Knight circle
Knight circles were a subdivision of the Imperial Knighthood , the community of the free nobility in the Holy Roman Empire .
Since the middle of the 16th century, the imperial knighthood has been organized into a total of 15 knighthoods, which in turn, with one exception, have been grouped into three knight circles since 1577. The knight places have been called knight cantons since the 17th century, following the example of the cantons of the Swiss Confederation . The five cantons of Danube , Hegau-Allgäu-Bodensee , Neckar-Black Forest , Kocher and Kraichgau belonged to the Swabian and the three cantons of Upper Rhine , Middle Rhine and Lower Rhine to the Rhenish knight circle . The Franconian Knight Circle consisted of six cantons.
The knighthood in Lower Alsace had a special position. She joined the community of the three knight circles in 1651 as a separate knight's place. In December 1680 she submitted to the state power of Louis XIV and her possessions and fiefs were submitted to French sovereignty. Subsequently, she still held the title of unrestricted knighthood in lower Alsace , but no longer belonged to the Old Kingdom (HRR) .
Remarks
- ↑ See a general summary of Helmut Neuhaus : The Empire in the early modern times. 2nd edition Munich 2003, p. 36 f.
- ↑ Michael Puchta: Mediatization "with skin and hair, body and life": The submission of the Imperial Knights by Ansbach-Bayreuth (1792–1798) , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-647-36078-2 , p. 32 f.