Who was more powerful during the low middle ages. The emperor or the French king?
>>18533088The French King, duh. The Holy Roman Emperor was an elected ruler whose real power depended directly on the hereditary feudal domains of his own family. He governed a decentralized confederation of hundreds of independent states, not a unified state, and therefore his power was limited to serving as a mediator of conflicts between the various principalities who gained independent power of the absence of Holy Roman Emperor failed centralization during the Great Interregnum caused by the defeat/ending of Hohenstaufen Dynasty to the Italian city-states and the Papacy of Northern Italy. In contrast, in the Late Middle Ages, the French monarchy was starting consolidated itself as a hereditary dynasty that subdued the feudal lords, centralized administration, and unified the territory under a strong and sovereign royal authority since the Hundred Years' War prolonged conflict decimated the old feudal nobility and allowed the French crown to establish the first professional standing armies and institute permanent national taxation.That's without even mentioning the Habsburgs, the emperors of the HRE because the whole of Austria was entire made of their feudal domains, only became the most powerful House in Europe because of marriages and dominios in other places outside of Austria/Germany, such as Spain, a centralized kingdom and with several colonial domains. But the French overcame him with the War of the Spanish Succession and the Napoleonic Wars.
>>18533164The Frogs were so powerful that they had their own Papacy, while the HRE/Ghibellines had to bow to the Pope/Guelphs to be legitimized as Holy Roman Emperor.
>>18533088Why were venetians and neapolitans excluded from hre gang?
>>18533088Do you mean the early middle ages? If so then the German King/Emperor was more powerful as the King of France as the Ottonians and Salians were able to form long lasting dynasties. In contrast the early french dynasties suffered from unlucky early deaths and were unable to contain the power of the nobility in the face of several crises. Only at the end of the 12th century did the centralisation process of France begin.>>18533164The election process of the early German Kings/Emperors wasn't codified (in contrast to what people are familiar with) and in effect the titles were hereditary. In nearly all cases before the 14th century it wasn't an election but a confirmation.
>>18533088>the low middle agesWhat's that? Early Middle Ages or Late?
The French king was basically just another duke or count until Philip II Augustus. The Emperor wasn't that much different but he had much greater symbolic power and often military power. From Otto to Frederick I, you had several emperors who were able to defeat their internal rivals and be the real top dog in the empire. HRE for sure.
>>18533245>VeniceVenice was part of the byzantine territory in Italy and while all of said territory got conquered by the Lombards, Venice held out as a byzantine outpost. When Charlemagne came to Italy he took over the realm of the Lombards but also failed to conquere Venice. Thus said city remained under nominal byzantine control, which gradually faded. >NaplesContintous power struggles between the Lombards and Byzantines resulted in an opening for Norman Invaders, which established their own polities and culminated in the Kingdom of Sicily in the 12th century. Of note is that nominally many of those norman states were vassals of the Papacy.
>>18533088No individual person was actually 'powerful' in the middle ages. Every king relied on the support of his vassals, which could switch allegiance at any moment. The position of Emperor of Christiandom held a far higher 'prestige' than that of the monarch of France but that didn't necessarily translate to greater material power.
>>18533257After the 14th century as well. After the Habsburg regained the power they had before the death of Rudolf I in 1291, the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor and successor of the Hohenstaufen Empty Throne after the end of the Great Interregnum, where the House of Habsburg lost the throne for a time to other families (such as the Nassau and the Luxembourg), the Habsburgs managed to convert the HRE election system into a de facto almost hereditary confirmation from 1438 until 1740 since the Albert II of Austria was the son-in-law of Sigismund of Luxembourg, who left no male heirs, Habsburg ensured the election of the eldest son or heir while the emperor was still in power eliminating disputes and the need for new electoral campaigns after the monarch's death.Unlike other candidates, the Habsburg possessed vast and rich elector duchies/principalities in entire Austria, while the prince-electors of Germany didn't even have an entire cardinal region of Germany to call their own. The Habsburg were powerful enough to finance armies without relying excessively on other non-Astrian elector principalities in the HRE and maintained strategic marriage alliances that offered privileges and lands to the seven great prince-electors, bought or secured, often through bribes and exchanges of political favors.The inbreeding and expansion of the Habsburgs out of Austria into Spain and America just consolidated their power over the HRE. Only the power of the Carolingians under Charlemagne compares to/is superior to that of the Habsburgs over Europe, but he was from the Early Middle Ages.>>18533262I think the OP is Iberophone, here we call the end of the Middle Ages (1300-1500 BCE) more "Baja Edad Media/Baixa Idade Média" (Low Middle Ages) than "Tardía Edad Media/Idade Média Tardia" (Late Middle Ages).
>>18533635Habsburg had regency over Italy as well, so they surrounded the pope and the French had to elected another pope to live in France.
>>18533653This is not limited to the antipopes of the Avignon Papacy. The Medici, one of the most prestigious papal families in Europe, who played a leading role in the patronage of the Italian Renaissance (Marsilio Ficino was one of their protégés), ruled not only the Papal States, but also the Republic of Florence, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and France through Catherine de Medici and Marie de Medici, both mother-in-law and second wife of King Henry IV, the first king of the Bourbon dynasty of France, who was originally a Calvinist/Huguenot from Spain forced to convert to Catholicism after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, but that protected the Huguenots through the Edict of Nantes (revoked by his great-grandson, the Sun King Louis XIV) and was assassinated by the Catholic fanatic François Ravaillac, hue.
>>18533281Isn't Venice sacking Constantinople ironic?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muMk6pTsRW8
It depends on the time and place…and how you also define “power”.Nominally, the Holy Roman Emperor ranked just below the Pope, and just above France, who themselves were ranked above England, in terms of the “Christian King” hierarchy. Despite this, England is a more formidable fighting force for most of the Middle Ages. The English King held overlordship from the Arctic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea at one point.That being said, the French King lost wars against his vassals pretty often. He didn’t really have full power until the Crusade in the South of France (a land grab in the Occitan and Toulouse), until the Gascons were subdued (always rebelling), and until the English were driven away in the 100 Years War
>>18533088France was the undisputed power in continental Europe up until like 150 years ago. They crushed most of their enemies
>>18533777>undisputedThere was never an “undisputed” power in Europe after the Romans
>>18533732Wasn't it somewhat common for people to complain about the undisputed head of Christendom (for western Europe) being elected from among a few corrupt Roman (less commonly Italian) families? Iirc it was. There are more Orsini popes than English ones.
>>18533789Kings didn’t give a fuck, because, in truth, long before the Protestant Reformation, the kings already invented ways to have supremacy over Catholicism in their own kingdom. The Pope just held nominal authority. It was called Gallicanism in France, and, in England, laws like the Statues of Mortmain and Magna Carta made sure the Clergy never got too powerful
>>18533802>long before the Protestant Reformation, the kings already invented ways to have supremacy over Catholicism in their own kingdomI noticed that you didn't mention Germany in your example of Western Caesaropapism (I say Western because Constantine, the first Christian emperor, moved the capital of the Roman Empire to the East, and Theodosius, which made Christianity the state religion of Rome, was originally emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire and the last Roman emperor to rule both East and West together until Justinian and Belisarius unification because he defeated the usurper Western emperors Magnus Maximus, Frankish Arbogast and Eugenius), since the Germanic princes only achieved autonomy from the Papacy with the Protestant Reformation because the papal power over the European kings itself originated from a Papal-Germanic alliance. Zechariah and Stephen II supported the deposition of the Merovingians by legitimizing Pepin the Short as the new King of the Franks under the Carolingian Dynasty because of the prestige of his father, the mayor of the palace Charles Martel (who saved Europe from Muslim expansion at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, giving the Carolingian dynasty the image of the true defenders of the Church), because the Carolingian mayors of the palace exercised de facto royal power behind the decadent Merovingians, and mainly because Pepin protected the Papacy (previously under the influence of the Byzantines) from the Lombards and the Donation of Pepin created the independent Papal States.
>>18533901The German kings retained control of the soil, only leasing it to the Bishops. In other European states the church controlled vast amounts of farmland (up to a third)
>>18533732Henry the Apostate is in hell right now, the words “Paris is worth a mass” echoing through his mind for eternity
>>18533901In exchange, later, the Papacy crowned Charlemagne, son of Pepin the Short, the Holy Roman Emperor, the successor to the Christian emperors of the Western Roman Empire (as a revenge against the Byzantine Papacy), the greatest Christian king and and defender of Christendom in Europe, a secular and originally religious (The Holy Roman Emperor could ordain bishops, who were the ones who elected the new popes, until the Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy) of the Church, and therefore, Jesus Christ and God, above the subsequent Christian kings/princes/dukes/... of France, Italy, Germany, England, Spain, etc... BUT The Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy happened, eliminating any chance of influence that the Holy Roman Emperor could have over the election of the Pope, the Italian city-states, with strong ties to the Papacy, experienced significant economic and population growth during the Crusades (Commercial Revolution), with the nascent merchant bourgeoisie and local nobles uniting to demand autonomy from the feudal lords and the Holy Roman Empire and forming independent governments called communes, many of them based on structures from the ancient Roman Republic (they maintained much contact and conflicts with the Byzantines during the Crusades, the very Renaissance/Rediscovery of Greco-Roman culture due to the flight of Greek scholars to Italy during the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks).The Hohenstaufen Dynasty attempted to centralize the Holy Roman Empire and control the Italian cities-states/Papacy, but failed, leaving the German throne vacant and full of pretenders, whose conflict transformed the Holy Roman Empire into the patchwork quilt that we know during the Great Interregnum.The Germanic Emperor gave lands to the Papacy in exchange for them dividing his kingdom into countless principalities. No wonder they converted to Protestantism, hue.>>18533937I was going to talk about that.
>>18533088The early emperors were more powerful but over time they were surpassed if not eclipsed by the French kings. The HRE looks massive on a map but you have to realize that for the most part it acted like a hundred wild horses pulling in different directions when they weren't busy kicking each other, which was most of the time. Even if the emperor had lots of power on paper this did not mean he could use it in practice. The most powerful people in the empire were always powerful as a result of their direct dynastic possessions (a concept called 'hausmacht'), not due to some abstract notion of rank which only means something if it can be enforced - which it often couldn't.The entire Habsburgs empire survived due to blind luck but mostly due to Jakob Fugger. The services of a private banker is the only reason that this piss poor family could even have the shadow of a chance of fighting the French kings, because their German vassals sure as fuck weren't keen on paying taxes or providing troops. When the French invaded Burgundy they all shrugged and said it was a conflict among the French and the Habsburgs, it didn't concern the empire, so a 15-year old Maximilian had to defend his wife's inheritance with... well, whatever he could pay for with the money he borrowed from Fugger. Same story during the Italian Wars or literally anything that Maximilian wanted to do at any point in his life. He had to beg and grovel his own princes for the resources to conduct politics, they either stalled or flat out refused, so he had to borrow and borrow and borrow from Fugger. The French on the other hand were monstrously rich compared to the Habsburgs, already have set up permanent systems of taxation while having much of the country under the thumb of the king, not a hundred different princes. The Habsburg's luck only changed after they managed to get Spain, i.e expanding their power OUTSIDE the HRE. A Holy Roman prince is worth about as far as you can spit.
>>18533802It depends on the King, the Emperor certainly cared. He wasn't easy to ignore outright, anyway. For a short period he may have genuinely been king of Europe. I'm talking about Innocent the third, here.
>>18533998That's what I wanted to say too. The Spanish (Castile and Aragon) Crown directly funded only the initial voyage of Christopher Columbus. Afterward, exploration and conquest were largely privatized. Conquistadores formed partnerships with wealthy private Italian investors to fund their ships, weapons, and men. The Spanish (Habsburg) Crown only financed expeditions again in Americas up until 1519, and then only partially, most were paid by private funds of Italian and German bankers. Habsburg's Spain was basically controlled by foreigner bankers, there is an interesting article called "los banqueros de Felipe IV" that explains just for buried in debt was the whole empire. The Habsburgs used the gold and silver extracted in the New World, mainly from the mines of Potosí and Zacatecas, to back its European projects (election in HRE and military power against England and France, who gave letters of marque to pirates steal Spanish gold and commodities in the Caribbean, hue). Banking dynasties such as the Fugger of Augsburg and the Welser financed the election of Emperor Charles V in exchange for mining concessions. This cash flow Spanish dependence was so profound that the Fugger family received income directly from the Spanish military orders and from silver mines as collateral. The great wealth allowed the Habsburgs to maintain the Spanish Tercios and hire armies of German (Landsknechte) and Italian mercenaries to fight in the Thirty Years' War and in disputes against France. The irony is that although Spain did not develop, in the capitalist sense, like its Dutch and English rivals, it served as a springboard for them. The rampant inflation of the Price Revolution devalued the Spanish currency, making its products more expensive. Taking advantage of this, the English and Dutch flooded the Spanish market with cheap manufactured goods. This fierce external competition ruined local producers and destroyed Spain's nascent manufacturing industry.
>>18534059But Spain only dropped the spaghetti out of the pocket in the floor when these fledgling Dutch and English manufacturing industries, who ironically developed to meet the strong Spanish demand as their nations did not yet have great empires like Spain, evolved into large companies and trading firms, transformed into the first capitalist conglomerates, accumulating so much capital that they soon opened their own banks. These financial institutions began to generate and move far more wealth than the entire Spanish economy. Unable to compete, Spain became isolated and without its own productive base. Consequently, the Spanish Crown lost its financiers and its credit base, which caused the empire to sink completely into debt and bankruptcy.Just for effect of comparison, the Dutch founded the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609. The English created the Bank of England in 1694. The Spanish only did the National Bank of San Carlos in later 1782, a decade before the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars fuck their shit out.
>>18534082>>18534059What faveladog cope is this, moorberians thought that any lifestyle outside hildago indolence was the equivalent of living like the peasants scrabbling beneath them, and that was reflected in a wider discouragement of any form of further development.You have spanish commentators in the 18th century literally laughing at spain getting flooded by french artisans arbitraging their skills given the shoddy workmanship of the natives lol
before the inevitable ban from our very thin-skinned brazilian mod
>>18533635I was specifically referring to the codification of the election process by the Golden Bull of 1356 since before that the election/confirmation of the German King/Emperor was just an assembly by some of the Greats of the Realm. This uncertainty factor in part led also to the Interregnum. And while the process of the eligible-for-elector Greats was already somewhat in practice in the previous century, only the Golden Bull of 1356 made it a fixed process. >Habsburg ensured the election of the eldest son or heir while the emperor was still in power eliminating disputes and the need for new electoral campaigns after the monarch's death.Not entirely true. Many Habsburg emperors still had to buddy up to the princes in order to secure their succesors. Frederick III. for example had to content with the rising Wittelsbacher and in part only secured the succession of his son Maximilian because he didn't invite the Bohemian King to the election of his son, which breached the Golden Bull of 1356 (but nobody cared).>Unlike other candidates, the Habsburg possessed vast and rich elector duchies/principalitiesAlso not entirely true. Only after 1493 did they (namely Maximilian I.) manage to secure a part of the Burgundian Inheritance und the main "gem" of the austrian crown, that being the Kingdom of Bohemia, only fell to them securely in 1526. And while before that 3 members of the house of Habsburg managed to become the kings of Bohemia as well, their control over those territory was slim at best and went hand in hand with much instability.>>18533653The Papacy of Avignon had nothing to do with Imperial/Habsburg interests in Italy. More so that France simply dgaf about the supposed primacy of the Pope and simply preassured the college of the cardinals into submission.>>18533751Somewhat. But Venice had simply emancipated itself from any amount of byzantine control long before the 4th crusade.
>>18533901In the early HRE the ecclesiastical princes were also the most reliable vassals of the King/Emperor. Much of the administration of the realm was hinged on the bishopships and many abbeys, which also supplied much of the martial force. >The Germanic Emperor gave lands to the Papacy in exchange for them dividing his kingdom into countless principalities. What? The Concordate of Worms specifies that bishops and abbots within the HRE get their physical fiefdom and their jura regalia invested into them by the Emperor, which makes them secular vassals of the imperial crown. Only the election of bishops and abbots took place without the participation of the king or emperor (the emperor was still allowed to decide in cases of electoral draws within a given diocese).>>18533998>The most powerful people in the empire were always powerful as a result of their direct dynastic possessions (a concept called 'hausmacht')That's true for every kingdom. The early french kings were piss poor and limited at best to the Île-de-France with their influence.
>>18534084In 1400, Spain, as the nation we know today, did not even exist yet, retard. There was Castile, Aragon, etc. In that century the Reconquista was finished for good (Granada). Europe had already a middle class in medieval times while Spanish Reconquista happened, it was heavily concentrated in the Netherlands, the Hanseatic League cities of Germany, and the city-states of North Italy which were major centers of commerce and industry. The Netherlands were favorably positioned at a crossing of east-west and north-south trade routes of North/Baltic Sea (which connected England, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Poland and Baltic countries), connected to a large German hinterland through the Rhine river which flowed the way to Switzerland, the other great financial confederation in Europe. Spain had very little of any middle class during its golden age in the 16th-17th centuries, a trade route focused solely on send manufactured goods to Atlantic/Americas (a poor industry, since Spanish colonies could not trade their commodities with each other and were discouraged from making manufactured goods) and not on European Internal Market and was almost entirely propped up by the influx of gold and silver from the New World.>>18534115>>18534141Thanks for the correction.>In the early HRE the ecclesiastical princes were also the most reliable vassals of the King/Emperor. Much of the administration of the realm was hinged on the bishopships and many abbeysThis didn't happen because their positions weren't hereditary, their lands couldn't become rival dynasties, which made them loyal administrative pillars of the Holy Roman Emperor? I know that, with the spread of the Reformation, the secular and ecclesiastical princes who converted to Protestantism gained enormous economic and political incentive, they could legally appropriate vast lands, abbeys, and Catholic wealth, keeping the money that previously went to Rome.
>>18534167You're reiterating the argument you dumb faveladog, they didn't develop because spain and its colonies chose to hidalgomaxx. Literally how the fuck can you pretend that the fucking netherlands had a more opportunistic trade route than spain did in the same time period, "hue"
>>18533164Yes, but the French king didn't have nearly as tight a grip on the society and culture of Europe. The Holy Roman Emperor was the universal Christian king and outranked every other king in Western Europe. He was literally the spiritual successor to the Roman emperors.
>>18533088The King of Germany was the most powerful monarch in Western Europe until the mid 13th century. Unlike West Frankia, East Frankia managed to avoid the worst of feudal disintegration and central power remained strong. The only king I can think of which surpassed the Emperor in income was Henry II, which did not last into Richard's reign. In the 14th century the opposite happened, as Germany became further decentralised and weaker from civil war and the habitual give away of rights to keep power while the French kings began to rapidly consolidate power and dissolve feudal lordships across France, integrating them into the royal demesne.It was at this point were the French kings gained ascendancy.>>18534167>This didn't happen because their positions weren't hereditary, their lands couldn't become rival dynasties, which made them loyal administrative pillars of the Holy Roman Emperor?No early titles, besides the kingship, were considered inheritable. The first title to be legally inheritable was the duchy of Austria under Barbarossa. Titles would default otherwise back to the king, who would parcel them out to who he pleased, which was often the child of the former Prince but he could just refuse to do so. This also existed in England, although unlike in Germany, never went away, Earldoms were not inheritable and could only be given by the king, to the disgruntlement of powerful barons, this was largely inherited from Anglo-Saxon Earldoms since such controllable titles did not exist in France.
>>18534168>Atlantic Route>opportunistic tradeThe Spanish didn't even have access to the left side of the Tordesillas Line until the Iberian Union, you retard. That was why Portugal was the dominant maritime power before Spain, they had access to the spices from the Orient/India and slaves of West/Central Africa, essential elements for the Triangular Trade Route since they used the coastal tropical territory in the Americas to plant and process the spices (Sugarcane is originated from Indian subcontinent), use the wealth gained selling this in Europe and then manufactured like any other products back to the Americas to buy manufactured goods and weapons that could be traded with West/Central Africans for their slaves, which were sold to spice plantations in the Americas that processed them back to Europe, which bought manufactured goods/weapons for Africans in exchange for slaves to America, Europe, Africa, ad infinitum...>>18534168>Who was more powerful during the low middle ages>during the low middle ages>low middle ages>>18534186>The first title to be legally inheritable was the duchy of Austria under BarbarossaHe was a Hohenstaufen, the dynasty that attempted to centralize the Holy Roman Empire but ended up causing more of its fragmentation.
