Этносы и «нации» в Западной Европе в Средние века и раннее Новое время

The idea of legal foundations of national identity have always been a key point for the English society. Though generally accepted, during the late Tudor and early Stuart epoch this idea was specified in several ways due to heterogeneity of English law. Civil law and common law courts, equity and prerogative jurisdiction, canon law and statutory law constituted a complicate system with no totally dominative element. Such a system reflected the very character of the English composite monarchy. Nevertheless, each branch of the English juridical system and socio-professional corporations formed by common law judges and civilians suggested its own way of development and structuring the monarchy comprising kingdoms of England and Scotland, dominion of Ireland, principality ofWales and lesser composites. Each legal corporation, experiencing the period of active social and intellectual development, pretended to be an arbiter for the politics of the crown. Both civilians and common lawyers believed their own legal system the best means of further integration within the Stuart monarchy. While common law discourse proposed definitely anglocentric scheme, civilians of the Doctors’ commons tended to advance «British», or «imperial» constructs with quite equal distribution of ethnical, political and cultural influence.

III. «SELVES» AND «OTHERS»: CONFLICTS AND COOPERATION

III.I «THE FOREIGNERS» IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS OF THE GERMAN TERRITORIAL STATES OF THE XVITH CENTURY

The notion of the national identity has been used in different way in Germany of the XVI^th century in respect of all-German or local level. Whereas one finds the notion of the German nation in the political rhetoric of the German princes, in the anti-Roman polemic of the religious reformers and the literary works of the Humanists, one observes on local level a self-identification referred to a concrete country: Bavarian, Saxon, Württenbergian.

The paper deals with the position of the foreigner employees in the central administration ofthe German territorial states in the 16^th century. One applied the terms "Ausländer», «Fremder», «auswärtiger Diener» to these employees, and the immigrants from other German countries were mostly meant by such terms.

The deficiency for the specialists, in particular for educated jurists and managers, caused a demand for foreigner employees. This deficiency was particularly acute in the territorial states where the universities had arisen at later date, as it was, for instance, in Brandenburg. The Reformation has contributed too for the multiplying of the foreigner employees, because the criteria of the religious confession became more important as the privilege to belong to local elite.

Enrollment of the foreigners ran against the opposition of the estates, especially of the nobility, who made a stand for the traditional privilege of the natives to fill important posts in the administration. The protests of the nobility had also a social component, for the most part of the foreigner jurists came from the bourgeoisie.

The princes assisted the skilled managers in their establishment in the country by granting them land and by favoring their marriage with the representatives of the local nobility and urban patriciate.

In addition to the self-identification regarding the country, the author examines the self-identification of the professional and religious groups which united people above the frontiers of the territorial states, for instance, licensed jurists, the Catholics or vice versa the Protestants.

III.II. CROATIAN NOBILITY IN STATE AND CHURCH SERVICE IN THE KINGDOM OF HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE XVITH CENTURY (IVAN KITONIC: A PORTRAIT IN THE TIME CONTEXT)