Research has rejected Ranke’s hypothesis that the Reformation emasculated the Holy Roman Empire and thwarted the emergence of a German nation state for centuries. However, current explanations of the Empire’s cohesion that emphasise the effects of outside pressure or political rituals are not entirely satisfactory. This article contributes to a fuller explanation by examining a factor that so far has been overlooked: monetary policies. Monetary conditions within the Empire encouraged its members to cooperate with each other and the emperor. Moreover, cross-cutting cleavages – i.e. the fact that both Catholics and Protestants were split among themselves in monetary-policy questions – allowed actors on different sides of the confessional divide to find common ground. The paper analyses the extent to which cleavages affected the negotiations about the creation of a common currency between the 1520s and the 1550s, and whether monetary policies helped bridging the religious divide, thus increasing the Empire’s political cohesion.

中文翻译：

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“亲爱的古老神圣罗马王国，它是如何凝聚在一起的？” 改革开放时期的货币政策、交叉分歧与政治凝聚力

研究驳斥了兰克的假设，即宗教改革削弱了神圣罗马帝国并阻碍了几个世纪以来德意志民族国家的出现。然而，目前对帝国凝聚力的解释，强调外部压力或政治仪式的影响，并不完全令人满意。本文通过研究迄今为止被忽视的一个因素：货币政策，为更全面的解释做出了贡献。帝国内部的货币条件鼓励其成员相互​​合作并与皇帝合作。此外，跨领域的分歧——即天主教徒和新教徒在货币政策问题上相互分裂的事实——允许信仰分歧的不同方面的参与者找到共同点。