Singing for his supper’
The reinvention of juvenile streetsinging in early modern Nuremberg
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11934732 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joel F Harrington (0000-0001-9582-9898, Vanderbilt University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 27-45 |
| Publication date | 1997-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0307-1022 • E-ISSN: 1470-1200 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03071029708567986 |
| OpenAlex | W1998428585 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 9 |
From 1478 onwards, the magistrates of the wealthy and influential imperial city of Nuremberg passed a series of increasingly stricter measures dealing with the ancient custom of poor children singing from house to house, particularly during the Christmas season, for food or money. Except for a few approved and closely supervised children from the city's Latin schools and orphanage, all other practice of the custom was prohibited and punished. After I588 this meant brief incarceration for offending children in the municipal pesthouse (Siechenhaus), with fines and possible banishment for their parents. During the i66os the government's campaign against all begging especially intensified, culminating in the I670 opening of the Nuremberg Discipline and Workhouse. By the end of the seventeenth century, though the problem of child begging continued, the custom of singing for one's supper had been effectively eliminated or at least restricted to organized outings from the city's Latin schools and orphanages. On the surface this appears as clear a case of early modern acculturation and social disciplining2 as we could hope to find. A religiously inspired governmental elite acts to suppress a popular custom involving unruly individuals and often lewd and 'unchristian' songs, in the process ensuring its own political authority and cultural hegemony. The internment of begging
Begging · Criminology · Elite · Government (linguistics · Hegemony · Political science · Politics · Singing · Sociology · Supper · Gender Studies · History · Law · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Citations per year | 0.1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2026 (22) |
| Highly cited | No |