Herring Trade, Quality Controls and Diplomacy in Cologne in the Fifteenth Century*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Brunmayr
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Quality Controls ◽  
Perishable Product ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
In Transit

Abstract The importance of herring to Cologne’s medieval economy is well-known and the need to control the quality of this long-distance and perishable product has also been widely recognized. The interregional quality norms that Cologne negotiated with Low Countries fishing towns in 1481 have been neglected, however. This article offers the first reconstruction of the diplomatic process that led to the edict and an analysis of the motives that impelled the diverse stakeholders to reach an agreement. The article demonstrates that in addition to herring’s commercial significance, its quality control was a major issue and was used as an instrument of influence by Cologne and other powers in the politically decentralized Holy Roman Empire. Comprehensive analysis of Cologne’s abundant sources shows how exchanges of letters and complaints gradually fed into formal negotiations, culminating in the publication of a crucial edict that established an interregional quality control system and took account of the interests of the different stakeholders in the herring trade. The article suggests that this push for regulation was also an element of Cologne’s economic strategy since it helped justify the taxes the city levied on goods in transit at the expense of competing actors in the Rhine region. In short, the example of quality controls on herring shows how food trade studies can shed light on power relations in the Empire during the late Middle Ages.

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.

France, Prussia, or Germany? The Napoleonic Wars and Shifting Allegiances in the Rhineland

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-640
Author(s):  
Michael Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
First Republic ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
City States

The following article focuses on the Rhineland, and more specifically, the region on the left (or west) bank of the Rhine bounded in the north and west by the Low Countries and France. This German-speaking region was occupied by the armies of revolutionary France after 1792. De jure annexation followed the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), and French rule lasted until 1814. Most of the Rhineland was awarded in 1815 to Prussia and remained a constituent part until after the Second World War. The Rhineland experienced Napoleonic rule first hand. Its four departments—the Roër, Rhin-et-Moselle, Sarre, and Mont-Tonnerre—were treated like the others in metropolitan France, and it is this status that makes the region distinct in German-speaking Europe. This had consequences both in the Napoleonic period and in the century that followed the departure of the last French soldier. This alone would constitute sufficient reason for studying the region. More broadly, however, the Rhenish experience in the French period sheds light on the much broader phenomena of state formation and nation building. Before 1792, the Rhenish political order appeared in many respects a throwback to the late Middle Ages. Extreme territorial fragmentation, city states, church states, and mini states distinguished its landscape. These survived the early-modern period thanks in part to Great Power rivalry and the protective mantle provided by the Holy Roman Empire. Then, suddenly, came rule by France which, in the form of the First Republic and Napoleon's First Empire, represented the most demanding state the world had seen up to that point. This state imposed itself on a region unused to big government. It might be thought that bitter confrontation would have resulted. Yet, and here is a paradox this article wishes to address, many aspects of French rule gained acceptance in the region, and defense of the Napoleonic legacy formed a component of the “Rhenish” identity that came into being in the nineteenth century.

Foreign vs. Local New Horizons, and Ancient Dilemmas and Strategies?

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 765-788
Author(s):  
Alain Touwaide
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Western World ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Practice Of Science

AbstractCapitalizing on the data presented in the three papers in this issue, the comments and conclusions here elaborate on the concept of transfer of knowledge in the field of materia medica and pharmacy. They evidence different mechanisms in three contexts, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western world and China, and trace the possible ancient roots of the phenomena under consideration. In so doing, they contextualize the processes under study in the three essays, and suggest also a possible new interpretation of the practice of science from the Late Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution.

scholarly journals The Bolognese Societates Armatae of the Late 13th Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-233
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Italian City ◽  
City States ◽  
The City

The Bologna archives preserve the bye-laws of 24 „armed societies”, dating from between 1230 and the early 1300s, written in good notary Latin. Though known to exist in other Italian city-states, only few non-Bolognese armed society bye-laws are preserved. These armed societies had disappeared everywhere by the Late Middle Ages. This article explores the function of these armed societies and the feudal law aspects of the bye-laws - was their function predominantly military, social or political? Why did they suddenly appear, and just as suddenly disappear? How did they fit into Bologna’s constitution - how did they relate to the civic authorities, the guilds? How did these armed societies operate? Who were the members? What arms did they have? Did they participate in the warfare between the city-states, the battles of the Lombard League and the Holy Roman Empire, the struggles between the Emperor and the Pope, the feuds between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs?

Personen, grenzen en politieke eenheden in de veertiende eeuw

2014 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-602
Author(s):  
Aart Noordzij
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Composite Nature ◽  
Political Units

Abstract Personal agency, borders and political units in the fourteenth century. The duchy of Guelders and the history of international relationsTheories that offer a historicized account of international relations often consider the late middle ages as a period of fundamental change. Territorial political units, geographically defined borders, and distinctions between internal and external gradually developed and became increasingly important. As a result international relations were not only governed by competition between individual lords, by feudal networks, or by imperial and papal universalism, but also by the agency of newly developing geopolitical units, such as kingdoms, territories, towns, and local lordships. On the basis of the Guelders War of Succession (1371-1379) this paper offers a snapshot of this process of transition, demonstrating the dense and composite nature of international relations during the fourteenth century in the western part of the Holy Roman Empire.

scholarly journals The Bolognese Societates Armatae of the Late 13th Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-277
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Italian City ◽  
City States ◽  
The City

Abstract The Bologna archives preserve the bye-laws of 24 „armed societies”, dating from between 1230 and the early 1300s, written in good notary Latin. Though known to exist in other Italian city-states, only few non-Bolognese armed society bye-laws are preserved. These armed societies had disappeared everywhere by the Late Middle Ages. This article explores the function of these armed societies and the feudal law aspects of the bye-laws - was their function predominantly military, social or political? Why did they suddenly appear, and just as suddenly disappear? How did they fit into Bologna’s constitution - how did they relate to the civic authorities, the guilds? How did these armed societies operate? Who were the members? What arms did they have? Did they participate in the warfare between the city-states, the battles of the Lombard League and the Holy Roman Empire, the struggles between the Emperor and the Pope, the feuds between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs?

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.

A Crooked Mirror for Princes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
Mirrors For Princes

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document