Princes of the Holy Roman Empire

The term Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (German: Reichsfürst, Latin: princeps imperii) denoted a secular or ecclesiastical Imperial State, who ruled over an immediate fief directly assigned by the Holy Roman Emperor. There were two principal types of princes; those who had territory and sovereignty and those who were honorary, having the title but no lands or territories and no claim to sovereignty.

The estate of imperial princes or Reichsfürstenstand^[1] was first established in a legal sense in the Late Middle Ages. The title of imperial prince and its associated imperial immediacy, however, bestowed a certain degree of legal security that made another, more powerful, nobleman dependent on the prince.

Contents 1 Imperial state 2 Honorary title 3 References 4 See also

Imperial state

A particular estate of "the Princes" was first mentioned in the 1180 decree issued by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Reichstag of Gelnhausen, in which he divested Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria. About fifty years later, Eike von Repgow codified it as a emanation of feudal law recorded in his Sachsenspiegel. As the term developed into a certain rank of nobility, in its proper sense, the effective princely states of the Holy Roman Empire had to meet three requirements:

• the superior territorial rule and derivative regalia, i.e. royal sovereign rights, over an immediate fief of the Empire
• a direct vote (votum virile) and a seat in the Reichstag
• a direct participation in the expenses and the military ban of the Empire.

Not all states met all three requirements, so one may distinguish between effective and honorary princes of the Holy Roman Empire.^{[2] [3]}

The Princes of the Empire ranked below the seven Prince-electors designated by the Golden Bull of 1356, but above the Reichsgrafen (Counts), Freiherren (barons) and Imperial prelates, who formed with them the Council of Princes at the Reichstag assemblies, but only held collective votes. About 1180 the secular Princes comprised the Herzöge (Dukes) who generally ruled larger territories within the Empire in the tradtion of the former German stem duchies, but also the Counts of Anhalt and Namur, the Landgraves of Thuringia and the Margraves of Meissen.

From the 13th century onwards, further estates were formally raised to the princely status by the emperor. Among the most important of these were the Welf descendants of Henry the Lion in Brunswick-Lüneburg, elevated to Princes of the Empire and vested with the ducal title by Emperor Frederick II in 1235, and the Landgraves of Hesse in 1292. The resolutions of the 1582 Reichstag at Augsburg explicitly stated that the status was inextricably linked with the possession of a particular Imperial territory. Later elevated noble families like the Fürstenberg, Liechtenstein or Thurn und Taxis dynasties subsequently began to refer to their territory as a "principality" and assumed the awarded rank of a Prince (Fürst) as a hereditary title. Most of the Counts who ruled territories were raised to Princely rank in the decades before the end of the Empire in 1806.

Ecclesiastical Princes were the Prince-Bishops (including the Prince-Archbishops of Besançon, Bremen, Magdeburg and Salzburg) as well as the actual Prince-abbots. They comprised a number of political entities which were secularized and mediatized after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, resp. fell to France or the independent Swiss Confederacy.

Honorary title

The honorary status of prince of the Holy Roman Empire might be granted to certain individuals. These individuals included:

• Independent sovereigns outside the Empire (such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta^[4])
• Sovereigns who were vassals, but outside its territory (i.e. the Prince of Piombino)
• Members of the Empire, like the Princes Kinsky or Paar, and those who never had a vote or seat, but held a seat as count in one or several of the four comital councils, or those who had neither a vote nor a seat in the Imperial Diet (as Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz^[5])
• Foreigners of note, such as the Princes of Belmonte, the Princes Chigi, the Princes Orsini,^[6] the Princes Orloff, the Princes Potemkin, Lubomirski, or Radziwill, or the Dukes of Marlborough^[7]

References

1. ^ Arnold, Benjamin (1991). Princes and territories in medieval Germany, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 24-25, ISBN 0-521-52148-3.
2. ^ Fra Cyril Toumanoff, "Genealogical Imperialism" (1985) vol 6 (no 134) (NS) Coat of Arms pp. 145, 147.
3. ^ Duke and Prince Jean Engelbert d'Arenberg, "The Lesser Princes of the Holy Roman Empire in the Napoleonic Era" dissertation, Washington, DC, 1950, published as Les Princes du St-Empire à l'époque napoléonienne (Louvain, 1951) 15ff, quoted in Almanach de Gotha (Almanach de Gotha, London, 1998) pp. 275–286.
4. ^ Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (Reichsfürst) 1607, cf in 1620, Austrian prince (His Serene Highness) 27 December 1880, cf 1889 and 1905. Most Eminent Highness by Italian royal decree 1927 (long by usage). Papal Cardinal-rank 1630.
5. ^ Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz were made a princes and altgraves 1790. The family are called Altgrave/Altgravine (HSH).
6. ^ The Princes of Orsini and Rosenberg were members of the comital council (personaliter) 1683, made a prince 1724, 1790]. Male primogeniture 1629, Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne 1735–1958.
7. ^ Fra Cyril Toumanoff, "Genealogical Imperialism" (1985) vol 6 (no 134) (NS) Coat of Arms 145, 151 n7.

See also

• List of Reichstag participants (1792)
• Structure of Princes of The Holy Roman Empire