94

THE DANCERS

The 1503-text, on the other hand, makes no mention of the
"Scharmutzl";209 yet the long account on ff. IO2V-IO4V21° is dated
1503 in the title. The report itself, however, names as captains
those cited in our scribe's item for 1507, Sigmundt Pfintzing and
Bertholt Strobl, and we may therefore conclude that 1507 is
properly the date of the incident.
The story of the defense of the Sckembart privilege, told by one
of the Ldujer, places vividly before us the scenes of this eventful
day. The splendor of the Turkish pageant is illustrated in two
Sckembart books: MS No. 2, f. 37, miniatures of Turks on horse
(with the caption: "Diese Reuter gehbren Zum Schbnpart"), per-
haps also f. 43, "Der Stall-Meister," and ff. 44 to 50; MS No. 36,
ff. 313 to 352, thirty-eight miniatures of Turks on horse and at
pastimes, such as wrestling. In this period of the encroachment of
the Turks on Europe a resplendent, masked Turkish procession
was a popular entertainment, which usually found its culmination
in a mock battle in which the "Turks" were taken captive and
converted.211 To judge by the account in the Sckembart MSS, no
battle had been planned for this Turkish pageant in Nuremberg,
but the Laufer staged their own attack and put the "Turks" to
rout in earnest. The punishment meted out to the Ldujer by the
Council was not only in accord with their desire to stamp out
anything that might stimulate an uprising, but also with the
generally favorable attitude to the Turks on the part of the city.
In Nuremberg the infidel invaders were honored as a force against
the power of the princes,212 and they were pictured in costume
209 The item for 1503 reads as follows (f. q8r): "Anno. 1503, warn .93. Jm
Schempart, Jre Haubtleut warn Caspar Baumgartner, vnd Gorg Kotzel, bekleidtet
Jnn Grun vnd WeiB, Leinen Leib, vnd Wiilene Hosen, Luff bey dem Miilla am
ObBmarck auB, gaben den Metzgern .15. f. hetten ein Hoel, was ein Hblefant, Druch
ein Hiiltznen thurn/. die Namen diser Person sein zu endt der Schempart mit der
Jarzal bezaichnet Zu findten/
210 Quoted supra, pp. 47-50.
2"Cf. Creizenach, I, 376 ("Le Pas Saladin," 1389, and later pageants in France);
J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, 9th ed. (Leipzig: E. A. See-
mann, 1905), II, 141 (entry of Alfonso the Great into Naples, 1443); Welsford
(Court Masque), p. 86 (Roman festival, 1473); Withington, I, 232, 238 (seventeenth-
century Turkish pageants in England). "Turks" appear in all modern festivals in
the Tyrol, cf. Dbrrer, p. 89.
212 Cf. B. Kamil, Die Turken in der deutschen Literatur bis zum Barock (Kiel:
Diss., 1935), P. 9.