Imperial Circles Research Articles

Süddeutsche Reichsstädter an der Universität Basel (1460–1802)

This article examines the attendance at the Basel University by students from 42 imperial cities from the Upper Rhine, Swabian, Franconian and Bavarian imperial circles in the period 1460 to 1802. The analysis focuses on the chronology of these students’ university attendance and their educational goals. The author also tries to identify particular urban and regional educational patterns. In the concluding part, results of this research on attendance at the Basel University in the 17th and 18th centuries are compared with the results of this author’s earlier research on attendance at the University of Strasbourg by students from the same imperial cities.

Country-"Policey": Norms in Early Modern Agrarian Societies.

The collection of sources on “good” policeyhas, so far, illustrated and interpreted the characteristics of early modernregulatory policy with territorial or urban examples. This was examined for aperiod which, as the saddle period of modernity, was responsible for setting acourse that can hardly be overestimated, according to which rights and duties,public and ecclesiastical order, social peace, honour, happiness, health andprosperity are partly derived to this day. This temporal framework remained inthis essay, but the social perspective changed. While many publications onordinances were tailored to the role of the nobility and the courts, themunicipal councillors, the imperial ecclesiastical chancelleries or theexecutive offices in the Reichskreise (Imperial Circles), the focus isnow on their social reflections. The perspective from “below” becomes moreeffective. The rural area, village cooperatives, agrarian forms of trade andaction remote from capitals and centres are the new, undoubtedly no lessinteresting focus. 

Imperial Patchwork “Flickenteppiche” as a Historical Metaphor for Chaos, Federalism and Diversity

With the recent research on the importance of the Estates, whose function often went far beyond questions of taxation, the Imperial Circles and the simultaneous deconstruction of European state formation as an absolutist top-down process the view of the “co-organizing intermediate levels” changed. This is how Johannes Burkhardt described these regional images in 2006 in “Gebhardt. Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte.” The new view of the Old Empire has been well received by research in regional history, especially since differentiations on small-scale rule and organization in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Thuringia, Saxony and other federal states have traditionally been and still are part of the core business of this discipline. “Flickenteppiche” as colourfully woven objects of diversity are certainly still products in demand in the textile industry and consumer society, but they are just as unsuitable as an explanatory model for the coherence of the Empire and its Imperial Circles as they are for analyzing power and rule in the early modern period. In their figurative meaning of the word, patchwork carpets ignore communicative processes for decision-making just as much as they register cross-border action and design as a quantité négligeable.

Village Policing Early Modern Systems of Order in the Countryside

The collection of sources on “good” policey has, so far, illustrated and interpreted the characteristics of early modern regulatory policy with territorial or urban examples. This was examined for a period which, as the saddle period of modernity, was responsible for setting a course that can hardly be overestimated, according to which rights and duties, public and ecclesiastical order, social peace, honour, happiness, health and prosperity are partly derived to this day. This temporal framework remained in this essay, but the social perspective changed. While many publications on ordinances were tailored to the role of the nobility and the courts, the municipal councillors, the imperial ecclesiastical chancelleries or the executive offices in the Reichskreise (Imperial Circles), the focus is now on their social reflections. The perspective from “below” becomes more effective. The rural area, village cooperatives, agrarian forms of trade and action remote from capitals and centres are the new, undoubtedly no less interesting focus.

IMPERIAL DISTRICTS AS FEDERAL AND REGIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 1500–1806

The creation of the Imperial Circles (= Reichskreise) was an overdue answer to the powerlessness of the Empire and the Estates in matters of the preservation of peace in the countryside, the organization of the Supreme Court, the control of taxes, begging, the poor, customs and coin matters, the conscription of the Imperial Army, health care – formed by the medical Policey with regard to the supply of drinking water, protection against epidemics and plague – and many other points in the early modern process of civilization. These included, for example, the construction of cross-border roads and streets and the settlement of territorial prestige and border disputes. Some of these were certainly more of a requirement than an everyday practice. Since the 16th century, most of the administrative work was then carried out by the increasing competence of county councils. In combination with their territorial system of offices and government, they had new instruments of regional planning control at their disposal. For urgent tasks such as regional and supra-regional road construction, the fight against epidemics and crime, and customs, coinage or trade policy, the county councils (= Kreiskonvente) were often too “small”, especially in the territorial area of southern Germany, but the Reich as a whole was far too “large”" to find and implement practicable solutions. Up to now it was a research desideratum to classify the imperial circles into the European system of federal structures. My contribution aims to close this gap.

‘Heerloese knechten’: Unemployed Soldiers as a Security Threat in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands

The sixteenth century saw increasing problems with disbanded, unemployed soldiers (‘heerloese knechten’) in Europe. In the Holy Roman Empire they had by the middle of the century come to be regarded as the primary threat to the Eternal Public Peace (Landfrieden). This article looks at why and how unemployed soldiers became a security threat in the sixteenth-century Netherlands. It does so by analysing the developing discourse on this topic and the measures taken to combat the threat in comparison with the Empire. In practice both the Netherlands and the Empire developed a collective security regime, which depended on cooperation to maintain the peace against threats like unemployed soldiers. There is, however, no contradiction here with rulers extending their grip on their territories. But there is a clear difference between the Netherlands and the Empire. Within the latter, an appeal to the Landfrieden allowed the implementation of supra-territorial, regional security policies, from 1555 in the Imperial Circles. For the Netherlandish provinces, on the other hand, such policies for combating the unemployed soldiers remained elusive, even under the Union of Utrecht of 1579.

The Duke’s Assassin: Exile and Death of Lorenzino de’ Medici. By Stefano Dall’Aglio. Translated by Donald Weinstein.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. xx+300. $40.00.

<i>The Duke’s Assassin: Exile and Death of Lorenzino de’ Medici</i>. By Stefano Dall’Aglio. Translated by Donald Weinstein.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. xx+300. $40.00.

Reichskammergericht und Universitäten in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts

The paper deals with the profile of training of assessors (judges) in the Imperial Chamber Court of the Holy Roman Empire after the formal establishment of the court in Speyer in 1529 down to its temporary closing in 1544. Apparently, the decisive criterion for acceptance into the circle of assessors was the quality of their training. The Imperial Estates and Imperial Circles were interested in putting forward highly qualified personnel for the Imperial Chamber Court. During the course of 1530s, they began to give greater attention to the ´correct´ religious beliefs of candidates as well. This led to sharp conflicts specifically within the Imperial Districts ( Reichskreise ). In addition, it proved very difficult to recruit qualified assessors from the ranks of the nobility. In order to comply with the Imperial Court statutes, which stipulated that half of the posts at the Court were to be filled by appointees from the nobility, the qualified candidates were raised to the rank of nobleman shortly after taking up their duties. The universities of Bologna and Freiburg had a special importance in the education of the assessors. In the 15-year period under focus, some 42 percent of assessors appointed had attended the University of Bologna. Many of the assessors had even studied there together, so that networks were formed. A further network of alumni was associated with the Freiburg professor Ulrich Zasius. In contrast with earlier research, this study shows that it was not just the large number of former pupils of Zasius which had a basic formative impact on the Imperial Chamber Court. Rather, the significant factor was the long tenure of Zasius′s pupils at the Court, and their function as president or so-called Kammerrichter there. Both university-based circles also established ties with the circle of humanists on the Upper Rhine.

The ‘imperial’ girl: Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, the imperial woman and her imperial childhood

This article examines the role played by ‘imperial girls’: daughters of vice-regal representatives, consuls and ambassadors despatched by British governments to represent its interests in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. Little is known about children's responses to their imperial childhoods and they are rarely considered in transnational and imperial history. It is argued that imperial girls had a more influential and practical education than their brothers who were often absent from the family circle at boarding school. Although they did not have formal educational opportunities, girls remaining with their families learned much more about the imperial mission, about how to act within the imperial space, and the expectations placed on imperial women through the organisational impulse of philanthropy, social reform and the transnational commodity of the imperial feminist mission. This article assesses the possible impact imperial childhoods had on later imperial women using one case study: that of Lady Helen Munro Ferguson [later Viscountess Novar]. She spent a large portion of her own childhood in imperial circles and was later an imperial woman in her own right as the Governor-General's wife in Australia between 1914 and 1920, and the founder of the Australian Red Cross.

Merōfu Kannon and Her Veneration in Zen and Imperial Circles in Seventeenth-Century Japan

Merofu Kannon (Ch. Malangfu Guanyin) had a significant following and was the inspiration for numerous poems and religious pictures in China and Japan. This article (1) explores the historical background and origins of Merofu (the wife of Master Ma)-a potent symbol of female lay piety who became regarded as a manifestation of Kannon; (2) provides translations and analyses of some poems by Chan and Zen priests referring to her; (3) focuses on the worship of Merofu Kannon in the circle of Emperor Gomizuno-o and Empress Tofukumon'in. The impetus for this article were the delicately crafted oshie images of this deity made by Tofukumon'in and her step-daughter Shozan Gen'yo (founder of Rinkyuji Imperial Convent) which I discovered at temples in Kyoto and Shiga prefecture. All seem to be based on the same Chinese prototype. The second half of the article provides descriptions of the five oshie Merofu Kannon known to me and documentation concerning the circumstances of their creation and donation. Through these images, I try to illuminate the meaning of Merofu Kannon in imperial circles in seventeenth-century Japan. KEYWORDS: Merofu Kannon - oshie - Isshi Bunshu - Tofukumon'in - Lotus Sutra (ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) ALTHOUGH most Buddhist practitioners and scholars today are unfamiliar with Merofu Kannon ... (Ch. Malangfu Guanyin), in earlier centuries she had a significant following and was the inspiration for numerous poems and religious paintings in China and Japan. Chun-fang Yu examines Buddhist chronicles and does a thorough analysis of Malangfu Guanyin and the related form Yulan Guanyin ... (Jp. Gyoran Kannon) in China in her publications dealing with feminine images of Guanyin (Yu 1990, 66-71; 1994, 166-67; and 2001, 186-7, 419-21.). In contrast, there is virtually nothing written in English about Merofu (the wife of Master Ma). I began to investigate the history and iconography of this deity after seeing the depictions of Merofu Kannon made by Empress Tofukumon'in ... (1607-1678) and Princess- Abbess Mitsuko Naishinno ... (1634-1727, better known by her Buddhist name, Shozan Gen'yo ...). This article will explore the origins of Merofu Kannon, and then focus specifically on the delicately crafted oshie ... images of this deity made by two imperial women in Japan's early modern era.1 Oshie are images made of a combination of painting and pieces of woven fabric, paper, and thread glued onto paper, silk, or wood backgrounds. The origins of this craft are not fully documented, but in Japan the practice of making pictures from cutting and pasting paper and cloth is thought to date back at least to the Muromachi period (Kuwahara 1996, 2).2 Originally the term oshie was used to describe paintings or prints pasted onto folding screens or fusuma, and what we now consider oshie were called ishoe (... or ...; clothing picture) or sensaizo ... (cut-out image).3 The technique involves first cutting out forms in stiff paper and covering them with cloth, carefully folding over the edges so stray threads do not show. The cloth-covered cut-outs were then arranged and glued onto a paper or silk background to form images. It is believed that this craft began among the women of Kyoto's aristocratic classes, and gradually spread to daimyo households and eventually throughout the populace. Sometimes oshie pictures-usually secular subjects-were glued onto wooden plaques and donated to shrines and temples with prayers for good fortune, and so forth. Called oshie ema ..., these votive pictures form a special genre in Japanese religious art. The Merofu Kannon oshie images by Tofukumon'in and Shozan Gen'yo differ from oshie ema in that they were actually objects of worship and housed in lacquered wooden zushi ... (portable shrines). The images are not three-dimensional, that is, padded with cotton like the battledores and other oshie pictures seen today, but rather the fabric-covered forms were pasted flat onto a background so that they resemble paintings. …

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Nabobs Revisited: A Cultural History of British Imperialism and the Indian Question in Late‐Eighteenth‐Century Britain

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Nabobs Revisited: A Cultural History of British Imperialism and the Indian Question in Late‐Eighteenth‐Century Britain

WILLIAM D. GODSEY, JR. Nobles and Nation in Central Europe: Free Imperial Knights in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850. (New Studies in European History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. xi, 306. $85.00

William D. Godsey, Jr., has already established himself as a leading authority of the central European nobility during the revolutionary age. In this new study, he adds substantially to his reputation with an acute analysis of the divergent paths that German and Habsburg nobles took in redefining the “nation” with which they identified. For a vehicle he has selected a cross-section of the 350 families of imperial knights that played such a pivotal role in Franconian, Rhenish, and Swabian imperial circles during the prerevolutionary era. The resulting prosopographical analysis makes extensive use of manuscript collections from a score of archives scattered across Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic as well as a plethora of published primary and secondary sources. The result is a detailed reconstruction of the cultural ambience of the Reichsritterschaft, several of whose families he features as examples of a cultural odyssey that spanned the course of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

‘How are the Egyptians behaving?’: Herbert Brookes, British‐Australian

Herbert Brookes was a wealthy businessman, a distinguished patron of high culture in Melbourne society, an anti‐Labor eminence who moved comfortably in the highest of imperial circles. The richness of his papers in the National Library provides the opportunity to examine the life of a leading British‐Australian, to analyse issues of conscience and purpose that do not figure much in current historiography and perhaps to throw new light on the concerns of the generation that saw its world disrupted after 1914. Using the notion of Protestant stewardship, I have suggested that Brookes' life offers one way into the dynamics of liberalism before the Great War and of loyalism after it.

Barbarian Disturbances in North Africa in the Mid-Third Century

Gibbon describes the years that correspond with the lifetime of Cyprian of Carthage thus: ‘the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity’. On the whole the impression to be gained from the extant correspondence of Cyprian of Carthage (the eighty-two letters are to be dated between the years c.249 and 258) is not of this kind and this evidence ought to act in some degree as a brake on exaggerated descriptions of the chaos of the period. Cyprian can assume, without the slightest hint of doubt, uninterrupted ease of communications all around the Mediterranean, freely cross-referring to other public letters of his on the assumption that they must have come the way of his correspondents. Similarly he is prepared to claim of an open letter written by the Roman clergy that it ‘has been circulated throughout the entire world and has reached the knowledge of every Church and of all the brethren’. The official correspondence which Cyprian conducted is indeed of notable breadth and frequency—among the letters which we chance to have figure communications with Christian communities in Spain, in Gaul, in Cappadocia (all suggesting previous correspondence with these areas), and of course in Rome and elsewhere in Italy. As Metropolitan of the African Church he sends to Rome on one occasion a list of all the orthodox African bishops and their sees, no doubt in order to keep the Roman records up-to-date—and also their address-list for their communications. Furthermore, after the abortively threatening persecution of Gallus the regular meetings in Carthage of the African synod appear to have been resumed. At Carthage, at any rate, life appears to have been little affected by the military and administrative débâcle that was becoming evident in imperial circles and from Cyprian’s point of view the Mediterranean world still appeared to be very much a unity.