ere triumphed.
It became the juridical expression of the political, economical, and
religious change which marks the close of the Middle Ages and the
beginnings of the modern commercial world.

It must not be supposed, however, that no resistance was made to it.
Everywhere in contemporary literature, side by side with denunciations
of the new mercenary troops, the _Landsknechte_, we find
uncomplimentary allusions to the race of advocates, notaries, and
procurators who, as one writer has it, "are increasing like
grasshoppers in town and in country year by year." Whenever they
appeared, we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang up. He who
had but the money in hand might readily defraud his poorer neighbour
in the name of law and right. "Woe is me!" exclaims one author, "in
my home there is but one procurator, and yet is the whole country
round about brought into confusion by his wiles. What a misery will
this horde bring upon us!" Everywhere was complaint and in many places
resistance.

As early as 1460 we find the Bavarian estates vigorously complaining
that all the courts were in the hands of doctors. They demanded that
the rights of the land and the ancient custom should not be cast
aside; but that the courts as of old should be served by reasonable
and honest judges, who should be men of the same feudal livery and of
the same country as those whom they tried. Again in 1514, when the
evil had become still more crying, we find the estates of Wuertemberg
petitioning Duke Ulrich that the Supreme Court "shall be composed of
honourable, worthy, and understanding men of the nobles and of the
towns, who shall not be doctors, to the intent that the ancient usages
and customs should abide, and that it should be judged according to
them in such wise that the poor man might no longer be brought to
confusion." In many covenants of the end of the fifteenth century,
express stipulation is made that they should not be interpreted by a
doctor or licentiate, and also in some cases that no such doctor or
licentiate should be permitted to reside or to exercise his
profession within certain districts. Great as was the economical
influence of the new jurists in the tribunals, their political
influence in the various courts of the empire, from the
_Reichskammergericht_ downwards, was, if anything, greater. Says
Wimpfeling, the first writer on the art of education in the modern
world: "According to the loathsome doctrines of the ne