Burgundian Rule on the Upper Rhine and its Aftermath, c. 1468–77

Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy

The third case study examines the role of associative structures and dynamics on the Upper Rhine in a series of episodes which brought profound upheaval to this region: the acquisition of an archipelago of lordships and jurisdictions by the duke of Burgundy, Charles ‘the Bold’, in 1468, the controversial style of government of his administrators which culminated in a revolt in 1474, and the local and Empire-wide wars against Burgundy that followed in 1474–7. In this time of growing consolidation within the community that formed the Holy Roman Empire, interactions between political actors continued to be mediated through alliances and other contractual ties, and negotiation remained centred on Tage. Heavy-handed Burgundian governors clashed with the loose configuration of principalities like Outer Austria, and stimulated the creation of anti-Burgundian coalitions on the Upper Rhine and across the Empire which combined traditional associative formats with a new rhetoric of German nationhood.

Traditio ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 119-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable

Among the many disputed episcopal elections of the twelfth century, there are few that present both as many problems and as many points of interest as that at Langres in 1138. The diocese of Langres had since the time of the Carolingian emperors been among the most important in France. As early as 872 Charles the Bald, at the request of bishop Isaac, granted jointly to the cathedral of St. Mamas at Langres and to St. Stephen at Dijon the right, previously held by the local count, to coin money. In 967, the lay count was officially replaced by the bishop, although most of his rights were subinfeudated to a vidame. ‘Par Langres,’ wrote Ferdinand Lot, ‘suzeraine du Langogne, du Dijonnais et de ses annexes (Atuyer, Oscheret, Mémontois), du Boulenois, du Bassigny, du Lassois, du Tonnerrois, etc., c'est-à-dire de la moitié de la Bourgogne française, le roi pouvait exercer, à l'occasion, une grande influence en cette région.’ In 1179, the bishop recovered direct control over his rights as count and became tenant-in-chief of the crown for all his lands and powers, whereas among his own vassals he numbered the duke of Burgundy and the count of Champagne. Later, between 1179 and 1356, he rose to the rank of duke and was recognized as the third ecclesiastical peer of the realm, taking precedence over his own metropolitan, the archbishop of Lyons, at the coronation of the king. Already in the first half of the twelfth century, the diocese of Langres compared in power and size to the great ecclesiastical principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. It included practically all the present bishoprics of Langres and Dijon and extended almost to the towns of Troyes and Auxerre to the north and west and beyond Dijon to the south. Within its boundaries lay not only the great old Benedictine abbeys of Bèze and of St. Bénigne and St. Stephen at Dijon, but also Molesme, the mother-house of Cîteaux, and the newly-founded Cistercian monasteries of Clairvaux and Morimund.


Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy

Interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire have always been fraught and contested, particularly regarding the late medieval and early modern period. German historians have offered two main interpretations of the Empire in recent decades. The first sees it as a patchwork of territorial states, and the second as a Reichsverfassung: a constitutional system characterized by disjunctive or oppositional forces. This Introduction sets out how this book will re-conceptualize the Empire as a more coherent political entity, using Upper Germany as a wide-ranging case study. Viewed comparatively, the evidence from the period between 1346 and 1521 suggests that all kinds of political actors shared in the same structures, dynamics, and assumptions—the same ‘political culture’. In particular, elites constantly interacted within the framework of associations such as alliances and leagues, which are the main focus of this book, and force us to view the Empire as a more interconnected political landscape.


Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
FREDERICK G. CROFTS

ABSTRACT Examining the understudied collection of costume images from Heidelberg Calvinist, lawyer, and church councillor Marcus zum Lamm's (1544–1606) ‘treasury’ of images, the Thesaurus Picturarum, this article intervenes in the historiography on sixteenth-century German national imaginaries, emphasizing the import of costume books and manuscript alba for national self-fashioning. By bringing late sixteenth-century ethnographic costume image collections into scholarly discourse on the variegated ways of conceiving and visualizing Germany and Germanness over the century, this article sheds new light on a complex narrative of continuity and change in the history of German nationhood and identity. Using zum Lamm's images as a case-study, this article stresses the importance of incorporating costume image collections into a nexus of patriotic genres, including works of topographical-historical, natural philosophical, ethnographic, cartographic, cosmographic, and genealogical interest. Furthermore, it calls for historians working on sixteenth-century costume books and alba to look deeper into the meanings of such images and collections in the specific contexts of their production; networks of knowledge and material exchange; and – in the German context – the political landscape of territorialization, confessionalization, and dynastic ambition in the Holy Roman Empire between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years War (1555–1618).


2022 ◽  
pp. 318-336
Author(s):  
Germain Miteu Tshinu

The third theme of the book seeks to understand the role of mineral resources in the African continent's socio-economic development. The case study of the DRC is used to understand the role played by the state-owned mining company Gecamines to socio-economic conditions of employees and the country's development at large. Resource curse and realism theories are utilised in this case study to unpack the role of mineral resources to Gecamines employees' access to education and healthcare in particular and to the entire country in general. The chapter employed a case study design with a qualitative approach research in its endeavour of exploring Gecamines' socio-economic contribution to its employees. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Gecamines' managers, unskilled mine workers, and the Provincial Department of Mines' officers.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-163
Author(s):  
Scott L. Edwards

In the multilingual environments of Central European cities and courts, Italian musicians found a receptive market for their music. There they confronted a range of linguistic abilities that encouraged innovative approaches to musical composition and publication. Recent rediscovery of the opening sheets of Giovanni Battista Pinello’s 1584 Primo libro dele neapolitane enables us to assess one Genoese composer’s experience of a multi-ethnic, Central European milieu during an unprecedented migrational wave. As chapelmaster at the electoral court in Dresden with ties to aristocratic circles in Prague, Pinello also issued a German version that can be sung, according to the composer, simultaneously with the napolitane. This study examines the Central European market for Italian music, the role of the Holy Roman Empire in facilitating Italian migration, and cultural challenges foreign musicians faced in their new homes. Nineteenth-century myths of nationhood depended on histories of folk-like immobility, but in fact migration was a basic condition of early modern European life. Music historians have long been aware of individual musicians’ travels from the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, along with a new trend, emerging around 1600, toward northward emigration by Italian musicians. Nonetheless, there is much more to say about the social underpinnings of such movements. Pinello’s fusion of languages, poetic forms, and registers invites us to reimagine the multi-ethnic complexion of Central European musical centers in the late sixteenth century.


Author(s):  
Cachard Olivier

This chapter uses maritime arbitration in Paris as a case study to discuss the possibility of a genuine arbitral case law. This possibility derives from the arbitrator being uniquely placed, in view of his or her legal and methodological freedom, to conduct ‘the free objective search for a rule’. The first section underlines that an arbitrator or an arbitral panel is in the best position to carry out this free objective search for a rule. The second section investigates whether an arbitrator is just adjudicating a peculiar dispute or if, in doing so, his findings may reach further authority. It then discusses the legal grounds given to the award. The third section focuses further on the characteristics of maritime disputes and tries to sort out how a balance between private and public interests is met. It also examines how the market arbitrators consider standard terms.


Rural History ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNIE TINDLEY

AbstractThere has been much historical debate over the role of aristocratic landed families in local and national politics throughout the nineteenth century, and the impact of the First, Second and Third Reform Acts on that role. Additionally, the period from 1881 in the Scottish Highlands was one of acute political and ideological crisis, as the debate over the reform of the Land Laws took a violent turn, and Highland landowners were forced to address the demands of their small tenants. This article addresses these debates, taking as its case-study the ducal house of Sutherland. The Leveson-Gower family owned almost the whole county of Sutherland and until 1884 dominated political life in the region. This article examines the gradual breakdown of that political power, in line with a more general decline in financial and territorial influence, both in terms of the personal role of the Fourth and Fifth Dukes of Sutherland, and the broader impact of the estate management on the mechanics and expectations of politics in the county.


1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Freiesleben

In the course of a summary of established views about the still unknown origins of portolan charts (this Journal, 36, 124, 1983) the hypothesis was advanced that they originated as a result of the maritime interests of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. It should perhaps be made clear straight away that this is no mere attempt by a German author to further German pretensions in this matter. In fact, of course, Frederick II (1194–1250) was the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and, according to the excellent biography by Kantorowicz, felt himself more and more the spokesman for cosmopolitan thought as his years advanced. He spent his youth in Sicily and was known as ‘The Sicilian’, and learned to speak German only during the third decade of his life during his first visit to Germany; by then he was fluent in half a dozen other languages. Sicily of course, where he spent most of his life, meant not simply the island but the kingdom of the two Sicilies which, since the Norse conquests, comprised extensive parts of southern Italy and notably Apulia, where Frederick had his court at Foggia. His dominions bordered papal territory, which accounts for the hostility to him of several popes.


PONTES ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 213-227
Author(s):  
Végh Ferenc

The estates of the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom, as it is well known, took an active role in the struggles of the Thirty years’ War (1618‒1648) on the Habsburg dynasty’s side. At the request of the monarch, many aristocrats and wealthy noblemen, who had been trained in the so-called small wars (German Kleinkriege) practised along the Ottoman border, raised especially light cavalry units and conducted them to the territory of the Holy Roman Empire. Nicholas VII. Zrínyi/Zrinski (1620‒1664) the Croatian-Slavonian ban-to-be (1647–1664) himself recruited cavalry companies in three successive years (1642–1644), at the head of which he fought in Bohemia and Moravia against the Swedes as well as in upper Hungary against the troops of George I. Rákóczi, the Prince of Transylvania (1630–1648). Moreover, he was appointed as the supreme commander of the Croatian-type cavalry two times. The present gap-fi lling paper primarily aims to clear the chronology of Zrínyi’s field operations in these years. It also reveals his probable motives, the characteristics of the negotiations with the imperial high command as well as the gathering of the troops. The case study will enable us to draw conclusions about the military entrepreneurship of this kind, giving an impetus to the research of this neglected field of early modern military history.


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