Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (72 page)

Judicial Reform

Maximilian achieved real success by accepting judicial reform as the price for a viable system of military and fiscal aid at the Reichstag meeting in Worms in 1495. This declared a new imperial public peace which, unlike its medieval predecessors, was expressed as both universal and eternal. Crucially, this consolidated the evolving status hierarchy by charging all holders of immediate fiefs to forswear violence as a
means of conflict resolution and instead to combine against all those breaching the Empire’s peace. This reduced mediate vassals clearly to being the assistants of the emperor’s immediate vassals, thus identifying how resources should be controlled and who was to provide them. The new Reichskammergericht of 1495 was created as a joint supreme court of both emperor and Empire, replacing feuding with judicial arbitration. Maximilian developed the Reichshofrat as a separate court solely dependent on him as emperor to resolve disputes involving imperial prerogatives (see
pp. 625–32
).

The new judiciary obliged the realization of long-held plans for a regional infrastructure to coordinate peace enforcement. This had first been envisaged in Rudolf I’s public peace of 1287 and had been re-emphasized in Wenzel’s peace of 1383. It addressed the demise of the old, large duchies by creating new regions called
Kreise
(‘circles’) to group the German immediate fief-holders and identify their area of collective responsibility. Unlike the old duchies, the Kreise were collective institutions without a single prince as head. They remained only proposals until 1500, when the smaller fiefs were grouped into six Kreise, with a further four added in 1512 to incorporate the electorates and Habsburg lands. Bohemia and Italy remained outside this structure. The princes accepted incorporation, because they realized their relatively modest resources prevented their playing as prominent a role in imperial politics as the electors, whereas regional politics touched their immediate interests. The Kreise were identified in all imperial legislation after 1507 as the framework for implementing common decisions, including selecting Reichskammergericht judges, enforcing that court’s verdicts, organizing military contingents and regulating exchange rates. These tasks promoted their development, compelling their members to convene their own assemblies and establish their own practices and conventions, all guided by general legislation issued through the Reichstag.
⁹⁸

Fiscal Reform

No real effort had been made since the Carolingian capitularies to fix what the Empire’s inhabitants were supposed to contribute fiscally to common tasks. Medieval emperors maintained registers of royal lands, but otherwise charters specified only the obligations of individual
vassals. Peer pressure and the desire to impress helped sustain the size of military contingents assembled for Roman expeditions. The Salians attempted general taxes in 1084, 1114 and 1124–5, but did so amidst civil war, which immediately undermined their legitimacy. Although they received some money from imperial cities, they lacked an infrastructure to collect taxes elsewhere. Likewise, Frederick II’s general tax project of 1241 failed, whereas he was able to collect regular sums from the imperial cities and especially their Jewish minorities.
⁹⁹
As we have seen (
pp. 356–65
), this was not unduly problematic, because the reworking of feudal obligations around 1230 continued to ensure vassals responded in sufficient numbers for later medieval kings to achieve real objectives.

The rapidly escalating costs and scale of warfare forced the Empire to confront its inherent ‘free rider’ problem caused by numerous vassals avoiding or only partially fulfilling obligations. This proved the most innovative aspect of reform, because it forced those involved to redefine their relationship to the Empire more precisely. Crucially, this occurred as all concerned were rapidly embracing writing in their own territorial administrations and as a means of regulating relations with outsiders. It was quickly agreed that it would be impossible to revive the old imperial lands, and that all fief-holders should assume new obligations expressed in cash terms. The first general tax was agreed in 1422 to combat the Hussites, but foundered amidst opposition from the clergy and cities. Another tax for the same purpose in 1427 proved more successful, thanks to energetic backing from a papal legate who secured clerical support. About 38,000 florins had been raised by late 1429, but compliance was still patchy and no one fully mastered the practical problem of collecting money across such a numerous and socially differentiated population.
¹⁰⁰

Despite prolonged discussions, this problem was not resolved until the 1495 Reichstag when the establishment of the Reichskammergericht forced those present to agree the new ‘Common Penny’ tax to be collected by the immediate fief-holders and magistrates of the imperial cities. The initial levy raised over 136,000 florins between 1495 and 1499.
¹⁰¹
The Common Penny was levied another five times between 1512 and 1551 but was increasingly displaced by the matricular system, which eventually supplanted it as the principal way all common burdens were assessed both at imperial and Kreis level. Introduced in 1422,
the matricular system was used a further five times by 1480 to raise troops and money against the Hussites and Turks. Each immediate fief and imperial city received an obligation to provide a fixed quota of soldiers or, from 1486, their cash equivalent calculated according to monthly wages. The quotas were recorded in an official register (
Matrikel
), with that prepared in 1521 becoming a benchmark for all future assessments.
¹⁰²

The matricular system was preferred because it enabled fief-holders and magistrates to conceal their true wealth. The initial Common Penny proved difficult, because hardly any territories possessed adequate tax registers, as they had few direct levies of their own. Registers were time-consuming to prepare, but their real problem was how they revealed personal and communal wealth to outsiders. Cities were particularly concerned that sensitive financial information would simply add to the desire of neighbouring princes to intrude on their autonomy. Quotas were only loosely related to actual wealth, because they were assigned in roughly descending order according to the titular status of each fief. For example, from 1486 all electors were assessed the same despite their considerable disparities in wealth. Quotas had additional political advantages, since the amounts in the registers were only ever intended as a basic guide and could be summoned as multiples or fractions as the case demanded. The fief-holders and magistrates had to meet the emperor to agree the size and duration of the grant, allowing them the opportunity to influence its use as well. Quotas eased military planning by fixing contingent sizes and also enabled the emperor to see more clearly who was dodging their responsibilities.

Vassals were responsible for raising, equipping, training and maintaining their troops, ensuring that the Empire’s central bureaucracy remained small compared to those of western European monarchies. Frankfurt’s city treasurer was sworn in as
Reichspfennigmeister
in 1495 to receive Common Penny payments remitted by fief-holders and magistrates. The post remained temporary, limited to individual tax grants authorized by the Reichstag, until made permanent in 1543. The Frankfurt treasurer’s responsibility was limited to south Germany in 1557 when a second official was appointed in Leipzig to receive payments from the north. Augsburg and Regensburg were identified as additional ‘towns of deposit’ (
Legstädte
). The role of Reichspfennigmeister peaked under Zacharias Geizkofler, who expanded it in the late sixteenth century to become the emperor’s chief banker and financial
advisor. The remit contracted rapidly after his resignation in 1603 and the post was essentially replaced by the creation of the new position of ‘Receiver of the Imperial Operations Fund’ in 1713, who handled funds voted to support the imperial army.
¹⁰³
A Fiscal’s Office (
Fiskalamt
) was established in Speyer in 1507 to help the Reichskammergericht prosecute those failing to pay imperial taxes, while a separate branch was established in 1596 to assist the Reichshofrat perform the same function in Italy.
¹⁰⁴

THE STATUS HIERARCHY

From Royal Assembly to Reichstag

Displacing the difficult administrative tasks to the territories allowed imperial reform to concentrate on formalizing how the Empire reached collective decisions. This cemented it as a mixed monarchy in which the emperor shared powers with the imperial Estates according to an increasingly rigid status hierarchy. The principal institution was the Reichstag, which combined two previously separate forms of assembly to become the Empire’s main forum for legitimating policies and reaching binding agreements.

As we have seen (
pp. 337–9
), the Carolingians already held assemblies with important vassals. These are now called ‘court assemblies’ (
Hoftage
), a term invented in 1980, to distinguish meetings that contemporaries understood as
curia
, or advisory royal courts, rather than
dieta
(diets), which generally implied a greater sense of rights for the participants.
¹⁰⁵
While certain conventions applied over timing and location, assemblies depended on the king to summon them and had no fixed membership. Feudalization contributed to the narrowing of participants to senior vassals and by the fourteenth century only around 20 people attended such assemblies. Meetings were fairly frequent though, with 40 held between 1314 and 1410 together with another 15 between 1381 and 1407 chaired by a royal envoy in the king’s absence.
¹⁰⁶

The other form comprised meetings held on the initiative of senior vassals. The oldest of these were the assemblies held after the death of kings who left no previously recognized heir. Other so-called ‘kingless
assemblies’ were held after 1076, notably to elect anti-kings (see
pp. 302–3
). The electors held 18 meetings separate from elections between 1273 and 1409, reflecting their growing corporate identity. Sigismund formally recognized the electors as ‘pillars of the Empire’ in 1424, signalling a greater willingness to consult them on common matters. However, tensions resurfaced after 1480 between the four Rhenish electors and their northern and eastern colleagues in Brandenburg, Saxony and Bohemia. These problems frustrated their efforts to exclude others from the right to share decisions with the monarch.
¹⁰⁷

Development was also slowed after the 1420s by the emperor’s reluctance to attend assemblies himself. Despite the accelerating transition to written communication, participants interpreted the emperor’s absence as undermining the legitimacy of any decisions they might reach, which was, of course, precisely why Frederick III often stayed away. However, the pressure to agree reform encouraged Frederick or his son Maximilian to attend after 1471, while the growing urgency saw nine assemblies between 1486 and 1498.
¹⁰⁸
The meeting in Worms in 1495 was widely recognized by participants as a milestone and was the first to call itself a Reichstag (imperial diet). The choice of term was deliberate, recognizing the change from the old royal assembly to a new kind of institution, transforming vassals’
duty
to offer advice and aid into a
right
to share in common decisions. While they remained the emperor’s vassals, they now also became imperial Estates (
Reichsstände
) collectively constituting the Empire with the emperor.
¹⁰⁹

Frequency and Location

Ten further meetings followed between 1500 and 1518, but institutional development slowed due to Maximilian’s growing preference for more informal meetings with key individuals. The Habsburgs’ need for assistance against the Turks renewed development during the nine meetings between 1521 and 1532. Growing confessional tension prevented the Reichstag reconvening from 1533 to 1540, but eight more meetings were held between 1541 and 1548, entrenching the earlier developments that were consolidated and extended in the session held in Augsburg in 1555 which agreed the Religious Peace.
¹¹⁰
In all, 40 to 45 Reichstags were held between 1495 and 1654, depending on the definition of a full meeting, compared to 40 assemblies between 1356 and
1493. Meetings varied in length from five weeks (Nuremberg, 1522) to 10 months (Augsburg, 1547–8).

Meetings under Maximilian I were still linked to the royal itinerary which that emperor resumed in order to engage more fully with the old core areas of Germany, holding 20 assemblies in 15 locations between 1486 and 1518, including four in towns that were not imperial cities.
¹¹¹
Thereafter, Reichstags always met in an imperial city, which was obliged to provide its town hall for the event. Nuremberg was the favoured venue, hosting 15 meetings, followed by Regensburg with 14, ahead of the others by some margin. Nuremberg’s growing embrace of Protestantism encouraged the Habsburgs to favour Regensburg, which was also easier to reach along the Danube from Vienna. All meetings convened there after 1594, except for a brief relocation to Frankfurt in 1742–4 under Charles VII. The Empire was unique in Europe in convening its representative assembly away from the royal capital, contributing to the permanent separation of the ceremonial and representational functions of the monarch’s court from formal political negotiations with his vassals and subjects.

Form of Representation

Unlike the medieval assemblies, the Reichstag acquired a fixed membership by 1521, which proved fundamental in determining the status hierarchy. This provided another important contrast with virtually all European parliaments, where representation was tied to social Estates like lords, clergy and commons generally meeting in separate ‘houses’. Representation in the Empire derived instead from the formalization of feudal obligations and consequently was tied to holding immediate imperial fiefs. The decisive factor was how far fief-holders and city magistrates were prepared to accept the new burdens imposed by the matricular system. These could be considerable. Lübeck’s matricular assessment in 1486 was four to six times higher than what it had previously paid in dues to the emperor as an imperial city. Lübeck chose to accept this and was consequently invited to subsequent assemblies, allowing its representatives to assert its new status as an imperial Estate. By contrast, Trier was regularly invited at first because it was a large and rich city, yet its refusal to contribute led to its exclusion later. The rapidity of developments between 1480 and 1520 was not
immediately obvious, and many of those involved did not appreciate the consequences of refusal. Yet by 1521 it became clear that acceptance of official burdens confirmed both representation in the Reichstag and the status of immediacy, whereas refusal denied the former and jeopardized the latter. In Trier’s case, the archbishop used the city’s refusal to argue it was no longer ‘free’ but directly subordinate to him and, consequently, should assist him in paying the electorate’s share of imperial taxes.