Interregnum (Holy Roman Empire)
In the history of the Holy Roman Empire, the period between the deposition of Emperor Frederick II by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 and the election of Rudolf is referred to as the interregnum ( Latin for "interim rule", here used more in the sense of "interim time") I. in the year 1273. In general, the beginning of the interregnum is set with the death of Frederick in 1250, in particular with the death of Conrad IV in the year 1254 (and rarely with the William of Holland in the year 1256).
During this time Heinrich Raspe , William of Holland , Alfonso of Castile and Richard of Cornwall were elected kings, but were hardly able to exercise rulers.
To the subject
The term, taken from the Roman constitutional law (cf. Interrex ), was used by the history of the 19th century to characterize the period following the - transfigured - Staufer rule as an age of turmoil and war. This found poetic expression in the ballad Der Graf von Habsburg by Friedrich Schiller , in which the Interregnum was described as the emperorless, the terrible time . Only in more recent research is this time seen in a much more differentiated manner and in the context of the options for action of those involved. The image of the selfish prince who does not care about the welfare of the empire and a chaotic and lawless time is meanwhile rejected.
history
prehistory
Depending on which event is considered more important, the start of the interregnum can either be on the day of the deposition of Emperor Frederick II by Pope Innocent IV on July 17, 1245 or on the death of the emperor on December 13, 1250. Regardless of the date, the most important thing for the political situation in the empire during the interregnum was the assessment of whether the deposition of Frederick by the Pope was lawful. Even contemporaries did not agree on this.
The struggle between Frederick II and Innocent IV was about the question of who should be at the head of Christianity and about concrete power politics, since Frederick was both emperor and Sicilian king and the papal state was thus effectively between Frederick's spheres of power . The resulting tensions and conflicts culminated in 1239 in a double excommunication of the emperor by Pope Gregory IX. For the year 1241, Gregory planned a synod in Rome, which Frederick prevented by military means by including Rome and ships on which the participants were arriving and taking hundreds of prelates prisoner. Shortly thereafter, Gregor died on August 21, 1241.
On September 10th of the same year, the most important spiritual rulers of the empire, the Archbishop of Mainz and the Archbishop of Cologne, allied against the Kaiser and thus began the fight against the Hohenstaufen rule in Germany.
It was not until June 25, 1243, that the church lawyer Sinibaldus Fieschi , who came from a distinguished Genoese family, was elected Pope. He chose the name Innocent IV. A year after his election, he managed to escape from Rome, still besieged by Frederick, via Genoa to Lyon, after having previously negotiated unsuccessfully with Frederick. On January 3, 1245, Innocent called a new council to Lyon, which began on June 28, 1245 with around 150 participants. None of Friedrich's major opponents from Germany were present. It is believed that although they were privy to the Pope's plans for deposition, they did not come, probably because they had scruples or feared the consequences should the plans fail.
At the final assembly of the synod, Innocent announced the dismissal of Frederick for four serious offenses: repeated perjury, breach of peace between Empire and Church, arrest of prelates on the way to the council, and proven heresy. The Pope forbade all subjects to continue to regard him as king and emperor and called on those entitled to vote to elect a new king. Innocent drew the legitimation for this unique step from the fact that he was the successor in the office of deputy and Christ
"[...] as long as he stayed in this world [...] and according to natural law could have passed judgments of deposition and condemnation sequences and any other judgments [...] against the emperors and anyone else [...], his deputy can do this for the same reason; for he would not have appeared as a level-headed gentleman to speak to him with awe had he not left behind such a unique representative who could do all of this "
Election of Heinrich Raspe
With all sorts of ecclesiastical refinements, the Pope claimed the right to depose the emperor, but the reactions in the empire were rather small. The other European rulers did not break ties with the emperor, but neither did they respond to Frederick's calls for solidarity.
The spiritual opponents in the kingdom took the first steps. They had to find a replacement for Friedrich, and so on May 22nd, 1246, the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, together with various bishops, counts and gentlemen, elected Heinrich Raspe as Roman-German king.
Election of Wilhelm of Holland
After Heinrich Raspe's death in 1247, Count Wilhelm of Holland was elected the new anti-king; only after the death of Conrad IV in 1254 did he gain general recognition. His undisputed rule ended abruptly when he was killed in battle in 1256.
The double choice of 1257
The so-called double election took place in 1257, when Alfonso of Castile and Richard of Cornwall were simultaneously elected kings by the seven eligible princes. Both were related to the Staufer family. Alfons was a grandson of Philip of Swabia and Richard the brother-in-law of Friedrich II. Both candidates were able to win three votes each, but Ottokar II of Böhmen gave both of them his vote, for which he was paid by them. This stalemate ensured that there was a double election.
The two elected kings could not achieve general recognition in the empire. Richard of Cornwall died in April 1272, whereupon Alfonso of Castile asked Pope Gregory X to confirm his election as king (papal approbation). But the Pope refused his license to practice medicine and thus paved the way for a new election.
The choice of Rudolf
In 1273 the three ecclesiastical electors and the Count Palatine near Rhine agreed on Count Rudolf IV of Habsburg as candidates. His election took place on October 1, 1273 in Frankfurt with the votes of the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg and against the resistance of the Bohemian Ottokar Přemysl.
The interregnum came to an end with the traditional anointing and coronation of the elected as Rudolf I on October 24, 1273 in Aachen Minster.
Consequences of the interregnum
Essential results of this time are the development of the Elector College as the sole body for the election of the Roman-German king and a kingship that increasingly had to rely on its own domestic power against the imperial princes who had become more powerful . Furthermore, the various imperial estates, such as the cities as well as the secular and spiritual princes, created various means of conflict resolution in times when a strong royal power was lacking, as can be seen from the unanimous election of Rudolf I as king after several double elections .
During the interregnum, the bishops and princes tried to increase their claims and territories. So they suppressed other less powerful nobles, fought against the urban bourgeoisie and illegally seized imperial fiefs. In addition, they introduced duties, new taxes, and even regimes of all kinds to increase their personal wealth. The lower nobility, above all the knighthood , was in no way inferior to the great, even if its methods were less subtle. The robber baron came into being. Nobody could put a stop to this wilderness of the German nobility; the courts and imperial authorities were powerless, the law of the fist , the law of the strongest, prevailed generally. The Holy Roman Empire had now become a lawless state, without functioning administration and control, in which the door was opened to anarchy.
However, the interregnum can also be viewed as a transitional phase: the old order broke up and created a development in which the sovereigns rose to become the new bearers of the state order, and the cities also emancipated themselves through the wealthy bourgeoisie and thus faced more self-confidently the prince. However, this stage also promoted small states , which made it difficult for the empire to become a closed state structure for centuries.
City federations
The cities suffered a lot from the anarchic conditions, everywhere commercial travelers and merchants were exposed to the danger of being attacked or abducted by robber knights. Even though popes, kings and princes passed laws against this activity, very little changed in practice. In addition, the merchants were exposed to the arbitrariness of the bishops and princes. They were burdened with high taxes and duties. If a merchant could not pay the required tax or if he died due to unfortunate circumstances, his lands and goods were confiscated by the sovereign and only given back to the actual heirs or paid out for special merits.
With this weakness of the imperial power, the cities began to help themselves collectively and began to form city leagues .
Rhenish Confederation
The first individual federation, which was concluded at the instigation of the Mainz citizen Arnold von Walpoden in 1254 between the cities of Mainz , Worms , Oppenheim and Bingen on the Middle Rhine , was later merged into the Great Rhenish Federation of Cities and Lords, which in 1256 already consisted of 31 archbishops, bishops, Counts and lords existed, and included 100 cities from Bremen to Basel . The main goal of the federal government was to guarantee peace in the country and to eliminate unjustified tariffs and taxes. All federal members were called upon to provide armed war teams in order to be able to ensure peace; To protect trade, the cities from Basel to the mouth of the Moselle were to have 100 and the cities further north 50 war vehicles ready.
Disputes between the allies were settled by an arbitration tribunal made up of four men from each city and each rule; these arbitrators were also the mandataries at the Federal Assembly, which takes place every four years. In these federal assemblies the general guidelines, such as the access of the rural population to the cities or the protection of the Jews, but also the social obligations of the members were defined. Every city had to build a poor house and levy a tax for poor welfare. The most important task besides economic and social concerns was the maintenance of the peace of 1235, which had to be preserved under all circumstances. The covenant was concluded because of the inability of the king / emperor, but it was not necessarily directed against him; King Wilhelm even confirmed him at a Reichstag and recognized his independent legal personality. Thus a makeshift became an institution on which the king could rely in difficult situations. However, this donation by the king also led to disputes within the federation, which escalated after Wilhelm's death when some members refused to bow to the decision of neutrality regarding the election of the king. One city after the other broke away from the federal government after a promise of royal money, so that it was finally dissolved. Despite this dissolution, however, the cities retained the privilege of taking on advisory functions at the Reichstag, which gave them a certain influence on imperial and royal politics.
The German Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League , the most important German association of cities, also had its beginnings in the 13th century. Their origins can be found in the amalgamation of German businessmen's cooperatives abroad, the individual federations of the northern German cities and in Lübeck's increase in power . In the 12th century, a cooperative of German merchants was established in London for North Sea trade, with the city of Cologne taking first place. The Cologne residents had their own quarters in London, which were later expanded to become the headquarters of all German merchants. The name "German Hanseatic League" is used for the first time in 1282 for this London cooperative. The term Hanse initially only means “ guild ” or “cooperative”, only later did the term change. Of decisive importance for the founding of the Hanseatic League, however, were the individual leagues of the northern German cities, which, similar to the Rhenish Confederation, were mainly dedicated to maintaining peace, the order of the system of coins and measures, etc. Such alliances were made by the Saxon-Westphalian cities in 1247: Hamburg and Braunschweig , as well as the cities of Bremen , Cologne , Hanover , Münster and Dortmund , Soest and Lippstadt , and in the Wendish lands the cities of Lübeck and Wismar , Rostock , Stralsund and Greifswald . Lübeck, which replaced Cologne in London and thus became the dominant city, stood out among these alliances. Also because of its favorable location between the Wendish and Saxon-Westphalian areas, it had become the center of North German trade. Lübeck even had the strength with his allies to force the anti-German King Erik II of Norway by force of arms into a peace that was very advantageous for the Germans. Since then Lübeck's supremacy had been decided, and even the Baltic cities conquered by the German Order adopted Lübeck law. Thus, at the end of the 13th century, the German Hanseatic League came into being under the leadership of Lübeck in a rather loose form without any founding document or act. Around 1300 the first Hanseatic League was held in Lübeck, which laid down its laws and guidelines. These did not only apply to the members of the Confederation, but were also mandatory for the cities of Slavia, the Mark, Poland, Gotland and Riga .
In this way, without the involvement of the Reich, a power factor emerged that had a decisive influence on trade and politics in the Baltic and North Sea region for hundreds of years.
literature
- Dieter Hägermann : Interregnum . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 5. Col. 468 f.
- Martin Kaufhold : German Interregnum and European Politics. Conflict resolution and decision-making structures 1230–1280. Hahn, Hannover 2000, ISBN 3-7752-5449-8 (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Writings. Volume 49, also habilitation thesis Uni Heidelberg 1999).
- Emanuel Peter LaRoche : The Interregnum and the Origin of the Swiss Confederation . Peter Lang, Bern / Frankfurt am Main 1991, DNB 457359129 Dissertation University of Zurich (= Spirit and Work of the Times , Volume 30).
- Martin Kaufhold: Interregnum. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-534-15450-9 .
- Malte Prietzel : The Holy Roman Empire in the late Middle Ages. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-15131-3 .
- Marianne Kirk: «The emperorless, the terrible time» - The Interregnum in the course of changing history , Frankfurt / M. u. a. 2002, ISBN 978-3-631-50542-7
Web links
- Interregnum: Hans Stadler. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Remarks
- ↑ The treaty that the two archbishops signed also shows how slowly news was transmitted at the time: The document contained their position on the current conflict between Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX. - At this point Gregor had already been dead for three weeks.
- ↑ from Innonenz's comment on his dismissal judgment; quoted from Martin Kaufhold: Interregnum. Darmstadt 2003, p. 15.