ABSTRACT
The long reign of the Habsburg Frederick I II (1440-93) was an uphill struggle for control. Until 1463 Frederick had to contest the control of his own Austrian and Tyrolean inheritance-his only territorial base-with his brother Albert. For 27 years (between 1444 and 1471) he never visited Germany west of these lands. He was threatened with supersession first by Philip the Good of Burgundy (1454), then by George of Podebrady, king of Bohemia (1459-61) and finally by his own son Maximilian, and as late as 1485 he was driven from Vienna by Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. The constantly harassed circumstances of the reign made schemes for constitutional reform impracticable, although these were discussed and in 1455 a detailed plan was drawn up for an imperial council, an imperial court presided over by paid judges, and a general tax. Frederick's solitary triumph, which was of profound importance fo r the future of both the Habsburgs and the empire, was the marriage of his son Maximilian to the Burgundian heiress Mary, daughter of Charles [he Rash (1477).1 This marriage conveyed to the Habsburgs the wealth of the Low Countries on which had been founded the g reamess of the Burgundian dukes, [hereby strengthening enormously their territorial basis and perhaps virtually ensuring the continuation of their election as emperors. It also extended their imerests so
Frederick Ill's Concordat of Vienna with pope Nicholas V (1448) contrasts with the French king Charles VlI's Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) in a way which illustrates clearly enough the difference between the authority of these two monarchs. The Pragmatic Sanction defined and checked papal authority over the Church in France to the advantage of the Crown. The Concordat, on the other hand, had to be acceptable to the imperial nobility as well as to the papacy; the German princes gained a very high price for their adherence to it and thereafter enjoyed an increased amount of ecclesiastical control. They won enlarged rights of presentation and a considerable share in the proceeds of ecclesiastical taxation. Church courts lost part of their jurisdiction to the princes. particularly in eastern Germany, and even to the municipalities. Moreover, the lay nobility even came to playa larger role in the organisation of religion, by issuing legislation concerned with matters of morality (such as gambling and false weights and measures), by intervening to reform or suppress ecclesiastical institutions and through its share in higher education. Of the 20 universities existing in Germany at the end of the Middle Ages, all but two (Wurzburg and Mainz) had lay founders. One consequence of these developments was that religious reform came to be thought of as in many ways essentially the responsibility of the princes.
