Staufen and Plantagenets. Ed. Alheydis Plassmann and Dominik Büschken. Bonn: V & R Unipress, Bonn University Press, 2018, 13 figures, 303 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 436-438
Author(s):  
David Nicholas
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire

This collection deals generally with the twelfth-century Hohenstaufen domains, which were called an “empire” by contemporaries, and the Plantagenet territories, which were not. The focus, although it is not adhered to rigidly, is the period of Henry II (1154–1189) in the Plantagenet areas of England and Western France and of Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–1190) in the Holy Roman Empire. It contains an introduction and nine substantive articles, two in German and the rest in English. Each paper appends its own list of sources and bibliography and an abstract in English. There is a substantial literature on most topics discussed, to which the authors add their own interpretations.

scholarly journals Images of Cities on the Nomismata of the Principality of Epiros from the First Half of the Thirteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 301-309
Author(s):  
Sergei A. Denisov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
The City

This paper has analysed the images of Arta and Thessalonike on eight types of billon nomismata minted in the Principality of Epirus in 1224–1248. These images were represented separately or included into the portraits of local rulers from the Doukai family: Theodore I (1215–1230), Manuel (1230–1237), John (1237–1244), and Michael II (1237–1267). There are two types of representation of the city on the coins. The first image followed the Byzantine iconographic tradition of the eleventh and twelfth century and appeared on the coins from 1224–1244. It comprises the scene showing the heavenly patron of the community (St. Demetrios) or archangel Michael giving a Doukas the model of Thessalonike. This scene underlined the religious legitimation of the ruler’s power over the local community and implied schematic presentation of the city as a model. To the second type occurring on the nomismata from 1237–1248 features the images of urban architectural elements (gates, walls, and towers) incorporated into the ruler’s portraits or shown separately on the reverse. These images also underlined the ruler’s relation with the local community; they are typical of more detailed execution of drawing of fortifications (blocks, embrasures, and flags). The second type images appeared on the coins under the influence from iconographic samples from the Holy Roman empire caused by the political alliance between the Doukai and Friedrich II Hohenstaufen (1212–1250). Using the representation of their power as the patrons of urban communities, the Doukai gained support for their policy from the local inhabitants and used it as a support for their power and struggle for the Byzantine heritage.

The Disputed Election at Langres in 1138

Traditio ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 119-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right ◽  
Duke Of Burgundy

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.

Sacrum imperium: Lombard Influence and the ‘Sacralization of the State’ in the Mid-twelfth Century Holy Roman Empire (1125–1167)*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vedran Sulovsky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Investiture Controversy ◽  
Political Vocabulary

Abstract Sacrum imperium (literally: holy empire) is a Latin phrase that entered the chancery of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190) in 1157. Sacrum imperium developed into the name of the Empire only much later, but scholars interpreted it as a programmatic phrase that Frederick and his chancellor, Rainald of Dassel, introduced as a part of their plan to ‘resacralize the state’ after its supposed desacralization by Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) and the Empire’s defeat in the Investiture Controversy (1076–1122). In this article I show that sacrum imperium was introduced not by Frederick and Rainald but by a group of Italian courtiers who had developed a new political vocabulary based on that of Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis and the contemporary Byzantine court language. I also demonstrate on the basis of Italian, Byzantine and papal sources that a desacralization of the state in 1122 never happened.

Words of Seduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rina Lahav
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Milieu

The first and longest letter in the collection left by Hugh Metel (d. c. 1150), an Augustinian canon of St. Léon, Toul, in the region of Lorraine, to Bernard of Clairvaux, promotes our understanding of geopolitical, religious, and social dynamics between Burgundy, Rome, and the Holy Roman Empire in the first half of the twelfth century. Based on this lengthy letter, Hugh Metel proves himself to be a self-aware writer, well-versed in the epistolary and social developments of his age, and engaged in the same social milieu as Albero of Montreuil and Bernard of Clairvaux and much more involved in the political and religious milieu of the mid-twelfth century than his relative obscurity today might lead us to believe.

Andreas Rutz, Die Beschreibung des Raumes. Territoriale Grenzziehungen im Heiligen Römischen Reich. Form und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, 47. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2018, 30 black-and-white maps and drawings in text, 20 color plates. 583 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 316-317
Author(s):  
David Nicholas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
The State ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
Subject Areas

This superb book concerns how territorial boundaries were drawn in the Holy Roman Empire between the Carolingian period and the eighteenth century. It shows how the Land, which from the twelfth century referred to the conglomeration of legal and political rights and offices that a lord held over his subjects and subject areas, became the territory, a geographical concept, in which location determined control. Measurable borders characterize the territory but not the Land. This study explains how and when the transition was made and thus concentrates on cartography and how territorial borders were perceived and eventually drawn. It uses the analytical framework of the transition in the Empire between the state based on personal relations and the institutional-territorial state. The focus is on Bavaria, Franconia, and the Rhineland and Westphalia.

Lordship and Administration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
Interconnected Networks ◽  
Territorial States

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.

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.

The Bounds of Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Lee
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Italian Nationalism ◽  
To Come

Scholars have long believed that ‘medieval’ universalism was supplanted by ‘Italian’ nationalism over the course of the fourteenth century. As this chapter demonstrates, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Although the humanists were often more concerned with the fate of Italy, or of individual cities, than of mankind as a whole, they did not waver in their belief that the Holy Roman Empire enjoyed universal dominion. Only at the very end of the Visconti Wars, when the Empire was seen to threaten the peace and liberty of the peninsula did ‘Italianness’ at last begin to come to the fore. Yet this is not to say that their universalism was unvarying. Depending on whether they chose to view it more as the successor of the ancient imperium Romanum or as an instrument of providence, they could paint it in idealistically ‘Roman’ colours, or endow it with a more ‘hegemonic’ tinge.

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