if he did not actually pen the famous Twelve Articles there formulated, they were at least drawn up under his inspiration and that of his colleague Lotzer. They embody ideas of wider import than are likely to have occurred to bands of peasants concerned with specific local grievances; and throughout the movement it is obvious that, while the peasants supplied the physical force and their hardships the real motive, the intellectual inspiration came from the radical element in the towns. This element was not so obvious at Memmingen as it became later on, and its chief effect there was to give a religious aspect to the revolt and to merge its local character in a universal appeal to the peasant, based on ideas of fraternal love and Christian liberty drawn from the Gospel.
This programme was not adopted without some difference of opinion, in which the Lake bands led the opposition. But the proposal of an Evangelical Brotherhood was accepted on March 7; and the Twelve Articles, founded apparently upon a memorial previously presented by the people of Memmingen to their town Council, were then drawn up. The preamble repudiated the idea that the insurgents' "new Gospel" implied the extirpation of spiritual and temporal authority; on the contrary, they quoted texts to show that its essence was love, peace, patience, and unity, and that the aim of the peasants was that all men should live in accord with its precepts. As means thereto they demanded that the choice of pastors should be vested in each community, which should also have power to remove such as behaved unseemly. The great tithes they were willing to pay, and they proposed measures for their collection and for the application of the surplus to the relief of the poor, and, in case of necessity, to the expenses of war or to meet the demands of the tax-gatherer; but the small tithes they would not pay, because God had created the beasts of the field as a free gift for the use of mankind. They would no longer be villeins, because Christ had made all men free; but they would gladly obey such authority as was elected and set over them, so it be by God appointed. They claimed the right to take ground game, fowls, and fish in flowing water; they demanded the restoration of woods, meadows, and ploughlands to the community, the renunciation of new-fangled services, and payment of peasants for those which they rendered, the establishment of judicial rents, the even administration of justice, and the abolition of death-dues, which ruined widows and orphans. Finally, they required that all their grievances should be tested by the Word of God; if aught which they had demanded were proved to be contrary to Scripture, they agreed to give it up, even though the demand had been granted; and on the other hand they asked that their lords should submit to the same test, and relinquish any privileges which might hereafter be shown to be inconsistent with the Scriptures, although they were not included in the present list of grievances.
On the basis of these demands negotiations were reopened with
