Alterity and Self-Understanding: Inclusion and Exclusion Strategies of Southern German Estates in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Markus Christopher Müller

Institute of Bavarian History at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 2  (2024):195-212 DOI 10.38145/2024.2.195

This article analyses diversification strategies in the politics of Sigismund I as king and emperor. Three examples (Swabia, Bavaria, and Tyrol) show different aspects of this diversity. In Swabia, Sigismund attempted to mediate alliances between the knightly societies and the city federations in order to create a counterweight to the imperial princes. In Bavaria, he privileged the knighthood and thus created a dynamic that led to the formation of the land estates with their own identity. Sigismund also supported rebellious nobles in Tyrol against their prince. All interventions can be better contextualised against the backdrop of his imperial policy. At first glance, he was not successful anywhere, but the imperial privileges he granted had an impact on the conflicts between the knighthood/nobility and princes in the fifteenth century and thus diversified late medieval constitutional practice.

Keywords: nobility, empire, constitution, knighthood, Swabia, Bavaria, Tyrol, estates

When King Sigismund was in Nuremberg in September 1422, he had difficult months behind him which had born witness to his coronation as king of Bohemia, victories and defeats against the Hussites, and a hasty flight. Furthermore, he was not in Nuremberg entirely voluntarily, for after he himself had let an invitation to a possible court day in Regensburg lapse, the electors had summoned him to appear in Nuremberg on July 15, 1422.1 Historian Sabine Wefers speaks of the self-organisation of the empire.2 Sigismund arrived on July 26 and tried to make the day called by the electors his own after all.3

On September 13, 1422, the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he allowed the knighthood in the empire (it remains unclear whether at this point he was only addressing the estate of imperial knights, which was also not yet clearly definable) to unite for the protection of their rights and to admit imperial cities to their union. In the corresponding charter, at least one of which is preserved in the original in Munich, the king emphasises his concern for safeguarding the rights of the knighthood of his realm.4 His aim was for the nobility to be happy and blessed.5 Sigismund had to intervene, as he had heard that the knighthood in Germany was suffering much coercion and that many of its rights were being challenged.6 This is followed in the corresponding charter by the cities, to which he grants the full right to join the associations of the nobility.7 For himself and all his successors, Sigismund confirmed the right of association for the knighthood and cities in his realm.

The charter from September 13, 1422 has so far received attention as King Sigmund’s “privilege,” especially in research on the Swabian nobility. Hermann Mau even regarded it as the “Magna Carta der deutschen Reichsritterschaft.”8 The aim of this royal privileging of Sigismund was, in my view, to diversify the political constellations of actors in the Holy Roman Empire so that Sigismund himself would be able to intervene as the ordering head of this empire and thus to create counterweights to the Electoral College. Sigismund’s approach can be seen as innovative against the backdrop of his father’s legislation (the Golden Bull) and the denigration by towns and princes of previous associations of lesser nobles as “evil societies” (böse Gesellschaften, e.g. in the early 1380s).

If we understand diversity as a system of differentiations9 that could be developed and asserted in different ways depending on historical constellations, this can be seen as Sigismund’s attempt to create diversity in order to secure and expand his rule. In the following, I will examine how realistic this attempt proved. I draw on three concrete examples: the Swabian noble alliances, the estates of the Duchy of Bavaria, and rebellious nobles in the County of Tyrol. I conclude with an admittedly incomplete attempt to assess the exemplary results to Sigismund’s imperial policy and his understanding of rule. A quick glance at the secondary literature suffices to show that the relationship between King and Emperor Sigismund to the non-princely nobles has hardly been studied. Historians have tended focus on his relations with the princes of the Holy Roman Empire and the political actors who enjoyed “imperial immediacy” (reichsunmittelbar).10 From a broader perspective, the preliminary findings of this paper can further a more nuanced understanding of the associative political culture of the late medieval empire, as recently emphasised by Duncan Hardy, for example:11 “The Empire therefore consisted of a shifting kaleidoscope of intertwined jurisdictions and networks.”12 The functioning of these networks within the empire in its parallel and mutually overlapping constitutional structures and constellations, especially below the level of the imperial princes, has not yet been sufficiently studied.13 In this article, I attempt to do this from the perspective of diversity.

The Swabian Noble Alliances

On April 25, 1413, the regional Swabian knightly confederations under the banner of St. George concluded the Bund der Gemeinen Gesellschaft, the so-called Jörgenbund.14 A few days later, 19 imperial cities entered a union among themselves with a protective relationship with Count Palatine Ludwig and Count Eberhard of Württemberg.15 More than a year later, at Christmas 1414, Sigismund came to the empire as the elected Roman king. At this time, he could only rely on the support of the electors to a limited extent. Accordingly, Sigismund quickly sought to harness the political potential of the lower nobility and the cities. He built on the origins of the Society of St. George’s Shield in the suppression of the Appenzell rural communes and the League above the Lake in 1407–1408, which surely played a major role in making the Society and other associations of lesser nobles potential partners of kings and emperors.16 At the Diet of Constance in February 1415, Sigismund reminded the city delegates of the great city alliances of the fourteenth century, and he explained to them that the princes were increasing their rights at the expense of the empire, while the empire only had the cities to support it. However, his attempts at motivation were unsuccessful. The cities refused to accept the royal alliance policy proposed.17

All the more surprising is the reason Sigismund gives in his Nuremberg charter of September 13, 1422 for not only allowing an alliance between the nobility and the cities but even having called for it. In the charter, he states that all the cities represented in Nuremberg had a great desire to achieve unity and friendship among themselves.18 He, the king, could therefore only welcome the fact that the cities stuck together when the princes joined forces.19 However, it is doubtful whether Sigismund acted as reactively as scholars have often believed him to have done. Rather, the charter should be understood merely as a rhetorical attempt to realise a project that had been running since 1414 at the latest, albeit unsuccessfully in this case as well.

This corresponds to an assumption expressed by Heinz Angermeier that it was not the intention of the imperial cities to engage in a new imperial policy. Rather, it was the king who based on his Hungarian experiences, believed that he could also only develop a monarchical policy in Germany with the help of the cities.20 After Sigismund’s initial conflicts with the Hungarian estates, he was able to come to terms with them in the following years. The model for his attempts to establish city alliances in the empire was certainly the great city privileges of the Hungarian diet of 1405. He probably assumed that this would also enable him to govern successfully in the empire.

This attempt to encourage and favour alliances of the lower nobility, the knighthood, and the cities was supplemented by a clear policy of prohibition, which can be seen as two sides of the same coin. For example, Sigismund forbade the Elector of Mainz and the Rhenish imperial cities of Mainz, Worms, and Speyer to form alliances, with a clear justification addressed to the Elector of Mainz: Since Emperor Charles IV had forbidden such association, he too, Sigismund, thought it was forbidden. He therefore did not want the Elector to approach the aforementioned cities. Instead, he should show consideration for the king and the Empire. In this case, Sigismund clearly argued with the prohibition of alliances formulated in the Golden Bull,21 which the king knew how to interpret differently for himself than for the imperial princes: an alliance could only be established with the knowledge and will of the imperial power. Sigismund wanted to secure a monopoly on it, so to speak.22 Mark Whelan has identified several factors of the communication between the Princely Abbey of Ellwangen and Sigismund’s court which can probably be cited as an additional difficulty in achieving this goal: “the obstacles associated with traversing the vast Luxembourg realms and the costs involved in treating with an often distant sovereign.”23 As Whelan points out, this did not mean that these problems diminished Sigismund’s “significance to contemporaries,”24 but they perhaps did make some of his policies more difficult to implement in practice.

Nevertheless, some of the electors also tried to apply Sigismund’s strategy and organise alliances under their leadership. However, the cities and the St. Jörgen Society refused such electoral association plans at the end of 1427. In May of the following year, the electors again tried to establish such an alliance under their aegis, but we know of no reaction to their efforts.25

At the Diet of Pressburg in 1429, Sigismund himself again called on the cities and knights in the Roman-German Empire to form an alliance, but again without any discernible result.26 Here too, the situation in Swabia nevertheless served as a model illustrating the merits of his argumentation. He sent the knight Konrad von Flörsheim to the knighthood in the Gau and Westerreich, west of the Vogesen, who was to call on them to unite in the name of the king. They need only examine and recognize the benefits such an association, which Sigismund had helped them to achieve, had brought to the Knighthood of Jörgenschild.27 Hermann Mau saw this as Sigismund’s ultimately failed attempt to create a “new basis of power”28 for himself and the empire.

So what remains of the intended diversification? Probably more than contemporaries were aware of. In his work on the Schwäbische Bund, the Swabian Confederation, Horst Carl describes the period under Sigismund as an important phase in the cooperative socialisation of the nobility in the German southwest.29 However, the privilege of 1422 by no means belongs only to the prehistory of the Swabian imperial knighthood, because the hypothesis that Sigismund only addressed knights and towns that were impartial to the empire is not persuasive, as the following example clearly illustrates.30

The Land Estates in the Duchy of Bavaria

The Bavarian estates (Landstände or Landschaft) existed in 1422 in the four partial duchies that had been created in the late fourteenth century after the death of Emperor Ludwig IV under his sons and grandsons.31 There they formed their own political entities without giving up the idea of an existing Duchy of Bavaria.32 Whether they were the addressees of Sigismund’s Nuremberg charter is difficult to say, but probably not. Nevertheless, the Bavarian estates took this royal charter very much for granted and included it as the thirtieth letter of freedom in their collection of rights and privileges created in 1508.33

It was obviously easy for them to integrate this royal document into their perception of themselves and their status, because this right of the nobility and the knighthood to unite with the towns had long been a reality in the Duchy of Bavaria. The institutionalised inclusion mechanisms, which we know as the right of the nobility to unite, were at the same time countered, however, by equally (and I would say causally) necessary exclusion mechanisms, which first and foremost slowly contoured the group that wanted and was supposed to unite. These exclusion mechanisms were also strongly developed in the Duchy of Bavaria at the beginning of the fifteenth century.34

The treatment of guests (Gäste), i.e. of foreigners, or non-Bavarians in this specific case, was regularly a topic of discussion, as was their role in the ducal administration, the council bodies, and the affiliation with the Landschaft.

The three Bavarian dukes Stefan, Friedrich, and Johann had to make several concessions to the nobility at a Diet in Munich in 1392: For themselves and their descendants, they promised not to issue any charter to guests, i.e. foreigners, which could call into question the rights of the “land und leut,”35 a term that the estates liked to use, in Bavaria. If they did, these documents would be pronounced invalid. Likewise, the dukes vowed for both Upper and Lower Bavaria that they would not take guests into consideration when appointing councilors (Räte), guardians (Pfleger), and other court offices, and that they would not appoint anyone who did not come from Bavaria, i.e. that they would only take Bavarian compatriots into their service.36 As a reaction to this, on the same day the “graven, freien, dinstleut, ritter und knecht, stet und mergkt gemaingklich wie die genant sein die zu den landen obern und nidern Bairn gehörent,”37 so counts and nobility, towns and markets in Upper and Lower Bavaria declared that they wanted to unite, also to resist, but in a way that the dukes should always remain with the rule in Bavaria, for the unity of the country, one could well say.

The two charters of the Tuesday before St. Catherine’s Day 1392, one issued and sealed by the princes (Landesfürsten) and one issued and sealed by the estates, reflect the reciprocal relationship. The assurance of exclusivity necessarily went hand in hand with the right to exclusivity for a privileged group. The following year, Duke Johann and Duke Ernst of Bavaria-Munich promised at a diet in Munich that they would only staff their council as well as their castles and fortresses with locals.38 This exclusion was also linked to inclusion, for in the same charter, the two dukes granted the counts, knights and nobles, the towns and markets, or in other words, the “land und leute” of their partial duchy, the right to assemble at any time as soon as necessary.39 On the eve of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in 1396, the dukes Stefan and Johann confirmed in Munich that they would only fill their council positions and all offices with persons who had been born in Bavaria or who were residents there, i.e. who had landed property and thus belong to the “land.”40

At this point, one could mention numerous other letters of alliances, privileges, and their confirmations which were written with particular frequency around 1400. They all move within the range of exclusivity and inclusivity that has been described, and it is only by thinking about them together that we can understand the diversity of political actors and structures. If we think further about Patrick Lantschner’s observation for the late Middle Ages that “the logic of conflict is the logic of political order itself,”41 the dynamic between inclusion and exclusion can also be interpreted not only as a conflict between prince and estates, but as a principle of political order, as Christina Lutter also points out for Vienna.42

The question of exclusivity is by no means confined to Bavaria, especially on Sigismund’s side, but is also encountered in the monarch’s immediate environment. The question of the national composition of his council became particularly intense after the death of his chancellor Georg von Passau in early August 1423. The number of Hungarian magnates, for example, in the witness lists and the strong participation of Italian scholars of jurisprudence were repeatedly criticised in the empire, but so was the prominent role of some members of the Swabian noble alliances in Sigismund’s close environment.43

In addition, Sigismund’s efforts concerning the “Landfrieden,” which Heinz Angermeier has clearly elaborated,44 are also reflected in a charter of the Bavarian Landschaft. According to a charter from a diet in Augsburg on the Mon­day after Palm Sunday 1429, one of the reasons for the association of the estates was that Sigismund had seen the unchristian work and the many sufferings that war and conflict had brought both for the rich and for the poor.45 The estates of the Duchy of Bavaria also included this charter, which originated in a different context, in their collections, rights, and privileges and thus also used it in later centuries to legitimise their claims to imperial authority.46 In 1434, the Bavarian knighthood had all its rights, freedoms, and privileges explicitly confirmed by Emperor Sigismund. The document was later included in the collection as the thirty-sixth letter.47 Under threat of a fine of 100 gold marks for violation of the chartered rights, Sigismund placed the knighthood under special imperial protection. This possibility of sanctions was also explicitly directed against the princes of the empire, i.e. also (although not mentioned by name) against the Bavarian dukes, and it sanctions harmonised well with Sigismund’s strategy of forming alliances at the level of the regional nobility, as shown by the example of Swabia. Thus in Bavaria and throughout the empire, sensitivity concerning the exclusivity of one’s own rights and privileges seems to have been part of the actors’ mindset and certainly played a central role in the question of diversity in the constitutional structure of the late medieval empire. The aforementioned imperial privileges for the Bavarian knighthood also contributed significantly to the formation of the estates, which were later able to invoke precisely these documents – a dynamic that has never been studied before.

Older traditions involving these kinds of demands for exclusivity can be found here. If we look at Tyrol, for example, Margrave Ludwig had also stipulated in the so-called “Großer Freiheitsbrief” (Great Charter of Freedom) of January 28, 1342, which his father, Emperor Ludwig IV, had confirmed, that no important position in Tyrol would be filled by a foreigner.48 This observation leads to the third example.

The Nobility of the County of Tyrol

In the county of Tyrol, Sigismund’s strategy of diversifying political actors fell on ground that was every bit as fertile as in Bavaria, since there is also evidence of a long tradition of corporative political participation in Tyrol. Sigismund wanted to take advantage of this to weaken the Habsburgs, who ruled Tyrol at the time.49

During his reign, the feud between Duke Ernst and Duke Friedrich in Tyrol ended (specifically, in 1417). After that, the struggle for territorial power, which the noble families of Rottenburg, Wolkenstein, Spaur, and Starkenberg in particular wanted to dispute with the ruler, continued for almost a decade. For this period, Werner Köfler assumes that the influence of the nobility in Tyrol reached a highpoint.50 The Tyrolean Landschaft repeatedly acted as a mediating authority. In 1420, Friedrich IV, who wanted and needed to expand his position of power, demanded that the richest nobles of Tyrol return the pledged offices and courts of the prince, though he did offer as a sum in return. However, the nobles refused to return them and sought help not only from other nobles in Tyrol but directly from King Sigismund. There they quickly found support.

As late as December 18, 1422, Sigismund from Pressburg encouraged the support of Ulrich von Starkenberg and Oswald von Wolkenstein. The brothers Michael and Lienhart von Wolkenstein were to support them against Duke Friedrich of Tyrol, who was attacking them. On December 29, Sigismund ordered Duke Friedrich to cease his hostilities against “his servant” Wilhelm von Starkenberg and his brother Ulrich. They would not violate Tyrolean land law, and thus Friedrich had no right to take action against them. If Friedrich, called the duke “with the empty purse,”51 wanted to assert his claims, he should do so before the king or before Dukes Ernst and Albrecht of Austria. Sigismund thus intervened relatively quickly in the Tyrolean disputes by strengthening the opposition among the nobles.

At a meeting in Merano at Pentecost 1423, Duke Friedrich confirmed the rights and freedoms of the assembled estates in order to quickly achieve an association of the country against the opposition of the nobility. With Sigismund’s support, however, the latter wanted to prevent such an agreement at all costs. When the king was in Altsohl (today Zvolen, Slovakia) in July, he once again increased his support for the rebelling nobles. Since Friedrich IV had not fulfilled his obligations to him as king and to the entire Roman-German Empire, in July 16, he was deprived of all fiefs in the county of Tyrol, the land on the Adige and in the Inn valley, as well as other courts. Sigismund announced his intention to return them to the empire and to grant the County of Tyrol to the brothers Ulrich and Wilhelm von Starkenberg as a fief for their loyal service. At the same time, at the request of the two brothers, Sigismund confirmed the rights and privileges of the estates on the Adige and in the Inn valley. Here we encounter a phenomenon that can be observed regularly throughout the fifteenth century: emperors and kings used their power to grant privileges to provincial estates to strengthen them against sovereigns. This constituted a diversification of the constitutional structure of the Roman-German Empire. On the following day, July 17, Sigismund ordered the Imperial Marshal Haupt von Pappenheim to lead the imperial panoply against Duke Friedrich, the disturber of the peace. Sigismund also called on the nobility of neighboring Tyrol, namely Counts Hans von Lupfen and Friedrich von Toggenburg, to take up arms against the disobedient Friedrich and to support Ulrich and Wilhelm von Starkenberg and to march into the Inn and Etsch valleys. One day later, on July 18, 1423, the Tyrolean nobility (we can see how well coordinated the king and the nobility were at this point) formed an alliance on behalf of the entire Tyrolean countryside to protect its freedoms and rights vis-à-vis the prince. At this moment, Sigismund seemed to have been successful with his strategy of playing the Tyrolean nobility off against the disagreeable prince. Friedrich, however, remained unimpressed with the day convened for August 5. In the forefront, he had so-called cedulas (“Zedeln”) sent to the courts of the country, which Friedrich thus gave more political significance than before, informing them about grievances in the country that needed to be remedied and the evil activities of the rebellious nobility. The “Zedeln” also contained the explicit prohibition against entering into any alliance without the consent of the prince, and they were thus clearly directed against alliances of the nobility, such as the alliance that King Sigismund had deliberately permitted in Nuremberg the previous year.52

Friedrich’s only problem was that hardly any nobles appeared in Brixen on August 5. The few who were present therefore asked for the date to be postponed, and a committee was formed to solve the problem later. The rebellious nobles, however, did not succeed in getting the estates on their side. On the next day, probably a committee meeting, on November 18, 1423, the bishop of Brixen and representatives of the estates appeared alongside the ruler and some of his councillors, who distanced themselves from the alliance that had been formed by the nobles. Finally, the council condemned the alliance of the nobility as an affliction of Tyrol.

Over the course of the year, Duke Friedrich succeeded in settling with a large part of the Tyrolean nobility, which is why de facto the alliance only lasted a few weeks. The sources, however, are silent about King Sigismund, who had wanted to intervene in the conflict a few months earlier. Friedrich’s fight against the Starkenbergs, who were particularly supported by Sigismund, continued. On May 10, 1424, a meeting in Innsbruck decided to send a delegation of representatives of the land estates to Greifenstein, the main castle of the Starkenbergs. This delegation failed, however, whereupon the Landschaft agreed to support the ruler by force of arms. Friedrich had thus decided the conflict de facto in his favour.

This enabled him to consolidate his rule, not quickly, but steadily, against the few remaining opposition families. In 1426, the Landschaft successfully mediated between him and the Spaur. Wilhelm von Starkenberg gave up the fight against the duke in November of the same year. Only Oswald von Wolken­stein53 remained, whom we know well from other contexts around Sigismund. Isolated as the last resister from the noble group, he wrote his depressed song “Durch Barbarei, Arabia” in the winter of 1426–1427, which ended with the following words: “Mein freund, die hassen mich überain / an schuld, des müss ich greisen. / das klag ich aller werlt gemain, / den frummen und den weisen, / darzü vil hohen fürsten rain, / die sich ir er land preisen, / das si mich armen Wolckenstein / die wolf nicht lan erzaisen, / gar verwaisen.”54 In 1427, he was summoned to the Diet in Bolzano, secretly left the country, was captured and brought to Innsbruck. Already on December 15, 1424, more than two years earlier, King Sigismund had promised him that he would comply with his request and intercede with Duke Friedrich IV on the rebel’s behalf. Here too, Sigismund did little apart from make announcements from afar. Nevertheless, Oswald von Wolkenstein was admitted to the Order of the Drake (Drachenorden) by Sigismund at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1431, which presumably gave him a belated sense of satisfaction.

Thus, in Tyrol, Sigismund made significant attempts in the initial conflict to oust the unpopular Habsburgs by diversifying the power structures within the county. The fact that all the relevant charters were issued far from Tyrol, not even in southern Germany, points to another problem. Sigismund seems to have had neither time nor energy to enforce his attempts. In the end, he failed in Tyrol in his fight against the establishment of a strong principality in the south of the empire. But here too, over the long term, an enduring image emerged of Sigismund as a leader who could dynamize the people emerged.

An Attempt at Synthesis

Now it is worth taking a final look at Sigismund’s attempts to diversify the political landscape of the Holy Roman Empire in his favour. Although the knight­hoods of Swabia, Franconia, and Bavaria had formed a defensive alliance against the Hussites in Ellingen on July 10, 1430, this alliance expired again after three years on St. George’s Day 1433. After Sigismund’s return from the imperial coronation in Rome at the end of 1433, further efforts of his failed at the imperial diets in Basel and Ulm in 1434 and at the imperial diet in Regensburg. In March of the same year, the negotiations between the St. Jörgenschild Society and the Swabian League of Towns failed in Kirchheim unter Teck.55 In mid-October 1434, Sigismund left the Empire for good, and with his departure, the negotiations on the Swabian association were broken off and never resumed.

But why did Sigismund’s sometimes very ambitious efforts fail at first sight?

Perhaps it can be said quite simply at first: Sigismund’s efforts towards diversification failed because of the diversity of the actors and the unwillingness of the cities to cooperate with the nobility and the knighthood, as a Nördlingen city scribe reported from Kirchheim in 1434: “aber es wart keine ainung troffen, quia displicuit civitatibus, et semper, in quantum licite potuerunt, quesiverunt vias exeundi.”56 The efforts to achieve peace (Landfrieden) at the end of the fourteenth century had already failed due to the differing interests of the cities and knights.57 Sigismund’s renewed attempts were equally unsuccessful.

Thinking further about an idea of Heinz Angermeier’s concerning the land peace order (Landfriedensordnung): Sigismund, with his numerous territories outside the empire, tended to be less affected by his own policy of diversification within the empire. He never had a direct view of his efforts to further associations and alliances and quickly lost sight of them.

The system of diversification can also be seen in Sigismund’s role as King of Bohemia. In the fight against the Hussites, he generously endowed the “Catholic” cities with privileges, as Alexandra Kaar has shown, but he re­peatedly fell short of his promises to them as well.58 Ultimately, the mutual securing of advantages functioned there in a way that did not work in such a direct manner vis-à-vis imperial cities, especially in the German southwest. The goal of creating “a world of personal relationship framed and maintained by symbolic communication and conventional and negotiatory institutions and associations”59 ultimately failed.

The royal charters were gratefully received in the regions of the empire in which a certain level of political participation had already been established, but without always having the effect intended by Sigismund. The question of failure thus ultimately remains one of perspectivation. If we look at the long-term consequences of the policy of diversification, it will certainly not be easy to reconstruct concrete causal chains. Even his greatest critics will not be able to deny that Sigismund’s attempts, which were considered a failure by his contemporaries, certainly had a dynamizing effect on the establishment of the estates in the territories of the empire and that he thereby enabled more differentiated actor structures to emerge in the constitutional structure of the empire.

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Köfler, Werner. Land, Landschaft, Landtag: Geschichte der Tiroler Landtage von den Anfängen bis zur Aufhebung der landständischen Verfassung von 1808. Veröffentlichungen des Tiroler Landesarchivs 3. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1985.

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The League of Lords between Feudalism and the Modern State: Diversity of State Models, Political Agency, and Opposition in Late-Medieval Bohemia (1394–1405)*

 Éloïse Adde

Medieval Studies Department, Central European University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 2  (2024):213-234 DOI 10.38145/2024.2.213

Traditionally, the League of the Lords (Panska jednota) is perceived as having been in opposition to the development of the modern state and as an embodiment of feudalism, which stood in stark opposition to rational modernization. In this paper, in line with the anarchist anthropology of David Graeber and James C. Scott, I would like to show that the nobles were not necessarily conservatives hostile to modernity but rather were political actors who were aware of their choices and who rejected changes not out of a mechanical conservatism but out of a motivated hostility to the modern state. Without losing sight of the pragmatic character of political events and alliances, I am therefore interested in this opposition group and, in particular, in the ways in which it justified its positions and sought to depict itself. Through an analysis of concrete events that occurred in Bohemia, this paper aims to challenge the linear doctrine on the development of the modern state as an unquestioned evolutionary development and thus reassess the possibility of (real) opposition and alternatives to the dominant model.

Keywords: state, revolt, league, Bohemia, agency

Traditionally, revolts in the Middle Ages are perceived as having been in opposition to the development of the modern state and are seen as moments in which the feudal mentality rose up against processes of modernization.1 This assessment is also applied to noble and patrician revolts. These revolts are considered comparatively fleeting events fueled by lingering elements of an already outdated worldview and are generally criticized for not having had clear political aims and for having served only the interests of those who instigated them without considering or embracing any ambition to change the system.2 Or rather, the fact that the leaders of these revolts did not seek to overthrow the monarchy and establish another political regime is taken as clear proof that their acts had no political significance. I would object to this assessment first merely by sharing the observation that the politicians of today are rarely tempted to introduce new social models and are often just as driven by personal motivations as medieval nobles and patricians allegedly were, but this does not prevent us from considering them as serious political players. In this paper, I would like to move away from these kinds of value judgments and propose a reinterpretation of medieval revolts by exploring the campaign of the Bohemian League of Lords against their king, Wenceslas IV (r. 1378–1419).

To briefly summarize the events, Wenceslas IV had been crowned at the initiative of his father Charles IV in 1363, when he was only two years old. He became full king upon his father’s death in 1378. This means that Charles had feared that the succession would be contested. Problems arose quite quickly during Wenceslas’ reign. There were continuous conflicts among members of the Luxembourg family (which explains the precaution taken by Charles in 1363). Jobst of Moravia (r. 1375–1411) and Sigismund of Hungary (from 1387) could not bear to submit to the authority of their close relative,3 and the high nobility complained of having been bypassed by the lower nobility, which enjoyed the favor of the court. When the always ambitious Jobst attacked his brother Prokop, with whom he cogoverned Moravia, Wenceslas had not deigned to intervene, perhaps preferring to see his relatives disunited, as Jiří Spěváček has suggested.4 In addition, Wenceslas was criticized in the Empire, and he was on bad terms with the bishop of Prague, Jan of Jenštejn. In December 1393, the king was even poisoned, maybe by Sigismund, Jobst, and Rupert III of the Palatinate.5

It is in this context of the troubles and isolation of the king that the League of Lords was formed in May 1394, which led to the first imprisonment of Wenceslas in May–August 1394.6 As Wenceslas continued to fail to respect his promises, he was imprisoned a second time by his brother Sigismund, who took him to Vienna, in 1402–1403.7 After the king’s release, an agreement was reached between him and the nobles in 1405 that put an end to the league, even though the lords had not managed to achieve all their objectives. As a result of this imprisonment, members of the high nobility were entrusted by the king with the supervision of the observance of law in the regions, and they were able to impose their choices for appointments to royal offices. However, the composition of the council remained the prerogative of the king.8

The idea is commonly accepted that the league belonged to the past, while the king’s government was a step in the direction of the development of the modern state (for instance, the use of competent servants from lower social backgrounds, beyond the figure of the favorite). In this paper, I would like to consider the two models as two competing worldviews. In line with “anarchist anthropology,” I intend to show that the lords of the league were political actors who were aware of their choices and who rejected some practices not out of reflex conservatism but out of a motivated hostility to the king’s conception of the state. “Anarchist anthropology” is a means of understanding and of­fering a critical reading of social processes in the world and history based on the choice of objects and an analysis of domination processes, including their adoption or deconstruction. From a retrospective and teleological perspective, “anarchist anthropology” attempts to deconstruct the great narratives of human history, and particularly the earliest chapters of this history (the emergence of the state, domination, coercion), to point towards our unconscious and ideological preconceptions as modern. It was developed in the 1970s, when Pierre Clastres brought to light the existence of a non-coercive power in so-called primitive societies, inviting anthropologists to abandon their prejudices and ethnocentrism.9 More recently, James C. Scott has challenged the idea that the state was the natural consequence of the appearance of agriculture and the adoption of more sedentary lifestyles. Indeed, Scott has highlighted resistance to the development and imposition of the state.10 Some medievalists have taken an interest in this development and the tools it provides better to define certain phenomena of modernity that have their roots in the Middle Ages and differ in their medieval phase from what they would later become.11

Without losing sight of the pragmatic character of political events and al­lianc­es, I am therefore interested (I) in this opposition group and, in particular, in the ways in which it justified its positions and sought to depict itself. I (II) situ­ate it in a tradition of revolts and claims and in a strong ideology developed by the nobility in Bohemia and (III) underline the strategy of the league. My intention is to call attention to a diversity of state models in the Middle Ages and thus go against an essentially canonical interpretation, which had embraced a linear model according to which the modern state (inevitably and evolutionarily) overcame the medieval state.

The League of Lords

At the end of the fourteenth century, the League of Lords emerged as an oppositional group of noblemen dissatisfied with the rule of King Wenceslas. The movement was characterized by a strong group identity. To formalize their action and their mission statement, they published a letter on May 5, 1394:

In Prague, May 5, 1394. We Jošt, Margrave and Lord of Moravia, Henry of Rožmberk and Lord of Krumlov, Henry the Elder of Hradec, Břenek of Skála, Bergow of Bílina, Berka of Hohenstein in Saxony, Wilém of Landštejn, Jan Michalec of Michalovice, Boreš the Younger of Bečov and Rýzmberk, Boček of Kunštátu, otherwise known as Poděbrad, the lords of Bohemia, all confess by this letter, unanimously and manifestly, that we have entered into such a covenant and such a promise between ourselves, and that we all have entered into and are entering into such a covenant, and that we promise to hold one another faithfully without guile under our good faith and honor: that we all will and ought to be in unity, and to seek the good of the land, and to bring forth and do the truth in the land, and so to stand together always, that we may lead all the good of the land before us, faithfully helping one another without guile, according to all our faith and according to our honor, each of us and all of us together, with all the power that we each have without guile. And whosoever any of us or any of ours by any act whatsoever shall by any means press him out of the course of the land, or out of the finding of the manor, he is one of us and we promise faithfully to help and to stand by him, that it may not be done to him, but that it may be done to every man.12

This letter begins with the names of the founding members of the League followed by the “lords of Bohemia,” the few nobles mentioned claiming to embody the interests of the whole group and even of the whole country (the word “land” / zemský – země appears four times in this short excerpt), although they of course spoke only for themselves. This claim to represent all is a typical illustration of repraesentatio identatis (representation-identity), which postulates that the part that represents is totally identical to the whole represented (pars pro toto) and which was formalized during the great councils of the fifteenth century (although this does not rule out its earlier existence).13 Considerable emphasis is put on consensus: “we all acknowledge by this letter, unanimously and manifestly.” This is typical of the medieval nobility: against the power of one monarch, the lords emphasized their communal organization as more valuable because it was more just.14 The action was intended to be in the name of all the Czech lords (the adjective “all” appears seven times), and the vocabulary insists on a promise, communal action, and mutual support within the group. This is called jednota, union, or the pásnká jednota in Czech, and it is usually translated as “league of lords” by scholars.

The lords’ action was given legitimacy by their association as a community and the contention that this community was acting for the common good. This conviction was embedded in the philosophy of Aristotle, who postulated that “any community was made for some good.”15 The “community” was eternal through the perpetual succession of its members (communitas non moritur), and thus it embodied stability. In the hierarchy of medieval values, the collegial structure of the community provided a permanent consensus, very much in contrast with a mortal individual, who was inconstant in action and motivated by his own interests.

The regular emphasis on concepts of “community” and “assistance” over­shadows the fact that the nobility was actually disunited. First, not all of them had joined the league. The loyalists included Prokop of Moravia and Jan Zhořelecký, the cousin and the brother of the king, respectively. On June 7, Jan Zhoře­lec­ký published a manifesto to fight the League. He gathered an army of the king’s loyalists and marched on Prague. The troops secretly took the king away from Prague. After a short stay at the Rosenberg castles of Příběnice, Český Krumlov and Vítkův Kámen, Wenceslas was interned at the Wildberg Castle of Stahremberk in Upper Austria. Jan Zhořelecký eventually obtained his release (August 1, 1394) in return for promises of impunity and certain concessions.16 Secondly, tensions also existed within the league.17

In the letter written by the League, the king was not explicitly addressed, even though the letter implicitly claimed to correct his errors. The Lords indicated that they wanted to protect “the good of the realm” and “increase the amount of truth” in the country, thus implying that “the good” and “the truth” were not respected anymore. The medieval king was bound to the political society under his rule. From the twelfth century on, the Paulinian (and theocratic) concept of power, which had dominated society until then, was replaced by a contractual one, which recognized political society as a partner of the ruler, who could not be the owner of all the property of his subjects anymore.18 With the transformations of the modalities of domination which had led to the increase of central power and, simultaneously, to the increased need for the ruler to be able to count on intermediaries (the nobility, the cities), the idea of representativeness, of adequacy between the policy of the sovereign and the expectations of the community of the land, the communitas regni (zemská obec or community of the land in Czech), had emerged distinctly in the collective imagination.19 Many sources and testimonies clearly show that the capacity to embody the interests of all and to respond as adequately as possible to them had become essential in power struggles, struggles that increasingly involved all subjects, whose appreciation was increasingly decisive because of the generalization of a contractual conception and practice of power.20 In Bohemia, the lords of the League claimed to be the only ones able to ensure the common good.

Appealing to this notion of the common good, the Czech lords attacked Wenceslas for his alleged failures. Their criticism aimed at the king’s purported neglect of political affairs and permanent recourse to members of lower nobility to govern with him. We find here again the topos of the bad adviser, a classic figure in medieval political thought.21 The common good was therefore respected only when the king ruled in concert with the lords, i.e. the high nobility, and took care of the country’s affairs, both being linked: when the king collaborated with the lords, he was taking care of the country.

In Nová rada (New Council), Smil Flaška of Pardubice clearly formulated these claims. Smil’s views capture the perceptions of the frustrated nobility. He had joined the Union in 1395. He was the nephew of Ernest of Pardubice (1344–1364), archbishop of Prague and close advisor to King Charles IV (1346–1378). Another of his uncles, Bohuš of Pardubice, also belonged to King Charles’ entourage. Together with his father William, who had become the sole heir to (and administrator of) the family’s possessions after the death of his brothers (Ernest, Bohuš, and Smil the Elder), our Smil (the Younger) personally experienced the king’s arbitrariness. On the death of Smil the Elder, the king had unjustifiably exercised the right of escheat and had seized the town of Pardubice from his family. Smil and his father had embarked on a legal battle (1384–1385) which had ended in defeat. In 1390, when they had appealed, the royal court (zemský soud) had rendered its verdict in favor of the king.22

In Nová rada, which became a major text in Czech literature, the new, inexperienced king summons the animals to give him advice “for the country’s order and peace” (line 50).23 44 animals give their advice. There are 54 in all, if we add those who are mentioned but do not speak. The lion is thus a good king, respectful of his collaborators and concerned with their advice for the common good. The calls to sleep soundly (made by the bear, 588), to eat and drink beyond measure (made by the bear, 587, the wolf, 702, 707, and the goose, 992), to follow one’s desires (made by the fox, 1398–1401), or to isolate oneself and shirk responsibility (made by the cockerel, 1330–1332) correspond to the vices attributed to Wenceslas IV, who did not hesitate to isolate himself in his residences in Křivoklát or Kunratice, in the middle of the forest, to escape the tumult and his responsibilities and to indulge in hunting.24 Along with the wolf, who is already looking forward to the feasts he will be able to have in exchange for services rendered to the king (730, 738–740), and the fox, who hopes to manipulate the king by flattering him (1382–1387), they all embody bad advisors of low social backgrounds, with whom Wenceslas allegedly had surrounded himself.

The leopard explicitly advises the king not to take commoners (488) but only “noble men” into his council, which should be small (491). He also enjoins him to respect the order and precedence of everyone (508) and not to neglect the prelates (510). The lesser nobility and merchants are openly scorned by the crane for their greed and their craving for social ascendancy via the purchase of offices (crane 645–675), a remark that directly echoes the criticisms of the League of Lords but is also a leitmotif of nobiliary literature.

In Smil’s text, the bad influence of these advisors is canceled out by the good advice given by the other animals and especially by the final prayer of the swan. Written by one of the members of the league, Nová rada delivered a powerful message in these troubled times. From its foundation, the League had a strong identity, inscribed in a century of vernacular literature, which founded Czech noble ideology.25

The Czech Nobility, a Tradition of Revolts and Claims and a Strong Ideology

Although they did not formulate any clear program in writing, the lords’ revolt and their demands were part of a long tradition. Written around 1310, the Chronicle of the so-called Dalimil represented the first formulation of the political program of the lords in the context of succession crises after the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty in 1306. Such a crisis was an opportunity to reconfigure the political order. Dalimil (the alleged author, though it is worth noting that the chronicle contains information from other chronicles written in Latin) took advantage of the threat of the Habsburgs to point out the danger represented by all Germans, even those of Bohemia, and thus to cast suspicion on the burghers of the country who were mostly German. At the same time, he showed that a good king was a king who worked with the lords, calling on the latter to fulfill their mission, i.e. to watch over the king and intervene if he were to prove too abusive. Dalimil condemns dissent motivated by personal aspirations.26 Nevertheless, there are cases when revolt becomes necessary. Three great revolts (1247–1249, 1276–1277, and 1288–1290) were considered justified: the nobles opposed the pro-German policy of the kings Wenceslas I (1205–1253), Přemysl Ottokar II (1253–1278), and Wenceslas II (1278–1305) and their resulting exclusion from political affairs.27 Dalimil presents these revolts as having been a necessity for the common good.

Dalimil goes so far as to wish for a new type of political system in which the king would be elected by the community of the land, i.e. the lords, in accordance with the principle of representation-identity mentioned above, according to which the part that represents is absolutely identical to the whole represented. He claims to be concerned about the risks involved in the link between power and the person of the king in the context following the murder of King Wenceslas III, and he insists that the king is stronger if elected.28 In reality, if the king were to be elected, the nobility would be stronger as the main agent in the decision making process. Only through powerful noblemen could the state (and the ruler) enjoy greater stability. We have here an illustration of the theory of the king’s two bodies. The political (or mystical) body is embodied by the community of the kingdom, itself represented by the nobility, and is able by its nature to overcome all the misfortunes (disease, aging, unexpected death) which can befall the king.29

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the nobility had developed a strong political self-awareness thanks to texts presenting its views and claims and the repeated crises, which allowed its members to become active again regularly and thus consolidate and even expend their achievements. The first such crisis occurred just after the death of Přemysl Ottokar II (1278). His young son Wenceslas II was kidnaped by his regent, Otto of Brandebourg. During the king’s absence (1279–1283), the nobility ruled the country, convening the kingdom’s first general diet in 1281.30

The second crisis started after the death of Wenceslas III, which led to the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty. Following the short reign of Rudolf of Habsburg on the Czech throne (1306–1307), the new king, Henry of Carinthia, failed to win unanimous support in the kingdom. The abbots and lords of Bohemia began to negotiate with their suzerain and the new king of the Romans, Henry of Luxembourg (1308–1313). Henry’s son Jean de Luxembourg became king (1310–1346). The newly elected King of Bohemia had to accept many demands from the nobility in the form of the Inaugural Diplomas. According to some stipulations, he could name only Czechs to principal offices and as members of his council. He also had to seek authorization from the lords to levy taxes.31 The Czech nobility managed to use the weakness of the king, a young foreigner, to impose itself as the embodiment of the nation and thus as the king’s indispensable partner.32

A new conflict between the lords and King John of Luxembourg which occurred in 1315–1318 confirmed the lords’ achievements of 1310. In 1313, the death of Henry of Luxembourg meant for John the loss of the support of his father and the title of imperial vicar, which had given him the right to have foreign advisors as an imperial vicar. The attacks of the Hungarian magnate Máté (III) Csák († 1321) and the lasting instability it created in Moravia further complicated the situation. The king needed the support of the Czech lords, whose military aid in the Moravian crisis came with the condition that the king would dismiss his foreign advisors and officers. In October 1315, Henry of Lipá, leader of this tumultuous nobility, was arrested under the pressure of the queen and accused of having plotted with John’s adversary Frederick of Habsburg. At the same time, John had to leave Bohemia to support Louis of Bavaria and to settle the equally complex situation in Luxembourg. The Czech lords intended to exploit the lack of a central authority. Henry of Lipá was released in April 1316 thanks to the pressure of his ever-growing camp. Ostracized, Queen Elizabeth had appealed to foreign mercenaries to assist her in her task, which further increased her political isolation. John came back to Bohemia in November 1317. At the same time, Henry of Lipá formed an official alliance with Frederick of Habsburg (December 27, 1317), which was joined by a great part of the nobility. Faced with this ever-stronger opposition, John called on Louis of Bavaria for help. Louis arrived at Cheb (Eger) on March 20, 1318. John wanted to organize a military expedition with the emperor against the treacherous barons, but the other players wanted to avoid such a risky conflict. The consequence was the signing of the Domažlice agreements on April 24, 1318. John had to confirm the commitments of the Inaugural diplomas.33

The nobility had also taken a stand against Charles IV and his project of bringing the nobility into line with the Maiestas carolina, a legal code written in 1350–1351 the aim of which was to increase royal power. Included among its provisions were sections granting the right to judge criminal cases solely to the king and other rights giving the king greater control over functionaries to increase royal revenues. In 1355, the nobility finally rejected the code at the General Diet. Rather than let the matter come to an open conflict with the nobility, Charles preferred in the end to abandon the whole project.34

By the end of the fourteenth century, the nobles had merged their stances during these episodes into a coherent synthesis, combining the political vision of the aforementioned Chronicle of the so-called Dalimil and a developed legal literature. The Romžberk Book (Kniha Romžberská)35 was a handbook intended for the noble land court or “šlechtický zemský soud.” It dates from the first half of the fourteenth century, but additions were regularly made to it during the fourteenth century, depending on the needs of the nobility. It is the oldest legal book written in Czech. The book systematically codifies the common law and includes contemporary regulations. It contains not only legal provisions, but also advice on how to use them in practice. The book was the initiated by Petr I of Rožmberk, “nejvyšší zemský sudí,” i.e. the High Court Judge of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Through his position and high office, Petr embodied the ideal of the great lord who worked with the king and was aware of and attached to the privileges of the nobility.36 He belonged to an important noble family and had married one of the daughters of the aforementioned Henry of Lipá.

Another particularity of the nobiliary culture at the time of the League was, paradoxically, its appropriation and assimilation of Charles IV’s legacy, despite its opposition to the Maiestas Carolina four decades earlier. In the time of John on Luxembourg (1310–1346), the nobility had similarly presented itself as the guarantor of the Přemyslid legacy against the so-called “foreign king.” This was despite its enduring conflict with the Přemyslid kings during the thirteenth century.37 Once dead and extinguished, the king and the dynasty no longer represented any threat. The dead king and the dynasty served as symbols of the state under the rule of a failed sovereign, as John of Luxembourg and Wenceslas IV were in the eyes of the Czech nobility. They also allowed the nobility to affirm itself as the defender of this state or statehood which was not attached to the ruling king but to a tradition, and thus depersonalized. An idealized vision of Charles IV was soon used to criticize Wenceslas IV, who was presented as his antithesis.38 The shadow of Charles IV is easily identifiable, for instance in the manuscripts possessed by the Romžberk family, a powerful family which had taken part in all campaigns and plots against the Bohemian kings from the thirteenth century to the time of the League.39 Of the 23 manuscripts of the Maiestas Carolina (twelve by Charles and eleven by his brother John-Henry, then heir to the Bohemian throne), two (one of each) were kept in the Romžberk Archives in Český Krumlov, while the others were kept in the Royal Archives.40 Only the Romžberk family possessed this text, testifying to their power and their interest in it. The manuscript ÖNB, cod. 619 [1396], held at the Austrian National Library and containing the Vita Caroli IV (Charles IV’s autobiography) and the Ordo ad coronandum Regem Boemorum (Coronation Order of the Bohemian kings, written by Charles IV), was also in possession of the Romžberk family before it became part of the collection of the Austrian National Library.41 The destiny of Ondřej of Dubá (circa 1320–1412/1413) is another example of this new interweaving of Charles’ legacy and the nobiliary ideology, emerging at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ondřej belonged to the high nobility of Bohemia (lords of Dubá, Benešovici). He joined the League after briefly supporting Wenceslas. In 1394–1395 and again in 1402, however, he wrote a legal book, Zemské právo, which quoted extensively from the Maiestas carolina.42 A convolute reconstituted by Naďa Štachová offers an illustrative example of this new and surprising synergy. This convolute contained three medieval manuscripts, Cerr. A, Cerr. B, and Cerr. C, named after the collector, Cerroni. This enormous set included both Dalimil’s nobiliary chronicle and the chronicle of Pulkava of Radenín, written for Charles IV, as well as Ondřej of Dubá’s legal book and the Book of Rožmberk.43 Despite his desire to bring the nobility into line, King Charles managed to symbolize the unity between the nobility and the state as St. Wenceslas had done for the nobility of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This does not mean that the nobility did not change over time (quite the contrary). But the group had succeeded in establishing a process of resistance to the ruler by systematically presenting itself as the protector of the common good and accumulating and synthesizing in its favor voices from many different horizons.

The Strategy of the League, Agency, and the Meaning of Revolt

The main grievance of the lords was the hegemony enjoyed at the court by the king’s favorites of low social background, to the detriment of the high nobility, especially the high positions occupied by Zikmund Huler, a burgher from the town of Prague, Jira of Roztoky, and Jan Čůcha of Zásada, both members of the low nobility.

However, as shown by Robert Novotný, Wenceslas’ court was, on the contrary, marked by an overrepresentation of the high nobility in comparison with his contemporaries, such Rupert of the Palatinate, Ludwig III of the Palatinate, or the Dukes of Bavaria,44 and also in comparison with his predecessor Charles IV, as shown by Peter Moraw.45 If we look at the list of the podkomoří (chamberlains) of Bohemia, the most important office of the kingdom, we can observe that the change had started already under Charles IV, the last member of the high nobility occupying this prestigious office having been Henry of Lipá under John of Luxembourg.

Robert Novotný found 160 speakers and advisors at Wenceslas’ Court. He could not identify the social origins of seven of them. 46 belonged to the clergy. 108 were lay people. Among the latter, seven were of burgher origin, 32 belonged to the lower nobility, and 61 belonged to the higher nobility.46 It was thus precisely when they were most favored and when they actually dominated Wenceslas’ court that the lords decided to rebel. Robert Novotný considered this a paradox which could only be explained by tensions and divisions within the nobility and competition among the main families of the kingdom, based on long-standing power-kinship ties, though he does not explain which ones were at play.47

If the lords were dominant in state structures, why were they complaining? This is a judgment that has traditionally been made about revolts. The actions of the nobles appear so unsuited to the context. But it would be a mistake to look for coherence in reactions, especially in the political sphere. It is a bias of the historian to expect more coherence from individuals of past societies than from his contemporaries. We are not surprised by the incoherence of the politicians of our time, and we should accept that people capable of similar incoherence in the Middle Ages. Moreover, it is a misconception to link revolts to injustice, oppression, or misery. If injustice and oppression were present in the discourse of medieval rebels, they were not necessarily realities. As Ernest Mandel has shown in his work on May 1968 and the contradictions of neo-capitalism, an economic boom and access to a more comfortable standard of living generated new needs, and this in turn allowed for a more accurate grasp of the existing inequalities, which increased resentment and frustration until these sentiments ultimately tore apart the social frameworks.48 Similarly, it was precisely the domination of the state apparatus by the Czech high nobility that allowed the lords to revolt at the end of the fourteenth century. The lords were not driven by injustice and demands made by the king. Rather, they merely intended to take advantage of the strong position they enjoyed, while gaining even more power and profiting of the weakness of Wenceslas’ rule in Bohemia and in the empire.

Studies of medieval revolt have almost invariably organized themselves around the concept of the state as the arena within which the revolts take place and take on meaning. Whether from a top-down perspective. as in the case of the histories written in the nineteenth century, or from a bottom-up Marxist perspective, as in many of the twentieth-century narratives, revolt is seen as an anomaly and a reaction against either arbitrariness or state excess. More recently, historians have increasingly shown that the “rise of the state” was a dialogic process in which the governed had considerable agency, often clamoring for more government rather than less.49 We have to interpret the acts of the lords from this perspective: the members of the League were protagonists in the political sphere with their own views, their own forms of agency, and their own expectations.

The League of Bohemian lords was neither the result of a moment of panic among desperate members of an old, frail nobility (as the traditional secondary literature has tended to claim)50 nor a disorderly and thoughtless attempt to preserve the feudal system or to satisfy the interests of the nobility (as the more recent literature has suggested). The creation of the League and the various steps it took were part of a political undertaken aimed at increasing the power of one clan over another in much the same way as the political parties of today clamor and scheme for power. No one would qualify the behavior of today’s political parties as immature or inconsistent, and we should be similarly cautious about applying these kinds of terms to political protagonists of the past. The Czech lords were merely playing the political game of their time.

Conclusion

Modern historiography has been dominated by the Weberian concept of the state’s “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.”51 Violence exerted by “non-state” or “non-royal” actors is then logically considered inherently a disorderly usurpation of governmental prerogatives, which is also in line with the view expressed by the central authority. However, the state in the late Middle Ages was much more polycentric, multi-layered, and diffuse than modern governments.52 For this reason, some historians, such as John Watts, are hesitant to speak of a state and prefer to use the word “polity.”53 Even if the debate is open-ended,54 I still prefer to speak of a state insofar as medieval sources attest the existence of a central and sovereign authority that had developed during the Middle Ages, with its own bureaucracy and specific regalian rights.55 The action of the League should be situated in this multi-layered and fluid architecture.

To consider the members of the League real political protagonists is also to distance oneself from the traditional, teleological, and ideological narrative on the history of the state, as described by Ian Forrest:

Generally, state growth is treated as a “good” (without justification) because in most liberal historiography and social science writing modern states are considered as good, and all that stands in the way of this growth is discredited. We see this in the language used to describe change in the history of state power: the verbs “to grow” and “to decline” set the pattern of positive/negative binaries, while abstract nouns such as “consolidation” and “fragmentation,” and adjectives like “strong” and “weak” add to the normative discourse in which political history is habitually written.56

As a group that destabilized the king’s authority, the League was necessarily seen as an immature and thoughtless enterprise driven by the interests of a disunited nobility.

In reality, the League offered an alternative view on the state through a political culture synthetizing the traditional nobiliary expectations as presented in the Chronicle of the so-called Dalimil, Smil Flaška’s New Council, and the legal literature with Charles IV’s legacy. By using the same infrastructure and the same ideology as the ruler and the state apparatus, the League contributed to develop and consolidate the state and statehood. Generally, protest does not reflect unease with the growing reach of government, but dissatisfaction with its limitations.

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* With this contribution, I present one of my new research topics. This work therefore consists more of hypotheses and avenues for reflection than of tangible findings.

Diversity, Differences, and Divergence: Religion as a Criterion of Difference in the Empire in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

Christine Reinle

University of Giessen

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 2  (2024):261-286 DOI 10.38145/2024.2.261

The article examines the extent to which religious diversity was possible in the Roman-German Empire at the time of Sigismund. With a look back to the fourteenth century, it considers groups and practices that deviated from Church doctrine to varying degrees and in different ways: the Waldensians and the so-called “German Hussites” as heterodox Christian groups, the Jews as representatives of a religion that was tolerated but suspected of blasphemous and criminal practices, and people who used superstitious or even allegedly magical practices. The Heidelberg university professor and inquisitor Johannes of Frankfurt is used as a representative of the official position of the Church, whose positions provide a comparative foil. Although other religious doctrines were theoretically not accepted (with the exception of Judaism), it will be shown that the persecution of dissenters depended on infrastructural conditions. It was also crucial whether the authorities and the population were willing to take note of deviations and classify them as heretical. At times, the specific labels were used in an arbitrary manner. Particularly in the case of superstitious practices, the questions that arose were often addressed through open processes of negotiation.

Keywords: Waldensians, Hussitism, superstition, Jews, John of Frankfurt

Recogitabo omnes annos meos in amaritudine vite mee (Is. 38, 15). With these words of the Jewish king Hezekiah, the Heidelberg professor of divinity John Lagenator from Dieburg, better known as John of Frankfurt (ca. 1380–1440), began (after a dedicatory preface) his “meditatio devota” in 1409f. In this devotional text, he reflected on the miserabilis ingressus, the lamentabilis progressus, and the dolorosus egressus of his life.1 John chose a sentence often quoted in the literature on preaching and confession to reflect on his sinful life in light of the impending judgement but also of his hope in God’s grace. I have deliberately placed the “meditatio devota” at the beginning of my remarks, because we usually know John of Frankfurt better in a different role: not as a man aware of his sins and pondering his own need for redemption, but as an inquisitor.2 The tension between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between conform piety, in line with the doctrines, and non-conform piety, is thus embodied by one person. This leads us into the center of our topic: Late-medieval religion examined from the point of view of diversity.

General Remarks

The contributors to this volume were asked to focus on diversity as a concept, specifically as a “system of differentiations.”3 Understood in this way, diversity is, according to Florin, Gutsche, and Krentz, “socially and culturally constructed” and thus “subject to historical change.”4 In general, it can be assumed that there is a broad reservoir of possible criteria of difference and that it is subject to historical change which and how much significance is assigned to which criterion.5 By developing this assumption further, one can ask in general how diversity is dealt with and which particular forms of diversity are accepted in political, religious, and social terms. It can also be assumed that the acceptance of diversity is (partly) negotiated and that diversity can influence political, social, and religious negotiation processes.6 However, in premodern times, not all participants were able to influence this process to the same extent, and thus it has to be asked whether and to what extent the idea of negotiation works.

When attempting to apply these general considerations to the subject of religion, I started from a premise and two questions.

Religious affiliation in general and the specific dogmatic form of faith in particular were unquestionably criteria of difference at a time when the legal and social status of a person in the area of Latin Christendom depended on his or her affiliation with the Catholic Church. One need merely think of the special legal status of the Jewish population or the categorization of heresy as “crimen laesae maiestatis.” These categories of difference were based on normative ideas; they were therefore not arbitrarily negotiable. The non-negotiability of central religious criteria of difference concerns the core of difference, the essential differentness between the Christian and Jewish religions, but also dogmatic differences, e.g. between Catholics and Waldensians or Hussites, once certain divergent dogmatic statements had been established as the respective propria in a conflictual process. Within Christianity, orthodoxy and heterodoxy are separated by the readiness to recognize the doctrines of the Church and by engaging in or refraining from religious or superstitious practices.

However, it is necessary to ask about the scope for negotiation when dealing with religious difference. Was there any readiness to coexist and live with differentness if the difference was to be maintained? Was it possible to draw the theoretically given boundaries clearly in practice? Was there any willingness to ascribe or not ascribe the attribute of difference or deviation to specific persons? It should also be noted that it was not exclusively the majority that categorized a minority as deviant. In fact, we can also expect that minorities deliberately differentiated themselves from the majority in their internal communication without necessarily staging this differentiation externally. The forementioned three aspects do not affect the criteria of difference per se, but they draw attention to the possibility and the will of the participants to apply them, as well as to the scope for interpretation while applying them.

Negotiation processes also have to be examined from the perspective of the question as to where the fundamental boundaries of what was tolerable at the margins of religious practice were redefined. Here it was necessary to focus on grey zones between religion, superstition, and magic and to inculcate and amplify existing classifications and norms.

In view of space limitations, I cannot consider all possible varieties of religious practices, spiritual forms of expression, and theological controversies in the discussion below. I concentrate more narrowly on questions that had political implications, because the issue of how to deal with diversity and divergence is also connected to governance in the time of king Sigismund. For this reason, I deal with the ways in which the heresies of the Waldensians and the Hussites were dealt with. The treatment of the Jewish minority and the issue of superstition will only be briefly touched upon. My considerations will be limited to the German part of the Empire, not including Hungary or Bohemia. Occasional retrospectives to the fourteenth century will be indispensable for understanding. Conform piety, which, when viewed in terms of private devotion, did not have a direct political impact, will only be touched upon for comparative purposes. Considering the abundance of possible aspects and wishing not to proceed too cursorily or arbitrarily, I will tie my comments on Catholic positions and practices back to the aforementioned John of Frankfurt. John, a scholastically influenced theologian who also made contributions to the theology of piety with his “meditatio devota,” was of course only one voice among many, but his view may be meaningful precisely because of its averageness.

Disguised Differences: The Heterodoxy of the Waldensians

We begin with the diversity constellation that was at times the most inconspicuous, namely the “informal coexistence”7 between Waldensians and Catholics. It lasted for up to 200 years. Despite sporadic regional persecution, Waldensian communities survived during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and possibly beyond in the German part of the empire,8 whereas the Waldensians in Bohemia and Moravia were subjected to more consistent persecution.9 It was not until the persecutions of the 1390s that the German Waldensians were decisively weakened and decimated.10 Researchers have investigated the reasons behind their ability to survive for such a comparatively long period of time. It was argued, on the one hand, that the Waldensians did not distance themselves from the Church in their way of life. They received the sacraments of the Church, for example. On the other hand, however, they differed from the Catholics because they rejected the doctrine of purgatory, the veneration of saints and relics, pilgrimages, and sacramentals. They refused to take an oath and denied that killing could be justified. Spiritually, they were committed to lay itinerant preachers, who also took confession. Waldensians defined themselves inwardly as the künden (those who knew), thus distinguishing themselves from the Catholics as the frembden.11 In the case of Strasbourg, they lived in close proximity to one another and pursued similar trades.12 They were endogamous and passed on their faith to their children.13 Their strivings not to stand out and to network closely with one another were complementary. Above all, the originally distinguishing feature of the Waldensians, the ideal of poverty, had already receded into the background by the thirteenth century, as it had come, in the meantime, to be seen as applying only to the itinerant preachers, and no longer to the simple devouts or those who only sympathized with the Waldensians. This made it possible for the Waldensians to lead a lifestyle that outwardly hardly differed from that of their Catholic neighbors.14 There is evidence of good integration into the urban society in Strasbourg and in Fribourg in the Üchtland region, where there were Waldensians who were poor and Waldensians who were wealthy and well connected.15 There were also Waldensian families in rural areas with a long Waldensian tradition, even entire “heretic villages” (namely in the Mark Brandenburg).16 The readiness of Waldensians to renounce their heresy when they were discovered and thus save their own lives without denouncing others17 is as striking as the apparently effective disguises used by traveling Waldensian preachers, who pretended to be merchants.18

The Waldensians offer an instructive case study for the topic of diversity in many respects. We begin with the question of whether they actually stood out as diverse, and we continue by asking why they were apparently tolerated over long periods of time despite their doctrinal differences with the Catholic Church. We conclude with the question of the logic and dynamics of persecution, including the problem that the status of a heretic had to be ascribed to individuals (or not).

The answers that have been offered to the first question in the secondary literature are controversial. Generally speaking, the Waldensians’ readiness to dissimulate, their willingness to feign repentance and the assumption of the authorities that they were not particularily dangerous were and are considered important reasons behind their ability to externally adapt to their environment.19 Karl Ubl, however, has called into question this thesis concerning the Waldensians’ alleged tendency to try to “camouflage” themselves. Ubl notes that their refusal to take oaths was a clear factor which set them apart from those around them, thus suggesting that the Waldensians were visible after all. In his opinion, other reasons played a role in the low level and sporadic occurrence of persecution before the 1390s in the Duchy of Austria. First, the rulers and inquisitors lacked comprehensive information about the Waldensians, in part because there was comparatively little written institutional information about Waldensians who had already been discovered. Second, the inquisitors had been given few means of power by the central authority (with the kingdom of Bohemia as a significant exception). Third, the population had little interest in persecuting the Waldensians. There was also reasonable fear that the Waldensians, if threatened or persecuted, might take revenge on inquisitors, apostates, or collaborators. Therefore, Ubl writes pointedly of “tolerance as a result of ignorance in the centers, pragmatic and enforced tolerance on the ground.”20 Even after the beginning of a campaign of persecution in the first half of the 1390s, the city of Strasbourg was more interested in a clandestine mass abjuration than in public heretic trials so as not to gain a reputation as a heretic stronghold. A negative image like that would have jeopardized the city’s honor.21

As far as I know, historians have not yet offered a clear explanation as to why the comparatively peaceful coexistence between Waldensians and Catholics came to an end in the 1390s. The apostasy of so-called heresiarchs and the disclosure of the names of sect followers probably only partly explain the wave of persecution launched against the Waldensians.22 The persecutions in Sigismund’s time, such as the burning of John Grießer in 1411 or the persecution of the Waldensians in Fribourg in 1430, lagged behind the persecutions of the 1390s. While the persecutions in Bern and Fribourg in 1399 were linked by denunciations and the Strasbourg persecution of Waldensians of 1400 was initiated from outside and favored by a phase of good relations between the city council and the bishop, the Fribourg trial of 1430 was fueled by an external factor, namely the fear of the Hussites. Once the trial was set in motion, it could also be instrumentalized to lead neighborhood conflicts.23 For the witchcraft trials in 1429 and 1437–1442, Georg Modestin and Kathrin Utz Tremp also asserted that Fribourg was pursuing political interests, namely to establish itself as a sovereign in former Tierstein territories.24 Thus it was not only religious fervor but also political will that led to the persecution of the Waldensians. The desire of the ecclesiastical and especially the secular authorities to maintain sovereignty over the meanings and procedures of the campaign of persecution against the Waldensians is also evident in their increasing interference in the conduct of the trials.

The transition from the persecution of Waldensians to the persecution of witches in the Fribourg region also raises questions concerning the actual mean­ings of “Waldensianism” as a construct, i.e. as a label used to denote (heretical) difference. As Herbert Grundmann has persuasively shown, in­quisitors categorized heterodox statements by labeling them with the names of older sects.25 For this, in the fourteenth century, people who were probably Walden­sians were labeled Luciferians. Similarly, according to Hermann Haupt, Wal­densians in Griesbach and Waldkirchen were labeled Wyclifites in 1410.26 And, of course, it could be useful to label an opponent within the church as Waldensian to bring him under suspicion.27 At the turn of the fifteenth century, the original Waldensian name (vaudois[e]) also took on the meaning of sorcerer or witch because of the equation of vaudois with heretic per se and the association of heresy with magic.28

However, in the local context, the question of who was to be condemned as a Waldensian was also negotiated on a personal level in front of the Inquisition. In individual cases, Waldensians were able to refute the accusation of heresy.29 The ascriptions made at the time (i.e. the contention that someone was a Waldensian) are not the only uses of the term that may be problematic. As Ubl has shown in the case of John Grießer, there is also an inherent danger in the scholarship of making simplifications and working with classifications that do not stand up to scrutiny. Grießer, who was executed in 1411, was probably not the Hussite he was accused of being. He may have been a Waldensian. But it is also possible that he may simply have been a dissident whose concern was a social one.30

What applies to individuals also applies, under different circumstances, to the Waldensian group in the period under investigation. Their contours began to soften. Long-held biblical positions such as the absolute ban on killing and the consistent refusal to take oaths were abandoned. Some Waldensians moved closer to Marian devotion. Heresiarchs turned to the Catholic Church and even became priests. Lay people may also have begun to perceive the lay apostolate as misguided. From the 1390s onwards, the Waldensians were therefore a group that was at least in a crisis-ridden process of transformation, if not in decline.31 Some Waldensians thus may have been amenable to Hussite ideas, when Peter Payne (around 1418–1432) and Friedrich Reiser (from around 1450) made attempts to persuade Waldensians and Hussites to unite and to remodel Waldensian teachings and structures by adopting Hussite elements.32

Feared Difference: The Heresy of the Putative “German Hussites”

Let us now turn to individuals who were labeled “German Hussites” by scholars. Sometimes they were condemned at their own time after having been accused of spreading certain teachings of Jan Hus, but sometimes they were simply put in this category by historians (for instance in the case of the aforementioned John Grießer, as Ubl has shown). They could simply have been one of the people who, like John Drändorf, had dedicated themselves to the pura[.] pauperta[s] Christi33 or had explicitly Waldensian roots, like Friedrich Reiser, who was executed in 1458. In both cases, a Waldensian influence was mixed with the adoption of Hussite ideas. However, it was also possible that a wealthy priest who was presumably well connected in the city council’s circles, such as the chaplain of the Regensburg council chapel Ulrich Grünsleder, copied Jan Hus’ writings and promoted his ideas.34

The authorities were highly alert to the emergence of actual or supposed Hussites, as the Hussite movement had taken on violent and revolutionary traits in Bohemia after the execution of Jan Hus in Constance. The Taborite wing of the Hussites in particular (since 1420) took on revolutionary traits, which found expression in instances of verbal and real violence. Fueled by the active advertising that the Hussite side carried out for its positions, the endeavor to combat the Hussite threat externally, i.e. in Bohemia, was accompanied by the fear of a spillover of the Hussite movement into the German lands. To prevent this, the whole population was required to take an anti-Hussite oath.35 It is difficult to say how much sympathy the Hussites enjoyed in Germany, especially in the cities, and how well sympathizers were informed about the Hussite doctrines in general. Riots such as the one in Heidelberg in 1422, in which the townspeople and the electoral bodyguard alike organized a riot against the members of the university and in which the cry was heard that the attackers would rather kill students and clerics than Hussites,36 may have been a mixture of a diffuse expression of sympathy and provocation. For Austria, Werner Maleczek has questioned whether the Hussites, who were feared for their campaigns and acts of violence, were able to gain a relevant mass of followers.37 Christina Traxler notes that the elementary military difficulties faced by the Hussite movement in the early 1420s in Bohemia itself as well as the national and patriotic character of the movement made it unlikely that it would have spread to Austria during its early years. Instead, she assumes that after the condemnation of Wyclif’s teachings and the execution of Hus at the Council of Constance, heretical phenomena of any kind came “suddenly under the general suspicion” of being Hussite. For this reason, Traxler also warns against inferring “the existence and the spread of Hussite followers in Austria from anti-Hussite measures.”38 Nevertheless, it cannot be overlooked that the Hussites aggressively tried to defend and spread their positions. Their positions were also adopted or adapted and disseminated by others. The cases of the heretics John Drändorf and Peter Turnau, who were interrogated and condemned with the significant involvement of Heidelberg professors, including John von Frankfurt, offer two examples.39

After studying in Prague, Leipzig, Dresden, Zittau, and again in Prague and after being ordained as a priest in Prague in 1417, Drändorf, a nobleman from the Margraviate of Meissen, led his life as a preacher in Prague and Neuhaus. In 1424, he traveled via the Vogtland region to the Upper Rhine valley as far as Basel. He then moved to Brabant and finally to Speyer.40 There, he was reunited with Peter Turnau, a native of Prussia and a companion from his Zittau and second Prague years, who had only received a lower ordination in Prague and had left the city in 1414 to attend the Council of Constance. After studying law in Bologna and taking a long journey which led him to Crete, Turnau had come by detours to Speyer. When Drändorf arrived, Turnau was in charge of the Speyer cathedral school.41 In 1424, Drändorf and Turnau traveled to Heilbronn. Turnau intended to apply for a preaching prebend, and Drändorf probably wanted to preach and evangelize. Drändorf’s downfall was that he meddled in the dispute between the town of Weinsberg and the lords of Weinsberg. As a result of this dispute, the town found itself in the Ban of the Imperial Würzburg District Court, the Imperial ban and the reinforced outlawry of the empire (Acht und Aberacht), as well as under the ecclesiastical ban.42 Drändorf took Weinsberg’s excommunication as an opportunity to incite the town to resist the unjust ex­communication. He criticized what he found annoying about the church ban: the secular exercise of power by the clergy, which included the use of the ban in secular matters.43 This grievance was, as Drändorf suggested, made possible by the blind obedience of the laity.44 After Drändorf was arrested near Heilbronn, he was extradited to Heidelberg because Elector Ludwig III intervened with the Würzburg bishop who held jurisdiction; hence, Drändorf was subjected to a trial there. The Bishop of Worms and three Heidelberg professors, including John of Frankfurt, presided over the trial on the basis of a Würzburg commission.45

In the course of the interrogation, Drändorf revealed his convictions one by one. His radical refusal to take an oath before the interrogation was seen as clear proof of his heresy at the outset of the trial. Self-confident, even defiant, he insisted that the copy of the Gospels he was given on which to take the oath was only a human product and that he could lie with or without having taken an oath. Moreover, Drändorf answered questions about his own biography and his actions by criticizing the church. He claimed that only a few clerics wanted to live according to Christ’s regula, and he insisted that symonia, avaricia, luxuria, et pompa prevailed among the clergy.46 Emperor Constantine was only allowed to give the church bona temporalia, but not dominium, and the pope should not have accepted the latter. Not every excommunication was unjust because, he added derisively: For clerics who carried weapons and bishops who invaded towns and villages were excommunicated, just as prelates who exercised temporal power were heretics and in a state of damnation.47 All believers who professed the true faith were the Church, not the church hierarchy. 48 Drändorf also rejected indulgences. The Council of Constance did not stand for the whole Church, a statement that Hermann Heimpel has interpreted to mean that Drändorf did not consider all the articles condemned by Constantiense in fact to be condemned. Drändorf also agreed with the demand for communion sub utraque.49 On other topics, Drändorf mixed statements that were influenced by Waldensian, Wyclifite, or Hussite ideas with Catholic elements, or he distanced himself from the Hussites, for example by rejecting Hussite iconoclasm.50 All in all, the heretical positions of the three provenances converged in Drändorf’s views. During his short trial which lasted only four days, Drändorf was also tortured. In the end, Drändorf, who had occasionally gone on the offensive and repeatedly provoked his judges, was degraded, sentenced to death, and burned.

Unlike Drändorf, who, as Marie-Luise Bulst-Thiele has suggested, may have wanted to die51, Turnau did not seek martyrdom. Rather, the trained jurisprudent initially defended himself skillfully in Udenheim (a place belonging to the bishopric of Speyer), where Heidelberg professors also took part in the trial. Heimpel credited John of Frankfurt with having effectuated a turnaround in the trial. The inquisitors got hold of Turnau because of the doubts he had expressed about the “ecclesiastical doctrine and practice,” such as the relationship between the Bible, the Church fathers, younger church teachers, and ecclesiastical ministry.52 Turnau, who argued in a strictly Biblicist manner, argued that the church could err. Moreover, he was accused of Utraquism.53 To summarize, Kurt-Victor Selge describes Turnau as a “consistent dissident,” whereas he characterizes Drändorf as an “aggressively subversive missionary.”54

At this point, it is worth taking one more look at the other side. Hawicks described Drändorf’s judge John of Frankfurt as a “vehement opponent of Hussitism,”55 as he opposed the Hussites in various roles, including as an inquisitor, as a writer, and as a preacher. However, John differed from Drändorf not only in terms of church politics. Both came from different social classes. Drändorf was originally a well-off lower nobleman, while John was mentioned as a pauper at the University of Paris in 1396.56 As John owed his rise to the church and the university, Drändorf’s radical “rejection of university degrees”57 must have been alien to him. Drändorf’s apparently ambivalent attitude towards his ordination to the priesthood, which caused the court to doubt his ordained status,58 also hardly bore any affinities with the high esteem in which John of Frankfurt held the priesthood in his “meditatio.”59 Further comparisons are methodologically problematic, as Drändorf’s interrogation protocols and John’s “meditatio devota” belong to completely different genres. Nevertheless, with every methodological reservation, it should be noted that Drändorf primarily denounced the sins of others by harshly criticizing the Church, while John reflected on his own sinfulness. John of Frankfurt was therefore not only a church functionary acting in terms of power politics, but also a person whose work as an inquisitor was probably in part tied to a religious doctrine that he had personally espoused. However, Drändorf’s concern for the salvation of his soul, which underlay his desire for communion sub utraque, also suggests a spiritual dimension. Perhaps Turnau’s occasional appeals to his conscience60 can also be seen as an indication of internalized piety.

More can be learnt from the study of the Hussites and the trial against Drändorf and Turnau on the subject of diversity. The theological premises and ecclesiastical-political conclusions of Hussitism were considered antagonistic to Catholicity and were therefore no longer tolerable as an expression of diversity. This condemnation included people such as Drändorf and Turnau, who had designed their own heterodox faith with various Catholic, Waldensian, Wyclifite, and Hussite elements. Drändorf and Turnau were also tried as individuals, not as members of a community like many Waldensians.

Incidentally, this was also often the case for the German Hussites of the early period, who were frequently, but not always, clerics, with a Prague university background playing a role. There are no clear indications in the sources that distinct Hussite congregations formed at that time. The time was probably still too short for this and the endeavour too dangerous. The only exceptions were Flanders and Hainaut, where, according to Bart Spruyt, an “important, mostly hidden dissenting movement” existed, which apparently also absorbed Hussite elements early on. As early as the late 1410s and until 1430, a number of people there were detained. The fact that several people were arrested and meetings were held suggests that there were group structures.61 Elsewhere, despite the idea of Peter Payne to persuade the Waldensians to join the Hussites, there are only sporadic indications in the sources to suggest that they did, at least until the 1440s. Only then did the weakened Waldensian communities appear to have come so close to Hussite ideas that it would be possible to speak of a Hussite-influenced diaspora.62 In my opinion, widespread hatred of the clergy and general social unrest are not enough to suggest that we can speak of the existence of Hussite religious communities before the 1440s, even if anti-clericalism in particular would have provided a starting point for the infiltration of Hussite ideas. Concerning the so-called Hussites, the sovereigns, municipal authorities, and local church institutions took the initiative to inquire about and try people regarded as suspicious. In general, we recognize an overriding political will to persecute alleged heretics.

The universities were also involved in the persecution of alleged heretics to varying degrees. Individual Heidelberg professors were involved in the fight against Hussitism at an early stage, an activity that was evidently also linked to their activities as electoral councilors. In 1421, John of Frankfurt and Conrad von Soest each wrote an anti-Hussite treatise during a campaign against the Hussites. Job Vener also took up his pen against the Hussites in 1421. Furthermore, there is evidence of a relevant sermon by John of Frankfurt and a speech by Conrad von Soest.63 A later example of the anti-Hussite commitment by Heidelberg professors is the refutation of a Taborite manifesto in 1430 by Nicolas of Jawor.64At the University of Vienna, in contrast, scholars just respond to requests and demands until the end of the 1420s. They did not become involved in the fight against the Hussites at their own initiative.65

The negotiation of a tolerated status, coexistence, or even integration were not on the agenda for those labeled Hussites. The religiously motivated political upheavals in the Kingdom of Bohemia had shown clearly what Hussitism was capable of, but other events also revealed the influence and power of Hussite ideas. Drändorf, whose hybrid heresy has been outlined, also regretted in a letter to the town of Weinsberg that he and other like-minded priests were too weak to oppose iniquitati malorum clericorum, nisi communis populus et loca imperialia suos oculus aperirent.66 He thus formulated a barely veiled threat. The opposition between Hussitism and Catholicism was only bridged at a later date and outside the inner empire, with the Basel and Prague Compactata. They were concluded with the participation of the Council of Basel and also under the impact of many military defeats and massive political pressure from Emperor Sigismund. Furthermore, they only applied to the Kingdom of Bohemia. This was the only case in which negotiations were held with heretics.67 The willingness to accept difference in this case was forced by the circumstances.

Suspected and Persecuted Difference: The Jews

It is worth also taking a brief look at the Jews, a group the diversity of which had been dealt with for centuries. John of Frankfurt still held the classical position towards them, according to which the messiahship of Christ necessarily would be deduced from the Old Testament. He made no reference to the opinion that emerged in the thirteenth century according to which the Talmud, if understood correctly, also contained appropriate passages.68 John’s writing, apparently secondarily called Malleus Judeorum, was intended as an explanation of the former position to the theologically interested Elector Palatine Ludwig III. It was not written with any missionary intention.69 In another sermon, John emphasized that the Jews had forfeited their first calling by God. Nevertheless, the path to salvation was not closed to anyone, because God would work on anyone if he did not close himself off. This remark can be interpreted as an expression of hope of conversion of the Jews.70 Despite still moderate voices like his, the Jews faced an increasingly repressive atmosphere in the late Middle Ages, as they were accused not only of alleged ritual murders and desecration of the Host but also of anti-Christian blasphemies and heresy because their teachings had gone beyond the Old Testament in the Talmud.71 Anti-Jewish and anti-Hussite sermons were held one after the other in Fribourg.72 Presumably both activities reinforced each other as a means of characterizing both the Jews and the Hussites as different. As in the fourteenth century, expulsions of Jews also took place in Sigismund’s time, partly in territories and partly in towns.73 Karel Hruza has shown in an exemplary manner that, for fiscal reasons, Sigismund had no interest expelling Jews, but that he was careful to protect his rights and financial interests when he was unable to prevent their expulsion, and that he thereby abandoned them.74

Three patterns can by shown in which the criterion of religious difference was instrumentalized in order to justify the expulsion of a group considered to be different but tolerated so far. First, conspiracy theories were hatched concerning the supposed cooperation of internal and external enemies. Secondly, religious pretexts were used to conceil economically and politically motivated Jewish persecution. And third, anti-Jewish stereotypes were reinvigorated in the run-up to Jewish persecution. As an example of the first, a rumor emerged in Vienna in 1419 according to which Jews, Hussites, and Waldensians had allegedly formed a confederacio which was allegedly directed against the Christian majority society. The Vienna theological faculty was consulted about this, but it apparently did not consider the topic urgent, as the discussion about it was postponed. Of the three groups mentioned, it was the Jews in particular who were highlighted because of their multitud[o], their allegedly delicata vita, and their writings (allegedly) containing detestable calumnies and blasphemies (i.e. the Talmud and probably also the “Toldot Jeschu”).75 The danger scenario was exacerbated by the fact that the Jews, who were already branded as heretics, appeared here in association with other heretics. There was nothing to substantiate this conspiracy theory, of course, even if Jews demonstrably sympathized with the Hussites.76

Secondly, the reasons for the expulsions of Jews have to be scrutinized. Petr Elbel has found little support in the sources for the seemingly self-evident as­sumption that the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna and Austria in 1420–1421 was a consequence of fear of their alleged alliance with other enemies of Catholic Christianity. Rather, the expulsion was motivated by economic reasons. However, an alleged desecration of the Host in Enns served as a pretext.77 The final expulsion of the Jews from Vienna in 1421 was also accompanied by the fact that Jews who had already been baptized under the pressure of the authorities were forced to listen to conversion sermons held by none other than the Viennese professor Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl. These sermons differed significantly from those which Heinrich von Langenstein drafted at the end of the fourteenth century to convert Jews through good words, as they lacked any concession to the Jews.78 However, the sermons fitted into a time in which the Council of Basel in 1434 wanted to impose forced preaching on Jews and inculcated traditional segregation regulations (1434).79

Religious pretexts were also used in other places to dislodge Jewish com­munities. In 2012, Hruza called attention to the political and fiscal motives of the city of Cologne, which wanted to get rid of its Jews in 1423–24, as the respective competences and rights of disposal over the Jews were a constant point of contention with the Archbishop of Cologne.80 However, when the city justified its actions to the king in 1431, the danger that the Jews were trying to persuade Christians to apostatize was put forward. It was also argued that foreign crusaders (probably in 1421) had attempted to slay the Jews on their way to the Hussite war, which led to concerns that such events could occur again. Further arguments included the Jewish practice of lending at interest, the expulsion of Jews from neighboring territories, the sanctity of the city of Cologne (with its relics of numerous saints and martyrs), and the rumor of well poisoning due to increased mortality rates caused by an epidemic.81 Nine months after Sigismund’s death, in August 1438, the mayor and the town council of Heilbronn justified to the chancellor of king Albert II, Kaspar Schlick, and the Hereditary Marshal of the Empire Haupt II von Pappenheim their decision not to extend the Jews’ residency status because they (the mayor and the town council) had been warned by scholars openly in sermons and secretly in the confession of how seriously they acted badly because they permitted Jews to remain in their community and allowed them to practice usury. The scholars also contended that the mayor and the council debased themselves by making this concession.82 Consequently, this situation had to be rectified.

As a third point, the accusations of ritual murder (a recurring accusation that both fortified and relied on an anti-Jewish stereotype) merits consideration. These accusations were used to justify repressive measures against Jews and to establish a new martyr cult. In the case of Ravensburg, however, King Sigismund tried to prevent the rise of a cult concerning a pupil purportedly murdered ritually in 1429. Sigismund had the church which had been designated as a pilgrimage site razed to the ground, though he was unable to put a complete stop to the pilgrimages.83 As far as I know, however, this measure taken by Sigismund was exceptional. In complete contrast, the Palatinate Elector Ludwig III, together with the parish priest of Bacharach, Winand von Steeg, ensured the revival of the declining cult of the so-called “Good Werner of Oberwesel,” who had allegedly been ritually murdered in the thirteenth century.

Blurred Differences: Piety, Superstition, and Magic

The problem of superstition, on which John of Frankfurt, among others, com­mented twice (in 1405 and 1425–27),84 can only be touched upon in this paper. The first text, a “quodlibet” on the question of whether demons could be compelled and controlled through the use of amulets, signs, and words, still predates the period in which the concept of the vaudois was amalgamated with that of the sorcerer. However, since the fourteenth century, magic and heresy in general had been brought closer together. Nevertheless, in his “quaestio” of 1405, John argues against conjuring demons without referring to the concept of heresy. Although demons could perform healings, for example, due to their extensive knowledge of the secret powers of nature, it was forbidden and harmful to summon them. Demons, he explained, only pretended to be coerced and compelled by men in order to deceive people. Anyone who invoked them was committing idolatry. In addition to healing magic, John condemned all kinds of common divination practices. Still very much in the old church tradition, he rejected the reality of witches flights, the transformation of people into animals through demonic magic, and the visitation of goddesses of destiny at the birth of children. With those and similar superstitions John charged old women in particular. 85

Furthermore, especially interesting are the passages in which John critizised “wildly” erected little houses or huts in fields or woods, which were visited due to vows because simple-minded people told of fantastic apparitions and alleged that miracles had been performed. Believers would make gifts and votive offerings to these dubious locations, donations that the parish churches then were lacking. Quite obviously, John was opposing unlicensed spontaneous pilgrim­ages. He im­puted them to be short-lived and therefore unsustainable, and he presumed that they were initiated because of avarice anyway. John also recalled the Savior’s warning against false prophets, but without mentioning demonic influences. In a very pragmatic way, he also cautioned that such remote places would provide a good opportunity for fornication. Furthermore, the canons forbade the offering of sacrifices in places that had not been consecrated. Like Nicolas of Jawor before him, John also warned against dubious hermits and ignoramuses who, out of shameful greed, offered to foretell the future and bless animals and humans. This too was idolatry, he insisted. Unfortunately, local priests often remained silent out of ignorance when they learned of abuses which John considered to be the remnants of ancient idolatry. John distanced himself from ignorant and brutal exorcists of the devil, who were often personally dubious figures anyway, much as he also rejected the practice of blessings, therefore citing Matthew of Krakow. If blessings were effective, he asked ironically, why would there be no blessing contra superbiam, luxuriam vel avaritiam or against robbers and arsonists?86

These passages are partly set in a contemporary discursive context to which Nicolas of Jawor, among others, contributed a great deal. When dealing with spontaneous pilgrimages and blessings, they show above all how the boundaries of permissible diversity were discussed.87 Unfortunately, it is not possible to trace the arguments used by John of Frankfurt in his more theoretical text written in 1425–25, in which he labeled people who summonsed demons heretics, as the second treatise remains unedited. It is therefore also not possible to decide whether this was an adaptation to the increasingly aggravated discourse or whether the different focus is due to the chosen level of argumentation.

Conclusion

It is worth returning, in conclusion, to our original considerations. Religion was a criterion of difference which in itself hardly left much room for negotiation. The dogmatic dividing lines were drawn by inquisitorial manuals, but they could also be seen, for example, when arguments from the Franciscan poverty controversy were used to refute the Hussites’ Four Articles of Prague.88 The doctrinal discrepancies are therefore evident in theory. This also applies to methodological determinations. John of Frankfurt, for example, accused the Hussites of clinging to the literal sense of the Bible. This methodological error was otherwise attributed to Jews.

In practice, however, the boundaries were more difficult to draw. The difficulty is evident when it came to the categorizations used for heretics, regardless of whether they were individuals or groups, as they often held hybrid positions. “Deviants” did not necessarily adopt all the doctrines and practices of a denomination that was marginalized as heretical, but possibly only some of them. They could take up and merge different ideas and even keep some elements of Catholic doctrines. In addition, whether a distinction was made between Catholics and heretics depended crucially on the willingness to recognize the heresy of the other person. In the decision-making situation, situational or context-dependent and pragmatic logics therefore competed with normative precepts.

Nevertheless, diversity was undesirable when it moved outside the normative boundaries of orthodoxy. Alexander Patschovsky pointed out early on that the heterodox could not be tolerated where there was no pluralism of truth.89 Tolerance was only possible with the Jews as long as they were understood as “blind” bearers of Christian truth. More recently, Christoph Mandry added that pluralism could only be regarded as a value once religion had become a private matter and confession was no longer considered constitutive for the cohesion of the political order.90

Concerning magic, the period under review was a threshold period. Magic and heresy could be connected from the fourteenth century onwards, but they were not necessarily combined. Furthermore, certain forms of superstition, as well as unlicensed forms of religion, could still be rejected without immediately being branded as magical or heretical.

In the examples outlined above, the approaches used to deal with diversity can hardly be described as “negotiation.” Both with the Jews and where pragmatism prevailed over doctrine in dealings with heretics, the power constellations were quite asymmetrical. Only when it came to the Jews and maybe minor forms of superstition was it possible to admit diversity in principle. In the case of heretics, deviance led to the elimination of the deviant as soon as it was addressed. Only in the case of the Bohemian Hussites (not examined here) did the political and military circumstances make it necessary to tolerate religious diversity, and this diversity in turn influenced political negotiation processes. Hence, I suggest we should speak of “handling diversity” when the possibility of tolerating or integrating differentness was given, no matter how asymmetrical the framework conditions may have been. On the other hand, I prefer to describe differences that could lead to the elimination of the other not as diversity, but as divergence.

Religious diversity can be found when the plurality of religious forms of expression is considered, that characterized conform late medieval piety. One can think of the variety of ecclesiastical and sacramental practices in the parishes, the numerous brotherhoods or the foundation system, which were able to combine the striving for imitatio Christi and an internalized relationship with God. However, these forms of religiosity were not the subject of my article

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Religious Diversity: What or How? Towards a Praxeology of Early Modern Religious Ordering*

Iryna Klymenko

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 2  (2024):287-305 DOI 10.38145/2024.2.287

Scholars of the pre-modern history of religion have increasingly sought to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of religious diversity. Building on these advancements, this paper argues that our comprehension of this phenomenon is intricately linked to our presuppositions regarding religious groups and their boundaries. By challenging the conventional notion of groups as closed, authentic, and consistently coherent collectives, it advocates for a praxeological approach. Drawing on sociological theories and microhistorical studies, with a particular focus on early modern sources related to Jewish communities, it proposes a transition from inquiries about “what” the groups are to an examination of “how” they have been constructed in both temporal and spatial dimensions. Thus, by viewing religious groups and their ordering as dynamic and process-related, this approach aims to deepen our understanding of religious diversity in the early modern era as an analytical and empirical category.

Keywords: early modern history, religious diversity, praxeology

As noted by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, any attempt to construct a com­prehensive theory of society capable of adequately and empirically capturing its complexity necessitates a departure from several fundamental assumptions. Among these is the prevailing notion that groups and their boundaries are relatively fixed structures which can be viewed as tangible entities with determin­able memberships and delineated borders – often at the expense of any understanding of their relational dynamics.1 It is crucial to acknowledge that Bourdieu articulated these insights decades ago, engaging with the prevailing intellectual milieu of his era. Specifically, he challenged the simplistic conceptualization of social classes as historically predetermined categories, thus countering the prevalent notion of societal structure as an objective reality. His overarching objective was to transcend this perspective in favor of a theoretically robust framework informed by empirical evidence and capable of adequately addressing the intricate complexity of its subject matter.2

If one adopts this objective and attempts to offer an assessment of religious diversity in the early modern period through a historiographic lens, the imperative remains pertinent. It is incumbent on us to scrutinize how our interpretation of religious ordering intersects with our conceptualizations of religious groups and their boundaries. If one embarks on scholarly inquiries into the histories of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and other faiths, there is an inherent risk of presupposing a predetermined structure to these religious groups and their demarcations. When we posit the existence of these groups as entities, we assume their cohesion as a collective and, moreover, we presuppose the ‘authenticity’ of their respective religious practices. Heeding Bourdieu’s critique of the compartmentalization of societal structures, such as the presumed objectivity of historical classes, we must take an epistemological step back. This entails examining the foundational assumptions inherent in historiography concerning religious groups and exploring analytical frameworks capable of transcending the complexity of these groups (and the processes through which they are posited and thus created in the secondary literature).

It is worth highlighting that over the past few decades, there has been a fruitful dialogue between historiographic and sociological approaches,3 along with extensive reflections on the complexity of religious organization in the pre-modern era. This paper contributes to a specific development recently articulated by Sita Steckel, who has synthesized past and current debates around an originally sociological concept of societal differentiation, thereby fostering an interdisciplinary perspective particularly applicable to the history of religions in the Middle Ages.4 The genesis of these discussions lies in historiographical reflections on differentiation theory, which, in essence, conceives society as a system consisting of various subsystems, such as politics, religion, medicine, law, and so forth, each driven by its own functional dynamics of communication.5 Notably, this form of societal complexity was originally construed as an inherently modern phenomenon. Consequently, differentiation theory, understood as a theory which applied specifically to modernization (explicitly constructed in contrast to pre-modern society), served as a catalyst for historical debates.6 Historians of pre-modern period have consistently argued for an approach that acknowledges the societal and historical complexity of pre-modern times. As Sita Steckel aptly phrases it, there is a call to perceive pre-modern societies “as dynamic entities”7 and thus necessarily to engage with primary sources in order to capture the nuances of historical dynamics faithfully.

In light of contemporary scholarship on pre-modern religious dynamics and pluralities, the notion that differentiation theory applies exclusively to processes and moments of modernization appears increasingly difficult to substantiate.8 Instead, current discourse emphasizes methodological endeavors by historians aimed at crafting conceptual frameworks that effectively capture the empirical intricacies of religious organization in pre-modern contexts. Building on this premise, this paper argues that our understanding of religious ordering is intricately tied to our presuppositions concerning religious groups and their boundaries. It therefore adopts an epistemologically reflective approach, seeking to illuminate the historical and societal complexities surrounding religious groups as early modern phenomena. Drawing on sociological theories, microhistorical studies, and early modern sources related to Jewish communities in particular,9 it proposes a shift from inquiries about the essence of these groups to an examination of how these groups have been constructed and how, as constructions, they behaved both temporally and spatially. By conceptualizing religious groups and their organization as dynamic and process-oriented, this approach aims to enrich our understanding of religious diversity and the complexity of the notion of diversity itself as both an analytical and empirical category in the study of the early modern era.

To accomplish this goal, this paper begins with an exploration of the regulatory constructions of religious boundaries (I) followed by an in-depth examination of these boundaries from a bottom-up perspective. This examin­ation considers the intricate interplay among the religious, economic, and medical spheres. Specifically, the paper employs the paradigm of religiously coded food and eating practices (II) as an analytical perspective from which to elucidate these dynamics. Within the chosen praxeological framework, it is imperative to acknowledge that any attempt to draw delineations among the societal spheres of religion, economy, and medicine necessitates recognition of the analytical nature of such categorization. This analytical division is crucial to any conceptual approach to the study of interactions that transcend individual subjectivity and structural objectivity. This allows for an understanding of these interactions as outcomes of both individual choices and structural dispositions.10 Additionally, it is necessary to perceive these spheres and their logics not as static compartments but as dynamic and contingent phenomena, exerting influence within every unique configuration of interactions.11 Translated within the context of this paper, praxeology entails the meticulous reconstruction of how religious group formation may be either compromised or strengthened, depending on varying societal contexts and problem references across different fields. This paper seeks to elucidate how these patterns can be extrapolated into broader conceptual frameworks.

Community of Law(s): Plurality and Polyphony of Regulations

Crucial to the construction of religious collectives in Judaism is the foundational concept of a chosen group the members of which adhere to the commandments of their God. A comprehensive collection of laws (mitzvoth), prohibitions, and precepts, derived from the oldest sources, was manifested in writing in antiquity. At least since the destruction of the Temple, Judaism has primarily been a law-based religion: halakha has been and remains far more central that any profession of faith (and here sees the crucial difference in the construction of belonging in Christianity). These norms address a wide range of topics and spheres, extending to the main matters of daily life. Though commonly translated as Jewish Law, halakha literally signifies the way to proceed or the right way to behave. Synchronized behavior, both in law and in practices, is constitutive for religious boundaries. Another fundamental aspect of group building is individual/personal belonging, which in the case of Judaism is not solely a result of following these norms of law but is primarily attributed to descent from a maternal Jewish line. This form of belonging includes or implies commitment to religious law. These two understandings of belonging (a definition of belonging on the one hand and the obligations of belonging on the other) initially provide a rather clear picture for what is addressed in this paper as a religious group. However, insights from early modern sources prompt further questions.

In one of his writings published in 1593, Reb Chaim12 lamented the behavior of his Jewish contemporaries: “And the rabbis have warned us not to be like the peoples of the lands, neither in our words nor in our deeds nor in our dress, but this is not heeded now in our sinful state, as many members of our community seem to mingle with them [goyim]13 and be like them [goyim], and they [members of our community] defile themselves with wine from their [goyish] feasts.”14 This passage underlines contemporary violations of religious norms but also speaks to the blurring of boundaries between Jewish and Christian groups. This blurring, crucial to the argument of this paper, occurs through daily practices and interactions.

The entire tradition of rabbinic literature and commentaries, developed over centuries in reaction to the practical need to adapt the (in principle) unchangeable norm of halakha to local and regional circumstances,15 reminds us to approach cases of violation of religious law beyond the sheer concept of deviance. As is asserted in one of the communal records, “[E]very Jew knows the law, and no [special] ordinance is needed.”16—so confirm one of the communal records. Yet the same record demands daily vigilance and control, prescribing sanctions and penalties for cases of violation.17 Community members belong to their collective by birth, which requires commitment to Jewish law. This clear demarcation of a group remains intact, as community leaders simultaneously count on the possibility of norm violations and, therefore, refer to and rely on regulations.

In the late sixteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,18 Jewish communities received permission from the political establishment of the country to arrange a relatively autonomous communal administration, with organs at both the local and the supranational levels.19 Interestingly, Jewish autonomy was facilitated by the political establishment of the Commonwealth not because it entertained some notion of tolerance or religious diversity but rather due to the need to find a way to collect taxes from the growing Jewish diaspora in the country.20 Among other provisions, this autonomy included the exclusive prerogative to regulate communal matters related to halakha.21 From the late sixteenth century onwards, communities and their organs produced an enormous amount of minute books (pinkassim)22 addressing different aspects and problems of daily life from the perspective of Jewish law. One crucial part of these regulations concerned religiously coded practices explicitly linked to religious differences, such as dress and attire in this example from 1607: “men and women shall not clothe themselves with the garments and immorality of non-Jews […]; children of Israel are to be distinguished by their clothing.”23 In the context of the religiously coded practices of attire, exceptions were or could be made for travelers (for security reasons) or those close to the political establishment and/or court (as a form of symbolic communication).24 This practice of making (or not making) exceptions offers an example of how religious practices not only co-shape boundaries but also, when deemed reasonable or necessary, temporarily prioritize them.

The changeability and adaptability of norms and therefore of boundaries, depending on contexts of interactions, will be important topics in the discussion below, particularly in the context of religiously coded practices related to food. The phenomenon of Jewish autonomy, in step with the actual practices of a regulatory framework, can be seen as another layer of collective demarcation of the group through adherence to a distinctive concept of law, along with religiously coded and regulated practices and fundamental norms of halakha, as mentioned above.

The limitations of this regulatory framework were many. As mentioned earlier, one of them was that regulations could only concern matters related to tradition. Moreover, Jewish authorities could exercise forms of governance over their community members but not over Christians or members of other religious groups.25 As interactions usually went beyond religiously defined communal spaces, regulatory organs and authorities regularly faced challenges in any attempt or effort to implement their orders broadly.

Furthermore, from the perspective of Jewish law and communal regulations, it is essential to stress the historically and societally given polyphony and disparity of regulations, emanating from different institutions and parties, motivated by diverse considerations, and situated in conditions of particular power relations. Rural and urban areas, for instance, were distinct in this regard. While the status of Jewish leaseholders (arendarze) was of importance in the latter,26 the regulatory constellations in the cities which enjoyed Magdeburg rights in its various forms were particularly significant. Guild and craft unions present another regulatory setting, primarily in context of the economic organization of the groups. Additionally, a special aspect of different urban districts being admitted to different groups merits consideration. Moreover, the status of Jewish communities in different places in the Commonwealth was subject to privileges issued by kings, resulting in different economic or social latitudes for different communities, which sometimes shared the same city, as is the case in L’viv/Lwow/Lemberg,27 which was home to two Jewish communities, one in the inner parts of the city and one on its periphery. Furthermore, the regulatory attempts by Christian, mainly Catholic institutions and organs towards the Jewish community also merit consideration.28 This briefly outlined plurality of regulatory frameworks and their dynamics and interdependencies are certainly topics that warrant further exploration and therefore cannot be exhaustively presented here. Yet it is crucial to keep this complexity in mind, along with the layers of Jewish law-related regulations, as we move towards a bottom-up study of interactions, focusing on one particular example of religiously coded norms and practices concerning food and eating.

The Logic of Fields: Between Religion, Medicine, and Economy

“A cooked root of this plant, called in Polish kosaciec [], in Latin irys […], as well as a salve made out of it, with added pork lard, softens gastric ulcers; with rose oil and a little vinegar mixed together, it is good for headaches; if mixed with honey and white hellebore, it removes stains from a face.”29 This recipe for improving health and treating ailments such as ulcers comes from a medical advisory published in Krakow in 1613. The language of the text is Yiddish, a vernacular which allows us to assume that this advisory was intended for daily use by members of the Jewish community. Hence, it is even more striking that this recipe included pork lard, which was prohibited by Jewish law.

Food-related prohibitions and precepts constitute a significant part of halakha, dating back to biblical times.30 Along with other functional aspects, these norms of a different kind have been used to create religious differences, i.e. to draw boundaries between Jewish and non-Jewish groups, not least due to the visibility and observability of practices related to food preparation and consumption.31 For instance, Leviticus 11: 44–47 includes verses regarding pure and impure (i.e. edible and inedible) animals, linking this differentiation to the fundamental religious distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish groups, exemplified by individuals in 1 Maccabees 1:12– 63 who chose death over consuming pork during the Seleucids persecution.32 If pork and pork products remained strictly prohibited, how can it be explained that they were mentioned in a book explicitly addressed to a Jewish audience?

An accurate analysis of a specific type of this source sheds light on the entire tradition of translations of medical works from diverse European languages into Yiddish from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth, which was one fascinating phenomenon of early modern knowledge transfer in Europe.33 Sejfer derech ejc ha-chajim presents one such translation of a then widespread type of regimen sanitatis salernitanum,34 which allegedly explains the puzzling reference to pork lard. The recipe could include foodstuffs that were prohibited by halakha because it was not derived from a text related to the Jewish tradition in the first place. Nevertheless, the question of retaining the passage in the translation intended for daily use by members of Jewish communities would still require explanation.

However, upon comparing the original version and the Yiddish one, we discover the latter to be an interesting case of symbioses, combining translated passages and passages added later. Remarkably, the cited passage was authored and included by the translator. Therefore, the inclusion in the recipe of an item that was prohibited by religious law still demands some explanation. From the perspective of differentiation theory (as well as field theory), one possible interpretation would be that texts written primarily as medical or health advisories related to a different form of authority than, for instance, those written from an explicitly religious perspective. And again, as mentioned in the introduction, this analytical division does not equate to empirical reality but is to be understood as implicitly incorporated in communicative and interactional structures as an option.

Confirming this perspective, rabbinic literature and commentaries tra­di­tionally addressed the issue of recommending a considerable range of items prohibited by religious law but apparently in daily use for medical or other purposes. In several recipes of Sejfer derech ejc ha-chajim which included pork lard, prescriptions were linked solely to external bodily parts, and thus the lard was not intended for consumption. It could be used as a salve, for instance, but still was not to be eaten. One such example regards a treatment for chickenpox among children. The recipe recommends combining a drink made from winter cress with a lard salve: “[O]ne must know and keep in mind that if giving bitter things [to drink], one must make a suppository from a stewed honeycomb or to grease the anus with fresh pork lard, so that worms can move faster from bitter to sweet.”35 This differentiation in internal and external use of forbidden items may have something to do with traditional rabbinic adaptations of halakha to particular regional or societal circumstances. An impressive number of commentaries and rabbinic texts argue about the use of pork and lard in the context of medical, economic, or social contexts. For example, one early modern commentary36 notes that the lard of an impure animal is considered unsuitable for sale or purchase by religious law, with certain exceptions. Selling lard intended for consumption is strictly forbidden, but its use for daily purposes (such as lighting a fire) is permissible. Additionally, exceptions may be made in cases of physical suffering: “[T]here is no permit for using lard for lubrication, except in cases of suffering; however, for a healthy person and for pleasure, it is not allowed […].”37 This reflects a pragmatic approach taken by religious elites. It indicates that the normative perspective of religious law cannot always be directly applied to daily life situations. Instead, it must be adapted and regulated differently according to various societal contexts.

On the one hand, religious boundaries influenced or expressed by norms related to food are established according to religious law. On the other hand, on a practical level (including the level of discourse), attributions, demarcations, and interdependencies of these boundaries could vary based on the logics of the various societal fields. This is illustrated in another passage from Sejfer derech ejc ha-chajim, where advice on improving digestion suggests following a practice among non-Jews (goyim), specifically Christians, who during Lent ate nuts after consuming fish to mitigate mucus production.38 While this practice may be seen as something to emulate, it simultaneously remained a clear marker of religious difference in religious texts. Notably, also figures writing from different Christian perspectives (and in various epochs of the pre-modern era) emphasized the functional distinctiveness of the Jewish feast, set in contrast with the Christian practice of fasting on Saturday. This can be illustrated exemplarily with the words of the influential Jesuit Piotr Skarga (1536-1612): “Why do we fast on Saturday? […] Firstly, in order to turn away from the Jews and reject their Saturday feast, which, like other feasts, was only prescribed until the resurrection of Christ. [And] [b]ecause fasting contradicts the feast.”39

Daily practices were undoubtedly influenced by religious law and forms of exercising control, yet they were presumably influenced to the same degree by the logics of societal fields. In Jewish moral literature, observations about economic activities in trade, such as the one from the city of Vilnius/Wilno, where the Jewish community would trade with Christians using impure poultry, reveal instances in which community leaders lost control over such situations.40 There are numerous regulations in the communal minute books regarding this matter in different regions of the Commonwealth. Solomon Kluger sought to arrive at compromises by drawing a distinction between trade in pork, with was forbidden, and trade in pork lard, which according to Kluger was allowed.41 This separation of meat and lard is striking. It invites us to consider whether lard was one of the very basic products in the region, common in general society, and therefore hard to avoid in daily life. It was used to prepare medications and, as evident from the passage cited above, to make soap and candles, and it was a great preservative for other foods or products. Kluger offered an explanation as to why his use of lard was justifiable: “Because I have complete evidence from one of the proselytes who told me how his father was negotiating the sale of olive oil, and that he himself brought oil from the state of Italy; and he could not transport it so far in barrels of wood without mixing it in lard until it was squeezed and stayed inside without taking out any drop.”42 Boundaries, with could be easily drawn in theological or polemical texts, seem to have been revised in moments of actual interaction.

From the perspective of religious law and its representatives, such as Rabbi and preacher Solomon Kluger (Rabbi Solomon ben Judah Aaron Kluger), the behaviors presented obviously fell in the category of deviant behavior and had to be controlled and punished. Yet from an analytical perspective, these behaviors can be seen as forms of adapting to norms in everyday interactions, which were governed by the logics of the social fields to which these interactions belonged. One could simultaneously appear to be a member of the religious community and be included, socially43 or economically,44 as a member of general society.

From this perspective of interactions, for instance, entangled labor relations among Jewish and Christian populations represent complexity.45 Jewish communal minute books shed light on these contexts frequently and regarding different aspects. Jewish households often hired maids who were Christian, which led to regulations concerning the responsibilities and prerogatives of the employers and their employees. A protocol from 1607, for instance, reads, “[Jewish] women are to remain vigilant [, sic!], in preserving and salting the meat themselves […], and by no means [having it be salted] by their non-Jewish maidservants; and they should also be careful when cooking the food, for it happened many times that they [the non-Jewish or Christian maidservants] […] added something forbidden.”46 The household was hardly observable from the outside, so the responsibility to watch over religious others became an issue, alongside the obligation to adhere to the law. Similarly, Jewish slaughterers (shoh. at. im) were frequently reminded of the rules of kashrut, and the possible sanc­tions and penalties for violations were stressed, such as suspension of one’s license (h.azaka).47 Licenses which permitted someone to engage in Jewish food production and trade, which included the production of butter and cheese and the supply of dried fish (which were popular in this region), were issued and could be suspended by local rabbis. They were thus one common instrument of regulation.

Working relations which brought members of different religious groups together were complex and involved various levels of negation and compromise. As mentioned above, Solomon Kluger complained about trade in non-kosher products in the city of Vilnius/Wilno, pointing out that these forbidden practices had become frequent, especially the consumption of non-kosher products by non-Jewish employees of Jews, even though this was prohibited by religious law.48 This must have been a major issue, as Polish and Lithuanian pinkassim from the sixteenth century onwards are filled with complaints about violations in cases involving food provided for Christian employees. As in the cases involving Jewish households, in this context we are also dealing with complex matters. An example from the Krakow community of 1590 shows clearly that suspicion had fallen on Jewish merchants traveling to the city of Gdansk as oxen drivers and grain transporters of having bought pork for their non-Jewish workers on the road, which constituted a violation of religious law.49 Much as a clear distinction was drawn between the two communities through the very observable difference between the Jewish feast on the one hand and the practice of fasting on Saturdays among Catholics on the other (as noted by the aforementioned Jesuit Piotr Skarga), the importance of time in the customs though which difference was expressed was also underlined in the context of interreligious labor relations. In the same minute book from Kraków, there are multiple warnings regarding the prohibition of doing agricultural works on a Saturday. Members of the Jewish community were not only prohibited from engaging in this kind of work on Saturdays, they were also prohibited from letting their Christian employees fish50 or plow or engage in any other activities in the field,51 under a penalty of a fine of 50 red złoty. The same temporal aspect of religious diversity (religious belonging linked to particular working days and feasts) frequently appears in the context of Jewish tavern keepers, who sometimes unlawfully served guests, primarily Christians, on the Sabbath, thus showing a stronger commitment to profits than to the law. Communal regulations, as we see here, were therefore not based on the law as an abstract norm. Rather, they were systematically driven by very specific situations and interactions.

Furthermore, supranational organs of Jewish autonomy also issued regulations to address violations of dietary laws, emphasizing the importance of maintaining religious boundaries between groups. This indicates that such problems occurred across regions and communities as a whole. A decree issued by the Council of Lithuania in 1628 provides an example. Local religious elites were ordered to warn all members of all communities in all the synagogues not to trade with Christians in non-kosher carcasses and other forbidden foods and also not to buy such items for their non-Jewish employees.52 Community leaders attempted to prevent and punish violations of these regulations, enforcing the dietary laws in order to maintain religious demarcation between the groups. However, religiously regulated practices related to food in particular were not solely about religious constellations. They also intersected with trade and economic interests, social relations, medical and health practices, and so forth. These various spheres of activity can and should be separated, yet on the level of actual interactions, they remained entangled and contingent.

By presuming the stability of early modern religious groups and the singularity of their boundaries, we tend preemptively to attribute authenticity to the very notion of groups as discrete entities, and we therefore are compelled to understand violation of group norms as deviance. Yet, if we shift our perspective from a religious one (which the former one is) to an analytical one, new questions arise. Is it possible that pork was cheaper than other meats, and thus there may have been significant economic incentives to buy non-kosher products for workers? Or perhaps roast pork was simply tastier and more filling? And was pork lard just a great preservative for food and a substance for healing practices? Yet, at this point and from an epistemological perspective, it is less important to find an explanations for these practices or give answers to these questions than it is simply to ask the questions themselves. This would mean not letting a normative, religiously burdened perspective appear in place of an analytical one, which could offer new perspectives on structural contingency and complexity.

Conclusion

Religious groups and their delineations are profoundly influenced by theological and legal frameworks. Despite demonstrating a historical propensity for fluc­tua­tion, whether through fragmentation or consolidation, religious collectives endure in the context of this form of ordering as relatively stable structures. Moreover, the formation of these groups is significantly influenced by religious practices and their accompanying regulatory mechanisms, which simultaneously serve to distinguish them externally while fostering internal cohesion. In this context, an interplay among shifts and enduring features is observable across temporal and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, within the realm of societal interactions, an additional framework emerges wherein a complexity of norms, regulations, and practices recurrently find expression in distinct forms. These diverse frameworks contribute to the establishment of religious boundaries, which can vary significantly. Additionally, the pace and frequency with which these boundaries undergo change within each framework may differ markedly.

Praxeology, as advocated for use in this paper, presents a perspective that transcends the simplistic dichotomy between the normative dimensions of theology and law on one hand and practices and interactions on the other. This perspective underscores that the analytical approach to understanding early modern group building should not be constrained by either of these frameworks. Rather, it urges a comprehensive consideration of the inherent complexity within these layers, recognizing their potential polyphony and incongruence in the early stages of assumption building.

These considerations have implications for the framing of religious diversity as both an empirical and analytical category. When beginning from a theological or law-related perspective, one may tend to perceive religious plurality solely as a sum of different groups. While historically valid to some extent, such an approach tends to accentuate only a specific aspect of the broader spectrum of religious ordering. These perspectives often underscore the apparent clarity and stability of religious collectives and their boundaries, notwithstanding their potential for variability. What remains concealed is the ambiguity inherent in what we define as religious groups. This ambiguity extends beyond mere proximity or boundaries of collectives and examines notions of deviance, when religious norms, perceived as definitions or forms of belonging, are individually or collectively transgressed. This paper considers these latter aspects of group formation and their conceptual underpinnings.

Consequently, if we seek to arrive at an understanding of religious diversity as both an empirical and analytical category, we must appreciate the complexity of ordering. Such an understanding must account for the coexistence of static and dynamic collective boundaries, both temporally and spatially, as well as the contingency of their manifestations in various interactional contexts.

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Weltecke, Dorothea. Essen und Fasten: Interreligiöse Abgrenzung, Konkurrenz und Austausch­prozesse. Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte. Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2017.

Medieval Diversity: Contexts and Meanings

Nora Berend

University of Cambridge

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In these concluding remarks to the collection of articles, I tease out the meanings of the term “diversity,” considering the contexts in which it appeared and how the various meanings it acquired in shifting contexts are meaningful for historical analysis. If one considers the possible connotations of “diversity” when applied to the age of Sigismund, what comes to mind immediately is diversity associated with Sigismund himself. As king of Hungary and Croatia, prince-elector of Brandenburg, king of Bohemia, king of the Romans, and later emperor, he ruled over diverse lands. This was depicted, for example, in the famous posthumous portrait in Nuremberg by Abrecht Dürer with the display of coats of arms.1 Furthermore, his royal title, in line with those of his predecessors, added a large number of territories, some of which were only part of the realm in wishful thinking: “Sigismund, by the grace of God king of the Romans forever August, and of Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania, and Bulgaria; Margrave of Brandenburg and heir of Luxembourg.”2 Sigismund was reputedly fluent in many languages and at home in different cultures. The Hungarian chronicler Johannes Thuróczy claimed that Sigismund’s long beard was a tribute to the Hungarians, whose ancestors allegedly had had long beards.3 There are also many depictions and portrayals of Sigismund. They served as reminders of his sway in diverse locations through visual means.

Sigismund’s political role was similarly diverse. He organized the crusade to Nicopolis, gathering Hungarian, French, Burgundian, German, and Italian troops and thus uniting a very diverse set of armies, only to suffer a major defeat in 1396. Other crusades did not fare much better.4 While Sigismund was a failure on the battlefield, he is seen as a major innovator in diplomacy who traveled all over Europe and spent substantial amounts of time in various cities, from Paris to Rome and Buda to Perpignan. He tried to mediate between England and France in the Hundred Years’ War. He was instrumental in ending the papal schism at the Council of Constance, yet he also failed to protect John Hus at the same council and ignited the Hussite wars.5

Contemporary authors were critical of the discrepancy between the king’s persuasive speeches and the various promises he made on the one hand and his actual deeds on the other:

This king was a lord of good words, he could say what everyone wanted to hear; he bade, gave, counselled, and promised much to which he did not hold, and he was not ashamed of this… His words were sweet, lenient, and good, and his works were brief, meager, and small.6

Although this is from a hostile source (the Klingenberger Chronik, by a partisan of Duke Frederick IV of Austria-Tyrol whom Sigismund placed under imperial ban and dispossessed in 1415), it is not the only such writing by an author who was not impressed by Sigismund’s acts compared to his promises. The clash between Sigismund’s lofty rhetoric for Christendom and his personal debauchery and the clear mix of opposing personality traits that this implied led one author to make the following claim:

The contradictory qualities, lofty thinking and frivolous action, religiosity and cynicism, chivalric virtue and breaking his word, spiritual depth and cruelty, piety and lasciviousness merged in him in an almost fantastic way. […] He was a dreamer and a calculator, a knight and a real-politician, uniting the ideas of Alexander the Great novels and Machiavelli.7

Portrayals of Sigismund in national historiographies were similarly varied.8 Traditional evaluations of Sigismund tended to be negative, although for different reasons. In the Hungarian historiography, he was not taken seriously because he came to rule by right of his wife. He was seen as a weak king who had to give in to nobles and was responsible for the failed crusade of Nicopolis. According to a persistent popular legend, however, John Hunyadi, who was venerated as a national hero, was his illegitimate son. This may have been at least partly based on the well-attested fondness Sigismund had for women. As Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/7–1445) quipped, “if the Schism had involved women, we would have achieved unity sooner.”9

From the point of view of many German historians, Sigismund had utopian plans and no real successes, apart from collecting crowns. For Czech historians, he was an enemy of the Hussites, who represented the Czech national cause, and he was responsible for the Hussite wars. An author in 1937 explained the contradictions in Sigismund’s personality by the spine-chilling logic of the times as carried in his blood. According to this claim, due to his ancestry, which brought together west and east, Sigismund embodied the collision of “sophisticated Western education and irrepressible Slavic primeval power and wildness.”10

Eventually, reevaluations of Sigismund began to present him as having done the best under difficult circumstances with very limited resources. He was lauded for a cultural revival in Hungary as well as for the success of a marital alliance as a counterweight to hostile barons. His own bravery as well as his propensity to reward loyal service and find excellent military commanders and advisors were highlighted. His reform projects for Church and Empire were seen positively. Indeed, he was often hailed as a master of performative communication. Thus we can, as is so often the case, reflect on the diversity of historians’ points of view and, in particular, on the significant shifts of perception over time.

More recently, it has been suggested that to compensate for the difficulties he faced, despite his financial problems, Sigismund cultivated the ritual, emotional, and material aspects of rulership, such as symbolic displays and splendid clothing.11 This line of research directed attention towards diversity in the use of spectacle in particular, or in other words, towards how public ceremonies performatively constructed rulership. Sigismund used imperial cities such as Constance for large assemblies, where burghers, merchants, ambassadors, and ecclesiastics would witness such ceremonies. One example is the Congress of Buda in 1412. The meeting’s principal aim was to broker a peace deal between Poland and the Teutonic Order. Those present included Sigismund himself, King Władysław II of Poland, and the king of Bosnia. It was attended by people from seventeen different countries, reportedly thirteen dukes, twenty one counts, 1,500 knights, 4,000 servants, one cardinal, one legate, three archbishops, eleven other bishops, 86 players and trumpeters, seventeen messengers, and 40,000 horses.12 According to Jan Długosz, even the envoys of Zeledin (Jalal al-Din), khan of the Golden Horde, traveled to Buda. The khan was an ally of Władysław II of Poland, and according to the chronicler, Sigismund used the “Tatar” presence “to threaten the Venetians.”13

Art was a vital tool in the performance of power, but if one considers the art of the period from the perspective of diversity, there are interesting paradoxes. One example is the depiction of the Pope and Emperor Rotulus in Berlin’s Staatsbibliothek from 1431, which offers an example of diversity in repetition. The pope and emperor figures are similar, but there are subtle differences in the forms of their crowns and in some details.14 A reliquary cross from Nagydisznód/ Cisnădie /Heltau, c. 1440, is celebrated in the catalogue of an exhibition on Sigismund for its complexity: “[t]he diversity of precious materials and complex iconography makes this cross one of the most outstanding Central European goldsmith works of the period.”15 While for the modern observer, the reliquary is valuable and alluring because it is made of a variety of precious metals, it reveals a more intriguing diversity. The cross was probably originally made as a reliquary for a Holy Blood relic, as suggested by the use of a ruby for the wound on Christ’s side. The cross was tied to the most universal Christian holy figure, yet it was at the same time very local, as it included the patron saints of the parish church, St. Walburga and St. Servatius.

Another example is the so-called Jankovich saddle, a bone saddle from c. 1420–40.16 This saddle was made with plates of ivory fastened over a wooden frame and hide, with imagery including St. George, a wild man (thought to represent the inner beast), and representations of courtly love with a minstrel. The meaning of the imagery refers to chivalry, protection from enemies, and the defense of Christian borders, and it has links to the Order of the Dragon. At the same time, this type of saddle was likely inspired by saddles that figured in works of literature, since ivory saddles appeared in romance literature from the twelfth century on, referred to by writers such as Chrétien de Troyes and Chaucer. The fifteenth-century saddle was probably used for ceremonial events, as were the many other such saddles known from the period. Thus a type emerged, making earlier literary representation a reality linked to prestige and a way to differentiate the elites.

Diversity was linked to differentiation in society in other ways as well, notably through the Order (“society”) of the Dragon, which was founded in 1408 by Sigismund.17 While it started out as a monarchical chivalric order of nobles in the entourage of the king, with Sigismund’s election as king of the Romans in 1410, it was very quickly transformed into an international order, with membership used as a reward and in diplomacy. There was a fundamental difference embedded in the order itself: only 24 members, barons of the realm, could wear both the dragon and the cross, while members of a second rank were not limited in number, but could only wear the dragon.

The fact of being admitted as a member, especially of the first rank, was an honor, but it also bound the person to Sigismund, as members had to swear loyalty to the king and promise to help him against the “pagans” (meaning the Ottomans). The Order was used by Sigismund to build alliances inside Hungary and to promote relations with the rulers of Serbia, Bosnia, and Wallachia. He also used it in international diplomacy to promote the anti-Ottoman crusade. In 1433, for his imperial coronation, Sigismund convinced Pope Eugene IV to grant the full remission of sins in a crusading indulgence to the members of the Order of the Dragon:

Item, because, by the power of its statutes and fulfilment of its oath, whoever is touched by the device or the society of the Dragon is obliged personally to set forth against the Turks, schismatics and heretics, and also infidels and to expose his own person and to attend to the extermination and confusion of the same [groups of people], the lord emperor himself therefore supplicates that our lord should mercifully consider conceding in perpetuity that the aforementioned lord emperor and his successors, the kings of Hungary and those of the aforesaid society and also all and everyone of the kingdom of Hungary and those of other foreign nations who personally set out for the defense of the Kingdom of Hungary and in support of the lord emperor and the successors of the kings and of the aforesaid society against those labeled infidels, schismatics, and heretics should have full remission of sins and penalties, in the same way that crusaders (crucesignati), confessed and penitent, in the passage for the acquisition of the Holy Land [have]. Permitted for all in the most blessed form.18

The Order of the Dragon was thus associated with war against the Ottomans, raising an interesting point about the sign of the dragon itself. The following explanation was given for this choice:

we and the faithful barons and magnates of our kingdom shall bear and have, and do choose and agree to wear and bear, in the manner of society, the sign or effigy of the Dragon incurved into the form of a circle, its tail winding around its neck, divided through the middle of its back along its length from the top of its head right to the tip of its tail, with blood [forming] a red cross flowing out into the interior of the cleft by a white crack, untouched by blood, just as and in the same way that those who fight under the banner of the glorious martyr St. George are accustomed to bear a red cross on a white field.19

The dragon was often used as a sign of evil, and so the defeated dragon was chosen as the sign of the Order: the members promised to crush the ancient enemy under the triumphant cross of Christ. The sign of the dragon itself had diverse meanings, since it usually implied negative connotations (as in depictions of the dragon defeated by St. George), yet at the same time, in its use as the sign of the Order, it allowed members to recognize one another and so became a sign of status and prestige.

Diversity also existed in politics, notably in the many ways of dealing with the Ottoman threat. At the time of Sigismund’s accession to the Hungarian throne, various countries between Hungary and the Ottomans were engaged in defensive warfare against the latter. With the collapse of Serbia, the Ottomans became a more direct danger for the kingdom of Hungary. After the failure of the Nicopolis crusade, it was only Ottoman interest in Asia Minor that brought relief. Sigismund therefore employed a variety of means to counter the Ottoman threat. Diplomatic efforts to gain the loyalty of Serbian and Bosnian rulers failed in the end, as the Serbs and Bosnians became tribute-payers of the Ottomans. Sigismund was also interested in finding allies against the Ottomans in Asia. He tried to secure finances and build up defensive systems on the borders. He also ordered nobles to arm peasant archers, and he specified the obligations of the nobility during a general levy to fight.

Sigismund also used courtly ceremony to call attention to the Ottoman threat. He made speeches at balls, promising war against “the Turks.”20 During a visit to Perpignan in 1415 to discuss Church union with the Byzantines, Sigismund was accompanied by a supposedly Ottoman prisoner who had been captured by him in battle. The Buda congress already mentioned was also intended to promote a crusade against the Ottomans, and Sigismund also made use of German to promote crusades. Yet there are accounts of Sigismund getting completely drunk and even being reprimanded by clerics at the Council of Basel for jousting instead of fighting against the infidel.

Sigismund’s efforts to raise awareness of the need for a crusade also had some odd consequences. For example, a report to the Teutonic Order warned that Sigismund claimed he intended to set off for the Holy Sepulcher in the company of a pagan princess, but in reality he was perhaps pondering an attack on the Order.21 So we should also consider the possible difference between the intention of a message and the recipient’s interpretation. There is yet another aspect of diversity in Sigismund’s relations with the Ottomans: trying to find common ground, for example when Sigismund negotiated with an Ottoman envoy. Western and Ottoman customs diverged, and the envoy behaved according to Ottoman norms. Sigismund, however, tried to honor him through behavior that corresponded to Western ideas. Sigismund sat on a throne surrounded by his court, and the Ottoman envoy knelt three times while approaching him. The king, however, bowed towards him each time and then had a chair set up facing him for the envoy to sit on.22

Hungary, one of the realms ruled by Sigismund, is often cited as an example of diversity, with the famous Admonitions attributed to King Stephen I (although written by a cleric) extolling immigrants:

For as guests arrive from different parts and provinces, so they bring with them different tongues and customs, different examples and weapons, and all this adorns the royal court while deterring foreigners from overweening contempt. For a country of one single language and one set of customs is weak and vulnerable. Therefore, I enjoin on you, my son, to nurture them [newcomers] benevolently and to hold them in high esteem so that they should stay with you rather than dwell elsewhere.23

There was thus a long tradition of diversity in Hungary. If we compare Sigismund’s reign to those of previous rulers, however, in some ways there was in fact less diversity. The earlier populations of Cumans and Muslims had disappeared by then, for example. Yet in other ways, there was more diversity, for instance through links to the Empire, linguistic variety (which included a growing use of the vernacular), and the appearance of new genres.

However, Sigismund was not only associated with diversity. An anonymous treatise in the name of Sigismund, the Reformatio Sigismundi, c. 1439, which was a manifesto for reform (which suggests that it was a vision of Sigismund), called for an end to regional autonomy and disorder and the creation of a centralized government under the Roman emperor.24 Tendencies towards more uniformity also appeared in the arts. While many artists were invited to Sigismund’s court at Buda from other parts of Europe, this was in order to produce what has been called international Gothic, a style that was more uniform across Europe than before and linked to royal courts. It replaced earlier, more isolated and diverse styles.25 It has also been suggested that the stone funerary monuments of Hungarian aristocrats became increasingly uniform more or less during Sigismund’s reign, as a Buda workshop produced and then influenced the manner in which these gravestones were made.26

Some trends therefore moved away from diversity towards more centralization and more uniformity. Yet the diversity of the world at the same time came to be the focus of more conscious attention. At the end of the fourteenth century and during the first decades of the fifteenth, Jewish responsa (she’elot u teshuvot) discussed the variations in Hungary and Austria of blowing the shofar and saying various prayers. Sources also indicate a difference of opinion between two rabbis concerning the use of a tablecloth for Passover. The tablecloth had been laid over a sack, and the issue was that yeast may have rubbed off on it. According to one view, this meant that the sack merely had to be shaken out, but according to another, it had to be washed before it could be used for Passover.27

The much-traveled Oswald von Wolkenstein even celebrated the diversity of the world. Originating from South Tyrol, he served various lords, including Sigismund, in whose service he went on diplomatic missions. He also authored numerous poems. In one, he celebrated the diversity of life itself:

Now, since all creatures that God has brought forth,

whether in water, in the air, or on earth

express their thankfulness to the Lord in His Majesty,

simply for the grace that He granted them form,

alas, stupid man, why then is your heart so wild [blind],

since you well know that God has created you in His image

and has granted you His grace so generously

in so much infinite variety?

He gave you a body and life, soul and reason;

earth, fire, water and the wonderful air are your servants,

and so all animals, wild and tame, the smell of fruit in the deep ground

are at your disposal in wondrous manner.28

Oswald was a member of several chivalric orders. He was a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher and a member of the Order of the Elephant, the Order of the Falcon, and the Order of the Dragon.29 He was proud of his travels to “France, León-Galicia, Aragon, Castile, England, Denmark, Sweden, Bohemia, Hungary, Apulia, Navarra, Cyprus, Sicilia, Portugal, Granada and Egypt,” and also to “Morocco, Arabia, from Armenia to Persia, through the Tartar lands to Syria, via Byzantium to Turkey, Georgia … Russia, Prussia, Estonia, Lithuania, Livonia.”30 In one of his poems, he noted, I have dwelled … with Christians, Greek-Orthodox, and heathens.31 In another, he boasted of his linguistic skills and his gifts as a musician:

French, Arabic, Catalan, Castilian,

German, Latin, Slovenian, Italian, Russian and Greek:

these ten languages I used whenever necessary.

Moreover, I knew how to play the fiddle, the trumpet, drums, and the flute.32

He also reflected on the diversity of customs in the lands he visited. He recounted how the queen of Aragon fixed earrings in his ears and in his beard, a custom at the court there, but something which simply provoked laughter at home.33

A contemporary travel account by Johann Schiltberger (1380–c. 1440) pro­vides even more detail, as it is a lengthy narrative rather than short poetry. Johann, who was born not far from Munich, wrote, “I left my home near the city of Munich at the time that King Sigismund of Hungary left for the land of the Infidels.”34 Taken prisoner by the Ottomans, he later recorded his experiences, also adding material from hearsay. He paid particular attention to customs that diverged from European ones, be that the local alternation of winter and summer pastures for animals or the growing of pepper in India.35

Schiltberger also compared Christian and Muslim customs, highlighting various differences. He compared Muslim ritual ablution to Christian confession, saying that Muslims believe they were pure after washing themselves, just as Christians were purified by confession made with full penitence. He likened Muslim Friday to Christian Sunday as the holy day. He pointed out that Muslims did not bury their dead in or around temples but out in the fields. He also wrote about the kerchiefs worn on the head by men, Christians wearing blue and Jews yellow.36 He demonstrated that many of these differences in the end signified the same referent: purification, a day set aside for prayer, the distinction between adherents of other faiths. Thus underneath diversity, he found commonalities.

Yet digging even deeper, ultimately a grave difference is manifest in Johann Schiltberger’s thinking between what he saw as the true faith and what he categorized as false belief. He recounts a particular legend concerning a sign that would mark a child who would someday bring great grief to the Christian world. According to the legend, a Christian priest in Egypt knew of a prophecy about a child named Mohammed. According to this prophecy, this child would introduce a doctrine against Christianity which would cause much suffering to Christians. He and his successors would acquire great power, which, however, would decrease after one thousand years had passed. There would be a sign which would identify the child: a black cloud which would always hover over him. The priest identified, Mohammed, who traveled with merchants, from this sign.37 As distinguishing signs go, this one stands out: a divinely ordained cloud following one person. Ultimately, Johann claimed that Muslims themselves knew that the Christians would someday regain their lands, and the Muslims would be expelled. The Muslims had only managed to conquer these lands in the first place because Christians had abandoned justice, had been haughty, and had turned away from God.38

Faced with so many types of diversity, how are we to make sense of “diversity” itself in the age of Sigismund? The first important point is that some forms of diversity may hide a common purpose or meaning, such as in the case of some religious rites in Christianity and Islam. Yet it is also possible that a single sign comes to acquire a diverse array of meanings, denoting different things depending on the context. This is the case, for example, with beards. Johann Schiltberger stated that Mohammed forbade Muslims from shaving their beards:

he who would have a face different to that he received from God does it against God’s command. They also say that whoever cuts his beard does it from vanity and pride and to please the world and scorns the creation of God; it is particularly the Christians who do this to please their women… for the sake of vanity, they disfigure the image in which God created them.39

In this text, beards are signs of adherence to Islam. Yet Sigismund’s luxuriant beard was his trademark. It is depicted in multiple portraits, some of them even hidden as representations of Biblical figures, though Sigismund himself saw Muslim Ottomans as the enemy. As mentioned above, supposedly Sigismund’s beard was a way of honoring his ties to Hungary.

Another issue concerns how and why diversity emerged. Interconnections through travel, dynastic ties, and the interests of the ruler and the elites often fostered forms of diversity. Yet diversity also manifested in moments of crisis, for instance the multiple interests that pulled in different directions in the empire or during the Schism. Should we use the same label, “diversity,” for all these phenomena? Or should we distinguish between occurrences that were given a positive connotation and instances that were given a negative meaning? And how did context determine the real meanings behind forms of diversity? We need to remind ourselves of historical change as well: diversity in Sigismund’s age was not the same as it is now. There was no diversity for the sake of inclusion, and there was no explicitly tolerant worldview. Quite the contrary, there were strict limits on what was considered acceptable, resulting in discrimination and persecution, for example of people who belonged to other religions or who espoused beliefs categorized as heresy. So we need to be careful, since diversity has taken on very different meanings in our age.

There were powerful limits to any positive assessments of diversity in Sigismund’s times. This was due in part to a worldview strongly imbued by Biblical ideas: Oswald von Wolkenstein’s poem celebrated life’s diversity but saw it all as existing for the sake of Man. The limits of diversity were also due in part to the hold Catholicism had at the time. Even in the age of papal schism, divergence from Catholic tenets was not tolerated, as the Hussite wars demonstrated. We should keep in mind that the Latin word “diversitas” also meant contrariety, contradiction, and disagreement. Diversity was often seen as negative, something to be condemned or even persecuted, whether embodied in prostitutes, Jews, or heretics. At other times, too much diversity caused unease. There are seeming celebrations of diversity, such as the Admonitions attributed to Stephen I, but underneath, we see the pragmatic motives for encouraging settlers. Ultimately, medieval diversity was seen as positive when it was utilitarian: nature served man, knowledge of many languages was a useful tool, and immigrants served the interests of the ruler.

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Smokescreens and Smear Campaigns: The Dutch Communist Party in Times of Crisis

Thomas Buijnink

Doctoral School of Sociology, Eötvös Loránd University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 1  (2024):80-106 DOI 10.38145/2024.1.80

This article seeks to establish how different crises in the Eastern Bloc affected the political standpoints of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, Communistische Partij Nederland (CPN), through an analysis of publications in affiliated party magazines between 1953 and 1981. This analysis is conducted within a framework consisting of party change theories and the literature about Eurocommunism as a Europe-wide phenomenon. The analysis indicates that the CPN went from supporting military interventions in Germany, Poznan, and Hungary to condemning them in Czechoslovakia, initially while maintaining ideological distance from political opponents in the Netherlands. This changed in 1981, when the CPN seemingly without restraint joined the mainstream political parties in condemning the introduction of martial law in Poland and the Socialistische Partij (SP), the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, took over the CPN’s position as a political outsider. This indicated a shift in the party’s stance from a niche to a mainstream positioning against Moscow.

Keywords: Communist Parties, Eastern Bloc, Eurocommunism, Netherlands

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union largely lost its previous exemplary function for communist parties outside of the Eastern Bloc.1 Communist parties in western and southern Europe underwent political, ideological, and organizational changes which have been characterized as a transformation into Eurocommunism. Eurocommunism could be described as a modernization attempt by such parties to appeal to a broader electorate. A new course fit for such purposes practically meant a step away from Moscow with a renewed focus on national circumstances. Armed interventions by the Soviet Union against protests and social movements in its satellite states, such as during the East German Uprising or the Hungarian Revolution, were met with heavy criticism in Western Europe. Scholars have attributed different levels of significance to the effects such events had on the development of communist parties in Europe. The secondary literature puts considerable emphasis on the communist parties in France and Italy,2 both of which were countries in which the communists at one point came close to parliamentary majorities. It is thus important to note that Eurocommunism is a broad umbrella term which hardly does justice to the differences among the various communist parties of Europe.

What makes the Dutch case interesting in comparison to France and Italy is that within the Dutch political landscape the CPN had always remained a small but constant factor. After World War II, the CPN performed relatively well and acquired ten seats in the national parliament.3 This success was due to the role of the Soviet Union in the war and to the CPN’s resistance to the German occupying forces. In the postwar years, the CPN even became the biggest party during the municipal elections in Amsterdam. During this period, the CPN was known as anti-German, anti-American, and also as a vocal supporter of Moscow. Since the mid-1960s, the CPN became more detached from Moscow due to the Sino-Soviet split until its ties with Moscow were renewed in the 1970s. During the Cold War, the CPN became less and less popular. In 1989, the CPN merged with other parties into GroenLinks, the Green Left.4

The secondary literature on Eurocommunism and party change theories could shed interesting light on the developments within and evolution of the CPN. The whole premise of Eurocommunism falls in line with party change theories. These theories indicate that the political standpoints of mainstream political parties are rationally altered to suit changing external circumstances. The literature on Eurocommunism proposes a narrative in line with this assumption, as communist parties all over Europe changed their political standpoints as a reaction to changing national political circumstances. However, this would require that communist parties be defined as mainstream parties. If not, party change theories would lack explanatory power for the emergence of Eurocommunism, since, if communist parties were to be defined as niche parties, they would theoretically remain unaffected by changing external circumstances and stick to their predetermined policy positions. By addressing the specific policy changes of the CPN towards the crises in the Eastern bloc, this article only addresses a fraction of an array of factors which could indicate a shift to Eurocommunism. Singling out crises in the Eastern Bloc as an explicitly party external factor offers the benefit that party change theories can indicate if a shift to Eurocommunism correlates with a shift from a niche to a mainstream political course. This leads to the fundamental question I address in the discussion below: How did the CPN react to political crises within the Eastern Bloc, and did its political standpoints develop as a response to these events?

Table 2. An overview of the election results of the CPN in general elections in relation to the crises in the Eastern Bloc

Source: PDC. “CPN en de Tweede Kamerverkiezingen tussen 1946 en 1986.” Reference work Dutch Parliament. Accessed 25 June 2021, https://www.parlement.com/id/vhsdgb8b3t09/cpn_en_de_tweede_kamerverkiezingen.

Literature Review

In a substantial article about the Hungarian Revolution and anti-communism in the Netherlands, Duco Hellema addresses the Hungarian Revolution and the Dutch response from an international relations perspective. In general, the political attitudes of Western European states towards the Hungarian Revolution could be described as rather passive. Hellema attributes the overall lack of action to a sense of cautiousness due to the constant threat of nuclear war. A second factor is that in November 1956, France and Britain were preoccupied with the Suez Crisis. The Dutch attitude became something of an exception.5 Hellema states that the Dutch public reacted “vehemently,” as in comparison to other European states, the Dutch had a more outspokenly anti-communist reputation. According to Hellema, this came from a sense of conservatism which had its roots in a widely shared sense of discontent with the rapid modernization and societal changes after World War II. A factor which led the Dutch government to practice a cautious foreign policy was the loss of its former colonies. As a result of this, the Dutch government was forced to redefine its position on the international playing field and had no firm or predetermined Ostpolitik. In the postwar period, the Netherlands was governed by a Roman-Red coalition (a coalition of the Dutch labor party De Partij van de Arbeid, or PvdA and the Catholic People’s Party, or KVP), the foreign policy of which was characterized by an anti-communist attitude and could be summarized as cautious. The developments in the Eastern Bloc were therefore not followed with great interest but rather with suspicion. As soon as the situation in Hungary escalated, the Netherlands had no specific criteria or Ostpolitik to fall back on. Eventually, the Hungarian revolution was considered a window of opportunity to reduce the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. The attitude of the Dutch government thus became impatient in comparison to the other Western European states. At the same time, the Dutch government acknowledged that it could only wait and see. The military intervention which brought the Hungarian revolution to an end was sharply condemned by the Dutch press and prompted large demonstrations. One of the main targets of indignation was the CPN.6 Ultimately, no major sanctions were imposed on the Soviet Union. Hellema concludes that the Dutch people reacted fiercely to the events in Hungary and that this was somewhat reflected in the choices made by the Dutch government.7

The assumption that Dutch anti-communism has its roots in conservatism could be challenged. According to Revel, the staunchest anti-communists in Europe have always been the social democrats.8 The anti-communist sentiments in the Netherlands and in other northwestern European states could therefore be explained by the strong presence of social democratic parties. This is important for the framing of the rise of Eurocommunism in the 1970s and 1980s: “The fundamental controversy about Eurocommunism in Europe is thus not a debate between the Right and the Left but between two Lefts. The question is which trend of European socialism, the Leninist or the social-democratic, will prevail.”9

In West European Communism after Stalinism. Comparative Approaches, Maud Bracke and Thomas Ekman Jorgensen offer an overview of the different ways in which Eurocommunism has been addressed by various scholars.10 In the late 1970s, many articles and books were published about the political and ideological changes which Western European communist parties underwent in the 1970s and the 1980s. Consequently, much of the literature on this topic suffered from the political burden of being directly linked to the Cold War. According to Bracke and Ekman Jorgensen, this context made it difficult for many scholars to approach the topic from a neutral perspective. Contemporary studies in Eurocommunism thus could benefit from a different and more neutral approach.11 A second observation they make is that Eurocommunism has mainly been studied in countries where communist parties were more influential. Thus, within the literature on Eurocommunism, there is a strong focus on southern Europe.12

According to the same authors, one of the main motivations behind the transition to Eurocommunism was an increasingly critical attitude towards the lack of internal democracy in communist parties. At the same time, many party members realized that communist parties would not be able to obtain a leading role in modern protest movements which emerged outside of the working class, such as student protest movements and women’s rights movements. The sense of insecurity within communist parties peaked in the 1960s because of the Sino Soviet split and because the New Left was increasingly winning political terrain. It must be noted, however, that the development of Eurocommunism cannot be entirely generalized due to large differences between communist parties.13 In the 1960s, when it became increasingly urgent for communist parties to adapt to changing social circumstances, some of these parties were already far removed from their origins. Unique party cultures, histories, and circumstances gave each of them a unique societal dimension. In Italy and France, the communist parties in particular emerged as influential political actors after World War II, a position which they initially managed to maintain in the 1950s. By comparison, the communist parties in the Scandinavian states were small and marginal.14

Scholars have attributed different levels of significance to the effects of the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring on the development of Eurocommunism. The Hungarian Revolution is considered a turning point by some authors, but other scholars argue that the ideological crisis for communist parties began no earlier than the 1970s. Gombin argues that the 1950s were formative for the French Communist Party and the emergence of the New Left.15 This was partly due to the Hungarian Uprising but also to the Algerian War: “Marxism lost its doctrinal primacy among an entire generation of young intellectuals and workers concerned with politics.”16 Jane Jenson draws a similar conclusion and considers 1956 a pivotal year for the communist party in France and “a high point between rise and decline.”17 Nevertheless, other authors claim the opposite. Roy Macridis18 and Hadley Cantril19 conclude that consternation within the French Communist Party was not particularly relevant for most of its members but mainly for its intelligentsia and leadership.

According to A. J. Liehm, the intended reforms proposed during the Prague Spring reflected and to a certain degree represented the ideal of Eurocommunism. Liehm concludes that the military interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, together with the general rejection of fundamental freedoms in Eastern Europe, were major reasons for the schism between eastern and western communist parties.20

Theoretical Framework

The circumstances under which political parties change their views are addressed widely within the field of political science. Several major studies have been bundled by Andreas Fagerholm in his 2015 article, Why Do Political Parties Change their Policy Positions? A Review.21 Among the studies on policy position change, two traditions can be distinguished. The first tradition was initiated by Robert Harmel and Kenneth Janda.22 Their general assumption is that political parties are conservative organizations which are averse to any form of change. If a political party changes policy positions, this is most likely because of internal party factors, such as leadership change. Alternatively, change could occur because of factors outside the party, such as disappointing electoral results or a shift in public opinion.23 The second tradition, heavily influenced by the work of Ian Budge,24 assumes that political parties rationally change their standpoints based on the political and societal circumstances they encounter while they engage in active political competition with one another. Budge identifies several factors which could indicate how likely it is for political parties to change their political standpoints.25 These include external factors, such as change of public opinion, undesirable electoral performance, creating distance between ideological rivals, and position within government or opposition. Also, internal factors are addressed, such as change of party leadership and internal party structures.

It is important to note that niche and mainstream parties have different tendencies when it comes to how they react to these factors. Adams et al. address changes in political standpoints in the context of Western European niche parties. This research concludes that while mainstream political parties’ policy shifts correspond to shifts in public opinion, niche parties do not display similar tendencies to adjust their policy preferences. A potential explanation for this phenomenon is that niche parties might have established their policy positions beforehand in such a way that they are already aligned with their rank and file.26 While there is consensus that there are relevant differences between niche and mainstream political parties, the literature is more ambiguous about how niche political parties should be identified. This leads to an important question in this theoretical framework, namely if in a Dutch context the CPN should be defined as niche or mainstream. Fagerholm emphasizes that an important distinction between niche and mainstream political parties is the degree to which they seriously compete during elections. However, a second definition is also widely used; Adams et al. argue that a party should be qualified as niche based on its ideology. If a party adheres to a niche ideology, such as communism or a far-right ideology, it should be qualified as a niche party. In the case of the CPN, both definitions of a niche party are applicable to a certain degree. One of the key features of the CPN is that it initially related itself to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in an outspoken manner, which is something no other political party in the Netherlands did. In an ideological sense, as hardline communists, it should be defined as a niche party. However, when it comes to electoral performance, a different categorization might be appropriate. Even though the CPN had never become a serious candidate for government, they were consistently represented in the Dutch parliament. In the postwar years, the CPN was represented in the opposition with ten seats. Its popularity slowly declined until it was disbanded, while over the years maintaining between two and eight seats. As such, the CPN had something to lose during the national elections and therefore had to compete seriously. In this sense, the CPN might have been sensitive enough to external circumstances to adapt its political standpoints under the influence of factors indicated by Fagerholm, even though, in an ideological sense, the party could still be considered niche.

Research Methodology and Case Selection

This article seeks to establish how such crises in the Eastern Bloc affected left wing party politics in the Netherlands and specifically the political standpoints of the CPN. This will be done through a discourse analysis of articles related to this topic from party affiliated newspapers and magazines. These publications mainly originate from the CPN newspaper De Waarheid, but they are contextualized with publications from Socialisme en Democratie and Paraat from the PvdA) as well as articles from de Tribune from the Socialist Party Socialistische Partij (SP). The analysis of such documents offers multiple benefits in comparison to other options. The first benefit is that during the twentieth century, these party magazines and newspapers were published on a regular basis and formed an important means of communication. Most party magazines were issued at least monthly, and some party-affiliated newspapers were even published on a daily basis, allowing the parties to reach out to their electorates regularly. This regularity enabled political parties to address the issues of the day quickly and react to developments as soon as they occurred. As these publications were an important way to communicate with the masses, any changes in a party’s political and ideological stance to appease public sentiment are also likely to have been addressed here.

I have not collected or analyzed the data in accordance with a strict code book. The reason for this is that the data has been selected from fundamentally different sources covering a span of almost forty years with large time intervals. The analysis of data focusses on five reoccurring elements during each moment of crisis. These elements partly fall in line with some of the relevant factors listed by Fagerholm.

1. Close attention is paid to how the uprisings against the socialist regimes were addressed.

2. Attention is also devoted to the attitudes expressed towards the initial reaction by the national government. The analysis considers which desires were expressed by the Dutch political parties towards the national authorities of the state in which the crises took place.

3. Indications of support for or criticism of military interference are also considered. Each of the political crises was brought to an end by military interference, always backed up by or under pressure from Moscow.

4. Attention is paid to whether political parties expressed a preference for a hardline or a more liberal approach to state socialism.

5. The dynamics between Dutch political parties are also taken into consideration, as is the question of whether they supported or reprimanded each other for their responses to the crises.

The East German Uprising of 1953

During the East German uprising in 1953, demonstrations against work quotas developed into mass protests against the East German government. After the Soviet forces stationed in East Germany intervened, it took until June 24 before the situation was fully deescalated.27

The protests in East Germany, consistently described in De waarheid as provocations, were addressed for the first time on Wednesday, June 17, 1953.28 The claim was made that the social unrest in East Berlin had been organized by the West German government under Adenauer in cooperation with the United States. According to De Waarheid, the “provocateurs” were inhabitants of West Berlin to whom the East German authorities responded in a measured and appropriate manner.29

De Waarheid considered the protests an attempt to divert attention away from the conciliatory measures proposed by the East German government. The local correspondent claimed that the following alleged circumstances had been essential factors in the outbreak of open conflict or clear signs of provocation from the West: the visit of Jakob Kaiser (minister of all-German affairs) to Berlin; the spread of propaganda from West to East Berlin; wounded insurgents having been taken to West Berlin; and the fact that the provocations had taken place near the Western border. The actual inhabitants of East Berlin were reported to have defended their city against the provocateurs.30 According to De Waarheid,the unrest among workers due to higher labor norms was immediately exploited by Western sabotage agencies, even though the East German government had acted quickly and adequately by altering their plans.

On June 18, it was stated by De Waarheid that American officers had been involved to such an extent that that they had walked through East Berlin in uniform and distributing orders. This was explicitly associated with Germany’s Nazi past. People were reported to have sung the Horst Wessel song and chanted, “We want Hitler back!”31

The events in Berlin were also addressed by Marcus Bakker, a board member of the CPN. He stated that the Soviet Union had made many proposals which would further a peaceful solution to global issues. A peaceful foreign policy and potential German reunification, Bakker continued, were against the interests of the United States. The recent economic and political successes of East Germany had rendered the West German smear campaign irrelevant. This smear campaign, according to Bakker, had been conducted by the United States and West Germany to provoke conflict. This plan has failed because the DDR government had recognized and addressed its previous mistakes, and the provocateurs had shown their fascist nature.32

In Socialisme en Democratie, distributed by the PvdA, J. in ‘t Veld considered the turmoil in the Eastern bloc as an indicator of success for the West’s cautious foreign policy.33 In the following edition, J. Barents addressed the geopolitical implications of the East German Uprising.34 The death of Stalin and the “workers revolt in Eastern Berlin” were interpreted as factors which could indicate an approaching change of the status quo: “One of the clichés destroyed by the East German uprising was the assumption that nations living under police and state terror could never rise up against their oppressors.”35 Barents considered the East German Uprising confirmation of Adenauer’s insistence on free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

1956 Poznan Protests

The Poznan uprising was the first full uprising which occurred after Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956. A peaceful strike in Poznan grew into a two-day fight between insurgents and the Polish army. Later that year, some of the demands which had been made by the insurgents were met. The uprising caught a lot of international attention, as a large number of representatives of the foreign press had been attending an international fair in Poznan.36

In its reports on the Poznan Uprising, De Waarheid contended that imperial agents and reactionaries had attempted to exploit Poland’s economic difficulties.37 Implying that the disturbances were prepared provocations by foreign actors, De Waarheid characterized the demonstrations as unjust, as the Polish government had already addressed the grievances voiced by the protestors.

The next day, it was alleged in De Waarheid that it was foreign provocateurs who had motivated the workers to go on a strike. “The situation escalated when provocateurs and underground groups started to shoot near the security police building.”38 The correspondent reported that order had been quickly restored after the army had opened fire on the provocateurs. Reportedly, the real workers had not been harmed, as they had nothing to do with the outbreak of violence.

In the article Workers and terrorists, the uprising in Poznan was linked to the protests in Berlin: “We have to say that it is easier to get a general overview of the events in the Polish city of Poznan than was the case in 1953 with the riots in Berlin (…) This is because the number of proponents of the Cold War has reduced since then.”39 The fact that there were economic and administrative issues in Poland was acknowledged, but the contention was also made that the government had devoted considerable effort to solving these issues. Looting and arson were considered indications that the disturbances had been instigated or carried out by professional foreign provocateurs. The Polish government was reported to have met the provocations with a continuation of “international and domestic détente.”40 In the next edition of De Waarheid, the American offer to supply Poznan with food was condemned as “malicious propaganda.”41 The disturbances in Poznan allegedly could be traced back to the United States, which had “a hundred million dollars on their budget for sabotaging socialist countries.”42

In the July 4 issue of De Waarheid, the contention was made that most of the workers had left the protests as soon as the provocateurs had become violent.43 CPN member F. Baruch argued that the American involvement in Poznan had been hinted at by Dulles himself, as he had implicitly mentioned the Poznan uprising before it had taken place, and the whole provocation had been part of an effort to create a smokescreen to hide the USA’s failing foreign policy.44

In the PvdA magazine Paraat,the Poznan uprising was explicitly addressed by Alfred Mozer.45 Mozer interpreted the protests in Poznan as an event of great importance because they had led to significant internal changes in Poland and pushed back the Russian sphere of influence. However, he stated that the situation might be more complicated than it initially seemed.46 According to Mozer, the death of Stalin implied that the conditions for the Stalinist model had ceased to exist, and this has led to an attempt by Moscow to ease relations with its satellite states by allowing them to liberalize to a certain extent. However, this attempt would always fail, Mozer suggested, since “hunger comes while eating.”47

In PvdA’s Socialisme en Democratie, Dedeijer expressed his faith in Władysław Gomułka’s ability to solve the issues at hand: “Not only in his political postulates, but also in his behavior as a man, in his intellectual integrity and his rationality.”48 De Kadt stated that the pretenses of communism had been utterly destroyed, and the ideology had been reduced to what it truly was: “An enforced system that by an immense waste of human lives, human happiness, and human dignity reaches only meagre results.”49 Goedhart took a critical approach to the concessions made by Moscow in 1956, as the easing of strict policies in Poland and Hungary could not be considered a logical outcome of the communist system and therefore could not be used as an argument in defense of communism.50

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956

On October 23, 1956, students gathered in Budapest to demonstrate against one-party rule and demand more political, economic, and democratic rights. The protests soon escalated, and fights broke out countrywide between the insurgents and the army. The revolutionaries believed they had succeeded, as the Soviet troops retreated from Budapest, to which the government responded by requesting military support from the Soviet Union and the reinstalment of Imre Nagy as the prime minister. Nagy’s decision to resign from the Warsaw Pact did not have the desired effect. In early November, Khrushchev crushed the revolution by sending the Red Army to Hungary. The international response which Nagy had hoped for did not come. After the revolutionaries were defeated, the government fell into the hands of the reorganized and purged Hungarian communist party.51

On October 24, 1956, the disturbances in Budapest were mentioned in De Waarheid. It was reported that counterrevolutionary gangs had conducted bloody attacks on soldiers and civilians. This allegedly had led the Hungarian government to announce martial law and to ask the Soviet troops to help restore peace.52 In a second article, Imre Nagy was paraphrased: “hostile elements joined the peaceful demonstration of Hungarian young people. They misguided the working people and acted against the popular-democracy and power.”53

The next day, De Waarheid addressedthe situation in Hungary, recognizing that the demonstrations had been provoked by the irresponsible behavior of leading politicians. Therefore, they expected the new Hungarian government to introduce far-reaching reforms once peace had been restored.54 Marcus Bakker blamed the Dutch media for not expressing solidarity with the Egyptians during the Suez Crisis, as they done with the Poles and Hungarians: “We are also deeply affected by the events in Hungary: while a people rose for a changed and improved construction of socialism, irresponsible elements made use of the situation to turn the desire for progress into a contra-revolution.”55 The Hungarian attempt to leave the Warsaw Pact was criticized the next day, as the only opponents of this pact would be “Adenauer and his Hitler-generals.”56 This assumption was illustrated by the example that fascists were reported to have sung “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.”57

On October 30, the CPN offered a statement about the situation in Hungary and the alleged anti-communist campaign in the Netherlands: “The party administration makes a call for all peace-loving Dutch citizens to recognize the true and dangerous character of the events and to take a stand against the campaign of incitement.”58 The CPN also claimed that even though there was no clear overview of the situation in Hungary, all available data pointed towards a putsch. It linked “this counterrevolutionary adventure” and the interests of “American pro–Cold War politicians.” The Dutch reaction to side immediately with this “counterrevolutionary coup d’état” showed the hypocrisy of other political parties: “The lament for the faith of the Hungarian people sounds especially false from the mouths of those who prepare an atomic war against the peoples of Eastern Europe and assist the rearmament of the SS in West Germany.”59 The worries about Hungary were interpreted by the CPN as “having the goal of diverting attention away from the deteriorating economic circumstances in the Netherlands and creating a false sense of unity.”60

On November 2, it was reported that there had been Western intervention in the events in Hungary, as planes from the Red Cross had dropped weapons and supporters of the previous Horthy regime had crossed Hungary’s Western border.61 A similar interpretation could be found the next day: “Under the cover of smokescreens of talking about a ‘heroic uprising’ and ‘Soviet Troops,’ Western circles do everything in their power to restore the old reactionary regime in Hungary.”62

On November 5, it was announced in De Waarheid that the new Hungarian government, under the leadership of János Kádár, along with the socialist forces of Hungary and the Soviet Union, had succeeded in their task.63 Any attempts to discuss the situation in the forums of the United Nations were deemed unlawful, as the uprising had been a strictly domestic affair. Assaults on the properties of the CPN in the Netherlands were also addressed: “It had nothing to do with an indignant crowd, but everything with organized destruction commandos.”64 On November 6, the alleged underlying motivations of the anti-communist riots in the Netherlands were addressed in more detail: “They attempt to conceal the dangerous situation, which is the result of the British-French aggression against Egypt, behind the curtain of Hungary hysteria.”65 The PvdA was especially blamed for this, with their “unreasonable disruptions about Hungary.”66

The tenth edition of PvdA’s Paraat from 1956 was dedicated entirely to the events in Hungary and Poznan, obviously siding with the revolutionaries: “For the first time in history an oppressed people, by its own force, has triumphed over a modern dictatorship while the same people has been handcuffed again by brute military force.”67 The author asks how the situation will develop and whether Moscow would “[u]nashamedly, brutally, and cynically lower the Iron Curtain over Hungary again (…) Moscow does not believe in tears, blood, and freedom. A people is being suffocated under the chokehold of Communism.”68 In another article, the authors of Paraat stated that the CPN had always been a “slavish imitation of the foreign communist parties that remain a slavish imitation of the Russian communist party.”69 The PvdA explicitly presented itself as an anti-communist party: “Now the terrible events in Hungary have united the PvdA, together with all other democratic parties, to take a stand against communism; to us this is a confirmation of our principal standpoint that we have drawn a line, which we have always followed as long as we have been democratic socialists.”70

The Prague Spring 1968

In 1968, Alexander Dubček introduced far-reaching reforms which opened the way for a ten-year transition plan. His intention was to re-popularize socialism by removing its most oppressive features. In practice, this led to the socialist government and the Soviet Union being openly criticized. The Soviet Union perceived the Prague Spring reforms as a threat to the unity of its bloc. On August 20, WTO forces occupied Czechoslovakia. Immediately, all reforms were undone, and Czechoslovakia entered a period of “normalization.” Within one year, the government re-established full censorship.71

In April, De Waarheid addressed the reforms of the Prague Spring. Its attitude towards these developments was positive under the precondition that the reforms would help build a stronger socialist state and the new foreign policy would remain in line with the foreign policies of other WTO members.72 On August 21, it was reported that WTO troops had unannouncedly entered Czechoslovakia and occupied the most important political centers. De Waarheid mentioned that the Soviet press bureau reported that these troops had come to Czechoslovakia’s aid only after the Czechoslovak government had requested armed support.73 Directly next to this article, a commentary by the CPN was placed in which the CPN distanced itself from the armed intervention: “Over the course of recent months, the Communist Party of the Netherlands has repetitively and with great emphasis expressed its stance against any sort of intervention, military or anything else, in the affairs of Czechoslovakia.”74 The CPN was convinced that this intervention would have “harmful consequences to the necessary battle against American capitalism and West-German revanchism.”75 The CPN also stated, however, that the Western press had done everything in its power to escalate the conflict. In a later article, the CPN announced that, “[i]t is up to the Czechoslovak people and the Czechoslovak communists to decide how the affairs of their country should be dealt with in the continuing construction of socialism. Interference, in whatever form, can only do damage and lead to great harm.”76

A week later, the front page of De Waarheid was covered by a manifesto of the CPN in which it strongly condemned the use of military force in Czechoslovakia: “The administration of the CPN declares with great emphasis that such conduct is unacceptable, that it has nothing to do with communist principles, and that it violates all decisions and declarations of the international communist movement.”77 The CPN stated that the crisis in Czechoslovakia had been caused by the former government under Antonín Josef Novotny, which Moscow had always supported. The Soviet Union thus had failed to deliver any justification for its interference. This made it the “most shameful breach of the principles of Leninism yet committed.”78 They stated that this interference took place with the silent approval of American imperialists, who seized the opportunity to nurture and inflame anti-communist sentiments. The CPN called for the Dutch working class not to be misled by the pro-Czechoslovak front of Dutch political parties. They felt that the other parties had used the situation in Czechoslovakia to cover up their support for the American war in Vietnam and German revisionism. However, the CPN also continued to present itself as a critic of the Soviet Union: “For years, the Communist Party of the Netherlands has been criticizing the leadership in the Soviet Union, much to the dismay of all anti-communists and the ‘official circles’ in our country.”79 The CPN then announced that they had cut off all ties with the leadership of the Soviet Union and its supporters: “The CPN insists that the current leadership in the Soviet Union cannot and should not in any way be identified with the Soviet Union or with the ideas of communism.”80 The CPN expressed the conviction that it was “the only party in the Netherlands with the moral right to stand up to the violation of communist principles being committed by the current Soviet leadership.”81

The Prague Spring was addressed in two articles in Socialisme en Democratie. Cees Laban spoke of the Czechoslovak people and politicians with great sympathy, concluding that

it is clear that one is looking for a form of communism that is in line with humanism and the principle of freedom, which is rooted in the people, and which also has an economic effect that will give the population greater prosperity (…) Therefore, the moral duty rests on us to provide support for this people cautiously and by using all appropriate, however limited, resources at our disposal.82

In another article, another PVDA politician strongly condemned the Soviet intervention but simultaneously argued in support of continuation of the détente policy: “It is the only policy that can lead to real cooperation between East and West.”83

Martial Law in Poland 1981

In the early 1980s, the Polish governing party (PZPR) was in crisis and rapidly losing influence. The opposition was gaining strength in the form of the Solidarność trade union and political movement under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa. The PZPR perceived Solidarity as the cause of the economic recession and accused its supporters of leading Poland into a civil war. The prime minister, Wojciech Jaruzelski, believed that the only way to maintain control and avoid Soviet intervention was to introduce martial law, marking a period of severe repression of the opposition and other far-reaching restrictions. Despite the severe measures, martial law did not achieve all the goals set by the PZPR, as Solidarity managed to remain active underground.84

On December 13, De waarheid stated on their front page that the Polish army had seized power and had announced a state of martial law.85 On the same page, the CPN condemned the coup d’état by the Polish army: “This seizure of power underlines the bankruptcy of the Polish United Workers Party and the urge to innovate as was expressed by the population and the trade union movement in Poland.”86 The CPN was convinced that this provided proof of “the failure of a one-party system, and that broad coalitions, separation of powers, and a deepening of democracy are necessary prerequisites for socialism.”87

In the December 15 issue of De waarheid,it was announced that the Amsterdam departments of the CPN and PvdA, together with three other progressive parties, had published a response to the coup d’état by the Polish army.88 Only a democracy, it was stated, could lay the foundations for political solutions.

On the next day, it was mentioned that a petition had been sent to the Polish ambassy in The Hague signed by the CPN, the PvdA, and, remarkably enough, three conservative political parties. Marcus Bakker, by then the leader of the CPN faction in the Dutch Parliament, was quoted: “In Poland, the point is that there was an opportunity to create real democratic socialism; but instead of seizing this opportunity, they intervened by military means. That is contrary to what we consider socialism.”89

In Paraat, political relations between the PvdA and CPN were explored. The discussants addressed the CPN’s political standpoints towards Eastern Europe and specifically their standpoint regarding the introduction of martial law in Poland. It was stated that the CPN had lost many members to the PvdA because its attitude towards Moscow had not been rectilinear. According to one of the discussants, the CPN had sometimes been critical of Moscow in the 1960s, but in the 1970s, the CPN had reorientated itself towards Moscow, and this had been something, the discussants contended, that the CPN’s electorate had not found encouraging. The discussants did not believe that the CPN being critical of Moscow was necessarily very substantial: “I miss a story from the side of CPN about the current situation in Eastern Europe, what the balance of power there is. A cohesive story, and not a sum of incidents.”90

In Poland: an “internal affair” for democratic socialism, Paul Kalma and M. Krop suggested that the PvdA had reacted reasonably to the introduction of martial law. Immediately, a statement of protest was written, and two demonstrations were organized. “However, this position does not undo the lukewarmness and half-heartedness that have characterized the reactions in the party to the events in Poland for the last year and a half.”91 One of the reasons for a lack of support, the authors supposed, was that the PvdA still had an old-fashioned concept of détente politics. It was therefore suggested that practical support of liberation movements in the Eastern Bloc should be taken more seriously: “Such support undoubtedly increases the tension between East and West, but that is the price which must be paid.”92 They argued that it would be key for successful détente politics to differentiate between the relaxation of relations between East and West while simultaneously acknowledging the changes to the European status quo. This way, a political course could be followed by the PvdA which would fall more in line with that of the United States.

De Tribune,the magazine of the SP, dedicated a large article to the introduction of martial law in Poland. In their view, Solidarity had become the mouthpiece of economic dissatisfaction. However, the Polish government had met most of the economic demands which could justifiably be made by a trade union. They did not consider Solidarity to be in the position to make any demands other than economic ones.93 According to De Tribune, the establishment of Solidarity as the third power beside the Church and state would inevitably lead to political confrontations. After martial law went into force, the army became the fourth power: “A drama is unfolding in Poland, let’s face it. A drama that for all progressive people will be experienced as a setback. But that is not yet a reason to cry with the CDA [Christian Democratic Appeal] and VVD [People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy] wolves” 94 (as the CPN allegedly had done). De Tribune concluded that none of these four powers in Poland had the mandate or the popular power to solve Poland’s economic issues. It therefore recommend that “Poland can only be drawn out of the economic swamp by an utmost concerted effort of these four powers, supported by the population.”95 In the article Washington, it was reasoned that while the situation in Poland dominated the news, many North American misdeeds had not been properly addressed.96 A similar way of reasoning can be found in a later article: “Poland is met with hue and cry, while Minister Haig97 praises Turkey, (…) They are using the Polish crisis to start a new anti-communist smear campaign and as a reason to sweep the disarmament talks off the table.”98

Analysis

An analysis of the discourse used by each of the political parties reveals that during each of the crises, all parties took clear and unambiguous positions. The PvdA systematically condemned all Soviet interventions in the Eastern Bloc. Among the many parties, the standpoints of the CPN changed the most significantly, as they went from fully supporting military interventions to completely condemning them. However, there were some steps in between. Regarding the East German Uprising, the CPN did not take the political and economic discontent of East Germans (except for the workers of the Stalin-Allee) strongly into consideration. Most of the uprising was framed as the work of fascists and foreign agents, which the East Berlin workers allegedly had nothing to do with. During the protests in Poznan and Budapest, the CPN already acknowledged to a larger extent the possibility that political and economic discontent existed among workers and citizens. However, the CPN still insisted that the Polish and the new Hungarian government had already solved or would soon solve the issues that had given rise to expressions of discontent. Initially, the CPN put trust in Nagy’s government to get hold of the situation in Hungary. However, as soon as Hungary left the Warsaw Pact, Nagy’s revolutionary government could no longer count on the CPN’s sympathy. The suppression of the Prague Spring was the first military intervention which was fully condemned by the CPN. The CPN supported the liberal policies of the Prague Spring, under the precondition that they would help further the construction of a better socialism. The CPN sympathized with the government of Czechoslovakia and stated that only the Czechoslovaks could solve the problems at hand, without any meddling by the WTO or Western powers. The CPN did not believe Moscow’s claim that Prague had asked the Soviet Union to remove fascist elements from the Czechoslovakian elite circles, so the CPN considered the intervention illegitimate. This led it to condemn the invasion of Czechoslovakia sharply and to cut ties with Moscow. However, the CPN still insisted that the situation had escalated due to Western Powers, which had put up another smokescreen to cover up German rearmament and the Vietnam War. During each of the four crises, the CPN repeatedly argued that the events in Eastern Europe were being used as smokescreens to hide American misdeeds and as part of smear campaigns to discredit communism. The introduction of martial law in Poland was therefore the second intervention which was fully condemned by the CPN but the first during which the CPN did not accuse any Western Powers of being involved. It is also important that, in contrast to its response to the events of the Prague Spring, during the introduction of martial law in Poland, the CPN contended that a democratic system was a prerequisite for socialism, not a one-party state. The SP interpreted the introduction of martial law as the result of the Poland’s poor economic circumstances and Solidarity, as a trade union, having intervened too much in politics instead of focusing on labor policies. It observed that none of the actors involved (the army, the Church, the state, and Solidarity) had either the popular support or political mandate to solve Poland’s (economic) issues. Therefore, the SP proposed that all actors cooperate. Despite this seemingly neutral position, it was still suggested in Paraat that the situation in Poland was being used by the Western Powers to start an anti-communist smear campaign to sweep disbarment talks off the table.

When the dynamics between the political parties in the Netherlands are considered, a few significant observations can be made. During the East German Uprising, the Poznan Protests, and the Hungarian Revolution, the dynamics remained largely consistent. The PvdA condemned military intervention and supported a more liberal and democratic political course. The CPN blamed the Western powers for allegedly organizing the crises and vocally supported the Soviet Union. On a national level, the CPN blamed the other political parties for utilizing the crises in the Eastern Bloc for their own gain, either to start anti-communist smear campaigns to divide the Dutch working class or to create smokescreens to hide the failing policies of the Dutch government. Simultaneously, the PvdA emphasized its anti-communist stance and called out the CPN for being a slavish imitation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This dynamic changed with the end of the Prague Spring in 1968. This time, even the CPN distanced itself from Soviet intervention, though it was not yet willing to take a collective stance towards Moscow with other political parties. The CPN stressed that it was the only political party in the Netherlands with the moral authority to condemn the WTO intervention. The other Dutch political parties were considered hypocrites for meddling in these affairs, as they did not even support the Dutch working class. Therefore, the CPN was unwilling to cooperate with initiatives and demonstrations organized by other political parties. The only crisis which the PvdA and CPN interpreted and acted on in the same manner was the introduction of martial law in Poland. Both parties considered this crisis symptomatic of a failing one-party state and acknowledged that the introduction of a multiparty system was much needed. The PvdA and CPN not only reached the same conclusion, they also acted in unity.

In 1981, the CPN adopted a very conventional and mainstream political standpoint towards the introduction of martial law in Poland. On this specific matter, the party acted together with the PvdA and even with conservative parties, such as the VVD and CDA. The SP explicitly placed itself outside of this cooperation. It also condemned the introduction of martial law, but the SP still did not want to work together with the other Dutch political parties. In fact, the SP framed the other parties as hypocrites and considered the international outrage little more than a smokescreen to get disarmament talks off the table. The SP publicly called out the CPN for its alleged hypocrisy on this issue. In this specific context, the SP in 1981 willingly took over the CPN’s position as a political outsider. It is therefore clearly the case that left-wing political parties in the Netherlands did strongly react to political crises within the Eastern Bloc. In particular, the CPN’s political standpoints towards these crises changed drastically over the years.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this discussion, I proposed to consider how the CPN reacted to political crises in the Eastern Bloc and whether its political standpoints developed in response to these events. An analysis of how the CPN presented itself in De Waarheid offers reason to assume that the party was motivated by the desire to appeal to a broader electorate, as it called public attention to its changed political standpoints. The CPN made considerable efforts to communicate its firm condemnation of the oppression of the Prague Spring and the introduction of martial law in Poland. It did this by placing elaborate statements in De Waarheid, which sometimes even covered full front pages, or as was mentioned in De Waarheid, by making a television appearance to express support for Solidarity.

The desire to keep ideological distance from political rivals seems to have played a role in how the left-wing parties in the Netherlands positioned themselves towards one another and the crises in the Eastern Bloc. In 1968, the CPN put in a lot of work into its efforts to underline its ideological distance from the PvdA, even though both parties condemned the Soviet Union’s response to the Prague Spring. However, as the standpoint of the CPN towards the introduction of martial law in Poland became mainstream and the CPN started to act accordingly, the SP took its place as the political outsider. The suggestion that the PvdA should adopt a more pro-active stance towards détente politics also fits the narrative of creating ideological distance. A bolder approach towards crises in the Eastern Bloc would have distanced the PvdA further from the new course of the CPN. Simultaneously, the PvdA took a critical stance towards the new course of the CPN by doubting its substantiality and integrity.

As is addressed in the literature on Eurocommunism, many factors led communist parties in Western Europe to change their political standpoints in the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, it remains difficult to say whether the CPN’s political standpoints changed as a reaction to the crises in the Eastern Bloc or the CPN’s reactions to these crises reflected earlier changes in political standpoints. However, within the framework of party change theories, the CPN seems to have become increasingly reactive to the reoccurring crises by changing its policies towards Moscow. It thus acted more like a mainstream party to appeal to a broader electorate, as the literature on Eurocommunism presumes.

This tendency can also be observed when the election results are coupled with the analysis of policy change in the CPN towards Moscow.99 The CPN lost four seats during the 1959 elections, which were held two years after the Poznan protests and the Hungarian uprising. During the election of 1977, the CPN lost five seats. Therefore, it is remarkable that large electoral losses during the elections of 1959 and 1977 were followed by significant changes in the CPN’s political standpoints during the subsequent crises in the Eastern Bloc, which occurred in 1968 and 1981. This indicates that the changes in political standpoints of the CPN towards the crises in the Eastern Bloc were seemingly affected by disappointing electoral results. Again, this indicates that the CPN acted in line with the presumptions in the theoretical literature on Eurocommunism in an attempt to appeal to a broader electorate.

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