Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (88 page)

Likewise, political as well as economic factors provided particular characteristics in the western Empire. As we shall see (
pp. 534–8)
, territorial authorities expanded their regulation of daily life in the interest of moral, religious and fiscal agendas. Farms became fiscal as well as economic units, with mid-fifteenth century Bavarian edicts already distinguishing core plots that could not be partitioned at inheritance.
³⁰
Leases generally became hereditary, while labour service continued to decline relative to cash rents and increasingly also taxes. Sharecropping persisted in Italy, though better conditions emerged in the Po valley. In contrast to France and elsewhere, German lords west of the Elbe retained very little land under their direct control, allowing
peasants access to the bulk of the cultivated area. Princely domains already only accounted for 15 per cent of cultivated land in Austria and Lower Bavaria in the later Middle Ages. The proportion in Bavaria shrank to 13.2 per cent by the late eighteenth century, while nobles owned 34 per cent, clergy 56 per cent, urban corporations 0.4 per cent and freeholding peasants only 4 per cent. However, these rates refer to underlying
dominium directum
, not rights of usage that allowed Bavarian peasants access to over 90 per cent of land through leases. Even east of the Elbe the situation was not wholly unfavourable. The Prussian king held only 4.5 per cent of the agricultural land, with nobles owning and directly managing 11 per cent, and cities and foundations a further 4.5 per cent. Peasants had access to the remaining 80 per cent as plots tied to manors or through leases. Control remained political, rather than immediately economic. The Bavarian elector was direct lord of only 10.6 per cent of peasants, but held lesser as well as superior legal jurisdiction over a further 55.9 per cent, while the clergy and nobility were lords of the rest.
³¹

DEFINING THE COMMON GOOD

Fellowship and Lordship

The social changes around 1100 contributed to the slow emergence of horizontal associational fellowship (
Genossenschaft
) alongside vertical lordship. These two forms of social organization need to be treated carefully as it is easy to assign them clear ideological distinctions. Much of German history has been seen as a struggle between the two before (depending on the viewpoint) either their synthesis in modern society or the triumph of authoritarianism.
³²
The Empire often takes the blame for the outcome, as apparently weak central power supposedly allowed the population to be oppressed by a multitude of petty princes (
Duodezfürsten
), who were already satirized in the eighteenth century: Friedrich Schiller’s play
Kabale und Liebe
depicts a prince selling his subjects as mercenaries to fund a luxurious lifestyle. The standard contrast with powerful monarchs like Louis XIV or Prussia’s Frederick II ‘the Great’ makes these princes appear even more ridiculous. The polemical potential was not lost on nineteenth-century German liberals, who
regarded the principalities surviving beyond 1806 as the primary obstacles to national unification.

We need to remove the moral signs, and not simplify the situation as a clash between progressive, proto-democratic fellowship and reactionary lordship. Associational and communal forms were not exclusive to peasants and burghers, but were important to clergy and nobles, as we shall see (
pp. 553–62
), while communes could also be lords (
pp. 516–18
and
579–91
). Lordship and fellowship did not merely co-exist but were closely interdependent. Above all, the ideology of the common good, like government techniques, was not simply pioneered by citizens only to be stolen later by princes. Instead, hierarchical and horizontal forms worked in ‘creative tension’,
³³
producing new ideas and practices.

Communities contained associational and hierarchical elements, and not all inhabitants regarded lords as outsiders. Most recognized that communities require leaders. These were not temporary ‘faces in the crowd’, striding forward at the right moment, but were generally established figures with the social and political capital necessary for leadership.
³⁴
Arguments rarely divided people purely according to wealth, and instead provided an extensive political vocabulary employed across the social spectrum. What united rulers and ruled was their engagement in the same debate over the ideal community.

Core values like peace, justice and harmony were related to morality and Christianity, and were thus considered timeless and ‘authentic’.
³⁵
Although all three were contested in practice, a fourth,
Notdurft
, proved the most controversial. Its ambiguities are revealed by its two possible translations of ‘sustenance’ and ‘necessity’. The former implied entitlement to the material means of existence, potentially including social levelling to ensure at least minimum shares for all. This could operate as a kind of ‘moral economy’ criticizing exploitation, hoarding and price rigging, thereby providing a basis to reject ‘excessive’ lordly demands. However, it also suggested a moral obligation to ensure sustenance, adding force to the idea of necessity overriding established arrangements in the name of the greater good.

The distinction between ‘common good’ (
salus publica
, or
Gemeinnutz
) and ‘self-interest’ (
Eigennutz
) was already well established during the early Middle Ages, and it sharpened with the wider appreciation of the contribution of the third Estate to general well-being. The term ‘common man’ emerged by 1280 as a largely positive appellation, while
ordinary folk were celebrated in illuminated manuscript books and cathedral carvings and windows, all depicting the Christian ideal of serving the community. The basic antithesis between common and private good persisted into the late eighteenth century and in many ways beyond, despite subtle changes in how it was expressed. The development of Natural Law from the seventeenth century argued that authority rested on a social contract in which the population surrendered some of their ‘natural’ freedoms in return for the benefits of living in an orderly society.
³⁶

Questions of Authority

The crucial question remained who was entitled to define the common good and thus to set the normative measures intended to foster and preserve it? Additionally, what limits could be imposed on that authority and what recourse did the subordinate population have against its abuse? Medieval writers remained fixed on the person of the king, rather than princes or lesser lords, but the articulation of good kingship was easily transferable to other authorities, especially as these acquired clearer public functions during the period of imperial reform. Numerous texts identified the prince as responsible for the
bonum commune
. These retained the earlier moral emphasis, but now devoted more space to judging policies rather than personal characteristics. They contributed to the growing articulation around 1500 of the imperial Estates as authorities (
Obrigkeiten
) governing subjects (
Untertanen
).
³⁷
Attempts during the Reformation to re-theologize the language of the common good failed, especially as the political outcome expanded the powers of imperial Estates to supervise church and religious life.

The Peace of Westphalia and subsequent political discussion defined the imperial Estates more clearly as possessing ‘territorial sovereignty’ (
Landeshoheit
), which became the collective term for the bundle of accumulated rights sanctioned by imperial law.
³⁸
Clearer ideas of authority gained ground with the fiscal and military needs of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which encouraged further intervention in daily life to promote thrift, obedience and productivity. It was accompanied by a change in style, most noticeable among the princes, but also apparent in the imperial cities, where the magistrates became more patrician and aristocratic. Already around the mid-sixteenth century, princes
remodelled their castles or built new residences to present carefully crafted images of power. Whereas the castles of medieval lords might suggest they feared attack from their subjects, the unfortified baroque palace exuded confident authority. Language changed too, as the word ‘common’ became more ambiguous. ‘Common man’ lost its positive associations in the wake of the violence of the Peasants War (1524–6) and became the antithesis of ‘noble’ (
Edel
), while ‘common woman’ denoted a prostitute.
³⁹
The language of consensus persisted into the sixteenth century, with rulers being ‘gracious’ (
gnädig
) in negotiating with their ‘loyal subjects’ (
getreue Untertanen
). However, these terms were increasingly displaced in the ruler’s discourse by words emphasizing his power to command:
Befehl
,
Gehorsam
,
Respekt
,
Hoheit
,
Autorität
. Princes simultaneously stressed their personal ‘honour’ and ‘reputation’, which were now measured by the prince’s place in the imperial hierarchy and his international standing.
⁴⁰

The experience of the Thirty Years War allowed princes to employ the argument of necessity to justify emergency measures. The official commemoration of the war through annual religious services and processions gave thanks for deliverance from horror, but simultaneously blamed the calamity on the sins of the pre-war population, who had allegedly incurred God’s wrath. Religious services and government mandates repeatedly admonished subjects to be pious, dutiful, thrifty and obedient, all as means to ensure the horrors of war would not return.
⁴¹
The cumulative result was a more absolutist style and conception of rule, elevating the prince above his subjects. Only he, it was claimed, could see beyond individual selfish interests to govern in the common good. Thanks to its roots in the public functions defining the status of imperial Estate, absolutism developed at this level, including for Austria and Prussia, rather than for the Empire overall in the person of the emperor. ‘Imperial absolutism’ remained only a spectre conjured through the rhetoric of ‘German liberties’ to oppose tighter Habsburg management of the Empire.
⁴²
Absolutism was distinguished from arbitrary rule by the restriction of absolute authority to within certain limits. All discussions of princely power acknowledged imperial law and the Empire as part of these limits (see
pp. 538–46
).

The spread of Enlightened ideas provided new arguments to support official direction of public life, especially through the utilitarian critique of received traditions, adding weight to the language of necessity
to disregard existing arrangements if deemed obsolete. Historians dispute how far such ideas actually changed princely rule.
⁴³
Style certainly changed, as rulers consciously distanced themselves from the Renaissance and baroque celebration of the prince as a semi-divine, heroic ruler, in favour of appearing more modestly as the state’s ‘first servant’, signally by the fashion for wearing simple military uniform rather than the pearl-buttoned silk coats and giant wigs of the recent past. In some respects rule became even more personal than before. Despite presenting himself as Prussia’s first
servant
, Frederick the Great tried to
master
all business himself, conducting government from his ‘cabinet’ or writing desk, rather than like other princes through formal meetings with councillors. Overall, however, government became more impersonal. Emperor Joseph II, himself a near parody of the pre-Revolutionary cult of the ‘first servant’, established in his law code of 1787 that crimes were now understood to be ‘against the state’, allowing the authorities to prosecute even if no plaintiff came forward.

Individual Interest

This opened possibilities for a new relationship between rulers and ruled, whereby an impersonal state related equally to individual inhabitants regardless of rank. Changes in theology, science and art had articulated new ideas of the individual since the later thirteenth century. Moral hostility to ‘singularity’ persisted and was reinforced by the Reformation, which emphasized confessional conformity, including lifestyle as well as belief. Nonetheless, well before anglophone writers like Bernard Mandeville or Adam Smith, Germans expressed positive interpretations of self-interest. Leonhart Fronsperger, a military clerk and noted writer, argued in 1564 that divergent individual needs actually created harmony by encouraging mutual interdependence.
⁴⁴
The development of imperial taxation meanwhile encouraged the relaxation of earlier restrictions on private wealth creation, since this could help meet obligations to the Empire.

However, German discussions took a different path from those among English-speaking philosophers like John Locke who developed the idea of rights relating directly to individuals, rather than deriving indirectly through association with a household, community or other corporate group. Adam Smith subsequently extended this into liberal
economic theory by arguing that individual wealth creation would add to overall prosperity, rather than simply representing the theft of someone else’s share of supposedly finite wealth. The market, not the state, should regulate society. The state was reduced to being a ‘night watchman’ guaranteeing only minimal order and security. The position remained reversed in most discussions in the Empire, where territorial authority was itself a product of corporate rights and could not be so easily disentangled from the social order. The state, not the individual, retained the initiative. In practice, new ideas of individualism simply added to existing arguments for state intervention to micro-manage lives and make people happy, if necessary by force. Attempts by writers like Heinrich Justi to reduce the state’s role, merely envisaged the ideal of a well-oiled machine entangling rather than liberating individuals.
⁴⁵
The basic contradictions in these arguments carried over into nineteenth-century German liberalism: the state was to remove barriers to individual happiness by dismantling protectionism and facilitating a free market, yet to do so required ever greater powers to overcome the considerable popular opposition to such measures.