Jump to content

free imperial city

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

[edit]
The free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire in 1792
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

[edit]

Etymology

[edit]

A calque of German Freie Reichsstadt (short singular form of Freie und Reichsstädte) or Latin urbs imperialis libera.

Noun

[edit]

free imperial city (plural free imperial cities)

  1. (historical) A self-ruling city within the Holy Roman Empire that had some autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet.
    A free imperial city held the status of Imperial immediacy, and was thus subordinate only to the Holy Roman Emperor, whereas a territorial city or town (Landstadt) was subordinate to a territorial prince – either an ecclesiastical lord (prince-bishop or prince-abbot) or a secular prince (duke (Herzog), margrave, count (Graf), etc.).
    • 1996, John Dornberg, Western Europe, Oryx Press, page 56:
      The city-states of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire had their origins as free imperial cities, a term coined in the late eleventh century.
    • 2007, Carlos Ramirez-Faria, Concise Encyclopedia Of World History, Atlantic Publishers, page 243:
      Verdun was an ancient bishopric and a free imperial city, which France conquered in 1552 (together with Metz and Toul) and made into a fortress to protect its eastern borders.
    • 2012, Joel Van Amberg, A Real Presence: Religious and Social Dynamics of the Eucharistic Conflicts in Early Modern Augsburg 1520-1530, BRILL, page 7:
      Like many free imperial cities, Augsburg in the early Middle Ages was an Episcopal city.

Translations

[edit]

Further reading

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=free_imperial_city&oldid=73227754"