Abstract

Financial Transactions by Appointment of the King. Eberhard Windeck, Bruges, Lubeck and King Sigmund (1415–1417)

In 1416, during a tour of Western Europe, Sigmund, King of the Romans since 1411, had to pawn precious gifts from the English King Henry V at the Bruges money market to cover his travel expenses. Seen through the eyes of Sigmund’s biographer Eberhard Windeck, this rather common episode in the conduct of royal finances represents an instance of the rarely explored history of royal budgets in the 15th century. Other royal instruments of revenue, e. g. customs duties and dues from imperial cities, were vastly impawned. The lack of general taxes was the gravest systemic deficiency of the elective monarchy in the Empire – certainly in comparison to England and France. This instance of royal creation of credit by pawn also displays King Sigmund’s influence on the ongoing crisis of communal leadership within the imperial and Hanseatic city of Lubeck, as well as the largely fiscal nature of royal policies towards an imperial city’s commune.