PRUSSIA'S RELATIONS WITH THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 1740–1786

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER H. WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
Old World ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Military Engagement

ABSTRACTMost writers have taken Frederick II at his word and interpreted his sparse and generally derogatory comments about the Holy Roman Empire as indications of its low priority in Prussian policy after 1740. This article offers a reappraisal, based on a re-examination of his writings and his policy towards the Empire and its principal dynasties. Despite his distaste for the imperial constitution, Frederick swiftly appreciated its significance to his goals of security and international recognition. Certainly, relations with the imperial Estates remained secondary to diplomatic and military engagement with Austria and the other major European powers. Nonetheless, the Empire remained more than an arena in which Austro-Prussian rivalry was played out. The imperial constitution offered a means to neutralize threats to Prussia's more vulnerable provinces and a framework to constrain Habsburg ambitions, while ties to minor German dynasties offered avenues to maintain or improve relations with Europe's leading monarchies that were likewise bound within the elite kinship of the Christian old world. For this to be effective, however, Frederick had to engage in all aspects of imperial politics and not just representation in formal institutions.

Empire and Counter-Empire in the Italian Far Right

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 99-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Spruce
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Territorial Integration

What old Fascisms and new nationalisms circulate in the political spaces of Europe? Through an analysis of their split on immigration policy in 2003, this article examines the myths and ideologies of the two major far right parties in Italy, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale. It argues that the anti-imperial mythology of the Lega, based on the defence of Lombardy against the Holy Roman Empire, has led it into a modernist politics of territoriality, borders and homogeneity. On the other hand, the Alleanza Nazionale has used its Fascist heritage, and in particular the mythologizing of the Roman empire, to open up a postmodern imperial politics, involving the expansion of borders, and the incorporation of new peoples and territories. Through the use of interviews with militants and deputies, it looks at how the Alleanza has re-articulated imperial Fascist mythologies within a new pro-European Union discourse, while the Lega has maintained its role of protest against deterritorialization despite the seeming inevitability of the territorial integration.

COMMUNICATING EMPIRE: THE HABSBURGS AND THEIR CRITICS, 1700–1919

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 117-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Power Base ◽  
The One ◽  
At Home

ABSTRACTIn the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undividedimperiumso long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.

The Contours of the Non-Lutheran Reformation in Germany, 1522–1546

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 167-174
Author(s):  
James M. Stayer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Common

Abstract Among the common ways of portraying Reformation divides are the following categories: Magisterial vs Radical Reformations; or a “church type” vs a “sect type” of reform. This essay offers an alternative view. It underscores the differences between Lutherans and Anglicans on one side; and the Reformed, Anabaptists, and Schwenckfelders on the other. The Lutherans, like the Anglicans under Henry VIII, worshipped in altar-centered churches which were Roman Catholic in appearance. They presented themselves as reformers of Catholic errors of the late Middle Ages. By contrast, when the Reformed, Anabaptists, and Schwenckfelders met for worship, it was in unadorned Bible-centered meeting houses. The Anabaptists were targeted for martyrdom by the decree of the Holy Roman Empire of 1529 against Wiedertäufer (“rebaptists”). Contrary to the later memory that they practiced a theology of martyrdom, the preference of apprehended Anabaptists was to recant.

scholarly journals Naar het Oosten. Geografische verschillen in het ledenbestand van de Ridderlijke Duitsche Orde, Balije van Utrecht, 1640-1840

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Renger E. De Bruin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Southern Germany ◽  
Admission Requirements

In the first half of the seventeenth century the Teutonic Order Bailiwick of Utrecht changed from a Catholic heir of the Crusades, loyal to a Habsburg grand master in Southern Germany into a society of married, Protestant noblemen, embedded in the structures of the Dutch Republic. The strict admission requirements make the Order an exclusive segment of Dutch nobility. The membership file offers rich possibilities of research on the composition of this layer in society. The members of the Bailiwick came from various provinces of the Dutch Republic and its successor states. A few came from the Holy Roman Empire. During the period under investigation the share of the eastern provinces of Overijssel and especially Gelderland increased (from fifty to 75 per cent), whereas that of the other provinces was much smaller and even decreasing. This conclusion confirms the image of the eastern provinces as bulwarks of nobility against the urban, maritime and bourgeois character of the western provinces, especially Holland.

Toward the Golden Bull and against the Pope: The Role of Custom and Honor in King Ludwig IV's Nuremberg and Frankfurt Appellations (1323–24)

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Kevin Lucas Lord
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
John Xxii

AbstractThis article addresses the onset of a decades-long conflict between the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire King Ludwig IV of Bavaria and the papacy. When Ludwig intervened on behalf of antipapal factions in northern Italy in 1323, Pope John XXII issued an ultimatum demanding that Ludwig immediately cease to exercise the royal power and title on the pretext that he had never received papal approval of his royal election. Failure to comply meant that the king would fall under sentence of excommunication. Ludwig responded with nearly identical appeals issued in Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Against previous arguments that these appeals were either legal documents operating within the confines of Roman Canon law or artifacts of protomodern realpolitik, this article argues that the “Nuremberg” and “Frankfurt Appellations” emerged from the king's preoccupation with his honor. His Appellations utilized the language and form of Roman Canon law to defame his opponent while he sought to ennoble and justify his actions with a rhetoric mirroring that in supposed repositories of imperial customary law such as the Sachsen- and Schwabenspiegel. In arguing that German custom superseded the jurisdiction of papal law in his Appellations, Ludwig elevated a discourse concerning royal elections to the highest levels of imperial politics where it would remain and find inclusion, in intent if not precise formulation, in the famed Golden Bull of 1356.

International Migration: Germany in the Eighteenth Century

1980 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 332-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Fenske
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small States ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Real Power ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
East Prussia

Inthe eighteenth century Germany as a unified, sovereign state was only a vague idea. The Holy Roman Empire provided only a loose framework for more or less independent small states. In an area of 660,000 square kilometers there lived twenty-seven million inhabitants, divided among 310 territories, 50 imperial free cities, and 1,500 imperial knighthoods. Large German provinces such as East Prussia, West Prussia, and Schleswig were situated outside the imperial boundaries. The emperor had no real power. Since 1648 the territories had possessed sovereignty, and looked upon each other as foreign countries. Even a move to a neighboring village lying on the other side of the frontier was considered as emigration.

Coping with Rebellion: Cities, Mortgagee Lords, and Crown Administrators in the Habsburg Vorlande, 1517–25

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 75-98
Author(s):  
Ludolf Pelizaeus
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
City Council ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City

In october 1541, a letter left the city of Innsbruck, in which the government, or Regiment, sharply admonished the mayor and councilors of the city of Belfort in the Sundgau. With all seriousness, the government reminded them that they were obliged to submit to the Lord von Mörsperg, their God-given authority, and if they did not, they would lose their freedom and risk further punishment.1 It is easy enough to identify the petitioner and petitioned in this document: the seigniorial family of Mörsberg/Morimont on one side, and the mayor and city council of Belfort/Beffort on the other. But there was also a third, superior authority involved: the Habsburg regime in Innsbruck and its subordinate, regional representatives who administered the Vorlande from nearby Ensisheim, which had admonished the city to remain “obedient” to the Herrn von Mörsberg. This instruction was, in fact, part of a long series of disputes between mortgagee lord (Pfandherr) and city. This article examines this type of conflict in more detail to present a model for analyzing structural changes through the historical development of three cities on the western edges of the Holy Roman Empire: Belfort, Rheinfelden, and Laufenberg.

Getting Over Athens

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Wiater
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Model ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the ambivalent image of Classical Athens in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities. This image reflects a deep-seated ambiguity of Dionysius’ Classicist ideology: on the one hand, there is no question for Dionysius that Athenocentric Hellenicity failed, and that the Roman empire has superseded Athens’ role once and for all as the political and cultural centre of the oikoumene. On the other, Dionysius accepted Rome’s supremacy as legitimate partly because he believed (and wanted his readers to believe) her to be the legitimate heir of Classical Athens and Classical Athenian civic ideology. As a result, Dionysius develops a new model of Hellenicity for Roman Greeks loyal to the new political and cultural centre of Rome. This new model of Greek identity incorporates and builds on Classical Athenian ideals, institutions, and culture, but also supersedes them.

Lordship and Administration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
Interconnected Networks ◽  
Territorial States

The Holy Roman Empire, and especially Upper Germany, was notoriously politically fragmented in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. A common way to interpret this fragmentation has been to view late medieval lordships, particularly those ruled by princes, as incipient ‘territories’, or even ‘territorial states’. However, this over-simplifies and reifies structures of lordship and administration in this period, which consisted of shifting agglomerations of assets, revenues, and jurisdictions that were dispersed among and governed by interconnected networks of political actors. Seigneurial properties and rights had become separable, commoditized, and highly mobile by the later middle ages, and these included not only fiefs (Lehen) but also loan-based pledges (Pfandschaften) and offices, all of which could be sold, transferred, or even ruled or exercised by multiple parties at once, whether these were princes, nobles, or urban elites. This fostered intensive interaction between formally autonomous political actors, generating frictions and disputes.

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