Academic literature on the topic 'Golden bull, 1356'

ABSTRACT “The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire.” For the historian, Voltaire's famous quip has three aspects: 1) What did Voltaire mean by it in 1756 when he wrote the line in his Essay on Customs? 2) How did contemporaries, including the Austrian Habsburgs, understand it? 3) Does the quote accurately describe the events the Philosophe is discussing (Charles IV of Bohemia and the Golden Bull of 1356)? Voltaire in fact exaggerates the weakness of the Empire in both 1356 and 1756, and uses an anachronistic standard to evaluate both: the quasi nation states of the 1750s. The three parts of the imperial title had changed in meaning during the four centuries after 1356. The jibe nonetheless reflects something of the thought of Voltaire and the French Enlightenment.

AbstractThis article addresses the onset of a decades-long conflict between the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire King Ludwig IV of Bavaria and the papacy. When Ludwig intervened on behalf of antipapal factions in northern Italy in 1323, Pope John XXII issued an ultimatum demanding that Ludwig immediately cease to exercise the royal power and title on the pretext that he had never received papal approval of his royal election. Failure to comply meant that the king would fall under sentence of excommunication. Ludwig responded with nearly identical appeals issued in Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Against previous arguments that these appeals were either legal documents operating within the confines of Roman Canon law or artifacts of protomodern realpolitik, this article argues that the “Nuremberg” and “Frankfurt Appellations” emerged from the king's preoccupation with his honor. His Appellations utilized the language and form of Roman Canon law to defame his opponent while he sought to ennoble and justify his actions with a rhetoric mirroring that in supposed repositories of imperial customary law such as the Sachsen- and Schwabenspiegel. In arguing that German custom superseded the jurisdiction of papal law in his Appellations, Ludwig elevated a discourse concerning royal elections to the highest levels of imperial politics where it would remain and find inclusion, in intent if not precise formulation, in the famed Golden Bull of 1356.

Sanqi (Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F. H. Chen) is planted on >10,000 ha in China and is a popular Chinese medicinal material (2). Black root rot is a recently identified but worsening problem on Sanqi since 2010 in Wenshan, China. Of the plant tubers examined from 185 ha, 8.5 to 27.4% were black with necrotic lesions. The base of leaves of infected plants had brown, sunken, necrotic lesions, and symptomatic plants had one to three chlorotic leaves. A fungus was isolated consistently from the basal leaves, bulb, and tubers of symptomatic plants. Six single-spore isolates were cultured on potato sucrose agar (PSA) at 25 ± 1°C in the dark. The mycelium of each culture was white initially on PSA, and then became rust-colored. The adaxial surfaces of the plates were black. Conidiophores were 13.6 to 167.3 × 1.4 to 21.8 μm (avg. 68.6 × 2.9 μm), single or with up to four levels of branching and two to three branches (or phialides) per level. The basal branches were often divergent, whereas the terminal branches were usually more appressed. Sporodochia were not present. Microconidia were 0-septate, 4.1 to 9.5 × 2.7 to 4.1 μm (avg. 8.2 × 2.9 μm). Conidia were 1- to 3-septate and occasionally 4-septate. One- to 3-septate conidia were clavate, with a truncate or slightly protruding conidial base, 9.2 to 40.8 × 3.5 to 6.8 μm (avg. 26.7 × 5.2 μm); whereas 4-septate conidia were 32.6 to 50.3 × 5.4 to 6.8 μm (avg. 40.9 × 6.5 μm). Chlamydospores were abundant, golden to brown, single or in chains or clumps, and up to 21.8 μm in diameter. PCR amplification was carried out for one isolate, RR926, using rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) primer pairs ITS1F and ITS4 (4). Sequencing of the PCR product (GenBank Accession No. KC904953) revealed 99% similarity (99% coverage) with the ITS sequence of Cylindrocarpon destructans var. destructans (AM419065). Phylogenetic analysis (MEGA 4.1) using the neighbor-joining algorithm placed the isolate in a well-supported cluster (>90% bootstrap value based on 1,000 replicates) with AM419065. Therefore, the pathogen was identified as C. destructans (Zinssm.) Scholten var. destructans (teleomorph Ilyonectria radicicola (Gerlach & L. Nilsson) P. Chaverri & C. Salgado) based on morphological characteristics and rDNA-ITS sequence analysis (1,3). Pathogenicity tests of the six isolates were conducted on five 1-year-old and five 3-year-old plants/isolate. The roots of all plants were washed with sterilized water, and then surface-sterilized with 75% ethanol. Inoculum (1 ml of 106 conidia/ml) of each isolate was brushed onto the roots of each plant with a paintbrush. Inoculated plants were planted in pots in a mixture of sterilized quartz sand:vermiculite:pearlite (2:1:1, v/v). The pots were placed under black shadecloth. The roots of five 1-year-old and five 3-year-old plants were brushed similarly with sterilized water as control treatments. After 30 days, symptoms similar to those on the original diseased plants were observed on the roots of all plants inoculated with the six isolates. The roots of non-inoculated plants remained healthy. The experiment was repeated. The same pathogen was re-isolated from the inoculated plants, but no pathogen was isolated from roots of the control plants. C. destructans var. destructans is widely distributed in soils (1), but to our knowledge, this is the first report of this fungus causing black root rot of Sanqi in China. References: (1) P. Charerri et al. Stud. Mycol. 68:57, 2011. (2) C. Y. Hu. New Rural Technol. 2:59, 2013 (in Chinese). (3) K. A. Seifert and P. E. Axelrood. Can. J. Plant Pathol. 20:115, 1998. (4) K. A. Seifert et al. Phytopathology 93:1533, 2003.

After the post-Hohenstaufen era, two decades of weak kings were followed by several dynasties competing for the German crown before the Habsburgs emerged dominant in the 15th century. During this period, the German kingdom evolved constitutional structures that institutionalized the elective monarchy. The most important was the establishment of a formal group of royal electors. ‘The later medieval empire: the emergence of the Habsburgs’ describes this key period, including the reigns of the first Habsburg king, Rudolf; Charles IV of Bavaria (r. 1347–78) and his important law the Golden Bull of 1356; Sigismund (r. 1410–37) and the reform of the church and empire; and the long reign of Frederick III (r. 1440–93)