Conclusion

TL;DRAbstract

Individual Estates — generally nobles, clergy, and burghers — together constituted the early modern "nation" in Western and Central Continental Europe, with the bodies politic in areas otherwise as diverse as Lower Austria and Burgundy bearing remarkable similarities. The imperial Diet at Regensburg seated nobles, prelates, and delegates of the immediate imperial towns. As a result of their centuries-long struggle against the territorial princes, their correspondingly complex constitutional history, and their relatively late arrival (ca. 1550) as an immediate imperial corporation, the Free Imperial Knights had no direct representation in the Diet. The pedigreed Catholics among their number, in combination with the Church that they dominated, nevertheless made up one of the most exclusive corporations in the Empire. Through their control alone of Mainz, they claimed the Empire's ranking electoral dignity and thereby an unusually privileged place in the traditional "nation." If that were

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