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How Holy (and Roman) Was the Holy Roman Empire?
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Map of Europe about 800 CE showing the extent of the Frankish kingdom under Charlemagne in light purple, covering much of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, and neighboring regions. Areas inhabited by Slavic peoples who were tributary to Charlemagne are shaded in a darker purple to the east of the Frankish kingdom, including groups such as the Bohemians, Moravians, and Croats. Major cities, rivers, and neighboring kingdoms are labeled for context.
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Map of Europe about 800 CE showing the extent of the Frankish kingdom under Charlemagne in light purple, covering much of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, and neighboring regions. Areas inhabited by Slavic peoples who were tributary to Charlemagne are shaded in a darker purple to the east of the Frankish kingdom, including groups such as the Bohemians, Moravians, and Croats. Major cities, rivers, and neighboring kingdoms are labeled for context.
Holy Roman Empire in 800

How Holy (and Roman) Was the Holy Roman Empire?

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History

Voltaire, it seems, was at least partially right when he famously quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither “holy” nor “Roman,” for the medieval empire was indeed neither until at least the 12th century. Although the term Holy Roman Empire is commonly used to identify the empire from its inception on December 25, 800, this title did not actually appear until 1254 in the wake of the recovery of ancient Roman law and the prolonged struggle between the papacy and the Hohenstaufen dynasty. The designation, therefore, is inaccurately applied to the empire before the time of the Hohenstaufen.

The matter is complicated because conceptions of the “Holy Roman Empire” existed in some form from the year 800, when Charlemagne (king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774, and emperor from 800 to 814) revived the imperial title of imperator augustus (“august emperor”) in the West. Crowned at Rome by Pope Leo III, Charlemagne ruled a Christian empire that was nearly coterminous with Western Christendom. The emperor himself consciously promoted Christian values as he understood them, and his military conquests—particularly his long campaign against the Saxons—have been likened to an early version of a Crusade. He also negotiated with the Eastern Roman emperor for recognition of his title.

In the 10th century the Ottonian dynasty revived the Carolingian imperial model. Otto I (German king from 936 and Holy Roman emperor from 962 to 973) deposed Pope John XII, who had crowned him emperor, and forced the installation of Leo VIII. Otto II (German king from 961 and Holy Roman emperor from 967 to 983) styled himself “Emperor Augustus of the Romans.” The Ottonians also claimed the imperial title in traditional Roman fashion—by right of conquest. In 1034 Conrad II (German king from 1024 and Holy Roman emperor from 1027 to 1039) used outright the term Roman Empire in reference to the union of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy.

It was not, however, until the 12th century—in the wake of the Investiture Controversy, which had undermined the traditional claims of the emperor’s place in the world—that the notion of a “holy empire” explicitly emerged. Influenced by the revival of Roman law, the chancery of Frederick Barbarossa (German king and Holy Roman emperor from 1152 to 1190) adopted the term sacrum imperium as a counterblast to the universal claims of the church. For Barbarossa the empire was a divinely ordained entity independent of church authority. The title Holy Roman Empire itself finally appeared during the extended controversy between the Hohenstaufen dynasty and the papacy in the 13th century, and, therefore, it is correctly applied only to the great central European empire after that time.

The growth of France as a major power, however, spelled the end of any real efforts to expand imperial control beyond the German realms, and the emperor Charles IV (German king and king of Bohemia from 1346 and Holy Roman emperor from 1355 to 1378), a sober realist, drew the necessary conclusions. By then the axiom that “the king is emperor in his kingdom” was firmly established; it marked the end of any universalist dream. Charles set out accordingly to make the empire a specifically German institution. By agreement with Pope Clement VI, he formally abandoned Italy; he would enter Rome only on the day fixed for his coronation and leave again the same day. This he did on April 5, 1355.

Charles then turned to the definition of the German constitution, particularly the rights of the electors, in the Golden Bull of 1356. The change was reflected in the final evolution of the empire’s title: Sacrum Romanum Imperium Nationis Germanicae (Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation). This title, which appears under Frederick III (German king from 1440 and Holy Roman emperor from 1452 to 1493), indicates that the emperor’s powers were limited to his German lands. On March 19, 1452, Frederick became the last emperor to be crowned in Rome by a pope. In 1508 Frederick’s successor Maximilian I (archduke of Austria, German king, and Holy Roman emperor from 1493 to 1519), unable to go to Rome, assumed with papal consent the style “elected emperor” or “chosen emperor” (Latin imperator electus; German erwĂ€hlter Kaiser). From at least this point on—if not earlier, given the promulgation of the Golden Bull—the Holy Roman Empire was an explicitly German state divorced from its historical connection to the papacy.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Michael Ray.