The Age of Imperial Reform, c. 1486–1521

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Culture ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Imperial Reforms

This final case study in associative political culture’s shaping of the evolving Holy Roman Empire examines the new legislation passed during the reign of King/Emperor Maximilian, which modern historians have often called ‘imperial reforms’. At the heart of the reform narrative is the idea that the Empire experienced a constitutional watershed around 1495/1500 as a set of new institutions was established through laws issued at the imperial diets, such as the so-called ‘eternal public peace’ (Ewiger Landfriede), the imperial chamber court (Reichskammergericht), and the imperial council (Reichsregiment). However, the functions and discourses of these institutions and the legislation that created them were remarkably similar to associative practices and documentation. Viewed from the perspective of the Upper German culture of multilateral assistance through stipulated mutual obligations and adjudication and negotiation at Tage, the outcomes of ‘imperial reform’ appear not as radical departures, but as iterations of deeply rooted structures and dynamics.

scholarly journals VISUALIZING GERMANNESS THROUGH COSTUMES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
FREDERICK G. CROFTS
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Material Exchange

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).

scholarly journals Zrínyi VII. Miklós részvétele a harmincéves háborúban (1642‒1644)

PONTES ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 213-227
Author(s):  
Végh Ferenc
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Military History ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Small Wars ◽  
The Military ◽  
Supreme Commander

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.

scholarly journals An Empire For Our Times? A Discussion of Peter Wilson's The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-572 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
James Madison ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

In the two centuries since its dissolution in 1806, the Holy Roman Empire has usually been viewed as an antiquated relic of the medieval past, a dysfunctional polity that hindered Germany's development into a modern, liberal nation-state. In the wake of its demise, a chorus of famous intellectuals and statesmen—including Voltaire, James Madison, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leopold von Ranke, and Heinrich von Treitschke—derided the Empire as a “monstrosity” hampered by outmoded institutions and backward policies. More recently, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, advocates of the so-called Sonderweg thesis blamed the Empire for Germany's belated unification and for the Germans’ supposedly “authoritarian” bent. In Heart of Europe [the American title of the study—Ed.], a bold and sweeping account of the Holy Roman Empire's thousand-year history, Peter Wilson sets out to supplant these anachronistic interpretations by explaining “what it was, how it worked, why it mattered, and its legacy for today” (5). With this important book, the best single-volume history of the Holy Roman Empire currently available, Wilson succeeds in answering these fundamental questions and provides fascinating insights into European politics from the early Middle Ages to the present. I would like to focus first on what I see as Wilson's most significant contributions to the existing scholarship on the Empire, and then examine how he treats the Protestant Reformation as a case study of the merits (and drawbacks) of his approach.

The Impact of the Executions in the German-Speaking Lands of the Holy Roman Empire

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Christman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Southern Germany ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
University City ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

This chapter argues that the executions of Vos and van den Esschen impacted the German-speaking lands more broadly. The first half addresses the dissemination of news of the burnings via published eyewitness accounts, as well as evidence from personal letters, revealing networks of correspondence that paralleled print as a means of diffusion. The second half of the chapter is devoted to a case study of Ingolstadt, a university city in southern Germany where booksellers and intellectuals employed the executions to demonstrate the corruption of the church. At the same time, opponents of Luther’s reform utilized them to condemn aspects of Reformation theology. The case reveals how news of the burnings worked its way into the fabric of the Reformation debates there.

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

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
The Third ◽  
Associative Structures ◽  
Upper Rhine ◽  
Duke Of Burgundy

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.

Dismantling a Monopoly: Jews, Christians, and the Production of Shofarot in Fifteenth-Century Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 360-386
Author(s):  
Andreas Lehnertz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Jewish Ritual

Abstract This essay presents a case study from Erfurt (Germany) concerning the production of shofarot (i.e., animal horns blown for ritual purposes, primarily on the Jewish New Year). By the early 1420s, Jews from all over the Holy Roman Empire had been purchasing shofarot from one Christian workshop in Erfurt that produced these ritual Jewish objects in cooperation with an unnamed Jewish craftsman. At the same time, two Jews from Erfurt were training in this craft, and started to produce shofarot of their own making. One of these Jewish craftsmen claimed that the Christian workshop had been deceiving the Jews for decades by providing improper shofarot made with materials unsuitable for Jewish ritual use. The local rabbi, Yomtov Lipman, exposed this as a scandal, writing letters to the German Jewish communities about the Christian workshop’s fraud and urging them all to buy new shofarot from the new Jewish craftsmen in Erfurt instead. This article will first examine the fraud attributed to the Christian workshop. Then, after analyzing the historical context of Yomtov Lipman’s letter, it will explore the underlying motivations of this rabbi to expose the Christian workshop’s fraud throughout German Jewish communities at this time. I will argue that, while Yomtov Lipman uses halakhic explanations in his letter, his chief motivation in exposing this fraud was to discredit the Christian workshop, create an artificial demand for shofarot, and promote the new Jewish workshop in Erfurt, whose craftsmen the rabbi himself had likely trained in the art of shofar making.

Austria as a Region of German Culture: 1900–1938

1992 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 135-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Luft
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Culture ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Austrian Studies ◽  
The Relationship

This Essay Attempts to contribute to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of Central Europe by making explicit a variety of themes that haunt discourse about Austrian culture and by making some suggestions about periodizing the relationship between Austria and German culture. I originally developed these thoughts on Austria as a region of German culture for a conference in 1983 at the Center for Austrian Studies on regions and regionalism in Austria. Although the political institutions of Central Europe have undergone a revolution since then, the question of Austria's relationship to German culture still holds its importance for the historian-and for contemporary Austrians as well. The German culture I have in mind here is not thekleindeutschnational culture of Bismarck's Reich, but rather the realm that was once constituted by the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire. This geographical space in Central Europe suggests a more ideal realm of the spirit, for which language is our best point of reference and which corresponds to no merely temporal state.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Constitutional System ◽  
Territorial States

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.

Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Territorial States ◽  
Alternative Structure

What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast central European polity was the continent’s most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while an array of regional actors played autonomous political roles. The Empire’s obvious differences from more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative judgements and fraught debates, expressed in the historiographical concepts of fractured ‘territorial states’ and a disjointed ‘imperial constitution’. This book challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, it demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of rituals, judicial systems, and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. The prevalence of associations encouraged a mentality of ‘horizontal’ membership of political communities, so that even the Empire itself came to be understood and articulated as an extensive and multi-layered association. On the basis of this evidence, the book offers a new and more coherent vision of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared ‘associative political culture’, which constituted an alternative structure and pathway of political development in pre-modern Europe.

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