Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor

The historical record is thin enough that you can read him any way you like.

What is clear is that he made himself enough of a problem that Emperor Frederick III sent troops to besiege the castle and starve him out.

The commander of the siege force was Andre Ravbar, and he settled in for what he expected would be a short wait.

A castle under siege runs out of food.

The most famous was the Hanseatic League, which included all the important towns of North Germany and had factories, that is trading stations, in Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and England.

The urgent need for some central law court to enforce the decrees of the Diet led to an attempt in the reign of Frederick III, 1440-93, to establish an imperial chamber, but the opposition of the emperor prevented this.

In 1488 some advance was made in Schwabia by the establishment of the Schwabian League, which was joined by princes, knights, and cities, and having its own army and federal assembly, was able to maintain some order in the land.

Only one country in Europe possessed less of national unity than Germany at the end of the 15th century, and that country was its partner in the Holy Roman Empire, Italy.

An unfailing source of capital had been discovered.

Trade and industry had been revolutionized by its use, and the modern life of the commercial world had begun.

End of Section 4 Section 5 of The Renaissance and the Reformation by Emmeline Tanner This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami Book 1, Chapter 3 The Reign of Maximilian in Germany, 1493-1519 In 1493, on the death of Frederick III, his son Maximilian, who had been elected King of the Romans in 1486, succeeded to the Austrian territories and the Empire.

He had married in 1477 Mary, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold, and was thus already Lord of the Netherlands and Franche-Comté.

It is prosperous, proud and busy, a town of clothmakers, tanners, merchants and craftsmen, famous across southern Germany for its great Whitsun Fair, which draws traders from Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm and far beyond.

The emperor, Frederick III, is old, cautious and perpetually short of money.

He rules a vast, fragmented empire of princes, bishops and cities, and he is worried, like everyone else, about the Ottoman Turks, who took Constantinople 18 years ago and are now pressing into the Balkans.

You pass through the gate as the watchman is preparing to close it for the night, and you find yourself in narrow, frozen streets lined with tall, steep-roofed, half-timbered houses.

But there are curious exceptions in the records.

In some towns the women of the brothel took part in certain festivities, ran in races at fairs or were sent gifts by the council at carnival time.

One story, told in a modern history magazine and difficult to verify, claims that in 1471 the women of Nuremberg's Fraunhaus playfully held the emperor Frederick III himself to ransom during a visit, releasing him only when he paid a florin.

Whether it is true or not, it suggests a world in which the women of the brothel were, at certain moments, allowed a strange and limited place in civic celebration.

The most famous was the Hanseatic League, which included all the important towns of North Germany and had factories, that is trading stations, in Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and England.

The urgent need for some central law court to enforce the decrees of the Diet led to an attempt in the reign of Frederick III, 1440-93, to establish an imperial chamber, but the opposition of the emperor prevented this.

In 1488 some advance was made in Swabia by the establishment of the Swabian League, which was joined by princes, knights, and cities, and having its own army and federal assembly, was able to maintain some order in the land.

Only one country in Europe possessed less of national unity than Germany at the end of the 15th century, and that country was its partner in the Holy Roman Empire, Italy.

An unfailing source of capital had been discovered.

Trade and industry had been revolutionized by its use, and the modern life of the commercial world had begun.

End of Section 4 Section 5 of The Renaissance and the Reformation by Emmeline Tanner This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami Book 1, Chapter 3 The Reign of Maximilian in Germany 1493-1519 In 1493, on the death of Frederick III, his son Maximilian, who had been elected King of the Romans in 1486, succeeded to the Austrian territories and the empire.

He had married in 1477 Mary, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold, and was thus already Lord of the Netherlands and Franche-Comté.

Owing to the weakness of the crown, Germany was still the most feudal of all countries and lagged far behind the rest in national growth.

The Holy Roman Empire, to give it the full and proper name, was at this time ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Frederick III.

It consisted of a collection of states, including the seven electorates, namely the three Rhenish archbishoprics of Mainz, Mayence, Trier, Treves, and Köln, Cologne, and the four states of Bohemia, Saxony, Brandenburg, and the Palatinate.

Other important members of the empire were the group of the Austrian dominions, including Austria proper, Tyrol, East Schwabia, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, then divided between three branches of the Habsburg family, and the duchies of Bavaria and Württemberg.

Through family possessions or connections they became guardians of the frontier on the west and southeast.

They planned to recover the hold upon Italy, and at all events to prevent the French from securing a footing there, and they retained their own hold upon the empire as long as it lasted.

The election of Frederick III, who reigned from 1440 to 1494, was due to his insignificance, and his reign was long and confused, resembling in some respects that of Henry III of England.

Yet it has been said of him that he won all his objects in the end, Ranka.

And such dispensations can be exceedingly expensive, in particular this one.

The only case of two archbishoprics in the same hand I can think of was Balduin of Trier, the brother of Emperor Henry VII and Imminens Gris of the Holy Roman Empire for about 30 years.

The fees for these dispensations came on top of the Servizie and the Annates, the obligations of bishops, abbots and priests to transfer the equivalent of their first year or first half year income to Rome.

So the final bill for all these dispensations and annates and so forth came to 30,000 ducats.

So for instance, Frederick the Wise offered indulgences to the pilgrims coming to see his impressive collection of relics.

And he was definitely not keen on competition from a papal indulgence.

Another example is Charles of Burgundy, that's the future Emperor Charles V.

He allowed the indulgences in his land, but only if 70% of the proceeds went towards the rebuilding of dykes following a recent flood, and only 30% went to Rome.

In the second, the council is sending Aeneas on many embassies, namely to Argentina three times, to Trent, to Constance, to Frankfurt, and to Saroy.

In the third is the sending of the same Aeneas by the Antipope Felix as ambassador to the Emperor Frederick III, with whom the ready intelligence, the eloquence, and the grace of Aeneas found so much favor that he was given the poet's crown of laurel by Frederick himself, who made him his protonotary, received him into the number of his friends, and appointed him his first secretary.

In the fourth, he is sent by Frederick to Eugenius IV, by whom he was made Bishop of Trieste, and then Archbishop of Siena, his native city.

In the fifth scene, the same emperor, who is about to come to Italy to receive the crown of empire, is sending Aeneas to Telamone, a port of the people of Siena, to meet his wife, Leonora, who was coming from Portugal.

The most famous was the Hanseatic League, which included all the important towns of North Germany and had factories, that is trading stations, in Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and England.

The urgent need for some central law court to enforce the decrees of the Diet led to an attempt in the reign of Frederick III, 1440-93, to establish an imperial chamber, but the opposition of the emperor prevented this.

In 1488, some advance was made in Schwabia by the establishment of the Schwabian League, which was joined by princes, knights, and cities, and having its own army and federal assembly, was able to maintain some order in the land.

Only one country in Europe possessed less of national unity than Germany at the end of the 15th century, and that country was its partner in the Holy Roman Empire, Italy.

An unfailing source of capital had been discovered.

Trade and industry had been revolutionized by its use, and the modern life of the commercial world had begun.

End of Section 4 Section 5 of The Renaissance and the Reformation by Emmeline Tanner This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami Book 1, Chapter 3 The Reign of Maximilian in Germany, 1493-1519 In 1493, on the death of Frederick III, his son Maximilian, who had been elected King of the Romans in 1486, succeeded to the Austrian territories and the empire.

He had married in 1477 Mary, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold, and was thus already Lord of the Netherlands and Franche-Comté.