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preserved by tradition, and expresses the piety and resignation of the buried knight.
The name, however, is irretrievably gone, though the date, 1573, remains. It is supposed by Usener, the author of a work on the castles in the neighbourhood of Frankfort, to have been the monument of Caspar of Cronberg, one of that generation who received back their patrimony from the Landgraves of Hesse. They had lost it as follows:—The Cronbergs had become connected by marriage with the Sickingen family. A lineal representative of this family is still said to inhabit a small farm close to the romantic ruins of the castle held by his ancestors on the Rhine. The head of the Sickingens was devoted to the cause of the Reformation, and drew on himself the wrath of the great military prelates who lived about the Rhineland. So Richard, Archbishop of Treves and Elector, Ludwig Elector and Count Palatine of the Rhine, and Philip the Magnanimous of Hesse, appeared in arms before Cronberg October 2lst, 1522. Their whole muster with which they were attacking Sickingen was said to amount to 30,000 men. In Cronberg itself there was only a younger member of the family to command, and to form a garrison, only twenty knights, sixty footmen, and thirty peasants impressed for the defence from two subject villages, who were, however,—according to a contemporary chronicler,—only “unhandy, lazy, obstinate louts.” The townsmen could only furnish 160 fighting men. Cronberg, however, held out from Saturday, the 21st of October, to Wednesday, the 25th, although it had been pounded with artillery, some of which had the honour of being pointed by the Serene hand of the Landgrave of Hesse, and had stood the brunt of balls said to have weighed ninety-five pounds. That the force with which these balls were propelled could not have been equal to their weight may be concluded from the fact, that only one man was killed, and the castle little damaged. Cronberg was, however, frightened into surrender by so proportionately overwhelming a demonstration. The allies took common possession of it, bought the interest of some of the family (probably belonging to the Catholic branch with the Wings) who were neutral, and finally passed it to Hesse. After the Reformation it lapsed again, or was ceded to the ancient family.
If this be the monument, as Usener supposes, of Caspar of Cronberg, he, being of the Wing branch of the family and a Catholic, would have been refused a tomb in the now Protestant town church, and the small Catholic church in the castle had become full of the graves of his ancestors. Perhaps he may have deemed himself unworthy of resting with his ancestors, having, though a Catholic, sided with the Reformers, and this might account for the character of the monument, and especially the attitude of the knight, which is one of deep contrition and earnest prayer.
In both the Catholic and Protestant churches are figures of the knights of the house of Cronberg, many with their ladies beside them, and their dogs at their feet. The armour of the knights tells of the ages in which they lived; the ladies too are remarkable for their hooded head-dresses, which allow only the face to be seen, and give these matrons a nunlike appearance.
One of the apparently most ancient figures in the Catholic church. The comparative rudeness of the work strikes the observer, as well as the great development of arms and chest as compared with the legs, a disproportion which could scarcely have been actual, or may have been exaggerated as an expression of knighthood, which was not accustomed to develope its calves by pedestrianism. The wings on this worthy’s helmet resemble ribs of beef. The present position of these figures could hardly have been the original. They were, doubtless, recumbent at first, afterwards taken up, and built into the walls of the churches for the sake of convenience. Amongst the most noted sufferers in effigy were Hardmuth, the friend of Luther, and son-in-law of Sickingen, and his wife. They reclined on a sarcophagus, surrounded by an open iron screen, in the Protestant church, all of which was taken away to make room for some seats. This is said to have been the work of a clerical Vandal at the end of the last century. In another instance, in the Catholic church, the knight is not only upright in the wall, but half concealed by the woodwork of the vestry. Germany appears to have had the full benefit of the taste of what is called the churchwarden period in England, the deliberate and cold-blooded vulgarity of which seems to have effected more ecclesiastical mischief in its long duration than any outburst of fanatical violence, or the normal devastation of war.