The Holy Roman Empire Reconsidered
The Holy Roman Empire has often been anachronistically assumed to have been defunct long before it was actually dissolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The authors of this volume reconsider the significance of the Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Their research reveals the continual importance of the Empire as a stage (and audience) for symbolic performance and communication; as a well utilized problem-solving and conflict-resolving supra-governmental institution; and as an imagined political, religious, and cultural "world" for contempora
History
1 online resource (346 pages)
9781845459925, 184545992X
727649480
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, RECONSIDERED; CONTENTS; ILLUSTRATIONS; SERIES PREFACE; PREFACE; CONTRIBUTORS; INTRODUCTION; SECTION I Presence, Performance, & Text; CHAPTER 1 Discontinuities; CHAPTER 2 Overloaded Interaction; CHAPTER 3 Princes' Power, Aristocratic Norms, and Personal Eccentricities; SECTION 2 Symbolic Meaning, Identity, & Memory; CHAPTER 4 The Illuminated Reich; CHAPTER 5 The Production of Knowledge about Confessions; CHAPTER 6 Staging Individual Rank and Corporate Identity; CHAPTER 7 The Importance of Being Seated; SECTION 3 Ceremony, Procedure, & Legitimation. CHAPTER 8 Ceremony and DissentCHAPTER 9 Contested Bodies; CHAPTER 10 Conflict and Consensus Around German Princes' Unequal Marriages; CHAPTER 11 Power and Good Governance; SECTION 4 Imperial Institutions, Confession, & Power Relations; CHAPTER 12 Marital Affairs as a Public Matter within the Holy Roman Empire; CHAPTER 13 The Corpus Evangelicorum; CHAPTER 14 Gallican Longings; CONCLUSION; Glossary; Bibliography; INDEX