Crown for sale? : reflections on the political function of documents of accounting and debt at the royal court in the Holy Roman Empire

• Published in: Studia historica Brunensia Vol. 70; no. 1; pp. 67 - 80
• Main Author: Kluge, Mathias
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Czech
• Published: Masaryk University 01.07.2023
• ISSN: 1803-7429; 2336-4513
• DOI: 10.5817/SHB2023-1-4

The written record of the late Middle Ages is characterized by an increasing number of royal debt and mortgage bonds of the Holy Roman Empire. This stands in contrast to the fragmentary written record of royal accounting documents. For a long time, this was considered to be a manifestation of poor financial administration, which was held to have led to a continuous state of imperial insolvency. In this paper, I present a brief English summary of key results of my habilitation thesis. From a cultural-historical perspective, they show that for a successful ruler documents of debt and accounting contributed to both the maintenance of creditworthiness and to binding and controlling his subjects, which were the principal pre-conditions of political power in the pre-modern age.