Imperial immediacy

Imperial immediacy (German: Reichsfreiheit or Reichsunmittelbarkeit) was a privileged constitutional and political status rooted in German feudal law under which the Imperial estates of the Holy Roman Empire such as Imperial cities, prince-bishoprics, and secular principalities, and such individuals as the Imperial knights, were declared free from the authority of any local lord, having no suzerain but the Holy Roman Emperor directly, without any intermediary authority: immediate = im- (negatory prefix) + mediate (in the sense of a third-party go-between, mediator); immediacy also applied to later institutions of the Empire such as the Diet (Reichstag), the Imperial Chamber of Justice and the Aulic Council.

The granting of immediacy began in the Early Middle Ages, and for those bishops, abbots, and cities then the main beneficiaries of that status, immediacy could be exacting and often meant subjection to the fiscal, military, and hospitality demands of their overlord, the Emperor. However, from the mid-13th century onwards, with the gradually diminishing importance of the Emperor, whose authority to exercise power increasingly limited to the enforcement of legislative acts promulgated by the Imperial Diet, entities privileged by imperial immediacy eventually found themselves vested with considerable rights and powers previously exercised by the emperor.

As established by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the possession of imperial immediacy conferred a particular form of territorial authority known as territorial superiority (Landeshoheit or superioritas territorialis in contemporary documents)^[1][2], to be understood today as a limited sovereignty.