HistoryToday

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

By Peter H. Wilson
Published in History Today, Volume 66, Issue 4, April 2016

The millennium-long history of the Holy Roman Empire has been wilfully misunderstood
since the rise of the nation state. But can its past shed light on Europe’s future?

For more than a thousand years, following its foundation on Christmas Day 800, the Holy
Roman Empire embodied the ideal that Europe was a single pacific Christian order upheld
by the emperor as pre-eminent monarch and guardian of the papacy. More directly, it
provided the political framework for what are now Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
Liechtenstein, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, as well as
most of Italy and parts of Denmark, France and Poland. Few of these countries were more
than geographical expressions for most of the Empire’s existence and none occupied its
present borders. Yet it is these countries and their neighbours that now shape how Europe’s
deeper past is remembered, rather than the Empire, which has largely been written out of
history or simply reduced to Germany’s Middle Ages. The Empire’s transnational character
already jarred with outside observers by the 18th century, prompting the French philosopher
Voltaire to quip that it was ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire’. Its demise in 1806,
amid the Napoleonic Wars, reinforced the belief that it had outlived its purpose and had long
been rendered irrelevant by the rise of sovereign national states.

Europe’s fragmentation into more clearly demarcated polities was matched by similar trends
in map-making and historical writing, which presented political development as a linear
process of consolidation around ‘national’ capitals. Historical atlases marked the delineation
of national frontiers by depicting each country as a solid block of colour, which expanded or
contracted with the acquisition or loss of territory. Historians chronicled their country’s past
as (usually heroic) efforts of supposedly far-sighted monarchs that forged unity, founded
institutions and generally gave coherence by passing laws, standardising weights and
measures and similar actions. The later broadening of historical writing to include more
social and economic themes did not fundamentally change this story, but instead simply
added ordinary folk to the ranks of national state-builders.

Charlegmagne as Holy Roman Emperor with the imperial orb and sword, French, 15th century

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The Empire was neglected because it did not conform to this historical trajectory.
Charlemagne, the first emperor, at least fitted later ideals of a powerful ruler. Already king
of the Franks after 768, Charlemagne rapidly expanded the Frankish realm from France and
the Rhineland to encompass north-west Europe, central Germany and all of Italy. It was these
successes that convinced Pope Leo III that the Frankish king would be a more effective
protector than the distant Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. Leo used a temporary
interregnum in Constantinople, between the reigns of Irene of Athens and Nicephorus, as an
excuse to ‘translate’, or transfer, what was still considered the ancient Roman imperial title
westwards and confer it on Charlemagne. His death in 814 was followed within a few decades
by a series of civil wars among the Frankish elite and a succession of partitions between 843
and 870 that, superficially at least, split the realm into distinct French, German and Italian
kingdoms. The periodic refusal or inability of various popes to crown one of these kings as
emperor contributed to the impression of imperial collapse.

***

For later commentators, the Empire’s history now became a largely German story, as the
Ottonian family ruling the German kingdom since 919 persuaded Pope John XII to confer
the imperial title on them in 962, after 36 years without a crowned emperor. What followed
was, for most German historians since the early 19th century, a source of national shame.
Rather than staying north of the Alps to forge a centralised monarchy, German kings were
repeatedly distracted by the chimera of imperial glory, launching seemingly quixotic
expeditions to seek coronation in Rome, interfere in papal affairs or go on crusades. Each
time, it appeared, more royal and imperial rights would be bartered away in return for the
temporary support of the German nobility. Thus, the Empire appeared to evolve in entirely
the opposite direction to the European ‘norm’, centrifugally as powers and prerogatives were
devolved to nobles and towns, rather than centripetally through the concentration of authority
in the hands of a national royal government.

The non-German-speaking parts of the Empire, such as Bohemia and Burgundy, ‘naturally’
evolved as autonomous countries, while the German lands fragmented into a mosaic of petty
principalities. Even the accumulation of unprecedented territories under the Habsburgs by
the mid-15th century failed to arrest this apparent ‘decline’, because they were allegedly too
‘Austrian’ and pursued their own dynastic interests. Worse, according to the sharply
Protestant-inflected historiography after the 1840s, the Habsburgs’ refusal to abandon
Catholicism led them to squander the opportunity allegedly presented by the Reformation to
forge unity through founding a German national church. It was thus left to Prussia to clean
up the mess by ejecting Austria and unifying Germany in a succession of short wars between
1864 and 1871.

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TIMELINE: THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

The warlike character of this Second Reich (Empire), followed by Hitler’s genocidal Third,
prompted German historians after the 1960s to view the Holy Roman Empire more
favourably. This positive reappraisal has been largely confined to the Empire’s last three
centuries and has remained within the broadly national lines established in the 19th century.
A major element in this is the fixation with the suffix ‘of the German nation’, which was
added to the formula ‘Holy Roman Empire’ in 1474. Despite recent claims to the contrary,
this was not adopted formally and most official documents simply referred to ‘the Empire’
without any mention of it being particularly ‘German’. However, the partial exclusion of
many non-German-speaking regions from the new institutions emerging around 1500 further
encouraged later 20th-century historians to reduce the Empire to Germany, with some even
calling it the first German nation state. These new institutions were intended to integrate the
various principalities and cities into a common framework which appears, to many recent
commentators, as federal and, in the words of one, Peter-Claus Hartmann, even a possible
blueprint for a more federalised European Union.

Traditional cartographical representative of the Empire as a patchwork,

in contrast to other, supposedly unified, European states

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The new, more positive interpretation has gained some traction in the public consciousness
in Germany, not least thanks to some well-funded and genuinely popular exhibitions staged
in 2006, marking the bicentenary of the Empire’s demise. Nonetheless, the older negative
verdict of the Empire as a failed nation state still predominates, especially beyond Germany:
assuming anyone pays it attention at all. This is unfortunate, because the Empire’s actual
history is both far more interesting and potentially much more relevant to contemporary
issues than either of the established views would suggest. The only way to recover that past
is to jettison the nationalist lens and to see the Empire on its own terms.

***

This means tackling the word ‘empire’ head on. The experience of European colonialism,
together with imperial projects in Europe itself, like those of Napoleon and Hitler, have all
firmly equated ‘empire’ with ‘hegemony’. Empires, it is assumed, expand from a core region
to dominate more ‘peripheral’ ones, whose inhabitants must serve the interests of the imperial
people. The Holy Roman Empire only briefly and superficially corresponded to this model.
Charlemagne’s initial expansion was certainly ‘imperial’ in the conventional sense of
conquering and absorbing new territories. Likewise, the Empire’s eastward expansion
through migration and colonisation during the 12th century was often violent and partly
imperialistic, though it also involved assimilation and accommodation and it proceeded
almost entirely without involvement or encouragement from the emperor.

Throughout, the Empire lacked a stable core and never possessed a single capital. During the
era of Carolingian (Frankish) rule the imperial title passed between different branches of
Charlemagne’s immediate descendants, including those based in Italy. Rome remained the
fav-oured place for imperial coronations until the mid-15th century, but was never considered
a political capital. Charlemagne already used numerous palaces, notably at Aachen, but also
throughout the Rhineland, along the River Main and across northern France. The Carolingian
line persisted in France until 987, around 40 years after the family died out in Italy and over
80 years after its extinction in Germany. France was already evolving as a distinct kingdom,
though it took several centuries for this to be articulated clearly. French kings were still
serious candidates as potential emperors in the 13th, 14th, 16th and 17th centuries. They, too,
claimed Charlemagne’s legacy, though in ways which came to differ sharply from how he
was remembered in the Empire.

The gradual separation of France significantly reduced the actual extent of the Empire,
though it still encompassed the German, Italian and Burgundian kingdoms: the latter also
under a Carolingian line of kings until 1032. The exact relationship of these different parts
was never clearly established, not least because contemporaries used the term ‘kingdom’ in
multiple ways.

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The modern conception of sovereignty lay far in the future, only emerging slowly in the 13th
century, as theorists argued that kings were ‘emperors in their own kingdoms’. At that point,
sovereignty was always singular, applied only to the writer’s own monarch, whereas all
others titled ‘king’ were considered somehow under the emperor’s jurisdiction. Even those
kings who were considered sovereign still formally recognised the emperor as Europe’s
premier monarch.

***

The process of selecting kings was equally fluid. Across Europe, later historians compiled
lines of kings, implying a form of hereditary succession that was entirely alien to those
actually involved. Royal genealogies were already constructed during the Carolingian era,
but were about demonstrating the status of the current king and his relations, rather than
recording hereditary rights. Even the Habsburgs, the Empire’s ultimate dynasts, ruling
continuously as emperors from 1452, included the Carolingians, Caesars and Trojans among
their ancestors. Kings might designate sons as successors, but any transition of rule always
required the approval of immediate relations and other great lords. While the French
monarchy eventually entrenched direct hereditary rule, things remained less clear in the
Empire’s three main kingdoms of Germany, Italy and Burgundy. Otto I’s victory over the
Magyars in 955 and his subsequent invasion of Italy established the pre-eminence of the
German kingdom within the Empire and ensured his coronation as emperor in 962.
Henceforth, whoever was German king was the leading candidate to be crowned emperor.
The Empire’s three kingdoms remained distinct, but related in hierarchical order. German
kings automatically assumed the Italian royal title, even without a coronation. The same
arrangement was extended to Burgundy after 1032.

The process of selecting each German king remained rooted within Germany, but without
clear rules before the 14th century. Participants did not view hereditary and elective
monarchy as clearly distinguished constitutional categories, instead placing far more
emphasis on the personal qualities of the potential candidates. Actual practice was
determined by a political culture based on personal presence rather than formal rules fixed in
writing. Participation was already restricted to a small elite of leading families, several of
which were closely related to the most likely candidates.

This culture of ‘presence’ was intended to minimise violence by allowing discrete

negotiations brokered by intermediaries, with female relations often playing a key role in
mediating such discussions. Decisions were then enacted in more formalised rituals, staged
as if they were expressions of spontaneous agreement. Participation signalled consent.
Absence could indicate disagreement, but in a way which allowed opponents to accept a
decision later without losing face.

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The system was far from perfect and several kings faced rebellions, including from their own
sons. However, there were only 18 rival or ‘anti-kings’ between 983 and 1410 and five of
these were during Henry IV’s tumultuous reign (1056-1106). Most anti-kings appeared as
opponents of incumbent kings and only four emerged directly from the process of selecting
a successor. Of these four ‘double elections’, only those of 1198 and 1314 resulted in serious
violence, while in the case of the other two, one rival never actually arrived to take up his
claim (Alfonso X of Castile, 1257); the other (Jobst of Moravia, 1410) died before he could
pose a serious challenge.

The double-headed eagle, symbol of the Holy Roman Empire, 1516

The elective character did not prevent long lines of kings from the same family during most
of the Empire’s existence: Carolingians (800-911), Ottonians (919-1024), Salians (1024-
1125), Staufers (1138-1254), Luxembourgs (1347-1437) and Habsburgs (1438-1806). Even
the age of the ‘little kings’ (1254-1347) saw greater continuity in terms of institutions and
political culture than is often thought. The Empire’s record for royal stability was no worse
and often better than that in Europe’s more conventional monarchies such as England,
Scotland or Spain.

The elective character emerged more clearly during the 13th century, before being formalised
in the Golden Bull of 1356, which reduced the number of princes involved to seven ‘electors’.
Traditionally, this process has been regarded as exemplifying the Empire’s supposedly
centrifugal political development. In fact, it was encouraged by the Staufers and later
Luxembourg monarchs, who used it as a way to both reduce the number of lords involved in
royal succession and to end papal meddling in the Empire’s politics.

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***

The Empire had never been a unitary state in the sense of possessing a single, uniform
administrative or legal system. The Carolingians already endowed assets to the church and
to secular lords. The Ottonians continued this practice, but the stabilisation of the Empire’s
outer frontiers by the early 11th century reduced the opportunities for further grants from
conquered land. Endowments evolved as fiefs, held in return for providing personal and
material assistance to the emperor, notably on military campaigns. Throughout, however, the
core of this system was a basic division of labour between the lords and the monarch.

The lords were responsible for supervision of local affairs and daily life, freeing the emperor
to concentrate on the imperial mission. The latter entailed protecting the papacy and
upholding peace and justice largely through symbolic acts, including setting a personal
example as a pious, moral ruler. Importantly, all parties subscribed to this ideal. The
numerous disputes between monarchs and individual lords reflected personal, rather than
constitutional disagreements. Imperial government thus remained remarkably cheap, as the
costs of maintaining the peace and resolving inhabitants’ problems were all borne directly by
lords, towns and villages.

Emperors continually sanctioned and extended local autonomy by granting charters to enable
lords and communities to discharge their local responsibilities, as well as to reward specific
instances of loyalty or service. The result was a complex web of specific local rights and
immunities, mediating the relationship of each lord or community to its neighbours, the rest
of the Empire and to the emperor. This relationship was always hierarchical, but grew rapidly
more so across the 12th and 13th centuries as the Staufers and their successors deliberately
expanded the number of senior lords, who now emerged more clearly as an elite known
collectively as ‘the princes’. These enjoyed the privilege of ‘imperial immediacy’, placing
themselves and their jurisdictions in a direct relationship to the emperor.

It was these jurisdictions that were increasingly ‘territorialised’, in the sense that they were
fixed geographically and became the patchwork of different principalities which feature on
most modern maps of the Empire. Lesser lords and communities within these principalities
possessed only ‘mediate’ status, in that their relationship to the emperor was mediated by one
or more intervening levels of jurisdiction. Around 80 towns emerged as imperial free cities,
thanks to special privileges exempting them from princely jurisdiction. Though united by
their common possession of immediacy, the princes were far from equal, because successive
emperors used their prerogatives to expand the range of princely titles. Thus, they retained
some hold over the elite by manipulating competition for status among the princes.

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Charlemagne and Leo III on the frontispiece of Victor Hugo's Legend of the Ages, 1886

This did not seal off the local level from the Empire, however, because all lordly and
communal privileges were still connected to the wider web of legal immunities and
jurisdictions. Moreover, institutional development at territorial and often even local level
remained closely bound to the wider imperial structure. For example, princes developed
institutions quite similar to those in other European monarchies, such as treasuries,
chancelleries, law courts and the like. However, these were established to enable them to
discharge their part of the Empire’s division of labour.

This interaction between imperial, territorial and local developments accelerated during the
period known as ‘imperial reform’, stretching from the 1420s into the 1570s, with a peak of
activity between about 1480 and 1521. The emperor, princes and free cities collectively
created a new range of imperial institutions, including the Reichstag (imperial diet), various
other consultative assemblies, a supreme court, plus mechanisms for upholding the public
peace, tax and military mobilisation structures. The process consolidated the Empire as a
‘mixed monarchy’, where the emperor shared the exercise of most powers with a long
hierarchy of immediate princes and free cities. The institutions counter-balanced the growth
of the Habsburgs, who amassed an unprecedented collection of hereditary possessions around
Austria, Bohemia and Burgundy. These gave them far more resources than any previous
ruling house and, for this reason, they retained a monopoly on what was still an elective
imperial title, since they were now the only viable candidates as emperors.

***

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Meanwhile, the new imperial structures promoted further developments at territorial and
local level. For example, the obligation to pay taxes and raise troops for the Empire’s
collective security encouraged princely and civic authorities to create new fiscal structures
within their jurisdictions. The Empire thus remained rooted in society in ways almost
completely overlooked by 19th- and 20th-century historians, who treated the individual
principalities as if they were separate states. The Empire’s inhabitants identified with it
precisely because the wider imperial structure guaranteed their own local privileges and
autonomy. Their sense of belonging was multi-layered, from household, parish, community,
territory, region to Empire. Attachment to the imperial level was not necessarily weakest. On
the contrary, the emperor’s relative distance could make him appear more benign than more
immediate authorities, especially as the imperial Supreme Court and other institutions often
intervened successfully to preserve local rights against tyrannical princes or spendthrift city
councils.

It is important not to over-romanticise these relationships. The Empire’s political and legal
structures certainly retained flexibility, even in the late 18th century, but they were also
deeply conservative and tied to an equally conservative social order, characterised by
corporate rather than individual rights. Many of these rights were surprisingly progressive,
such as legal equality for the three Christian confessions (Catholicism, Lutheranism,
Calvinism), officially recognised from 1648 following the horrors of the Thirty Years War,
as well as relatively effective protection for the Empire’s substantial Jewish minority.
Women also enjoyed far more extensive rights than those generally found elsewhere in
Europe. Nonetheless, these rights were always particular and local, rather than equal or
universal, in that they derived from each person’s place of residence and social status.
Moreover, attempts to fix them with ever greater precision in a growing corpus of written
laws significantly retarded the Empire’s ability to respond to the underlying social and
economic change that accelerated across the 18th century.

Many of these arrangements outlived the Empire’s dissolution in 1806, contributing to the
difficulties liberals and nationalists encountered during the 19th century, as they tried to
construct a united Germany inhabited by people who were supposed to feel uniformly
‘German’. It is here that the Empire’s history is most instructive for the current debates on
identity and on Europe’s future. The Empire shows that an effective polity and a cohesive
society do not always require people to surrender local identity and autonomy. The challenge
for today is to find ways of achieving this, while retaining the benefits of the democratic,
equal, uniform rights and opportunities secured across the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Peter H. Wilson is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and
author of The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (Allen Lane,
2016).

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http://www.historytoday.com/peter-h-wilson/holy-roman-empire
Consulted: May 9, 2016

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