Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (96 page)

The problem was so intractable because it affected all levels of public institutions, except, ironically, the Empire, which was virtually debt-free (see
pp. 405–6
). Towns and villages contracted debts not simply for their own purposes, but to meet tax quotas imposed by princes and territorial Estates. Inhabitants also fell into debt as tax arrears were often converted into local debts while their community paid on their behalf. The 6,000 subjects of Ochsenhausen abbey in Swabia owed 584,000 florins in tax arrears by the end of the eighteenth century.
¹³¹
Unlike those of Britain and the Dutch Republic, German governments did not make the transition to commercialized debt by issuing tradable bonds. Indeed, most governments were lagging behind their subjects. Before 1618, landlords extended credit to tenants without requiring interest, instead extracting ‘payment’ in the form of continued subordination. The experience of the Thirty Years War encouraged many to commercialize these arrangements, shifting from social investment and material reward to purely monetary transactions despite official cameralist measures intended to preserve peasants as taxpayers.
¹³²

Stability and Reluctance to Change

Continued membership of the Empire cushioned territories against the need for radical change by providing a safety value for popular protest through judicial arbitration and administrative review (see
pp. 631–7
). Imperial institutions also intervened directly to stabilize smaller territories when they got into difficulties. The Reichshofrat handled at least 131 cases involving debts of the imperial knights during the eighteenth century, as well as intervening in imperial cities, counties and small principalities. Württemberg alone acted as imperial debt commissioner in 120 cases in Swabia between 1648 and 1806. Commissioners could be tough: those in Sachsen-Hildburghausen called in military assistance from neighbouring territories in 1769 when the local prince refused to accept their reforms, which included disbanding the principality’s oversized army. Moreover, commissions achieved real successes. That sent to the imperial city of Nördlingen reduced its debt from 696,176 florins in 1750 to 84,408 in 1793.
¹³³

Such action sustained weaker micro-territories like Waldeck-Pyrmont, which Prince Friedrich Karl August was forced to pawn to Hessen-Kassel in 1784 for 1.2 million talers just to cover his most pressing debts, after
his own Estates refused to accept further liabilities. With Hessen-Kassel already the prince’s main creditor along with the Dutch Republic, it seemed likely that the next step would be full annexation, but Waldeck’s autonomy was saved by intervention from the Reichshofrat in 1804, which appointed Prussia as its commissioner. Even at this late stage in the Empire formal processes still functioned. In January 1805 the prince abdicated in favour of his younger brother, who accepted drastic economies proposed by Prussia, which refrained from abusing its position to annex Waldeck itself. The commission dissolved along with the Empire in August 1806, but Waldeck saved itself by joining Napoleon’s new Confederation of the Rhine, weathering the subsequent storms of German political history to survive as a separate entity until 1922.
¹³⁴

These examples could be multiplied, but the general point is that intervention stabilized cities and principalities by adjusting existing constitutional and fiscal arrangements. Further, more radical changes were considered not merely undesirable but unnecessary. The overriding impression gained from reading accounts of these individual cases is that those involved did not believe that their socio-political order was ‘broken’. While one-third of Mainz knights were involved in debt cases, they remained wealthy as a group, especially the Catholics, who enjoyed access to plum positions in the imperial church. Whereas the imperial city of Wimpfen was crippled by the 1770–72 famine, others like Aalen and Zell am Hammersbach remained debt-free despite their small size and other problems. The imperial prelates on average held only 138 square kilometres with 2,400 subjects each – some had no taxpayers at all. They deliberately avoided modernization by keeping their administration simple to reduce overheads, yet they were hugely successful on their own terms, and able to embark on costly baroque church-building using income from donations and pilgrims. Some were even able to purchase autonomy, like Neresheim abbey, which bought out Öttingen’s protectorate rights to join the ranks of Swabian prelates in 1764.
¹³⁵

There was likewise no sense of impending crisis in the larger territories. Despite its rocketing debts, interest payments consumed only 30 per cent of Habsburg expenditure, as opposed to 60 per cent in France. The resilience of the existing order was further demonstrated by its ability to manage the renewed burden of major war after 1792.
Baden raised 13 loans totalling 8 million florins between 1794 and 1805, against a pre-war debt of just 65,000 florins, whereas Bavaria, despite 20 million florins of debts, was still able to raise 31 loans totalling 14 million across the same period.
¹³⁶
The Empire’s political components and corporate groups generally achieved what mattered to them: preserving their autonomy and sustaining their material existence. While the Empire’s constitutional order did not prevent adjustments, it certainly made radical changes less likely.

11

Association

LEAGUES AND ASSOCIATIONS

Political Tendencies and Common Features

The creative tension between lordship and fellowship characterizing relations between lords and communities was present in all forms of association. Exploring these underscores the previous chapter’s argument that political and social orders were mutually reinforcing. Associations were almost invariably based on members of a similar socio-political status and were formed to advance corporate goals. They provided a means to transcend localism by providing a framework for individuals or communities of similar status to combine for mutual benefit. Most associations were formed to preserve existing status and privileges, but they could also seek to expand their members’ influence and bargain new rights. Emperors often viewed princely alliances with suspicion, while peasant and artisan movements generally appeared subversive, and have certainly been presented as such by many historians. Associational forms emerged alongside Estates society, which they reinforced rather than challenged. Their relationship to the Empire was broadly similar, and only two leagues, albeit important ones, led to the formation of independent states (Switzerland and the Dutch Republic).

Regardless of their different status, all corporate groups combined in similar ways. Until well into early modernity, all associations were at heart sworn alliances (
coniurationes
, or
Einungen
). These had already appeared amongst the Frankish clergy in the eighth century and spread to laity in the eleventh as a way to secure aid and protection on a
mutual and more symmetrical basis than through subordination to a lord. As we have seen (
pp. 513–15
), sworn associations were important to the foundation of new towns and the urban communal movements. Townsfolk agreed to treat each other as brothers, creating a larger and formalized extended kinship. Oaths gave alliances a sacral character, heightened by the culture of personal presence. Members gathered together and signalled their participation by holding up the first two fingers of their right hand as their ‘oath fingers’ (
Schwurfinger
); hence the punishment of cutting off these fingers for those accused of breaking their promises.

The sacral element was strengthened by common religious activities like celebrating mass and venerating specific saints as patrons of an organization. Guilds, for instance, often maintained their own chapel and marched together in civic religious processions. This aspect peaked between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries when many associations were specifically founded for prayer or charitable purposes. The theological aspect lessened in Protestant areas with the Reformation, which undermined the basis for ‘good works’, but the Counter-Reformation gave renewed impetus in Catholic regions, notably with the establishment of Marian cults.
¹
Written culture contributed to lessening the religious element by allowing members to communicate across greater distances. Alliances were now enshrined in treaties, often signed and sealed by representatives acting for absent masters, though nobles clung to the practice of swearing personal oaths longer than did cities. The overlap between presence and written culture was strongest during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when common activities remained important elements in fostering solidarity. For example, Strasbourg’s guilds were known after the taverns where they met rather than by their trades. Princes and lords shared these changes of culture. For example, weddings and funerals provided important opportunities for political discussions and were a major feature of Protestant alliances.
²

Oaths and charters were generally fixed in purpose and scope. Most associations were time-limited, though some were hereditary pacts binding on heirs and descendants. Exceptions were usually made so that individual members did not contravene any existing obligations to non-members. This became routine for all alliances between imperial Estates during early modernity, which usually stated they were not directed against the emperor or Empire. Members were nominally
equal, unless the alliance combined several status groups. Equality was understood in terms of law, status and honour, but could take on a broader meaning in the more radical forms of association emerging in the high Middle Ages. Such trends were not restricted to those movements later historians have labelled as ‘popular’. For example, nobles also advocated openness and transparency, encouraging each member to declare his wealth under oath to ensure fair distribution of common burdens. Princes placed the least emphasis on equality, and were reluctant to enter blanket, open-ended arrangements that might threaten their autonomy. However, internal stratification was apparent in all associations, including those of the ‘common man’ (
see pp. 579–94
).

Regardless of their social composition, virtually all associations at least nominally elected their leaders, even if in practice it was often clear who the successful candidates would be. Nobles preferred small advisory committees, regarding plenary meetings as inconvenient and expensive. Towns preferred full meetings, since their own governments already included citizens’ assemblies balancing city councils, and alliances combining more than one status group adopted a similar approach.

Lay Associations

The spread of associations to laity in the eleventh century was part of the general disappearance of older forms of servitude and the adoption of more communal forms of living. As we have seen (
pp. 240–42
and
487–9
), both processes were related to the emergence of Estates society and thus also to hierarchy and the political order. The freedom to associate was never entirely autonomous and all alliances were concerned to assert their legitimacy. Most alliances appearing between 1100 and 1300 were local and related to specific economic activities and aspects of urban life. Merchants’ guilds were already appearing in northern Germany during the eleventh century, because individual lords were unable to protect long-distance traders. By combining, merchants were able to bargain for recognition and security from lords along their trade routes. Artisans’ and traders’ guilds emerged during the twelfth century to protect specific economic interests, such as fish-sellers in Worms (1106), Würzburg cobblers (1128) and Mainz weavers (1175). Such groups were always more than purely economic organizations.
They certainly acted as closed shops, demanding high qualifications as barriers to new entrants, and imposing self-regulation and quality controls to discriminate against others seeking to engage in their trade. However, they also operated an internal moral economy to ensure all members had reasonable opportunities to make a living, and sustained collegiality by helping each other in the event of personal or family misfortune, and through various social and religious activities. Guilds proved potent platforms from which to bargain for rights and demand a share in communal government. Frederick II issued decrees banning them as subversive in 1219 and 1231, but their utility as a means of organizing and controlling trades ensured they continued.
³

Apprentices’ and journeymen’s brotherhoods appeared during the economic depression of the 1330s and spread following the Black Death in reaction to the guilds’ increasing exclusivity. The practice of restricting masters’ titles to the sons of existing guild members excluded journeymen economically and politically. Craft guilds and journeymen’s associations survived into the nineteenth century, long after the merchants’ organizations had lost their function as international trade developed during the seventeenth century with greater legal protection from territorial governments. Journeymen followed craftsmen by making membership selective rather than voluntary, despite their continued outward assertions of freedom.

Lay organizations had already assumed their definitive form by the later fourteenth century, with further development restricted largely to consolidating existing practices. These organizations had become a permanent feature of towns and also rural crafts in many areas. As urban society matured, it spawned other associations, notably shooting clubs (
Schützengesellschaften
) between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their members were initially armed with crossbows, and, though they updated their weaponry to firearms as these developed, the shooting clubs remained primarily expressions of neighbourhood identity rather than practical military organizations.
⁴
Humanist debating societies developed in the fifteenth century, such as the
Societas Rhenania
, founded in Heidelberg in 1495. These rarely had over 30 members each and declined during the confessional tension of the Reformation era, only to re-emerge around 1600 with a new focus on language and science. The Empire lagged behind Britain and France in developing coffee-house culture from the late seventeenth century,
partly because it lacked such easy access to imported coffee, while the modest size of most towns restricted the market for what remained a luxury product. Vienna had only 80 cafés in the 1780s compared to 900 in Paris. However, the Empire’s polycentric socio-political structure encouraged a much more evenly distributed intellectual culture, especially given the equally broad spread of literacy and media outlets. There were 50 to 60 ‘patriotic’ and economic societies by the late eighteenth century, whose 4,500 members debated practical aspects of public life ranging from political economy to bee-keeping, and often published their own journals. In addition, there were 430 reading societies, with up to 20,000 members, and 250 to 300 freemasons’ lodges, with a similar membership.
⁵