re exalted
position. In this epoch, when cultivated minds began to devote their
energies to other things besides fighting in war and carousing in peace,
music found new and worthier subjects in nature and love and the beauty
of woman. Under the new system she became the arbiter of all knightly
disputes, the queen to whom all obedience was due. From this extreme
worship arose the schools of the Minnesingers and the Troubadours, who
paid her manifold homage in the shape of poetry and song.

According to the general statements of history, the Minnesingers began
their career in the time of Frederick Barbarossa, of Germany. This would
place their origin in the latter part of the twelfth century. Yet it is
a strange fact that Heinrich of Veldig, usually accounted the pioneer in
this new school of singing, utters a complaint about the loss of the
good old times, and bewails the decay of the true greatness of the art
to which he devoted himself. The original song in which he expresses
this sentiment is still extant, and the particular stanza in question
runs as follows:

"Do man der rehten minne pflag
Da pflag man ouch der ehren;
Nu mag man naht und tag
Die boesen sitte leren;
Swer dis nu siht, und jens do sach,
O we! was der nu clagen mag
Tugende wend sich nu verkehren."

That many of the early songs of the Minnesingers have been preserved is
due to the forethought of Ruediger of Manesse, a public officer of Zurich
in the fourteenth century. He made a thorough collection of all
specimens of the style of the Minnesingers, and many subsequent works,
such as that of Von Der Hagen, are based upon his researches.

The language ordinarily used by the Minnesingers was that of Suabia,
which was that employed at the imperial and many lesser courts of
Germany. They used it with a skill and delicacy which was generally far
superior to the style of the Troubadours. In performing their works,
they did not, like their western brethren, have recourse to hired
accompanists, or Jongleurs, but supported the vocal part by playing on a
small viol. The Jongleurs were essentially a French institution, and no
class of musicians similar to them existed in Germany. The Minnesingers,
like the Troubadours, were amateurs, and aimed to keep free from the
taint of professionalism. Men of the highest rank were proud to belong
to this order of musicians, and emperors, princes, and famous knights
are found among them.

The l