Petitions of subjects at the imperial aulic council of emperor Rudolf II (1576-1612)

The project takes up current approaches towards the cultural history of politics by linking two different fields of research which have been discussed most fervently over recent years. So far, research has centred on either the early modern supplication system or the exertion of monarchical power within the institutional framework. However, linkage of these two areas will lead to great potential for innovation in the actual object of study, concentrating on supplications which were addressed to the Aulic Council of Rudolf II (1576 - 1612) and were filed by subjects or by groups of subjects formed for the occasion. As the planned research project will focus on a so far (almost) entirely neglected and sometimes downright negated element of the Empire`s political system, an utterly new set of aspects will be unveiled. The analysis of Imperial clemency as an assertion of the Emperor`s authoritative power, which does not only extend to the imperial Estates (which is at present the only aspect that has been discussed by research) but also to individual subjects who are not directly governed by the Empire, will therefore shed light upon new facets of Imperial power. Hence, the systematic collection of supplications and subsequent generation of a database will be a milestone for further research. Only through transnational cooperation will it be possible to access and deploy the underlying notions of political communication. In other words, supplications will have to be studied from both the subject`s perspective (project Ullmann) and the perspective of the Imperial recipient (project Haug-Moritz) in order to illuminate generically the contextually condensed attributions which are concealed within the supplications as an act of communication.

The project focused on the imperial power to grant clemency as a widely neglected and disregarded component of the Holy Roman Empires political system. This study converged on the examination of supplications which were filed at the Aulic Council by subjects both as individuals and as groups formed for the occasion. By means of transnational cooperation, supplications dating from the rule of Emperor Rudolf II (1576-1612) were systematically collected and included in a database, thereby making them available to a wider public (http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/suppliken/de/datenbank). Records are integrated in the database. Methodically, the project followed the approaches of a cultural history of politics, which have been amply discussed over recent years, thus connecting and interrelating research on early modern supplications with studies on monarchic forms of government and their institutional frameworks. The discussions of this topic with international experts from a European point of view are published in a miscellany (http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/Beitraege-zur- Rechtsgeschichte-Oesterreichs-Band-2-2015).