Emerging Parliaments between Corporative Representation and Interaction with the Royal Courts: Parliamentary History in Late Medieval and Early Modern Central Eastern Europe

Parliamentary History in late medieval Central Eastern Europe emerges between a collective (proto-national) identity and a contemporarily ‘perceived’ royal counterpart. While in Poland the Piast kings managed to establish a common royal administration, it was the Hungarian magnates’ power and the symbolic significance of St. Stephen’s crown that provided identificatory factors for a proto-national coherence within the Pannonian Basin. In Bohemia, royal power could only be solidified by tackling with vast allodial areas of power and the special position of the Duke of Bohemia as Electoral Prince. Though all case studies corresponded in court structures’ institutionalisation, their manners to consolidate central authorities’ varied greatly. The mirrored choreography-focus on the constitutionalization of the crown estates-relation serves as tertium comparationis in accordance with the functional comparative research interest in noble assemblies’ conflicts with the crowns’ strive for consolidation. The Bohemian mirrored choreography seems somehow displaced by the Bohemian duke’s imperial function, whereas the Magyar magnates’ freedom narrative differed essentially from the Polish szlachta’s claims. Whereas Poland’s geographical challenges required a cautious distance from the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, as catholic universalism was the Teutonic Order’s instrument, the Hungarian aristocracy borrowed successfully from the crown’s Latin affinity and Christian legitimization. The Polish-Lithunian aristocratic Rzeczpospolita (Res Publica, denominating the political nation on a Quod omnes tangit – share between nobility and crown) relied on a legally confirmed corporatism (1422, 1430/33, and 1573); both electoral crowns remained the decisive counterpart for the representative assemblies, and the proto-national representation needed this kind of mirrored choreography: still, the Polish May Constitution of 1791 referred to a constitutional ‘contract’ between king Stanislas August and the szlachta on behalf of the political nation.