Re-evaluating the Thirty Years' War
The relationship between adversaries of Europe's Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the decades preceding the conflict has been conventionally described as hostile. Yet it may be that the Catholic world and the Holy Roman Empire had a more complex interaction than generally assumed. The CIKME project aimed to find out. Funded under the EU's Marie Curie programme for researcher development, the study ran for two years to July 2013. The team investigated the relationship between sides during the decades before the war and its early stages. The aim was to provide a new understanding of the context, focusing on knowledge exchange across spatial boundaries, through both methodological and empirical research. Outcomes included an international workshop, and subsequent publications. A further result was a reframing of the relationship under question, according to methodological tools. An exploratory panel was organised, with preparation of a follow-up publication. Specific findings included a deeper understanding of the role of brokers, and of German court physicians resident in Rome, in fostering contact. Confessionalism has been discarded as an explanation, and replaced with a more complex understanding. The project also deconstructed the concept of Roman universalism, by studying the multiple processes that supported it. The centrality of Rome was re-examined within the framework of a complex relationship.A spin-off outcome of the research was approval and funding for another EU project. CIKME yielded a better and more complex understanding of the relationship between sides during the Thirty Years' War.
Keywords
Thirty Years' War, information exchange, Roman ideals, Catholic, Holy Roman Empire
