The Wikipedia article states it was an empire but reading about it, it seems like it was more a collection of states under one nominal emperor, who kind of let the states run their own things as long as they paid tribute, at least by the end.
So was it a real unified state? Was it thought of the way Russia was to the Soviet Union. Where Russia was the real power and the other subjects of the Soviet Union, Estonia, Ukraine, Modovia etc were just subject areas behind the real power the Russians?
“This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
It lasted 844 years, so your question may have different answers depending on the era. In generally, it was more loosely organized than other states of the time.
The Empire was in a serious frenemy situation with the Papacy.
Empire means having an emperor. There isn’t a strict definition on how much or little control the Emperor has. So both the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar, who had a lot of power, as the later Holy Roman Empire that followed after Christianization, were Empire, though the latter was structured quite different.
Russia in relation to the USSR was an empire with a Tsar that ruled already other countries, then changed from Empire to socalism (and then Stalinism), and continued ruling over the previously “aquired” countries, plus grabbing a few more after WWII in the Eastern bloc alliance - indepent countries, but with ideologically similar regimes, and Soviet troops showing up to prevent a change of regime.
That’s not really comparable to the Holy Roman Empire, where the states conquered under the real Roman Empire fell away and apart after the fall of Western Rome, and then got asembled into something with a fancy name, electing emperors by a few governors.
It was a secular German confederacy, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
At times, sorta.
At times, sorta.
Wikipedia recounts the history in detail, but there were a number of distinct stages.
1.) Carolingian revival of the old title of Emperor, deriving from the Western Roman Empire. Sort of pre-HRE HRE, it was a unified dynastic state, at first in fact, then in theory, terminating with Charles III, Charlemagne’s great-grandson. Though the greatest concentration of Carolongian dynastic power were traditionally in Neustria ( northern France essentially ) and Austrasia ( what would become Lotharingia and German Franconia ), the Carolingians held either personal or imperial estates in every corner of the empire and the higher nobility also at times showed a similar lack of geographic specificity. Italy was very central to the realm and in particular to the imperial title. Emperors such as Lothar I and Louis III were based out of Italy.
2.) Post-Carolingian, pre-Ottonian emperors. Short period of squabbling petty dynasts mostly from Italy and Provence, striving for power in Italy.
3.) The Ottonian empire. Birth of the HRE. As the Ottonians originated in northern Germany and imposed themselves on Italy by force to claim the imperial title, the state remained very Germanocentric. The Ottonians and the Salians that followed had a broad base of territorial power in Germany, but less so elsewhere. The inheritance of the kingdom of Burgundy at Arles ( the third crown in the HRE’s hand ) brought a wide swath of territory under their technical jurisdiction, but in practice very little direct control until the Hohenstaufen inherited some land there in the 12th century.
The Ottonians and Salians, though they leaned on some regions more than others within Germany, were also not territorially constrained in Germany. Imperial estates and church estates ( available to imperial use pretty freely until the investiture contest ) reached every corner of that kingdom and the emperors remained peripatetic. Though the notion of elected emperors had arisen with the fall of the last eastern Carolingian, in practice the Ottonian and Salian HRE remained highly dynastic in character, with child emperors succeeding based on bloodline. Until the Investiture Contest the Papacy and Church remained largely subservient to the emperor and were a major reservoir of imperial power and influence.
4.) The Supplinburg/Hohenstaufen HRE. With the demise of the Salians the dynastic succession began to breakdown. Subsequently there would always be a tension between dynasties striving to retain dynastic control of the state vs. the notion of an elected emperor ( now at times heavily influenced by outside sources such as an increasingly independent and often hostile Papacy). Increasingly the territorial primacy and geographically de-centered nature of the imperial house in Germany waned as emperors, struggling for dominance in wealthy Italy, conceded more and more hereditary rights and others powers to the nobility in Germany and Bohemia ( who made the leap from duke to king as a result ). In particular the last significant Hohenstaufen, Frederick II, pretty much auctioned off most of the old imperial estates ( chunks of non-allodial territory attached to the crown, like for instance the Pleissnerland ).
5.) The post-Hohenstaufen medieval period. The HRE became almost a quasi-ceremonial title. One with enormous prestige and a variable amount of real power, but HRE’s were now centered on and mostly dependent on their own geographically constrained family powerbases. Strong families like the Habsburgs and Luxemburgs at times alternated with virtual cyphers like Richard of Cornwall or the territorially weak Adolf of Nassau. Families like the Luxemburgs and Wittelsbachs rose and fell in power ( often dissipating territorial gains among multiple heirs ). Italy increasingly wandered out from under the HRE’s thumb as squabbling mini-states. Burgundy fell away, largely absorbed by France piecemeal ( and over many centuries ).
6.) The Habsburg imperium. Skipping a lot of intermediate history here, but in essence this was the point that the Habsburg dynasty was able to semi-securely establish a stranglehold on the ever-increasingly ceremonial ( but still useful ) imperial title, based largely on their dominance via a successful accretion of family territorial power, a good chunk of it ( especially the crown of St. Stephen - i.e Croatia Hungary, etc., not to mention Charles V’s Spanish empire ) actually sitting outside of imperial borders.
So a very, very thumbnail sketch ( and a challenge-able one ), but as you can see it just depends on the time period. Even the very late emperors could generate some limited use from the title ( like the crappy imperial estate troops raised during the wars with Prussia ), but by the time Napoleon abolished it, it had degenerated into more of a particularly weak semi-hereditary chairmanship over a loose confederacy of German statelets.
That should be Louis II. Sorry :).
Louis III was one of the Provencal/Italian contenders from the post-Carolingian period ( though his mother was a Carolingian princess, a daughter of Louis II in fact ).
Depending on the definition, you could make a case that Rome was an empire before Augustus. But by your definition, it was not an empire under Julius Caesar.
The Holy Roman Empire wasn’t holy, wasn’t Roman, and arguably, wasn’t an empire except in the most indolent sense of the term.
Today, we would call it a federation under (sometimes) central rule.
Stranger
Well, setting aside the ‘Holy’ and ‘Roman’ parts of that, I do think that traditional summation is a little too glib.
The Carolingian empire was certainly just that and the title they resurrected was really de facto the one that the HRE inherited. The squabbling Italian warlords that followed them were of course not really imperial in any real sense.
However I’d argue that the more or less hereditary HRE of the Ottonian and Salian dynasties could be properly referred to as an empire. I’d measure this in terms of their dominance of Germany and northern Italy, as well their suzerainty over Burgunday and some of the western Slavs. But also their dominance ( up until near the end ) of the Papacy. They were without question the most important European power outside of the Eastern Roman Emperors of Byzantium themselves.
With the Hohenstaufen I think you have what looks in retrospect like the rearguard struggle to maintain some real semblance of empire. And I don’t think it was doomed to failure. Different people mark the final failure at different spots. Geoffrey Barraclough cites the death of Frederick I Barbarossa ( d. 1190 ), arguing that Henry VI was over-invovled with the siren-song of southern Italy, but he was writing from a Germany-oriented POV. Others have argued as late as the prematurely dead Conrad IV ( d. 1254 ) that they still had the potential to revive the state. I’d probably go with the death of Henry VI myself ( d. 1197 ) for various reasons. For one, once he died dominance in Western Europe passed out of the empire’s hands for the first time to France under Philip II Augustus.
But IMHO it really wasn’t until they shuffled off the stage that the title of emperor ceased to have the coherent power it once did.
Have I ever mentioned how much I love your posts Tamerlane? That was an excellent summary and overview.
An Empire has a technical definition nothing more. America might count as an Empire by the traditional definition, as does Britain and modern Germany.
In short, an Empire requires a power which rules over subject states. Whether you consider a federal nation such as the US or Germany to fit this is up to you; certainly Roman subject states weren’t completely without rights in the relationship, so it’s a matter of degree.
I was told once that the Hold Roman Empire was:
I was thrice told the same.
It did last more than 20 minutes, though.
Hear, hear!
Seconded.
But what’s this I hear from Duran Duran about the HRE being none of the three terms used to describe it?
A good working definition of an Empire is a group of different nationalities being ruled by one government of one nationality. By that definition the Holy Roman Empire counts - it was Germans ruling over other Germans plus Bohemians, Danes, Dutch, French, Italians, Poles, and other nationalities.
It was Holy in the sense that Bishops of the Catholic Church held official positions in its government and had a say in selecting its Emperors. And it was Roman in the sense that it was recognized as a successor state to the classical Roman Empire (although the Emperor in Constantinople would have disputed that claim).
Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out that it really was Holy, was Roman, and was an Empire? Or at least one out of three?
Talk amongst yourselves.
Julius Caesar was never an emperor, and did not live during the Roman Empire.