Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor was the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The title was without interruption, held in conjunction with title of King of Germany throughout the 12th to 18th centuries. From an autocracy in Carolingian times the title by the 13th century evolved into an elected monarchy chosen by the prince-electors. Various royal houses of Europe, at different times, became de-facto hereditary holders of the title, notably the Ottonians and the Salians. Following the late medieval crisis of government, the Habsburgs kept possession of the title without interruption from 1440–1740; the final emperors were from the House of Lorraine, from 1765–1806. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved after the defeat at Austerlitz by emperor Francis II, who continued to rule as Austrian emperor; the Holy Roman Emperor was perceived to rule by divine right, though he contradicted or rivaled the Pope, most notably during the Investiture controversy. In theory, the Holy Roman Emperor was primus inter pares among other Catholic monarchs.
In practice, a Holy Roman Emperor was only as strong as his army and alliances, including marriage alliances, made him. There was never a Holy Roman Empress regnant, though women such as Theophanu and Maria Theresa of Austria served as de facto Empresses regnant. Throughout its history, the position was viewed as a defender of the Roman Catholic faith; until the Reformation, the Emperor elect was required to be crowned by the Pope before assuming the imperial title. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor was the last to be crowned by the Pope in 1530. After the Reformation, the elected Emperor always was a Roman Catholic. There were short periods in history when the electoral college was dominated by Protestants, the electors voted in their own political interest. From the time of Constantine I, the Roman emperors had, with few exceptions, taken on a role as promoters and defenders of Christianity; the reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor in the Church.
Emperors considered themselves responsible to the gods for the spiritual health of their subjects, after Constantine they had a duty to help the Church define orthodoxy and maintain orthodoxy. The emperor's role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, uphold ecclesiastical unity. Both the title and connection between Emperor and Church continued in the Eastern Roman Empire throughout the medieval period; the ecumenical councils of the 5th to 8th centuries were convoked by the Eastern Roman Emperors. In Western Europe, the title of Emperor became defunct after the death of Julius Nepos in 480, although the rulers of the barbarian kingdoms continued to recognize the Eastern Emperor at least nominally well into the 6th century. From the western perspective, the interregnum in the Roman Empire spanned the 8th centuries; the title of Emperor was revived in 800, when Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III. The title of Emperor in the West implied recognition by the pope; as the power of the papacy grew during the Middle Ages and emperors came into conflict over church administration.
The best-known and most bitter conflict was that known as the investiture controversy, fought during the 11th century between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII. After the coronation of Charlemagne, his successors maintained the title until the death of Berengar I of Italy in 924; the comparatively brief interregnum between 924 and the coronation of Otto the Great in 962 is taken as marking the transition from the Frankish Empire to the Holy Roman Empire. Under the Ottonians, much of the former Carolingian kingdom of Eastern Francia fell within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Since 911, the various German princes had elected the King of the Germans from among their peers; the King of the Germans would be crowned as emperor following the precedent set by Charlemagne, during the period of 962–1530. Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned by the pope, his successor, Ferdinand I adopted the title of "Emperor elect" in 1558; the final Holy Roman Emperor-elect, Francis II, abdicated in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars that saw the Empire's final dissolution.
The term sacrum in connection with the German Roman Empire was first used in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa. The standard designation of the Holy Roman Emperor was "August Emperor of the Romans"; when Charlemagne was crowned in 800, he was styled as "most serene Augustus, crowned by God and pacific emperor, governing the Roman Empire," thus constituting the elements of "Holy" and "Roman" in the imperial title. The word Roman was a reflection of the principle of translatio imperii that regarded the Holy Roman Emperors as the inheritors of the title of Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, despite the continued existence of the Eastern Roman Empire. In German-language historiography, the term Römisch-deutscher Kaiser is used to distinguish the title from that of Roman Emperor on one hand, that of German Emperor on the other; the English term "Holy Roman Emperor" is a modern shorthand for "emperor of the Holy Roman Empire" not corresponding to the historical style or title, i.e. the adjective "holy" is not intended as modifying "emperor".
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great. Multiple copies were made of that one original and distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the Chronicle was still being updated in 1154. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version; the oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. All of the material in the Chronicle is in the form of annals, by year; these manuscripts collectively are known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle is not unbiased: there are occasions when comparison with other medieval sources makes it clear that the scribes who wrote it omitted events or told one-sided versions of stories.
Taken as a whole, the Chronicle is the single most important historical source for the period in England between the departure of the Romans and the decades following the Norman conquest. Much of the information given in the Chronicle is not recorded elsewhere. In addition, the manuscripts are important sources for the history of the English language. Seven of the nine surviving manuscripts and fragments now reside in the British Library; the remaining two are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. All of the surviving manuscripts are copies, so it is not known for certain where or when the first version of the Chronicle was composed, it is agreed that the original version – sometimes known as the Early English Annals – was written in the late 9th century by a scribe in Wessex. Frank Stenton argued from internal evidence that it was first compiled for a secular, but not royal, patron. After the original Chronicle was compiled, copies were distributed to various monasteries.
Additional copies were made, for further distribution or to replace lost manuscripts, some copies were updated independently of each other. Some of these copies are those that have survived; the earliest extant manuscript, the Parker Chronicle, was written by a single scribe up to the year 891. The scribe wrote DCCCXCII, in the margin of the next line; this appears to place the composition of the chronicle at no than 892. It is known, it is difficult to fix the date of composition, but it is thought that the chronicles were composed during the reign of Alfred the Great, as Alfred deliberately tried to revive learning and culture during his reign, encouraged the use of English as a written language. The Chronicle, as well as the distribution of copies to other centres of learning, may be a consequence of the changes Alfred introduced. Of the nine surviving manuscripts, seven are written in Old English. One, known as the Bilingual Canterbury Epitome, is in Old English with a translation of each annal into Latin.
Another, the Peterborough Chronicle, is in Old English except for the last entry, in early Middle English. The oldest is known as the Winchester Chronicle or the Parker Chronicle, is written in the Mercian dialect until 1070 Latin to 1075. Six of the manuscripts were printed in an 1861 edition for the Rolls Series by Benjamin Thorpe with the text laid out in columns labelled A to F, he included the few readable remnants of a burned seventh manuscript, which he referred to as destroyed in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Following this convention, the two additional manuscripts are called and; the known surviving manuscripts are listed below. The manuscripts are all thought to derive from a common original, but the connections between the texts are more complex than simple inheritance via copying; the diagram at right gives an overview of the relationships between the manuscripts. The following is a summary of the relationships. Was a copy of, made in Winchester between 1001 and 1013. was used in the compilation of at Abingdon, in the mid-11th century.
However, the scribe for had access to another version, which has not survived. Includes material from Bede's Ecclesiastical History written by 731 and from a set of 8th-century Northumbrian annals and is thought to have been copied from a northern version that has not survived. Has material that appears to derive from the same sources as but does not include some additions that appear only in, such as the Mercian Register; this manuscript was composed at the monastery in Peterborough, some time after a fire th
Stephen, King of England
Stephen referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 1135 to his death, as well as Count of Boulogne from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. Stephen's reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, he was succeeded by Henry II, the first of the Angevin kings. Stephen was born in the County of Blois in central France. Placed into the court of his uncle, Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands, he married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England. Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William Adelin, in the sinking of the White Ship in 1120; when Henry I died in 1135, Stephen crossed the English Channel and with the help of his brother Henry of Blois, a powerful ecclesiastic, took the throne, arguing that the preservation of order across the kingdom took priority over his earlier oaths to support the claim of Henry I's daughter, the Empress Matilda.
The early years of Stephen's reign were successful, despite a series of attacks on his possessions in England and Normandy by David I of Scotland, Welsh rebels, the Empress Matilda's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou. In 1138 the Empress's half-brother Robert of Gloucester rebelled against Stephen, threatening civil war. Together with his close advisor, Waleran de Beaumont, Stephen took firm steps to defend his rule, including arresting a powerful family of bishops; when the Empress and Robert invaded in 1139, Stephen was unable to crush the revolt and it took hold in the south-west of England. Captured at the battle of Lincoln in 1141, Stephen was abandoned by many of his followers and lost control of Normandy. Stephen was freed only after his wife and William of Ypres, one of his military commanders, captured Robert at the Rout of Winchester, but the war dragged on for many years with neither side able to win an advantage. Stephen became concerned with ensuring that his son Eustace would inherit his throne.
The King tried to convince the Church to agree to crown Eustace to reinforce his claim. In 1153 the Empress's son, Henry FitzEmpress, invaded England and built an alliance of powerful regional barons to support his claim for the throne; the two armies met at Wallingford, but neither side's barons were keen to fight another pitched battle. Stephen began to examine a process hastened by the sudden death of Eustace. In the year Stephen and Henry agreed to the Treaty of Winchester, in which Stephen recognised Henry as his heir in exchange for peace, passing over William, Stephen's second son. Stephen died the following year. Modern historians have extensively debated the extent to which Stephen's personality, external events, or the weaknesses in the Norman state contributed to this prolonged period of civil war. Stephen was born in Blois in France, in either 1092 or 1096, his father was Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois and Chartres, an important French nobleman, an active crusader, who played only a brief part in Stephen's early life.
During the First Crusade Stephen-Henry had acquired a reputation for cowardice, he returned to the Levant again in 1101 to rebuild his reputation. Stephen's mother, was the daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, famous amongst her contemporaries for her piety and political talent, she had a strong matriarchal influence on Stephen during his early years. France in the 12th century was a loose collection of counties and smaller polities, under the minimal control of the king of France; the king's power was linked to his control of the rich province of Île-de-France, just to the east of Stephen's home county of Blois. In the west lay the three counties of Maine and Touraine, to the north of Blois was the Duchy of Normandy, from which William the Conqueror had conquered England in 1066. William's children were still fighting over the collective Anglo-Norman inheritance; the rulers across this region spoke a similar language, albeit with regional dialects, followed the same religion, were interrelated.
Stephen had one sister, along with two probable half-sisters. Stephen's eldest brother was William. William was intellectually disabled, Adela instead had the title passed over him to her second son, who went on to acquire the county of Champagne as well as Blois and Chartres. Stephen's remaining older brother, died young in his early teens, his younger brother, Henry of Blois, was born four years after him. The brothers formed a close-knit family group, Adela encouraged Stephen to take up the role of a feudal knight, whilst steering Henry towards a career in the church so that their personal career interests would not overlap. Unusually, Stephen was raised in his mother's household rather than being sent to a close relative. Stephen's early life was influenced by his relationship with his uncle Henry I. Henry seized powe
The Anarchy
The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1135 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a succession crisis precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin, the only legitimate son of Henry I, in a shipwreck in 1120. Henry's attempts to install his daughter, the Empress Matilda, as his successor were unsuccessful and on Henry's death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne with the help of Stephen's brother, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester. Stephen's early reign was marked by fierce fighting with English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. Neither side was able to achieve a decisive advantage during the first years of the war; the castles of the period were defensible, much of the fighting was attritional in character, comprising sieges and skirmishing between armies of knights and footsoldiers, many of them mercenaries.
In 1141 Stephen was captured following the Battle of Lincoln, causing a collapse in his authority over most of the country. However, on the verge of being crowned queen, Empress Matilda was forced to retreat from London by hostile crowds. Stephen almost seized Matilda in 1142 during the siege of Oxford, but the Empress escaped from Oxford Castle across the frozen River Thames to safety; the war dragged on for many more years. Empress Matilda's husband, Geoffrey V of Anjou, conquered Normandy, but in England neither side could achieve victory. Rebel barons began to acquire greater power in northern England and in East Anglia, with widespread devastation in the regions of major fighting. In 1148 the Empress returned to Normandy, leaving the campaigning in England to her young son Henry FitzEmpress. In 1152 Stephen and Matilda of Boulogne, queen consort and Stephen's wife, unsuccessfully attempted to have their eldest son, recognised by the Church as the next king of England. By the early 1150s the barons and the Church wanted a long-term peace.
When Henry FitzEmpress re-invaded England in 1153, neither faction's forces were keen to fight. After limited campaigning and the siege of Wallingford and Henry agreed a negotiated peace, the Treaty of Wallingford, in which Stephen recognised Henry as his heir. Stephen died the next year and Henry ascended the throne as Henry II, the first Angevin king of England, beginning a long period of reconstruction. Chroniclers described the period as one in which "Christ and his saints were asleep" and Victorian historians called the conflict "the Anarchy" because of the chaos, although modern historians have questioned the accuracy of the term and of some contemporary accounts; the origins of the Anarchy lay in a succession crisis involving Normandy. In the 11th and 12th centuries, north-west France was controlled by a number of dukes and counts in conflict with one another for valuable territory. In 1066 one of these men, Duke William II of Normandy, mounted an invasion to conquer the rich Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England, pushing on into south Wales and northern England in the coming years.
The division and control of these lands after William's death proved problematic and his children fought multiple wars over the spoils. William's son Henry I seized power after the death of his elder brother William Rufus and subsequently invaded and captured the Duchy of Normandy, controlled by his eldest brother Robert Curthose, defeating Robert's army at the Battle of Tinchebray. Henry intended for his lands to be inherited by his only legitimate son, seventeen-year-old William Adelin. In 1120, the political landscape changed when the White Ship sank en route from Barfleur in Normandy to England. With Adelin dead, the inheritance to the English throne was thrown into doubt. Rules of succession in western Europe at the time were uncertain. In other parts of Europe, including Normandy and England, the tradition was for lands to be divided up, with the eldest son taking patrimonial lands—usually considered to be the most valuable—and younger sons being given smaller, or more acquired, partitions or estates.
The problem was further complicated by the sequence of unstable Anglo-Norman successions over the previous sixty years: there had been no peaceful, uncontested successions. With William Adelin dead, Henry had only one other legitimate child, but female rights of inheritance were unclear during this period. Despite Henry taking a second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, it became unlikely that Henry would have another legitimate son and instead he looked to Matilda as his intended heir. Matilda had been married to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, from which she claimed the title of empress, her husband died in 1125 and she was remarried in 1128 to Geoffrey V of Anjou, whose county bordered the Duchy of Normandy. Geoffrey was unpopular with the Anglo-Norman elite: as an Angevin ruler, he was a traditional enemy of the Normans. At the same time, tensions continued to grow as a result of Henry's domestic policies, in particular the high level of revenue he was raising to pay for his various wars. Conflict was curtailed, however, by the power of the king's reputation.
Henry attempted to build up a base of political support for Matilda in bot
Archbishop
In Christianity, an archbishop is a bishop of higher rank or office. In some cases, such as the Lutheran Church of Sweden and the Church of England, the title is borne by the leader of the denomination. Like popes, metropolitans, cardinal bishops, diocesan bishops, suffragan bishops, archbishops are in the highest of the three traditional orders of bishops and deacons. An archbishop may be granted the title or ordained as chief pastor of a metropolitan see or another episcopal see to which the title of archbishop is attached. Episcopal sees are arranged in groups in which one see's bishop has certain powers and duties of oversight over the others, he is known as the metropolitan archbishop of. In the Catholic Church, canon 436 of the Code of Canon Law indicates what these powers and duties are for a Latin Church metropolitan archbishop, while those of the head of an autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches are indicated in canon 157 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches; as well as the much more numerous metropolitan sees, there are 77 Roman Catholic sees that have archiepiscopal rank.
In some cases, such a see is the only one in a country, such as Luxembourg or Monaco, too small to be divided into several dioceses so as to form an ecclesiastical province. In others, the title of archdiocese is for historical reasons attributed to a see, once of greater importance; some of these archdioceses are suffragans of a metropolitan archdiocese. Others are subject to the Holy See and not to any metropolitan archdiocese; these are "aggregated" to an ecclesiastical province. An example is the Archdiocese of Hobart in Australia, associated with the Metropolitan ecclesiastical province of Melbourne, but not part of it; the ordinary of such an archdiocese is an archbishop. Until 1970, a coadjutor archbishop, one who has special faculties and the right to succeed to the leadership of a see on the death or resignation of the incumbent, was assigned to a titular see, which he held until the moment of succession. Since the title of Coadjutor Archbishop of the see is considered sufficient and more appropriate.
The rank of archbishop is conferred on some bishops. They hold the rank not because of the see that they head but because it has been granted to them personally; such a grant can be given when someone who holds the rank of archbishop is transferred to a see that, though its present-day importance may be greater than the person's former see, is not archiepiscopal. The bishop transferred is known as the Archbishop-Bishop of his new see. An example is Gianfranco Gardin, appointed Archbishop-Bishop of Treviso on 21 December 2009; the title borne by the successor of such an archbishop-bishop is that of Bishop of the see, unless he is granted the personal title of Archbishop. The distinction between metropolitan sees and non-metropolitan archiepiscopal sees exists for titular sees as well as for residential ones; the Annuario Pontificio marks titular sees of the former class with the abbreviation Metr. and the others with Arciv. Many of the titular sees to which nuncios and heads of departments of the Roman Curia who are not cardinals are assigned are not of archiepiscopal rank.
In that case the person, appointed to such a position is given the personal title of archbishop. They are referred to as Archbishop of the see, not as its Archbishop-Bishop. If an archbishop resigns his see without being transferred to another, as in the case of retirement or assignment to head a department of the Roman Curia, the word emeritus is added to his former title, he is called Archbishop Emeritus of his former see; until 1970, such archbishops were transferred to a titular see. There can be several Archbishops Emeriti of the same see: The 2008 Annuario Pontificio listed three living Archbishops Emeriti of Taipei. There is no Archbishop Emeritus of a titular see: An archbishop who holds a titular see keeps it until death or until transferred to another see. In the Anglican Communion, retired archbishops formally revert to being addressed as "bishop" and styled "The Right Reverend", although they may be appointed "archbishop emeritus" by their province on retirement, in which case they retain the title "archbishop" and the style "The Most Reverend", as a right.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a prominent example, as Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town. Former archbishops who have not received the status of archbishop emeritus may still be informally addressed as "archbishop" as a courtesy, unless they are subsequently appointed to a bishopric, in which case, the courtesy ceases. While there is no difference between the official dress of archbishops, as such, that of other bishops, Roman Catholic metropolitan archbishops are distinguished by the use in liturgical ceremonies of the pallium, but only within the province over which they have oversight. Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops are styled "The Most Reverend" and addressed as "Your Excellency" in most cases. In English-speaking countries, a Catholic archbishop is addressed as "Your Grace", while a Catholic bishop is addressed as "Your Lordship". Before December 12, 1930, the title "Most Reverend" was only for archbishops, while bishops were styled as "Right Reverend"; this practice is still followed by Catholic bishops in the United Kingdom to mirror that of
Interregnum (Holy Roman Empire)
There were many imperial interregna in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, when there was no emperor. Interregna in which there was no emperor-elect have been rarer. Among the longest periods without an emperor were between 924 and 962, between 1245 and 1312, between 1378 and 1433; the crisis of government of the Holy Roman Empire and the German kingdom thus lasted throughout the late medieval period, ended only with the rise of the House of Habsburg on the eve of the German Reformation and the Renaissance. The term Great Interregnum is used for the period between 1250 and 1273. After the deposition of Frederick II by Pope Innocent IV in 1245, Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia was set up as anti-king to Frederick's son Conrad IV. Henry was succeeded as anti-king by William of Holland. After 1257, the crown was contested between Richard of Cornwall, supported by the Guelph party, Alfonso X of Castile, recognized by the Hohenstaufen party but never set foot on German soil. After Richard's death in 1273, Rudolf I of Germany, a minor pro-Staufen count, was elected.
He was the first of the Habsburgs to hold a royal title. After Rudolf's death in 1291, Adolf and Albert were two further weak kings who were never crowned emperor. Albert was assassinated in 1308. King Philip IV of France began aggressively seeking support for his brother, Charles of Valois, to be elected the next King of the Romans. Philip thought he had the backing of the French Pope Clement V, that his prospects of bringing the empire into the orbit of the French royal house were good, he lavishly spread French money in the hope of bribing the German electors. Although Charles of Valois had the backing of Henry, Archbishop of Cologne, a French supporter, many were not keen to see an expansion of French power, least of all Clement V; the principal rival to Charles appeared to be the Count Palatine. Instead, Henry VII, of the House of Luxembourg, was elected with six votes at Frankfurt on 27 November 1308. Given his background, although he was a vassal of king Philip, Henry was bound by few national ties, an aspect of his suitability as a compromise candidate among the electors, the great territorial magnates who had lived without a crowned emperor for decades, who were unhappy with both Charles and Rudolf.
Henry of Cologne's brother, Archbishop of Trier, won over a number of the electors, including Henry, in exchange for some substantial concessions. Henry VII was crowned king at Aachen on 6 January 1309, emperor by Pope Clement V on 29 June 1312 in Rome, ending the interregnum. However, political instability in Germany re-emerged after Henry's untimely death in 1314. Louis IV was opposed by Frederick the Fair, by Charles IV, Charles IV in turn by Günther of Schwarzburg, ruling unopposed only from 1350, his successors Wenceslaus and Jobst again were not crowned emperor. Sigismund was crowned emperor in 1433, but only with Frederick III, the second emperor of the House of Habsburg, did the Holy Roman Emperor return to an unbroken succession of emperors until its dissolution in 1806; the crisis of the interregnum established the college of prince-electors as the only source of legitimacy of the German king. At the same time, the lack of central government strengthened the communal movements, such as the Swabian League of Cities, the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederacy.
It encouraged increased feuding among the lesser nobility, leading to conflicts such as the Thuringian Counts' War, leading to a general state of near-anarchy in Germany where robber barons acted unopposed by the nominal system of justice. Germany was fractured into countless minor states fending for themselves, a condition that would persist into the modern period and, termed Kleinstaaterei, present an obstacle to the modern project of national unification. Comyn, Robert. History of the Western Empire, from its Restoration by Charlemagne to the Accession of Charles V, Vol. I. 1851 Hägermann, Dieter. Interregnum. In: Lexikon des Mittelalters. Band 5. Sp. 468 f. Jones, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VI: c. 1300-c. 1415, Cambridge University Press, 2000 Kaufhold, Martin. Deutsches Interregnum und europäische Politik. Konfliktlösungen und Entscheidungsstrukturen 1230–1280. Hahn, Hannover 2000, ISBN 3-7752-5449-8 (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Schriften. Band 49. LaRoche, Emanuel Peter. Das Interregnum und die Entstehung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.
Peter Lang, Bern / Frankfurt am Main 1991. Kaufhold, Martin. Interregnum. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-534-15450-9. Prietzel, Malte. Das Heilige Römische Reich im Spätmittelalter. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-15131-3. Kirk, Marianne. «Die kaiserlose, die schreckliche Zeit» – Das Interregnum im Wandel der Geschichtsschreibung, Frankfurt/M. U.a. 2002, ISBN 978-3-631-50542-7 Stadler, Hans: Interregnum in German and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2007
