The holy dimension of the Holy Roman Empire. Representations of power in Germany between war and peace (1648-1664)

If the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) are no longer seen as the German "national catastrophe," the historians still hesitate to acknowledge the character of a nation and the existence of a specific political identity in the Holy Empire in the XVIIth century. This article is a contribution to a new history of the political representations of the Holy Empire, between the Treatises of Westphalia (1648) and the Turk attack (1664). The Turk assault on the borders of the Empire aroused indeed a large debate about the nature of the political power. Setting a complex of antagonisms against the Turks, the Germans defined a specific political identity, in which the condemnation of the Reason of State combined with the respect for law and for the ius gentium. This debate was not only conjectural. The depersonalization of the Imperial power combined with a personalization of the princely power and with the emergence of cameralism.