Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (50 page)

Constitutional Commentary

The advent of print both encouraged and facilitated public discussion of the Empire. Known as
Reichspublizistik
, this constitutional commentary reflected a central character of imperial politics by remaining an endless dialogue without a universally accepted conclusion. Not only was the constitution never codified, but the mountains of official documents and public commentary added to the difficulty of defining it by providing evidence for endless exceptions to supposed general
rules. The indefatigable Johann Jakob Moser wrote around one hundred volumes only to conclude that ‘Germany is governed the German way’.
⁵²

Careful examination of these publications reveals that, while attitudes changed towards the Empire across early modernity, mainstream opinion remained broadly favourable. Disagreements were fiercest between the 1570s and 1640s, while some aspects were increasingly criticized after 1750, but no major thinker advocated substantial change. Even during the most heated exchanges the situation was broadly similar to that in Britain after 1689, when Whigs and Tories worked within the same constitution whilst disagreeing over details. Both Germany and Britain contrasted with late eighteenth-century France, where many leading intellectuals concluded that the Bourbon monarchy was no longer fit for purpose.

The fundamental issues were already articulated in 1458 by Enea Silvio Piccolomini, future Pope Pius II, who posed a rhetorical address to the Empire’s princes: ‘Of course you recognize the emperor as your king and lord, but he clearly exercises his authority like a beggar, and his power is effectively nothing. You only obey him as far as it pleases you and it pleases you as little as possible.’
⁵³
Imperial politics appear here as a zero-sum game where the growth of princely power erodes that of the emperor, casting doubt whether the Empire was even still a monarchy. The Reformation intensified discussions by broadening ‘German freedom’ to include religious liberties. Faced with a seemingly implacably Catholic emperor, many Protestants argued that the Empire was really an aristocratic republic, or a commonwealth, in which the emperor was merely first among equals, like the Venetian doge. The concept of indivisible sovereignty advocated in the 1560s by the French philosopher and jurist Jean Bodin pushed discussions towards sharper categorization through his distinction between the outward form of government and its legal power (sovereignty). Thus, he argued, while the Empire might have the trappings of monarchy with regal symbols, it was in fact a commonwealth, because real power rested with the princes and was exercised through the Reichstag.

Catholics and also moderate Lutherans like Gottfried Antonius and Dietrich Reinkingk mounted a spirited defence of the Empire as monarchy; Reinkingk was even ennobled by Ferdinand III for arguing in 1655 that the emperor had supreme power once elected. Reinkingk was
the monarchists’ last hurrah, because the Thirty Years War revealed both the emperor’s lack of supreme power and the dangers should he ever obtain it. The aristocratic counterblast was restated in an influential tract by Bogislav von Chemnitz, writing under the pseudonym Hippolithus a Lapide in 1643. Chemnitz was working for the Swedes and his book was symbolically burned by the imperial executioner. Not surprisingly, Prussia reissued Chemnitz’s work in 1761 at the height of the Seven Years War when it also challenged Habsburg imperial authority.
⁵⁴

In fact, Chemnitz’s interpretation was already politically unacceptable to most imperial Estates once Ferdinand III accepted revisions to the imperial constitution in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). This rejected both the monarchical and aristocratic interpretations in favour of a middle course advocated by writers like Dominicus Arumaeus and Johannes Limnaeus, who, in turn, reworked ideas already voiced around 1500 that the Empire was a mixed monarchy in which the emperor held the initiative, but shared important powers with the imperial Estates. Westphalia’s main significance was to widen the circle sharing governance beyond the electors to include all imperial Estates. Moreover, it was clear by the 1680s that shares would remain unevenly distributed along the status hierarchy, limiting how far the junior Estates could influence policy, but equally ensuring they were not excluded altogether. This countered Bodin’s either/or approach with its insistence that sovereignty was either wholly wielded by the emperor or exercised through the Reichstag, Instead, power was diffused through the Empire’s different authorities, making them interdependent.

Samuel Pufendorf pushed the mixed-monarchy interpretation further through comparative analysis with other European states. Pufendorf’s views gained currency thanks to his subsequent fame as Germany’s first professor of natural law and his status as a leading intellectual. Like Chemnitz, he published his
De statu imperii Germanici
in 1667 under a pseudonym (the fantastically titled Severini de Monzambano). Pufendorf rejected attempts since Bodin to fit the Empire into the standard categories of states, arguing instead it was an ‘irregular body’. His choice of the term ‘monstrosity’ to express this was immediately controversial and he deleted it from later editions of his book.
⁵⁵
Pufendorf profoundly influenced how the Empire came to be interpreted after 1806, because he argued it had
declined
from a
regular monarchy into an irregular one during the Middle Ages. He also revived Piccolomini’s sharp dualist interpretation by arguing that while the Empire was an
irregulare Corpus
, its component principalities were regular monarchies. Pufendorf believed this was the root of all its political problems, because the princes were trying to break free, while the emperor was trying to reassert monarchical authority. Finally, his comparison with other European states presented the Empire as weak, because it lacked the central institutions found in France and elsewhere.

However, numerous other writers disputed that an ‘irregular body’ should necessarily be an inferior one and continued Pufendorf’s historical analysis with more positive conclusions. Alongside Moser, Johann Pütter also contributed around one hundred volumes on the constitution, while Johann von Ludewig published a German translation of the Golden Bull with 2,500 pages of commentary. The verbosity of these authors represented the Empire through words in the way other states were projected in the timber, brick and stone of their royal palaces and parliaments. Their inability to suggest any alternative to existing conditions underlines the broad contentment with what Arch-chancellor Dalberg described as ‘a permanent Gothic structure that might not conform to all the building regulations, but in which one lives securely’.
⁵⁶

IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM

German Attachment to the Empire

The concept of attachment to a fatherland (
patria
) gained currency with Humanist discourse and first appeared in the German form
Vaterland
in relation to the Empire in 1507.
⁵⁷
Humanists’ interest in civic engagement refashioned the patriot as someone actively promoting the common good, and further elaboration of this idea extended it later to encompass all inhabitants. Imperial patriotism varied considerably, as did its equivalents in other countries, but it has usually been considerably underestimated.
⁵⁸

The Empire’s sense of itself was filtered through how it saw its place in Europe. As earlier sections of this work have shown, the ideal of the Empire as a Christian pan-national order persisted into early modernity,
weakening any trend to more essentialist definitions of its inhabitants as a single nation determined by narrow criteria like language or ethnicity. Attitudes to outsiders were filtered through perceptions of the threat they posed to Christianity and ‘German freedom’. This complicated relations with countries like France, Denmark and Sweden, all of which embraced varieties of Christianity regarded with hostility by at least some of the Empire’s inhabitants after 1517, and all of whom invaded, claiming to uphold controversial interpretations of the imperial constitution. This ambivalence only disappeared as French expansionist policies under Louis XIV after 1667 were perceived as a general threat transcending religion and political status. Louis was accused of seeking an illegal ‘fifth monarchy’ that would displace the Empire’s pre-eminent position and threaten its subjects’ liberties. Francophobia incorporated earlier tropes associated with the Turks as an existential threat to Christian civilization.
⁵⁹

The extent to which Austrians and Czechs identified with the Empire is hard to assess, partly through a lack of research, but also because their loyalty to the emperor during the Habsburg era was indistinguishable from allegiance as his direct subjects. There was a distinct Czech identity by early modernity, but this was clearly neither fixed nor always opposed to ‘German’, ‘European’ or many other possible identities.
⁶⁰
Patriotism was understandably strongest in Germany, which for many eighteenth-century writers was synonymous with the Empire. Recourse to the imperial supreme courts offers one quantitative measurement of the intensity and regional spread of engagement with the Empire. The two supreme courts – the Reichshofrat and Reichskammergericht – received 220,000 cases between 1495 and 1806, with the majority coming from the areas with the greatest political fragmentation. This is not entirely surprising. Since the courts were designed to resolve disputes between imperial Estates, it is natural that their business would reflect how these were concentrated, in the south and west. Rather more surprising is that after several centuries on the margins of imperial politics, the north German principalities and cities chose to use the courts as soon as they were established.
⁶¹

Italian Views

Italians were conscious of
Italia
as a distinct country, but the idea of the Empire as ‘foreign’ stems largely from the nineteenth-century Risorgimento and from German nationalists condemning medieval emperors for pursuing the ‘illusion’ of power south of the Alps. The emperor’s status as king of kings made him appear less immediately ‘German’ to Italians. Many did oppose imperial expeditions and protested at the
furor teutonicus
, but all emperors attracted at least some local support. Contemporaries did not view the choice as between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ rule, but as about who could best deliver peace and justice. Otto I’s intervention in Italy in 951 was not a conquest of a ‘foreign’ country, but the deposition of Berengar II, whom Pope John XII condemned as a tyrant.
⁶²
The root problem was that the intermittent character of the emperor’s presence in Italy inhibited the kind of working relationship that usually existed north of the Alps. The tendency to resort to force undermined claims to provide peace and justice. This deepened with the reception of Gregorian anti-imperial propaganda during the Investiture Dispute (1070s–1122), and the articulation of Ghibelline and Guelph sentiment during the Staufer era (1138–1254). Nonetheless, calls for the
libertas Italiae
voiced by the Lombard League were not campaigns for national independence, but protests against Staufer ‘tyranny’.

Ghibelline sentiment persisted during the prolonged imperial absences after 1250 amongst those like Dante and Petrarch who believed only a strong imperial presence could provide the order that Italy so urgently needed. The papacy’s ‘Babylonian Captivity’ in Avignon after 1309 increased interest, while many opposition groups within Italian towns hoped the emperor could liberate them from their local opponents. Given such unrealistic expectations, most imperial visits inevitably disappointed. Charles IV was criticized for appearing more concerned to extort money than address local problems. Moreover, Italian cities were accustomed to self-governance and resented paying for the expensive imperial entourage. The Pisans rioted in May 1355, setting fire to the palace where Charles and his wife were staying. The imperial couple were forced to flee naked into the street and order was restored only after considerable bloodshed.
⁶³

Guelph and Ghibelline sentiment gradually converged during the
fourteenth century with all agreeing that politics were about asserting local civic autonomy relative to immediate neighbours, whilst still admitting the emperor had some role as suzerain. Emperors continued to visit Italy on average once a decade across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but made only one appearance between 1452 and 1496 (in 1469), before returning amidst the very different circumstances of Habsburg imperial rule and the Italian Wars. The assignment of the Habsburgs’ Italian possessions to Spain after 1558 also made the emperor appear more distant. By the eighteenth century, Genoese authors advocating their republic’s sovereignty criticized the Empire as an
Imperio di Germania
that should stay north of the Alps. Other, lesser communities and lords continued to look to the emperor and Reichshofrat to protect their privileges in ways similar to their German counterparts. However, its strong associations with Germany and the fact that it only encompassed northern Italy rendered the Empire suspect in the eyes of later Italian nationalists. The same appears broadly true for Burgundy and the countries that emerged from it after 1797.

Only Aristocrats?

If the results of this regional survey are perhaps not so surprising, the social spread of imperial patriotism proves more unexpected. The general conclusion has been that the Empire mattered little outside the small elite of petty princes who depended on it to preserve their autonomy.
⁶⁴
There is no doubt that the imperial princes identified their prestige and autonomy with the Empire’s continued well-being. They often wanted to improve their own position, but only relative to their rivals. As Duke Ernst August of Hanover expressed it in 1682: ‘It is not in the interests of this House to detach itself from the emperor and Empire, but on the contrary to remain firmly bound to them, since there is no more reliable security than in the Empire. And if the Empire were to go under, I do not see how this House can maintain its liberty and dignity.’
⁶⁵