ABSTRACT
F ranee in the early fourteenth century shows the potential strength of a medieval monarchical state in favourable circumstances, the Crown flourishing on the snowball principle that nothing succeeds like success. The German territories at the same time illustrate no less clearly the contrary process of fragmentation, lack of central control fostering the institutions of local political independence and traditions of regionalism. Much of this was due to the peculiar position of the German Crown. From the high Middle Ages the no tional ruler of the Germanic lands was burdened with the additional stams of 'empcror'-the successor to Charlemagne, whose coronation as emperor in 800 had signalled a sel f-conscious revival of the ricle of ancient Rome, as well as a reassertion o f western European interests in such a title as counterweight to that o f the emperors of Byzantium. The legacy of this episode was complex. During the disputes between the German ruler and the papacy, imperial propagandists had elevated their patron to the status of chief secular power, even God's secular representative on earth, with a unique relationship to the chief spiritual power and to the other secular rulers of Christendom. T he territory of the emperor also extended well beyond Germany and covered an area which no medieval ruler could realistically hope to control; yet a belief in the rights and therefore duties that came with the imperial office--and perhaps also the difficulties in asserting their authority in theit humbler capacity as rulers of Germany-impelled successive emperors into the international ideological and geo-political arena. Our concern here will be less with the universalist aspirations and obligations of the emperor than with the d ramatically different story of their f6rtunes in Germany itself, and the very d ifferent question of how Germany developed in consequence.
