Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (121 page)

Several attempts to address this have described the EU as a ‘neo-medieval empire’, arguing that it is not converging along the Westphalian model into a federal superstate, but is evolving instead as a complex structure of fragmented sovereignty and ‘plurilateral’ governance.
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The concept of neo-medievalism is an analytical construct that would benefit from closer engagement with the actual history of the Holy Roman Empire, at least during its last three centuries. Comparisons can be instructive, if not necessarily flattering to either the EU or the Empire. First, the Empire’s history is a reminder that decentralized political systems are not necessarily peaceful in their intentions. Like the Empire, the EU does not possess its own armed forces, nor has it waged wars, yet decentralization ensures a significant proportion of wealth continues to be spent on defence as each member remains fully armed. The EU has remained at peace, but individual member states such as France and the
UK have been involved in several wars and other substantial military operations, not all of them clearly sanctioned by the UN or any other multilateral organization. Although celebrated in the more positive scholarly interpretations as having peaceful intentions, the eighteenth-century Empire was the most heavily armed part of Europe, and it proved incapable of preventing individual members, such as Austria or Saxony, from waging their own wars outside its frontiers.
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Both the EU and the Empire have lacked a single capital or a clear political core. Although individual elements have enjoyed more influence than others, this did not result in subjugation – except in the final stages of the Empire after 1801. The EU displays clear differences from the Empire in that its members retain the formal legal equality accorded to sovereign states. This extends to special cultural provisions, such as ensuring official documentation is prepared in all national languages, as well as equal freedom of movement for citizens, goods and capital. By contrast, autonomy in the Empire was embedded in a hierarchy defined by status and differing constitutional rights. However, the EU struggles to reconcile formal equality with the considerable diversity in population, wealth and economic potential across its membership, as evidenced by the repeated revisions to voting arrangements in its central institutions. It also shares the Empire’s imprecision around frontiers, which remain only superficially defined by national boundaries. Member states are combined in different overlapping levels of jurisdiction, such as the Schengen border agreement, the Eurozone and the EU itself. Additionally, individual members have binding commitments to states outside the union, such as the UK’s leadership of the Commonwealth, just as early modern Austria and Prussia had extensive hereditary possessions outside the Empire.

The EU further resembles the Empire in lacking an organized uniform body of citizens. Its relationship to its inhabitants is indirect and mediated by autonomous political levels, such as the member states, which can still set their own criteria for citizenship, yet issue passports conferring rights extending across the entire union. The Empire appears to have done rather better than the EU in fostering attachment amongst its inhabitants, who valued it as a framework sustaining local and particular liberties, and in respecting diversity, autonomy and difference. It is here that perhaps the most interesting comparisons can be made. Sovereignty is fragmented in the EU, as it was in the Empire. In
both, policy implementation depends on members’ cooperation, allowing scope for local adaptation and initiative. These arrangements require consensus to a far higher extent than in centralized sovereign polities, including federal ones like the United States where central institutions (for example Congress) act directly on citizens through their ability to pass laws affecting their lives, tax their wealth, or conscript them as soldiers. It is precisely this arrangement that appears threatened by voter apathy and disenchantment, because citizens risk losing control of the institutions of government. By contrast, decentralized, fragmented political structures do not lend themselves to common direct democratic control, as evidenced by the European Parliament’s struggle to find a meaningful role within the EU and in the minds of European voters.

Some political scientists now argue that decentralized, fragmented systems might offer different, perhaps even better ways to forge consensus by ‘legitimation through deliberation’.
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Decentralized structures can spread authority, creating multiple, more local and thereby perhaps more meaningful arenas for decisions to be reached. Consensus becomes a more open-ended, ongoing process of bargaining between interested parties, rather than a periodic assignment of mandates to elected representatives expected to agree definitive decisions. Democratic legitimacy derives from the openness of debate, not the practice of voting. Citizenship is about involvement in and access to discussion through civil society and a free media, not simply formal rights and institutions.

It seems likely that, for such ideas to work, participants must accept that politics can no longer be guided by absolutes, rather in the manner that conflict resolution in the Empire was about workable compromises, not questions of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Like current practice within the EU, the Empire relied on peer pressure, which was often more effective and less costly than coercion, and which functioned thanks to the broad acceptance of the wider framework and a common political culture. However, our review of the Empire has also revealed that these structures were far from perfect and could fail, even catastrophically. Success usually depended on compromise and fudge. Although outwardly stressing unity and harmony, the Empire in fact functioned by accepting disagreement and disgruntlement as permanent elements of its internal politics. Rather than providing a blueprint for today’s Europe, the history of the Empire suggests ways in which we might understand current problems more clearly.

Glossary

Abschied
see
Recess.

Allodial property
Land and other assets belonging to a family, separate from any legal jurisdictions they might possess. Often held collectively, in common, and distinct from individual personal possessions.

Amt
Dual meaning as either a public post held by an official or an administrative district within a territory.

Arch-offices
The ceremonial titles assumed by the electors during the high Middle Ages and associated permanently by the Golden Bull (q.v.) with particular electorates.

Armed Estate
A territory possessing a permanent military establishment beyond that required to fulfil imperial obligations.

Benefice
Land or other assets conferred as a reward or to facilitate service (see
Fief
). The term derived from the Old High German
lîhan
(
Lehen
), Latinized as
Beneficium
and meaning to lend, award or confer. It was used widely in the early Middle Ages and did not necessarily entail vassalage until 1166. Its usage during the later Middle Ages was increasingly restricted to denote property and assets endowed to support clergy (see also
Fief
).

Canton
A territorial division for administrative or governing purposes. Its most prominent usage is to denote the self-governing areas combining after 1291 as the Swiss Confederation, though these were actually called ‘places’ (
Orte
) until the official adoption of the term ‘canton’ in 1798. ‘Canton’ was already the official designation of the regional associations of the imperial knights from the mid-sixteenth century, and was also the label for the recruiting districts introduced into the Prussian monarchy in 1733.

Capitularies
Legally binding, written administrative guidelines issued by the Carolingians.

Communalism
Collective political action through communal institutions embodying the associative principle binding neighbours together.

Confessionalization
The demarcation of religious belief according to confessional orthodoxy, identifying an area and its inhabitants firmly with one variety of Christianity.

Contado
Originally ‘the counts’ land’, this term came to mean the hinterland dominated by a town in medieval Italy.

Deditio
Ritualized submission to royal (or lordly) authority, primarily used during the Ottonian and Salian eras and usually brokered by third parties to end a dispute in return for a full or partial restitution of lands and titles.

Dienstherrschaft
The feudal right to claim labour service from dependent peasants.

Electoral capitulation
or
Wahlkapitulation
Agreements between an emperor, or a spiritual prince, and their electors made prior to the final confirmation of their election, confirming corporate rights and privileges.

Electors
The princes entitled to participate in the selection of each emperor. Their privileges were codified by the Golden Bull (q.v.).

Estates
A set of complex terms related to the corporate structure of early modern society that was divided into privileged orders of clergy, nobility and commons. Each of these orders was considered an Estate (
Stand
), as were the recognized subgroups within them. Representative institutions drawing on these groups were also called Estates. Territorial Estates (
Landstände
) were composed of representatives of the corporate groups from a particular territory. As constituent elements of the Empire, each territory (with certain exceptions) was both an ‘imperial Estate’ (
Reichsstand
) with a place in the Reichstag, and a
Kreisstand
with a seat in the relevant Kreis Assembly (q.v.).

Fief
The terms
feudum
and
feodum
were Latin versions of Old High German words for movable property. Emerging in the ninth century, they were increasingly equated with benefices (q.v.), displacing that term after the mid-twelfth century, though usage was uneven and only became established in north-east Germany a century later. From 1166, both fief and benefice were understood as involving vassalage and were tied to homage.

Gerichtsherrschaft
The right of feudal jurisdiction over a given area.

Ghibelline
A term coined in the twelfth century to designate imperial supporters, especially in Italy. It derived from Waiblingen in Swabia, then (erroneously) believed to be the Salians’ family home (see also
Guelph
).

Golden Bull
The imperial charter of 1356 codifying the privileges of the electors, or
Kurfürsten
, who chose each emperor. These rights included the indivisibility of the electorates and their exemption from some forms of imperial jurisdiction.

Gravamina
Petitions, especially those from Estates to a ruler.

Grundherrschaft
The form of landownership whereby tenants rented plots from their feudal lord.

Guelph
A term coined in the twelfth century to designate the emperor’s opponents in Italy. It derived from the Welf family, which had land in Italy and Germany and which played a significant role in opposing Henry IV in the 1080s (see also
Ghibelline
).

Gutswirtschaft
The manorial economy characterizing the area east of the Elbe where lordly estates were worked by dependent serfs and hired labourers producing bulk crops traded on the international market.

Immediacy
The status of
Reichsunmittelbarkeit
, indicating a relationship to the emperor that was direct and not mediated by any intermediate authority or lord.

Imperial church
The collective term for the
Reichskirche
, or ecclesiastical territories.

Imperial city
or
Reichsstadt
A city with the status of immediacy (q.v.), as distinct from a territorial town. The same applied to other terms employing the prefix
Reich
: imperial knights, imperial counts, imperial prelates.

Imperial Italy
The part of northern Italy under the emperor’s feudal jurisdiction that included Milan, Savoy, Genoa, Parma, Tuscany, Mantua, Solferino and other smaller principalities.

Imperial vicar
An individual charged with exercising imperial authority during the emperor’s absence, either in a specific locality or across an entire kingdom.

Investiture
The Latin terms
vestitura
and
investitura
denoted the act of legalizing possession of assets or jurisdictions. The term derived from the papal practice since the seventh century of sending vestments (the
pallium
) to a new archbishop.