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.

The project undertook a comprehensive analysis of Emperor Sigismund's (1410/11-1437) interactions with various actors from late medieval Bavaria, aiming at extending our understanding of this monarch's rule in the Holy Roman Empire in general. Bavaria, which consisted largely of territories belonging to the rival Wittelsbach dynasty, served as a case-study to explore, if Sigismund's imperial rule as a whole should be reevaluated. The project was carried out by two parallel research teams, one based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and one at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. One of its main results is the monograph jointly written by all project members, in which four sub-areas were investigated: Sigismund's interactions with the Bavarian Wittelsbachs (i.e., at the time, the princely lines of Bavaria-Munich, Bavaria-Ingolstadt, Bavaria-Landshut, Bavaria-Straubing, and the Upper Palatinate), his relations with the Bavarian bishoprics (Salzburg, Freising, Regensburg, and Passau), the Bavarian nobility, and Regensburg, the only Free City on Bavarian soil. Especially concerning his dealings with the Wittelsbachs, Sigismund proved to be very adept at exploiting their internal conflicts to strengthen his own authority as supreme overlord and judge. He also pursued a very active policy towards the Bavarian bishops. Unlike the situation in other regions of the Empire, the few noble families immediate to the Empire and the Free City of Regensburg did not play a particularly important role in Sigismund's Bavarian policy. Nevertheless, the monarch's contacts with them turned out to have been much more intense than previous scholarship had assumed. Overall, the case-study showed Sigismund as an extremely active ruler with a keen understanding of how to maneuver effectively under the political constraints inherited from his predecessors. As a result, he (mostly) succeeded in accomplishing his most important goals. The project was thus able to prove that the question of how successful Sigismund's imperial rule was should be revisited by taking a deeper look at the regional level. The current scientific consensus, i.e. that the monarch had to compensate for his weak position in the Empire with an especially active church and foreign policy, may then need to be revised. This comprehensive analysis of Emperor Sigismund's relations with Bavaria was possible only thanks to the extensive archival research carried out by the Munich project team at the Bavarian State Archives. The collected primary sources were not only used internally, but will also be made available to the larger scientific community in the future, as the Vienna project team has compiled a volume of abstracts of Emperor Sigismund's charters, which will be published in print and online in the "Regesta Imperii XI - Neubearbeitung" series.