ABSTRACT
Among the many sins and injustices of the European ancient regime, according to popular wisdom, one of the worst was the utter inflexibility of its social hierarchy. Early modern contemporaries and modern historians consequently agree that even limited social mobility could not apply to any of the individuals considered "dishonourable". Illegitimacy, for instance, was usually a social handicap of some degree, but that degree ranged considerably from a minor embarrassment to certain legal restrictions to profound scandal, depending on the immediate cultural and chronological context. In German lands, the inherent subjectivity and instability of social marginalization was in fact a point of great consternation among those individuals worried about their own declining status from the fifteenth century on. Meister Frantz's bittersweet tale provides a useful illustration of the possibilities and limitations of social mobility among the dishonourable of early modern Europe.
