Title given to the highest dignitary of the Holy Roman Empire
This article is about the government title. For the head of Unseen University in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, see
Archchancellor (Discworld)
.
An
archchancellor
(
Latin
:
archicancellarius
,
German
:
Erzkanzler
) or chief chancellor was a title given to the highest dignitary of the
Holy Roman Empire
, and also used occasionally during the
Middle Ages
to denote an official who supervised the work of chancellors or notaries.
[1]
The
Carolingian
successors of
Pepin the Short
appointed chancellors over the whole Frankish realm in the ninth century.
Hincmar
refers to this official as a
summus cancellarius
in
De ordine palatii et regni
and an 864 charter of King
Lothair I
refers to
Agilmar, Archbishop of Vienne
, as archchancellor, a word which also begins appearing in chronicles about that time.
[1]
The last Carolingian archchancellor in
West Francia
was
Archbishop Adalberon of Reims
(969-988), with the accession of
Hugh Capet
the office was replaced by a
Chancelier de France
.
At the court of
Otto I
, then
King of Germany
, the title seems to have been an appanage of the
Archbishop of Mainz
. After Otto had finally deposed King
Berengar II of Italy
and was crowned
Holy Roman Emperor
in 962, a similar office was created for the Imperial
Kingdom of Italy
. By the early eleventh century, this office was perennially held by the
Archbishop of Cologne
. Theoretically, the archbishop of Mainz took care of Imperial affairs for Germany and the Archbishop of Cologne for Italy, though the latter often used deputies, his see being outside of his kingdom. A third office was created about 1042 by Emperor
Henry III
for the recently acquired
Kingdom of Burgundy
. He initially bestowed it on Archbishop
Hugh I of Besancon
.
[2]
It only appears in the hands of the
Archbishop of Trier
in the twelfth century as the chancellory of Arles, as Burgundy was then known.
By the
Golden Bull of 1356
, Emperor
Charles IV
confirmed the threefold division of the archchancellory among the three ecclesiastical
Prince-electors
of the Empire. Actual governmental functions like calling the
Imperial elections
, however, were carried out by the Mainz archbishops alone. The office in this form was part of the constitution of the Empire until the
German Mediatisation
in 1803, when Mainz was secularised. The last elector,
Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg
, however, retained the title of archchancellor until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. There was a marked resemblance between the medieval archchancellor and the later
chancellors
of the
German Empire
, the
Weimar Republic
,
[3]
and the Austrian Empire.
[1]
The title is continued by the present-day
Chancellors of Germany
and
Austria
.
In
France
the title of "Archchancellor of the Empire" was given to
Napoleon I
's chief legal advisor,
Jean-Jacques-Regis de Cambaceres
.
Archchancellors of the Holy Roman Empire
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain
:
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911). "
Archchancellor
".
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 358.
- ^
Stefan Weinfurter,
The Salian Century: Main Currents in an Age of Transition
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. 97.
- ^
Reincke.
- ^
Zahn, J. (1875).
Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermarkt, vol. I: 798-1192
. Graz: Verlag des Historisches Vereines fur Steiermark. pp. 60?68.
- ^
Zahn, J. (1875).
Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermarkt, vol. I: 798-1192
. Graz: Verlag des Historisches Vereines fur Steiermark. p. 69.
- ^
Zahn, J. (1875).
Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermarkt, vol. I: 798-1192
. Graz: Verlag des Historisches Vereines fur Steiermark. pp. 119?120.
- ^
Zahn, J. (1875).
Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermarkt, vol. I: 798-1192
. Graz: Verlag des Historisches Vereines fur Steiermark. p. 137.
Sources
[
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]