The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0088/00883.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 29KB | 447 lines

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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part II}
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$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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$Subject{footnote
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book V: History Of Germany To The Diet Of Worms In 1495
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part II

     It is not easy to account for all the circumstances that gave to seven
spiritual and temporal princes this distinguished pre-eminence.  The three
archbishops, Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, were always indeed at the head of the
German church.  But the secular electors should naturally have been the dukes
of four nations: Saxony, Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria. We find, however,
only the first of these in the undisputed exercise of a vote.  It seems
probable that, when the electoral princes came to be distinguished from the
rest, their privilege was considered as peculiarly connected with the
discharge of one of the great offices in the imperial court.  These were
attached, as early as the diet of Mentz in 1184, to the four electors, who
ever afterwards possessed them: the Duke of Saxony having then officiated as
archmarshal, the Count Palatine of the Rhine as arch-steward, the King of
Bohemia as arch-cupbearer, and the Margrave of Brandenburg as arch-chamberlain
of the empire. ^g But it still continues a problem why the three latter
offices, with the electoral capacity as their incident, should not rather have
been granted to the Dukes of Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria.  I have seen no
adequate explanation of this circumstance; which may perhaps lead us to
presume that the right of pre-election was not quite so soon confined to the
precise number of seven princes.  The final extinction of two great original
duchies, Franconia and Suabia, in the thirteenth century, left the electoral
rights of the Count Palatine and the Margrave of Brandenburg beyond dispute.
But the dukes of Bavaria continued to claim a vote in opposition to the kings
of Bohemia.  At the election of Rodolph in 1272 the two brothers of the house
of Wittelsbach voted separately, as Count Palatine and Duke of Lower Bavaria.
Ottocar was excluded upon this occasion; and it was not till 1290 that the
suffrage of Bohemia was fully recognized.  The Palatine and Bavarian branches,
however, continued to enjoy their family vote conjointly, by a determination
of Rodolph; upon which Louis of Bavaria slightly innovated, by rendering the
suffrage alternate.  But the Golden Bull of Charles IV. put an end to all
doubts on the rights of electoral houses, and absolutely excluded Bavaria from
voting.  The limitation to seven electors, first perhaps fixed by accident,
came to be invested with a sort of mysterious importance, and certainly was
considered, until times comparatively recent, as a fundamental law of the
empire. ^h

[Footnote g: Ibid., t. iv. p. 78.]

[Footnote h: Schmidt, pp. 78, 568; Putter, p. 274; Pfeffel, pp. 435, 565;
Struvius, p. 511.]

     2. It might appear natural to expect that an oligarchy of seven persons,
who had thus excluded their equals from all share in the election of a
sovereign, would assume still greater authority, and trespass further upon the
less powerful vassals of the empire.  But while the electors were establishing
their peculiar privilege, the class immediately inferior raised itself by
important acquisitions of power.  The German dukes, even after they became
hereditary, did not succeed in compelling the chief nobility within their
limits to hold their lands in fief so completely as the peers of France had
done.  The nobles of Suabia refused to follow their duke into the field
against the Emperor Conrad II. ^i Of this aristocracy the superior class were
denominated princes; an appellation which, after the eleventh century,
distinguished them from the untitled nobility, most of whom were their
vassals.  They were constituent parts of all diets; and though gradually
deprived of their original participation in electing an emperor, possessed, in
all other respects, the same rights as the dukes or electors.  Some of them
were fully equal to the electors in birth as well as extent of dominions; such
as the princely houses of Austria, Hesse, Brunswick, and Misnia.  By the
division of Henry the Lion's vast territories, ^j and by the absolute
extinction of the Suabian family in the following century, a great many
princes acquired additional weight.  Of the ancient duchies, only Saxony and
Bavaria remained; the former of which especially was so dismembered, that it
was vain to attempt any renewal of the ducal jurisdiction.  That of the
emperor, formerly exercised by the counts palatine, went almost equally into
disuse during the contest between Philip and Otho IV.  The princes accordingly
had acted with sovereign independence within their own fiefs before the reign
of Frederic II.; but the legal recognition of their immunities was reserved
for two edicts of that emperor; one, in 1220, relating to ecclesiastical, and
the other, in 1232, to secular princes.  By these he engaged neither to levy
the customary imperial dues, nor to permit the jurisdiction of the palatine
judges, within the limits of a state of the empire; ^k concessions that
amounted to little less than an abdication of his own sovereignty.  From this
epoch the territorial independence of the states may be dated.

[Footnote i: Pfeffel, p. 209.]

[Footnote j: See the arrangements made in consequence of Henry's forfeiture,
which gave quite a new face to Germany, in Pfeffel, p. 234; also p. 437.]

[Footnote k: Pfeffel, p. 384: Putter, p. 233.]

     A class of titled nobility, inferior to the princes, were the counts of
the empire, who seem to have been separated from the former in the twelfth
century, and to have lost at the same time their right of voting in the diets.
^l In some parts of Germany, chiefly in Franconia and upon the Rhine, there
always existed a very numerous body of lower nobility; untitled at least till
modern times, but subject to no superior except the emperor.  These are
supposed to have become immediate, after the destruction of the house of
Suabia, within whose duchies they had been comprehended. ^m

[Footnote l: In the instruments relating to the election of Otho IV. the
princes sign their names, Ego N. elegi et subscripsi.  But the counts only as
follows: Ego N. consensi et subscripsi.  Pfeffel, p. 360.]

[Footnote m: Pfeffel, p. 455; Putter, p. 254; Struvius, p. 511.]

     A short interval elapsed after the death of Richard of Cornwall before
the electors could be induced, by the deplorable state of confusion into which
Germany had fallen, to fill the imperial throne.  Their choice was however the
best that could have been made.  It fell upon Rodolph Count of Hapsburg, a
prince of very ancient family, and of considerable possessions as well in
Switzerland as upon each bank of the Upper Rhine, but not sufficiently
powerful to alarm the electoral oligarchy.  [A.D. 1272.] Rodolph was brave,
active, and just; but his characteristic quality appears to have been good
sense, and judgment of the circumstances in which he was placed.  Of this he
gave a signal proof in relinquishing the favorite project of so many preceding
emperors, and leaving Italy altogether to itself.  At home he manifested a
vigilant spirit in administering justice, and is said to have destroyed
seventy strongholds of noble robbers in Thuringia and other parts, bringing
many of the criminals to capital punishment. ^n But he wisely avoided giving
offence to the more powerful princes; and during his reign there were hardly
any rebellions in Germany.

[Footnote n: Struvius, p. 530.  Coxe's Hist. of House of Austria, p. 57. This
valuable work contains a full and interesting account of Rodolph's reign.]

     It was a very reasonable object of every emperor to aggrandize his family
by investing his near kindred with vacant fiefs; but no one was so fortunate
in his opportunities as Ro