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

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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

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“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” –  The Impossible Term “Propaganda” and Its Popular and Anti-Royal Uses in Luxembourg Bohemia (ca. 1390–1421)

Klara Hübner

Masaryk University, Brno

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 2  (2024):235-260 DOI 10.38145/2024.2.235

The article follows two paths. First, it deals with the genealogy of the concept of propaganda and the ambiguities and vagaries of the term associated with it. On the one hand, this concept is decisively shaped by modern prerequisites. On the other hand, it has characteristics that make it a timeless element of political communication. Because of the strong influence of modern phenomena on what we have come to understand as propaganda, the application of this term to premodern examples works only if the communicative context is emphasized, including the historical and social background, the strategies of the propagandist, the propagandist’s sense of the most effective means of swaying a certain target public, etc. Second, the focus is on parallel manifestations of propaganda in Bohemian society in the decades before the Hussite Wars (1390–1420). One can identify two of the functions of the propaganda of the time: it was used to deepen and spread the Hussite reformist thinking among the general population and to subject the respective Luxembourg kings, Wenceslas IV and Sigismund of Luxembourg, to harsh criticism. There were few points of contact between the two forms of propaganda used to further these two goals, since they addressed different social groups, but their effectiveness clearly demonstrates how far-reaching the impact of political propaganda could be in the fifteenth century.

Keywords: medieval propaganda, pre-Hussite Bohemia, Luxembourg dynasty, Wenceslas IV, Sigismund of Luxembourg

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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

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Challenging Systematization in Romania: Human Rights, Transnationalism, and Dissidents in Campaigns by Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR), 1989–1990

Keywords: Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR), cultural heritage preservation, human rights, transnationalism, dissidents, exiles

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Katalin Schrek
University of Debrecen
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.310

In the last third of the eighteenth century, the foreign policy of the Russian Empire was oriented towards the Ottoman Empire and, as part of it, towards the Balkans and the Black Sea region. The aspirations of Russian foreign policy under Catherine II were shaped not only by the weakening of the government in Constantinople and the acquisition of new territories, but also by the creation of Russian economic, cultural, and political presence in southeastern Europe. The creation of official diplomatic representations was one of the main tools used by Russia to establish its presence in the Balkans.

The establishment of permanent embassies and the creation of the necessary political and infrastructural background became a decisive segment in the development of European diplomacy from the Peace of Westphalia to the Napoleonic Wars. The steps taken by the government in St. Petersburg with the creation of permanent embassies in the leading European courts were in line with the abovementioned trend, but while this kind of “catching up” process gradually moved towards Central and Western Europe, Russia applied a completely different set of conditions to maintain diplomatic relations in the case of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman diplomacy operated as a “one-sided diplomatic relation”: there were permanent Russian envoys at the Constantinople court, but no representatives were delegated by the Porte to St. Petersburg. Russia had to adapt to this special situation in the eighteenth century. This closed system was broken by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, which closed the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 and included a clause according to which Russia had the right to establish consulates in the Ottoman Empire and thus in the Balkans, a key area.
The other key element of the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji was the right of the reigning Russian tsar to be the protector of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, which was also fixed in this agreement. The “authority” acquired at this time was not unprecedented, as the Porte had acceded to such requests in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through capitulations with other states (such as France, Austria, or the Venetian Republic), thus establishing the “protégé” system. At the same time, the Russian government took the protection of Christians under the jurisdiction of the Porte to a new level and made it an integral part of its foreign policy. In my study, I examine how the Russian Empire applied the results of the Peace of Kuchuk Kainardji to diplomatic advocacy in the Balkans.

Keywords: Russian diplomacy, Ottoman Empire, eighteenth century, Balkan relations, Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, diplomatic service

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