The term immunity (from Latin immunitas, originally meaning freedom from public duties, munera) generally indicates freedom from interference in a specific legal area. Persons who enjoy immunity, as well as potentially other people or objects, thereby are not subject to the authority of others (especially their norms and powers of execution). Immunity appears in a variety of contexts in the early modern period.

(a) In the Holy Roman Empire, the districts that enjoyed immunity in the Middle Ages persisted in the early modern period: if one proved able to a…