Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: Upper Germany, 1346–1521

Abstract Policies excluding ethnoracial and religious minorities reinforce the power of political elites. This study addresses an extreme case of exclusion: urban expulsions of Jews in the medieval western Holy Roman Empire. Expulsions were official edicts proclaimed by Christian princes, lords, or town councils, whomever ruled a territory. Changing religious and political culture, in the form of new value on community righteousness and the beginning of territorialization, provided incentives for polities to expel their Jewish residents. Using a new database of Jewish settlement and city development in the Western Holy Roman Empire 1000–1520 CE, I show that the relational structure of political power between Christian elites could insulate or expose Jewish communities to political contests of the time. Jews were derided, lesser members of Christian society, but in spite of increasing focus on Christian piety and legislating community purity, most cities did not expel their Jewish residents. City rulers that did expel were attempting to solve challenges for sovereignty through their policies toward Jews.

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Conclusion

10.1093/oso/9780198827252.003.0014 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Duncan Hardy

Keyword(s):

Roman Empire ◽

Political Culture ◽

Early Modern ◽

Structure And Function ◽

Holy Roman Empire ◽

Early Modern History ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Political Actors ◽

And Function ◽

The Comparative Study

It is clear from the comparative study of Upper German evidence undertaken in this book that multilateral associations were ubiquitous in the Holy Roman Empire in the period 1346–1521, and that they structured the interactions of all the diverse political actors within it. Indeed, inhabitants of the late medieval Empire used an ‘associative’ language of membership and mutual assistance, and the multilateral metaphor of the Quaternion (a symbolic amalgam of political actors of various statuses), when attempting to apprehend and articulate the structure and function of their polity. Modern unitary concepts of statehood and constitutionality, which dominate how we narrate and describe late medieval and early modern history, are inadequate to make sense of the Empire’s structure. The paradigm of ‘associative political culture’ offered in this book therefore not only reconceptualizes the Empire, but also has implications for alternative ways of envisioning political configurations and developments in pre-modern Europe.

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