This lecture aims at showing how informal power and its sharing among a group of trusted agents were decisive factors that allowed the shaping the Habsburg Monarchy under the reign of Maximilian of Habsburg.
The formation of the Habsburg Monarchy was a key political process for late medieval Europe. This original state ‑ a three-headed polity or composite state made of territories and people dispatched all over Europe, or (to go with recent accounts on the topic) a “state composed from composite states” ‑ was very often studied from an institutional perspective (notably the reforms and innovations put in place by Maximilian).
However, Maximilian’s rulership continued to rely on his personal relations with a network of trusted friends and agents. These people – often seen as favorites or 'grey eminences' ‑ possessed an important amount of informal power that contrasted with the sometimes low position they held at court. Those agents allowed the Emperor to maintain direct and quick contacts with the different groups that made possible the ruling of the Monarchy.
Letters and sometimes autograph letters were the privileged means used by Maximilian to keep contacts with those agents. By doing so, Maximilian symbolically created a group of ‘chosen’ individuals, or of the epistolary familiares of the Emperor.
Andreas Zajic
Following studies of History, Classics (Latin), European Ethnology and Auxiliary Sciences of History, Andreas Zajic earned his Dr. phil. in History from the University of Vienna (2001), where he also attained (in 2009) the professorial qualification (Habilitation) for History of Austria and Auxiliary Sciences of History. He has been a member of the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung at the University of Vienna since 2001 and regularly teaches palaeography, heraldry and sigillography.
He heads the Department of Text Edition and Source Studies at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMAFO) and is the project leader of three long-term research projects of historical text edition (comprising the Viennese branches of the MGH Diplomata edition, the Regesta Imperii and the Deutsche Inschriften series).
Only recently, he has – for the first the time in five hundred years – dealt intensively with the palaeography and purposes of Emperor Maximilian’s autograph handwriting, see:
Licht auf blinde Flecken. Beobachtungen zum eigenhändigen Schreiben Maximilians I. In: Lukas Madersbacher/Erwin Pokorny (Hgg.), Maximilianus. Die Kunst des Kaisers.
Themenausstellung im Südtiroler Landesmuseum für Kultur- und Landesgeschichte Schloss Tirol in Zusammenarbeit mit der Universität Innsbruck, 27. Juli – 3. November 2019. Berlin/München 2019, 120-129.
Rex idiographus – Bausteine zu einer Analyse der Autografen Maximilians I. In: Stefan
Krause (Hg.), Freydal. Zu einem unvollendeten Gedächtniswerk Kaiser Maximilians I. =
Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 21 (2019) 132-157.
Jonathan Dumont
Jonathan Dumont is PhD Doctor in History, Art, and Archaeology (Université de Liège, Belgium, 2010). He is currently Research Fellow/Mitarbeiter at the Institut für Mittelalterforschung (IMAFO) of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna, Austria).
His work focusses on late medieval and early modern political history and history of political cultures in Europe, particularly in France, the Low Countries, and the early Habsburg Monarchy.
He has notably published:
Lilia Florent. L’imaginaire politique et social à la cour de France durant les Premières Guerres d’Italie (1494-1525), Paris, Honoré Champion, 2013, 632 p. (coll. Études d’histoire médiévales, 15; URL: https://www.honorechampion.com/fr/champion/8202-book-08532475-9782745324757.html)
Marie de Bourgogne/ Mary of Burgundy. Reign, ‘Persona’, and Legacy of a Late Medieval Duchess/ Figure, principat et postérité d’une duchesse tardo-médiévale, ed. M. Depreter, J. Dumont, E. L’Estrange, S. Mareel, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021, 475 p. (coll. Burgundica, 31; URL: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503588087-1)
He is currently preparing, with Eloïse Adde, a collective volume on the Naturalisation and Legitimation of Power (1300-1800) for Micrologus Library.
Zoom link:
https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/97413566507?pwd=bTJ4ZDBSelh1QmdidHNva1lEWW4xUT09
Meeting ID: 974 1356 6507
Passcode: 657640
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