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.

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 Reformation and the Establishment of Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Whaley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
General Population ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Charles V ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
The Church

Martin Luther was a subject of the Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire. His emergence as a reformer was made possible by the sponsorship he received in Wittenberg. He owed his survival to the protection afforded him by the Elector when Emperor Charles V outlawed him and ordered that the papal ban of excommunication be enforced in the empire. The audience to which Luther appealed was the general population of German Christians, both lay and ecclesiastical, who wanted a reform of the church and the reduction of the pope’s influence over it. That his appeal resonated so widely and so profoundly had much to do with a combination of crises that had developed in the empire from the 15th century. That his reform proposals resulted in the formation of a new church owed everything to the political structures of the empire. These facilitated the suppression of radical challenges to Luther’s position. They also thwarted every effort Charles V made over several decades to ensure that the empire remained Catholic. Lutheranism became entwined with the idea of German liberty; as a result, its survival was secured in the constitution of the empire, first in 1555 and then in 1648.

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.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yair Mintzker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
German Nation ◽  
German Speaking

This introductory chapter discusses how the historical figure of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer—also known as Jew Süss—is incredibly elusive, and any understanding of him must begin with the political and legal regimes under which he lived and died. Oppenheimer spent almost his entire life in the southwest corner of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In the eighteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire was the general political organization that connected the hundreds of more or less sovereign polities in German-speaking central Europe. Especially important for understanding Oppenheimer's case is the fact that the Empire's members shared a common legal system scholars term “inquisitorial.”

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.

The Swiss Reformations

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph C. Head
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Social Settlements ◽  
Early Emergence ◽  
Swiss Confederation ◽  
Radical Movements

This chapter analyzes Reformation events in the Swiss Confederation as local manifestations of pan-European movements of religious change. After setting the early emergence of strong evangelical and radical movements for reform in the political and cultural context of the Confederation—a distinctive polity within the Holy Roman Empire—the article traces a trajectory from early reform movements triggered by Ulrich Zwingli’s preaching through a period of political and social settlements from the 1530s to 1560s. The specific settlements reached in Switzerland, notably the Second Religious Peace of Kappel (1531) in turn required the region’s inhabitants to re-imagine their social, cultural and political lives for a world with multiple rival Christian confessions.

Empire and Counter-Empire in the Italian Far Right

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 99-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Spruce
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Territorial Integration

What old Fascisms and new nationalisms circulate in the political spaces of Europe? Through an analysis of their split on immigration policy in 2003, this article examines the myths and ideologies of the two major far right parties in Italy, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale. It argues that the anti-imperial mythology of the Lega, based on the defence of Lombardy against the Holy Roman Empire, has led it into a modernist politics of territoriality, borders and homogeneity. On the other hand, the Alleanza Nazionale has used its Fascist heritage, and in particular the mythologizing of the Roman empire, to open up a postmodern imperial politics, involving the expansion of borders, and the incorporation of new peoples and territories. Through the use of interviews with militants and deputies, it looks at how the Alleanza has re-articulated imperial Fascist mythologies within a new pro-European Union discourse, while the Lega has maintained its role of protest against deterritorialization despite the seeming inevitability of the territorial integration.

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.

How Did Germany Go Right?

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist

To set a single agenda for German history would be a foolhardy task, but let us begin with a major generalization about the long-term development of the field. Two mega-issues have dominated the historiography and debates for a century or more, standing on the path of historical research like some huge boulders that can not be moved or even circumvented. The first concerns how the German communities of Central Europe had constructed a nation-state—Tantae molis erat Germanam condere gentem, to adapt Vergil. There was a Prussian-centered statist answer by scholars including Leopold von Ranke, Heinrich von Treitschke, and Friedrich Meinecke, and continuing through Christopher Clark'sIron Kingdom. A more decentered approach has, by contrast, stressed local experiences; liberal and participatory currents of a political or religious (often Roman Catholic in sympathy, e.g., the work of Franz Schnabel) or cultural nature; and, finally, the heritage of a federalist constitutionalism, whether instantiated in the Holy Roman Empire or in the later celebratory afterglow ofHeimat. The second mega-issue that dominated the historiography for the first generation—perhaps half-century—after World War II and the collapse of Nazism was one that I was asked about at my undergraduate oral examinations in the spring of 1960: Where did Germany go wrong? The catastrophic career of National Socialist Germany, both internally and for Europe in general, compelled my generation and later ones never to lose sight of that issue. Even those who rejected claims about long-term disabling flaws in the emergence of liberal democracy—the political original sin, so to speak—had to address that fundamental issue.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document