441ImperialReform

Reforming the Holy Roman Empire

Image: Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Maximilian I (1519). Oil on panel. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Image Source: Olga's Gallery.

The Reichstag at Worms, 1495
The Imperial Executive Council, 1500-1502, 1522-1524
Conclusion
Suggestions for Further Reading

Most accounts of the Reformation's origins focus on earlier efforts to reform the church, and ask whether or not the Reformation emerged from them, directly or indirectly. What is less often appreciated is the extent to which the Reformation was enmeshed in the politics of secular reform in the Holy Roman Empire. For several decades prior to the "Luther Affair," the political life of central Europe was absorbed with a series of efforts to reform the institutions of law-making and government within the Holy Roman Empire. This reform movement took many forms and grew out of a diverse set of interests. These included concerns

With the growing power of territorial princes in Germany in relation to the Emperor and to imperial institutions in general;
With the general lawlessness of fifteenth-century Germany and the destructiveness of private wars between feuding princes and nobles;
With the dynastic ambitions of the increasingly powerful Habsburg lineage, which through the marriage of Emperor Maximilian I to the heiress Mary of Burgundy acquired kingship over the immensely prosperous Netherlands and the region of Franche-Comté;
With the lack of any effective means to defend the Empire militarily against the ever-growing threat of invasion by the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Debate over how to to reform the Empire had been increasing in intellectual circles and among ruling elites since the early fifteenth century. Among the most widely circulated reform proposals were the anonymous and semi-apocalyptic Reformatio Sigismundi (c. 1438) and the De concordatia catholica (1433) by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. The latter argued that the Empire was succumbing to a “mortal disease” of general disharmony. This disease threatened the Empire with death. If it were not cured, argued Cusa,

...people will look for the Empire in Germany and not find it there; and as a result strangers will occupy our lands and will divide us up among themselves, and in this way we shall become subject to another nation.

Early attempts at reforms were made under Emperor Sigismund (1410-1437), who had presided over the Council of Constance. That assembly had offered a model for how the Empire might go about the project of reform. Sigismund tried create a reform alliance with the German cities, but his efforts failed in the face of resistance to reform from the Imperial Electors. From the 1450s on, the initiative came from princes eager to place more restrictions on the power of the Emperor as part of a reform package. When an imperial reform movement emerged in the late 1480s, two coalitions formed:

1) The Emperor’s Party:
The first group, consisting of the Habsburg Emperor and his allies among the imperial cities and the weaker princes of the realm, supported reforms that would (a) enable the Emperor to exploit Germany's considerable resources more effectively than in the past, through such innovations as a regular system of imperial taxation; and that would (b) enable the Emperor to administer Germany in absentia, such as an imperial governing council, if it could be kept under the Emperor's control. In short, Maximilian I and his party wanted an Empire that would maintain the peace during his absences, to the benefit of his dynasty, and at minimal cost to Austria.

2) The Princes’ Party:
Led by Nicolas of Cusa’s pupil, Archbishop-Elector Berthold von Henneberg of Mainz, the imperial Archchancellor, the princes’ party saw reform as a means to give the Empire a more clearly federal structure. The main instrument of such a reform would be an imperial court system that would put an end to private wars and subject conflict among princes to the arbitration of courts of law. In addition, the Princes' party envisioned a standing administrative council for the Empire that was capable of acting with considerable executive autonomy from the Emperor.

This characterization of the interests involved only begins to describe the complexity of reform politics during the last decade of the fifteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth. An example: as archduke of Austria, Emperor Maximilian was also a prince of the realm, and in this capacity he shared many interests with other princes of similar power and stature. Reforms that served him as a prince might benefit the other princes as well. But as Emperor, Maximilian could also make common cause with the small-fry lords of the Empire, the imperial knights, as a counterweight against the more powerful princes.
A deadlock formed between the two sides, which was broken when the Emperor’s financial needs proved so great that he could no longer afford to continue without an infusion of new money from the Reichstag; the first step toward reform was taken in 1486, when after long negotiations the Reichstag proclaimed a 10-year ban on private wars between lords. This was the first in a series of general, imperial truces and would provide the legal basis for reforms of the Empire's judicial system.

The Reichstag at Worms, 1495
But the most important and lasting moves toward reform were taken at an assembly of the imperial estates held at the Rhineland city of Worms in 1495. At the forefront of its efforts stood the problem of private warfare between princes, nobles, and free cities. To address the problem, the assembly adopted a series of far-reaching changes. To begin with, the Reichstag proclaimed the “Perpetual Peace,” which built on the earlier truce and decreed that in future, no member of the Empire should feud with or cause harm to any other. Violations of this “Perpetual Peace” would be treated in courts of law, not on the field of battle. By this means, the Reichstag sought to put an end to feuding among the princes and free cities of Germany.

The problem was particularly acute in central, southern and western regions of Germany, where lesser nobles clung to the right of armed self-defense;
The recently elected Emperor, Maximilian I, made common cause with the princes of the realm to assert princes' monopoly over the legitimate use of violence within their territories and to end the lower nobility's right of armed self-defense.

To deal with disputes between princes of the Empire, a supreme Imperial Chamber Court (Reichskammergericht) was established and given a seat in the city of Frankfurt. Emperor Maximilian -- vulnerable due to several simultaneous wars -- was forced to concede a large measure of control over the new tribunal to the princes, who appointed some of the judges and who (in theory) financed the whole operation.

Like the reformed Reichstag itself, this new institution built on the precedent of existing imperial courts seated in the imperial cities of Speyer and Rottweil.
According to its original code of procedure, the new Imperial Chamber Court consisted of 25 judges: a chief justice, two presiding deputies, and two associate justices who would be appointed by the Emperor; of the remaining 20 justices, two were nominated by the Emperor (as a prince of the realm), six by the Electors; and twelve by the remaining members of the Reichstag, grouped into regional districts called “Imperial Circles” (Reichskreise).

The Imperial Chamber Court's primary function was the arbitration of conflict between princes;
This, too, helped to solidify the judicial powers of the more powerful princes, whose subjects could not appeal to the Imperial Chamber Court.
The situation was different with respect to the smaller princes of central and southwestern Germany, however: a majority of them enjoyed no such immunity from the Imperial Chamber Court's jurisdiction.

The Imperial Chamber Court would prove to be one of the most enduring accomplishments of the reform era: within a few decades, it managed to put an end to the destructive feuding characteristic of the fifteenth century and after that continued to function as a court of arbitration and appeal until the Empire's destruction under Napoleon.

The Reichstag of 1495 also addressed a deeper problem, that of establishing its own authority and regularizing its own operations, much as the Council of Constance's decree Frequens had attempted to do for the government of the church. There was nothing particularly new about assemblies of the imperial estates: for centuries, Emperors had summoned assemblies of dependent vassals and magnates to confer and resolve conflicts.

Building on the precedent of recent diets, the 1495 assembly at Worms laid down the legal foundation of its own institutional permanence: procedures for deliberation and voting in the Reichstag were regularized; the membership was fixed and lists were drawn up of those territories of the realm that were entitled to send delegates to each diet.
From then on, the Reichstag would be divided into two separate houses (Councils or curiae) which debated in secret:

The Council of Electors (Kurfürstenrat)
The Council of Princes (Fürstenrat)

This division codified a hierarchy of among the princes of Empire; it also reflected the exclusion of the lower nobility from active participation in decision making at the imperial level; finally, it reflected the exclusion of imperial free cities, whose representatives were allowed to attend theReichstag, but only as non-voting observers.
By the same token, it was a system geared toward the production of compromises: the complex system of councils, caucuses and voting guaranteed that no resolution could pass which seriously compromised the interests of any member of the Empire. On the other hand, the costs of ignoring the Reichstag or defying its resolutions were potentially grave. Thus most of the imperial estates had both an interest in participating and an interest in achieving compromises.

The Reformation would test this capacity to the limit.

The Imperial Executive Council (Reichsregiment), 1500-1502, 1522-1524
The reforms did not end in 1495. The Reichstag also established the “Common Penny”, a direct, universal property and poll tax, meant to finance the imperial court system and the common defense. Finally, in 1500, Maximilian could no longer resist the pressure to establish a Imperial Executive Council (Reichsregiment), seated in the imperial city of Nürnberg, which was meant to operate continuously as a governing council, on behalf of the Reichstag and with only a minimum of interference from the Emperor.

The Imperial Executive Council was to include the seven Electors (or their representatives) and 13 members appointed by the German princes. A representative of the Emperor would preside.
But the Imperial Executive Council dissolved after only two years, in 1502, when it expired for lack of funding from the great princes; a similar fate awaited much of the rest, too.
As a countermeasure to the Imperial Chamber Court, Emperor Maximilian I in 1498 set up a supreme court under his own control, Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat); thus from that year on, two supreme courts existed in Germany, and would continue to compete until the end of the Empire in 1806.
Much as they might have liked the idea of fiscal and judicial institutions that would limit the Emperor's power, the princes were reluctant to support funding mechanisms such as the “Common Penny” which would be assessed without regard to traditional exemptions and collected by authorities not fully under their own control. Soon after its promulgation, the princes were able to replace the “Common Penny” with a fixed taxation schedule that left the actual apportionment and collection to princely governments. This allowed traditional exemptions, for example of the nobility, to remain in place.

A second attempt to establish an Imperial Governing Council in 1522 failed after only a few years in operation: as a concession to the German Electors for making him Emperor, Maximilian's grandson Charles V agreed to accept the existing reforms to the Empire -- including the Imperial Aulic Council -- to rule in accordance with imperial law, and to permit the reconstitution of the Imperial Governing Council. A new Governing Council convened in Nürnberg in 1522 and began reviving reform ideas from twenty years before; but as in 1502, lack of support from the Electors and the princes undermined its efficacy, and the council quickly lapsed into obscurity.

Conclusion
When Archbishop Berthold von Henneberg died in 1512, much of the initiative reform expired as well. On balance, the results of the reform movement were mixed: few had been satisfied with the existing state of German affairs; many, if not most elites wanted change in the direction of greater peace and security. But few could agree on proper course of reform, and fewer still were in any position to impose their version of reform on the rest. In the end, the Empire got a little of everything: new federal institutions, some of them quite effective, but no strong federal power; a stronger monarch in the person of Maximilian I and his successor, Charles V, but not a strong monarchy.

Another lasting effect of the reform movement was to entrench emerging regional differences in the Empire's political culture and structure. Already in the fifteenth century, the northern and eastern regions of the Empire were dominated by relatively large duchies and counties, in which the judicial monopoly of dukes and counts was relatively well established. During the period of reform, these powerful, northern princes still risked relatively little by failing to participate in a Reichstag or adhering to its resolutions. But small-fry princes and free cities located in the politically fragmented regions of central, western, and southern Germany enjoyed no such impunity. They could refuse to pay the Common Penny or honor Reichstag resolutions only at grave risk. The result was to encourage the northeast-southwest bifurcation of Germany: large territorial states in the north and east, an extremely fragmented political landscape with far livelier federal institutions of justice and decision making in the southwest.

But we must resist the temptation to seek the origins of all the Empire's strengths and weaknesses in the outcomes of the imperial reform movement. Most modern diagnoses of success and failure take as their yardstick the degree to which a particular change moved Germany in the direction of national state-building and ethno-political unification (according to one version); others have diagnosed success and failure according to the standards of social or economic "progress" toward a particular world-historical goal. But as Thomas Brady and others have pointed out, the Empire's reformers had no such goals in mind. If Maximilian I had had his way, an entirely different political landscape would have emerged from the reform era, with an enlarged and powerful Austria--stretching from what is now Belgium and the Netherlands and what is now western France across what is now southern Germany into what is now Austria--at the core of a federation of cities and communes throughout the Empire. This project failed, not so much because it did not lead to nation building or social transformation, but because Reformation and the religious divisions it produced shattered its foundations and chances for realization^[1].

1. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., "The Common Man and the Lost Austria in the West," 338, 350.

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