Academic Pieces

by April Brinkley

The years around 1500 provide a convenient separation between the medieval and the early modern world. Forces of European overseas expansion, population increase, trade expansion, the invention of printing, the rise of modern science, and the Reformation combined to usher in a new era. Politically, the European scene was just as active.¹ Arguably, the most important political development in sixteenth-century Europe was the rise of national states. National monarchies became the norm in Western Europe, with the exceptions of Germany under the Holy Roman Empire and Italy, home to the papacy; some representative institutions also developed within government.² Coherence within these nation states--or nationalism, which is as much a psychological as political term³ --would develop later in response to centralized governments' control of military protection and such protection's financial support, taxation.⁴

The primary concern of centralized government in sixteenth-century Europe was determining religious allegiance.⁵ Religious allegiances in this volatile period often led to wars among factions. Such warfare, in turn, demanded large sums of money from a state.⁶

As taxes were levied and wars waged, centralized government's powers to make laws, coin money, and exercise ultimate jurisdiction increased.⁷ It was particularly true in the maritime nations of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Dutch Netherlands that the national state became the supreme political institution.⁸ As the European economy became centered on the North Atlantic shores, favorable economic conditions of successful feudal societies with their related mercantilism, burgeoning capitalism, and individuals ready to invest in innovation contributed to the rewriting of political geography. These forces led to growth in state power.⁹

Those who possessed this power made efforts beyond those of the battlefield to retain it. Most Renaissance monarchs used propaganda to aid the justification of theoretical claims. Commonly this was seen by the use of symbols and ceremonies.¹⁰ One of the most effective forms of public relations for rulers in this age of patronage proved to be works of art. Artists' striking images, in fact, bolstered the images of princes.¹¹ But words, as well as visual representations, were used to legitimize royal affairs. For instance, Sir John Fortescue's writings, directly connected with the rival claims of the houses of York and Lancaster to the throne of England, served as propaganda to help defend dynastic change; his words were aimed at the people of England.¹²

Of course, for written propaganda to be effective, nations needed to have within them a common language among peoples. In the process of accepting a common, standard language above differing dialects, Western Europeans often chose the speech as spoken by the elite of the capital or the economically central region.¹³ Examples of this trend abound: as the sixteenth-century Netherlands broke away from the rest of the German dialect area, the speech of Brabant was regarded as standard; with the decline of Flanders and the rise of the northern provinces in the seventeenth century, the speech of Amsterdam became the standard for contemporary Dutch.¹⁴

All Continental nationality movements were connected with language,¹⁵ and nearly all of the European languages became associated with a sense of nationality of varying intensity.¹⁶ Patriotism was inspired, in fact, by writers celebrating the glories of their respective homelands. Such patriotically-aware works in France had much to do with the establishment of the tradition of French literature in the vernacular.¹⁷

Clever propaganda, however, could not help transform theoretical realities into political realities for the Holy Roman Empire or the Papacy.

In theory, the emperor was the temporal ruler of all Christendom with God as his only superior. In reality, though, there was no real imperial power. With no army, no revenue, no institution, but just an emperor who was beholden to his seven electors,¹⁸ the Holy Roman Empire existed as an empire only in myth.¹⁹ The real power in Germany was that of the territorial princes.²⁰

As for papal power, a similar obstacle presented itself in 1517 with Martin Luther's protest. Rulers who chose to deviate from the traditional Catholicism and instead embrace Protestantism further cost the papacy a portion of its dominion. Additionally, fear that a council would be summoned by Charles V to settle Luther's religious question--thus effectively taking the matter out of the hands of the pope--served to diminish papal authority.²¹

Another area where theory and practice diverged, ironically, was that of royal officers. Pressed for funds, monarchs often resorted to selling appointments to royal offices. As this relatively easy means of raising money gained popularity, an increasing number of royal officers came into existence. While the greater number of officers may have represented increased royal authority, in reality they undermined the power of monarchs. Having purchased their place of power, royal officers often practiced independently from the king. Thus, in an effort to strengthen royal sovereignty, kings' powers were actually diminished.²²

Another development that decreased a king's power was England's Parliament. During the reign of James I, the English Parliament embarked upon a struggle for more control of the government. Eventually, Parliament was triumphant against the Stuart house, gaining authority to regulate taxation as well as some voice in legislation.²³ By the end of the seventeenth century, the novel idea of a sovereign "king-in-parliament" achieved a balance between central monarchial authority and the representation of England in Parliament.²⁴

It is likely that the force that met state sovereignty with the most opposition was that of localism. The realm in which freedom was normally defined before the advent of the modern nation-state was small and local: the home, the manor, the village, the principality, and the city.²⁵ Simply, most people's world was too local to be national.²⁶ Lordly power and the local customs prevailed over state sovereignty.²⁷ The idea of a state existing abstractly from its ruling monarchy only emerged at the end of the sixteenth century.²⁸

Emergence of the modern state brought with it the idea of sovereignty--a single authority for both making and enforcing laws--within a defined and consolidated territory. This rise of sovereignty in Europe required, however, the removal of entrenched rights and powers of lesser authorities such as nobles, barons, or local or regional autonomies.²⁹

Barons of this era often justified rebellions on the grounds that the king was ill-counseled by his wicked advisers, the removal of whom could remedy the situation.³⁰ When the barons of England rebelled against their king, it was because they were threatened, as a class, by the establishment of a self-sufficient royal bureaucracy and administration.³¹

A host of conditions in Europe during the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries helped to tip the balance of favor in the direction of the formation of nation-states. Perhaps the most outstanding and influential of these factors was warfare. The foundation of nationalistic behavior is not interest in other members of the group, but solidarity in repelling a common enemy. More than sympathy for one's fellow citizens, hostility toward outsiders incites nationalism.³² The wars waged in Europe helped the rulers of the time achieve these ends.

While it is often difficult for contemporary society to fathom a world void of sovereign nations and the accompanying complex international relations, the development of this modern political reality was not inevitable. The triumph of the modern concept of nations was produced by the combination of absolute monarchical power with the powerful national forces that were emerging by the end of the Middle Ages.³³

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