it received from the emperor Henry III. permission to establish a mint and a market. It is said to have been destroyed by the emperor Henry V. in 1105, but if this was the case the town must have been very speedily rebuilt, as in 1127 we find the emperor Lothair taking it from the duke of Swabia and assigning it to Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria. An imperial officer, styled the burggrave of Nuremberg, who, however, seems to have been merely the military governor of the castle, and to have exercised no sway over the citizens, became prominent in the 12th century. This office came into the hands of the counts of Hohenzollern at the beginning of the 13th century, and burggrave of Nuremberg is still one of the titles of their descendant, the German emperor. The government of the town was vested in the patrician families, who, contrary to the usual course of events in the free towns, succeeded in permanently excluding the civic gilds from all share of municipal power, although in 1347 there was a sharp rising against this oligarchy. The town was specially favoured by the German monarchs, who frequently resided and held diets here, and in 1219 Frederick II. conferred upon it the rights of a free imperial town. By the terms of this charter the town appears to have been immediately subject to the king, who was represented by his magistrate (or Schultheiss). In a short time, however, the latter appears to have been assisted by a council, consisting of 13 consules (burgomasters) and 13 scabini (assessors), who collectively formed the governing and administrative body under the presidency of the bailiff. The last-named official soon confined himself to the judicial magisterial office, and a further increase in the numbers of the council having taken place by the appointment of 8 nominees of the king, a municipal council of 34, under the direction of the senior consul or burgomaster, dealt with matters exclusively civic. Later this council (the kleine Rat) was increased to 42 members, 8 of whom belonged to the artisan class.
In 1356 Nuremberg witnessed the promulgation of the famous Golden Bull of the emperor Charles IV. At the beginning of the 15th century the burggraves of Nuremberg, who had in the meantime raised themselves to the rank of princes of the Empire, were invested with the margraviate of Brandenburg, and sold their castle to the town. They, however, reserved certain rights, and their insistence on these led to fierce and sanguinary feuds between the burghers and the margraves Albert Achilles and Frederick and Albert Alcibiades of Bayreuth.
The quarrel with the margraves, however, did not interfere with the growth of the town’s prosperity, which reached its acme in the 16th century. Like Augsburg, Nuremberg attained great wealth as an intermediary between Italy and the East on the one hand, and northern Europe on the other. Its manufactures were so well known that it passed into a proverb—“Nuremberg’s hand goes through every land.” Its citizens lived in such luxury that Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.) has left it on record that a simple burgher of Nuremberg was better lodged than the king of Scotland. The town had gradually extended its sway over a territory nearly 500 sq. m. in extent, and was able to furnish the emperor Maximilian with a contingent of 6000 troops. But perhaps the great glory of Nuremberg lies in its claim to be the principal fount of German art. Its important architectural features have already been described. The love of its citizens for sculpture is abundantly manifest in the statues and carvings on their houses. Adam Krafft, Veit Stoss and Peter Vischer form a trinity of sculptors of which any city might be proud. In painting Nuremberg is not less prominent, as the names of Wohlgemuth and Dürer sufficiently indicate. In the decorative arts the Nuremberg handicraftsman attained great perfection in ministering to the luxurious tastes of the burghers, and a large proportion of the old German furniture, silver-plate, stoves and the like, which are now admired in industrial museums, was made in Nuremberg workshops. Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508–1585), the worker in silver, is perhaps eminent enough to be added to the above list of artists. Its place in literary history—by no means an unimportant one—it owes to Hans Sachs and the other meistersänger. A final proof of its vigorous vitality at this period may be found in the numerous inventions of its inhabitants, which include watches, at first called “Nuremberg eggs,” the air-gun, gun-locks, the terrestrial and celestial globes, the composition now called brass, and the art of wire-drawing.
Nuremberg was the first of the imperial towns to throw in its lot with the Reformation, and it embraced Protestantism with its wonted vigour about 1525. Its name is associated with a peace concluded between Charles V. and the Protestants in 1532. The first blow to its prosperity was the discovery of the sea-route to India in 1497; and the second was inflicted by the Thirty Years’ War, during which Gustavus Adolphus was besieged here in an entrenched camp by Wallenstein. During the eight or ten weeks that the blockade lasted no fewer than 10,000 of the inhabitants are said to have died of want or disease. The downfall of the town was accelerated by the illiberal policy of its patrician rulers; and the French Revolution reduced it to such a degree that in 1796 it offered itself and its territories to the king of Prussia on condition that he would pay its debts. Prussia, however, refused the offer. In 1803 Nuremberg was allowed to maintain its nominal position as a free city, but in 1806 it was annexed to Bavaria.
See Lochner, Nürnberger Jahrbücher bis 1313 (Nuremberg, 1832–1835); Nürnbergs Vorzeit und Gegenwart (Nuremberg, 1845) and Geschichte der Reichsstadt Nürnberg zur Zeit Kaiser Karls IV. (Berlin, 1873); Priem, Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg bis auf die neueste Zeit (Nuremberg, 1874); B. Schönlank, Altnürnbergische Studien (Leipzig, 1894); L. Rösel, Alt-Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1895); E. Mummenhoff, Altnürnberg bis zum Jahre 1350 (1890); R. Hagen, Bilder aus Nürnbergs Geschichte (Nuremberg, 1889); F. Roth, Die Einführung der Reformation in Nürnberg (Würzburg, 1885); J. M. Lotter, Sagen, Legenden and Geschichten der Stadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1898); the Quellenschriften zur Staats- und Kulturgeschichte der Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1893, fol.); and the Mitteilungen of the Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1879, fol.). See also C. Headlam, The Story of Nuremberg (London, 1899).
NURSE (a shortened form of the earlier “nourice,” adapted through the French from Lat. nutrix, nutrire, to nourish), primarily a woman who suckles and takes care of an infant, and more generally one who has the general charge of children; also a person, male or female, who attends to the sick, and particularly one who has been trained professionally for that purpose (see Nursing).
NURSING. The development of sick-nursing, which has brought into existence a large, highly-skilled, and organised profession, is one of the most notable features of modern social life. The evolution of the sick-nurse is mainly due to three very diverse influences—religion, war and science—to name them in chronological order. It was religion History. which first induced ladies, in the earlier centuries of Christianity, to take up the care of the sick as a charitable duty. The earliest forerunner of the great sisterhood of nurses of whom we have any record was Fabiola, a patrician Roman lady, who in A.D. 380 founded a hospital in Rome with a convalescent home attached, and devoted herself and her fortune to the care of the sick poor. She had a rival in the empress Flaccilla, the pious consort of Theodosius I. (A.D. 379–395), who also personally visited the hospitals and attended on the sick. Organized nursing does not appear to have formed any part of medical treatment, except in so far as the deacons of the church attended on the poor, until the 4th century of the Christian era. After that date the employment of women for this purpose must have developed rapidly, for in the reign of Honorius (A.D. 395–423) six hundred women were engaged in the hospitals of Alexandria. These institutions were managed by the clergy, and throughout the dark and middle ages the hospital and nursing systems were connected with religious bodies. Nurses were provided by the male and female monastic orders, an arrangement which still continues in most Roman Catholic countries, though it is gradually being abandoned through the increasing demands of medical science, which have led the hospitals to establish training schools of their own. The names of the oldest foundations which still survive, such as the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, St Thomas’s and St Bartholomew’s in London, the order of St Augustine, and (in the form of a modern revival) that of St John of Jerusalem, sufficiently indicate the original religious connexion. The
