Regesta Imperii XI: Regesten Kaiser Sigismunds (1410-1437). Nach Archiven und Bibliotheken geordnet. Die Urkunden und Briefe aus den Archiven und Bibliotheken Mahrens und Tschechisch-Schlesiens, ed. Peter Elbel
Len Scales
It is not long ago that the reign of Sigismund Luxemburg (1368–1437), in Hungary and Holy Roman Empire, lay sunk deep obscurity. For nearly a century half four-volume biography king emperor by Joseph von Aschbach, published between 1838 1845, had no substantive successor. The problems went beyond those judged as largely empty achievement, ruler, to eyes earlier generations, disreputable, even squalid, character. Equally formidable deterrents were practical difficulties studying monarch whose realms stretched from Scheldt Balkans, subjects embraced most Europe’s linguistic families. Progress was hardly speeded fractured state central-European core Sigismund’s lands twentieth-century ‘age extremes’. And while fog dissipated rapidly with political changes century’s close, it lingered more tenaciously around written deposits government. Making sense these poses challenges exceptional complexity. In addition normally itinerant chancery for imperial affairs, could command fixed peripatetic Hungarian chanceries, his final years there separate documentary tradition Bohemian realm. How bodies scribes documents interrelated, where boundaries them, remain matters some uncertainty. resulting corpus materials large disparate, scattered widely across Europe. From what survives, clear both much has been lost forever good many fragments hidden, awaiting future archival excavations.
The English Historical Review