Imperial immediacy
Imperial immediacy (
The granting of immediacy began in the Early Middle Ages, and for the immediate bishops, abbots, and cities, then the main beneficiaries of that status, immediacy could be exacting and often meant being subjected to the fiscal, military, and hospitality demands of their overlord, the Emperor. However, with the gradual exit of the Emperor from the centre stage from the mid-13th century onwards, holders of imperial immediacy eventually found themselves vested with considerable rights and powers previously exercised by the emperor.
As confirmed by the
In today's terms, it would be understood as a limited form of sovereignty.Gradations
Several immediate estates held the privilege of attending meetings of the Reichstag in person, including an individual vote (votum virile):
- the seven Prince-electors designated by the Golden Bull of 1356
- the other Princes of the Holy Roman Empire
- secular: Dukes, Margraves, Landgraves, et al.
- ecclesiastical: Prince-Provosts.
They formed the
Further immediate estates not represented in the Reichstag were the Imperial Knights as well as several abbeys and minor localities, the remains of those territories which in the High Middle Ages had been under the direct authority of the Emperor and since then had mostly been given in pledge to the princes.
At the same time, there were classes of "princes" with titular immediacy to the Emperor which they exercised rarely, if at all. For example, the Bishops of Chiemsee, Gurk, and Seckau (Sacken) were practically subordinate to the prince-bishop of Salzburg, but were formally princes of the Empire.
Advantages and disadvantages
Additional advantages might include the rights to collect
As pointed out by
Disadvantages might include direct intervention by imperial commissions, as happened in several of the southwestern cities after the
Problems in understanding the Empire
The practical application of the rights of immediacy was complex; this makes the history of the Holy Roman Empire particularly difficult to understand, especially for modern historians. Even such contemporaries as
A revisionist view popular in Germany but increasingly adopted elsewhere[citation needed] argued that "though not powerful politically or militarily, [the Empire] was extraordinarily diverse and free by the standards of Europe at the time". Pointing out that people like Goethe meant "monster" as a compliment (i.e. 'an astonishing thing'), The Economist has called the Empire "a great place to live ... a union with which its subjects identified, whose loss distressed them greatly" and praised its cultural and religious diversity, saying that it "allowed a degree of liberty and diversity that was unimaginable in the neighbouring kingdoms" and that "ordinary folk, including women, had far more rights to property than in France or Spain".[6]
Furthermore, the prestige of the Emperor among the German people outweighed his lack of legal and military authority. One need find no better proof of this than the fact that the constitution of Germany remained little changed for centuries, with hundreds of tiny enclaves co-existing peacefully with much larger and often greedy and militaristic neighbors.[
See also
- Free Imperial City
- German mediatization
- Imperial Abbey
- Imperial Diet (Holy Roman Empire)
- Imperial Estate
- Imperial Village
- List of states of the Holy Roman Empire
- Tenant-in-chief
- Autonomous administrative division
References
Citations
- ^ Gagliardo, J. G.; Reich and Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806, Indiana University Press, 1980, p. 4.
- ^ Lebeau, Christine, ed.; L'espace du Saint-Empire du Moyen-Âge à l'époque moderne, Presse Universitaire de Strasbourg, 2004, p. 117.
- ^ Jonathan Israel, "The Dutch Republic:Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477–1806", Ch. 4, p. 66.
- ^ James Bryce (1838–1922), Holy Roman Empire, London, 1865.
- ^ James Sheehan, German History 1770–1866, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. Introduction, pp. 1–8.
- ^ "The Holy Roman Empire: European disunion done right". The Economist. December 22, 2012. Retrieved January 8, 2016.
Sources
- Braun, B.: Reichsunmittelbarkeit in .php German, .php French and .php Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2005-05-03.
- Bryce, James (1865). Holy Roman Empire. London.
- Sheehan, James (1989). German History 1770–1866. Oxford: Oxford University Press.