GRAVAMINA (Lat.,=" Grievances"): In historical terminology the official compilation of the grievances of the German nation against the Papal Court. Such formal complaints became more and more frequent, especially in the second half of the fifteenth century, and in the course of time developed into a constantly recurring subject of consideration or menace in the German diets far into the period of the Reformation. Their origin maybe traced to the complaints or propositions of reform which the German nation, like other nations, laid before the Council of Constance and the Council of Basel (qq.v.). Efforts at an ecclesiastical reformation accompanied those directed against abuses in the empire, and it is to be noted that the prime source of complaint, as well as of opposition, was the higher clergy. The general desire received a more tangible form in the Gravamina Alemanim nationia which were laid before the Diet of Frankfort in Aug., 1456, in which the unfulfilled hopes of the preceding councils again found expression; but conditions did not change. In the latter years of the century, under the influence of Berthold of Mains, complaints about the investiture of foreigners with German prebends became more urgent. Another chief point of complaint was directed against questionaries and mendicant friars. While thus far spiritual princes had been the leaders of the movement, so that secular princes and their desires came into consideration only secondarily, a change took place in the latter period of the reign of Maximilian I. (d. 1514); but it was at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518 that the Gravamina first received real official form, when a memorial was prepared stating reasons for the refusal to pay ecclesiastical tithes. The movement reached its culmination at the Diet of Worms (1521), where it was advocated even by Roman Catholic princes, like George of Saxony, who disavowed Luther, but favored a reformation after the conception of Erasmus. A commission, composed of spiritual and secular members, was immediately entrusted with the compilation of the complaints. Their discussions resulted in the famous "One hundred [more precisely one hundred and two] Gravamina of the German Nation," Deutsche Reichatagsakten, 2d ser., ii., Gotha, 1896, no. 96, which attack not only papal encroachments, but abuses of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the immoral life of the clergy in general. Nevertheless, they remained only a provisional draft, and no result followed from them even though they were repeated in another form at the Diet of Nuremberg (1522-23; cf. O. Redlich, Der Re6chdag zu Nurnr

berg I Slog-83, Leipsic, 1887, pp.120,144; Gebhardt, pp. 133 sqq.); but, as an official accusation of the German nation, they form an important historical document concerning the conditions of the time.

(T. Kolde.)

Bibliography: J. F. Georgi, Imperatorsm impernique principum ac procsrum fotiusque nationis Germanica gravamina adroarsus curiam Romanam totumque axleaiastieum ordinum, Frankfort, 1725; G. M. Weber, Die hundert Bo echwerden der puammten deutschen Nation, Erlangen, 1829 (text alone); W. Roesmann, Betrarhtungen fiber doe Zsitalter der Reformation mit archivalischen Bsilapen, Jena, 1858; Deutsche Reiehetagsakten, new series, vol. ii., ad. A. Wrede, Gotha, 1898; B. Gebhwdt, Die Gravamina der deutschen Nation oepsn den römischen Hof, Breslau, 1895.