When the Emperor Submitted to his Rebellious Subjects

Scholarship associates Emperor Frederick Barbarossa with two momentous but seemingly contrary developments in European history: the Diet of Roncaglia of 1158 is considered a landmark in the conceptualisation and growth of royal authority, but the Peace of Constance with the rebel Lombard League of 1183 is represented as the legal basis for the autonomy of the Italian city republics. This paper highlights the fact that the Peace of Constance also identified imperial prerogatives, and it argues that, while it is now overlooked, that side of the settlement attracted a great deal of attention well into the early modern period and well beyond Italy. It demonstrates this by examining a largely forgotten account by the jurist Odofredus, which differs from the now current depictions of the Peace of Constance by stating that the rectors of the League defined those prerogatives following Barbarossa’s submission to them. The paper advises partial acceptance of this account, contextualises it in the conflict between Frederick II and the League (1226–50), and suggests not only that the Peace of Constance and Odofredus’ account informed seminal debates on kingship, right of resistance and popular sovereignty, but also that the former came to be a prime historical example of a settlement between sovereign and subjects, and the latter its standard interpretation, in the following centuries

Ancient history · Economic history · Emperor · Interpretation (philosophy · League · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Scholarship · Settlement (finance · Sovereignty · Classics · Historical Legal Studies and Society · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy