Law, Society and Political Culture in Late Medieval and Reformation Germany

The German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire were the stage for some of the most significant events in late medieval and Reformation Europe. This book offers readers key translated primary sources that illuminate the legal, political, social and cultural history of this tumultuous region between the mid-fourteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries.

The German lands have long been neglected in English-language accounts of this period, not least because few sources produced within them have been available in translation. Most of these laws, which have shaped the constitutional development of Germany in its various incarnations down to the present day, are translated into English here for the first time. The legal and political sources selected here shed light on German government and society at every level, from Roman kings and emperors, mighty princes and imperial cities to ordinary priests, peasants and prostitutes. This selection includes all the major laws issued in the Empire, from the Golden Bull of 1356 to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, via the peace-keeping legislation passed under the Habsburg emperors of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Thematic chapters cover the unique elective monarchy, imperial diets, plans for imperial and ecclesiastical reform, alliances and associations, warfare and arbitration and lordship and administration at local levels.

Law, society and political culture in late medieval and reformation Germany enables students and scholars to discover a crucial phase in German and European history in unprecedented depth.

Duncan Hardy is Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Florida