Reichsvogt
Reichsvogt (literally: Imperial Vogt; or Imperial Bailiwick for the so-called Reichsvogtei area) was the term for the office of a Vogt that was nominated by the king as the representative of the Holy Roman Empire, and was especially in today's Switzerland in the High Middle Ages a very influential position.
Function and rights
The Reichsvogt was patron, chairman of the blood court and administrator of the king of the Holy Roman Empire acting with imperial rights. These included the territory under the direct reign of the king, and the imperial cities and imperial monasteries that were directly subordinate to the king, and not to individual dominions or churches and monasteries.
Switzerland
In the present-day Switzerland there was in the European Middle Ages, in addition to the imperial cities of Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, Solothurn and Zürich, as well as the imperial monasteries Disents, Einsiedeln, Fraumünster and Grossmünster in Zürich, and the St. Gallen Abbey territories where the Reichsvogt acted as the secular court rule. These extensive complexes of Empire country were directly subordinate to the king, especially in the Old Swiss Confederacy and in the Western Switzerland. The latter were grouped into imperial bailiwicks in the 12th century respectively imperial fief to local barons, among them the houses of Zähringen, Kyburg, Rappperswil and Toggenburg.
In the 13th century, imperial bailiwicks were propagated fiefdom of large dynasties, Savoy and Habsburg, alongside perceived their officials as Reichsvögte (plural) the imperial rights. Zürich, for example, received in 1218 the status as Reichsstadt, an imperial city, and chosed the first Reichsvogt from the urban citizenry, which exercised the advocacy of the two pins and the city. Zurich mostly sat his counselors as Reichsvogt and county judge in personal union, bus was ousted from the middle of the 13th century more and more of the Habsburg family.
General in the cities, the Reichsvogt and comparable Schultheiss, increasingly dealt with in addition to the jurisdiction, and walked up to the mayor at the head of the city's council. In the 15th century successively the office of Reichsvogt was acquired e.g. 1400 in Zürich, St. Gallen in 1415, Schaffhausen in 1415/29, and the Reichsvogt became the chairman or executive officers of the blood court. Under the name Reichsvogt survived this office in St. Gallen and Appenzell Innerrhoden (1606–1872) until the 19th century.
See also
Literature
- Erwin Eugster: Adlige Territorialpolitik in der Ostschweiz. Kirchliche Stiftungen im Spannungsfeld früher landesherrlicher Verdrängungspolitik. Zürich 1991, ISBN 3-90527-868-5.
- Roger Sablonier: Gründungszeit ohne Eidgenossen: Politik und Gesellschaft in der Innerschweiz um 1300. hier + jetzt, Baden 2008, ISBN 978-3-03919-085-0.
External links
- Waltraud Hörsch: Reichsvogt in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 23 December 2011.