Book Description

Excerpt from Sumptuary Law in Nürnberg: A Study in Paternal Government Sumptuary regulation was of a piece with the whole design of mediaeval municipal law-giving. We have learned to accept as normal to that period the minute regulation of prices, the strict supervision of purchase and sale, the fixation of wages, and the prescription of the quality of goods and the conditions of production. It is only a step from these matters to that regulation of personal expenditure which is the typical feature of sumptuary legis lation. In the sumptuary ordinance we may see reflected at its clearest the paternal attitude of the legislators, and realize in its purest expression the sense of responsibility which they felt for the whole round of the activities of the citizen, from economic to moral. The town fathers re quired him not only to transact his business in accordance with standards of equity which they authorized, but also to adjust his personal economy, to dress, to curtail his luxuries, after their ideas of propriety. When the govern ment undertook to dictate what a citizen should spend on his clothes, his wedding, his feasts, the christening of his baby, the burial of his kin, it laid its hand directly upon some of the liveliest of human desires. These laws there fore serve to illustrate the relationship of citizen and state on the plane of most intimate contact. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.