Rhense Spa Association
The meeting ( Kurfürstentag ) of six of the seven electors , which took place on July 16, 1338 in Rhens and included an agreement, is called Kurverein von Rhense or Kurverein von Rhens . Except for Johann , the King of Bohemia , all electors were present: Baldwin for Elector Trier , Heinrich III. von Virneburg for Kurmainz , Walram von Jülich for Kurköln , Rudolf II. and Ruprecht I for the Palatinate County near Rhine as well as Ludwig , the Margrave of Brandenburg , and Rudolf I , the Duke of Saxony-Wittenberg .
The background to the meeting was the unresolved conflict between Emperor Ludwig IV and Pope Benedict XII. The position of the Pope, who ultimately insisted on his position and refused to recognize the emperor, led to an anti-curial mood in the empire and to protests from the electors, who insisted that only their election (with the votes of the majority) was decisive and this no further papal confirmation was required. The electors had first met in Oberlahnstein , but shortly afterwards the meeting moved to Rhens.
There they signed an unlimited alliance on July 16, 1338, which reaffirmed their position: Only the electors elect the Roman king , the future emperor . In doing so, they protested against any papal interference (see papal approval ) in the powers they had declared and, in order to defend the rights of the empire, also called on the other members of the empire to join the declaration, which was largely promoted by Baldwin of Trier. However, the declaration was of a principled nature and not aimed at the conflict between Ludwig and the curia - no reference was made to the person of the emperor, which Ludwig was later to do himself (see Licet iuris ).
The Kurverein was of great importance for the “ Imperial Constitution ”, as the majority principle was also laid down there and the Electoral College was firmly established as such. For the first time the electors did not come together to elect a king, but to deal with problems that had arisen during the reign of a reigning king. In addition, the electors postulated that they, and not the king, represented the rights of the empire. In the dispute with the Pope, however, the declaration of the Kurvereins Ludwig was of little use - it also made the emperor's dependence on the college clear.
The Königsstuhl von Rhens , a building from 1842, is a reminder of the Rhense spa association .
See also: Golden Bull of Charles IV.
literature
- Alois Schmid : Rhense, Kurverein from (1338) . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 785.
- Edmund E. Stengel : Avignon and Rhens. Research on the history of the struggle for the right to the Reich in the first half of the 14th century (= sources and studies on the constitutional history of the German Empire in the Middle Ages and modern times. Vol. 6, 1, ISSN 0863-0836 ). Böhlau, Weimar 1930 (Classical and material-rich study).
- Heinz Thomas : German history of the late Middle Ages 1250–1500. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1983, ISBN 3-17-007908-5 , especially p. 197 ff.
Web links
- Latin full text ( memento from February 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) according to Karl Zeumer : Ludwigs des Bayern Königswahlgesetz 'Licet iuris' from August 6, 1338 .