Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437)

Ein Manuskript über Kriegstechnik aus der Frührenaissanceund sein Verfasser. Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola: De rebus militaribus (Über Kriegsgeräte).

Die Erforschung der ungarischen Beziehungen des florentinischen Kriegsingenieurs von epochaler Bedeutung und seiner kriegstechnischen Manuskripte war mit dem Jubiläum des Königs von Ungarn, Sigismund von Luxemburg (1387—1437), verbunden. Die Erscheinung der  italienischen Frührenaissance in Mitteleuropa, in der die Kriegsingenieure eine führende Rolle spielten, fiel in die Zeit seiner Regierung. Die Pläne und Erfahrungen dieser Kriegsingenieure übten auf die technische Entwicklung in Ungarn eine nachweisbar große Wirkung aus. Der Aufsatz faßt unsere heutigen Kenntnisse über Taccola und seine Manuskripte zusammen und behandelt dann das viel umstrittene Pariser Manuskript (B. N. Cod. Lat. 7239). Es wurde durchgehend von derselben Hand kopiert, ein Beweis dafür, daß seine Teile nicht zufällig in Konstantinopel zusammengefügt wurden. Es handelt sich vielmehr um eine späte, um 1470 entstandene Kopie eines Taccola-Manuskriptes aus der Zeit von König Sigismund von Luxemburg. Dasselbe bezieht sich auch auf die in ihm enthaltene Balkan-Karte, die den Feldzug König Sigismunds gegen Nikopol darstellt. Man kann also von einer späten, authentischen Kopie einer früheren italienischen Karte sprechen. Der Aufsatz widerlegt die Auffassung Fr. Babingers, wonach der Kodex für Mohamed I I . enstanden sein soll, bzw. die Ansicht Dumitriu-Snagovs, laut der das Manuskript zur Zeit der Schlacht von Nikopol in Siebenbürgen kopiert wurde. Obwohl sich ein Aufenthalt Taccolas in Ungarn nicht eindeutig nachweisen läßt, belegen zahlreiche Texte dem Einfluß der Werke italienischer Kriegsingenieure (Architektur, Kanonentechnik usw.) auf das Ungarn des 15. Jahrhunderts.

De Nicopolis à la mort de Charles le Téméraire, une ‎‎succession d’événements contribua au ‎‎‎remaniement de l’Europe politique du XVe siècle. C’est à travers les ‎peintures de ‎Gentile, Gozzoli, ‎Marmion, et Van Eyck, rattachées a la cour des ducs de ‎Bourgogne et des Médicis que ‎Abolala ‎‎Soudavar ‎nous fait redécouvrir ce ‎siècle de renaissance.‎ -"C’est un livre qui ouvre des ‎perspectives ‎‎nouvelles et qui sur bien des points me parait très ‎‎convaincant. Bien sûr, c’est un livre ‎d’histoire de ‎‎l’art mais c’est bien plus"; Pierre Rosenberg de l'Académie française et ‎prés-dir. honoraire, Musée du ‎Louvre. -"Abolala ‎Soudavar nous offre ici une étude ‎stimulante et novatrice. Ses conclusions ‎s’appuient sur ‎des ‎données ‎historiques solides et sur une ‎étude comparative très intéressante" ‎Bertrand Schnerb, prof ‎Univ de ‎Lille

This is a critical edition of the second and last draft of Giovanni Bertoldi's Latin commentary on Dante's "Commedia", extending until "Inferno", XIII. The introduction provides an in-depth analysis of the manuscript tradition of the entire commentary, with a constitution of an elaborated "stemma codicum" envisioning the presence of both drafts.

Die vorliegende Arbeit zeichnet mittels Auswertung der urkundlichen Überlieferung die Beziehungen Sigismunds von Luxemburg zu den Sechsstädten der Oberlausitz nach.
Die Autorin unternimmt dabei eine bisher für Sigismunds Regierung noch nicht erfolgte vergleichende Untersuchung der praktischen Umsetzung von Herrschaft durch landesherrliche Städte, wofür sie exemplarisch die Sechsbundstädte Bautzen, Görlitz, Zittau, Löbau, Lauban und Kamenz wählte.
Ein erstes Kapitel stellt Quellenlage, Forschungsstand und Fragestellung sowie die historische Ausgangslage vor, worauf eine Analyse der Funktionen der Sechsstädte und ihrer Bürger für das Königtum bzw. derjenigen des Königtums für Städte und Bürger folgt. Das letzte Kapitel arbeitet die Träger der Kommunikation zwischen Landesherrn und Städten heraus und stellt diese in den Kontext des königlichen Hofes.
Als Resultat ergibt sich eine differenzierte Bewertung der Rolle der Oberlausitz im politischen System Sigismunds. Die Autorin zeigt, wie die Beteiligten unter den Umständen einer „Herrschaft aus der Ferne“ versuchten, jeweils größtmöglichen Nutzen aus den phasenweise relativ intensiven Beziehungen zu ziehen. Besondere Bedeutung kommt dabei Sigismunds Rolle als Schiedsrichter und Legitimationsinstanz in lokalen Konkurrenz- und Konfliktsituationen zu. Die Zuschreibung dieser Funktionen ermöglichte es dem Herrscher seinerseits, die sechsstädtischen Ratsschichten als Instrumente seiner Herrschaft einzusetzen, ohne seine durch die Hussitenkriege begrenzten Ressourcen zu sehr zu belasten.
Die angewendete Methodik erlaubte es weiters, die starke Anlassbezogenheit der Ausstellung königlicher Urkunden herauszuarbeiten, wodurch selbst für mutmaßliche motu-proprio-Handlungen des Herrschers ein komplexes Zusammenspiel mit den Urkundenempfängern aufgezeigt werden konnte. Damit erhärtet sich auch für die Oberlausitz der schon andernorts festgestellte Befund, dass von einer zielgerichteten „Städtepolitik“ Sigismunds nicht die Rede sein kann.

Une histoire de trois empereurs. Aspects des relations Sigismond de Luxembourg avec Manuel II et Jean VIII Paléologue, in:  Sigismund of Luxemburg and the Orthodox World, éd. Ekaterini Mitsiou, M. Popović, J. Preiser-Kapeller et al., Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienne, 2009 (Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, CCXXII), p. 41-101.

Présentation des relations que Sigismond de Luxembourg, roi de Hongrie (1387-1437) et empereur germanique (1410/11-1437) développa tout au long de son règne avec les deux empereurs Paléologues, ses contemporains. Nous mettons en lumière la présence, jusqu’ici ignorée, d’une délégation hongroise au sacre de Manuel II (1392). Ce moment constitua le point de départ d’une réorganisation de l’Église orthodoxe du royaume de Hongrie, sur laquelle fut alors élargie la juridiction du Patriarcat œcuménique à travers l’exarchat du métropolite de Hongrovalachie. Le roi de Hongrie se révèle ainsi être le porteur de l’idée de l’égalité des rites latin et grec qui, à terme, triompha lors du Concile de Florence. Pour cette idée, Sigismond se vit âprement critiqué par les cardinaux à la fin du Concile de Constance, ce qui n’empêcha pas l’empereur d’Occident de la mettre toujours en œuvre en vertu de son droit de patronage royal sur l’Église de Hongrie. À la visite de Sigismond à Constantinople en 1396 répondit la visite de Jean VIII à Buda en 1424. Grâce aux rapports cordiaux entre les empereurs d’Orient et d’Occident, une nouvelle conception émerge, celle d’une fraternité des empereurs chrétiens à la tête d’un Empire chrétien, idéalement considéré comme unique. Sigismond voulait la mettre en œuvre en organisant le Concile œcuménique destiné à réconcilier les Églises, dans la capitale de Hongrie, à Buda. Sa mort empêcha toutefois ce projet d’aboutir, précipitant le conflit entre Eugène IV et le Concile de Bâle. L’idéal de l’unité de l’Empire ne sera pas moins affirmé pour autant par les Byzantins dans un curieux document publié par W. Ullmann et resté très peu discuté. Enfin, une analyse est faite de la présentation de Sigismond de Luxembourg comme un "second Basile Ier" (le Macédonien), donc comme un empereur byzantin, sous la plume de Nicolas de Cues dans la "Concordance catholique" (1434).

Bosnia and its Neighbors in the Middle Ages: Approaches and perspectives, ed. Elmedina Duranović, Enes Dedić, Nedim Rabić, University of Sarajevo - Institute of History, Sarajevo, 2019, 193 - 216;

Political opportunities within the Bosnian Kingdom at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century were heavily influenced by the Ottoman Interregnum and the fight for Hungarian crown between Ladislav, the King of Naples and Sigismund of Luxembourg. The events epitomized some of the key factors in enabling a strong affirmation of Bosnian nobles who, with constant support change between the conflicting parties, were searching for a better political position at that time. One of the leading characters of these happenings was the Bosnian magnate, knez Pavao Radinović. The main goal of this work is to present the position and posturing of a Bosnian noble, knez Pavao, between 1408 and 1415 marking an immensely strong influence of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, which strived to achieve an even bigger power in medieval Bosnia understanding her importance for their expansionist policies. A substantial amount of older and recent historiographic work analyzed the era covered in this text, and a considerable number of sources about it was also published, none of which examined the ties between knez Pavao, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire as a separate unit.

Keywords: Bosnian Kingdom, Kingdom of Hungary, Ottoman Empire, knez Pavao Radinović, Sigismund of Luxembourg, Bosnian king Ostoja, Bosnian king Tvrtko II Tvrtković, herzog Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, voivode Sandalj Hranić Kosača...

Bosna i njeni susjedi u srednjem vijeku: Pristupi i perspektive, ur. Elmedina Duranović, Enes Dedić, Nedim Rabić, Univerzitet u Sarajevu - Institut za historiju, Sarajevo, 2019,  193-216;

Interregnum u Osmanskom Carstvu i borba za ugarsku krunu između Ladislava Napuljskog i Sigismunda (Žigmunda) Luksemburškog imali su snažnu refleksiju na političke prilike u Bosanskom Kraljevstvu krajem 14. i početkom 15. stoljeća, te predstavljaju neke od ključnih faktora koji su omogućili snažno afirmiranje bosanskih plemića koji su konstantnim laviranjem između sukobljenih tabora tragali za što boljom političkom pozicijom u tom vremenu. Jedan od aktera tih dešavanja bio je bosanski velikaš knez Pavao Radinović. Glavni cilj ovog rada jeste predstaviti poziciju i držanje jednog bosanskog plemića, u ovom slučaju kneza Pavla, u periodu od 1408. do 1415. godine, kada se bilježi izuzetno snažan utjecaj Ugarskog Kraljevstva i Osmanskog Carstva, koji su na sve načine pokušavali ostvariti što veću moć na prostoru srednjovjekovne Bosne uviđajući njen značaj u svojim ekspanzionističkim politikama. Razdoblje o kojem autor piše u ovom tekstu obrađeno je u velikom broju starijih i novijih historiografskih radova, a i znatan broj izvora o istom je također objavljen, ali odnos kneza Pavla sa Ugarskom i Osmanskim Carstvom ranije nije zasebno tretiran.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Crusade-in-the-Fifteenth-Century-Converging-and-competing-cultures/Housley/p/book/9781472464712

By highlighting Ottoman attacks on Croatia, Hungary and North Italy during the 15th century, this paper will explore the origins and development of the “antemurale” concept from a Bosnian point of view. Whereas the cases of certain frontier states which bordered with the expanding Ottoman Empire have been well researched so far, not much attention has been given to the role played by the Bosnian Kingdom in the broader Christian struggle against this aggressive adversary.
The Ottomans gained a foothold in Bosnia very early on, in the last decade of the 14th century, and I will attempt to show that they used Bosnia as a stepping-stone for further attacks on lands ruled by the Hungarian King and other Christian princes in the West. It is because of this that the Bosnian rulers and nobles were considered as being complicit in these assaults, and were effectively denied the assistance necessary to get rid of the Ottoman influence in their state. In a way, having been forced to remain on the opposite side of Christendom’s bulwark, Bosnia became an open gate through which the Ottoman akinji raiders passed at will. When it became inevitable that the Ottomans would conquer their Kingdom, the Bosnian rulers sought military help from those states which were not directly threatened. In order to draw attention to their plight, and thus initiate a crusade, they presented their state as a “gate”, “key” or “shield” of Christendom. Despite their best efforts, they received no help from the Western states and the Bosnian Kingdom was finally incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1463. The strategic importance of Bosnia was not lost on contemporaries and in the following period the Bosnian “antemurale” discourse was adopted by Venice and the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus.

The paper sheds light to life of Anna of Cilli (* 1380–1388; † 1416), second wife of Władisław Jagiełło and Queen of Poland, as outlined by the preserved sources. In the first part, it points to her firm embeddedness in the Celje family and follows her journey to Poland, highlighting that upon her arrival in Krakow she was received as a legitimate heiress to the Polish throne.

Jan Chudoba z Vartemberka [Wartenberg] was bohemian aristocrat and one of the important politics at the border of 14th and 15th Century. Wartenbergs was one of the leading noble families in medieval Bohemian Kingdom and they hold rich dominium in North Bohemia. Jan Chudoba was in early years a friend of theologian Jan Hus. Lately he founded a new castle Ralsko, very closed to his main settlement castle in Wartenberg (now Stráž pod Ralskem). During the turbulent time of hussite wars was at the site of emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg a with other powerful aristocrats in this part of land he made strong alliance.

Published in: Heraldika a genealoge 41 (2008), No. 1-2, pp. 105-110.

The first great figure of panel painting in medieval Hungary was the painter Thomas de Coloswar, whose only surviving work is the Calvary-altarpiece from Garamszentbenedek (Hronský Benadik, Slovakia), preserved today at the Christian Museum of Esztergom. The altarpiece was completed in 1427, and was commissioned by Nicholaus, son of Peter of Garamszentbenedek, cantor of the royal chapel at Buda castle. Generations of Hungarian and foreign researches have dealt with the significance and origins of this great work, and discussed the likely origins of its painter. In recent scholarship, there seems to be an agreement that the style of the painter stems from the International Gothic style of the Prague court – a style also incorporating French, Burgundian and Italian elements. It has also been suggested that the painter may have left Prague for Hungary at the time and because of the Hussite revolution. In my paper, I would like to demonstrate instead that
the origins of the painting style of Master Thomas are to be found in Nuremberg, at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
Thomas de Coloswar is closely connected to Nuremberg workshops around 1420, which developed after the completion of the main altar of the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg. Iconographic, stylistic, and historical observations will be discussed to support this proposition, which gives us a chance to re-evaluate painting at the court of King Sigismund as well. Observations concerning the portrait of Emperor Sigismund in Nuremberg and on the Calvary-altar from Garamszentbenedek are
also included, as they strongly support the connection outlined in the study.

The second part of the treatise follows Anna’s rule from the birth of her only child to her untimely death; it draws attention to the meeting of the two queens from Celje, Anna and Barbara, in 1412, and discusses Anna’s role in the public life of the Kingdom of Poland – even though it appears to be a minor one, traces of her political activity, which caused her to fall into disfavour of the Teutonic Order, have been preserved.

The aim of the program is to take stock of Hungarian documents of
studia humanitatis with 1526 as a milestone. The census intends to register predominantly the use of (school)books in Hungary in teaching grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.

In the Hungarian historiography Sigismund of Luxemburg is regarded as the ruler constantly struggling with recurrent financial difficulties. Pledging royal possession was probably his most favored method of alleviating this financial pressure; it was so important for his rule in Hungary that he managed to gain the throne of the country through such a transaction. The article provides an overview of his pledging practice in Hungary by discussing the general terms and conditions under which the properties were put in pledge, redeemed, or pledged further. Moreover, it presents which sources in which way can contribute to the study of the topic, and it also points out the limits of the preserved source material.

More information: In Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages, ed. Roman Zaoral, 87-109. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Since the antiquity the preservation of the saint’s earthly remains and their brandeums was a key element in their developing cults, likewise in the case of Ladislaus I of Hungary (also Saint Ladislaus), whose body was raised after 1192, and the remains of the head and arms were placed in an ornate relic, which in time became the centre of devotion of the holy king. During the Anjou’s in due to the representation of power St. Ladislaus's first gilded bust was completed, as well as two ornate relics for the arms. However these relics were destroyed around 1403 as a result a fire accident in the cathedral of Várad. Like Louis I of Hungary, Sigismund of Luxembourg himself paid his respects to the Holy King and for this reason he has renewed the cathedral of Várad – which was under construction at that time – while also developed new relics for the remains of Saint Ladislaus. Although the historical sources from Sigismund’s period didn’t mention the relics, it is suspected that the brandeums discussed in inventories dated in the following century could have been made under the reign of Sigismund. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the primary and secondary artifacts of Saint Ladislaus appearing after 1403, and to define what time the busts of Saint Ladislaus were made, as well as to explore the role played by Saint Ladislaus's relics in the monarchic and baronial representation during the Sigismundian age.

One of the key moments of Sigismund of Luxemburg’s ascension to the
Hungarian throne was the Moravian margraves’ military intervention in
Hungary in 1385. Thanks to it, Sigismund became ruler of the country, but in return he had to cede the territory between the Váh and Danube rivers. This paper deals with this decisive event of Sigismund’s rise to power, and more precisely, with the way the territory came under foreign rule, how it was administered by the margraves during this period, and how Sigismund recovered it.

The orations that Filippo Diversi delivered in honour of the Hungarian kings Sigismund of Luxemburg and Albert of Hapsburg shed more light on the style, tastes, literature, and customs of his day than on the lives and accomplishments of the two royal heads. Through communicational codes of a literary genre closely connected to the real world we are able to study human relationships, attitudes, values, interests, and the cultural and social context of the time. Diversi’s discourses thus contribute to the post-modern rethinking of language, history, and the scope of human knowledge. Rhetoric and discourse, in an ever new dialogue with the past, promote themselves as genuine historical sources, with the answers lying in both the contents and the form.

General accounts of the political history of later medieval Europe have tended to stress the development of discrete, more-or-less coherent units. A typical approach in such accounts is to list the most prominent European kingdoms and principalities, and to characterise the most important trends in their development in terms of that which contributed (however gradually and incompletely) to their consolidation and constituted the vertical ‘lineaments of state power’.  This way of thinking about politics has long posed a problem for the German-speaking spaces within the Holy Roman Empire. Given that a path towards increasingly centralised statehood under a monarch or prince is held up as the norm, it is not surprising that – in light of the weakness of the kings of the Romans and the fragmentation of the Imperial political map – German scholars have concluded that ‘das römisch-deutsche Reich den Weg zur modernen Staatlichkeit nicht gefunden [hat]’, and furthermore that ‘in den Territorien weitgehend verwirklicht wurde, was dem Reich als Ganzem versagt blieb, so daß es in Deutschland eher die Territorialherrschaften waren, die den Grundstock für die Ausbildung des modernen “Anstaltsstaates” gelegt haben’.  The notion that the Empire’s late medieval political development was shaped by the creation of Territorien – Territorialstaaten, even –emerged in the early modern principalities within the Empire, and has overshadowed the historiography of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ever since.  There have been attempts to render this idea of crystallising authority within compartmentalised lordship-territories less anachronistically and less abstractly as socially-grounded Landesherrschaft and Landeshoheit, notably under the influence of Otto Brunner’s concept of autogenic lordship in tradition- and community-derived Länder.  The word ‘state’ is thus now avoided, but the historiographical vision of the Empire remains that of a patchwork of evolving political units (Flächenherrschaften) characterised by growing governmental authority. As Ernst Schubert conceded in his recent overview of princely lordship in late medieval Germany, scholarship of the Empire remains in the grip of this model of territorial political power below the level of the crown even though scholars are questioning the meaning and value of the concepts (Territorium, Landesherrschaft, and so on) which underpin it.

The Empire as a whole has not been fully abandoned in the search for a political narrative for later medieval Germany. Since Peter Moraw’s 1985 history of the 1250-1490 period the role of the monarchy and the estates have been viewed constructively through the influential paradigm sketched out in that book.  According to Moraw’s model, there was a transition from an ‘open constitution’ (offene Verfassung), in which political entities existed side-by-side within the boundaries of an Empire towards which they had no major obligations, to a kind of ‘configured consolidation’ (gestaltete Verdichtung), which was the loose and dualistic but increasingly institutionalised form that the Empire took as a consequence of the interplay of the interests of great dynasties on the Imperial throne on the one hand and the combined efforts of the leading Reichsstände to defend and assert their personal and territorial agendas on the other. This framework is offered as a means of making sense of how ‘die Vielzahl der Machtträger im Reich’ and their ‘freie Kräftespiel’ fed into the shape and dynamic of the Imperial polity as a whole.

These conceptualisations of the Empire and its constituent parts have gone a long way towards fashioning a convincing narrative of political developments in the German lands. However, in the south-west of the Empire there was a level of political activity which is very evident in surviving documentary sources, but which the existing models of the unitary Territorial- and Reichsverfassungen and the predominantly vertical links within them do not fully apprehend:  the sub-monarchical level of lateral interaction between local elites . Verfassungsgeschichte is good at identifying relationships within a political unit, but not across or between multiple units, especially the kind of fragmentary and protean units which formed fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Oberdeutschland. The lateral interaction amongst such units is exemplified by the numerous alliances, leagues, and Landfrieden undertaken by and between a range of political actors along the length and breadth of the Upper Rhine, including princes, counts, margraves, prince-bishops, abbots, and free and Imperial cities. Other kinds of formal association in the area, such as coinage leagues and multilateral jurisdictional contracts, as well as informal networks spanning multiple polities (between creditors and debtors, relatives in extended noble dynasties, etc.), also point to the mutual entanglement of a variety of political actors and entities across ‘territorial’ boundaries. These essentially horizontal associations appear to have been so widespread and multitudinous that it seems appropriate to explain these activities in terms of an associative political culture in the concerned south-western regions.

The aim of this paper will be to demonstrate the existence of this political culture in a particularly challenging period for the Imperial monarchy and for peace and order in the Empire – the reigns of Wenceslas, Rupert of the Palatinate, and Sigismund. It will attempt to do so by sketching out the uniquely intense series of criss-crossing alliances which dominated the political landscape of the Upper Rhine between the 1370s and the 1430s. These alliances, and the lateral relationships which underpinned them, shed some light on a bewilderingly complex series of conflicts – the ‘town wars’ of the 1380s, the feuds of Strasbourg in the 1390s, the anti-Austrian Reichskrieg of the 1410s, and the anti-badisch coalition of the 1420s – which can seem chaotic and inexplicable when viewed solely from the perspective of the individual political entities involved, or from that of a ‘zoomed out’ overview of Imperial history. The paper will seek to substantiate the case for associative political culture further by reference to some other specific examples of lateral interaction, such as knightly societies and trans-jurisdictional mediatory practices. It will also consider how the activities of more or less autonomous regional powers below the level of the crown intersected with the idea and reality of the Empire as a whole and its monarchs. The presence in many alliance treaties, not least royally-sanctioned Landfriedensverträge, of a rhetoric of concern for general peace and order and the honour of the Holy Roman Empire suggests a conscious link between associative activity and the overarching Imperial polity. More concretely, kings could and did attempt to harness associations to their own agendas, particularly those associations with close established customary ties to the crown’s remaining administrative structures, such as the league of ten Imperial cities in the Reichslandvogtei of Alsace (the so-called ‘Décapole alsacienne’). The half-brothers Wenceslas and Sigismund provide an instructive comparison, in that the former’s rigid opposition to most formal associations (notably Städtebünde) left him with far less influence than the latter was able to garner through a policy of careful support for key actors and their allies, although neither could fully direct associative dynamics in the south-western localities. The turbulence in south-west Germany which followed Charles IV’s experiment in hegimoniales Königtum cannot be fully understood without considering how associative activity fits into both regional and crown-level politics.

The contention in this paper will thus be that we stand to gain by thinking about sources pertaining to later medieval Germany in a framework other than that of the Verfassungsgeschichte of either a territory or of the Empire as a whole. Instead, a consideration of political structures – discourses, networks, and behavioural patterns as well as formal ties and institutions – could yield new perspectives and resolve apparent difficulties in the Empire’s historical development.  The specific case of the later medieval Upper Rhine suggests that some of the prevalent structures of this kind could be characterised as elements of an associative political culture on the basis of the extensive evidence of lateral interaction between poorly hierarchised neighbouring powers. Associative political culture in all its forms offers one possible alternative solution to Moraw’s ‘drängendes Problem’ of ‘die Suche nach dem Gemeinsamen in der deutschen Geschichte innerhalb ihrer ausgeprägten Vielfalt’.  This paper will attempt to make it clear that lateral interactions between variegated powers are an important but neglected aspect of the political history of the Empire and perhaps of Europe more generally in the later middle ages.

n the past decades, or even during the last hundred years, many books and articles have been published on the Crusade in 1396 and on the Battle of Nicopolis. The interest is not surprising, because this was one of the iconic late medieval crusader events. Serious preparations were taken. This includes the parade as well. The theme is huge, so the study is going to deal only with Hungary and the western section of the route of the Hungarian troops.The deployment route of the marching battalions/armies is far from being as clarified as one might think. My study attempts to answer the following questions: When did the Western crusaders reach Buda, and when and on what route did they proceed south? When did the Hungarian king and his barons – and with them the Hungarian troops – join the crusaders? How many columns were involved in the advancement? The study shows that Sigismund, after receiving in Buda the Western leaders, made an important diplomatic detour to the Hungarian-Polish border. The arrival of Western leaders to Buda should be placed on the first half of June. After that the study will take into account the possible routes of the Western and Hungarian Crusaders. Another part of the crusader army was the minor army columns which advanced through Transylvania to Wallachia and were led by the faithful baron of the Hungarian king, Voivode Stibor.

“I am Emperor. I am above grammar.” – Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund (b. 1368, d. 1437 CE)

[This research paper gives the ancestry of Emperor Sigismund going back to ancient times]

Why would a Holy Roman Emperor’s statement be of such importance that I (or anyone) would take the time to write a research paper about it? Well, because it is just one of many examples of those who were born into royalty, making reference to what only they were privy to; the use of a ‘Royal Language’. [I]

In order to get to the point where one would understand just what his statement actually meant and referred to, one would have to know much about the true nature of royalty. And, that, is a very complex subject. As I have been explaining in other papers, just as we have a 1% today, this same “condition” existed for a very long time – a very long time. And the reason that it had remained so, is because those ancient royal individuals saw to it that it would;...

This article focuses on some letters written by Sigismund from Luxembourg that are preserved in the archives of the Public Libraries of Udine and Cividale and publishes their full text for the first time. The letters date back to the period of the war between Hungary and Venice to take control over Friuli and cover a time span that goes from 1411 to 1418.

A short contribution to a recently published volume on the encounter between king Sigismund and Benedict XIII (Pedro de Luna) at Perpignan in 1415. In my text I analyse, how Sigismund's journey from Constance to Perpignan was perceived in France and Burgundy: While information on this event remains quite scarce (and sometimes misleading)  in contemporary historiography (in spite of the presence of representatives of the French crown), we can reconstruct that Sigismund's movements were in fact followed quite closely by observers in France and Burgundy.

It is practically impossible to understand the local state of affairs in the medieval Slavonia in the first decade of the 15th century without examining the repercussions of the crisis that began in 1402 and culminated the following year and the actions that the winning side took to restore its damaged authority. This is why the mechanisms used for resolving the political crisis are observed in this paper through the prism of the administrative practices reliant on the written word, specifically, through the prism of the “Register of Rebels” made at the General Assembly that took place in Križevci in the late 1403 and the early 1404. Indeed, the quest for the Slavonian register of rebels also yielded clues about the very similar crisis-resolving mechanism used in the Kingdom of Hungary, where a register of rebels was also made in the early second decade of the 15th century. Although not preserved, both documents are valuable for understanding the functioning of the royal apparatus in the early 15th century and for analyzing the modalities of interactions between local societies and the political center.
Razumijevanje lokalnih prilika u srednjovjekovnoj Slavoniji u prvom desetljeću 15. stoljeća zapravo je nemoguće bez uvida u reperkusije krize koja je izbila 1402. i kulminirala iduće godine, odnosno bez uvida u načine na koje je pobjednička strana ponovno uspostavila svoj narušeni autoritet. U radu se stoga sagledavaju mehanizmi saniranja političke krize kroz prizmu uloge administrativnih praksi utemeljenih na pisanoj riječi u tom procesu, odnosno kroz prizmu registra nevjernih nastalog na općem shodu održanom u Križevcima krajem 1403. i početkom 1404. godine. Štoviše, potraga za slavonskim registrom nevjernih otvorila je uvid i u vrlo sličan mehanizam rješavanja posljedica krize 1403. i na razini čitave Ugarske, gdje je također, početkom drugog desetljeća 15. stoljeća, napravljen registar nevjernih. Oba dokumenta, makar nisu sačuvana, dragocjeni su stoga tragovi za razumijevanje funkcioniranja kraljevskog aparata početkom 15. stoljeća te za sagledavanje modaliteta interakcije lokalnih društava i političkog središta. Ključne riječi: Sigismund; politička kriza; srednjovjekovna Slavonija; registar; shod. * Ovaj je rad sufinancirala Hrvatska zaklada za znanost projektom IP-2019-04-9315 "Anžuvinski archiregnum u srednjoistočnoj i jugoistočnoj Europi u 14. stoljeću: pogled s periferije".

The paper examines the image of Hussite era as presented in the first edition of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín’s Historical Calendar (1578). It identifies sources used by Veleslavín for description of XVth century history in Czech lands, follows the author’s method of modifying their information and makes an attempt to reconstruct Veleslavín’s  view of events related to the anti-Catholic movement. Brief analysis proves that, despite using sources written by the Catholic authors, Veleslavín by means of paraphrasing shows Czech Hussites as warriors fighting for „the truth of Christ“, i.e. the Utraquist communion, against Germans and Hungarians. Therefore Historical Calendar should be perceived and analyzed as an integral part of the XVIth century Czech Utraquist historiography.