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.

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.

How Sincere Was Leibniz’s Criticism of Hobbes’s Political Thought?

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Fiorenza Manzo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
Theoretical Ground ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Textual Evidence

This paper focuses on Leibniz’s engagement with Thomas Hobbes’s political anthropology in the Mainz-period writings, and demonstrates that Leibniz tried to construct an alternative to the English philosopher by conceiving of a physically- and ontologically-grounded psychology of actions. I provide textual evidence of this attempt, and account for Leibniz’s rejection of Hobbes’s political theory and anthropological assumptions. In doing so, I refer to diverse aspects of Leibniz’s work, thereby highlighting his aspiration to congruity and consistency between different areas of investigation. Furthermore, Leibniz’s political writings and letters will reveal another—sometimes neglected—aspect of the issue: his concern to defend and legitimize the existence of pluralist and collective constitutional political systems like the Holy Roman Empire by providing the theoretical ground of their ability to last.

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.

scholarly journals Literary Culture in the Holy Roman Empire, 1555-1720

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Literature

These essays discuss approaches to early modern literature in central Europe, focusing on four pivotal areas: connections between humanism and the new scientific thought the relationship of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century literature to ancient and Renaissance European traditions the social and political context of early modern writing and the poets' self-consciousness about their work. As a whole, the volume argues that early modern writing in central Europe should not be viewed solely as literature but as the textual product of specific social, political, educational, religious, and economic circumstances. The contributors are Judith P. Aikin, Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Thomas W. Best, Dieter Breuer, Barton W. Browning, Gerald Gillespie, Anthony Grafton, Gerhart Hoffmeister, Uwe-K. Ketelsen, Joseph Leighton, Ulrich Maché, Michael M. Metzger, James A. Parente, Jr., Richard Erich Schade, George C. Schoolfield, Peter Skrine, and Ferdinand van Ingen.

Polish Jews Meet German Jews

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-258
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Polish Jews

This chapter assesses the meetings of the Polish Jewish refugees with the German Jews on the ground in the communities of the Holy Roman Empire. It begins by examining the chapbook Di bashraybung fun Ashkenaz un Polak (The Description of a German and a Polish Jew). Published in Prague sometime in the second half of the seventeenth century, it provides a satirical look at the interaction of the Polish Jewish refugees with the German Jews they met on their travels in the empire. The satirical poem presents this in two large blocks: the first gives the point of view of the Polish Jew and his complaints about his reception in the empire; the second brings the perspective of the German Jew and his opinions of the indigent refugees with whom he is faced. The chapter then determines the extent to which the chapbook was an accurate portrayal of the mid-seventeenth-century reality, considering the Jewish refugees in Frankfurt a.M. and Hamburg, as well as in Vienna.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document