ABSTRACT
Johann Sebastian Bach spent his entire life within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Heiliges Römisches Reich teutscher Nation), a patchwork of around 1800 territories varying in size and shape that encompassed most of central Europe, including all of modern Germany and Austria, and portions of modern Italy, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. Officially, the Emperor in vienna was at the very top of the hierarchy, followed by the Prince Electors (Kurfürsten)— the Archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhein, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg, and later the Duke of Bavaria and the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In practice, however, the Emperor was quite weak, leaving the electors and other local rulers-princes, feudal lords, clerics, ecclesiastical institutions, city and village governments-a large measure of autonomy.1
