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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 8

Publication Date: August 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.98.12779. Wüst, W. (2022). Village Policing--Early Modern Systems of Order in the Countryside. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,

9(8). 174-195.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Village Policing--Early Modern Systems of Order in the

Countryside

Wolfgang Wüst

History Department, Faculty of Philosophy and Theology

Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany

ABSTRACT

The collection of sources on “good” policey has, so far, illustrated and interpreted

the characteristics of early modern regulatory policy with territorial or urban

examples. This was examined for a period which, as the saddle period of modernity,

was responsible for setting a course that can hardly be overestimated, according to

which rights and duties, public and ecclesiastical order, social peace, honour,

happiness, health and prosperity are partly derived to this day. This temporal

framework remained in this essay, but the social perspective changed. While many

publications on ordinances were tailored to the role of the nobility and the courts,

the municipal councillors, the imperial ecclesiastical chancelleries or the executive

offices in the Reichskreise (Imperial Circles), the focus is now on their social

reflections. The perspective from “below” becomes more effective. The rural area,

village cooperatives, agrarian forms of trade and action remote from capitals and

centres are the new, undoubtedly no less interesting focus.

Keywords: Rural law, agrarian policing, order, honor, health, villages, landlords,

chancellery, church-regulations, forests, lakesides, Southern Germany, Franconia

POLICE AND RURAL LAW

Although rural and legal historyi in their subject tradition have never averted their gaze from

local and village aspects in legislation, their interest has only been reactivated in recent times.

Municipalities and villages have therefore been accepted as equal fields of study alongside

territories and cities. Rural areas, village cooperatives, agrarian forms of trade and action,

remote from the centre, are – as they were – in a renewed focus that is undoubtedly not

uninteresting. The step was overdue, as there were equal standards at the local level for work

and family, for peace and war, for church and inn, for play and seriousness in pre-industrial

living communities. Some things are strikingly similar in local and territorial orders. Church

authorities were rigorous here and there when it came to the protection of services, preaching,

hours of prayer and the teaching of children, as well as rest on Sundays and public holidays in

general. This point was always at the forefront of the territorial police statutes. For obvious

reasons, it was measured more closely against agrarian living and working conditions in the

community and village ordinances. Rural ordinances decisively supplemented the tradition of

southern German landed estates with a civilizational ruling component that would not

immediately emerge from sources strictly oriented towards economic and social history, such

as Urbare (landlordship register)ii, interest, levy and manorial registers.iii In the countryside,

the village policy ideally aimed at comparable standards of rule, as was, for example, fixed in

drawings for the rural building architecture in a Musterurbar of the year 1793. The model

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Wüst, W. (2022). Village Policing--Early Modern Systems of Order in the Countryside. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(8). 174-195.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.98.12779

register refers to the Franconian region, but cannot be fixed to a specific village centre.

Standardized house types for farmers from the second half of the 18th century can still be found

today in the Hohenloher Freilandmuseum in Wackershofen near the city of Schwäbisch Hall,

based on designs by a priest in Kupferzell and by an agricultural enlightener named Johann

Friedrich Mayer (1719–1798).iv

Fig. 1: "Practical draft" for a rural model urbarium by P. Johann Baptist Roppelt OSB in Banz

Monastery, 1793. Image rights: StA Bamberg, RB.Oec.p.f.2 (provenance: Michelsberg Monastery

in Bamberg)

Fig. 2: The Enlightenment philosopher and pastor Johann Friedrich Mayer (1719-1798) from

Kupferzell recommends the two-storey farmhouse built in 1794 by Georg Schuhmacher in

Elzhausen (Braunsbach parish) for general imitation in southern Germany. Image rights:

private

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 8, August-2022

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Fig. 3: The model farmhouse in the Schwäbisch-Hall open-air museum from 1794, close-up.

Image rights: private

The village control of norms, as it emerged even in architecture, was initially devoted primarily

to the practice of religion and belief. In Lutheran Elgersdorf, which had belonged to the

margraviate of Ansbach since 1361, the village authorities in 1740 exhorted everyone to

renounce “a godless life” and to “observe the Sabbath feast”. In detail, the municipal regulations

stated that „weder manns- oder weibsperson Gottes heiligsten namen verunehren, noch alles was

Gott den herrn ein gräuel, zu begehen sich gelüsten lassen. Insonderheit soll ein jeder am heiligen

sonntag und anderen gewöhnlichen fest- buß- und feyertagen, dem lieben Gott mit fleissiger

besuchung der predigt und anhörung seines worts, und anderen christlichen wercken, seinen

schuldigen dienst leisten, und daran mit keiner feldarbeit, es seye mit getreydt abschneiden,

aufsammeln, einführen, heuen und mähen, noch mit flachs gespinst und anderer arbeit umgehen.

Und da es ja des gewitters halber die höchste noth erforderte, besonders in der heu- und getreydt

ernd, nichts unter wehrendem gottesdienst und der predigt vernehmen.“v

Images like these and the situation of a village world affected by religious austerity, morality,

ecclesiastical and police authority are familiar to us through the Victorian writer Mary Anne

Evans (1819–1880), who wrote world literature under the pseudonym George Eliot.vi In the

novel “Adam Bede”, reference was still made in the mid-19th century to the consequences of

disregarding Sunday commandments in an agrarian milieu. God's punishments led to the

destruction of crops and livelihoods. And violations of the norm were naturally followed by

sanctions in Franconian offices as well. In the Hohenzollern's Cadolzburg rent office – and not

only there – we found plenty of evidence for penal bills. In August 1667, four local peasants paid

a fine of more than three florins, „daß sie sontags gemehet.” In March 1673 Hannß Zolles and

Wilhelm Rüßbeck in Cadolzburg deposited a fine of over one florin for "letting their servants go

early on Sundays". And in the winter of 1705 the search was still going on for farm workers.

They should collect every day “tobacco leaves in the fields”, even on Sundays.vii In rural areas,

the commandment to observe Sundays and public holidays had a special, by no means conflict- free relationship with the inn, which was usually close to the church. There, before, during or

after church services, people were only too happy to sin against the rulers and the church. In a

village and court order from the Upper Franconian nobility of Mitwitz, it was therefore the duty