Indice

Ricerche

• Quaglioni Diego - Le «usure dotali» nella dottrina di diritto comune / Die «usure dotali» in der Lehre vom Gemeinen Recht
• Frigerio Alessandra - Umanesimo del diritto: il «De modo in iure studendi» di Giovanni Battista Caccialupi (1467) / Rechtshumanismus: «De modo in iure studenti» von Giovanni Battista Caccialupi (1467)
• Pastore Alessandro - Scegliere a chi donare. La selezione dell’assistenza nell’Italia moderna / Wem geben. Die Entscheidung für eine Hilfseinrichtung im frühneuzeitlichen Italien
• Lorandini Cinzia - Mercati d’oltralpe. Flussi commerciali tra Italia settentrionale e Mitteleuropa nel secolo XVIII / Märkte nördlich der Alpen. Handelsbeziehungen zwischen Norditalien und Mitteleuropa im 18. Jahrhundert
• Carta Paolo - Lo spirito ‘religioso’ del diritto: Salvatore Satta e Piero Calamandrei / Der ‘religiöse’ Geist des Rechts: Salvatore Satta und Piero Calamandrei
• Sala Roberto - Il controllo statale sull’immigrazione di manodopera italiana nella Germania federale / Die staatliche Kontrolle über die Einwanderung italienischer Gastarbeiter in die Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Temi

• Quaglioni Diego - Il fondamento giuridico della potestà ecclesiastica. Spunti dalla canonistica classica / Die Rechtsgrundlage der Kirchengewalt. Anregungen aus der klassischen Kanonistik
• Willoweit Dietmar - Rechtsgrundlagen der weltlichen Herrschaft geistlicher Fürsten im Mittelalter / Fondamenti giuridici del potere temporale dei principi ecclesiastici nel medioevo
• Otmar von Aretin Karl - Reichsverfassung und Mindermächtige. Geistliche Fürsten und italienische Vasallen als Stützen der kaiserlichen Reichspolitik / Costituzione dell’Impero e potenze minori. Principi ecclesiastici e vassalli italiani come sostenitori della politica imperiale
• Curzel Emanuele - Attraverso le Alpi. Mobilità clericale fra XIII e XV secolo / Über die Alpen. Klerikale Mobilität vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert
• Rankl Helmut - Das Kirchenregiment der weltlichen Fürsten im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Das Beispiel Bayern / Il governo ecclesiastico dei principi temporali nei secoli XV e XVI. L’esempio della Baviera
• Flachenecker Helmut - Kirchengeschichtsschreibung zwischen Wissenschaft, Hagiographie und Politik. Historisch-statistisch oder religiösstaatstragend? / Storiografia ecclesiastica fra scienza, agiografia e politica: un approccio storico-statistico o politico-religioso?
• Wüst Wolgang - Fürstliche Stiftsherrschaft in der Frühmoderne. Ein Vergleich süd- und nordalpiner Verhältnisse in Augsburg, Brixen, Eichstätt, Konstanz und Trient / Sovranità principesco-vescovile nella prima età moderna. Un confronto tra le situazioni al di qua e al di là delle Alpi: Augusta, Bressanone, Costanza e Trento
• Jaitner Klaus - Kontinuität oder Diskontinuität päpstlicher Deutschlandpolitik von 1592 bis 1644? / Continuità o discontinuità della politica pontificia verso l’Impero germanico dal 1592 al 1644
• Walther Gerrit - Diskrete Bündnispartner. Zum Verhältnis zwischen geistlichen Stiften und Ritterschaft im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung / Alleati discreti. Le relazioni fra poteri ecclesiastici e ceto dei cavalieri all’epoca dei conflitti di religione
• Schmid Alois - Kirche, Territorium und Dynastie in der Geschichtsschreibung des 17. Jahrhunderts / Chiesa, territorio e dinastia nella storiografia del XVII secolo
• Donati Claudio - Chiesa italiana e vescovi d’Italia dal XVI al XVIII secolo. Tra interpretazioni storiografiche e prospettive di ricerca / Die italienische Kirche und die italienischen Bischöfe vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert: historiographische Interpretationen und Forschungsperspektiven
• Koller Alexander - «… ut infirma confirmaret, disrupta consolidaret, depravata converteret». Grundlinien der Deutschlandpolitik Gregors XIII. / «… ut infirma confirmaret, disrupta consolidaret, depravata converteret». Linee di fondo della politica di Gregorio XIII nei confronti dell’Impero germanico

Discussioni

• Gehler Michael - Im Spannungsfeld zwischen Region, Nation und Europa. Alcide De Gasperi, Südtirol, das Trentino und Österreich (1945-1954) / Tra regione, nazione ed Europa: Alcide De Gasperi, l’Alto Adige, il Trentino e l’Austria (1945-1954)
• Pombeni Paolo - La storia, le circostanze e le leggi della politica. Qualche considerazione sul saggio di Michael Gehler / Die Geschichte, die Umstände und die Gesetze der Politik. Einige Überlegungen zum Aufsatz von Michael Gehler

Materiali

• Cao Gian Mario - Pico della Mirandola goes to Germany. With an edition of Gianfrancesco Pico’s «De reformandis moribus oratio» / Pico della Mirandola va in Germania. Con un’edizione del «De reformandis moribus oratio» di Gianfrancesco Pico
• Federico Maria Albina - L’Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Feltre e il fondo «a parte Imperii» / Das Archivio della Curia Vescovile in Feltre und die Abteilung a «parte Imperii»
• Luzzi Serena - Il «viaggiatore filosofo» e il conte mecenate. Lettere inedite di Carlo Antonio Pilati a Giovanni Vigilio Thun-Hohenstein di Castel Braghèr (1775-1777) / «Der reisende Philosoph und der fürstliche Mäzen». Unveröffentlichte Briefe von Carlo Antonio Pilati an Giovanni Vigilio Thun-Hohenstein von Castel Braghèr

Download n. 30, 2004

Abstract

Karl Otmar von Aretin - Reichsverfassung und Mindermächtige. Geistliche Fürsten und italienische Vasallen als Stützen der kaiserlichen Reichspolitik1
This essay explores the role of the «Mindermächtige» – the lesser princes, the Reichsgrafen, the ecclesiastical princes, the imperial cities – in the Alte Reich. Essentially, the emperor’s influence in the Reich relied on these «Mindermächtige» and when they disappeared together with the ecclesiastical princes in the wake of the secularization and the Napoleonic upheavals, the Reich was no longer governable by a catholic emperor. As a result, Emperor Francis II felt compelled to declare the Reich defunct on August 6, 1806.

Gian Mario Cao - Pico della Mirandola goes to Germany. With an edition of Gianfrancesco Pico’s «De reformandis moribus oratio»
The aim of this article is to reassess Gianfrancesco Pico’s relationship with the German-speaking world. Particularly considered are Pico’s correspondence with scholars and printers (such as Willibald Pirckheimer and Thomas Wolf); the several German editions of both Gianfrancesco and Giovanni Pico’s writings; and Gianfrancesco’s frequent traveling to Germany (at least seven trips between 1502 and 1517). The article also provides the edition of De reformandis moribus, an oration concerning the moral decay of the Church that Pico addressed to Pope Leo X during the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) and was first published in Alsatia in 1520. The text presented here is based upon a philological examination of all the nine surviving copies, namely a Casanatense codex and eight printed editions (1520, 1523, 1535, 1601, 1606, 1610, 1690, and 1817), the latter mostly published north of the Alps as well as included in collections strongly critical of Catholicism and subsequently put on the Index.

Paolo Carta - Lo spirito ‘religioso’ del diritto: Salvatore Satta e Piero Calamandrei
The uninterrupted dialogue between two of the most important Italian jurists and politicians of the 20th century, Piero Calamandrei and Salvatore Satta, leads to the discovery of a humanistic tradition that still comprehends law in lay terms as religio.

Emanuele Curzel - Attraverso le Alpi. Mobilità clericale fra XIII e XV secolo
This essay has as its object clerical mobility in the late middle ages in the alpine area and tries to distinguish between different historical phases and different typologies. It is known that between the 9th and the 12th centuries the bishops’ sees of northern and central Italy were often occupied by nobles from southern Germany; after the eclipse of imperial power (second half of the 13th century), there was a significant return of bishops from the north to Italian cities in the 14th century, spurred by the activism of the Luxembourg-Bohemia and Austrian Habsburg dynasties. Generally the cathedral canons were expressions of the ruling classes of the single cities: in Trento, however, many came from the German speaking area, also because of Tyrolean interference into the bishopric. The clergy’s attitude towards the cure of souls needs to be further investigated; the clergy’s increased mobility – building careers and working in areas very far from home – on the other hand, is a fact.

Claudio Donati - Chiesa italiana e vescovi d’Italia dal XVI al XVIII secolo. Tra interpretazioni storiografiche e prospettive di ricerca
In the introductory section of this essay, the research of the last decades about the head offices of the Papal Curia and the structures of the Italian episcopates, in the period from the 16th to the 18th century is presented and discussed. The next section deals with a number of questions regarding the ties between the Curia, the episcopates, and the Italian States. The following theories are explored: a) the close connection between the Curia and the episcopates as the crucial element characterizing the Italian Church in the Early Modern period; b) the fact that in the same period Italy as a whole was «suburban» with respect to Rome, which meant that the Pope and the Curia exercised their authority and jurisdiction in many matters over most of the Italian States, and c) that also the Italian Church experienced a kind of a «episcopalian» stage in the last decades of the 17th and at beginning of the 18th century.

Maria Albina Federico - L’Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Feltre e il fondo «a parte Imperii»
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the controversies regarding the juridical competence of the house of Austria in those territories politically dependent on authorities whose points of reference were – from an ecclesiastical point of view – Venetian bishops had increasing influence on the government of the dioceses bordering the Venetian Terraferma. This also becomes evident in the diocese of Feltre where the bishops gradually became aware of the importance of separately considering the territories of the diocese politically tied to the Empire. The structure of the Archivio della Curia Vescovile in Feltre reveals how the growing «political» awareness of the bishops of Feltre in the government of the dioceses determined the gradual putting in place of a collection «a parte Imperii», in order to separately collect the correspondence coming from the imperial part of the diocese. This collection was added to the miscellaneous volumes which constitute the archive’s main corpus. The stratification of different methodologies in the papers of the «pars Imperii» highlights, on the one hand, the role played by the chancellors and the archivists of the curia, and on the other, the changes in the criteria for collecting documents due to political changes.

Helmut Flachenecker - Kirchengeschichtsschreibung zwischen Wissenschaft, Hagiographie und Politik. Historisch-statistisch oder religiös-staatstragend?
There was a vast increase in ecclesiastical historiography in the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe. The main reason for this development was the birth of the different religious denominations, which made it necessary to have distinctive proof of evidence for former rights and possessions in religious and juridical arguments. In Germany and in Italy a varied, historical-statistical church historiography developed. Ferdiand Ughelli’s Italia Sacra concentrated on the history of the bishops and dioceses. Ughelli and his German colleagues all had the problem that neither a unified Germania nor Italia actually existed, so that their works mirror a unity that did not correspond to the political reality. Furthermore, growing numbers of hagiographic books were published in the 18th century as saints enjoyed an increasing importance as state patrons. Bavaria Sancta and Germania Sacra stood next to each other: whereas the description of a terra sancta was oriented along Episcopal boundaries, the terra sancta description was younger and focused on a secular territory.

Alessandra Frigerio - Umanesimo del diritto: il «De modo in iure studendi» di Giovanni Battista Caccialupi (1467)
Historiography on juridical humanism has for some time felt the necessity of a complete restoration of the writings de modo studendi in iure. They are of primary importance not only for cultural history but also for the history of the university and their passage from the middle ages to the modern period. The de modo studendi in iure are genuine methodological and scholastic manuals and precisely depict the political, social, and cultural function to which the jurists felt called. They thus entered into the so-called intellectual «disputa delle arti», which has not been investigated enough, but which in reality is a dispute on the law and the jurisdictionalization of culture. The affirmation of scientific supremacy and the supremacy of the jurist’s category that accompanied it, still today characterize the age of humanism, an age where the old and the new coexist, without that unnatural opposition of elements on which the constructions of 19th and 20th century historiography rested. Giovanni Battista Caccialupi’s De modo in iure studendi is an outstanding example of this.

Michael Gehler - Im Spannungsfeld zwischen Region, Nation und Europa. Alcide De Gasperi, Südtirol, das Trentino und Österreich (1945-1954)
In 2004, the 50th anniversary of Alcide De Gasperi’s death was marked by numerous ceremonies and conferences. On September 5, 1946, Karl Gruber and Alcide De Gasperi signed the Paris Treaty, which is viewed rather critically in Tyrol and South Tyrol whereas the judgment of Austrian diplomacy and politics is another one. Vienna’s relationship with Rome could not consist solely in the South Tyrol question; there were many reasons for constructing a good relationship with Italy: commerce, security agreements, and anti-Communism. This was manifest in the fine relations between the Österreichische Volkspartei and the Democrazia Cristiana. Repeatedly the Austrian Ambassador in Rome Johannes von Schwarzenberg (1947-1955) mentioned De Gasperis difficulties due to Italy’s precarious internal situation caused by secession tendencies inside the DC and by Communist vote gains. Italy’s dependence on the USA became evident and that little energy was left for South Tyrol. During the Cold War, NATO-Italy played something of a protector role for Austria. Its independence needed to be safeguarded to circumvent a too strong dependence from Germany. De Gasperi was neither an Italian nationalist, as the Austrians often portray him, nor a friend of South Tyrol’s, as Gruber and the early SVP-leadership had hoped: he was a politician devoted to Italian reason of state, a convinced Trentino regionalist and only in his late years a passionate «European». For South Tyrol his 1951 conversion to «Europeism» came too late. The Paris Treaty is not its child, even though decades later they were again and again referred to together.

Klaus Jaitner - Kontinuität oder Diskontinuität päpstlicher. Deutschlandpolitik von 1592 bis 1644?
This brief study of Roman policy-making concerning Germany between 1592 and 1644, clearly shows popes Clement VIII and Gregory XV quite similarly engaged in active policy on the one hand and the less ambitious and more passive actions by Paul V and Urban VIII on the other. Hence a wave-like movement of intervention and non-intervention can be observed, in accordance with the coalitions the popes formed against their direct predecessors in order to increase and control their power and resources. For instance, in 1621 the relations, friends, and clients of the Aldobrandini family were immediately attached to the Ludovisi, and Giovanni Battista Agucchi, cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini’s former major-domo, became a new and most influential secretary of state. Not only did this wave-movement influence the careers of the members of the curia Romana, but it also seems to have shaped the pattern of German papal policy, despite existing constant elements.

Alexander Koller - «… ut infirma confirmaret, disrupta consolidaret, depravata converteret». Grundlinien der Deutschlandpolitik Gregors XIII.
This essay deals with the reshaping of the policies of the Holy See regarding Germany during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572-85). To begin with, it discusses the institutional framework at the beginning of the pontificate (notably, the revival of the Congregation for the Affairs of Germany, and the reform of the Roman Collegium Germanicum where young men where educated for their service as priests in the Empire). Secondly, it describes the origins and the chief tasks of the two most significant new nunciatures (Graz, 1580, and Cologne, 1584). The setting-up of new diplomatic representations in the Empire by the Holy See became necessary when the scope for action of the nunciature at the Emperor’s court, which since the beginning of the sixteenth century was responsible for the whole of the Empire, was becoming more and more limited. Not only was the imperial residence located inconveniently at the periphery (moving between Prague and Vienna), but the twofold nature of the rule of the Emperor – as sovereign of the Empire and territorial prince – now had a negative impact. Since the religious division of the Empire was established in the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555), the Emperor also had to consider the concerns of the Protestant princes and territories. From now on any cooperation with Rome in ecclesiastical and confessional matters was only possible for him in his capacity as territorial prince of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary.

Cinzia Lorandini - Mercati d’oltralpe. Flussi commerciali tra Italia settentrionale e Mitteleuropa nel secolo XVIII
The entrepreneurial experience of the Salvadori family brings evidence to the pivotal role played by «alt Tirol» in the 18th century in cultural and economic exchange between Italian regions and middle-European ones. When the brothers Valentino and Isidoro Salvadori first settled in Trento in 1664, they were only two minor merchants operating on a local basis. They managed five shops in South Tyrol, but also participated in the transit trade and attended the Bozen fairs, getting in touch with Italian and middle-European operators. Far from specializing in a particular product or activity, the firm manufactured tobacco and silk, traded a variety of goods, and was involved in financial activities. Only in the early 1780s was the decision adopted to concentrate on silk production and trade, as well as on the relative exchange activity. Collecting the produce of many local silk manufacturers, the Salvadori became «Verleger» of international prestige, devoted to providing the textile factories north of the Alps with raw and manufactured silks.

Serena Luzzi - Il «viaggiatore filosofo» e il conte mecenate. Lettere inedite di Carlo Antonio Pilati a Giovanni Vigilio Thun-Hohenstein di Castel Braghèr (1775-1777)
This essay presents the critical edition of the travel letters sent by Carlo Antonio Pilati to count Giovanni Vigilio Thun di Castel Braghèr in 1775/76. This correspondence was among the papers recently found in the private archives of the family Thun-Hohenstein di Castel Braghèr (Coredo, province of Trento) and consists of fifty letters written between 1763 and 1784. They offer new elements for studying the persona and the work of the famous illuminist and also allow drawing a portrait of this protector, a figure up until now completely unknown, but very active in the cultural circles where Pilati’s thinking took shape. The sixteen letters published here offer fundamental information about the Trentino intellectual’s sojourns in southern Italy and in France and, furthermore, they allow an analysis of Carlo Antonio Pilati’s most famous and most translated book, the Voyages dans differens Pays (The Hague 1777).

Alessandro Pastore - Scegliere a chi donare. La selezione dell’assistenza nell’Italia moderna
This essay is based on a preliminary paper given at the conference «Affrontar necessità molte e grandi» (University of Brescia, November 22-23, 2001) and aims to concentrate on some broad topics concerning the politics towards the poor in Early Modern Italy. Based on 16th century legal treatises, the first part of this study offers an analysis of the relationship between gift-giving and almsgiving and assesses the specific role played by the idea of work in relationship to the practically idle life of the poor. The second part of this paper, based on archival material concerning the admission of sick paupers to be segregated inside the Misericordia Hospital of Verona, will allow us to explore the rules of the charitable and medical institutions within a crossed perspective of a society that wants to discipline the sins and discipline the crimes at the same time.

Paolo Pombeni - La storia, le circostanze e le leggi della politica. Qualche considerazione sul saggio di Michael Gehler
This paper discusses Michael Gehler’s essay contending that De Gasperi can simply be judged as an Italian nationalist uninterested in the rights of nations regarding the question of South Tyrol in the framework of post-war reassessment. De Gasperi was, above all, the political leader of a defeated country with enormous problems of settlement due to its position in the international competition: loosing its colonies, challenged by France on the western border, deprived of the eastern territories by Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia. In this context, De Gasperi could not afford to be generous with the South Tyrolean population, giving back this region to Austria. The Italian Prime Minister would have simply condemned himself to political marginality, dismissing the central position he had won in Italian politics. As a former citizen of the Habsburg Empire, the Trentino politician had more reason to be suspicious of the South Tyrolean claims than to be sympathetic with them, if one remembers the harsh stand the Innsbruck authorities had taken against the autonomy of his Trentino.

Diego Quaglioni - Il fondamento giuridico della potestà ecclesiastica. Spunti dalla canonistica classica
In the theological and juridical middle ages, the discussion involving the foundations of ecclesiastic power focuses on the interpretation of «authoritative texts», and – in particular obviously – holy texts. For a long time theologians and jurists (of canon and civil law) affect scientific writings and notions, while trying to find the «measure» of the relation between secular and spiritual power.

Diego Quaglioni - Le «usure dotali» nella dottrina di diritto comune
The reason for hating the interest in marriage (as well as the marriage of interest) is completely foreign to the medieval juridical mentality. By contrast, the special favor matrimonii, affirmed by theologians and jurists and sanctioned by church legislation, entails that dowry usury, i.e., the effects given with the established dowry, set up but not paid, are an exception with respect to the general prohibition of usury. On the basis of such an exception common law tries to construct a renewed theory of interest.

Helmut Rankl - Das Kirchenregiment der weltlichen Fürsten im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Das Beispiel Bayern
In the late middle ages, when national monarchs, territorial leaders, and urban magistrates gained a stronger position vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, the Bavarian dukes, especially the Munich line, became fervent advocates of conciliarism and promoters of reform in the church. Already on the eve of the Reformation they practiced a strong control over their territory’s ecclesiastical institutions, based on common law and a series of privileges granted by the Councils of Constance and Basel as well as the Roman Curia. In the 1520s the dukes began to suppress the Lutheran reformation energetically. With the responsible episcopacy reluctant, initiative in effecting church reform passed on to them. Negotiations with Rome yielded extended privileges, which greatly enhanced the duke’s influence in ecclesiastical matters at the bishops’ expense and supported him as the holder of a supreme, unified state authority. With the creation of the Spiritual Council (1570), which supervised the subjects’ religious life, clerical properties, and revenues, the duchy entered the age of confessionalism. The Concordat of 1583 was the capstone of the ducal church policy; it passed the predominance of control over religion and church, in fact if not in law, into the hands of the Wittelsbach duke, who had become the vanguard of the empire’s Catholic revival and a major political force in Europe.

Roberto Sala - Il controllo statale sull’immigrazione di manodopera italiana nella Germania federale
This article deals with the state control of Italian labor migration to West Germany after World War II. In this respect, the actions of both the German and the Italian governments are taken into consideration, as both countries took measures to control the influx of the Italian workforce to the Federal Republic of Germany. Migration was subject to an institutional framework based on diplomatic negotiations between Germany and Italy. In this context, the Federal Republic and National Socialist Germany proceeded in a similar way regarding the recruitment of Italian labor. In 1955, the recruitment of Italian labor was reintroduced by means of a German-Italian agreement, which served as a model for further recruitment agreements between Germany and other Mediterranean states. However, from 1962 onwards, Italian laborers, in contrast to all other groups of «guestworkers», came to benefit from the liberalization within the European Economic Community. Consequently, state recruitment was superseded by spontaneous migration, which turned out to be beyond the control of both the German and the Italian authorities.

Alois Schmid - Kirche, Territorium und Dynastie in der Geschichtsschreibung des 17. Jahrhunderts
The historical classification of the 17th century can still be considered a crucial problem for cultural history in Germany. By and large this era was seen as a period of transition and – unlike humanism or the enlightenment – it was not considered remarkable. In opposition to this view, recent scholarship has shown that the 17th century – the baroque age – did have its own typical character, which differed strongly from that of the preceding or following époques. The emphasis on a specific confessional culture, the rise of the modern state, the predominant role of dynasty and, in the scientific sphere, the encyclopedic approach as a very special way of explaining the world, all these elements could well be profoundly characteristic of this influential period in German history. The new perception of the 17th century helped to unveil two widespread forms of writing, the literary genres of terra sacra and terra sancta: The terra sacra describes the ecclesiastical history of a region on local terms; the terra sancta stresses its biographical aspects. In combining both perspectives, a new type of historiography emerged. In the Bavaria sancta et pia by Matthäus Rader SJ (1615-1627) this blending of two different types of writing reached its methodological summit. Hence Rader’s work was the most prominent contribution of Bavarian scholarship to historiographical literature in Germany during the 17th century.

Gerrit Walther - Diskrete Bündnispartner. Zum Verhältnis zwischen geistlichen Stiften und Ritterschaft im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung
Ecclesiastic states and imperial knights were a characteristic trait of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Seemingly utterly «mediaeval» in there corporate political structure, they developed into permanent configurations only at the beginning of the early modern period however – in the course of the reformation. They determined and completed one another. Both demonstrated high political stability notwithstanding their remoteness from all principles of modern statehood. The confessional choices of noble members of ecclesiastic territories followed laws of «discretion». Even if knights came to choose a confession different from the one of the catholic duke, they generally accepted and defended the Catholicness of the diocese as a whole, because only in this manner could their autonomy as protestant ecclesiastic lords be preserved.

Dietmar Willoweit - Rechtsgrundlagen der weltlichen Herrschaft geistlicher Fürsten im Mittelalter
Beginning with the Franconian Empire, the kings incorporated the bishops and abbots of the major monasteries into their political system. By their privileges they took them under their protection, excluded the power of the local nobles from the ecclesiastical grounds, and granted jurisdiction to the privileged institutions of the church (immunitatio tuitio). The medieval emperors continued these politics by conferring judicial rights. They also exercised an influence on the nomination of new bishops. After the end of the Investiture Controversy in 1122 (Concordat of Worms), the emperors invested the bishops and abbots, who were now elected according to the rules of Canon Law, with the regalia, i.e. the imperial rights to govern the people in secular matters. Thus, feudal relations between the empire on the one hand, and most bishops and some abbeys on the other gained ground. These clergymen thus became ecclesiastical princes with judicial and political rights alongside of the great dynasties and an important element of the imperial power for many centuries. Furthermore, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishops also remained efficient in the territories of the secular princes. This led to a number of conflicts regarding the competences of the ecclesiastical courts. These only came to an end with the Lutheran reformation of many secular territories. The clerical states of the empire, however, survived until 1803.

Wolfgang Wüst - Fürstliche Stiftsherrschaft in der Frühmoderne. Ein Vergleich süd- und nordalpiner Verhältnisse in Augsburg, Brixen, Eichstätt, Konstanz und Trient
Long before they were secularized, ecclesiastical lordships found themselves in a crisis of legitimation. As regions under the rule of spiritual lords – bishops, abbots or provosts – they appeared to be superfluities, left over from a lost world. More than any other member of the body politic of the Holy Roman Empire, they have been denounced by historians for their obsolete social structure. Generally, however, historians have neglected to analyze them typologically: Can they, in fact, be regarded as a group of states on their own? If so, was this group homogenous? It is high time to take a closer look. In so doing, I have limited myself to examining five examples north and south of the Alps. If we compare regional forms of episcopal lordship German prefers «Hochstift» rather than «diocese» when speaking about bishoprics as territories –, then it is imperative to ask the right questions. However, comparative studies on the group of ecclesiastical states have failed to note the similarities and differences between conditions north and south of the Alps. Indeed, even until very recently the study of ecclesiastical lordships has been relegated to the outer darkness of historical research, since these states were regarded as relics of the Middle Ages, derided by the Enlightenment as incapable of reform, then secularized and finally forgotten. Even within the bounds of the history of ecclesiastical lordships, one can recognize a certain sympathy for developments in South Germany, although no one bothers to put this to the test by actually comparing South Germany with other regions. However, a mere glance suffices to support the conclusion that episcopal states such as Brixen and Trent contributed to the emerging sense of regional identity. Since, however, the some 300 Italian dioceses – I have not dealt with the papal state – are marked off from the (German-speaking) imperial bishoprics both in size and constitutional development, my investigation has been limited to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Imperial church.