ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of taxation in medieval German “römischer Reich” between the eleventh and early sixteenth century. Previous scholarship has tended to look this political space as an archaic counterexample to the construction of the monarchical state through taxation, as observed in France or England. But by looking at taxation without the schema of the construction of the modern state, many different taxes and diversified tax collection practices become apparent. The absence of a centre, and the political fragmentation did not prevent experiments in ordinary and extraordinary taxation, on the scales of the Empire, principalities or cities.
