(Ger.: ‘flagellant songs’).
The name given to a group of sacred songs sung by the flagellants (It. flagellanti, disciplinati) of the 13th and 14th centuries during their pilgrimages and acts of penance.
Geisslerlieder are in the vernacular and belong equally to the tradition of the Italian laude of the late Middle Ages, and to that of the German pilgrim's song, the one-line invocation and multi-line hymn to a saint. Whereas most of the rest of the popular sacred songs of the Middle Ages are lost because those capable of writing them down did not consider them worth saving for posterity, some at least of the songs of the German flagellants were preserved because the spectacular events connected with them led several contemporary chroniclers to record them. These events arose in Italy in the middle of the 13th century from the desperate situation in the political, social and moral spheres. Faced with the absence of any power to deal with public suffering or the permanent warfare in town and country (e.g. between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines), hermits and travelling preachers called the world to contemplation and to atonement through penance, so that the individual might be the source of improvement. The movement started in Umbria in 1258; with ‘pax et misericordia’ as their watchword, organizations of lay brothers (for example, the Disciplinati di Gesù Cristo in Perugia) were formed to perform communal public acts of penance lasting 33 ½ days in memory of Christ's suffering for the sake of the world, and to spread the movement by making pilgrimages which excited the attention of the masses. At the beginning ‘nobiles et mercatores’ as well as ‘rustici’ took part, but as the movement spread further (as far as Poland in 1261) it was increasingly the lower social classes that were involved, although no unified sects were formed, nor was there any overt agitation for social revolution. The personal act of penance, religious in motivation and defined in terms of the Last Judgment, remained at the heart of the manifestations. Every act was subject to a strict ritual and performed in penitential garments, under vows of silence and directed by a ‘magister’, ‘minister’ or ‘meister’. In Italy ‘laudes divinas et incondita carmina’ (Bologna, 1260) and ‘hymnos in latina vel vulgari lingua’ were sung during these acts, but instrumental music and ‘amatorie cantilene’ were forbidden. The flagellants adopted some of the singing practices of the Laudesi fraternities and enriched the liturgy peculiar to those groups with more sophisticated sacred songs. One of these laude, Chi volo de mondo desprezzare, has survived with its melody from the 13th century; otherwise the musical settings of these ‘canti’ or ‘buozlieder’ from the first eruption of that lay mass movement are lost.
It was the second wave in 1349, spreading over wide areas of Europe like a natural catastrophe in its effect on the entire population, that shocked the priests into noting down the flagellants' penitential songs, linked with events caused by plague and other sufferings, as documents worthy of recording. An immense outbreak, aggravated by the fear that the Last Judgment was imminent, spread on this occasion across the Low Countries as far as Britain and Scandinavia. Large and small processions of penitents formed, chose leaders, confessed their sins and, while singing, with due ritual ‘beat themselves most energetically’ (Bohemia, 1349). ‘Cum canto devoto dulcique melodia’ they went from place to place with their message, the singing of the Leisen being led by two or three singers (see Leise).
The Leisen can be divided into two groups, the songs sung while the flagellants were in procession or on pilgrimage, and those sung during the penances. Some were notated in neumes in the Chronicon Hugonis sacerdotis de Rutelinga (1349; RF-SPsc O XIV, 6), a work in hexameters rediscovered in 1880. Hugo Spechtshart of Reutlingen was a Swabian priest and teacher, an exceptionally skilled musician and an acutely observant spectator of the processions. His claim to a place in the history of folksong collecting in Germany is that as a conscientious chronicler he was the first to take pains to notate exactly what he heard. He was also the first to notate the variants from strophe to strophe usual in living folksong, so that his record of what was actually sung in the 14th century has a unique documentary value. As he watched the processions, led by banners and crosses, Hugo heard the cantica Nu ist diu betfart so here (ex.1), Maria muoter reiniu meit and Maria unser vrouwe. These are old pilgrims' songs, known over a wide area; they survived in the folksong of some Catholic regions until the 17th century. They are characterized by invocations to the Virgin and remembrances of Christ’s sufferings, which are linked together by internal and final refrains to form stanzas, like a song.
Such formulae – invocations and recurrent rhyme patterns – are among the traditional components of European folksong that emerge from comparative melodic study of processional and dance-songs, and of songs connected with particular customs collected over a wide area. Like the old pilgrims' songs these too were in general metrically extendable, as the lead singers were allowed latitude to introduce variations within a well-known framework; the recurring refrains sung by the crowd were confined to simple formulae, which seem to have been the nuclei from which longer epic invocations and strophic songs of petition developed in the Middle Ages.
During the flagellation rituals performed in circles outside churches, songs made up on the journeys of flagellation (‘in den geiselnfarten’) were also sung. The principal song is believed to have been the eight-part ‘cancio’ Nu tret her zů der büssen welle, in which the singing was led by the best singers. During the singing the flagellants walked round and round, flung themselves on the ground, knelt down with raised hands and bemoaned the evil of the world. Parts of this ritual survived in the popular memory after the flagellant processions of 1349 had ceased, and became the object of mockery. In Switzerland in 1350, for instance, people are supposed to have danced to a song of which the original words were:
Der
unserr bůzze welle pflegen,
Der sol gelten und wider geben.
Er biht und lass die sunde varn,
So wil sich got ubr in erbarn.
(‘Let him who wants to join our penance pay and give again, let him confess and renounce sin, then God will have mercy on him’), substituting the following text:
Der
unser Buss well pflegen
Der soll Ross und Rinder nehmen,
Gäns und feiste Swin!
Damit so gelten wir den Win.
(‘Let him who wants to join our penance take horse and cattle, geese and fat swine! That's how we shall pay for the wine’). In the Middle Ages the fear of death is often juxtaposed with the lighthearted joy of existence in this manner.
The Geisslerlieder are medieval religious folksongs, of which the texts express the particularly urgent needs of the flagellants within a strophic framework characteristic of the genre as a whole, while the melodies are typical of songs of pilgrimage and petition, which probably formed part of the general repertory of religious songs in the 14th century.
See also Lauda spirituale.
MGG2(J. Janota)
E.G. Förstemann: Die christlichen Geisslergesellschaften (Halle, 1828)
K. Lechner: ‘Die grosse Geisselfahrt des Jahres 1349’, Historisches Jb der Görresgesellschaft, v (1884), 437–62
P. Runge, ed.: Die Lieder und Melodien der Geissler des Jahres 1349 nach der Aufzeichnung Hugo's von Reutlingen (Leipzig, 1900/R)
A. Hübner: Die deutschen Geisslerlieder (Berlin, 1931)
J. Müller-Blattau: ‘Die deutschen Geisslerlieder’, ZMw, xvii (1935), 6–18
W. Salmen: ‘Gesang der Geissler in Westfalen’, Westfalenspiegel, xi (1956), 5
W. Wiora: ‘The Origins of German Spiritual Folk Song’, EthM, viii (1964), 1–13
N. Ruwet: ‘Méthodes d'analyse en musicologie’, RBM, xx (1966), 65–90; Eng. trans. in MAn, vi (1987), 3–36
C. Petzsch: ‘Nachrichten aus Städtechroniken (Fortsetzung) and Weiteres’, Historische Volksmusikforschung: Seggau 1977, 119–36
F. Graus: Pest, Geissler, Judenmorde das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit (Göttingen, 1987)
W. Salmen: Tanz und Tanzer im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance (Hildesheim, 1999)
WALTER SALMEN