IMC 2014: Sessions

The long shadows of imperial pasts were cast well into the Late Medieval period, where it made its presence felt in the aspirations of the Charles IV to keep his disparate realm together. As part of the ideology of empire he represented, and as a counterpoint to the ever more autonomous political groups that were developing at the time, Charles IV used the image of his illustrious namesake to enhance his own prestige and the unity of his realm. However, as Václav Žůrek will show, his attempts at establishing an imperial saint's cult around Charlemagne in his domains fell on deaf ears for a variety of reasons. Similarly, as Pavlína Rychterová will demonstrate, Charles's bid to promulgate his new code of laws by attaching it to the heritage of Frederick II was not realised either - even though the resulting work, the Maiestas Carolina did lead a highly interesting life of its own regardless. Finally, wrapping up the proceedings, Stefan Donecker will shed light on some methodological issues that inevitably emerge when studying late medieval and early modern visions of community that drew upon the shadows of empire, emphasising the twofold hermeneutic distance between present-day researchers, 15th-/16th-century scholars and the imperial past.