Itinerant court

This manner of ruling a country is strongly associated with German history, where the emergence of a capital city took an unusually long time. The German itinerant regime (Reisekönigtum) was the usual form of royal or imperial government from the Frankish period and up to late medieval times.[1] The Holy Roman Emperors did not rule from any permanent central residence in the Middle Ages and even later. They constantly traveled, with their family and court, through the empire.

The Holy Roman Empire did not have a capital city. The emperor and other princes ruled by constantly changing their residences. Imperial dwelling places were typically palaces built by the Crown, sometimes episcopal cities. The routes the court follows during the journeys are usually called "itineraries". Palaces were notably erected in accessible, fertile areas - surrounded by Crown mansions, where imperial rights to local resources existed. These princely estates were scattered around the whole country. The composition of the ruler's retinue constantly changed, depending on what area the court was passing through and which noblemen joined their master on the trip or left him again.

During a year, impressive distances were covered. The travel speed of the German itinerant court was normally between 20 and 30 kilometres a day.[2] In 1146, Conrad III of Germany could travel as fast as 66 kilometres a day on his journey from Frankfurt to Weinheim.[3]

The itinerant court is often conceived as a typical German institution. Medieval Germany was, however, not the only kingdom ruled this way; it was also the case in most other contemporary European countries, where terms like "corte itinerante" describe this phenomenon. Kings and their companions traveled continuously from one royal palace to the next. The old Parliament of Scotland assembled in many different places, Scotland being ruled by an itinerant court in early historical sources. In Saxon England, conditions were the same.[4]

A more centralized way of ruling did evolve during this time, but only slowly and gradually.[5] London and Paris began to develop into permanent political centers from the late 1300s, when Lisbon also showed similar tendencies. (Spain, on the other hand, lacked a fixed royal residence until Philip II elevated El Escorial outside Madrid to this rank.) Smaller kingdoms had a similar, but slower development.[6]

Emperor Charles V made 40 journeys during his lifetime, traveling from country to country with no single fixed capital city. It is estimated that he spent a quarter of his reign on the road.[7] He made ten trips to the Low Countries, nine to German-speaking lands, seven to Spain, seven to Italian states, four to France, two to England, and two to North Africa. As he said in his last public speech, "My life has been one long journey."[8]

During all his travels, Charles V left a documentary trail in almost every place he went, allowing historians to surmise that he spent nearly half his life (over 10,000 days) in the Low Countries and almost one-third (6,500 days) in Spain. He spent more than 3000 days in what is now Germany and nearly 1,000 days in Italy. He spent 195 days in France, 99 in North Africa, and 44 in England. For 260 days, his exact location is unrecorded, all of them being days spent at sea traveling between his dominions.[9]

Germany never developed a fixed capital city during the medieval or early modern period. "Multizentralität" remained its alternative solution: a decentralized state where the governmental functions never ended up in just one place until the late modern period.

England was very different in this respect. Central political power was permanently established in London approximately in the middle of the fourteenth century. Still, London's outstanding position as a financial center had been firmly established many centuries earlier. A monarch like King Henry II of England (1133-1189) was attracted by its great wealth, but he was hesitant about taking up residence there. During his reign, London was becoming as near to an economic capital as the conditions of the age allowed. But its very prosperity and its extensive liberties forbade it as a desirable place of residence for the king and his court. They stood in the way of its becoming a political capital.

The king often wished to be near the great city, but he claimed the same power to control the court that the citizens demanded to govern their city. The only way to avoid conflict between the household and municipal jurisdictions was for the king to keep away from the latter much of the time. He could only be in the city as a guest or a conqueror. Accordingly, he seldom ventured within the city walls. He established himself on such occasions either in the Tower Fortress or at his palace of Westminster just outside the City of London.

A Fourteenth-Century English Carriage

London was the natural leader among English towns. To control England, the kings needed to maintain London first. London was too powerful to handle; it took centuries before the monarchs settled there. They tried, unsuccessfully, to drive the London merchants out of business by making Westminster a rival economic center. They tried to find some other suitable place in the Kingdom to deposit their archives, which were gradually growing too large and heavy to be transported on their unending journeys.[10]

York tended towards becoming a political capital during times of war with Scotland. The Hundred Years' War against France caused the political center of gravity to shift to the southern parts of England, where London was dominant. Gradually, many of the institutions of the State ceased to follow the king on his journeys and established themselves permanently in London: the Treasury, Parliament, and the court. Last, of all, the king experienced a need to take up permanent residence in London himself. It was only possible for him to make London his capital city after he had become powerful enough to "tame the financial metropolis" and transform it into an obedient tool of the State authority.[11]

The English historical example clearly shows that a political center does not naturally evolve at the same place as the economically most important place in a given country. It has a certain tendency to do so, admittedly. Centralizing and centrifugal forces counteracted each other at this time, at the same time as wealth was both an attractive and a repelling party vis-à-vis the rulers.

A migrating form of political power was an inherent feature of the feudalism that succeeded the more centralized Roman Empire. In Eastern Europe, Constantinople retained the characteristics of a political capital city much more than any western city.

This traveling government enabled better surveillance of the realm. The king's nomadic lifestyle also facilitated control over local magnates, strengthening national cohesion. Medieval government was, for a long time, a system of personal relationships rather than an administration of geographic areas. Therefore, the ruler had to "personally" deal with his subordinates. This "oral" culture gradually, during medieval times, gave way to a "documentary" type of rule - based on written communication, which generated archives, making stationary rule increasingly more attractive to the kings.

Initially, rulers also needed to travel to meet the court's financial needs - because contemporary inadequate transportation facilities simply did not allow a large group of people to stay permanently in one place. Instead of sending resources to the government, the government wandered to the resources. In many countries, however, the traveling kingship persisted throughout the 16th century or even longer. Food supplies and other necessities were usually transferred to the place where the court resided for the moment.

Consequently, these pure economic benefits must have been less decisive than the political importance of traveling. The transition from a state with an itinerant court to a state ruled from a capital city was a reflection of how an "oral" way of life, when kings could win loyalty only by personally meeting their subjects face to face, gave way to a "documentary" rule when the ruler was able to rule simply by letting his incipient bureaucracy send them a written message.

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• Peyer, Hans Conrad (1964): Das Reisekönigtum des Mittelalters. In: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. ed. Hermann Aubin, vol 51, Wiesbaden, pp. 1–21.
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• http://www.koenigspfalzen.mpg.de/projekt.html
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• https://web.archive.org/web/20160402142358/http://www.reich-deutsches.de/mittel_4.html