Imperial Rhetoric in the Publicism of the Palatinate before the Bohemian Coronation of Elector Frederick V

Abstract

At the turn of the 16th — 17th centuries, the imperial discourse was changing, the new German princes were determined to protect the “true faith”, and they were not against revising the agreements reached by their predecessors. Confessional and imperial propaganda was on the increase in Germany. Did the publicism of the beginning of the 17th century reflect the religious social and political demarcation between the Catholic and Evangelical estate? In the Palatinate funeral sermons and speeches of professors of the University of Heidelberg, which were distributed among the subjects of the Palatinate and fellow Calvinists, the apology of the “true faith” came to the fore, and the place of the “imperial estate” was occupied by the Evangelical and Catholic estates, which were opposed to each other. However, in the writings that had spread throughout Germany, imperial rhetoric did not recede into the background, but was transformed along with the image of the Empire itself. This was evidenced by an anonymous text of 1618 of Palatinate origin on the reasons for the destruction by the troops of the Evangelical Union of the fortress of Udenheim, erected by the bishop of Speyer, a member of the Catholic League. In the 1570s — 1580s the Empire was presented as a common home for Protestants and Catholics, an assembly of estates headed by the emperor, and before the Thirty Years’ War the rhetoric of the texts of the Palatinate was increasingly moving towards understanding the Empire only as an elite community without a clear leader. This source allows us to speak about two motives of the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V’s decision to demolish the Udenheim fortifications: the protection of the Empire and the protection of hereditary possessions, and both of these motives are indissoluble linked — the security of hereditary lands and subjects could only be ensured in the absence of threats to the Empire. Frederick V is shown in the text as one of the main persons responsible for the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation on the banks of the Rhine. The defense of the Empire for him meant the defense of his own corner of the imperial home — territories that had traditionally, since the 14th century, been under the influence of the Rhine palatine counts.