Caught in the Crossfire

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-180
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Jewish Populations

This chapter focuses on relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century, which was the era of the Thirty Years War. It highlights the conflict of the Thirty Years War that provided the backdrop to further religious and political developments that shaped Jewish experiences. The chapter describes how the combative form of Catholicism took shape in the wake of the Catholic Reformation in various places, including the Holy Roman Empire. It looks into parts of northern Europe, particularly Germany and the Low Countries, that began to be more welcoming to Jewish populations. It also illustrates the contrast between repressive Catholicism and a more welcoming form of Protestantism.

Translating Sorrow

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-163
Author(s):  
Scott L. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Central European ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Italian Music

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.

Theories of Federalism under the Holy Roman Empire

1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz H. F. Eulau
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
Early Emergence ◽  
Territorial Organization ◽  
Constitutional Evolution ◽  
Different Content ◽  
Gradual Transformation

A fact little appreciated by American political scientists is the relatively early emergence of federalism as a working concept of political theory in the Holy Roman Empire of the seventeenth century. But although these federal theories run ahead of corresponding theories elsewhere, it must be pointed out that political and legal conditions peculiar to the medieval Empire retarded an even earlier appearance. For centuries, the constitution of the Empire had retained its feudalistic structure. Many conspicuous changes, however, had taken place in the course of its development and had filled that structure with an entirely different content. The main result of the Empire's constitutional evolution had been its gradual transformation from an originally fairly unitary state into a federalistic organization of de facto sovereign states. It might be supposed, therefore, that the highly articulated territorial organization of the Empire would have easily served as fertile soil on which contemporary political theorists and jurists might have founded an elaborate theory of federalism.

John Bergius: Irenicism and the Beginning of Official Religious Toleration in Brandenburg-Prussia

1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bodo Nischan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
German Nation

Europe in the early seventeenth century was a continent divided along confessional lines. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Not only had the gulf between Protestants and Catholics widened there, in addition the animosity between Lutherans and Calvinists had grown to the point where members of the two Protestant churches often resented each other more than their common Catholic foe.

The Seventeenth-Century Literary Text: Aesthetic Problems and Perspectives

1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
James A. Parente
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
Simultaneous Development ◽  
Literary Societies

Seventeenth-century literature in the Holy Roman Empire has rarely been discussed in general cultural histories about the European Baroque. The dramatic achievements of Shakespeare, Calderon, and Corneille, the inimitable poetry of the Metaphysicals and Marino and the mischievous adventures of the Spanish picaro have long overshadowed the literary accomplishments of the German Baroque. Even today many scholars are still content to dismiss the German seventeenth century as derivative while, in the opposite camp, loyal Germanists currently defend its uniqueness. As is generally known, literary developments in the Empire were slowed by a number of unfortunate circumstances. Geographical, confessional, and linguistic disunity strongly contributed to the parochialism of German Baroque letters. Local literary societies were widely scattered throughout the Empire from Silesia to the Rhine and communication between them was greatly hampered. The lack of a main cultural center similar to the artistic hubs of Paris or London further isolated the writers from each other. In addition, confessional differences not only segregated Catholic and Protestant poets, but also resulted in the simultaneous development of a Batoque Latin and German literature.

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.

scholarly journals Naar het Oosten. Geografische verschillen in het ledenbestand van de Ridderlijke Duitsche Orde, Balije van Utrecht, 1640-1840

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Renger E. De Bruin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Southern Germany ◽  
Admission Requirements

In the first half of the seventeenth century the Teutonic Order Bailiwick of Utrecht changed from a Catholic heir of the Crusades, loyal to a Habsburg grand master in Southern Germany into a society of married, Protestant noblemen, embedded in the structures of the Dutch Republic. The strict admission requirements make the Order an exclusive segment of Dutch nobility. The membership file offers rich possibilities of research on the composition of this layer in society. The members of the Bailiwick came from various provinces of the Dutch Republic and its successor states. A few came from the Holy Roman Empire. During the period under investigation the share of the eastern provinces of Overijssel and especially Gelderland increased (from fifty to 75 per cent), whereas that of the other provinces was much smaller and even decreasing. This conclusion confirms the image of the eastern provinces as bulwarks of nobility against the urban, maritime and bourgeois character of the western provinces, especially Holland.

Germany and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheilagh C. Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
Starting Point

AbstractThis article surveys the debate on the ‘General Crisis’ of the seventeenth century in the light of hitherto neglected research. Firstly, most theories of the crisis fail to combine its economic and socio-political aspects. Secondly, few explanations of the crisis take account of evidence from the local and regional levels. Thirdly and most seriously, theories of the crisis have ignored Germany, while historians of Germany have ignored the crisis debate. This article seeks to Jill these gaps. It puts Germany at the centre of a comprehensive theory of the crisis that takes existing crisis theories as its starting point, but also shows how the Thirty Tears War, largely caused by the peculiar institutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire, in turn wrought significant institutional change, not just in Germany, but throughout Europe.

Renaissances and Reformations

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 105-153
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Renaissance Italy

The chapter begins with History’s place in Renaissance Italy. Then it shows how the historiographies of various states were influenced by tendencies in Italian humanism, as well as by the Reformation. France is accorded special attention, then more briefly England and parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Then the chapter addresses the historiographical battles that corresponded to the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were battles of ecclesiastical History, centring on ancient sources. The polemical nature of some of the disagreements reinforced existing scepticism about the reliability of historical knowledge. Yet an increasingly bipartisan critical methodology developed, based on a combination of humanist philology and new palaeographical techniques, with established religious hermeneutics playing their part. Here the dictates of self-serving confessional History as Identity sometimes stood in tension with the demands of a proceduralist History as Methodology even as all sides agreed on the importance of History as Communion. The chapter concludes by addressing a ‘scientific’ seventeenth century for whose dominant intellectual figures historical enquiry supposedly had little use. Like previous chapters, this one addresses conceptual concerns of a general nature as they arise. Different sorts of contextualization are addressed, along with their implications for thinking about the past. Particular consideration is given to how a heightened attention to historical contextualization could be reconciled with ongoing demands for the relevance of History as Lesson for the present. Topical reading was one established solution, but another was resurrected with the ancient doctrine of similitudo temporum.

scholarly journals Ottoman Language Learning in Early Modern Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Stefan Hanß
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

AbstractThis article presents new evidence on the authorship and readership of the earliest printed Ottoman language materials that details the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire actively engaged in learning Ottoman. Such findings open up a new field of inquiry evaluating the Ottoman impact on the German-speaking lands reaching beyond the so-called “Turkish menace.” Presenting the variety of Ottoman language students, teachers, and materials in central Europe, as well as their connections with the oral world(s) of linguistic fieldwork in the Habsburg-Ottoman contact zone, this article argues that Ottoman language learning is an important but thus far neglected element in understanding the cultural and intellectual landscape of early modern central Europe. What may appear to be experiments with linguistic riddles on first glimpse was in fact grounded in deep enthusiasm and fascination for Ottoman language learning shared among a community of Protestant semi-scholarly aficionados.

‘All our dear countrymen’? British and Irish expatriates east of the Rhine as recorded in the Triennial Travels of James Fraser of Kirkhill (1634–1709)

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-67
Author(s):  
David Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
River Rhine ◽  
Transnational Identities ◽  
Shed Light

That section of the memoirs of James Fraser of Kirkhill (1634–1709) covering his 1659 travels east of the River Rhine, is exceptionally detailed and vivid. In particular, the fifty-four folios in question shed light on the nature of a British and Irish network towards the eastern and southern edges of the Holy Roman Empire. The purpose of this article is to assess Fraser's account of this body of expatriates from the Stuart kingdoms, a group he identified collectively as his ‘countrymen’. The circle within which he recorded having become a part was relatively inclusive, being confessionally diverse and based both on a loose affiliation to the cause of the then-exiled monarchy as well as, it appears, flexibility and adaptability with respect to language use. Three cities in the region that are commented on in depth in the account have been selected – Regensburg, Vienna and Prague – and Fraser's remarks in relation to the network in each of them analysed. This allows for wider conclusions focusing on the nature and development of that wider range of seventeenth century supranational and transnational identities which could link expatriates from throughout the Stuart monarchy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document