Emperor Sigismund and Bavaria

The project aims to achieve two main goals: Firstly, it will broaden our understanding of Sigismunds imperial rule by giving an in-depth analysis of the kings relationship with the Bavarian territories. Bavaria, a territory ruled mostly by a rivalling dynasty, will serve therein as a geographically defined case study for the reassessment of Sigismunds imperial rule as a whole. The planned project aims to scrutinise whether or not Sigismunds imperial rule was indeed as feeble as it has been depicted up to now by scholarship that was primarily focused on the western parts of the empire. Does the Bavarian example not show how the last Luxemburg king quite skilfully exploited the inner-dynastic rivalries of one of the empires most important families by purposefully favouring individual members of the dynasty, thus tying them firmly to his own person? Could this case study not prove that he exploited the few resources connected to the royal title quite successfully in order to pursue an active imperial policy? How do we weigh these issues against the question of to what extent Sigismund acted in Bavaria as King of the Romans and which components of his policy were conditioned more by his Bohemian Hausmacht perspective? The relationship between Sigismund and Bavaria will be the subject of a collective monograph. Secondly, we plan to publish the first of a series of volumes that will assemble abstracts of all of Sigismunds charters held in the Munich archives as part of the on-going re-edition of Regesta Imperii XI. To give a comprehensive analysis of Sigismunds policy towards Bavaria, the project will have to engage in extensive archival research, namely in the archives of Bavaria, and to identify all the existing charters issued by Sigismund. By publishing the findings of this research in a qualified source edition, we will ensure that the indispensable archival research is put to maximum use and its results made accessible to the entire academic community. The collected material, which exceeds this first volume of abstracts, will then form the basis for the future continuation of the on-going re-edition of Regesta Imperii XI.

No additional funding sources recorded.