne after all. What further strengthened the Habsburg case was that Ludwig had angered his main ally, king John of Bohemia when he had made his son the new margrave of Brandenburg, a story we will talk more about next week.
Bottom line is that 2 years after his great success at Mühldorf, king Ludwig IV was again in trouble. There are two stories about how he resolved it, a nice, heroic and chivalric version and a more sober, analytical version.
The chivalric version goes as follows: While Ludwig’s rival for the crown, Frederick the Handsome was held in honorable captivity at Schloss Trausnitz, the two cousins who had grown up together renewed their friendship. Negotiating long into the night they agreed that Frederick would give up any claim on the imperial crown and would return some of the imperial lands he had seized. In exchange, he would not have to pay a ransom and was allowed to return home. Once back in Vienna he should obtain the support of his brothers and his main allies to this agreement. Should he fail to get these signatures, he was to return to his jail in Bavaria.
Frederick did go back to Vienna and tried to convince his brothers that the game was up. Leopold however saw things differently. He argued that Ludwig was excommunicated and hence any promise made to him could be broken. Moreover, they received letters from pope John XXII to that effect as well as financial support from the king of France to continue the war.
Still, Frederick, a man of his word, having failed in his mission, returned to captivity in Bavaria. Ludwig, deeply moved by his cousin’s integrity, offered him what he always wanted, the crown. Ludwig and Frederick should rule jointly. If one were to go to Italy to become emperor, the other would keep things on an even keel back home in Germany and vice versa. Hearing that generous offer, the grateful Frederick embraced his cousin, became co-king and they remained firm friends until the Habsburg’s death.
The other, more constitutional perspective looks like that: This was the third time that the succession of the empire had to be decided by force of arms, Dürnkrut, Göllheim and now Mühldorf. This was not a sustainable model, in particular now when there were three roughly equal sized political blocks. And it was completely untenable if the pope in Avignon, which means the king of France, actually decided who rules or whether there was a ruler at all.
For the empire to survive, it had to go further down the road of becoming the collective responsibility of the princes instead of a traditional monarchy. This process had begun long ago with Barbarossa and his concept of being the capstone, the first amongst equals of the princes. By the 14th century the central authority had diminished so much and the power of the territorial lords consolidated so far, a command and control monarchy had become impossible. But nobody wanted for the empire to dissolve. The empire provided legitimacy and a level of coordination and legal framework that kept the overall system stable and the princes in charge of their territories.
So a period of experimentation followed that lasted through the 14th, 15th and 16th century, trying out various ways how the imperial princes could collaborate in the interest of the empire whilst still pursuing their individual interests. The joint rule of Ludwig and Frederick was such an experiment.
Though it was never repeated, it was a successful experiment. The joint rule reconciled two of the three great families and it reassured the other princes that Ludwig would not be able to seize any more lands and territories for himself or his family. And it gave a focal point for the rising anger at the papacy.
Pope John XXII’s claim that he had the ultimate authority over who would become emperor threatened the role of the Prince-Electors. The Prince electors saw themselves as the ultimate deciders, not as a some sort of pre-selection committee. This common interest in preserving their constitutional role took precedence over their territorial differences.
And another constituency shared the dislike of the Avignon pope and that was the German clergy. Pope John XXII had insisted that the selection of bishops and increasingly abbots and even lower clergy had to be the preserve of the pope, not the decision of the cathedral canons or monks. The reason for that was in part organizational, giving the pope more control over the quality of local church leaders. It also had a monetary element. Every time a new bishop or abbot was appointed by the pope, a third of the first year income was to be sent to Avignon, for lower clergy it was 100% of the income. That wasn’t new. John XXII’s new idea was to constantly shift bishops and abbots between positions. So the bishop of Basel becomes archbishop of Mainz, so a new bishop of Basel had to be found, well that post goes to the previous bishop of Lavant, meaning we need a new bishop of Lavanat, that one was previously abbot of Einsiedeln and so on and so on. Every time a post is filled, a chunk of the first year income is sent to Avignon.
That was not only irritating for the post holder, but also for the people at his court. These incomes weren’t salaries, they were monies needed to fund the functioning of the bishopric or abbey, paying servants and granting special bonuses etc. All that went away, plus local clergy saw their careers taken over by foreign prelates.
These disaffected imperial princes and the German church founded a coalition strong enough to withstand the excommunication, even the interdict that in principle prevented the reading of mass across the whole empire. And the coalition was strong enough that Ludwig could dare to journey to Rome for his coronation without having to be concerned about coups back home.
In December 1326 he travelled to Trient and then to Milan, accompanied by just 200 knights. This was no longer an attempt to assert genuine political control over Northern Italy as Henry VII’s campaign had been. It was more of a visit to the imperial vicars who needed Ludwig to legitimize their rule. And he obliged most generously. He confirmed the Visconti of Milan, the della Scala of Verona and all the others and in exchange the Italians staged a lovely coronation as king of Italy for Ludwig and his new wife Margarete of Holland.
From there he proceeded to Pisa which resisted initially, but could be made to open its gates. By the way, this moment in the autumn of 1327 where the story of the Name of the Rose begins. In the spring of 1328 Ludwig reached Rome.
At which point the question is, what will he be doing there? He is still excommunicated. Pope John XXII has not agreed for him to be crowned emperor. He does not have any cardinals with him who could perform the ceremony as Henry VII had. So, who would be crowning him?
What happens next just shows how far and how radical Ludwig IV was. He did not even bother to go to St. Peters or dig up some malleable archbishop to place the crown on his head whilst gently poked by a spear. No, he accepted the imperial crown from the Senate and the People of Rome, the way the emperors of old had been elevated. The coronation was performed by the now superannuated Sciarra Colonna, the same man who had apprehended and allegedly slapped pope Boniface VIII with it bringing down the imperial papacy, a man so thoroughly antipapal as one could imagine. And he performed the ceremony in his role as the head of the Roman Senate. There was a mass afterwards, but that was purely decorative.
This bold act was to make visible that the empire was no longer beholden to the papacy. He, Ludwig had become emperor by the election of the Prince Electors and his coronation was a secular act, confirming what had already happened, not a religious event, constituting his position as ruler.
Now before you conclude that it was some German provincial baron who had come up with the concept of secular rule and the division between church and state almost exactly a 1000 years after the last pagan Roman emperor had breathed his last. That would be pushing it.
No, a lot of the intellectual underpinning of his rule and the idea of a secular emperor came from the court of intellectuals like William of Ockham and Michael of Cesena who had joined him after they had fled from Avignon. The most radical of those was a man called Marsilius of Padua who had been at Ludwig’s court since 1323. His main work the Defensor Pacis, the Defender of peace makes the case that all power comes from the people, that the people elect and depose the ruler and that the ruler’s purpose was to provide peace and justice. The church on the other hand had no right to temporal power, in fact Jesus had refused the offer of temporal power outright. He was the son of god after all, so power over all men was entirely at his disposal. Marsilius of Padua stated quote: “The elective principality or other office derives its authority from the election of the body having the right to elect, and not from the confirmation or approval of any other power”, and “The prince who rules by the authority of the “legislator” (aka the elector) has jurisdiction over the persons and possessions of every single mortal of every station, whether lay or clerical, and over every body of laymen or clergy”. (end quote)
That is the definition of the secular state carrying a monopoly of violence. This is written 200 years before Machiavelli and 500 years before Hobbes, Montesquieu and the French Revolution. And it wasn’t just something some weird professor had dreamed up in a remote corner of europe. No, this was doctrine at the heart of one of the most consequential rulers of the age.
So much for “Intellectuals in the Middle Ages only debated how many angels can fit on the head of a pin”.
I would have loved for Ludwig to leave it at this, pack up his gear and return to Germany, be consistent. But history is messy and never quite fits with theory. So Ludwig did not have the strength of his convictions to just rely on a secular coronation. A few days after his first coronation he became old school again and deposed pope John XXII for papal overreach and heresy. In his stead he elevated a radical Franciscan to become pope as antipope Nicolas V who crowned him with full regalia in St. Peter.
A bit irritating but what can we do.
Being crowned twice and spring with its usual risks of death and disease approaching, Ludwig packed up and went home. He reached Munich around Christmas 1330, by which time his antipope had already caved to John XXII.
For the next 8 years he focused on stabilising his regime, supporting the growth of trade and cities and passing laws.
As for his conflict with the papacy, things fell into a bit of a lull. Pope John XXII refused to lift the excommunication of the emperor and all of his supporters. The empire remained under interdict, meaning in principle no mass could be sung and no sacraments administered, which would be an epic catastrophe in the medieval perception of the world. But the German clergy largely ignored the ban coming from what they believed was a heretic pope and, as William of Ockham kept telling them, a heretic pope ceased to be pope the moment he became a heretic without any further constituent act being needed. So the German clergy continued saying mass and things kept running smoothly.
In fact John XXII in his later years, he lived all the way to 90, did indeed develop some unorthodox, possibly heretic views. Specifically he concluded that all souls, saints included, would end in purgatory and would only be brought before god on the day of judgement. When he came out with that, pretty much all the prelates in Avignon issued a collective groan. Irrespective of what the bible said, this notion would wipe out the value propositions of pilgrimages, crusades, relics, the reading of mass for the dead, donations to religious houses etc., etc., pp. everything the church of Avignon stood for.
The reason is obvious. The church had invented the concept of purgatory, a sort of waiting room for the souls before they would allowed to enter heaven. The amount of time one had to spend in purgatory depended on how sinful their individual life had been. And purgatory was quite uncomfortable. But there was a way to shorten this waiting time. The intercession of saints, in particular the virgin Mary could appease the gatekeepers and mean you get up to cloud 9 in a couple of weeks instead of millions of years. To gain that intercession was possible by doing good works, for instance donating funds to build a new church, decorate a chapel, give land to a religious house in exchange for mass being sung for the dead or going on crusade. That concept paid for quite a lot of medieval and renaissance art.
Now if John’s idea that even saints had to wait in purgatory with everyone else, all these donations were useless. What is the point of worshipping the big toe of St. Cuthbert if Saint Cuthbert is only a few places places ahead in the queue. John XXII’s great theological breakthrough was quickly dismissed and he admitted that he may have erred, something as we know isn’t possible for a pope to do.
John XXII died in 1334 and his successors took a more conciliatory approach towards the empire. But still, Ludwig was unable to get the excommunication and the interdict lifted. The pope kept insisting that he had the right to approve or reject imperial elections and Ludwig was unwilling to give in.
For Ludwig, this conundrum needed to be resolved and if the pope wasn’t willing to compromise, then the empire had to take a stance. Throughout the year 1338 the Prince-Electors, the bishops and abbots, the cities and the emperor himself wrote to the pope asserting that it was the right of the people, represented by the seven electors to choose the emperor and that “the one who is elected by the majority of the electors is the true king and emperor”.
In a meeting at Rhens on July 16th, 1338 the Prince Electors, minus King John of Bohemia came together and solemnly swore to defend their right to elect the king and emperor against all external interference, and to submit to the majority decisions of the college of electors. This agreement was then opened up to all other princes as well as vassals, Ministeriales and even the burghers of the cities.
Then they declared a law that the election automatically confers all the rights over the empire to the elected king without the need for any approbation, not even the need for a coronation.
This, the so-called Kurverein zu Rhens was the beginning of the constitution of the empire that will go through many more iterations and reforms until the end of the Reich in the 19th century. But the fundamental point that the elected monarch was automatically king and emperor was established. The pope could no longer withhold coronations or even make the elevation dependent on their approbation.
There will still be coronations in Aachen and journeys to Rome, but they were purely ceremonial, they do no longer effect a transfer of power. The long fight that began with Henry IV in the snow of Canossa and dominated the reigns of Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II was over.
It is ironic that Ludwig IV is still known by his derogatory nickname “the Bavarian” given to him by pope John XXII. John’s moniker was meant to say that his legitimacy ended on the borders of Upper Bavaria, but in reality he shaped much of what we know as the Holy Roman Empire. As for the intellectuals who helped him develop and defend these political concepts, William of Ockham, Michael of Cesena and Marsilius of Padua, they stayed in Munich and died there and their graves are still in the city.
Next week we will try something new. We will still follow the life of Ludwig the Bavarian. But we will look at it through the eyes of someone else, a woman, called Margarete Maultasch, countess of Tirol, best known from Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel the ugly duchess. I hope you will join us again.
And just a final reminder that the history of the Germans is advertising free and that if you want to hear the sound of Bach’s Flute Sonata in E-flat major, performed and arranged by Michael Rondeau, rather than me espousing mattresses, sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on historyofthegermans.com/support.
