XI Regesten Kaiser Sigismunds (1410 - 1437). Neubearbeitung

The present edition of the abstracts of the charters and letters from the archives in Moravia and Czech Silesia of Sigismund ( 1368 - 1437), King of the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and Bohemia and Emperor, is the first part of the planned complete revision of the edition of abstracts "Urkunden Kaiser Sigmunds" (Innsbruck 1896-1900) published by Wilhelm Altmann within the framework of the Regesta Imperii. Owing to the fact that nowadays Moravia and Czech Silesia do not form administrative units within the Czech Republic, the content of the present publication is related to the contemporary administrative regions, which also corresponds with the organization of the highly centralized Czech archival system. Based on this principle, the present publication concerns all archives of the following regions: South Moravia (Brno), Zln, Vysocina (Jihlava), Olomouc and Moravian-Silesian region (Ostrava). Altogether, 181 abstracts of the charters and letters of Emperor Sigismund were compiled from these archives. In addition, an abstract of a contract between Sigismund and the brothers of Moravany made by arbiters (n. 158a). Only 46 of these charters appeared (sometimes with flaws) in a form of brief abstracts in Wilhelm Altmann`s work. The rest was partly published in various Czech editions, collections of abstracts and archival inventories, partly remained unpublished. The structure of the present publication adopts the established practice of the recent publications of the Regesta Imperii. The introduction is followed by list of documents with their brief abstracts, main part with abstracts themselves, list of primary sources and literature, and index. In the introduction, first the criteria according to which the individual items were included in the present publication are presented in detail. Then, a basic diplomatic description of the edited charters follows, particularly focused on forms of preservation, writing material, seals, chancery notations, and the complex question of the provenience of the individual charters. Next, the technique of making abstracts used in the present publication is explained. This technique is based on the proved methods applied in the abstracts of the charters by Emperor Frederick III from the Austrian State Archives. The differences result particularly from the fact that, because of the mix of imperial, Bohemian and Hungarian traditions, Sigismund`s diplomatic production was much more varied than that of Frederick. Finally, the introduction provides a critical explanation of the significance of the edited material, which places the corpus of the collected charters in the wider context of Sigismund`s Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian politics.