Sources
- Zippelius, Reinhold. Kleine deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, 7th. ed. Munich: 2006 ISBN 978-3-406-47638-9.
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The Statutum in favorem principum ("Statute in favour of the princes") of 1231, reaffirmed in 1232, counts as one of the most important sources of law of the Holy Roman Empire on German territory.
In May 1231 Frederick II's son Henry, King of Germany, issued the grant under pressure from the German secular princes during his rebellion against his father. The terms were very similar to those conceded to the ecclesiastical princes or bishops in the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis at the time of the Henry's coronation (in 1220), conferring similar rights. Frederick II confirmed the grant in May 1232.
In this law, the Emperor relinquished a number of important Royal rights ("Regalia") to the secular princes. Among other things, they received the rights to mint coins and levy tolls in the German part of the Holy Roman Empire. In particular, however, Frederick granted them the right of approval over any legislation proposed in future by the Emperor.
The decreeing of this law together with the previous Confoederatio made the power and influence of the territorial princes in relation to the Empire and the towns extraordinarily great. Frederick's aim was to leave his Empire north of the Alps secure under the direct rule of the princes, allowing him to concentrate his efforts on the southern part of the Empire. This rule of the land by the princes was nevertheless secured at the expense of the centralised power of the monarchy. As a result, this law is the basis of federalism in Germany.
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The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed in the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Hohenstaufen dynasty, also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynasty's most prominent rulers – Frederick I (1155), Henry VI (1191) and Frederick II (1220) – ascended the imperial throne and also reigned over Italy and Burgundy. The non-contemporary name of 'Hohenstaufen' is derived from the family's Hohenstaufen Castle on the Hohenstaufen mountain at the northern fringes of the Swabian Jura, near the town of Göppingen. Under Hohenstaufen rule, the Holy Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent from 1155 to 1268.
A prince-bishop is a bishop who is also the civil ruler of some secular principality and sovereignty, as opposed to Prince of the Church itself, a title associated with cardinals. Since 1951, the sole extant prince-bishop has been the Bishop of Urgell, Catalonia, who has remained ex officio one of two co-princes of Andorra, along with the French president.
Frederick II was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of emperor Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Queen Constance of Sicily of the Hauteville dynasty.
The history of Schleswig-Holstein consists of the corpus of facts since the pre-history times until the modern establishing of the Schleswig-Holstein state.
The Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen — not to be confused with the modern Archdiocese of Hamburg, founded in 1994 — was an ecclesiastical principality (787–1566/1648) of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church that after its definitive secularization in 1648 became the hereditary Duchy of Bremen. The prince-archbishopric, which was under the secular rule of the archbishop, consisted of about a third of the diocesan territory. The city of Bremen was de facto and de jure not part of the prince-archbishopric. Most of the prince-archbishopric lay rather in the area to the north of the city of Bremen, between the Weser and Elbe rivers. Even more confusingly, parts of the prince-archbishopric belonged in religious respect to the neighbouring Diocese of Verden, making up 10% of its diocesan territory.
An Imperial State or Imperial Estate was a part of the Holy Roman Empire with representation and the right to vote in the Imperial Diet. Rulers of these Estates were able to exercise significant rights and privileges and were "immediate", meaning that the only authority above them was the Holy Roman Emperor. They were thus able to rule their territories with a considerable degree of autonomy.
The Privilegium maius was a medieval document forged in 1358 or 1359 at the behest of Duke Rudolf IV of Austria (1358–65) of the House of Habsburg, claiming the family has the right to rule Rome because of land rights granted to them by Nero and Julius Caesar. It was essentially a modified version of the Privilegium minus issued by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1156, which had elevated the former March of Austria into a duchy. In a similar way, the Privilegium maius elevated the duchy into an Archduchy of Austria.
Henry (VII) (1211 – 12? February 1242), a member of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was King of Sicily from 1212 until 1217 and King of Germany (formally Rex Romanorum) from 1220 until 1235, as son and co-ruler of Emperor Frederick II. He was the seventh Henry to rule Germany, but in order to avoid confusion with the Luxembourg emperor Henry VII, he is usually numbered Henry (VII).
The Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis was decreed on 26 April 1220 by Frederick II as a concession to the German bishops in return for their co-operation in the election of his son Henry as King. It was an important source of law of the Holy Roman Empire, and was counted among its constitutional documents by the editors of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
The House of Luxembourg or Luxembourg dynasty was a royal family of the Holy Roman Empire in the Late Middle Ages, whose members between 1308 and 1437 ruled as kings of Germany and Holy Roman emperors as well as kings of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. Their rule was twice interrupted by the rival House of Wittelsbach.
The German Emperor was the official title of the head of state and hereditary ruler of the German Empire. A specifically chosen term, it was introduced with the 1 January 1871 constitution and lasted until the official abdication of Wilhelm II on 9 November 1918. The Holy Roman Emperor is sometimes also called "German Emperor" when the historical context is clear, as derived from the Holy Roman Empire's official name of "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" from 1512.
Prince of the Holy Roman Empire was a title attributed to a hereditary ruler, nobleman or prelate recognised as such by the Holy Roman Emperor.
The Duchy of Austria was a medieval principality of the Holy Roman Empire, established in 1156 by the Privilegium Minus, when the Margraviate of Austria (Ostarrîchi) was detached from Bavaria and elevated to a duchy in its own right. After the ruling dukes of the House of Babenberg became extinct in male line, there was as much as three decades of rivalry on inheritance and rulership, until the German king Rudolf I took over the dominion as the first monarch of the Habsburg dynasty in 1276. Thereafter, Austria became the patrimony and ancestral homeland of the dynasty and the nucleus of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1453, the archducal title of the Austrian rulers, invented by Duke Rudolf IV in the forged Privilegium Maius of 1359, was officially acknowledged by the Habsburg emperor Frederick III.
The (Princely) County of Tyrol was an estate of the Holy Roman Empire established about 1140. After 1253, it was ruled by the House of Gorizia and from 1363 by the House of Habsburg. In 1804, the County of Tyrol, unified with the secularised prince-bishoprics of Trent and Brixen, became a crown land of the Austrian Empire. From 1867, it was a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
Erbreichsplan is a German word meaning "plan for a hereditary empire". It refers to the proposal of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (1191–1197), to abolish imperial election and make the Holy Roman Empire hereditary within his family, the Staufer. This would effectively have combined the Empire and its three kingdoms—Germany, Italy and Burgundy—with the hereditary kingdom of Sicily, which belonged to Henry and his heirs in right of his wife, the heiress Constance. Since Sicily was a papal fief, this plan was strongly opposed by the Papacy. It also failed to generate sufficient support among the imperial princes.
The Imperial Diet was the deliberative body of the Holy Roman Empire. It was not a legislative body in the contemporary sense; its members envisioned it more like a central forum where it was more important to negotiate than to decide.
In the Holy Roman Empire, the Great Interregnum was a period of time following the death of Frederick II where the succession of the Holy Roman Empire was contested and fought over between pro- and anti-Hohenstaufen factions. Starting around 1250 with the death of Frederick II, conflict over who was the rightful emperor and King of the Romans would continue into the 1300s until Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected emperor and secured succession for his son Wenceslaus. This period saw a multitude of emperors and kings be elected or propped up by rival factions and princes, with many kings and emperors having short reigns or reigns that became heavily contested by rival claimants.
