Chapter XVIII - Constitutional development and political thought in the Holy Roman Empire

Summary

The reign of Maximilian I (1459–1519) had given the empire much new strength. The emperor, a powerful and dynamic personality, proved capable of taking some decisive decisions. When he maintained his hold over the Tyrol and the Habsburg possessions in Swabia (1488–90) he made sure that the king of the Romans should not be pushed aside to the periphery of the empire. In doing so, he also managed to reactivate the traditional supporters of the crown, especially the Swabians. The Swabian League, founded in 1488, became an important instrument of Habsburg policy in the empire at the same time as it was becoming attractive to the German princes. However, not even Maximilian was able to alter the inmost reality of German constitutional history: king and territories continued to stand side by side. There was no process of centralisation initiated by the king, though the danger that the great men might destroy the Imperial federation was removed by Maximilian’s consolidation of his kingship, a process generally given the name of imperial reform. At the Diet of Worms in 1495, important new directions were taken in hand, all of them testifying to the co-existence of king and territories on terms which before this had emerged from a laboriously negotiated compromise.

In return for a tax granted by the Diet, the king proclaimed an ‘eternal territorial peace’ directed against the right, claimed by the nobility, to wage private war. This constituted an important step in the consolidation of the empire. The king’s Chamber Court was so reformed that it might be able to control conflicts hitherto settled by licensed fighting. Though it continued to sit in the king’s name, it was separated from his court and removed from its influence. It thus profited from the fact that the monarchy continued to be peripatetic. At any rate, the organisation of the law court was completed; not only did the Imperial Estates thereby acquire a significant influence, but parity was achieved between the traditional, noble, agencies of power and the newly risen jurists of bourgeois descent. This parity was also to make itself felt within the territorial administrations.