The Macro-Political Contexts in Lindau

Abstract

The events of 7 November 1626 obviously unfolded within complex, multiple contexts.¹ The following two chapters explore many of these contexts. Generally, while historians recognize that no singular context can either determine or explain historical events, they neverthess commonly distinguish and classify contexts. Most common is the distinction between those contexts which are considered ‘material’ and those which are deemed ‘ideological’, a distinction which simply reflects the established dichotomy, conceptualized variously as the difference between ‘explanation’ and ‘interpretation’, between ‘social science’ and ‘humanism’, between ‘social history’ and ‘cultural history’, and so forth. The method widely associated with Quentin Skinner, who advocates a careful distinction between practical and ideological contexts, hinges on much the same dichotomy. Moreover, Skinner’s method, inspite of a certain theoretical neatness, is difficult to implement.² In reality, practical and ideological contexts are hopelessly intertwined, an observation which has prompted Thomas Robisheaux’s criticism of those historians of the long sixteenth century in Germany who tend to disengage matters social or cultural from the political.³