Imperial Diets of Roncaglia

IMPERIAL DIETS OF RONCAGLIA. - A fraction of Piacenza, on the border between it, Lodi and Pavia (Runcalea, from runcare), near the Lambro and the Po, at the crossing of the land and river routes from Lombardy to Genoa, Lucca, Bologna, Ravenna, and a favorite place for the diets convened by the emperors. They were attended not only by the major feudatories, but also by the major and minor valvassors, arimanni and citizen milites.

As in the early Middle Ages, political questions de stabilitate Ecclesie et regni were dealt with there, and the supreme royal tribunal and the review of the army before the Emperor were held there at the beginning and end of the Diet. The first assemblies of R. (ascertained by Solmi) were convened by the Milanese archbishops: Arnulf in 1002 and Aribert in 1021; only from May 1055 is the first imperial assembly, historically ascertained. Those of the royal vicars follow: Otto in 1068 and Eberhard in 1075, of Henry V in 1110, of Lothair II in 1132 de statu ecclesie atque imperii and in 1136 on the alienations of fiefs, of Frederick I from 30 Nov. to 5 Dec. 1154 with the consules civitatum, and the most solemn of all, from 11 to perhaps 28 Nov. 1158. Another followed in Apr.-May 1159; then came war; the army with Henry VI halted there only briefly on 7 June 1194, and from then on R. housed only Milanese troops.

At the Diet of 1158 the German side was represented by the bishops, the great feudatories, and the imperial army encamped on the left bank of the Po. The feudal laws were promulgated there and the imperial tribunal functioned. Having crossed the Po on the bridge built in two days, the Emperor passed to the right bank in Piacenza territory (in Cotrebia) where the Italian side was encamped: the great feudatories, the consules and indices civitatum; the jurists Bulgarus, Martinus, Jacobus and Hugo, as counselors; the milites of Lombardy and Emilia. Here on the 23rd he decided the question of the regalia and peace was sworn, the concluding act of the Diet. This assembly intended to recall to the authority of the State the public functions and the related rights, dispersed and fragmented in the hands of ecclesiastical bodies, lords, and Communes (Solmi), and furthermore marked the first great affirmation of the revived Roman law in medieval life, preventing the oppression of one of the parties: the principal merit of the four doctors. They, when asked by the Emperor ut iudicament et in veritate omnia regalia iura, refused to pronounce sine consilio aliorum iudicum universarum Langobardiae civitatum ibi astantium. Two judges having been elected for each city, twenty-eight in number, they established with the four doctors, after mature examination, the royal rights: arimauniae, viae publicae, flumina navigabilia, portus, ripatica, vectigolia, moneta, mulatarum poenarum compendia, bona vacantia, quae ab indignis legibus unferentur, bona contrahentium incestas nuprias et damnatorum et proscriptorum, angariarum perangariarum plasustorum et navium praestationes, extraordinaria collatio, potestas constituendorum magistratum, argentarie et palatia, piscaticum redditus et salinarum, bona committentium crimen maiestatis, dimidium thesnuri in loco Caesaris iuveni. By equating the communal cities with the feudatories, no longer reinstated in their old privileges but replaced by officials directly dependent on him, Frederick intended to hasten the decline of feudalism and begin the centralization of the State. But the creation of imperial judges at the head of the cities, to collect the tributes and administer justice, was immediately opposed by the Lombards, and before long their administration stirred up the revolt of Milan, Piacenza, Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, Parma, Mantua and the Veronese March, against what was called the Teutonicorum imperium, while the feudal hierarchy and the communal organization prevented the complete application of Roman law to the needs of the Empire, with a serious limitation on Frederick's effective power. In vain were the ancient terms invoked to exalt him as sole legislator and arbiter of politics. The ironic saying appears truer: De tributo Caesaris nemo cœtabat, Omnes erant Caesares, nemo censum dabat. Already in May 1159 Frederick declared to Bishop Albert of Freising that before enduring the ruin of the Empire he would have preferred death in battle: maluimus honestum mortem inter hostes.

Fulvio Crosara

near Grottkau on 16 Oct. 1813, d. in Vienna on 20 Oct. 1887.

Coadjutor in the parish of Grottkau, suspended a divinis in 1843 for an anti-Roman article, he refused to submit and addressed an appeal to the clergy of Germany, urging them to break with the hierarchy, with Rome, with ecclesiastical celibacy and with the Latin liturgy, in order to form a German national Church on a synodal basis. Excommunicated and degraded by his bishop, R. founded in Jan. 1845 the German-Catholic community of Breslau, to which other 100 communities were soon added, drawn into schism by his skill as an agitator. The Confessio fidei that R. gave to the community of Breslau is rationalistic in tone, in full opposition to the teaching of the Church.

At the "Council" of Leipzig (22 March 1845) the movement begun by R. merged with the one promoted shortly before, in the parish of Scheidemühl, by J. Czerski: in the merger the rationalist tendency of R. prevailed over the more conservative one of Czerski. In the following years R., on propaganda journeys through Germany, was hailed as the new reformer by free thinkers, nationalists, liberal Protestants, and received with reserve by the various governments and by conservative Protestants. The new "reformer" lacked a true religious content, and this soon led to a break with the adherents of Czerski, not remedied even at the "Council" of Berlin in 1847.

In the upheavals of 1848 R. and his adherents acted in a radical sense, and in the reaction of 1849 R. had to go into exile in England. Having returned to Germany in 1861, he founded in 1863 in Frankfurt am Main the Religiöser Reformverein with a program in tune with free thought and anticlericalism.

Igino Rogger