European Monarchs

Europe in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period was in a state of transition, consolidating from a collection of fiefs, small territories and countries with fairly fluid borders into nation-states.

Many of the countries we take for granted today, Spain, Italy and Germany for example, did not actually exist as political entities, and others had different borders than is the case now. Even France, one of the earliest states to coalesce, did not include the regions of Lorraine, Brittany, Savoy and Navarre, which are now within its limits.

The people of the landmass we consider to be Europe thought of themselves as living within ‘Christendom’, a combined religious-political concept that, in theory, was subject spiritually to the Pope, and looked to the Holy Roman Emperor for leadership against the ‘Turk’ – the expanding Ottoman Empire, that by the mid-seventeenth century, was knocking at the gates of Vienna. The Renaissance, with its development of new political theories, and the Reformation, which challenged the Catholic Church, smashed this concept of unity, and redrew the map.

Monarchy, that is the embodiment of sovereign power in a single person, usually by inheritance under a variety of conventions, was the norm throughout Europe. Lists of these monarchs by territory are in the articles below.