Common penny
The common penny (also: Reichspfennig ) was an imperial tax , which, at the instigation I. Maximilian in 1495 at the Diet of Worms was chosen to the Emperor the funds for the war against France , against the Ottoman Empire and especially for the support of the Imperial Chamber to procure.
Surname
The term common penny refers to the more general meaning of the word penny as money or levy , similar to the St. Peter's penny as a levy to the Catholic Church or the Pope in Rome. Commonly means a general tax or duty.
prehistory
Just like the other projects in the Holy Roman Empire that led to reforms at the Worms Reichstag of 1495, the common penny was the result of developments and discussions that had lasted since the beginning of the 15th century; its introduction stands at the end of a series of attempts to permanently solve the increasingly pressing problem of imperial finances.
Financing the wars of the empire
With the provision of imperial armies, which was customary up to the 15th century, the numerous military requirements could no longer be met, as the defeats against the Hussites in 1421 and 1422 showed. In addition, a fundamental upheaval in the military system took place during this period. In place of the armies, which were provided by the feudal takers and caused hardly any costs to the empire, mercenary armies with modern military technology stepped up . These mercenary armies had to be paid, however, which led to a tremendous appreciation of money in the consciousness of contemporaries, and the discussion about the war finances became a driving force for the tax discussions of this time.
history
The tax was initially granted for four years. As a "common" (general) tax, it was designed in such a way that it was to be levied on every subject in the Holy Roman Empire over 15 years according to wealth and applied to residents of all territories. Depending on personal status and wealth, it was designed as a poll , income and wealth tax . They were confiscated by the Roman Catholic church administration through the individual parishes .
Because of the great difficulties in collecting it, the common pfennig was abandoned again in 1505. Until 1551 it was advertised several times with equally dubious success.
Reasons for failure
Many reports of difficulties in collecting taxes are collected in the so-called "Book of Afflictions". This is a compilation of the problems reported to the tax collectors in Frankfurt am Main. It emerges from these reports that the question arose in the Bishopric of Worms as to which sovereign should collect the tax in the condominium of the monastery, i.e. in the areas that were administered by several gentlemen. Problems also arose with serfs when they were under the jurisdiction of another master, because they refused to pay the tax on the grounds that their master had prohibited them from paying the tax. On the other hand, the lord of the body often did not even try to get serfs in foreign judicial districts to tax. In the cities religious and knightly nobles refused to pay the tax, and on occasion it was not possible to clearly identify the areas in which, for example, cities had the right to collect taxes. The attempts by the Teutonic Order to collect the taxes were particularly pathetic.
The reports in the “Book of Afflictions” show that tax collection was always particularly difficult or even impossible when the rulers in an area were not clear. So whenever the sovereign rights, from land to body rule and lower jurisdiction to higher jurisdiction, were not all in one hand, many gentlemen refused to grant other competing rulers the right to collect taxes, since with the right to collect taxes own authority rights were affected. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that it was not clear what powers were required to collect taxes. In addition, failure to collect the tax meant that the rulers did not suffer any financial losses and the empire lacked the executive options to punish refusal to pay the tax.
To enforce the right to collect taxes against other authorities meant a gain in power and was seen as a prejudice for other authority rights. For this reason, this right was sometimes fiercely contested and their own serfs or bailiffs were forbidden to pay the tax or the common penny was ordered to be paid to this or that person. In view of the problems appearing in the sources, it can be considered likely that the common penny achieved the opposite of what was wanted. It was not the lack of or poorly developed imperial bureaucracy that caused the common penny to fail, but rather its principle contradicted the sovereignty of the members of the empire, which was already well advanced. Thus, in addition to the secured financial flow to the Reich, he also missed one of his other goals, namely to strengthen the Reichsverband with its class structure from emperor to simple peasant.
The successor to the common penny as a Reich tax was the Kammerzieler , who only served to finance the Reich Chamber Court.
See also
Web links
literature
- Eberhard Isenmann : The Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages. In: The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe. approx. 1200-1815. Edited by Richard Bonney, Oxford 1999, pp. 243-280, here pp. 265-267.
- Eberhard Isenmann: Imperial finances and Imperial taxes in the 15th century . In: Journal for Historical Research 7 . 1980, pp. 1-76, 129-218.
- Peter Moraw : The "common penny" . In: It started with tithing . Edited by U. Schultz, 1986, pp. 130-142.
- Peter Schmid: The common penny from 1495. history and origins, constitutional history, political and financial significance (= Series of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences 34 . Band 34 ). Goettingen 1989.
Individual evidence
- ^ Benedikt Zäch: Common Pfennig. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 23, 2006 , accessed July 30, 2018 .
- ↑ Peter Schmid: The common penny from 1495. history and origins, constitutional history, political and financial significance (= Series of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences 34 . Band 34 ). Göttingen 1989, p. 16 .
- ↑ Thomas Kaufmann : History of the Reformation. Verlag der Weltreligionen, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-458-71024-0 , pp. 41–54
- ^ Benedikt Zäch: Common Pfennig. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 23, 2006 , accessed July 12, 2020 .
- ↑ Peter Blickle: Common Pfennig and Authority (1495) . In: Quarterly for social and economic history . tape 63 , no. 2 , 1976, p. 180–193, here p. 184 ff .
- ↑ Peter Blickle: Common Pfennig and Authority (1495) . In: Quarterly for social and economic history . tape 63 , no. 2 , 1976, p. 180–193, here p. 187 .
- ↑ Peter Blickle: Common Pfennig and Authority (1495) . In: Quarterly for social and economic history . tape 63 , no. 2 , 1976, p. 180–193, here p. 192 f .