Associations and the Discourses of Peace, Common Weal, and Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
German Nation ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Almost All

Associations such as alliances and leagues were not merely functional tools. The rhetoric found in treaties and correspondence suggests that some members of associations perceived their participation as an activity freighted with political and moral significance. Almost all alliance and league foundation treaties and renewals contain appeals to clusters of ideas, centred on the concepts of divinely ordained peace, the common good of the community, and the Holy Roman Empire (conceptually linked, from the late fifteenth century, to the ‘German nation’). These discourses can only be found in this precise form in one other setting: the imperial diets and Empire-wide correspondence and legislation that they produced. This indicates that members of associations claimed to be involving themselves in the most significant and legitimate spheres of political activity in the Empire, even when their immediate objectives were modest and localized, or the legality of their alliances was challenged by other authorities.

Virtue, Ambition, and the Balanced Constitution

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Carlo Sigonio ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Research

The turmoil in Europe in the early sixteenth century revealed some of the weaknesses of princely power and imperial authority; it was clear that the much-needed reform and rebalancing could not be enacted solely from above. This chapter focuses on works which called for the promotion of civic virtue and the strengthening of institutions, especially in a time of rapid social, economic, and political upheaval. In Venice, Gasparo Contarini set out an idealized model of mixed government while in the Holy Roman Empire magistrates and officials were encouraged to uphold the common good—often a common good shaped by Protestant thinking. However, the case of Miguel Servetus in Geneva sparked further discussion of the role of the magistrate in upholding religious truth and generated new arguments for toleration. Meanwhile, many writers looked to ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration and advice, and new research by men like Carlo Sigonio revealed that Rome’s political system had itself been affected by social and economic change. In England Sir Thomas Smith drew on some of this research to advocate a broadly based citizenry in which wealth, lineage, and merit were all seen as important qualifications for office-holding.

The Changing Face of the Holy Roman Empire

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 269-280
Author(s):  
Hamish Scott
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The North ◽  
Defensive Role ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Baltic

Few institutions have possessed as enduring importance in Europe's history as the Holy Roman Empire. Dating its foundation to Charlemagne's coronation in 800, it survived for a millennium, being dissolved only in 1806 in the face of the overwhelming threat from Napoleonic imperialism. Its geographical extent was equally remarkable: at its peak, imperial territory stretched eastward from the North Sea as far as Poland, and southward from the shores of the Baltic deep into the Italian Peninsula. Around 1800, shortly before its nemesis, the Empire was Europe's second largest polity, with a territorial area of around 687,000 square kilometers. It was eclipsed only by Russia, which during the later-seventeenth and eighteenth century had expanded spectacularly. Its population too was impressive: with around twenty-nine million inhabitants, its only rivals were France and Russia. Claiming descent from ancient Rome, the Empire long embodied the idea of a unified Christendom, while its defensive role against Ottoman expansion from the late fifteenth century onward sustained its religious mission even after the Protestant Reformation. Yet it is often squeezed out of accounts of Europe's past, an exclusion which is particularly evident for the early modern centuries.

scholarly journals Kinzelbach Annemarie Policing the Environment in Premodern Imperial Cities and Towns: A Preliminary Approach

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annemarie Kinzelbach
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Implicit Associations ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship

Recent historiographical studies of the Holy Roman Empire reveal that policy focused on defining and redefining the relationship between governors and citizens, largely through negotiating practices. Historians have applied these discoveries in limited ways when discussing public health policies in German-speaking areas, ignoring questions of compliance, resistance, or enforcement. Some lacunae result from archival losses, but survivals enable us to fill many gaps. In this chapter, relevant premodern statutes are first identified. Secondly, textual analysis of manifold sources uncovers implicit associations (for example, parallels between dirt and prostitution), while highlighting explicit relationships between communal health and such general issues as religion, morality, and the common good. Negotiation practices are unveiled, for instance, in modifications to statutes and regulations. Thirdly, contemporary chronicles, diaries, accounts, council minutes and administrative documents are examined for information on implementation of laws and ordinances.

scholarly journals Practice and power: the rise and disappearance of the Franzosenärzte, or doctors of the French pox, in Nuremberg, 1495–1560

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-97
Author(s):  
Monica O’Brien ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Healthcare System ◽  
Medical Practitioner ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Medical Marketplace ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The City

During the late fifteenth century a new category of medical practitioner appeared in the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire: the Franzosenarzt or French pox doctor. Until now, there has been no dedicated study of these practitioners. Through an analysis of municipal records from Nuremberg (circa 1495 to 1560), this paper offers the first dedicated investigation of the Franzosenärzte in this city, focusing on uncovering their relationships with Nuremberg’s civic and medical hierarchies. It demonstrates why the Franzosenärzte gained a footing within the city’s municipal healthcare system, but remained subject to the suspicions of the civic and medical authorities. These suspicions, combined with a competitive medical marketplace and Nuremberg’s economic difficulties, precipitated the disappearance of the Franzosenärzte from the city around 1557. Nevertheless, for a brief moment, the Franzosenärzte’s practical expertise in treating the French pox unsettled Nuremberg’s nascent medical hierarchy and the ambitions of the city’s physicians.

The Empress, the Elector and the Painter

2018 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Ben Pope
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Reference Material ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Late Fifteenth

German MS. 2 is a previously unstudied armorial dating from the mid-sixteenth century. This article shows that it was produced in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger for Elector August of Saxony, and that it was copied from an earlier armorial of c.1500 which was kept in Cranach’s workshop, probably as reference material. Much of the original content and structure of this ‘old armorial’ has been preserved in Rylands German 2. On this basis, the original armorial can be located in a late fifteenth-century Upper German tradition of armorial manuscripts known as the ‘Bodensee’ group. It was also closely linked to the Habsburg dynasty, and appears to have been dedicated to Empress Bianca Maria Sforza. The armorial therefore opens significant new perspectives on the relationships between artists and heraldry and between women and heraldic knowledge, and on ways of visualising the Holy Roman Empire through heraldry.

Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Scholz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
German Nation ◽  
New Perspective

Abstract: Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire tells the history of free movement in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, one of the most fractured landscapes in human history. The boundaries that divided its hundreds of territories make the Old Reich a uniquely valuable site for studying the ordering of movement. The focus is on safe conduct, an institution that was common throughout the early modern world but became a key framework for negotiating free movement and its restriction in the Old Reich. The book shows that attempts to escort travellers, issue letters of passage, or to criminalize the use of ‘forbidden’ roads served to transform rights of passage into excludable and fiscally exploitable goods. Mobile populations—from emperors to peasants—defied attempts to govern their mobility with actions ranging from formal protest to bloodshed. Newly designed maps show that restrictions upon moving goods and people were rarely concentrated at borders before the mid-eighteenth century, but unevenly distributed along roads and rivers. In addition, the book unearths intense intellectual debates around the rulers’ right to interfere with freedom of movement. The Empire’s political order guaranteed extensive transit rights, but apologies of free movement and claims of protection could also mask aggressive attempts of territorial expansion. Drawing on sources discovered in more than twenty archives and covering the period between the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, the book offers a new perspective on the unstable relationship of political authority and human mobility in the heartlands of old-regime Europe.

Corporate Politics in the Public Sphere: Corporate Citizenspeak in a Mass Media Policy Contest

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nyberg ◽  
John Murray
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article connects the previously isolated literatures on corporate citizenship and corporate political activity to explain how firms construct political influence in the public sphere. The public engagement of firms as political actors is explored empirically through a discursive analysis of a public debate between the mining industry and the Australian government over a proposed tax. The findings show how the mining industry acted as a corporate citizen concerned about the common good. This, in turn, legitimized corporate political activity, which undermined deliberation about the common good. The findings explain how the public sphere is refeudalized through corporate manipulation of deliberative processes via what we term corporate citizenspeak—simultaneously speaking as corporate citizens and for individual citizens. Corporate citizenspeak illustrates the duplicitous engagement of firms as political actors, claiming political legitimacy while subverting deliberative norms. This contributes to the theoretical development of corporations as political actors by explaining how corporate interests are aggregated to represent the common good and how corporate political activity is employed to dominate the public sphere. This has important implications for understanding how corporations undermine democratic principles.

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 The Temporal and Spatial Structure of Medieval Expulsions of Jews

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerice Doten-Snitker
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Social Interdependence ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Racial Exclusion ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Political Value

What social processes guide the spread of ethnic or racial exclusion? I investigate the diffusion of medieval expulsions of Jews from polities in the Holy Roman Empire. For medieval rulers, religious and material concerns were strong rationales against expulsion. Yet expulsions increase markedly in the fifteenth century. Did an expulsion by one government affect another government’s choices about expulsion? Using event history analysis methods, I document the limited spread of expulsion among over 500 polities in the western Holy Roman Empire, 1385-1520 CE. Temporal and spatial trends indicate that expulsions in politically and economically powerful cities spurred expulsions generally but suppressed them nearby. The adoption of expulsion followed political and economic incentives that were embedded in inter-city relationships, particularly after theological changes gave expulsion fresh political value. Social interdependence can spur as well as squelch racial extremism.

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