ABSTRACT
Development towards the modern nation state can be observed throughout Renaissance Europe. The impetus for this development came from the urban middle class and from the monarchy, which dominated the life of the nation both politically and culturally from the court. On closer consideration, this structural change in society means the replacement of the feudal vassal relationship of the Middle Ages by anti-feudal, centralized and absolutist tendencies connected with the reigning monarchs and the policies pursued by them. The sovereign princes, some from new dynasties, rejected the old universal papal claims of author ity and concentrated entirely on the administration of their newly constituted states and, with special regard to foreign policy, on the protection of their national interests. Although the European monarchies which were then gaining ascendancy still differed substantially from the nation state of the nineteenth century, they herald its development from the political and ideological point of view. The emerging national consciousness found its anchor in the cult of the absolutist ruler together with, as far as cultural history is concerned, its usually mythically superelevated patriotic expression.1
