ABSTRACT
The myth of the people’s involvement in the selection of the emperor persisted throughout the Middle Ages with regard to the medieval kings of Europe. The idea was largely based on Germanic customs which suggested that the Germanic tribes elected their kings and that the kings thus elected were answerable to their popular assemblies. The institutional reality probably reflected a complex mixture of both elements in terms of which the king’s popular support would depend on whether the people could continue to consider him a representative of God. The fictionality and/or fictitiousness of this whole constellation was unmasked in sixteenth century Germany when the peasants finally began to revolt against the German princes. The blood of Christ that redeems humanity in Christian theology becomes the blood of the people who put their lives on the line for one another.
