Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (129 page)

The Worms meeting also established new peace-keeping and judicial arrangements, declaring a permanent public peace to end feuding, whilst establishing the
Reichskammergericht
as a new supreme court to arbitrate disputes between imperial Estates. The new court symbolized the Empire’s mixed character through the court’s formation jointly by the emperor and imperial Estates, all of whom assumed responsibility for maintaining it, nominating judges and implementing verdicts. By being independent, the court also symbolized how the Empire and its new institutions were greater than the sum of their parts. The Empire, through its constitution, was emerging more clearly as a legal framework with its own dynamic. It legitimized the status of the individual imperial Estates and, more generally, all groups, communities and entities were recognized somewhere in the growing body of imperial law.

1499

The Swiss or Swabian War. Maximilian I attempted to curb Swiss expansion and force them to accept the burdens and responsibilities associated with imperial reform. His defeat marked the definitive end of Habsburg efforts to assert lordship over Switzerland, but though the Swiss were exempted from the new institutions created by imperial reform, they nonetheless remained within the Empire.

1500–1512

The Reichstag in Augsburg (1500) established six ‘imperial circles’ (
Reichskreise
) to facilitate implementation of the measures agreed at Worms five years earlier. This Kreis structure was extended by bringing most of the remaining German territories within the system through the establishment of four additional circles. The Habsburgs deliberately enhanced their autonomy within the Empire by drawing the boundaries of the Austrian and Burgundian Kreise to ensure that both were almost entirely composed of their own possessions. Switzerland, imperial Italy and the Bohemian lands all remained outside this framework. The Kreis structure developed unevenly, but all ten Kreise were functioning by the 1540s, because their members appreciated the advantages of regional cooperation. The Kreise were another lasting achievement of imperial reform. By contrast, efforts to impose a permanent advisory council (
Reichsregiment
) on the emperor failed by 1530, partly through Habsburg opposition, but also because the imperial Estates came to realize that the Reichstag was a better vehicle for their interests.

1508

The papacy recognized Maximilian I as ‘elected Roman emperor’, thereby accepting the arguments advanced since the fourteenth century that the German king exercised imperial prerogatives from his election. Papal involvement diminished, conveniently at a time when the military situation in Italy made a coronation journey more difficult.

1517

The start of the Reformation with Martin Luther’s publication of his 95 Theses. Critically, the religious controversy began while imperial reform was still underway. Debates over the correct form of Christianity became entangled with disputes over the Empire’s proper political order.

1519–56

The reign of Charles V, grandson of Maximilian I and already king of Spain since 1516. Even more than Maximilian, Charles embodied both old and new, reinforcing the sense that the early sixteenth century marked an important stage in the Empire’s development.

1521

The Reichstag in Worms consolidated imperial reform through the new matricular list, and initiated a series of increasingly substantial grants in taxes and military aid, enabling the Habsburgs to defend the Empire’s eastern frontier against the Ottomans. Charles’s declaration of Luther as an outlaw further politicized the Reformation, which was now, formally, treated as a public-order matter. Those princes embracing Lutheranism subsequently became known as Protestants through their objections to the Catholic majority’s insistence on enforcing the imperial ban. The political history of the Reformation essentially became a sequence of Protestant efforts to suspend or reverse the legal measures initiated in 1521, most notably the Catholics’ use of the public-peace legislation from 1495 to prosecute Lutherans for theft when they took over church property and spiritual jurisdictions.

1521–2

Charles transferred responsibility for Austria to his younger brother Ferdinand I, who subsequently became king of Bohemia and Hungary after the death of those countries’ monarch at the battle of Mohács against the Ottomans (1526). Ferdinand reorganized administration for his possessions (1527), consolidating their distinct status within the Empire as the Habsburg hereditary lands (
Erbländer
).

1522–6

The Knights Revolt (1522–3) was followed by the German Peasants War (1524–6), as both groups sought to realize social and political aims within their embrace of the Reformation. The Empire provided a framework for a coordinated princely response, notably in the south-west through the Swabian League. The princes’ triumph ensured their subsequent leadership of the Reformation. However, the imperial constitution was changed to adjust how the defeated parties related to the Empire. Although still excluded from most of the new imperial institutions, the knights largely escaped incorporation within princely territories, because the emperor affirmed their immediate status as ‘imperial knights’ (
Reichsritter
) in return for cash taxes. Both they and the peasants were also granted access to the
Reichskammergericht
(supreme court) to resolve disputes with lords and to protect their rights (1526). The imperial cities, some of which had backed the peasants, were recognized more clearly as imperial Estates to prevent them ‘turning Swiss’ by joining the Swiss Confederation. This option remained into mid-century, but grew progressively less attractive with mounting differences between Swiss and German Protestantism, and a clearer appreciation of the effectiveness of imperial institutions as vehicles for civic interests.

1527

Unable to pay his army, Charles V encouraged it to sack Rome after Pope Clement VII had sided with France. Up to 10,000 civilians were killed and the event severely damaged Charles’s reputation.

1529–41

The peak of Ottoman-Habsburg conflict. Having conquered most of Hungary (1526), the sultan besieged Vienna (1529) in an attempt to eliminate Charles V as a rival to his imperial claims. Although repulsed from Vienna, Ottoman forces retained Hungary and forced Charles’s brother Ferdinand to pay cash tribute (1541, annual from 1547). Despite a major military effort in 1565–7, the Habsburgs were unable to conquer the Turkish part of Hungary, and had to continue their tribute in return for an extension of the truce.

1530

The coronation of Charles V as emperor by Pope Clement VII in Bologna was the last imperial coronation by a pontiff; thereafter all future emperors were crowned by a German archbishop, usually in Frankfurt. There were no more separate royal and imperial coronations. Monarchs were crowned either when they were elected king of the Romans during the lifetime of an incumbent emperor (
vivente imperatore
), or when they were elected after the death of an emperor who died without a prearranged successor. The German royal title had become progressively less distinct since the fourteenth century and was now subsumed within the imperial one, without being formally abolished.

1530–45

The consolidation of both the Reformation and imperial reform. Lutheranism emerged more clearly as a permanent alternative to Catholicism, complete with its own statement of faith (Augsburg Confession, 1530) and church structures established in those cities and principalities that had embraced it. These Protestant imperial Estates formed the Schmalkaldic League (1531) to oppose Catholic attempts to use the Empire’s legal machinery to reverse these developments. Despite religious tensions, the imperial Estates continued cooperation through the Reichstag, which passed wide-ranging regulations for public order, morality, economic management and defence, all of which influenced similar measures in the German principalities and cities. Charles’s younger brother, Ferdinand I, was elected king of the Romans (1531) and increasingly assumed responsibility for the Empire’s affairs.

1546–7

The Schmalkaldic War. Charles V used a temporary ascendancy over France in the Italian Wars as an opportunity for a military solution to the religious deadlock in the Empire. The Schmalkaldic League was decisively defeated (battle of Mühlberg, 1547). Charles removed lands and the electoral title from the Ernestine branch of the Saxon Wettins who had led the League, and gave these to the Protestant Duke Moritz of the Albertine branch, who had backed him during the war. This was the first change amongst the electors since 1356, and demonstrated Charles’s imperial power.

1547–8

The ‘Armoured Reichstag’ at Augsburg, so named by the presence of Charles’s troops as he attempted a definitive settlement of all important issues in his favour. Religious observance was to follow guidelines set out in the ‘Interim’, a pro-Catholic statement to remain in force pending a final decision from the Council of Trent (1545–63), chaired by the pope. Management of the Habsburg lands was reorganized through the Burgundian Treaty, assigning the family’s possessions in the Burgundian Kreis and Italy to Charles’s eldest son Philip II, who was also designated his successor in Spain with its dependencies in Naples, Sicily and the New World. Philip’s uncle Ferdinand I was accepted as Charles’s successor in the Empire and the family’s hereditary lands. Relations with the rest of the Empire were to run through a pact (the
Reichsbund
) between the emperor and leading imperial Estates.

1552

The Princes Revolt. An alliance of Protestant princes emerged amidst mounting violent disorder in Franconia and parts of Saxony. Moritz of Saxony secured French support for the revolt by allowing France to extend jurisdiction over the imperial cities (and de facto the associated bishoprics) of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The princes forced Ferdinand to agree the Peace of Passau, suspending much of the settlement reached four years earlier in Augsburg.

1555

The Religious and Profane Peace of Augsburg. Prolonged negotiations since 1553 produced a comprehensive settlement at a Reichstag in Augsburg to the religious and political problems of the first half of the sixteenth century. The religious clauses were deliberately ambiguous to allow parties of different faiths to agree on a common document. Lutherans received legal recognition alongside Catholics in the Empire. All imperial Estates were declared to possess the right of Reformation (
ius Reformandi
), embodying the secular supervision of church affairs in their territorial jurisdictions. The Peace of Passau was recognized as a normative year for the possession of church property, meaning the Lutherans could keep what they had taken from the Catholic church up to that point. Dissenting minorities received certain safeguards, but the treaty made contradictory provisions regarding the status of the imperial church. Catholics believed the Peace reserved all imperial church jurisdictions and offices exclusively for them, giving Catholics an in-built majority in the new imperial institutions, because there were more ecclesiastical than secular imperial Estates. Lutherans believed special guarantees issued by Ferdinand I allowed them to acquire such lands despite the recognition of 1552 as a normative year elsewhere in the Peace.

The more lengthy secular clauses codified and extended the imperial reform measures for defence, public order, coinage and economic coordination. The Kreise received enhanced powers, increasing the scope for regional collaboration and initiatives. Other than Austria and Burgundy, all Kreise developed assemblies as platforms to coordinate implementation of imperial laws and Reichstag decisions, as well as to introduce regional measures of their own. Representation amongst immediate lords was much broader in the Kreis Assemblies than at the Reichstag, where the majority of minor princes and counts lacked full votes in the princely college. These measures mark the high point of imperial reform. Further important legislation passed by subsequent Reichstag meetings into the 1570s modified and consolidated existing constitutional arrangements without fundamentally altering them.

HABSBURG STABILIZATION AND EXPANSION, 1556–1739

1556–8

The abdication of Charles V and partition of the Habsburg monarchy. Charles interpreted the events of 1552–5 as a defeat of his measures imposed in 1548. He accelerated the transfer of power already underway to his brother Ferdinand, formally abdicating (3 August 1556) and returning to Spain, where he died (21 September 1558). Ferdinand I was recognized as Roman emperor a few weeks later in 1556, but the full transfer of power was not completed until a formal ceremony on 15 March 1558 once he secured agreement from the electors. The process further consolidated the Empire as a mixed monarchy: the emperor remained pre-eminent (the Habsburgs had initiated the transfer), but ruled only through agreement from leading imperial Estates (the transfer was only completed through the electors’ agreement). The transfer also completed the separation of the Habsburgs into separate Austrian and Spanish branches, which persisted until the extinction of the latter in 1700.

1556–76

The reigns of Ferdinand I (to 1564) and his son Maximilian II (1564–76). The administration of the Austrian lands was strengthened, but structural problems emerged following Ferdinand I’s allocation of the Tirol and Inner Austria (Styria, Carinthia and Krain) to his younger sons, creating junior Habsburg branches. The
Reichshofrat
, established under Maximilian I, was reorganized and placed on a firm footing (1559) as a second imperial supreme court to safeguard imperial prerogatives, including feudal jurisdiction across imperial Italy. Good relations with individual important princes ensured the maintenance of the 1555 Augsburg Peace, despite the emergence of Calvinism as a major third religion without clear sanction in imperial law, and despite the onset of Catholic ‘Counter-Reformation’ measures, including the activities of the Jesuits in Germany.