The Thirty Years War

1997 ◽  
pp. 72-100
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Central European ◽  
German Jewry ◽  
Czech Lands ◽  
New Phase

This chapter focuses on the Thirty Years War (1618–48), which marked a new phase in the interaction between Jews and European society in several respects. Especially in central Europe, the long and terrible conflict accelerated the reintegration of Jewry in progress since the 1570s, preparing the way for the ‘Court Jews’ of the later seventeenth century. While significant changes had already taken place in the period from 1570 down to the commencement of the Thirty Years War, care must be taken not to exaggerate the extent of central European Jewry's gains by 1618. The expansion of Jewish activity and communities was then still at a comparatively early stage. The first point to take into account in explaining the proliferation of Jewish communities in Germany, the Czech lands, and Alsace during the Thirty Years War is the special relationship between German Jewry and the Emperor. It had long been a fact that the chief protector of the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire was the Emperor. The chapter then looks at the role of Jacob Bassevi, the financier who was at the centre of the efforts to raise Jewish subsidies for the Emperor, during the Thirty Years War.

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.

Central European Jewry during the Thirty Years' War

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan I. Israel
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
German Society ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Central European ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
German Jewry ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Systematic Explanation

Despite the wealth of published studies on individual German, Austrian, and Czech Jewish communities of the early modern era, it is remarkable how rare have been the attempts to synthesize the material and reach an overall assessment of the impact of the Thirty Years' War on Central European Jewish life. This gaping lacuna was noted some years ago by S. W. Baron, whose own general discussion of this subject is virtually unique. Immensely erudite, Baron's piece not only reveals the vast scope of the relevant material but tentatively suggests that the great European conflict was a key formative episode in the development of German Jewry, reversing earlier trends and preparing the way for the “Court Jews” of the later seventeenth century. This it undoubtedly was. Even so, Baron's evaluation is open to criticism on several counts. In particular, he fails to bring out, or make clear, just how crucial and how favorable a phase the Thirty Years' War was for the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, while some effort is made in his essay to identify the key shifts of the period, such as an alleged drift of Jews from the countryside to the towns, it is arguable that this is not handled very convincingly or with sufficient precision. In any case, it is evident that a fuller, more systematic explanation is needed if we are to account for the singular fact that during this period of almost unparalleled disruption, turmoil, and suffering Christendom's perennial scapegoat fared considerably better than most of the rest of German society.

Studies on the Iconography of Universities in the Holy Roman Empire: Images on Seals and Maces

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berthold Kress
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The University ◽  
Coats Of Arms

This chapter provides an iconographic overview on how the universities of the Holy Roman Empire displayed their authority. It will focus on two aspects. The first is the development of iconographic formulae that can convey the constitution and activity of a university or one of its faculties; and the second is the role of coats of arms or other political signs that indicate the relation between the university and the rulers of the territory in which it was situated. A seventeenth-century legal treatise on insignia gives a long list of the signs of the head of a university: maces (Sceptra), robe (Epomis), register (Matricula), the presence of bedells, seals, books of statutes and privileges, and the keys to consistory and prison. Of these objects, only the two that regularly bear images is discussed in this chapter: the seals and the maces.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-205
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Relevant Issue ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Cultural Formations ◽  
German Jewry

This chapter provides an overview of the Polish–Lithuanian Jews' flight westward after 1648. Three major issues underlie the discussion as a whole. First is the nature of Jewish solidarity in those years and the fate of the Jewish refugees outside Poland–Lithuania when the religious imperative to ransom captives was not a relevant issue. Second is the policies adopted by the states of the Holy Roman Empire toward the refugees and their impact on the refugees themselves as they tried to rebuild their lives on German lands. Third is the new social and cultural formations created by the encounter of “eastern” and “western” Ashkenazim in the wake of the refugee crisis and their consequences for the development of German Jewry in both the short and long term.

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.

Augustan Criticism and Changing Conceptions of English Opera

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd S. Gilman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Latin Culture ◽  
British Nationalism ◽  
English Opera

The love-hate nature of the relations between England and Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is well known. Ever since Henry VIII broke with Rome after Pope Clement VII refused to allow his divorce, things Italian were a popular object of satire and general disdain. An ever-increasing British nationalism founded on political, religious, and aesthetic principles during the seventeenth century fanned the flames of anti-Italian sentiment. This nationalism, newly consolidated in the seventeenth century by the ambitions of the Stuart monarchs to destroy Parliament, was intimately connected with English Protestantism. As Samuel Kliger has argued, the triumph of the Goths—Protestant Englishmen's Germanic ancestors—over Roman tyranny in antiquity became for seventeenth-century England a symbol of democratic success. Moreover, observes Kliger, an influential theory rooted in the Reformation, the “translatio imperii ad Teutonicos,” emphasized traditional German racial qualities—youth, vigor, manliness, and moral purity—over those of Latin culture—torpor, decadence, effeminacy, and immorality—and contributed to the modern constitution of the supreme role of the Goths in history. The German translatio implied an analogy between the conquest of the Roman Empire by the Goths (under Charlemagne) and the rallying of the humanist-reformers of northern Europe (e.g., Luther) for religious freedom, understood as liberation from Roman priestcraft; that is, “the translatio crystallized the idea that humanity was twice ransomed from Roman tyranny and depravity—in antiquity by the Goths, in modern times by their descendants, the German reformers…the epithet ‘Gothic’ became not only a polar term in political discussion, a trope for the ‘free,’ but also in religious discussion a trope for all those spiritual, moral, and cultural values contained for the eighteenth century in the single word ‘enlightenment.’”

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 Central European History and the Holy Roman Empire

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-45
Author(s):  
Joachim Whaley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
British Journal ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
European History ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
German History ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Central European ◽  
East European ◽  
New Literature

Central European History (CEH) began to appear at a crucial juncture in the historiography of the Holy Roman Empire. Of course its remit was much broader. Founded sixteen years before the British journal German History, Central European History, together with the Austrian History Yearbook (founded in 1965) and the East European Quarterly (founded in 1967), took over the role occupied between 1941 and 1964 by the Journal of Central European Affairs. Each of these US journals shared an openness to new approaches and to work on all periods since the Middle Ages, as well as a desire—in the words of CEH's inaugural editor, Douglas Unfug—to keep “readers abreast of new literature in the field …,” with “reflective, critical reviews or review articles dealing with works of central importance … [and] bibliographical articles dealing with limited periods or themes…”

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.

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