Imperial Regiment

As Reichsregiment the educated in the years 1500 and 1521 were feudal government organs referred to the Holy Roman Empire a unified political leadership with the participation of the prince should give.

Both consisted of the emperor or his deputy and 20 - later 22 - representatives of the imperial estates and had their seat initially in the imperial city of Nuremberg , later, from 1524 to 1527, in the imperial city of Esslingen . The creation of a functioning imperial regiment was the central point of imperial reform at the beginning of the 16th century. Both times it failed after a short time due to the resistance of the respective emperor and the diverging interests of the princes.

The first imperial regiment

The first imperial regiment was initiated by Elector Berthold von Henneberg from Mainz at the Worms Reichstag in 1495 . In return for the approval of the common penny and for support in the war against France , he asked the Roman-German king and later Emperor Maximilian I to set up a permanent governing body on an estate basis. The emperor was to hold only the honorary chairmanship in the body that was supposed to control the finances, the warfare and the foreign policy of the empire.

Since this would have meant a massive curtailment of his power, Maximilian I did not agree to the proposal. However, under the pressure of his financially precarious situation, he embarked on other reforms that should pave the way to the imperial regiment. Only when the princes were entitled to him a Reich militia at the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1500 did the Reich regiment actually be formed. The committee, which had its seat in Nuremberg , included Maximilian I and 20 representatives of the ecclesiastical and secular imperial princes as well as the imperial cities . Maximilian refused to cooperate with the organ from the beginning and dissolved it again in 1502.

The second imperial regiment

Maximilian's successor as emperor, Charles V , was also confronted with the demands of the princes for an imperial regiment. As a condition for his election as Roman king , he had to admit the renewed convocation of the body in his election surrender. Since Karl ruled over Spain and other countries outside the empire at the same time , it was foreseeable that he would spend a large part of his reign outside Germany . The imperial regiment was to meet during this time under his brother Ferdinand and regulate the affairs of the empire.

At the Worms Reichstag of 1521 , at which Martin Luther was supposed to justify himself to the emperor, the second Reich regiment was founded. Charles V only granted him decision-making powers during his absence from the Reich. Otherwise it only had an advisory role. The second imperial regiment also failed because of the lack of support from the emperor. After he had pushed through the election of his brother Ferdinand as Roman king in 1531, he finally dissolved the body.

literature

Victor von Kraus : The Nuremberg Reich Regiment. Foundation and expiration 1500–1502; a piece of German constitutional history from the age of Maximilian . Wagner, Innsbruck 1883. ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
Christine Roll : The second Reichsregiment 1521–1530 (research on German legal history; Vol. 15). Böhlau, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-412-10094-3 (also dissertation, University of Konstanz 1991).
Hermann Heimpel : Studies on church and empire reform of the 15th century . Winter, Heidelberg 1974, ISBN 3-533-02338-9 .
Johannes Kunisch : The Nuremberg Reich Regiment and the Turkish Danger . In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 93 (1973), pp. 57-72, ISSN 0018-2621 .
Horst Rabe: Reich and faith split, Germany 1500–1600 (New German History; Vol. 4). Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-30816-3 .
Heinz Angermeier : The imperial reform 1410–1555. The state problem in Germany between the Middle Ages and the present. Beck, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-30278-5

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Gudrun Litz: The Reformation image question in the Swabian imperial cities . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-16-149124-5 , p. 181 .
↑ Contents: The reform text “De praxi curiae Romanae” (Squalores Romanae Curiae, 1403) by Matthew of Krakow and its editor; the “Speculum aureum de titulis beneficorum” 1404/05 and its author.

[1] Gudrun Litz: The Reformation image question in the Swabian imperial cities . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-16-149124-5 , p. 181 .

[2] Contents: The reform text “De praxi curiae Romanae” (Squalores Romanae Curiae, 1403) by Matthew of Krakow and its editor; the “Speculum aureum de titulis beneficorum” 1404/05 and its author.