Religious Policy

A Roman emperor in late antiquity had to deal not only with military, administrative, and communicative matters, but also with the complex religious affairs of the time. Jovian was a Christian, and he made a clean break with Julian’s pro-pagan measures and returned to the religious policy of Constantine and Constantius II. He did not, however, issue anti-pagan measures. Jovian may have been in favor of Nicene Christianity if we can believe Athanasius’s letter addressed to him, as well as the Petitiones Arianorum. This set of four petitions to Jovian have been preserved among the apologetical writings of Athanasius and should therefore be treated with caution. In general, Jovian seems to have taken no sides in the various christological conflicts and debates of his time. He propagated religious tolerance as is evident from Themistius’s consular oration. Whether he issued a law of religious tolerance, as Themistius seems to suggest, remains in doubt. Regulating religion, dealing with dogmatic issues, or taking a position himself in religious conflicts seem not to have been among Jovian’s primary concerns.

Losing Champions

This chapter discusses how 1626 was to be a dangerous year for those wedded to Elizabeth Stuart's cause. The first casualty was a minor Protestant polemicist and fervent supporter of hers named Thomas Scott. Then the Duke of Brunswick died at Wolfenbüttel; Brunwick's death damaged not only Elizabeth's cause, but also her well-being. Meanwhile, in November, Gabor agreed terms with the Holy Roman Emperor, signing the Peace of Pressburg in December. With Gabor making peace, Elizabeth had lost yet another champion. The chapter then looks at how Buckingham's invasion of the Isle of Rhé started the Franco-Stuart war of 1627–1629. Frederick V and Elizabeth were fully committed to two complementary struggles: regaining the Palatinate and keeping up appearances. Just when nothing seemed to be going right for Frederick and Elizabeth, the good news that the Swedish king's army had landed at Usedom in July of 1630 arrived. Gustavus Adolphus died on the battlefield on November 16, 1632, shortly after the taking of Frankenthal. His death was presumably received with mixed emotions by Elizabeth, as while she may have joined in the general mourning of a lost Protestant champion, his passing must also have seemed timely, not least because of the disrespect that he had accorded her husband and his stance on the Palatinate.

Military Manoeuvres

This chapter explores how it was made public on February 25, 1623, that the Holy Roman Emperor had removed Frederick V from the Palatinate on the grounds of treason and had placed it into the hands of Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, to whom he was financially and militarily in debt. On March 29, 1623, the agreement handing Frankenthal to Isabella was finally signed in London. Under the agreement, 'Donna Isabel' promised to return Frankenthal after eighteen months, willingly allowing 1,500 English foot and 200 horse back in to reoccupy it, if the truce under which Frederick and the Spanish had ceased conflict in and around the Palatinate had not been transformed into a full peace treaty. Back in England, Elizabeth's brother Charles undertook a mission to fetch the Infanta Maria, the Spanish bride promised to him, and bring her back home. While Charles remained in Spain, the great Catholic power held a bargaining chip of rare value. Not only was he heir to King James's three Crowns, but, more to the point, the Spanish were at war with his sister. Convinced that the marriage of her brother Charles to the Spanish Infanta was inevitable, and that all hope of their restoration to the Palatinate was lost, Elizabeth and Frederick began to consider establishing themselves more permanently in the Dutch Republic.

Nicolaus von Redewitz – ein Diplomat und Informant des Deutschen Ordens am Hof von Sigismund von Luxemburg

Nicolaus von Redewitz – the Teutonic Order’s diplomat and informant in the court of Sigismund of Luxembourg At the end of 1422, Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor, allowed the Teutonic Order to have a permanent diplomatic representation in his court, in the person of Nicolaus von Redewitz. This was related to the fact that from the beginning of the 1420s, the Ottoman Empire posed an increasingly serious threat to the southern borders of Hungary again, and Sigismund wanted to win over the Order for the fight against the Turks. Arriving in the court of the king, von Redewitz kept the Grand Master of the order informed of Sigismund’s political plans, decisions, negotiations, military actions against the Turks, and all-important events. A recurring theme in his letters was the king’s urge that the Order take on the defence of the southern borders of the Hungarian Kingdom. In return, he first offered the Grand Master the Burzenland in Southern Transylvania, from where Andrew II, King of Hungary, expelled the Order in 1225, then the Banate of Severin by the lower Danube. Following long negotiations, at the end of July 1429, a few Teutonic Knights arrived in Hungary. These knights did not undertake the armed protection of the southern borders, only its organisation. Sigismund entrusted the management of twenty-one fortresses and military watch-posts to the Knights, who envisioned the reinforcement of the defence with the involvement of mercenaries. However, the Hungarian Treasury was unable to provide the expenses for this plan. When, at the end of the summer of 1432, the Turks launched an attack at the lower Danube, they managed to occupy three fortresses under the control of the Order. Recognising that the Order’s idea of the protection of the borders is impossible to finance, at the end of 1434, Sigismund agreed to the gradual return of the Teutonic Knights who had arrived in Hungary in 1429 to Prussia.

Tradition of geodetic instruments production in the Czech Republic

The article describes the development of geodetic surveying and production of geodetic instruments in what is now Czech Republic. The beginnings of development can be found in the 12th–13th centuries during the colonization of the territory and the consolidation of state administration. Significant development peaks occurred in the 14th century during the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia Charles IV and then at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries during the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. The new direction is related to the development of industry at the end of the 19th century. At that time, several dozen companies in fine mechanics and optics were operating in Prague. The company J. & J. Frič was a world leader in the use of a glass divided circle in 1864. The production of astronomical and geodetic instruments in Czechoslovakia was successful until the end of the 1960s.

Bones, fire, and falcons: Loving things in medieval Europe

In three loving encounters between humans and nonhumans, this article explores different approaches to material love in medieval Europe. Beginning with an English bishop who attempted to eat the bone relic of Saint Mary Magdalene, it first considers how a series of medieval thinkers imagined God's love as mediated primarily through the consumption of matter. Further, it shows how the medieval commercialization of relics enabled a subversive, quasi-mystical counter tradition that located loving experiences within the unmediated physicality, or thingness, of Christian artifacts themselves. Moving next to Saint Francis of Assisi (d.1226), the article explores a curious case of self-negating devotion to fire. While contextualizing the saint's love against a background of scholastic materialism and ecstatic mysticism, it explores how fire gained a unique onto-theological status as the material essence of both love and the heavens in the 1200s. Finally, turning to love for animals, the analysis explores the astonishing care shown to falcons by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II (d.1250). While surveying a series of trends in medieval ways of loving creatures, the article stresses how the emperor's radical empathy for beasts allowed him temporarily to surrender his sovereignty, melding the interest of king and bird. Just like the mystical theology that underpinned much of medieval devotion, it argues, these three loving encounters were all essentially structured as self-annihilating journeys into a “oneness” with the material landscape. Considering the ongoing threads of this forgotten type of self-erasing love, these medieval encounters can have intriguing implications for debates in the environmental humanities today.

Spectatorship, Control, and Collective Groups

It is axiomatic that the Roman emperor attempted to control the city populace through an ideology of ‘bread and circuses’ (free grain and public entertainment). Yet a riot during a food crisis in 189 ce, which began in the circus and spread to the streets, shows that spectators could be the agents of political interaction at public spectacles rather than merely passive participants, that public spectacles could be organizing events for the non-elite population. It has been argued that crowds in order to form require a ‘notion of legitimation’. Indeed, the crowd at this riot was engendered in part through the long-standing conventions of spectatorship at Roman public spectacles, including 1) public spectacles as venues for popular protest and interactions with the emperor; 2) the custom of arranged seating, including claques, factions, and trade guilds (collegia); 3) common forms of spectator response, such as acclamations.

CARACALLA AND ‘ALEXANDER'S PHALANX’: CAUGHT AT A CROSSROADS OF EVIDENCE

It is well known that Alexander the Great offered inspiration to successive monarchs and autocrats. Few of these, however, could claim to match the affection shown by the Roman emperor Caracalla (198–217 ce). Caracalla is said to have been an almost pathological aficionado of Alexander, constantly promoting a public association between himself and his idol. One aspect of Caracalla's imitatio Alexandri was allegedly the levy of a peculiar phalangite formation based on the arms and equipment of Alexander's time. For years it was impossible to gauge whether this was a real development or a hostile literary fabrication, but the discovery of funerary remains at Apamea in Syria, which appear to memorialize phalangites and lanciarii, confirmed to some the historicity of Caracalla's bizarre levy. This article argues, however, that the apparently convincing combination of evidence is illusory, and that Caracalla's ‘phalanx’ was rather a convenient label applied to an inherently Roman formation.