A new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that reveals why it was
not a failed state as many historians believe
The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated
union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an
emperor. Around 1500, it took on a more formal structure with the
establishment of powerful institutions--such as the Reichstag and
Imperial Chamber Court--that would endure more or less intact until the
empire's dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger
provides a concise history of the Holy Roman Empire, presenting an
entirely new interpretation of the empire's political culture and
remarkably durable institutions.
Rather than comparing the empire to modern states or associations like
the European Union, Stollberg-Rilinger shows how it was a political body
unlike any other--it had no standing army, no clear boundaries, no
general taxation or bureaucracy. She describes a heterogeneous
association based on tradition and shared purpose, bound together by
personal loyalty and reciprocity, and constantly reenacted by solemn
rituals. In a narrative spanning three turbulent centuries, she takes
readers from the reform era at the dawn of the sixteenth century to the
crisis of the Reformation, from the consolidation of the Peace of
Augsburg to the destructive fury of the Thirty Years' War, from the
conflict between Austria and Prussia to the empire's downfall in the age
of the French Revolution.
Authoritative and accessible, The Holy Roman Empire is an incomparable
introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe.