The mandate of the King of the Holy Roman Empire Maximilian of 1497 on the imperial disgrace of Danzig and Elbling (from the archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences): Hanseatic cities and the Holy Roman Empire

Abstract

The article deals with the authentic printed mandate, issued by the King of the Holy Roman Empire Maximilian, later Emperor Maximilian I (1486–1519), in 1487. The mandate is preserved under the number 446/21 in the archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Emperor declared disgrace to the Hanseatic cities of Danzig and Elbing for refusing to submit to imperial justice. Like many other wealthy Hanseatic trading cities, Danzig and Elbing resisted dependence on imperial power, jurisdiction of the imperial court, and taxation by the Empire, preferring the less onerous patronage of the Polish King. The author analyses the subject matter of the royal mandate, its composition, characteristic stylistic turns, and features of the language. The article includes a transcription of the document, its translation into Russian, and a reproduction of the mandate.