(12) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

 

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

The thousand year Reich, subsequently styled as the First Reich – which means I’ve featured all three Reichs in my special mentions.

It was, as Voltaire famously quipped, neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.

The Holy Roman Empire had some substance to it, but also embodied an idea – or worse, a snub by Pope Leo III to the eastern Roman Empire and its empress Irene by crowning Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, in what must surely rank as a medieval meme.

Of course, underlying that idea was the enduring influence or template of the western Roman Empire, a legacy which many in the European kingdoms or nations subsequent to it sought to revive, even at the expense of the eastern Roman Empire.

That idea had some force to it under Charlemagne, who had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire – although his empire should more accurately be styled as the Frankish Empire- but it soon fell apart after it was divided between his sons.

From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose. Historians tend to distinguish the Frankish Empire from the Holy Roman Empire proper, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down that thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the idea had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. It was still a snub to the eastern Roman empire, who were deeply insulted by the Pope crowning Roman Emperors – although in fairness, “the Pope was the only one of these people who actually lived in Rome itself” so “it could be argued he was the most entitled to decide who was Emperor of the Romans”.

The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, and under him, the idea had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

That reflected the internal struggles within the Empire – with German nobles, with Italian cities or communes, and above all, with the Papacy. “The Empire and the Papacy, both competing for secular and religious power over all Christendom without the means to enforce it, essentially destroyed each other’s credibility. This was not helped by a fairly consistent policy of Emperors to neglect the basis of their power in Germany to grasp at its shadow in Italy – because in order for a German king to become Emperor, he had to go to Italy and be crowned by the pope”.

From there, the empire that had originated as a meme essentially devolved back into one – falling into irrelevancy or worse, the joke of an empire “that mostly clung to life because the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor and the rest of Europe was willing to humor him”. As Marx quipped, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

And above all, it was incredibly convoluted, both in history and structure – an emperor elected by powerful regional lords and clergy, in an empire that went from 300 to 1800 “sovereign kingdoms, duchies, free cities, and other entities”.

Hence Voltaire’s famous quip about it – and Napoleon doing away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.