In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, German feudal lords, both secular and ecclesiastical, tried to increase the earnings from their lands by raising demands on their peasant tenants. As the traditional freedoms and property rights of peasants were restricted, massive revolts occurred in southern Germany in 1525. The following, representative statement of pe4sant grievances, summarized in twelve articles, came from the town of Memmingen.

1. It is our humble petition and desire that in the future each community should choose and appoint a pastor, and that we should have the right to depose him should he conduct himself improperly....

2. We are ready and willing to pay the fair tithe of grain…. The small tithes [of cattle], whether [to] ecclesiastical or lay lords, we will not pay at all, for the Lord God created cattle for the free use of man….

3. We… take it for granted that you will release us from serfdom as true Christians, unless it should be shown us from the Gospel that we are serfs.

4. It has been the custom heretofore that no poor man should be allowed to catch venison or wildfowl or fish in flowing water, which seems to us quite unseemly and unbrotherly as well as selfish and not agreeable to the Word of God....

5. We are aggrieved in the matter of woodcutting, for the noblemen have appropriated all the woods to themselves.

6. In regard to the excessive services demanded of us which are increased from day to day, we ask that this matter be properly looked into so that we shall no continue to be oppressed in this way….

7. We will not hereafter allow ourselves to be further oppressed by our lords, but will let them demand only what is just and proper according to the word of the agreement between the lord and the peasant. The lord should no longer try to force more services or other dues from the peasant without payment....

8. We are greatly burdened because our holdings cannot support the rent exacted from them…. We ask that the lords may appoint persons of honor to inspect these holdings and fix a rent with justice….

9. We are burdened with a great evil in the constant making of the making of new laws.... In our opinion we should be judged according to the old written law….

10. We are aggrieved by the appropriation… of meadows and fields which at one time belonged to a community as a whole. These we will take again into our own hands....

11. We will entirely abolish the due called Todfall [that is, heriot or death tax, by which the lord received the best horse, cow, or garment of a family upon the death of a serf] and will no longer endure it, nor allow widows and orphans to be thus shamefully robbed against God's will, and in violation of justice and right….

12. It is our conclusion and final resolution, that if any one or more of the articles here set forth should not be in agreement with the Word of God, as we think they are, such article we will willingly retract.

Source:
Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Department of History, 1897).