# What Exactly Was The Holy Roman Empire? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 9, 2011, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662 "2011-12-09T20:16:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/41 "2011-12-11T20:03:44Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No, I don’t think this was the case. I believe Imperator remained a working title into Octavian’s era. The honorary title given to a military leader who’d won a major victory was triumphator. Not quite. What would happen was that, he’d win a major victory and then be acclaimed by his men on the field. Then he’d be “imperator”. Then, if that happened, the senate could award him the title “triumphator” (or “ovator”). But you couldn’t be a triumpator without being an imperator first. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/42 "2011-12-11T20:27:38Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > My god !I think that we’re getting into a double woosh situation here ! > > Or arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre we ? But what if one and only one of those three possibilities were incorrect? What then? Did anyone mention that? Discuss. But in all seriousness, how many vassal states does a realm require to be an empire? ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2011, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/43 "2011-12-12T08:10:22Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > But in all seriousness, how many vassal states does a realm require to be an empire? None, apparently. Japan is an empire (well, they still have an Emperor, anyway) with no vassal states at all. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2011, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/44 "2011-12-12T08:35:51Z")
I’ve heard that it: 1. Didn’t have any holes in it. 2. Was not a nose shape. 3. Didn’t contribute its name to one of the Star Wars movies. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2011, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/45 "2011-12-12T09:19:43Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > None, apparently. Japan is an empire (well, they still have an Emperor, anyway) with no vassal states at all. Well, do they have an emperor? Presumably the Japanese have some word or expression in Japanese through which they refer to their soverign ruler. For some reason, we English speakers (and perhaps other Westeners) have chosen to translate this expression by our word “emperor,” instead of using “king,” or some other alternative. Whether we had a good reason for making that choice (one rooted in Japanese tradition or the realities of their history and political arrangements) I do not know. Perhaps we just did so because we had already decided (on much better grounds) that the Chinese ruler was an emperor, and the Japanese looked more or less like the Chinese to Western eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Walther\_Ego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8dc957/32.png) [@Walther\_Ego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walther_Ego)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2011, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/46 "2011-12-12T12:13:10Z")
As far as I can tell, there were no non-Roman emperors in Western Europe before Napoleon. They all claimed the Roman throne. An emperor was universal (in theory), Roman and Holy (he sat on the throne of Constantine and thus was the legitimate leader of Christendom). In the Balkans, Bolgars and Serbs had toyed with national emperorships (and a Serb king even proclaimed himself as the emperor of Greeks, different from the universal Roman emperor in Constantinople). But in West, the emperor was simply always Roman, as they had always been. So any state with the word empire would naturally include Roman in its name. And then the Roman empire and Christendom had been synonymous for a long time, so holy is not that far-fetched. Thus Holy Roman for almost any Empire. The HRE sure was weak institutionally, but not that much weaker than many other states early on. Election of monarchs was widespread either when there was no immediate heir or every single time the monarch died. This was an inherent weakness vigorously fought by most dynasties. If you had a long streak of royal sons, that was sometimes enough to solidify the hereditary monarchy. Germany never had that. So it was a fairly weak medieval state in the beginning of the 30 years war. A lot of governements were trying centralizing reforms. Sometimes they succeeded (France), sometimes not (Spain). From the Habsburgs’ point of view, the war was genuinely religious, but there was a centralizing aspect. If the Catholic League had won it, the imperial institions would have been strengthened. While the war became a stale-mate, the peace crushed the Habsburg political goals completely. After the war the German principalities could act as independent monarchs without any challenge from above. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2011, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662/47 "2011-12-12T14:56:20Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Perhaps we just did so because we had already decided (on much better grounds) that the Chinese ruler was an emperor, and the Japanese looked more or less like the Chinese to Western eyes. The Japanese deliberately adopted and mimicked the Chinese Imperial state, including adopting to some degrees its titles, so it’s a perfectly valid expression. Likewise, in practice Japan actually was a proper Imperial state (albeit with loose central control over those subject states) for smot fo its history. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-holy-roman-empire/605662.md?page=2)