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Imperial immediacy

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Document signed by theAbbot of Marchtal,"immediate and exempt"

Imperial immediacy(German:ReichsfreiheitorReichsunmittelbarkeit) was a privileged constitutional and political status rooted in Germanfeudal lawunder which theImperial estatesof theHoly Roman Empiresuch asImperial cities,prince-bishoprics,andsecular principalities,and such individuals as theImperial knights,were declared free from the authority of any local lord, having nosuzerainbut theHoly Roman Emperordirectly, without any intermediary authority:immediate=im-(negatory prefix) +mediate(in the sense of a third-party go-between,mediator);immediacyalso applied to later institutions of the Empire such as theDiet(Reichstag), theImperial Chamber of Justiceand theAulic Council.

The granting of immediacy began in theEarly Middle Ages,and for those bishops, abbots, and cities then the main beneficiaries of that status,immediacycould be exacting and often meant subjection to the fiscal, military, andhospitalitydemands of their overlord, the Emperor. However, from the mid-13th century onwards, with the gradually diminishing importance of the Emperor, whose authority to exercise power increasingly limited to the enforcement oflegislative actspromulgated by the Imperial Diet, entities privileged by imperial immediacy eventually found themselves vested with considerable rights and powers previously exercised by the emperor.

As established by thePeace of Westphaliain 1648, the possession of imperial immediacy conferred a particular form of territorial authority known asterritorial superiority(Landeshoheitorsuperioritas territorialisin contemporary documents),[1][2]to be understood today as a limitedsovereignty.

Gradations[edit]

ThePrince-Bishop of Liège,member of the Imperial estates, enjoyed Imperial immediacy and therefore could negotiate and sign international treaties on his own, as long as they were not directed against the Emperor and the Empire.

Several immediate estates held the privilege of attending meetings of theReichstagin person, including an individual vote (votum virile):

They formed theImperial Estates,together with 99 immediate counts, 40Imperial prelates(abbots and abbesses), and 50 Imperial Cities, each of whose "banks" only enjoyed a single collective vote (votum curiatum).

Further immediate estates not represented in theReichstagwere theImperial Knightsas well as several abbeys andminor localities,the remains of those territories which in theHigh Middle Ageshad been under the direct authority of theEmperorand since then had mostly been given in pledge to the princes.

At the same time, there were classes of "princes" with titular immediacy to the Emperor which they exercised rarely, if at all. For example, the Bishops ofChiemsee,Gurk,andSeckau(Sacken) were practically subordinate to the prince-bishop of Salzburg, but were formally princes of the Empire.

Advantages and disadvantages[edit]

Additional advantages might include the rights to collecttaxesandtolls,to hold amarket,tomint coins,tobear arms,and to conductlegal proceedings.The last of these might include the so-calledBlutgericht( "blood justice" ) through which capital punishment could be administered. These rights varied according to the legal patents granted by the emperor.

As pointed out byJonathan Israel,[3]the Dutch province ofOverijsselin 1528 tried to arrange its submission toEmperor Charles Vin his capacity as Holy Roman Emperor rather than as his being theDuke of Burgundy.If successful, that would have evoked Imperial immediacy and would have put Overijssel in a stronger negotiating position, for example given the province the ability to appeal to theImperial Dietin any debate with Charles. For that reason, the Emperor strongly rejected and blocked Overijssel's attempt.

Disadvantages might include direct intervention by imperial commissions, as happened in several of the southwestern cities after theSchmalkaldic War,and the potential restriction or outright loss of previously held legal patents. Immediate rights might be lost if the Emperor and/or the Imperial Diet could not defend them against external aggression, as occurred in theFrench Revolutionary warsand theNapoleonic Wars.TheTreaty of Lunévillein 1801 required the emperor to renounce all claims to the portions of the Holy Roman Empire west of theRhine.At the last meeting of the Imperial Diet (German:Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) in 1802–03, also called theGerman Mediatisation,most of the free imperial cities and the ecclesiastic states lost their imperial immediacy and were absorbed by several dynastic states.

Problems in understanding the Empire[edit]

map of the Holy Roman Empire (central Europe) in 1789 showing the several hundred states, in different colours
The Holy Roman Empire in 1789. Each of these states (different colours) on the map had a specific set of legal rights that governed its social, economic, and juridical relationships between the state and the emperor, and among the states themselves.

The practical application of the rights of immediacy was complex; this makes the history of the Holy Roman Empire particularly difficult to understand, especially for modern historians. Even such contemporaries asGoetheandFichtecalled the Empire a monstrosity.Voltairewrote of the Empire as something neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire, and in comparison to theBritish Empire,saw its German counterpart as an abysmal failure that reached its pinnacle of success in the early Middle Ages and declined thereafter.[4]Prussian historianHeinrich von Treitschkedescribed it in the 19th century as having become "a chaotic mess of rotted imperial forms and unfinished territories". For nearly a century after the publication ofJames Bryce's monumental workThe Holy Roman Empire(1864), this view prevailed among mostEnglish-speakinghistorians of theEarly Modern period,and contributed to the development of theSonderwegtheory of the German past.[5]

Arevisionistview popular in Germany but increasingly adopted elsewhere[citation needed]argued that "though not powerful politically or militarily, [the Empire] was extraordinarily diverse and free by the standards of Europe at the time". Pointing out that people like Goethe meant "monster" as a compliment (i.e. 'an astonishing thing'),The Economisthas called the Empire "a great place to live... a union with which its subjects identified, whose loss distressed them greatly" and praised its cultural and religious diversity, saying that it "allowed a degree of liberty and diversity that was unimaginable in the neighbouring kingdoms" and that "ordinary folk, including women, had far more rights to property than in France or Spain".[6]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^Gagliardo, J. G. (1980).Reich and Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806.Indiana University Press. p. 4.
  2. ^Lebeau, Christine, ed. (2004).L'espace du Saint-Empire du Moyen-Âge à l'époque moderne.Presse Universitaire de Strasbourg. p. 117.
  3. ^Jonathan Israel, "The Dutch Republic:Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477–1806", Ch. 4, p. 66.
  4. ^James Bryce (1838–1922),Holy Roman Empire,London, 1865.
  5. ^James Sheehan,German History 1770–1866,Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. Introduction, pp. 1–8.
  6. ^"The Holy Roman Empire: European disunion done right".The Economist.December 22, 2012.RetrievedJanuary 8,2016.

Sources[edit]

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