Download or read book The Holy Roman Empire written by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that reveals why it was not a failed state as many historians believe The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an emperor. Around 1500, it took on a more formal structure with the establishment of powerful institutions--such as the Reichstag and Imperial Chamber Court--that would endure more or less intact until the empire's dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger provides a concise history of the Holy Roman Empire, presenting an entirely new interpretation of the empire's political culture and remarkably durable institutions. Rather than comparing the empire to modern states or associations like the European Union, Stollberg-Rilinger shows how it was a political body unlike any other--it had no standing army, no clear boundaries, no general taxation or bureaucracy. She describes a heterogeneous association based on tradition and shared purpose, bound together by personal loyalty and reciprocity, and constantly reenacted by solemn rituals. In a narrative spanning three turbulent centuries, she takes readers from the reform era at the dawn of the sixteenth century to the crisis of the Reformation, from the consolidation of the Peace of Augsburg to the destructive fury of the Thirty Years' War, from the conflict between Austria and Prussia to the empire's downfall in the age of the French Revolution. Authoritative and accessible, The Holy Roman Empire is an incomparable introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe.
Download or read book Heart of Europe written by Peter H. Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 1025 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Economist and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year “Deserves to be hailed as a magnum opus.” —Tom Holland, The Telegraph “Ambitious...seeks to rehabilitate the Holy Roman Empire’s reputation by re-examining its place within the larger sweep of European history...Succeeds splendidly in rescuing the empire from its critics.” —Wall Street Journal Massive, ancient, and powerful, the Holy Roman Empire formed the heart of Europe from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later. An engine for inventions and ideas, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture, it derived its legitimacy from the ideal of a unified Christian civilization—though this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope for supremacy. In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Holy Roman Empire worked, why it was so important, and how it changed over the course of its existence. The result is a tour de force that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power and the legacy of its offspring, from Nazi Germany to the European Union. “Engrossing...Wilson is to be congratulated on writing the only English-language work that deals with the empire from start to finish...A book that is relevant to our own times.” —Brendan Simms, The Times “The culmination of a lifetime of research and thought...an astonishing scholarly achievement.” —The Spectator “Remarkable...Wilson has set himself a staggering task, but it is one at which he succeeds heroically.” —Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book Imperial Splendor written by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and published by Giles. This book was released on 2021 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly-illustrated history and survey of centers of book production and use within the Holy Roman Empire over the course of seven hundred years.
Download or read book Reich and Nation written by John G. Gagliardo and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Society and Politics in Germany written by G. Benecke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2006. This book attempts a new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. It makes use of regional printed materials and of unpublished state archives from north-west Germany, a large and important region of which no thorough study has yet been published in English.
Download or read book The Emperor s Old Clothes written by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years, scholars struggled to write the history of the constitution and political structure of the Holy Roman Empire. This book argues that this was because the political and social order could not be understood without considering the rituals and symbols that held the Empire together. What determined the rules (and whether they were followed) depended on complex symbolic-ritual actions. By examining key moments in the political history of the Empire, the author shows that it was a vocabulary of symbols, not the actual written laws, that formed a political language indispensable in maintaining the common order.
Download or read book The Holy Roman Empire 2 volumes written by Brian A. Pavlac and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 677 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reference entries, overview essays, and primary source document excerpts survey the history and unveil the successes and failures of the longest-lasting European empire. The Holy Roman Empire endured for ten centuries. This book surveys the history of the empire from the formation of a Frankish Kingdom in the sixth century through the efforts of Charlemagne to unify the West around A.D. 800, the conflicts between emperors and popes in the High Middle Ages, and the Reformation and the Wars of Religion in the Early Modern period to the empire's collapse under Napoleonic rule. A historical overview and timeline are followed by sections on government and politics, organization and administration, individuals, groups and organizations, key events, the military, objects and artifacts, and key places. Each of these topical sections begins with an overview essay, which is followed by alphabetically arranged reference entries on significant topics. The book includes a selection of primary source documents, each of which is introduced by a contextualizing headnote, and closes with a selected, general bibliography.
Download or read book The Swabian League written by Charles River and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-05 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Despite the pope's aversion to temporal glory, his authority tended to fill the vacuum in the West left when the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed in 476. The pope would continue to do so until 800, when Charlemagne would allow himself to be crowned Emperor of the West in Rome upon receiving his crown from Pope Leo III. This created modern Europe and was the culmination of two centuries of papal policy aimed at securing its independence from the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople. Before Charlemagne's coronation, there had been no formal break with Constantinople, but recognizing Charlemagne aimed to ensure the Roman Empire was reborn in the West. For the papacy, the new empire, now commonly referred to as the Holy Roman Empire, secured its independence from Constantinople since the new emperor had received his crown from the Church. The popes maintained and would continue to maintain for centuries that the imperial power lay in their hands as the heirs and custodians of ancient Rome, and that they had delegated that power to the King of the Franks. The papacy would guard this doctrine jealously, and for centuries it held that no man could call himself emperor until the pope had placed the Crown of Charlemagne upon his head. Naturally, many Holy Roman emperors disputed the pope's interpretation of their authority, and the battles between popes and emperors shaped European history for much of the Middle Ages. Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085) famously declared that the pope had no earthly judge and that he might depose emperors and absolve their subjects from the oaths of allegiance. He demonstrated this power by forcing Emperor Henry IV, in penitential garb, to wait upon him in the snow outside the walls of Canossa, and after three days the pope deigned to absolve him from excommunication. For a time, the popes were masters of Europe, but in the end their power was eroded by the growing tide of nationalism, religious indifference, and the papacy's own corruption. As this suggests, the Holy Roman Empire was a fascinating institution as well as one of the most perplexing and contradictory. It was both German and universal. It was created by the Catholic Church, yet in the end enshrined confessional freedom in its constitution. It was both an empire and a collection of loosely federated principalities and city-states. It was Roman, but based in Germany, and for most of its existence it either ignored the Vatican or was at war with it. The Swabian League, an alliance of cities and states in the southwest of Germany within the Holy Roman Empire was interesting in itself both for the way it influenced imperial politics and for how it shaped the German nation and thus the history of Europe.There were two Swabian Leagues, with the first in the High Middle Ages and the second being formed during the Renaissance. The Protestant Reformation tore apart the alliances in the 16th century, and the divisions continued to influence the history of Germany well beyond the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. In fact, it can be argued that the Swabian League created the German nation as it exists today, and its influence lives on through the autonomous Swabian peoples who live in the federal German state of Baden-Wurttemberg. The Swabian League: The History and Legacy of the Mutual Defense Pact for the Holy Roman Empire's Imperial Estates examines the events that led to the formation of the Swabian League, and what eventually brought about its demise. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Swabian League like never before.
Download or read book Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire written by Duncan Hardy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast Central European polity was the continent's most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while a diverse array of regional actors played an autonomous role in political life. The Empire's obvious differences compared with more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative historical judgements and fraught debates, which have found expression in recent decades in the concepts of fractured 'territorial states' and a disjointed 'imperial constitution'. Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany — the southern regions of modern-day Germany plus Alsace, Switzerland, and western Austria — between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of technologies, rituals, judicial systems, and concepts and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. On the basis of this evidence, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire offers a new and more coherent depiction of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared political culture.
Download or read book Germany and the Holy Roman Empire written by Joachim Whaley and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany and the Holy Roman Empire offers a striking new interpretation of a crucial era in German and European history, from the great reforms of 1495-1500 to the dissolution of the Reich in 1806. Over two volumes, Joachim Whaley rejects the notion that this was a long period of decline, and shows instead how imperial institutions developed in response to the crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably the Reformation and Thirty Years War. The impact of international developments on the Reich is also examined. The first volume begins with an account of the reforms of the reign of Maximilian I and concludes with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. It offers a new interpretation of the Reformation, the Peasants' War, the Schmalkaldic War and the Peace of Augsburg, and of the post-Reformation development of Protestantism and Catholicism. The German policy successfully resisted the ambitions of Charles V and the repeated onslaughtsof both the Ottomans and the French, and it remained stable in the face of the French religious wars and the Dutch Revolt. The volume concludes with an analysis of the Thirty Years War as an essentially German constitutional conflict, triggered by the problems of the Habsburg dynasty and prolonged by the interventions of foreign powers. The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the conflict, both reflected the development of the German polity since the late fifteenth century and created teh framework for its development over the next hundred and fifty years.
Download or read book Imperial City written by Susan Vandiver Nicassio and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1798, the armies of the French Revolution tried to transform Rome from the capital of the Papal States to a Jacobin Republic. For the next two decades, Rome was the subject of power struggles between the forces of the Empire and the Papacy, while Romans endured the unsuccessful efforts of Napoleon’s best and brightest to pull the ancient city into the modern world. Against this historical backdrop, Nicassio weaves together an absorbing social, cultural, and political history of Rome and its people. Based on primary sources and incorporating two centuries of Italian, French, and international research, her work reveals what life was like for Romans in the age of Napoleon. “A remarkable book that wonderfully vivifies an understudied era in the history of Rome. . . . This book will engage anyone interested in early modern cities, the relationship between religion and daily life, and the history of the city of Rome.”—Journal of Modern History “An engaging account of Tosca’s Rome. . . . Nicassio provides a fluent introduction to her subject.”—History Today “Meticulously researched, drawing on a host of original manuscripts, memoirs, personal letters, and secondary sources, enabling [Nicassio] to bring her story to life.”—History
Download or read book The Holy Roman Empire Reconsidered written by Jason Philip Coy and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Holy Roman Empire has often been anachronistically assumed to have been defunct long before it was actually dissolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The authors of this volume reconsider the significance of the Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Their research reveals the continual importance of the Empire as a stage (and audience) for symbolic performance and communication; as a well utilized problem-solving and conflict-resolving supra-governmental institution; and as an imagined political, religious, and cultural "world" for contemporaries. This volume by leading scholars offers a dramatic reappraisal of politics, religion, and culture and also represents a major revision of the history of the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period.
Download or read book Germany and the Holy Roman Empire written by Joachim Whaley and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 747 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Holy Roman Empire written by James Bryce and published by Jazzybee Verlag. This book was released on 2017 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bryce approached the subject of the Holy Roman Empire from only one angle, but that a very important one. What interested him was to trace the history of the imperial idea from the founding to the termination of the Holy Roman Empire. He was not interested in its actual history save in so far as that narrative illuminated his major thesis. He endeavored to interpret and to evaluate the influence of a great political idea in medieval and modern history. The facts throughout the book were reduced to that minimum necessary to give coherence and cohesiveness to the subject. The only descriptive chapter in the work is that entitled "The city of Rome in the middle ages," which is a masterpiece of historical composition, without equal in English literature.
Download or read book Imperial Villages written by Beat Kümin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book-length study of imperial villages, Beat Kümin provides unprecedented insights into the micro-political cultures of rural communities and popular desires for local autonomy in the pre-modern German lands.
Download or read book A Comparative Study of Six City state Cultures written by Mogens Herman Hansen and published by Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. This book was released on 2002 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire written by Luca Scholz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 sitefor 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 study shows that attempts to escort travellers, issue letters ofpassage, 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. Newlydesigned 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.Luca Scholz unearths intense intellectual debates around the rulers' right to interfere with freedom of movement. The Empire's political order guaranteed extensive transit rights, but claims of protection could also mask aggressive attempts of territorial expansion. Drawing on sources discovered inmore than twenty archives and covering the period between the late sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire offers a new perspective on the unstable relationship of political authority and human mobility in the heartlands of old-regimeEurope.
