King, nobility and people, and the idea of the nation

For as much as all other nations are wont to vaunt the glory of their achievements, and reap joy from the remembrance of their forefathers: Absalon, Chief Pontiff of the Danes, whose zeal ever burned high for the glorification of our land, and who would not suffer it to be defrauded of like renown and record, cast upon me, the least of his followers—since all the rest refused the task—the work of compiling into a chronicle the history of Denmark, and by the authority of his constant admonition spurred my weak faculty to enter on a labour too heavy for its strength.¹⁴⁵

In this way, Saxo Grammaticus opens his work on the history of the Danes, composed in the early thirteenth century, expressing his pride in the history of his nation and explaining to his readers why such a work is so necessary that he has taken it upon him, despite his incompetence.

The recent upsurge of partly violent nationalism in the new countries in the Third World and in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism has stimulated research in nationalism, mostly emphasizing its contingent character. Nations are ‘imagined communities’; contrary to the ideas of their most eager adherents who claim a fundamental unity in virtue of race, religion, language or other character­istics. Nations are also regarded as flexible; the features a particular group regards as characteristic of themselves are adapted in a way that serves to distinguish them from another group.¹⁴⁷ A widespread attitude has further been to regard national­ism as essentially a modern invention.¹⁴⁸ One of the most articulate and influential spokesmen of this theory is Ernest Gellner.¹⁴⁹

Gellner distinguishes between group identity and nationalism in the strict sense.

Gellner’s theory points to important differences between modern and pre­modern attitudes. The common people were clearly less affected by the state, at least in the positive sense, and the elite often behaved in ways that today would have been considered unpatriotic. What seems the most specifically modern aspect of nationalism is the struggle by ethnic groups to create a nation state, which had not existed before or to restore one that had been destroyed. Thus, in the nine­teenth century, there was a German and an Italian movement for unification as well as movements for the creation of independent states among groups that regar­ded themselves as a particular people ruled by foreigners: the Irish and later the Scots under English rule, the Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Basques and Catalans in Spain. The late nineteenth-century Zionistic movement for the Jews to return to Israel to form their own state belongs in the same category. Some of these peoples had previously had their independent states, such as the Poles, Czechs and Catalans; other based their claims more on language and culture, as some of the new nations that emerged after the First World War and then after the fall of the Soviet Union: the Baltic countries and Ukraine.

The propaganda of these national movements suggests that they are essentially the products of strong emotions and dominated by poets and freedom fighters willing to die for their country. There has also been a tendency to regard nation­alism as irrational: ‘Why and how could a concept so remote from the real experience of most human beings become such a powerful political source so suddenly?’ asked Eric Hobsbawm, who, as a Marxist, regarded class as the social category that expressed people’s real interests.¹⁵⁰ The answer is that the concept is not remote from the real interests of most human beings. Nationalism is not only the willingness of some idealists to sacrifice everything for an imagined community, but an expression of the fact that every organized government involves a number of people who are interested in its continued existence. The increasing importance of the national community in the nineteenth century was a result of the fact that the state became more important to a larger part of its population. The building or location of infrastructure like railways, harbours and steamships, the competition for jobs in the expanding national administration and not least the institution of compulsory schools and military service were likely to engage a large part of the population in the government and affairs of the state.¹⁵¹

Turning to the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the state was of course less important in the lives of most people than in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, in his history of the Norwegian kings, the Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturluson repeatedly points to the difficulties kings had in being accepted in other countries, clearly because they lacked networks.¹⁵² There was a national elite in each country who resented attempts from foreigners to gain influence there, whose own position was limited to that particular country and who could expect prominent and advantageous positions in the royal government.

These considerations apply not only to the lay nobility but also to the Church. Although the Church was a universal organization, it was, in practice, largely local and territorial, having its main income from land, which in most cases was located within one particular country. The churchmen had the same interests as the lay aristocrats in protecting their property and, in addition, needed organized govern­ment and peaceful conditions to carry out their work. Their long-term interests therefore largely coincided with those of the king, although there might in periods be conflicts between the two. According to ecclesiastical ideology, the king who held his power from God was a territorial king, whose power was confined to one country and who had to respect the rights of his counterparts in other countries. Moreover, religion was a strong force of social identification. Philip IV of France quite successfully depicted himself as the most Christian king in his conflict with the papacy. Such proclamations were of course particularly effective in wars against non-Christian peoples. With the religious division during the Reformation, similar appeals could be used in wars against confessional enemies.¹⁵⁴

There are also examples of major popular movements with aims of a national character.

The rebellion proved very successful and led to the deposition of Erik in all three countries in 1439—42. Peasant rebellions were frequent in Europe in the Middle Ages but rarely led to great changes, particularly not the deposition of kings. Nor was the deposition of Erik in Sweden the exclusive result of the pea­sants’ action; it also necessitated the cooperation of the nobility. Erik had con­ducted an expensive foreign policy, including twenty years of war to join the county of Schleswig to Denmark and he had mostly governed without involving the council of the realm in the government. His regime illustrates that dynastic unions often led to discontent in the country that was not the king’s main resi­dence and demonstrates the general problem of the relationship between the king, the nobility and the common people.

During most of the period 1470—1520, Sweden was without a king and ruled by members of the aristocratic Sture kindred, who used the title ‘protector of the realm’.

Many tourists in Prague notice the statue of St John Nepomuk on the Charles Bridge, one of the most popular saints in East Central Europe. The statue was erected in 1683, on the 300th anniversary of his martyrdom. According to the legend, John Nepomuk was killed and his body thrown into the river by the evil King Wenceslas because he had refused to reveal what the queen had said in her confession. Actually, Wenceslas did execute John, but the reason was a conflict over the election of an abbot and thus had nothing to do with the queen’s confession. The story is found for the first time in 1459 but became really widespread during the Counter­Reformation, leading to John Nepomuk’s canonization in 1721. There was a great need for a national saint in the 1620s, when the Czech Protestants had been defeated and the country was forced back to the Catholic faith. In addition, the story celebrated one of the most important sacraments by underlining the priest’s absolute duty to hide what the penitent had told, even at the cost of his own life. It is also possible that St John Nepomuk was deliberately used to replace another martyr from the same period, namely, the reformer John Hus.

Since 1310, Bohemia had been ruled by the Luxembourg Dynasty after the national one, the Premyslids, had become extinct in 13 06.¹⁵⁶ Although the new king, John (1310—46), had promised to make Bohemia his main residence and rule in cooperation with the Czechs, he did not keep his promise but spent most of his reign promoting the interests of his dynasty in various parts of Europe. As the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII (1309—13), he aspired to the imperial throne. He was succeeded by his son, Charles IV, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1347. Despite the extensive political interests resulting from this posi­tion, Charles’ engagement and interest in Bohemia were far greater than that of his father. In his autobiography, he describes his upbringing in France, where he forgot his Czech mother-tongue, so that he had to learn it again when he returned.¹⁵⁷ But he did learn it and he made Prague the most important city in the Holy Roman Empire, founded the New Town on the undeveloped land between the Old Town and the ancient Premyslid settlement on Vysehrad, built the Charles’ Bridge and restored and extended the cathedral.¹⁵⁸ He also showed great interest in the Czech language, which is probably the main motive for his foundation of a monastery in Prague, using the Old Church Slavonic liturgy.¹⁵⁹ Finally, he foun­ded the first university east of the Rhine in Prague (1348). He also seems to have solved a number of internal conflicts and restored the government after the lack of firm rule during his father’s reign. His eldest son and successor Wenceslas was less successful and was deposed as Roman emperor in 1400. His reign also saw an outburst of national and religious conflict.

There had been a considerable immigration of Germans to Bohemia, partly as merchants, artisans or craftsmen and partly as followers of the Luxembourg. Some of the wealthiest burghers were German and some of the towns, including the Old Town of Prague, were dominated by Germans. John Hus (1369—1415) was pro­fessor and for a period (1402—3) also rector of the University of Prague as well as a preacher in the Church of Bethlehem. He worked for reform of the Church, morally as well as doctrinally, was influenced by John Wycliffe, who had opposed the Church in England, and, like him, rejected all other sources than the Bible as authoritative. He was a strong adherent of the Czech language, both in general and for use in religious contexts, and published a translation of the New Testament, the Psalms and the Wisdom literature in 1406, which replaced some previous transla­tions from the 1380s onwards. For a long time, the king supported Hus and his adherents. In 1409, a conflict at the university made the German professors and students leave and found their own university in Leipzig. Later, in 1412, when Hus had been excommunicated, the king changed sides and supported the Church. In 1414, Hus was summoned to the Council of Konstanz where he went under promises of safe conduct, but the prelates persuaded the Emperor Sigismund, Wenceslas’ brother, that it was not necessary to keep promises to a heretic. Hus was then arrested, condemned and burnt at the stake on 6 July 1415.

The result was rebellion in Bohemia. Large parts of the population supported Hus, the nobles, gentry and peasants, most of whom were Czechs, whereas the Germans largely supported the Church and the clergy. The opposition, Hussites as they were called, combined religious zeal with Czech patriotism and fought the emperor, Wenceslas’ successor Sigismund, with considerable success.¹⁶⁰ However, they were divided into a moderate and a radical branch, largely corresponding to the social dif­ference between the elite and the people. The conflict resulted in a large part of the ecclesiastical lands being taken over by the laity, mainly the nobility. Sigismund fought for twenty years to suppress the rebellion but finally agreed to a compromise with the moderate party in 1436. The Bohemian estates, towns, gentry and nobles were con­firmed in their privileges, the rights of the Germans were restricted, communion was to be given to the laity in both species — one of the central demands of the Hussites — and the cities received the right of resistance against attempts to prevent them from practising their faith. Several conflicts occurred in the following period but the Hus­sites remained in power until they merged with the new Reformation movement in the early sixteenth century. By contrast, the Church was reduced to a minor property owner. However, the great winners from this were a small number of noble families, which turned out to be a weakness the next time the religious freedom of the country was challenged, at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War.

Sweden and Bohemia had in common that they were in a union with another country, Sweden with Denmark, whereas Bohemia was a part of the large and composite Holy Roman Empire. Generally, dynastic unions often seem to have resulted in conflicts or rebellions. Other examples are Scotland and England in the seventeenth and partly the eighteenth century, Aragon and Castile in 1640—60 and again during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702—13), the Dutch War of Independence against Spain in 1572—1609 and the rebellions against Spain in Sicily and Southern Italy. A common feature was the need for the continuous presence of the king. This might of course also be a burden — entertaining a king is not cheap — but had the advantage that it was possible to negotiate with him in person and solve problems in this way. In addition, kings tended to favour people they knew and would therefore appoint men from their main country of residence to most positions. Political or cultural differences might then easily lead to reactions against officials from another country.

Admittedly, such reactions may also be found within one country, notably such a large and composite country as France, but the more well-developed and advanced the institutions in a country entering a union with another one, the more likely are such problems to occur. In short, without assuming the strong identifi­cation with the nation to be found in nineteenth- and twentieth-century national states, sentiments of this kind were strong enough to have political importance and to cause tension within dynastic unions. One condition for this to happen, how­ever, is that group identification extends to national borders, not only to localities within the country. This does not mean that the latter identity is abolished; it continues to exist even in modern national states. It is reasonable to assume that the regional identity was relatively more important in the Middle Ages and the early modern period than today, considering the means of communications at the time, which meant that most people had not travelled far from the place they lived. The most likely category of people to have felt a national identity would therefore have been the elites, nobility, the higher clergy and the higher bourgeoisie, above all the people who held or wanted to hold office in the service of the state. Finally, we must also point to the importance of the king as an object of identification.

There are also numerous examples, mostly from the later Middle Ages, of resentment against people of a different race, language or religion. The many per­secutions of the Jews is an obvious example, but there were also other conflicts, such as the one between the English and the Irish in Ireland and Germans and Slavs in various parts of Eastern Europe.¹⁶¹ Although most known examples of this are from the later Middle Ages, it seems more doubtful whether it was a new phenomenon at the time; there is evidence of such resentment at various times in many parts of the world; it is enough to refer to the Jews and the gentiles in the Old Testament. In some cases, such sentiments may have contributed to national identification, as the persecution and expulsion of Jews and Muslims in Spain, but they might also have the opposite effect, as in Bohemia and other places in East Central Europe, where resentment between ethnic groups made it more difficult to hold the country together.

As we have seen, the 193 states existing today are very different, many of them lacking most of the criteria people in the western world associate with a state. Not surprisingly, civil wars are more frequent today than wars between states. Here we may see a certain parallel to medieval Europe. All medieval states underwent periods of internal conflicts, struggles over the succession or between nobles with bases in different parts of the country. There might also be a sliding transition between external and internal wars, as illustrated by the Hundred Years War. The intensive period of wars between states in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may from this point of view be regarded as evidence that the internal conflicts in each country had been overcome. This in turn indicates some internal cohesion, not necessarily patriotism in the modern sense, but that the elites were attached to the central government and that the common people were used to being ruled in a certain way by the representatives of the state. In parts of Europe, notably along its western coast from Norway to Portugal, the units that developed before the thir­teenth century have continued to exist until the present. In other parts, further east, great changes occurred during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Entirely new states have developed through the division or unification of earlier territories: Germany and Italy have become united, while a number of new states were cre­ated from the ruins of the Austrian Empire. Without claiming that this develop­ment was a logical and inevitable outcome of existing loyalties in the countries in question, it may be pointed out that it was very different from the creation of modern states from the European colonies in Africa and the Middle East. The new states had some basis in political and cultural traditions, language, common history, religion or commercial connections, like Germany and Italy, or they had been partly independent units within the old empires, like Belgium, Bohemia and Hungary. The continuity between the old Europe and the new is greater than it immediately seems. Although the modern democratic state in many respects is a radical novelty, it has some basis in the institutions and ties of loyalty developed in the previous period.