;
and it is owing again to their Latin translations that the existence of
this curious style of poetry can be traced back so far as the tenth
century.(4) As these poems are written in Latin, they could not find a
place in a German reading-book; but they, as well as the unduly suspected
Latin plays of the nun Hrosvitha, throw much light on the state of German
civilization during the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The eleventh century presents almost an entire blank in the history of
literature. Under the Frankish or Salic dynasty, Germany had either to
defend herself against the inroads of Hungarian and Slavonic armies, or it
was the battle-field of violent feuds between the Emperors and their
vassals. The second half of that century was filled with the struggles
between Henry IV. and Pope Gregory VII. The clergy, hitherto the chief
support of German literature, became estranged from the German people; and
the insecurity of the times was unfavorable to literary pursuits.
Williram's German had lost the classical correctness of Notker's language,
and the "Merigarto," and similar works, are written in a hybrid style,
which is neither prose nor poetry. The Old High-German had become a
literary language chiefly through the efforts of the clergy, and the
character of the whole Old High-German literature is preeminently
clerical. The Crusades put an end to the preponderance of the clerical
element in the literature of Germany. They were, no doubt, the work of the
clergy. By using to the utmost the influence which they had gradually
gained and carefully fomented, the priests were able to rouse a whole
nation to a pitch of religious enthusiasm never known before or after. But
the Crusades were the last triumph of the clergy; and with their failure
the predominant influence of the clerical element in German society is
checked and extinguished.

From the first beginning of the Crusades the interest of the people was
with the knight,--no longer with the priest. The chivalrous Emperors of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty formed a new rallying point for all national
sympathies. Their courts, and the castles of their vassals, offered a new
and more genial home to the poets of Germany than the monasteries of Fulda
and St. Gall. Poetry changed hands. The poets took their inspirations from
real life, though they borrowed their models from the romantic cycles of
Brittany and Provence. Middle High-German, the language of the Swabian
court, became