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— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

Holy Roman Empire

~7 min read · Ch. 1 of 8
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  • The Holy Roman Empire was, in the words of the philosopher Voltaire, "in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." That sardonic line has clung to it for centuries. Yet this sprawling polity held together much of Central and Western Europe for roughly a thousand years. On the 25th of December 800, Pope Leo III placed a crown on the head of Charlemagne, the Frankish king, and named him Roman Emperor. The act revived an imperial title that had lapsed more than three centuries earlier, after the Western Roman Empire fell in 476. What followed was not a single nation but a loose, decentralized body that resisted easy definition. It eventually covered the lands of eleven modern countries, from the Netherlands to Slovenia. How could a realm with no fixed capital, an elected ruler, and no standing central administration last until 1806? Why did its emperors keep insisting they were heirs of ancient Rome? And how did its very weakness become a strange kind of strength?

  • Sacrum, meaning holy or consecrated, first attached itself to the empire in 1157 under Frederick I Barbarossa, who wanted to justify his ambitions over Italy and the Papacy. The phrase "Holy Roman Empire" appears from 1254 onward. Before that, the realm went by many labels. Scribes called it universum regnum, the whole kingdom, or imperium christianum, the Christian empire, or simply Imperium Romanum. The emperor's claim always rested on translatio imperii, the idea that supreme power had passed to him from the ancient rulers of Rome.

    By around 1500, ordinary sources often just called the realm "Germany." A decree following the Diet of Cologne in 1512 renamed it the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation," a form first seen in a document in 1474. The change coincided with the loss of imperial lands in Italy and Burgundy. Historians have since questioned how official that grand title ever was. Hermann Weisert found that documents were thirty times as likely to drop the national suffix as to include it. Peter Wilson notes that German historians invoke "of the German nation" far more readily than the empire's own inhabitants ever did. The naming did not end with the empire. Beginning in 1923, German nationalists and Nazi Party propaganda would label the Holy Roman Empire the "First" Reich, with later German states cast as the second and third.

  • On Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III restored the imperial title in the West for the first time in over three centuries. The pope had a problem in the East. In 797, Empress Irene had removed her son Constantine VI from the throne and declared herself sole ruler. Since the Latin Church recognized only a male Roman emperor as head of Christendom, Leo looked elsewhere, and Charlemagne's defense of papal lands against the Lombards made him the obvious choice. Charlemagne adopted the formula Renovatio imperii Romanorum, the renewal of the Roman Empire.

    Berengar I of Italy, the last emperor of the old Carolingian line, died in 924, and the title lapsed again. Its second revival came in 962, when Pope John XII crowned Otto of Saxony as emperor. Otto the Great had already proved himself in battle. In 951 he came to the aid of Queen Adelaide of Italy, defeating her enemies and marrying her. In 955 he crushed the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld. His coronation tied the German kingdom to Italy and the Papacy at once. Otto did not stop at being crowned. In 963 he deposed John XII and installed Leo VIII, asserting that an emperor could make and unmake popes. That assertion would haunt his successors.

  • Pope Gregory VII was determined to stop kings from appointing bishops, a practice the reform-minded Papacy increasingly saw as improper. King Henry IV, crowned emperor in 1084, refused to yield. He had his bishops excommunicate the pope, addressing him pointedly by his birth name "Hildebrand" rather than his papal name. Gregory answered by excommunicating the king, declaring him deposed, and releasing his subjects from their oaths of loyalty.

    In 1077, finding himself with almost no political support, Henry made the famous Walk to Canossa. He won a lifting of his excommunication at the price of public humiliation. The German princes had meanwhile elected a rival king, Rudolf of Swabia, and although Henry defeated him, more uprisings followed, including a rebellion by his own sons. The struggle, known as the Investiture Controversy, ended only after Henry's death, when his son Henry V reached the 1122 Concordat of Worms with the pope and bishops. The empire survived, but the king lost the sacral aura he had once carried. From then on, the pope and the German princes stood as major players in imperial politics.

  • Frederick II has been called the greatest of all the medieval German emperors, prized for his prestige and dynamic personality. He led the Sixth Crusade in 1228 while under excommunication, and it ended in negotiations and a temporary restoration of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Yet his reign marked a turning point toward the breakup of central rule. His focus lay south of the Alps, so he bought the cooperation of Germany's princes with sweeping grants.

    The 1220 Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis handed bishops a bundle of regalia, including tariffs, coining, and the right to build fortifications. The 1232 Statutum in favorem principum extended these privileges to secular territories. That same document called the German dukes domini terrae, owners of their lands, a striking shift in terminology. From 1232 the emperor's vassals held a veto over imperial legislation, and any new law had to win the princes' approval. The Mainz Landfriede of 1235, also called the Constitutio Pacis, became one of the empire's basic laws and required the princes to share the burden of local government. Frederick's grandfather had built on older foundations. The first imperial Landfrieden, a peace mechanism meant to abolish private feuds, had been issued in 1103 under Henry IV at Mainz.

  • Charles IV issued the Golden Bull in 1356, and it remained valid until 1806. The decree fixed the composition and procedures of the college of prince-electors, the Kurfürsten. From then on the emperor would be chosen by a majority of the seven electors rather than by unanimous consent. The electoral title became hereditary, and electors gained the right to mint coins and exercise jurisdiction. The bull even recommended that their sons learn German, Latin, Italian, and Czech.

  • Major measures for reform launched at the 1495 Reichstag at Worms. A new court, the Reichskammergericht, was created to stand largely independent of the emperor, funded by a new tax called the Gemeine Pfennig. To rival it, Maximilian established the Reichshofrat in Vienna in 1497. The two courts ran in parallel for the rest of the empire's life. At the same Diet, the Reception of Roman Law was formalized, making Roman law binding in German courts except where it clashed with local statutes.

    Maximilian was described as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 250 years who ruled as well as reigned. He combined the Court Chancery and Imperial Chancery in 1502 and created a general treasury, the Hofkammer, at Innsbruck in 1496. With his humanists he revived old symbols, rediscovering Tacitus's Germania and reinventing the female figure of Germania as the virtuous mother of the empire. The printing industry and a new postal system, the first modern one in the world, let ideas spread, and the empire's decentralized structure made censorship hard to enforce. After two decades of reform, the emperor remained first among equals while sharing power with the estates through common institutions. Maximilian's loyalty to Augsburg, home of the Fugger, Welser, and Baumgartner families, helped make that city the capital of early capitalism.

  • On the 6th of August 1806, the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, abdicated and formally dissolved the empire. The collapse followed Napoleon's defeat of his forces at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine from German client states loyal to France. Francis, who had taken the title Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1804, declared the tie binding him to the German Reich to be broken and laid down the imperial crown.

    The empire had once held vast numbers of people. Charlemagne's realm may have had as many as 20 million, and Peter Wilson estimates around 25 million across the empire and Imperial Italy in 1700. The demographic disaster of the Thirty Years' War cut so deep that by one estimate the population did not exceed its 1618 level again until 1750. Francis's House of Habsburg-Lorraine outlived the empire, reigning as Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary until 1918. Only two princely member states survive as monarchies today, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Principality of Liechtenstein. Of its Free Imperial Cities, just Hamburg and Bremen still stand as states within Germany.

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Common questions

What was the Holy Roman Empire?

The Holy Roman Empire was a polity that controlled much of Central and Western Europe, headed by the Holy Roman Emperor and marked by a decentralized political structure. It began in either 800 or 962 and lasted until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.

When did the Holy Roman Empire begin and end?

The Holy Roman Empire developed in the Early Middle Ages, beginning in either 800 or 962, and it lasted a millennium until 1806. Its dissolution came on the 6th of August 1806, when Emperor Francis II abdicated.

Who was the first Holy Roman Emperor?

On the 25th of December 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, the Frankish king, as Roman Emperor. The title lapsed by 924 and was revived in 962 when Pope John XII crowned Otto of Saxony, known as Otto the Great, as emperor.

Why is it called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation?

A decree following the Diet of Cologne in 1512 changed the name to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, a form first used in a document in 1474. The change coincided with the loss of imperial territories in Italy and Burgundy and the rising importance of the German Imperial Estates.

What did Voltaire say about the Holy Roman Empire?

Voltaire remarked sardonically that the body called the Holy Roman Empire was "in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." The quip has been quoted as a famous assessment of the empire's name and nature.

How was the Holy Roman Emperor chosen?

The imperial office was traditionally elected by a handful of prince-electors and electors-spiritual. The Golden Bull of 1356, issued by Charles IV, fixed the college of seven prince-electors and ruled that the emperor be chosen by a majority rather than unanimous consent.

What countries were part of the Holy Roman Empire?

For most of its history the empire covered the modern Czech Republic, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Switzerland, Slovenia, Germany, and Austria, plus large parts of eastern France, northern and central Italy, and western Poland.

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