The Court as Institution

Definition and Development

Discussion of the Early Modern Court in the Holy Roman Empire is complicated by the sheer number of courts and their political and cultural diversity. At a conservative estimate there were 100 courts in the empire during our period, of which the most important was the imperial court, followed by the courts of the secular electors (Saxony, Brandenburg, the Palatinate, Bohemia, later Bavaria, and later still Hanover); of great lords such as the dukes of Württemberg or the landgraves of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt; and of the three ecclesiastical electors, Trier, Cologne, and Mainz. Since primogeniture was not the rule, territories were constantly being subdivided, and these smaller territories had their own courts. A particular court could have a cultural importance out of all proportion to its size. Rottenburg on the Neckar under Mechthild of the Palatinate (1418–82, r. in Rottenburg 1452–82), Wolfenbüttel during the reign of August of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1579–1666, r. 1635–66), Gottorf in Schleswig-Holstein under Friedrich III of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf (1597–1659, r. 1616–59), or Weissenfels under August of Saxony-Weissenfels (1614–80, r. 1656–80) are cases in point.

Another complicating factor is that the court as an institution underwent a remarkable transformation from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth century.At the beginning of the fifteenth century the term court denoted the ruler’s household, that is, his family and personal servants augmented by those nobles who had access to him. The court meant therefore the group of people that moved around from place to place with the ruler. As the early modern territorial state developed and the prince set about consolidating his power, a centralized governmental apparatus became necessary, consisting of increasing numbers of officials appointed for their specialized knowledge in such subjects as law, fortification techniques, or mining. The court thus gradually came to mean the government of a particular territory with its attendant civil service; often too it was the seat of justice and social control, a function still apparent in the phrase “a court of law.”