Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire

In the Holy Roman Empire ''no prince... can forbid men passage in the common road'', wrote the English jurist John Selden. In practice, moving through one the most fractured landscapes in human history was rarely as straightforward as suggested by Selden''s account of the German ''liberty of passage''.Across the Old Reich, mobile populations-from emperors to peasants-defied attempts to channel the...