Season Opener

On 31^st of October 1517 a hitherto unknown professor at the smallish university of Wittenberg published 95 theses. And by doing so, he unleashed a sequence of events that would fundamentally change the face of Europe and still defines communities and nations.

The interesting question about the 95 theses is not why Luther rote them, but why they had any impact at all. Martin Luther stands at the end of a mile long queue of learned and sometimes less learned men who railed against the decadence of the church, called for a return to the actual text of the bible and demanded that the clergy lives like the apostles. But somehow the message on that fateful day in 1517 gained traction across the Christian world in a way no previous attempt had.

Why? That is a question I believe will be the guiding line through the coming seasons. Something about the social, political, cultural, religious and economic landscape of early modern Germany must have provided the cinder on which protestant ideas could catch fire.

You will now ask, why is Dirk talking about the Reformation. The last season ended on the 14^th century, a good 150 years before “the day that changed western Christianity”. Aren’t we supposed to go through this chronologically.

Oh yes we are. But as we are moving forward at our accustomed pace we will hit the Hussite revolt that started in 1415. This religious uprising has so many common threads with Luther’s reformation, it may be seen as a dress rehearsal for the actual Reformation. Luther himself declared in 1519 “Ich bin ein Hussite” I am a Hussite.

Spoiler alert, the Hussite revolt did not lead to the fraction of the catholic church, but that makes it even more interesting. What were the circumstances that led the people of Bohemia and many other parts of the empire to take up arms to defend their convictions, how come they were successful and by what means could a reconciliation be achieved? Knowing that will help us understand why a 150 years later such a settlement failed to materialize, dividing Europe into Protestants and Catholics and spurning some of the bloodiest civil wars in history.

To explore the causes and impact of this reformation before the reformation we will take a look at the decline of the house of Luxemburg, the emergence of the Ottoman empire, the creation of Burgundy as a political entity separate from France, the defeat of the Teutonic Knights and the great western schism with its resolution at the Council of Constance where amongst other things Jan Hus was convicted and burned at the stake. We will dive into Jan Hus’ and his predecessor’s thoughts and convictions as well as the military innovations of Jan Zizka and probably a lot more things I have not yet thought about.

That is quite a list of very diverse topics, which is why we will have to change the structure of our narrative. So far our storylines had mainly followed along with the lives of kings and emperors. Not necessarily because they were great men driving events, but because events centered around them, making their lives a good crutch to hang the story on. The period we are now entering was different. In the late 14^th and early 15^th century the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire were on many occasions tangential to the overall picture or even completely absent from the stage.

To give a proper account we will therefore have to look at things from multiple viewpoints. Events or people who have taken top billing in one episode may make cameo appearances in others, all in the hope of painting a broad picture of this fascinating period in history. It will be challenging, but also hopefully fun and interesting.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to Season 9 – Reformation before the Reformation – The Great Western Schism, the Hussite Wars and the rise of the Ottomans.

On 31^st of October 1517 a hitherto unknown professor at the smallish university of Wittenberg published 95 theses. And by doing so, he unleashed a sequence of events that would fundamentally change the face of Europe and still defines communities and nations.

The interesting question about the 95 theses is not why Luther rote them, but why they had any impact at all. Martin Luther stands at the end of a mile long queue of learned and sometimes less learned men who railed against the decadence of the church, called for a return to the actual text of the bible and demanded that the clergy lives like the apostles. But somehow the message on that fateful day in 1517 gained traction across the Christian world in a way no previous attempt had.

Why? That is a question I believe will be the guiding line through the coming seasons. Something about the social, political, cultural, religious and economic landscape of early modern Germany must have provided the cinder on which protestant ideas could catch fire.

You will now ask, why is Dirk talking about the Reformation. The last season ended on the 14^th century, a good 150 years before “the day that changed western Christianity”. Aren’t we supposed to go through this chronologically.

Oh yes we are. But as we are moving forward at our accustomed pace we will hit the Hussite revolt that started in 1415. This religious uprising has so many common threads with Luther’s reformation, it may be seen as a dress rehearsal for the actual Reformation. Luther himself declared in 1519 “Ich bin ein Hussite” I am a Hussite.

Spoiler alert, the Hussite revolt did not lead to the fraction of the catholic church, but that makes it even more interesting. What were the circumstances that led the people of Bohemia and many other parts of the empire to take up arms to defend their convictions, how come they were successful and by what means could a reconciliation be achieved? Knowing that will help us understand why a 150 years later such a settlement failed to materialize, dividing Europe into Protestants and Catholics and spurning some of the bloodiest civil wars in history.

To explore the causes and impact of this reformation before the reformation we will take a look at the decline of the house of Luxemburg, the emergence of the Ottoman empire, the creation of Burgundy as a political entity separate from France, the defeat of the Teutonic Knights and the great western schism with its resolution at the Council of Constance where amongst other things Jan Hus was convicted and burned at the stake. We will dive into Jan Hus’ and his predecessor’s thoughts and convictions as well as the military innovations of Jan Zizka and probably a lot more things I have not yet thought about.

That is quite a list of very diverse topics, which is why we will have to change the structure of our narrative. So far our storylines had mainly followed along with the lives of kings and emperors. Not necessarily because they were great men driving events, but because events centered around them, making their lives a good crutch to hang the story on. The period we are now entering was different. In the late 14^th and early 15^th century the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire were on many occasions tangential to the overall picture or even completely absent from the stage.

To give a proper account we will therefore have to look at things from multiple viewpoints. Events or people who have taken top billing in one episode may make cameo appearances in others, all in the hope of painting a broad picture of this fascinating period in history. It will be challenging, but also hopefully fun and interesting.

But before we start, I have to come to you cap in hand. The History of the Germans podcast is entirely free to anyone to enjoy, even to enjoy without advertising. Which means the funding has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is the generosity of our patrons who make either ongoing monthly contributions from £2 a month on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or through a one-time donation on historyofthegermans.com/support. And let’s all thank Jean Louis S., Jocelyn H-S, Marina H., Mark S. Michael E. and Miroslav D. who have made such generous one-time donations.

And with that – back to the show

Last season we kicked off with a 10,000 feet overview of where we were, what had happened before and where the tides of history were ebbing and flooding. I think that worked quite well and gives listeners who are coming new to the History of the Germans a chance to catch up. If you are one of them, welcome!

Our starting point for this season is November 1378, most precisely the 29^th of November, the day the emperor, king of the Romans, king of Italy and king of Burgundy, Karl/Charles/Karel IV breathed his last.

Why that date? Because we are at a point of transition from the Middle Ages to the early Modern period and Karl IV and his Golden Bull were in many aspects the end point of some key historical trends that had dominated the Middle Ages. But what does transition from Middle Ages to Early Modern actually mean? In what way is this new epoch different from what went on before? The answer is, in almost every possible aspect, economic, social, political and cultural.

Let’s start with the economy. The Middle Ages from the 10^th century onwards were a period of sustained economic growth driven by a combination of improving climate conditions, the so-called medieval warm period, and a series of improvements to agricultural techniques, for instance the use of heavier ploughs drawn by horses something made possible by the invention of the horse collar and the horseshoe. Another key innovation was crop rotation that hugely increased yields. And social change, namely the replacement of slavery with serfdom and then with tenancy agreement that pushed productivity.

These improvements drove a rapid rise in population, which in turn brought more and more land under cultivation. For Britain where we have reasonable data, the population rose from 1 million to 5-6 million between the post Roman period and the year 1300. By then about 10.5 million acres had been put under the plough, again a roughly 3-fold increase. At these levels most regions in western Europe had reached saturation levels which led to a huge migration eastwards where almost 10% of the population of the empire left their overcrowded homes in the Rhineland, Flanders, Holland and elsewhere to search for pastures new in what is today east Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechia, the Baltic states, Prussia and even further afield.

The medieval warming period ended in the middle or end of the 13^th century and by the 14^th century Europe was gradually getting colder, a process called the little ice age that peaked in the 16^th and 17^th century and lasted until the mid-19^th century. Severe famines as one has not seen for centuries began in the 1310s. Natural catastrophes became more common. The Grote Mandrenke, the great drowning of men in 1362 killed 25,000, sank the town of Rungholt in Frisia and turned 5000 square kilometers of land into a shallow sea on the Dutch coast, an area far larger than the Ijsselmer and Markermer that remain of it.

The biggest humanitarian disaster was however the Black Death, the plague that killed roughly a third of Europe’s population and kept returning in regular intervals for centuries.

The combination of these two effects, the climate and the plague meant that growth stalled and populations shrunk. Much of the land that had been cultivated in the 13^th century was no longer viable in the 14^th century. And it was also no longer needed as there were less mouths to feed.

This change in population and economics drove social change too.

The dramatic cull of people during the plague often hit the cities harder than the countryside as people lived close together. For some cities, the Black Death brought about rapid decline, some vanished completely. But those that survived quickly filled up again. They had not lost their economic advantages, which meant there were suddenly a large number of job openings. For many a peasant, tired of paying ever increasing rents to their landlord, life in the city became an attractive proposition. So, these surviving country dwellers left for the bright lights and freedom of the towns and cities. And that not just happen during the great Plague of 1348 to 1352 but again during the subsequent outbreaks that occurred every 10 to 15 years..

That in turn caused some serious problems for the landowners, in particular for the knightly class. They had so far benefitted from the population explosion that had created an almost inexhaustible supply of cheap labor to toil on their estates, either as tenants or as farmhands. But now that well had dried up, first through the disease and then the rural exodus that followed. If they wanted to keep their workforce they had to pay them a fair wage. The Bank of England did an analysis of wages going back to the 13^th century and the period of the Black death was the only time before the industrial revolution when real incomes increased. Great for peasant’s pockets but a severe cut to the baronial profit margins, profit margins already depleted by a decline in prices. Prices had dropped because there were simply less people around demanding foodstuff.

As the knights, these embodiment of the medieval world saw their financial resources shrink, they experienced another, even harsher hit to their social standing. For centuries the knight in his metal cocoon riding his mighty warhorse was the Leopard Tank of his day, a weapon so powerful, only another knight could stand up to it. But that time was coming to an end. The battles of Morgarten,  Mühldorf and in Flanders had shown that infantry armed with halberds and cunning could inflict serious damage on armored riders. The success of the English longbowmen at Crecy and Poitiers should have penetrated the minds of the French nobility as much as it did their armor, though they still needed another reminder at Agincourt. Canons appear from the late 14^th century, at which point the hegemony of the Knights on the battlefield is well and truly over.

Moreover, tactics changed. The amateurish armies of volunteers that were the mainstay of the Middle Ages were replaced by bands of professional soldiers. The practice began in Italy where the city councils got used to hiring Condottiere to fight their wars rather than sending their precious sons out to the battlefield. The Hundred Years’ war saw the rise of the Compagnie of mercenaries offering their services to either party in the conflict and the civil wars of the Interregnum in the empire were decided by who could hire and pay the best mercenaries.

As the knights declined, their role at the top of the tree, in the councils of the princes and emperors, was taken by the merchants, bankers and lawyers. When in the 12^th century Frederick Barbarossa’s main advisers had been the duke Otto von Wittelsbach and Rainald von Dassel, the archbishop of Cologne, 200 years later emperor Karl IV’s chancery was staffed with lawyers from the lower nobility or the city patricians. He listened more to the advice of his Nurnberg bankers who could provide him cash to pay for mercenary armies or his acquisitions, and in whose mansions he rather stayed, than in some drafty castle.

The rise of the merchants and bankers was no coincidence. Trade networks expanded in the 13^th and 14^th century, ships had become larger, transport costs were falling meaning profits for merchants in the major centers were going up and up. Shipping bulk goods, wheat, herring, wood, ash, base metals even ore became viable businesses alongside the long established trade in spices, furs and beeswax. This was the height of the power of the Hanseatic League that gained a near monopoly on the East-West trade all the way from Novgorod and Bergen to Bruges and London.

A specific area of growth for the German cities, and Nurnberg in particular, were advances in metallurgy. Mining and smelting had always been a key industry in the German lands ever since the silver mines of Goslar opened in the 10^th century. But in the 14^th century new technologies were developed. One particular breakthrough exploited the fact that most copper ore in Europe contained traces of silver. The secret “Saiger” process developed by a Nurnberg merchant enabled them to separate the two metals. It made the copper purer and hence more valuable and left behind an amount of silver as a windfall. This process was extremely lucrative. Traders could make six times from the sale of the copper and silver than they had paid for the ore.

As economic activity in the cities thrived, they were able to translate this into influence and political independence. Under the feudal system that prevailed across Europe, cities were subject to the ownership rights of the prince on whose territory they were located and whose forefathers had often founded them in the first place. But over time some cities have been able to shake off their overlord. Places like Cologne, Regensburg, Mainz and Strasburg had paid off and chased off their bishops who had once ruled over them and had become free cities. The cities that were located on royal land benefitted from the weakness of the central power. They would proudly declare allegiance to the emperor and, under duress, pay him taxes, but in all other respects these imperial cities were as free as the free cities. And then you have places like Hamburg where the council simply forged a charter that had declared them a free and imperial city and pushed this claim through by force and fortune. But even where formal overlordship remained, as was the case with most members of the Hanseatic League, the cities enjoyed a large degree of freedom at least in the 14^th and 15^th century.

Which gets us to the political picture.

The great medieval dynasties of the Ottonians, the Salians and the Hohenstaufen had expired by 1268. A centuries long conflict with the papacy over leadership of Christianity and repeated attempts to bring Northern Italy to heel had ended with a comprehensive defeat of imperial power. The last of these emperors, Frederick II had died in 1250, excommunicated, militarily and physically exhausted and increasingly paranoid. His son, Konrad was never crowned King of the Romans and perished in the attempt to defend his kingdom of Sicily against Charles of Anjou, the papal champion. The last of the dynasty, Konradin, died aged just 17 on the executioners block in Naples, having failed to oust the usurper of the Sicilian crown.

After that the empire had no effective leadership for two decades. Two foreigners, Alfonso X of Castile and Richard of Cornwall were simultaneously elected as kings of the Romans, but neither could assert much authority.

In 1273 the prince electors, at that point a still somewhat fluid group, elected Rudolf of Habsburg, a count from the Aargau in modern day Switzerland. Rudolf was a truly impressive figure, a ruthless warrior but commensurate strategist and politician. He had profited enormously from the collapse of Hohenstaufen power, taking over lands and cities previously held by the imperial family. He was however still only a count and his family had been relative parvenues. That may have been the reason the electors chose him, believing he would be a weak ruler who would grant them whatever rights and privileges they desired.

As it turned out, Rudolf was nothing of that sort. He initiated a restitution policy forcing princes and bishops to hand back the formerly royal lands to the king. Peter Wilson estimated that roughly 2/3 of the former imperial resources were recovered.

Rudolf also embarked on a confrontation with the richest and most powerful of the imperial princes, king Ottokar II of Bohemia, the “Golden King”. Relying on the large silver mines in Kutna Hora, Ottokar II had expanded his realm by acquiring Austria, Styria, Carinthia and what is now Frioul and Slovenia. Rudolf outmaneuvered Ottokar and forced him to hand him the Austrian duchies. In a subsequent battle Rudolf defeated Ottokar II who died in the field. The Habsburgs took over Austria which over time became the center of their power.

Upon Rudolf’s death the electors refused to elect Rudolf’s son which would have created a new royal or even imperial dynasty. Instead they chose another little count, Adolf von Nassau. Adolf tried the same trick, this time going after the Landgraviate of Thuringia. But that failed, he irritated the Prince electors who deposed him and called back Albrecht von Habsburg, the son of Rudolf they had previously rejected. Albrecht defeated and killed Adolf and took control of the empire.

Albrecht’s main interest was now to further expand his and his family’s possessions. The golden opportunity was the kingdom of Bohemia where king Ottokar’s family, the Premyslids had died out. There was lot of back and forth, and just when Albrecht was preparing for another invasion of Bohemia he was murdered by his nephew.

Adolf and Albrecht represent a new approach to the role of the King of the Romans. These men looked at the title only as a way to expand their personal wealth, in particular using the royal prerogative to claim fiefs that had become vacant upon the extinction of the vassal’s family. The empire and its interests were clearly secondary.

Their successor was another “little count” in inverted commas, Henry of Luxemburg. And the calculation of the prince electors was again the same as before, let’s get someone with limited resources on the throne and push him around. And again, their gamble did not work out.

Henry VII was cut from a different cloth. He had grown up at the French court and had a much broader perspective. He saw that unless he gained the imperial crown through a coronation in Rome, the imperial title and with it political power over the empire would inevitably fall to the French king.

Henry VII therefore set off for Italy, the first emperor to be crowned in Rome for almost a century. But apart from the coronation, his stay in Italy was a terrible failure. Like his predecessors he was dragged into protracted Italian domestic conflicts that he could not resolve. His army perished before the walls of Brescia, his beloved wife succumbed to disease, and so did he a year later.

But the house of Luxemburg did receive a windfall profit they did not even aspire to. And it was the most valuable of them all, the kingdom of Bohemia. The Bohemian nobles who retained the right to choose their ruler offered the crown to John, the son of Henry VII. Though Henry saw it as a distraction from his main objective, the Roman coronation, he was persuaded to let the Bohemians take his son home as their new king. John of Luxemburg would later become famous as the Blind King of Bohemia whose pointless chivalric deeds at the battle of Crecy gained him the respect of Edward, the Black Prince of Wales.

After Henry VII death, we have another simultaneous election of a king of the Romans, Ludwig of Wittelsbach, duke of Upper Bavaria and Frederick of Habsburg, duke of Austria. In 1322 Ludwig did emerge victorious at the battle of Mühldorf. But by then imperial power was already so diminished, the title, its resources and prerogatives added only marginal advantage to its holder.

The political landscape had become a system of three roughly equal sized power structures. The house of Habsburg centered round Austria and their holdings in South-west Germany, Alsace and Switzerland,  the Luxemburgs as kings of Bohemia and counts of Luxemburg and the Wittelsbachs as dukes of Bavaria and Counts Palatinate on the Rhine.

During the 30 year long reign of Ludwig the Bavarian, the three parties carved up all vacating fiefs between each them. The Habsburgs received Carinthia, the Wittelsbachs Brandenburg and Holand Hennegau and the Luxemburgs Silesia.

Where they clashed was over the county of Tyrol which controlled the important transalpine routes, including the Brenner pass. John of Luxemburg got there first, gaining the hand of the heiress of these lands, Margarete Maultasch for his son Johann Heinrich. However that relationship broke down and Margarete threw the Luxemburger out and married the son of Ludwig the Bavarian, without prior divorce. In the end, after the Margarete’s only child had died, she handed the county to the Habsburgs.

Ludwig managed to keep a lid on all these conflicts until in 1347 the kettle boiled over. The Luxemburg party elevated Karl, the son of the blind king of Bohemia to king of the Romans. Karl managed to overcome his opposition, partially because both Ludwig the Bavarian and the next champion of the Wittelsbach cause died, but mainly through bribery. These bribes were astronomical, adding up to 1.6 million gold florins.

To raise theses funds Karl sold, pawned and granted away almost all that was left of the royal lands and rights. Though he bought some of it back later, the net result was that from now on any holder of the royal or imperial title had to fund almost the entirety of their administration from their personal fortune.

Karl IV reigned for 30 years, a period during which he stabilized the situation in the German lands and issued the most significant constitutional document in the 14^th century empire, the Golden Bull.

The Golden Bull did not say anything fundamentally new. It set out that the king of the Romans was elected by a majority of the seven electors, these being the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the duke of Sachsen-Wittenberg, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine and  margrave of Brandenburg. These electors had been set more or less since the election of Rudolf of Habsburg in 1273. All the Golden Bull did was to clarify exactly which branch of the respective houses was allowed to vote, the voting process, location and the like.  It also granted the Prince Electors king-like status in their own lands. They enjoyed all formerly royal rights and privileges in their lands, like the establishment of tolls, the raising of taxes, minting of coins, building of castles and establishment of cities. Their subjects had only limited recourse to imperial justice. Basically they were completely autonomous though still part of the empire. Again, not really a change from the status quo, but a written confirmation of it.

The significance of the Golden Bull lay less in what it said than in what it did not say. The Golden Bull makes no mention of the pope at all. And by this omission it asserts that the pope has no role in the choice of the future emperor. Hitherto the popes had declared an explicit right of approbation, i.e., they reserved the right to reject an election they did not agree with. This was one of the manifestations of the superiority of the popes over the emperors that had been the key intellectual and political battleground of the Middle Ages. 

Pope John XXII and Ludwig the Bavarian had clashed over exactly this question, the approbation. This conflict resulted in the excommunication of Ludwig, his family and in the end the entire empire. Ludwig managed to hold on to his throne and gained the support of the imperial bishops, abbots and clergy in his defiance of the papacy. He even got crowned in Rome, not by the pope or a cardinal, but by the people and senate of Rome, much like the pagan emperors of old. At the Kurverein zu Rhens the electors asserted their right to elect the future emperor without any interference from the papacy. This statement was obviously not recognized by the papacy. But when Karl IV issued the Golden Bull, which in a more elegant way said the same, the pope did not object too loudly.

And that brought the long lasting papal-imperial conflict, that central axis of medieval politics, to an end and laid the foundations for a new constitution of the empire, as yet unknown.

If we sum up the political situation over these 125 odd years from 1250 to the death of Karll IV in 1378, one question should come up, which is, how could the empire afford a hollowed out central authority, squabbling princes, excessive bribery and a papal interdict on top. Why did it not get invaded? Any other state with that level of dysfunction would not have been able to maintain its territorial integrity.

And that gets us to something that nobody ever seems to mention. For almost 300 years, ever since the battle on the Lechfeld in 955, there had not been any external threat to the empire’s borders. This is truly astounding. If you look at France and its constant wars with England, Spain’s Reconquista, the never ending wars between the Scandinavian kingdoms, Poland’s conflict with the Lithuanians and the Teutonic Knights, it becomes clear that in this respect the Holy Roman empire in the 13^th and 14^th century was an exception.

Basically the empire was exceedingly lucky. On its eastern border Poland had disintegrated into dozens and dozens of smallish duchies ruled by descendants of king Boleslaw III, the Wrymouth. The powers to the east of Poland had been wiped out by the Mongols who themselves made only one brief effort to move west before their urge for conquest died down. So instead of being a threat to the empire, Poland and the east became an area of conquest and emigration for the empire. First the buffer states of the Slavic Wends between the Elbe and the Polish border was taken over by Saxon nobles who founded Brandenburg and the various Saxon duchies. Some of the Slavic elite like the dukes of Mecklenburg and Pomerania were coopted into the empire. The Teutonic knights were called in by a Polish duke to deal with the pagan Pruzzi and established the order’s state in Prussia.

Equally the Hungarians had integrated into the West and Bohemia was part of the empire. The Scandinavians in the North were preoccupied with their constant wars of succession, often finding themselves dependent upon the counts of Holstein or the Dukes of Mecklenburg or dealing with the Hanseatic League.

Finally in the west, the kings of France had focused on their internal consolidation rather than outward expansion. Their two 100 years wars with their largest vassal, the king of England left little resources for forays eastwards. As for the south, Italy was a key battleground for medieval imperial politics, but that was always a civil war between the papal and imperial faction, not a war of conquest.

As we head into the end of the 14^th and the 15^th century this picture changed considerably. The kingdom of Poland recovered from centuries of total fragmentation. Under Wladyslaw the elbow-High and  Kasimir the Great the Piast duchies united back into a kingdom and took an ever more aggressive stance against the Teutonic Knights and the encroaching Margraves of Brandenburg.

At the same time king Louis the great of Hungary led a renaissance of Hungarian power and played a key role in imperial politics. And all that happened on the doorstep of Bohemia, the main powerbase of the imperial family.

Equally the French monarchy had started nibbling away at the French-speaking imperial bishoprics of Cambrai, Toul, Verdun, Metz and Liege. Further south Provence, still part of the kingdom of the Arelat and hence imperial territory was ruled by a cadet branch of the French royal family. The Franche-Comte, once home to Barbarossa’s wife Beatrice was gradually transferred to France in the 14^th century.

The issue of French encroachment became an increasingly important topic, in particular under the Luxemburg emperors Henry VII and Karl IV who hailed from the area. Karl IV used the weakness of the French monarch after their defeat at the battles of Crecy and Poitiers to reassert imperial authority by holding a massive diet in Metz in 1356 where the Golden Bull was finally proclaimed. However, once France had regained the territories ceded to the English in the treaty of Bretigny, they turned their gaze again eastwards to the empire.

In the last year of his life emperor Karl IV travelled to France to find a compromise with Charles V of France over the former kingdom of Burgundy which included Provence, the Rhone valley and Piedmont as well as the succession to the Hungarian and Polish thrones. In this deal, the details are unknown, it seems as if Karl IV handed over de facto control of Provence and the Rhone valley to the French crown in exchange for his son’s succession in Hungary.

What we can conclude from that is the main political axis had shifted from north-south to east-west. In the Middle Ages, emperors were focused on Italy and on the papacy, but by the end of the 14^th century most of time and effort is spent on France, Poland and Hungary.

And just generally, the center of power in the empire has shifted east. The medieval emperors had their main landholdings and support base in the south and along the Rhine river. Now, under Karl IV, imperial power relies on Bohemia with its satellites, Silesia and Moravia and the recently acquired margraviate of Brandenburg.

With external pressures mounting fundamental reform of the empire becomes ever more pressing. To put that into perspective, king Edward III of England had borrowed 1.1 million gold Florin to fight the 100 Years’ war against the French. The total income of the emperor from his imperial resources was 20,000 Gold Florin. If he wanted to raise exceptional taxes, the only place he could do that was in the imperial cities that would occasionally head his demands, but not always. The other source of funds were the merchant bankers in these cities who lent considerable amounts against huge interest and only upon handover of valuable collateral.

Despite their importance in the functioning of the empire, by 1378 the cities were most unhappy with the state of affairs in the kingdom. Being dependent upon trade, their main concern was the safety of the roads and rivers, the tolls charged and the stability of the currency. When Karl IV designed the Golden Bull he initially wanted to address all three subjects. He aimed for a communal policy on coinage, guaranteeing the levels of precious metal content, restrictions on tolls and a general peace, a Landfrieden. The Landfrieden would have been a permanent ban on private violence, requiring the princes to eradicate the robber barons and recognize a system of law courts that based their decision on the written laws. In exchange the cities would have to refrain from forming leagues and associations for mutual support, i.e, doing all these things by themselves.

But these provisions were never passed. In the negotiations the princes managed to water the rules on mints, tolls and the peace down to practically zero. All that was left in the Golden Bull was the ban on the formation of city leagues.

No points to Griffindor for figuring out what happened next. With the central government unable to guarantee safety from illegal and legal robbery, the cities defied the Golden Bull. The Swabian cities, most of them imperial ones, formed a league led by the city of Ulm. They refused to swear allegiance to Karl’s son Wenceslaus which resulted in a war. The imperial army failed to scale the walls of Ulm and the emperor had to reach for a compromise that sanctioned the Swabian league. And the war boosted the confidence of the citizens of Ulm to the point they gave their parish church, the Ulmer Muenster, the tallest church tower in the world, or at least they tried. The tower was only completed in the 19^th century.

Another, even more unusual league formed in the South West. The imperial cities of Zurich, Bern and Lucerne joined the forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden in an agreement of mutual support against their not really very oppressive overlords, the house of Habsburg.

But it is not only the economic, social and political picture has fundamentally changed by the middle of the 14^th century. There is also a huge cultural shift.

When we talk about culture in the Middle Ages, what we are talking about is religion, and even more specifically, the church and at its head, the papacy.

Ever since the 10^th century religious history was driven by the constant demand to reform the church. Given the importance the afterlife played in the mind of people of the Middle Ages, the quality of the church personnel who performed the holy sacraments was of crucial importance. A sinner wanted to be sure that his absolution was valid so that his time in purgatory was shortened. And for the sacrament, be it eucharist, baptism, confession, confirmation and last rites, to be valid, it had to be performed accurately, something only a competent and properly anointed priest could ensure. Even though the papacy had confirmed many times that even sacraments administered by unworthy clergymen in an inaccurate  manner were valid, the people still demanded better.

These reform efforts had come in waves. Once disappointment with the established church reached boiling point, reformers gained traction proposing changes. The Cluniac abbots, St. Peter Damian, Anselm of Canterbury preached reform in the 11^th century, Bernhard of Clairvaux in the 12^th century and St. Francis in the 13^th century. For most of this period the papacy was able to retain control over the reform process. They usually achieved that by co-opting the movements into their system, be it as Cluniacs, Cistercians or Franciscans. This, combined with relentless persecution of those reformers they branded heretics kept the pope in charge.

In the 14^th century the papacy lost control of the reform agenda. They had moved to Avignon where they spent their days under the watchful eye of the French monarch and doing their bidding, even when it was to sanction a raid on the templar order. In this period the church became much more efficient as an organization, gaining more and more control over the local bishoprics and even individual clergymen. At the same time it also improved its fiscal capabilities, collecting tithes more consistently, drawing the first year income of newly elected bishops and issuing indulgences as a way to monetize their store of holiness. This process made the Avignon papacy appear greedy and worldly to the common man. Moreover it made it unpopular with local clergy whose autonomy and income they had seized.

Pope John XXII, a lawyer more than a theologian, put oil in the fire when he pressured the Franciscan order to give up its vow of poverty. He reasoned that the image of a poor Franciscan habit next to a bejeweled cardinal made the latter look bad. This debate t- hat quickly became a debate over whether the church as a whole should be as poor as Jesus had been – had a devastating impact on the perception of the papacy. The pope was seen as endorsing the worldliness of the church rather than fighting it. And worldly the church had become. Teenage archbishops, drunk parsons, dissolute monks and lustful nuns returned not just as tropes in folk tales and bawdy songs.

Having lost the moral high ground the popes saw their hold on political power wane. When pope John XXII excommunicated the elected king of the Romans, Ludwig IV, the move backfired badly. Ludwig marshalled a coalition between the Franciscan dissenters and the imperial church against the pope. For almost 30 years did the church in the German lands live outside the reach and in defiance of the papacy. Even when the papal candidate Karl IV replaced Ludwig, he quickly shed the mantle of papal protegee. Nobody wanted to be a Pfaffenkönig, a pet of the church.

Karl IV did formally reconcile the empire with the Holy See and the interdict was lifted but the hold of the pope over the empire was broken as the Golden Bull made clear.

The calamities of the papacy did not end with the Golden Bull. In 1377 pope Gregory XI returned to Rome from Avignon. But there he died just months later. The cardinals elected a new pope, Urban VI. How free and fair this election was depends on what impact one ascribes to the Roman mob that had gathered outside, threatening to kill everyone inside unless they chose a Roman pope. Once back in Avignon the cardinals declared the election of Urban VI invalid and elected a new one, Clement VII. We now have two popes. Urban VI was recognized by several powers, including the emperor and the king of England, whilst Clement VII relied mainly on French support. The Great Western Schism was born. As the two popes were preoccupied with their internal squabbles, hope for church reform receded further and further.

The inability of the papacy to lead a successful reform program left a void. Whenever that had happened In the Middle Ages the emperors had occupied this empty space, claiming universal responsibility for Christendom. But that claim has moved so far from the political realities of the day, even pious rulers like Karl IV could not really take up the mantle any more.

Which meant the reform debate was left to the laity and the intellectuals. Men like Dante, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua and Petrarch developed entirely new concepts of how the church should be organized. Marsilius who is one of the most unfairly overlooked political thinkers in European history was the most radical. In his Defensor Pacis, the Defender of the Peace he declared that all laws that bind men in the here and now derive their legitimacy from the acclamation of the people. A ruler rules only on the support of the ruled, not by divine right. Hence in the empire, it is the emperor who makes the laws in agreement with the ruled, represented by the Prince-Electors. The pope on the other hand has no power in the temporal world, his realm is the spiritual world.

Marsilius’ writings gained a lot of traction. They were translated into French, Italian and German which indicates they were read not just by the Latin-speaking intellectual elite, but much more broadly. Other thinkers, namely John Wycliff who we have not yet talked about, developed these ideas further.

What helped the spread of new concepts were the new universities that had sprung up across central Europe. Prague University opened in 1348, Krakow in 1364, Vienna in 1365, Pecs in Hungary in 1367, Heidelberg in 1386, Leipzig 1409 and Rostock in 1419.

Charismatic preachers spread their message of the sinfulness of the official church and the urgent need for reform.

In particular in the empire, which had been detached from the papacy for decades under Ludwig the Bavarians, the population was already very skeptical of the ability that reform could be achieved inside the church.

And that is where the story begins.

Next week we will kick off by looking at Karl IV’s successor, king Wenceslaus IV who inherited what looked like a stable and well sorted reign even though several key reform projects are still unfinished. Will he be able to continue in his father’s footsteps, deliver the Landfrieden, protect the empire against its external foes and resolve the Great Western Schism? Well, let’s see.

And whilst you wait you may want to brush up on some of the earlier episodes that go into a lot more depth on some of the topics we just discussed. In particular the episodes 149 to 151 where we discuss the reign of Ludwig the Bavarian, which was a crucial period when the empire and the church drifted apart. Or if you need a refresher on how imperial power fell apart, the episodes 73 to 77 trace the story of the civil war between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV that brought a free for all for the imperial princes and then the early years of Frederick II who had to accept the status quo. Or if you like to hear more about the Hanseatic League or the Teutonic Knights, you can find these as a separate podcast unimaginatively titled the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights wherever you find the History of the Germans.

You can listen to all of these on historyofthegermans.com where you can also support the podcast by signing up as a patron or by making a one-time donation.