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EMPIRE

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Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 356 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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EMPIRE , a See also:

term now used to denote a See also:state of large See also:size and also (as a See also:rule) of composite See also:character, often, but not necessarily, ruled by an emperor—a state which may be a federation, like the See also:German empire, or a unitary state, like the See also:Russian, or even, like the See also:British empire, a loose See also:commonwealth of See also:free states See also:united to a number of subordinate dependencies. For many centuries the writers of the See also:Church, basing themselves on the Apocalyptic writings, conceived of a See also:cycle of four empires, generally explained—though there was no See also:absolute unanimity with regard to the members of the cycle—as the See also:Assyrian, the See also:Persian, the Macedonian and the See also:Roman. But in reality the conception of Empire, like the term itself (See also:Lat. imperium), is of Roman origin. The empire of See also:Alexander had indeed in some ways anticipated the empire of See also:Rome. " In his later years," See also:Professor See also:Bury writes, " Alexander formed the notion of an empire, both See also:European and See also:Asiatic, in which the Asiatics should not be dominated by the European invaders, but Europeans and Asiatics alike should be ruled on an equality by a monarch, indifferent to the distinction of See also:Greek and See also:barbarian, and looked upon as their own See also:king by Persians as well as by Macedonians." The contemporary Cynic See also:philosophy of cosmopolitanism harmonized with this notion, as Stoicism did later with the practice of the Roman empire; and Alexander, like See also:Diocletian and See also:Constantine, accustomed a Western See also:people to the forms of an See also:Oriental See also:court, while, like the earlier Caesars, he claimed and received the recognition of his own divinity. But when he died in 323, his empire, which had barely lasted ten years, died with him; and it was divided among See also:Diadochi who, if in some other respects (for instance, the Hellenization of the See also:East) they were heirs of their See also:master's policy, were destitute of the imperial conception. The See also:work of Alexander was rather that of the forerunner than the founder. He prepared the way for the See also:world-empire of Rome; he made possible the rise of a universal See also:religion. And these are the two factors which, throughout the See also:middle ages, went together to make the thing which men called Empire. At Rome the term imperium signified generally, in its earlier use, the See also:sovereignty of the state over the individual, a sovereignty which the See also:Romans had disengaged with singular clearness from all other kinds of authority. Each of the higher magistrates of the Roman people was vested, by a lex curiata (for See also:power was distinctly conceived as See also:resident in, and delegated by, the community), with an imperium both See also:civil and military, which varied in degree with the magnitude of his See also:office. In the later days of the See also:Republic such imperium was enjoyed, partly in Rome by the resident consuls and praetors, partly in the provinces by the various proconsuls or propraetors.

There was thus a certain morcellement of imperium, delegated as it was by the people to a number of magistrates: the coming of the Empire meant the reintegration of this imperium, and its unification, by a See also:

gradual See also:process, in the hands of the princeps, or See also:emperor. The means by which this process was achieved had already been anticipated under the Republic. Already in the days of See also:Pompey it had been found convenient to See also:grant to an extraordinary officer an imperium aequum or majus over a large See also:area, and that officer thus received See also:powers, within that area, equal to, or greater than, the powers of the provincial See also:governors. This precedent was followed by See also:Augustus in the See also:year 27 B.C., when he acquired for himself See also:sole imperium in a certain number of provinces (the imperial provinces), and an infinitum imperium majus in the remaining provinces (which were termed senatorial). As a result, Augustus enjoyed an imperium coextensive indeed with the whole of the Roman world, but concurrent, in See also:part of that world, with the imperium of the senatorial proconsuls; and the See also:early Empire may thus be described as a dyarchy. But the distinction between imperial and senatorial provinces finally disappeared; by the See also:time of Constantine the emperor enjoyed sole imperium, and an absolute See also:monarchy had been established. We shall not, however, fully understand the significance of the Roman empire, unless we realize the importance of its military aspect. All the soldiers of Rome had from the first to swear in verbs! Caesaris See also:Augusti; and thus the whole of the Roman See also:army was his army, regiments of which he might indeed lend, but of which he was sole Imperator (see under EMPEROR). Thus regarded as a permanent See also:commander-in-See also:chief, the emperor enjoyed the privileges, and suffered from the weaknesses, of his position. He had the power of the See also:sword behind him; but he became more and more liable to be deposed, and to be replaced by a new commander, at the will of those who See also:bore the sword in his service. The See also:period which is marked by the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine (A.D.

284–337) marks a See also:

great transformation in Develop- the character of the Empire. The old dyarchy, under ment under which the emperor might still be regarded as an See also:official Diocletian of the respublica See also:Romana, passed into a new monarchy, and See also:con- in which all See also:political power became, as it were, the stantine. private See also:property of the monarch. There was now no distinction of provinces; and the old public See also:aerarium became merely a municipal See also:treasury, while the fiscus of the emperor became the See also:exchequer of the Empire. The See also:officers of the imperial praetorium, or bodyguard, are now the great officers of state; his private See also:council becomes the public See also:consistory, or supreme court of See also:appeal; and the comites of his court are the adminis- trators of his empire. " All is in him, and all comes from him," as our own year-books say of the See also:medieval king; his See also:household, for instance, is not only a household, but also an See also:administration. On the other See also:hand, this unification seems to be accompanied by a new bifurcation. The exigencies of frontier See also:defence had See also:long been See also:drawing the Empire towards the troubled East; and this tendency reached its See also:culmination when a new Rome arose by the See also:Bosporus, and See also:Constantinople became the centre of what seemed a second Empire in the East (A.D. 324). See also:Par- See also:Division ticularly after the division of the Empire between of the Empire. See also:Arcadius and See also:Honorius in 395 does this bifurcation appear to be marked; and one naturally speaks of the two Empires of the See also:West and the East. Yet it cannot be too much emphasized that in reality such See also:language is utterlyinexact. The Roman empire was, and always continued to be, ideally one and indivisible.

There were two emperors, but one Empire—two persons, but one power. The point is of great importance for the understanding of the whole of the middle ages: there only is, and can be, one Empire, which may indeed, for convenience, be ruled conjointly by two emperors, resident, again for convenience, in two See also:

separate capitals. And, as a See also:matter of fact, not only did the See also:residence of an emperor in the East not spell bifurcation, it actually fostered the tendency towards unification. It helped forward the transformation of the Empire into an absolute and quasi-Asiatic monarchy, under which all its subjects See also:fell into a single level of loyal submission: it helped to give the emperor a gorgeous court, marked by all the ceremony and the servility of the East.' The deification of the emperor himself See also:dates from the days of Augustus; by the time of Constantine it has infected the court and the See also:government. Each emperor, again, had from the first enjoyed the sacrosanct position which was attached to the tribunate; but now his See also:palace, his chamber, his charities, his letters, are all " sacred," and one might almost speak in advance of a " See also:Holy Roman Empire." But there is one See also:factor, the greatest of all, which still remains to be added, before we have counted the sum of the forces that made the world think in terms of empire for centuries - to come; and that is the reception of See also:Christianity into InfluChristience of - the Roman empire by Constantine. That reception anity. added a new See also:sanction to the existence of the Empire and the position of the emperor. The Empire, already one and indivisible in its aspect of a political society, was welded still more firmly together when it was informed and permeated by a See also:common Christianity, and unified by the force of a spiritual See also:bond. The Empire was now the Church; it was now indeed indestructible, for, if it perished as an empire, it would live as a church. But the Church made it certain that it would not perish, even as an empire, for many centuries to come. On the one hand the Church thought in terms of empire and taught the millions of its disciples (including the barbarians themselves) to think in the same terms. No other political conception—no conception. of a rats or of a nation—was any longer possible.

When the Church gained its hold of the Roman world, the Empire, as it has been well said, was already " not only a government, but a See also:

fashion of conceiving the world ": it had stood for three centuries, and no See also:man could think of any other See also:form of political association. Moreover, the See also:gospel of St Paul—that there is one Church, whereof See also:Christ is the See also:Head, and we are all members—could not but reinforce for the See also:Christian the conception of a necessary political unity of all the world under a single head. Una Chiesa in uno Stato—such, then, was the theory of the Church. But not only did the Church perpetuate the conception of empire by making it a part of its own theory of the world: it perpetuated that conception equally by materializing it in its own organization of itself. Growing up under the See also:shadow of the Empire, the Church too became an empire, as the Empire had become a church. As it took over something of the old See also:pagan ceremonial, so it took over much of the old See also:secular organization. The See also:pope borrowed his See also:title of pontilex See also:maximus from the emperor: what is far more, he made himself gradually, and in the course of centuries, the See also:Caesar and Imperator of the Church. The offices and the dioceses of the Church are parallel to the offices and dioceses of the Diocletian empire: the whole spirit of orderly See also:hierarchy and See also:regular organization, which breathes in the Roman Church, is the heritage of See also:ancient Rome. The Donation of Constantine is a See also:forgery; but it expresses a great truth when it represents Constantine as giving to the pope the imperial palace and insignia, and to the See also:clergy the ornaments of the imperial army (see DONATION OF CONSTANTINE). ' See also:Bryce points out, with much subtlety and truth, that the rise of a second Rome in the East not only helped to perpetuate the Empire by providing a new centre which would take the See also:place of Rome when Rome fell, but also tended to make it more universal; " for, having lost its See also:local centre, it subsisted no longer by historic, right only, but, so to speak, naturally, as a part of an See also:order of things' which a See also:change in See also:external conditions seemed incapable of disturbing " (Holy Roman Empire, p. 8 of the edition of 19o4). The Roman empire.

Upon this world, informed by these ideas, there finally descended, in the 5th See also:

century, the See also:avalanche of barbaric invasion. Its impact seemed to split the Empire into fragmentary Barbari t n kingdoms; yet it See also:left the universal Church intact, and with it the conception of empire. With that conception, indeed, the barbarians had already been for centuries See also:familiar: service in Roman armies, and See also:settlement in Roman territories, had made the Roman empire for them, as much as for the civilized provincial, part of the order of the world. One of the barbarian invaders, See also:Odoacer (Odovakar), might seem, in 476, to have swept away the Empire from the West, when he commanded the See also:abdication of See also:Romulus Augustulus; and the date 476 has indeed been generally emphasized as marking " the fall of the Western empire." Other invaders, again, men like the See also:Frank See also:Clovis or the great Ostrogoth See also:Theodoric, might seem, in succeeding years, to have completed the work of Odoacer, and to have shattered the sorry See also:scheme of the later Empire, by remoulding it into See also:national kingdoms. De facto, there is some truth in such a view: de jure, there is none.' All that Odoacer did was to abolish one of the two See also:joint rulers of the indivisible Empire, and to make the remaining ruler at Constantinople sole emperor from the Bosporus to the pillars of See also:Hercules. He abolished the dual sovereignty which had been inaugurated by Diocletian, and returned to the unity of the Empire in the days of See also:Marcus Aurelius. He did not abolish the Roman empire in the West: he only abolished its separate ruler, and, leaving the Empire itself subsisting, under the sway (nominal, it is true, but none the less acknowledged) of the emperor resident at Constantinople, he claimed to See also:act as his See also:vicar, under the name of patrician, in the administration of the See also:Italian provinces.' As Odoacer thus fitted himself into the scheme of empire, so did both Clovis and Theodoric. They do not claim to be emperors (that was reserved for See also:Charlemagne) : they claim to be the vicars and lieutenants of the Empire. Theodoric spoke of himself to See also:Zeno as imperio vestro famulans; he left See also:justice and administration in Roman hands, and maintained two See also:annual consuls in Rome. Clovis received the title of See also:consul from See also:Anastasius; the Visigothic See also:kings of See also:Spain (like the kings of the See also:savage See also:Lombards) styled themselves Flavii, and permitted the cities of their eastern See also:coast to send See also:tribute to Constantinople. Yet it must be admitted that, as a matter of fact, this See also:adhesion of the new barbaric kings to the Empire was little more than a form. The Empire maintained its ideal unity by treating them as its vicars; but they themselves were forming separate and See also:independent kingdoms within its See also:borders.

The See also:

Italy of the See also:Ostrogoths cannot have belonged, in any real sense, to the Empire; otherwise Justinian would never have needed to See also:attempt its reconquest. And in the 7th and 8th centuries the form of adhesion itself decayed: the emperor was retiring upon the Greek world of the East, and the German conquerors, settled within their kingdoms, lost the width of outlook of their old migratory days. It is here that the See also:action of the Church becomes of supreme importance. The Church had not ceased to believe in the The continuous See also:life of the Empire. The Fathers had Church taught that when the cycle of empires was finally and the ended by the disappearance of the empire of Rome, Empire. the days of See also:Antichrist would See also:dawn; and, since Antichrist was not yet come, the Church believed that the Empire still lived, and would continue to live till his coming. Mean- ' The de facto importance of the event of 476 can only be seen in the See also:light of later events, and it was not therefore noticed by contemporaries. See also:Marcellinus is the only contemporary who remarks on its importance, cf. Marcellini Chronicon (Mon. Germ. Hist., Chronica minora. ii. 91), Hesperium Romanae gentis imperium . . . cum hoc Augustulo periit .

. . Gothorum dehinc regibus Romam tenentibus. 2 A passage in Malchus, a See also:

Byzantine historian (quoted by Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 25, See also:note u, in the edition of 1904), expresses this truth exactly. The envoys sent to Zeno by Odoacer urge cas Was See also:alp aUTOIS (3cu nXsias ob SEO[ KOLVOS SE h7roxpi]QE6 etbsoc WV aUTOKphTCOp See also:Ea' hµ4oripots Tots as pass. The envoys then suggest the name of Odoacer, as one able to See also:manage their affairs, and ask Zeno to give him, as an officer of the Empire, the title of Patricius and the administration of Italy.while the Eastern emperor, ever since Justinian's reconquest of Italy, had been able to maintain his hold on the centre of Italy; and Rome itself, the seat of the head of the Church; still ranked as one of the cities under his sway. The imperialist theory of the Church found its See also:satisfaction in this connexion of its head with Constantinople; and as long as this connexion continued to satisfy the Church, there was little prospect of any change. For many years after their invasion of 568, the pressure which the Lombards maintained on central Italy, from their See also:kingdom in the valley of the Po, kept the popes steadily faithful to the emperor of the East and his representative in Italy, the See also:exarch of See also:Ravenna. But it was not in the nature of things that such fidelity should continue unimpaired. The development of the East and the West could not but proceed along dro,rg''een e constantly diverging lines, until the point was reached between when their connexion must snap. On the one hand, the Bast and development of the West set towards the increase of the west. powers of the See also:bishop of Rome until he reached a height The popes. at which subjection to the emperor at Constantinople became impossible. Residence in Rome, the old seat of empire, had in itself given him a great See also:prestige; and to this prestige St See also:Gregory (pope from 590 to 604) had added in a number of ways.

Ile was one of the Fathers of the Church, and turned its See also:

theology into the channels in which it was to flow for centuries; he had acquired for his church the great spiritual See also:colony of See also:England by the See also:mission of St See also:Augustine; he had been the See also:protector of Italy against the Lombards. As the popes thus became more and more spiritual emperors of the West, they found themselves less and less able to remain the subjects of the See also:lay emperor of the East. Meanwhile the emperors of the East were led to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs in a manner which the popes and the Western Church refused to tolerate. Brought into contact with the pure monotheism of Mahommedanism, See also:Leo the Isaurian (718–741) was stimulated into a crusade against See also:image-See also:worship, in order to remove from the Christian Church the See also:charge of See also:idolatry. The West clung to its images: the popes revolted against his decrees; and the See also:breach rapidly became irreparable. As the hold of the Eastern emperor on central Italy began to be shaken, the popes may have begun to cherish the See also:hope of becoming their successors and of See also:founding a temporal dominion; and that hope can only have contributed to the final See also:dissolution of their connexion with the Eastern empire. Thus, in the course of the 8th century, the Empire, as represented by the emperors at Constantinople, had begun to fade utterly out of the West. It had been forgotten by lay sovereigns; it was being abandoned by the pope, who had been its chosen apostle. But it did not follow that, because the Eastern emperor ceased to be the representative of the Empire for the West, the conception of Empire itself therefore perished. The popes only abandoned the representative; they did not abandon the conception. If they had abandoned the conception, they would have abandoned the See also:idea that there was an order of the world; they would have committed themselves to a belief in the coming of Antichrist. The conception of the world as a single Empire-Church remained: what had to be discovered was a new representative of one of the two sides of that conception.

For a brief time, it would seem, the pope himself cherished the idea of becoming, in his own See also:

person, the successor of the ancient Caesars in their own old See also:capital. By the aid of the Frankish kings, he had been able to stop the Lombards from acquiring the See also:succession to the See also:derelict territories of the Eastern emperor in Italy (from which their last exarch had fled overseas in 752), and he had become the temporal See also:sovereign of those territories. Successor to the Eastern emperor in central Italy, why should he not also become his successor as representative of the Empire—all the more, since he was the head of the Church, which was coextensive with the Empire? Some such hope seems to inspire the Donation of Constantine, a document forged between 754 and 774, in which Constantine is represented as having conferred on See also:Silvester I. the imperial palace and insignia, and therewith omnes Italiae seu occidentalium regionum provincias loci; et civitates. But the hope, if it ever was cherished, proved to be futile. The popes had not the material force at their command which would have made them adequate to the position. The strong See also:arm of the Frankish kings had alone See also:corona- delivered them from the Lombards: the same strong tion of arm, they found, was needed to deliver them from See also:Charles the See also:wild See also:nobility of their own See also:city. So they turned magne as to the power which was strong enough to undertake emperor of the task which they could not themselves attempt, the west. and they invited the Frankish king to become the representative of the imperial conception they cherished.' In the year 800 central Italy ceased to date its documents by the regnal years of the Eastern emperors; for Charlemagne was crowned emperor in their See also:stead. The king of the See also:Franks was well fitted for the position which he was chosen to fill. He was king of a stock which had been from the first Athanasian, and had never been tainted, like most of the Germanic tribes, by the See also:adoption of Arian tenets. His grandfather, Charles Martel, had saved See also:Europe from the danger of a See also:Mahommedan See also:conquest by his victory at See also:Poitiers (732); his See also:father, See also:Pippin the See also:Short, had helped the See also:English missionary See also:Boniface to achieve the See also:conversion of See also:Germany. The popes themselves had turned to the Frankish kings for support again and again in the course of the 8th century.

Gregory III., involved in See also:

bitter hostilities with the iconoclastic reformers of the East, appealed to Charles Martel for aid, and even offered the king, it is said, the titles of consul and patrician. See also:Zacharias pronounced the deposition of the last of the See also:Merovingians, and gave to Pippin the title of king (75r); while his successor, See also:Stephen II., hard pressed by the Lombards, who were eager to replace the Eastern emperors in the See also:possession of central Italy, not only asked and received the aid of the new king, but also acquired, in virtue of Pippin's donation (754), the disputed exarchate itself. Thus was laid the See also:foundation of the States of the Church; and the grateful pope rewarded the donation by the See also:gift of the title of pa/ricius Romanorum, which conferred on its recipient the See also:duty and the See also:privilege of protecting the Roman Church, along with some undefined measure of authority in Rome itself." Finally, in 773, Pope See also:Adrian I. had to appeal to Charles, the successor of Pippin, against the aggressions of the last of the Lombard kings; and in 774 Charles conquered the Lombard kingdom, and himself assumed its See also:iron See also:crown. Thus by the end of the 8th century the Frankish king stood on the very steps of the imperial See also:throne. He ruled a See also:realm which extended from the See also:Pyrenees to the Harz, and from See also:Hamburg to Rome—a realm which might be regarded as in itself a de facto empire. He bore the title of patricius, and he had shown that he did not See also:bear it in vain by his vigorous defence of the papacy in 774. Here there stood, ready to hand, a natural representative of the conception of Empire; and Leo III., finding that he needed the aid of Charlemagne to maintain himself against his own Romans, finally took the decisive step of crowning him emperor, as he knelt in See also:prayer at St See also:Peter's, on See also:Christmas See also:Day, 800. The See also:coronation of Charlemagne in 800 marks the coalescence into a single unity of two facts, or rather, more strictly speaking, of a fact and a theory. The fact is German and secular: it is the wide de facto empire, which the Frankish sword had conquered, and Frankish policy had organized as a single whole. The theory is Latin and ecclesiastical: it is a theory of the According to the view here followed, the Church was the See also:ark in which the conception of Empire was saved during the dark ages between 60o and 800. Some See also:influence should perhaps also be assigned to Roman See also:law, which continued to be administered during these centuries, especially in the towns, and maintained the imperial tradition. But the influence of the Church is the essential fact.

2 In the 5th century the title patricius came to attach particularly to the head of the Roman army (ma ister utriusque militiae) to men like See also:

Aetius and See also:Ricimer, who made and unmade emperors (cf. See also:Mommsen, Gesammelte Schrif ten, iv. 537, 545 sqq.). Later it had been See also:borne by the Greek exarchs of Ravenna. The concession to Pippin of this great title makes him military head of the Western empire, in the sense in which the title was used in the 5th century; it makes him representative of the Empire for Italy, in the sense in which it had been used of the exarchs.necessary political unity of the world, and its necessary See also:representation in the person of an emperor—a theory See also:half springing from the unity of the old Roman empire, and half Theory of derived from the unity of the Christian Church as the caroconceived in the New Testament. If we seek for lingian the force which caused this fact and this theory to empire. coalesce in the Carolingian empire, we can only answer—the papacy. The idea of Empire was in the Church; and the head of the Church translated this idea into fact. If, however, we seek to conceive the event of 800 from a political or legal point of view, and to determine the residence of the right of constituting an emperor, we at once See also:drift into the fogs of centuries of controversy. Three answers are possible from three points of view; and all have their truth, according to the point of view. From the ecclesiastical point of view, the right resides with the pope. This theory was not promulgated (indeed no theory was promulgated) until the struggles of Papacy and Empire in the course of the middle ages; but by the time of See also:Innocent III. it is becoming an established See also:doctrine that a translatio Imperil took place in 800, whereby the pope transferred the Roman empire from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of the magnificent Charles?

One can only say that, as a matter of fact, the popes ceased to recognize the Eastern emperors, and recognized Charles instead, in the year 800; that, again, this recognition alone made Charles emperor, as nothing else could have done; but that no question arose, at the time, of any right of the pope to give the Empire to Charlemagne, for the See also:

simple See also:reason that neither of the actors was acting or thinking in a legal spirit. If we now turn to study the point of view of the civil lawyer, animated by.such a spirit, and basing himself on the See also:code of Justinian, we shall find that an emperor must derive his institution and power from a lex regia passed by the populus See also:Romanus; and such a view, strictly interpreted, will See also:lead us to the conclusion that the citizens of Rome had given the crown to Charlemagne in 800, and continued to bestow it on successive emperors afterwards. There is indeed some speech, in the contemporary accounts of Charlemagne's coronation, of the presence of " ancients among the Romans " and of " the faithful people "; but they are merely See also:present to See also:witness or applaud, and the conception of the Roman people as the source of Empire is one that was only championed, at a far later date, by antiquarian idealists like See also:Arnold of See also:Brescia and Cola di See also:Rienzi. The faex Romuli, a See also:population of lodging-See also:house keepers, living upon pilgrims to the papal court, could hardly be conceived, except by an ardent See also:imagination, as See also:heir to the See also:Quirites of the past. Finally, from the point of view of the German tribesman, we must admit that the Empire was something which, once received by his king (no matter how), descended in the royal See also:family as an See also:heirloom; or to which (when the kingship became elective) a title was conferred, along with the kingship, by the See also:vote of See also:electors.' But apart from these questions of origin, two difficulties have still to be faced with regard to the nature and position of the Carolingian empire. Did Charlemagne and his successors enter into a new relation with their subjects, in virtue of their coronation? And what was the nature of the relation between the new emperor now established in the West and the old emperor still reigning in the East? It is true that Charlemagne exacted a new See also:oath of See also:allegiance from his subjects after his coronation, and again that he had a revision of all the See also:laws of his dominions made in 802. But the revision did not amount to much in bulk: what there was contained little that was Roman; and, on the whole, it hardly seems probable that Charlemagne entered into any new relation with his subjects. The relation of his empire to the empire in the East is a more difficult and important problem. In 797 the empress See also:Irene had deposed and blinded her son, Constantine VI., and usurped his throne. Now it would seem that Charlemagne, whose thoughts ' See the famous See also:bull Venerabilem (Corp. See also:fur.

See also:

Canon. See also:Deer. See also:Greg. i. 6, c. 34). ' Even on this view, an imperial coronation at the hands of the pope was necessary to See also:complete the title; but this was regarded by the Germans (though not by the pope) as a form which necessarily followed., were already set on Empire, hoped to depose and succeed Irene, and thus to become sole representative of the conception Relations of Empire, both for the East and for the West. Sudof the denly there came, in 800, his own coronation as em-See also:Caro/in- peror, an act apparently unpremeditated at the glen to the moment, taking him by surprise, as one gathers from Eastern See also:Einhard's Vita Karoli, and interrupting his plans. It left him representative of the Empire for the West only, confronting another representative in the East. Such a position he did not See also:desire: there had been a single Empire vested in a single person since 476, and he desired that there should still continue to be a single Empire, vested only in his own person. He now sought to achieve this unity by a proposal of See also:marriage to Irene. The proposal failed, and he had to content himself with a recognition of his imperial title by the two successors of the empress. This did not, however, mean (at any See also:rate in the issue) that henceforth there were to be two conjoint rulers, amicably ruling as colleagues a single Empire, in the manner of Arcadius and Honorius.

The dual government of a single Empire established by Diocletian had finally vanished in 476; and the unity of the Empire was now conceived, as it had been conceived before the days of Diocletian, to demand a single representative. Henceforth there were two rulers, one at See also:

Aix-la-Chapelle and one at Constantinople, each claiming, whatever temporary concessions he might make, to be the sole ruler and representative of the Roman empire. On the one hand, the Western emperors held that, upon the deposition of Constantine VI., Charlemagne had succeeded him, after a slight See also:interval, in the government of the whole Empire, both in the East and in the West; on the other hand, the Eastern emperors, in spite of their grudging recognition of Charlemagne at the moment, regarded themselves as the only lawful successors of Constantine VI., and viewed the Carolings and their later successors as upstarts and usurpers, with no right to their imperial pretensions. Henceforth two halves confronted one another, each claiming to be the whole; two finite bodies touched, and each yet claimed to be See also:infinite. If, as has been suggested, Charlemagne did not enter into any fundamentally new relations with his subjects after his character coronation, it follows that the results of his coronation, of the in the See also:sphere of policy and administration, cannot See also:carol- have been considerable. The Empire added a new ingian sanction to a policy and administration already empire. See also:developed. Charlemagne had already showed himself episco pus episcoporum, anxious not only to suppress See also:heresy and supervise the clergy within his borders, but also to extend true Christianity without them even before the year when his imperial coronation gave him a new title to supreme governorship in all cases ecclesiastical. He had already organized his empire on a new See also:uniform See also:system of counties, and the missi dominici were already at work to superintend the action of the See also:counts, even before the renovatio imperii Romani came to suggest such uniformity and centralization. Charlemagne had a new title; but his subjects still obeyed the king of the Franks, and lived by Frankish law, in the old fashion. In their eyes, and in the eyes of Charlemagne's own descendants, the Empire was something appendant to the kingship of the Franks, which made that kingship unique among others, but did not radically alter its character. True, the kingship might be divided among See also:brothers by the old Germanic See also:custom of See also:partition, while the Empire must inhere in one person; but that was the one difference, and the one difficulty, which might easily be solved by attaching the name of emperor to the eldest See also:brother. Such was the conception of the Carolings: such was not, however, the conception of the Church.

To the popes the Empire was a See also:

solemn office, to which the kings of the Franks might most naturally be called, in view of their power and the traditions of their house, but which by no means remained in their hands as a See also:personal property. By thus seeking to dissociate the Empire from any indissoluble connexion with the Carolingian house, the popes were able to See also:save it. Civil See also:wars raged among the descendants of Charlemagne: partitions recurred: the Empire was finally dissolved, in the sense that the old realm of Charlemagne fell asunder, in 888. But the Empire, as an office, did not perish. During the 9th century the popes had insisted, as each emperor died, Break-up that the new emperor needed coronation at their hands; of the and they had thus kept alive the conception of the Carol-Empire as an office to which they invited, if they did ingia, not appoint, each successive emperor. The quarrels empire. of the Carolingian house helped them to make See also:good their claim. See also:John VIII. was able to select Charles the Bald in preference to other claimants in 875; and before the end of his pontificate he could write that " he who is to be Aeft"thtuede ordained by us to the Empire must be by us first and papacy, foremost invited and elected." Thus was the unity of the Empire preserved, and the conception of a united Empire continued, in spite of the eventual dissolution of the realm of Charlemagne. When the Carolingian emperors disappeared, See also:Benedict IV. could crown See also:Louis of See also:Provence (901) and John X. could invite to the vacant throne an Italian potentate like Berengar of See also:Friuli (915); and even when Berengar died in 924, and the Empire was vacant of an emperor, they could hold, and hold with truth, that the Empire was not dead, but only suspended, until such time as they should invite a new ruler to assume the office. Various causes had contributed to the dissolution of the realm of Charlemagne. Partitions had split it; See also:feudalism had begun to See also:honeycomb it; incessant wars had destroyed its core, the fighting Franks of See also:Austrasia. But, above all, the rise of divisions within the realm, which, whether animated by the spirit of See also:nationality or no, were ultimately destined to develop into nations, had silently undermined the structure of Pippin and Charlemagne. Already in 842 the oath of See also:Strassburg shows us one Caroling king See also:swearing in See also:French and another in German: already in 87o the partition of See also:Mersen shows us the kings of See also:France and Germany dividing the middle kingdom which lay between the two countries by the linguistic frontier of the See also:Meuse and Moselle.

The year 888 is the See also:

birth-year of See also:modern Europe. France, Germany, Italy, stood distinct as three separate See also:units, with See also:Burgundy and See also:Lorraine as debatable lands, as they were destined to remain for centuries to come. If the conception of Empire was still to survive, the pope must ultimately invite the ruler of the strongest of these three units to, assume The the imperial crown; and this was what happened when in 962 Pope John XII. invited See also:Otto I. of Germany to renew once more the Roman Empire. As the imperial strength of the whole Frankish tribe had given them the Empire in 800, so did the national strength of the East Frankish kingdom, now resting indeed on a Saxon rather than a Frankish basis, bring the Empire to its ruler in 962. The centre of political gravity had already been shifting to the east of the See also:Rhine in the course of the 9th century. While the Northmen had carried their arms along the See also:rivers and into the See also:heart of France, Louis the German had consolidated his kingdom in a long reign of sixty years (817-876) ; and at the end of the 9th century two kings of Germany had already worn the imperial crown. Early in the loth century the kingship of Germany had come to the vigorous Saxon See also:dukes (919); and strong in their Saxon basis See also:Henry I. and his son Otto had built a realm which, disunited as it was, was far more compact than that which the Carolings of the West ruled from See also:Laon. Henry I. had thought in his later years of going to Rome for the imperial crown: under Otto I. the imperial idea becomes See also:manifest. On the one hand, he established a semi-imperial position in the West: by 946 Louis IV. d'Outremer is his protege, and it is his arms which maintain the See also:young See also:Conrad of Burgundy on his throne. On the other hand, he showed, by his policy towards the German Church, that he was the true heir of the Carolingian traditions. He made churchmen his ministers; he established missionary bishoprics on the See also:Elbe which should spread Christianity among the See also:Wends; and his dearest project was a new archbishopric of See also:Magdeburg. The one thing needful was that he should, like Charlemagne, acquire the throne of Italy; and the dissolute See also:condition of that See also:country during the first half of the German kingdom and the empire.

loth century made its acquisition not only possible, but almost imperative. Begun in 952, the acquisition was completed ten years later; and all the conditions were now The Holy present for Otto's See also:

assumption of the imperial throne. o E mpirere. He was crowned by John XII. on See also:Candlemas Day 962, E and thus was begun the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted henceforth with a continuous life until 1806.' The same ideas underlay the new empire which had underlain that of Charlemagne, strengthened and reinforced by the fact that they had already found a visible expression before in that earlier empire. Historically, there was the tradition of the old Roman empire, preserved by the Church as an idea, and preserved in the Church, and its imperial organization, as an actual fact. Ecclesiastically, there was the Pauline conception of a single Christian Church, one in subjection to Christ as its Head, and needing (so men still thought) a secular counterpart of its in-divisible unity? To these two sanctions philosophy later added a third; and the doctrine of See also:Realism, that the one universal is the true abiding substance—the doctrine which pervades the De monarchia of See also:Dante,—reinforced the feeling which demanded that Europe should be conceived as a single political unity. But ii the Holy Roman empire of the German nation has the old See also:foundations, it is none the less a thing sui See also:genesis. Externally, it meant far less than the empire of Charlemagne; it meant simply a See also:union of Germany and See also:northern Italy (to which, after 1032, one must also add Burgundy, though the addition is in reality nominal) under a single rule. Historians of the 19th century, during the years in which the modern German empire was in travail, disputed sorely on the advantages of this union; but whatever its advantages or disadvantages, the fact remains that the union of See also:Teutonic Germany and Latin Italy was, from an external point of view, the essential fact in the structure of the medieval Empire. Internally, again, the Empire of the Ottos and their successors was new and unprecedented. If Latin imperialism had been combined with Frankish tribalism The in the Empire of Charlemagne, it now met and blended Empire with feudalism.

The Holy Roman emperor of the and middle ages, as See also:

Frederick I. proudly told the Roman feudalism. envoys, found his See also:senate in the See also:diet of the German baronage, his See also:equites in the ranks of the German knights. Feudal-ism, indeed, came in time to invade the very conception of Empire itself. The emperors began to believe that their position of emperor made them feudal overlords of other kings and princes; and they came to be regarded as the topmost See also:summit of the feudal See also:pyramid, from whom kings held their kingdoms, while they themselves held directly of See also:God. In this way the old conception of the world as a single political society entered upon a new phase: but the See also:translation of that conception into feudal terms, which might have made Diocletian gasp, only gave it the greater hold on the feudal society of the middle ages. Yet in one way the feudal conception was a source of weakness to the Empire; for the popes, from the middle of the 12th century ' It is a curious fact that imperial titles (imperator and basileus) are used in the Anglo-Saxon diplomata of the loth century. See also:Edred, for instance (946—955) is imperator," cyning and casere totius Britanniae," " basileus Anglorum hujusque insulae barbarorum ": See also:Edgar is " totius Albionis imperator Augustus " (cf. See also:Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. c. vii. § 71). These titles partly show the turgidity of English Latinity in the loth century, partly indicate the quasi-imperial position held by the Wessex kings after the reconquest of the Dane-law. But there seems to be no real ground for See also:Freeman's view (See also:Norman Conquest, i. 948 sqq.), that England was regarded as a third Empire, See also:side by side with the other Empires of West and East Europe.

That the titles were assumed in order to repudiate possible claims of the Western Empire to the overlordship of England is disproved by the fact that they are assumed at a time when there is no Western emperor. The assumption of an imperial See also:

style by Henry VIII., which is mentioned below, is explained by the See also:Reformation, and does not mean any recurrence to a forgotten Anglo-Saxon style. s It is in virtue of this aspect that the Empire is holy. The term sacrum imperium seems to have been first used about the time of Frederick I., when the emperors were anxious to magnify the sanctity of their office in See also:answer to papal opposition. The emperor himself (see under EMPEROR) was always regarded, and at his coronation treated, as a persona ecclesiastica.onwards, began to claim for themselves a feudal overlordship of the world, and to regard the emperor as the chief of their vassals. The theory of the Translatio buttressed their claim to be overlords of the Empire; and the emperors found that their very duty to defend the Papacy turned them into its vassals—for was not the advocatus who defended the lands of an See also:abbey or church its See also:tenant by feudal service, and might not See also:analogy extend the feudal relation to the imperial See also:advocate himself? The relation of the Empire to the Papacy is indeed the See also:cardinal fact in its See also:history for the three centuries which followed the coronation of Otto I. (962-1250). For a century The (962–1076) the.relation was one of amity. The pope Empire and the emperor stood as co-See also:ordinate sovereigns, and the ruling together the commonwealth of Europe.3 If Papacy. either stood before the other, the emperor stood before the pope. The Romans had sworn to Otto I. that they would never elect or ordain a pope without his consent; and the rights over papal elections conceived to belong to the office of patricius, which they generally held, enabled the emperors, upon occasion, to nominate the pope of their choice. The See also:partnership of Otto III., son of a Byzantine princess, and his nominee Silvester II.

(already distinguished as See also:

Gerbert, scholasticus of the See also:chapter school of See also:Reims) forms a remarkable See also:page in the See also:annals of Empire and Papacy. Otto, once the See also:pupil of Silvester in classical studies, and taught by his See also:mother the traditions of the Byzantine empire, dreamed of renewing the Empire of Constantine, with Rome itself for its centre; and this antiquarian See also:idealism (which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi were afterwards, though with some difference of aim, •to See also:share) was encouraged in his pupil by the pope. Tradition afterwards ascribed to the two the first project of a crusade, and the institution of the seven electors: in truth their faces were turned to the past rather than to the future, and they sought not to create, but to renovate. The See also:dream of restoring the See also:age of Constantine passed with the premature See also:death of Otto; and after the death of Silvester II. the papacy was degraded into an appendage of the Tusculan family. From that degradation the Church was rescued by Henry III. (the second emperor of the new Salian house, which reigned from 1024 to 1125), when in 1046 he caused the deposition of three competing popes, and afterwards filled the papal See also:chair with his own nominees; but it was rescued more effectually by itself, when in 1059 the celebrated bull In nomine Domini of See also:Nicholas II. reserved the right of electing the popes to the See also:college of cardinals (see See also:CONCLAVE). A new era of the Papacy begins with the See also:decree, and that era found its exponent in See also:Hildebrand. If under Henry III. the Empire stands in many respects at its See also:zenith, and the emperor nominates to the Papacy, it sinks, under Henry IV., almost to the See also:nadir of its fortunes, and a pope attempts, with no little success, to fight and defeat an emperor. The rise of the Papacy, which the action of Henry III. in 1046 had helped to begin, and the bull of 1059 had greatly promoted, was ultimately due to an ecclesiastical revival, which goes by the name of the Cluniac See also:movement. The aim The roof that movement was to separate the Church from contest. st. the world, and .thus to make it independent of the laity and the lay power; and it sought to realize its aim first by the See also:prohibition of clerical marriage and See also:simony, and ultimately by the prohibition of lay See also:investiture.

A decree of Gregory VII. in 1075 forbade emperor, king or See also:

prince to " presume to give investiture of bishoprics," under See also:pain of See also:excommunication ; and Henry IV., contravening the decree, fell under the See also:penalty, and the See also:War of Investitures began (1076-1122). Whether or no Henry humiliated himself at See also:Canossa (and the See also:opinion of German historians now inclines to regard the traditional See also:account as exaggerated) the Empire certainly suffered in his reign a ' The emperor claimed See also:suzerainty over the greater part of Europe at various dates. See also:Hungary and See also:Poland, France and Spain, the Scandinavian See also:peninsula, the British Isles, were all claimed for the Empire at different times (see Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, c. xii.). The " effective " empire, if indeed it may be called effective, em-braced only Germany, Burgundy and the regnum Italiae (the old Lombard kingdom in the valley of the Po). great loss of prestige. The emperor lost his hold over Germany, where the aid of the pope strengthened the hands of the discontented nobility: he lost his hold over Italy, where the Lombard towns gradually acquired municipal See also:independence, and the donation of the Countess See also:Matilda gave the popes the germ of a new and stronger dominium temporale. The First Crusade came, and the emperor, its natural See also:leader, could not lead it; while the centre of learning and See also:civilization, in the course of the fifty years' War of Investitures, gradually shifted to France. The ,,truggle was finally ended by a compromise—the See also:Concordat of Worms—in 1122; but the Papacy, which had fought the long War of Investitures and inspired the First Crusade, was a far greater power than it had been at the beginning of the struggle, and the emperor, shaken in his hold on Germany and Italy, had lost both power and prestige (see INVESTITURE). It is significant that a theory of the feudal subjection of the emperor to the pope, foreshadowed in the pontificate of Innocent II., and definitely enounced by the envoys of Adrian IV. at the diet of See also:Besancon in 1157, now begins to arise. The popes, who had called the emperors to be heads of the European commonwealth in Soo and again in 962, begin to vindicate that headship for themselves. Gregory VII. had already claimed that the pope stood to the emperor, as the See also:sun to the See also:moon; and gradually the old co-ordination disappeared in a new subordination of the Empire to the papal plenitudo potestatis. The claim of ecclesiastical independence of the middle of the 11th century was rapidly becoming a claim of ecclesiastical supremacy in the middle of the 12th: ' the imperial claim to nominate popes, which had lasted till 1059, was turning into the papal claim to nominate emperors.

Yet at this very time a new period of splendour dawned for the Empire; and the rule of the three See also:

Hohenstaufen emperors, Frederick I., Henry VI. and Frederick II. (1152-1250), marks the period of its history which attracts most sympathy and admiration. Frederick I. regained a new strength in Germany, partly because he united in his See also:veins the See also:blood of the two great con- The tending families, the Welfs and the Waiblingens; partly Hohen- because he had acquired large patrimonial possessions staufen in See also:Swabia, which took the place of the last Saxon emperors. See also:demesne; partly because he had a greater See also:control over the German episcopate than his predecessors had enjoyed for many years past. At the same time the revival of See also:interest in the study of Roman law gave the emperor, as source and centre of that law, a new dignity and prestige, particularly in Italy, the See also:home and See also:hearth of the revival. Confident in this new strength, he attempted to vindicate his claims on Italy, and sought, by uniting the two under his sway, to inspire with new life the old Ottonian Empire. He failed to crush Lombard municipal independence: defeated at See also:Legnano in 1176, he had to recognize his defeat at the treaty of See also:Constance in 1183. He failed to acquire control over the Papacy: a new struggle of Empire and Papacy, begun in the pontificate of Adrian IV. on the question of control over Rome, and continued in the pontificate of Alexander III., because Frederick recognized an See also:anti-pope, ended in the emperor's recognition of his defeat at See also:Venice in 1177. The one success was the acquisition of the Norman kingdom for Henry VI., who was married to its heiress, Constance. But the one success of Frederick's Italian policy proved the ruin of his house in the reign of his See also:grandson Frederick II. On the one hand, the possession of See also:Sicily induced Frederick II. to neglect Germany; and by two documents, one of I220 and one of 1231, he practically abdicated his sovereign powers to the German princes in order to conciliate their support for his Italian policy. On the other hand, the possession of Sicily involved him in the third great struggle of Empire and Papacy. Strong in his Sicilian kingdom in the See also:south, and seeking, like his grandfather, to establish his power in See also:Lombardy, Frederick practically aimed at the unification of Italy, a policy which threatened to engulf the States of the Church and to reduce the Papacy to See also:impotence.

The popes excommunicated the emperor: they aided the Lombard towns to maintain their independence; finally, after Frederick's death (1250), they summoned Charles of See also:

Anjou into IX. 12Sicily to exterminate his house. By 1268 he had done his work, and the medieval Empire was practically at an end. When See also:Rudolph of See also:Habsburg succeeded in' 273, he was only the overthrow head of a federation of princes in Germany, while in of the Italy he abandoned all claims over the centre and south, Empire in and only retained titular rights in the Lombard See also:plain. 1taty. Thus ended the first great chapter in the history of the Holy Roman Empire which Otto had founded in 962. In those three centuries the great fact had been its relation to the Papacy: in the last two of those three centuries the relation had been one of enmity. The basis of the enmity had been the papal claim to supreme headship of Latin Christianity, and to an independent temporal demesne in Italy as the condition of that headship. Because they desired supreme headship, the popes had sought to reduce the emperor's headship to something See also:lower than, and dependent upon, their own—to a See also:mere See also:fief held of St Peter: because they desired a temporal demesne, they had sought to expel him from Italy, since any imperial hold on Italy threatened their independence. They had succeeded in defeating the Empire, but they had also destroyed the Papacy; for the French aid which they had invoked against the Hohenstaufen developed, within fifty years of the fall of that house, into French control, and the captivity at See also:Avignon (1308-1378) was the logical result of the final victory of Charles of Anjou at See also:Tagliacozzo. The struggle seemed to have ended in nothing but the exhaustion of both combatants. Yet in many respects it had in reality made for progress.

It had set men thinking of the respective limits of church and state, as the many lihelli de life imperatorum et pontificum show; and from that thought had issued a new conception of the state, as existing in its own right and supreme in its own sphere, a conception which is the necessary basis of the modern nation-state. If it had dislocated Germany into a number of territorial principalities, it had produced a college of electors to represent the cause of unity: if it had helped to pre-vent the unification of Italy, and had left to Italy the fatal See also:

legacy of See also:Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, it had equally helped to produce Italian municipal independence. A new chapter of the history of the Empire fills the three centuries from 1273 to r556—from the See also:accession of Rudolph of Habsburg to the abdication of Charles V. Italy was now lost: the Empire had now no See also:peculiar connexion ,Empire with Rome, and far less See also:touch with the Papacy. A from the new Germany had risen. The extinction of several royal See also:election of See also:stocks and the nomination of anti-kings in the course of Rudolph of civil wars had made the monarchy elective, and raised Hahshurg' 1273. to the side of the emperor a college of electors (see ELECTORS), which appears as definitely established soon after 1250. With Italy lost, and Germany thus transmuted, why should the Empire have still continued to exist? In the first place, it continued to exist because the Germans still found a king necessary and because, the German king having been called for three centuries emperor, it seemed necessary that he should still continue to bear the name. In this sense the Empire existed as the See also:presidency of a Germanic See also:confederation, and as something analogous to the modern German empire, with the one great difference that the Hohenzollerns now derive from See also:Prussia a strength which enables them to make their imperial position a reality, while no See also:Luxemburg or Habsburg was able to make his imperial position otherwise than honorary and nominal. In the second place, it continued to exist because the conception of the unity of western Europe still lingered, and was still conceived to need an exponent. In this sense the Empire existed as a presidency, still more honorary and still more nominal, of the nations of western Europe.

In both capacities the emperor existed to a great extent because he was a legal See also:

necessity-because, in Germany, he was necessary for the investiture of princes with their principalities, and because, in Europe, he was necessary, as the source of all rights, to bestow crowns upon would-be kings, or to act as the head of the great orders of See also:chivalry, or to give See also:patents to notaries. With the history of the Empire regarded as a German confederation we are not here concerned. The reigns of the Habsburg, Luxemburg and II See also:Wittelsbach emperors belong to the history of Germany. Yet two of these emperors, Henry VII. and Louis IV., should not pass without See also:notice, the one for his own See also:sake, the other for the sake of his adherents, and both because, by interfering in Italy, and coming into conflict with the Papacy, they brought once more into prominence the European aspect of the Empire. Henry VII., the contemporary and the See also:hero of Dante, descended into Italy in 1310, partly because he had no power and no occupation in Germany, partly because he was deeply imbued with the sense of his imperial dignity. Coming as a peacemaker and mediator, he was driven by Guelph opposition into a Ghibelline r6le; and he came into conflict with See also:Clement V., the first of the Avignonese popes, who under the pressure of France attempted to enforce upon Henry a recognition of his feudal subjection. Henry asserted his independence: he claimed Rome for his capital, and the lordship of the world for his right; but, just as a struggle seemed impending, he died, in 1313. During the reign of his successor, Louis IV., the struggle came. Louis had been excommunicated by John XXII. in 1324 for acting as emperor before he had received papal recognition. None the less, in 1328, he came to Rome for his coronation. He had gathered See also:round him See also:strange See also:allies; on the one hand, the more advanced See also:Franciscans, apostles of the cause of clerical disendowment, and inimical to a wealthy papacy; on the other hand, jurists like Marsilius of See also:Padua and John of Jandun, who brought to the cause of Louis the spirit and the doctrines which had already been used in the struggle between Boniface VIII. and See also:Philip IV. of France. Marsilius in particular, in a See also:treatise called the Defensor Pacis, insisted on the See also:majesty of the lay state, and even on its superiority to the Church.

Perhaps it was Marsilius, learned as he was in Roman law, and remembering the lex regia by which the Roman people had of old conferred its power on the emperor, who suggested to Louis the policy, which he followed, of receiving the imperial crown by the decree and at the hands of the Roman people. The policy was remarkable: Louis embraced an See also:

alliance which Frederick See also:Barbarossa had spurned, and recognized the medieval Romans as the source of imperial power. Not less remarkable was the new attitude of the German electors, who for the first time supported an emperor against the pope, because they now See also:felt menaced in their own electoral rights; and the one permanent result which finally flowed from the struggle was the enunciation and See also:definition of the rights and privileges of the electors in the See also:Golden Bull of 1356 (see GOLDEN BULL). In this struggle with the Papacy the Empire had shown something of its old universal aspect. It had come into connexion with Italy, and into See also:close connexion with Rome: it had enlisted in defence of its rights at once an Italian like Marsilius and an Englishman like Ockham. The same universal aspect appeared once more in the age of the conciliar movement,. at the beginning of the 15th century. One of the essential duties of the emperor, as defender of the Church, was to help the assembling and the deliberations of See also:general See also:councils of the Church. This was the duty discharged by See also:Sigismund, when he forced John See also:XXIII. to summon a council at Constance in 1414, and sought, though in vain, to See also:guide its deliberations. The See also:journey which Sigismund undertook in the interests of the council (1415–1417) is particu- larly noteworthy. He sought to make See also:peace throughout western Europe, acting as See also:international arbitrator-in virtue of his presidency of western Europe—between England and France, between Burgundians and Armagnacs; but he failed in his aim, and when he returned to the council, it was only to witness the defeat of the party of reform which he championed. National feeling and national antipathies proved too strong for Sigismund's attempt to revive the medieval empire for the purposes of international See also:arbitration: the same feel- See also:ing, the same antipathies, made inevitable the failure of the council itself, in which western Europe had sought to meet once more as a single religious com- monwealth.

Early in the 15th century, therefore, the conception of the unity of western Europe, as a single Empire-Church, was already waning in both its aspects. The unity of the Church Universal was dissolving, and the conception of the nation-church arising (as the separate concordats granted by See also:

Martin V. to the different nations prove); while the unity of the Empire was proved a dream, by the powerlessness of the emperor in the See also:face of the struggle of England and France. See also:Renaissance and Reformation combined to complete the fall which the failure of Sigismund to guide the conciliar movement had already foreshadowed. The Renaissance, revolting influence against the medievalism of the See also:stadium and not of the sparing even the sacerdotium of the middle ages, had Reformalittle respect for the medieval imperium; and, going on. back to pure Latin and See also:original Greek, it went back beyond even the classical empire to find its ideals and inspirations. But it is the coming of the Reformation, and with it of the nation-church, which finally marks the See also:epoch at which the last vestige of the old conception of the political unity of the world disappears before the nation-state. Externally indeed it seemed, at the time of the Reformation, as if the old Empire had been revived in the person of Charles V., who owned territories as vast as those of Charlemagne. But Charles's dominions were a dynastic agglomeration, knit together by no vivifying conception; and, though Charles was a See also:champion of the one See also:Catholic Church against the Reformation,. he did not in any way seek to revive the power of the medieval empire. Meanwhile the reforming monarchs, while they See also:cast off the Roman Church, cast off with it the Roman empire. Henry VIII. declared himself free, not only of the pope, but of all other See also:foreign power; not only so, but as he sought to take the place of the pope with regard to his own church, so he sought to take the place of the emperor with regard to his kingdom, and spoke of his " imperial " crown, a style which recurs in later Tudor reigns.' The conception of one Empire passed out of Europe, or, if it remained, it remained only in an honorary See also:precedence accorded by other sovereigns to the king of Germany, who still entitled himself emperor. In Germany itself the honorary presidency which the emperor enjoyed over the princes came to mean still less than before, when religious See also:differences divided the country, and the principle of cujus regio ejus religio accentuated the local See also:autonomy of the prince. When Charles abdicated in 1556, the change which the accession of Rudolph of Habsburg had already marked was complete: there was no empire except in Germany, and in Germany the Empire was nothing more than a convenient legal conception. The Reformation, by sweeping away the spiritual unity of western Christendom, had swept away any real conception of its political unity, and with that conception it had swept away the Empire; while it had also, by splitting Germany into two religious camps, and making the emperor at the most the head of a religious See also:faction, dissipated the last vestiges of a real Empire in the country which had, since 962, been its peculiar home.

From 1556 to 18o6 the Empire means a loose federation of the different princes of Germany, lay and ecclesiastical, under the presidency, elective in theory but hereditary in The practice, of the house of Habsburg. It is an empire Empire as much in the same sense as the modern German empire, a German with a diet somewhat analogous to the modern Bundes- cnfedera. See also:

rat, and a cumbrous imperial chamber for purposes of tton justice, hardly at all analogous to the highly organized system of federal justice which prevails in Germany to-day. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire into this loose federation had already been anticipated by the concessions made to the princes by Frederick II. in 1220 and 1231; but the final organization of Germany on federal lines was only attained in the treaty of See also:Westphalia of 1648. The attempt of See also:Ferdinand II., in the course of the See also:Thirty Years' War, to assert a practically monarchical authority over the princes of Germany, only led to the regular vindication by the princes of their own monarchical authority. The emperor, who had tried in the 15th century to be the inter-national authority of all Europe, now sank to the position of less than inter-state arbitrator in Germany. That the Empire and the emperor were retained at all, when the princes became ' Cf. the Act 25 Henry VIII. c. 22, § 1: "the lawful kings and emperors of this realm." The Empire and the rise of the idea of national states. so many independent sovereigns, was due partly to a lingering sense of quasi-national sentiment for a magni nominis See also:umbra, partly to the need of some authority which should combine in one whole principalities of very different sizes and strengths, and should protect the weak from the strong, and all from France. But this authority only found its See also:symbol in the emperor. Such real federal authority as there was remained with the diet, a See also:congress of sovereign princes through their accredited representatives; and the emperor's sole rights, as emperor, were those of granting titles and confirming tolls. The Habsburgs, emperors in each successive See also:generation, never pursued an imperial, but always a dynastic policy; and they were perfectly ready to See also:sacrifice to the aggrandizement of their house the See also:honour of the Empire, as when they ceded Lorraine to France in return for See also:Tuscany (1735). It needed the See also:cataclysm of the French Revolution finally to overthrow the Empire.

Throughout the 18th century it lasted, End of a thing of long-winded protocols and never-ending the Holy lawsuits, " neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire." Roman But with See also:

Napoleon came its destroyer. As far back Empire. as the end of the 13th century, French kings had been scheming to annex the title or at any rate absorb the territories of the Empire: at the beginning of the 19th century the See also:annexation of the title by Napoleon seemed very imminent. Posing as the New Charlemagne (" because, like Charlemagne, I unite the crown of France to that of the Lombards, and my Empire See also:marches with the East "), he resolved in 1806, during the dissolution and recomposition of Germany which followed the peace of See also:Luneville, to oust See also:Francis II. from his title, and to make the Holy Roman Empire part and See also:parcel of the " See also:Napoleonic idea." He was anticipated, however, by the prompt action of the proud Habsburg, who was equally resolved that no other should See also:wear the crown which he himself was powerless to defend, and accordingly, on the 6th of See also:August 1806, Francis resigned the imperial dignity. So perished the Empire. Out of its ashes sprang the See also:Austrian Empire, for Francis,in 18o4,partly to See also:counter Napoleon's assumption of the title of Emperor of the French, partly to pre-See also:pare for the impending dissolution of the old Empire, had assumed the title of " Hereditary Emperor of See also:Austria." And in yet more See also:recent times the German empire may be regarded, in a still more real sense than Austria, as the descendant and representative of the old Empire of the German nation. What had been the results of the Holy Roman Empire, in the course of its long history, upon Germany and upon Europe? General It has been a vexala quaestio among German historians, influence whether or no the Empire ruined Germany. Some of the have argued that it diverted the See also:attention of the Empire. German kings from their own country to Italy, and that, by bringing them into conflict with the popes, and by thus strengthening the hands of their rebellious baronage with a papal alliance, it prevented the development of a national German monarchy, such as other sovereigns of western Europe were able to found. Others again have emphasized the racial division of Saxon and Frank, of High German and See also:Low German, as the great cause of the failure of Germany to grow into a united national whole, and have sought to ascribe to the influence of the Empire such unity as was achieved; while they have attributed the learning, the See also:trade, the pre-See also:eminence of medieval Germany to the Italian connexion and the prestige which the Empire brought. It is difficult to pronounce on either side; but one feels that the old localism and See also:individualism which characterized the early German, and had never, on German See also:soil, been combined with and counteracted by a large measure of Roman population and Roman civilization, as they were in See also:Gaul and Spain, would in any See also:case have continued to See also:divide and disturb Germany till See also:late in her history, even if the Empire had never come to reside within her borders. Of the larger question of the influence of the Empire on Europe we can here only say that it worked for good.

An Empire which represented, as a Holy Empire, the unity of all the faithful as one See also:

body in their secular, no less than in their religious life—an Empire which, again, as a Roman Empire, represented with an unbroken355 continuity the order of Roman administration and law—such an empire could not but make for the See also:betterment of the world. It was not an empire resting on force, a military empire; it was not, as in modern times empires have sometimes been, an See also:autocracy warranted and stamped by the See also:plebiscite of the See also:mob. It was an empire resting neither on the sword nor on the See also:ballot-See also:box, but on two great ideas, taught by the clergy and received by the laity, that all believers in Christ form one body politic, and that the one See also:model and type for the organization of that body is to be found in the past of Rome. It was indeed the weakness of the Empire that its roots were only the thoughts of men; for the lack of material force, from which it always suffered, hindered it from doing work it might well have done—the work, for instance, of international arbitration. Yet, on the other hand, it was the strength and See also:glory of the Empire that it lived, all through the middle ages, an unconquerable idea of the mind of man. Because it was a being of their thought, it stirred men to reflection: the Empire, particularly in its clash with the Papacy, produced a political consciousness and a political See also:speculation reflected for us in the many libelli de lire imperatorum et pontificum, and in the pages of Dante and Marsilius of Padua. Roman, it perpetuated the greatest See also:monument of Roman thought—that ordered scheme of law, which either became, as in England, the model for the See also:building of a native system, or, as in Germany from the end of the 15th century onwards, was received in its integrity and administered in the courts. Holy, it fortified and consolidated Christian thought, by giving a visible expression to the kingdom of God upon See also:earth; and not only so, but it maintained, however imperfectly, some idea of international See also:obligation, and some conception of a commonwealth of Europe.' The Holy Roman Empire of western Europe had in its own day a contemporary and a rival—that east Roman empire of which we have already spoken. From Arcadius to John See also:Palaeologus, from A.U. 395 to 1453, the Roman empire was continued at Constantinople—not as a theory and an idea, but as a simple and daily reality of politics and administration. In one sense the East Roman Empire was more lineally and really Roman than the West: it was absolutely continuous from ancient times. In another sense the Western Empire was the most Roman; for its capital—in theory at least—was Rome itself, and the Roman Church stood by its side, while Constantinople was Hellenic and even Oriental.

Between the two Empires there was fixed an impassable gulf; and they were divided by deep differences of thought and See also:

temper, which appeared most particularly in the sphere of religion, and expressed themselves in the cleavage between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Yet, as when Rome fell, the Catholic Church survived, and ultimately found for itself a new Empire of the West, so, when Constantinople fell, the Orthodox Church continued its life, and found for itself a new Empire of the East—the Empire of See also:Russia. Under See also:Ivan the Great (1462-1505) See also:Moscow became the See also:metropolis of Orthodoxy; Byzantine law influenced his code; and he took for his See also:cognizance the See also:double-headed See also:eagle. Ivan the Terrible, his grandson, finally assumed in 1547 the title of See also:Tsar; and henceforth the Russian emperor is, in theory and very largely in fact, the successor of the old East Roman emperor,2 the head of the Orthodox Church, with the mission of vengeance on See also:Islam for the fall of Constantinople. In the 19th century the word " empire " has had a large and important bearing in politics. In France it has been the apanage of the Bonapartes, and has meant a centralized system Modern of government by an efficient Caesar, resting immedi- Empires. ately on the people, and annihilating the powers of the people's representatives. Under Napoleon I. this conception had a Carolingian See also:colour: under Napoleon III. there is less of ' The Papacy, consistent to the last, formally protested at the Congress of See also:Vienna in 1815 against the failure of the Powers to restore the Holy Roman Empire, the " centre of political unity " (Ed.). 2 The See also:Turks, occupying Constantinople, have also claimed to he the heirs of the old emperors of Constantinople; and their sultans have styled themselves Keisar-i-Ri2m. Carolingianism, and more of Caesarism—more of a popular dictatorship. While in modern France Empire has meant autocracy instead of representative government, in Germany it has meant a greater national unity and a federal government in the place of a confederation. The modern German empire is at once like and unlike the old Holy Roman Empire. It is unlike the old medieval Empire; for it has no connexion with the Catholic Church, and no relation to Rome.

But it is like the Holy Roman Empire of the 17th and 18th centuries—for it represents a federation, but a more real and more unitary federation, of the several states of Germany. The likeness is perhaps more striking than the dissimilarity; and in virtue of this likeness, and because the memory of the old German Kaiserzeit was a See also:

driving force in 187o, we may speak of the modern German empire as the successor of the old Holy Roman Empire, if we remember that we are speaking of that Empire in its last two centuries of existence. The modern " Empire of Austria," on the other hand, does not connote an empire in the sense of a federation, but is a convenient designation for the sum of the territories ruled by a single sovereign under various titles (king of Bohemia, See also:archduke of Austria, &c.) and unified in a single political system.' The title of Emperor was assumed, as we have seen, through an See also:historical See also:accident; and, though the Habsburgs of to-day are personally the lineal descendants of the old Holy Roman emperors, they do not in any way possess an empire that represents the old Holy Empire. In England, of recent years, the term " Empire " and the conception of imperial-ism have become prominent and See also:crucial. To Englishmen to-day, as to Germans before 1870, the term and the conception stand for the greater unity and definitely federal government of a number of separate states. For the German, indeed, Empire has meant, in great measure, the strengthening of a loose federal institution by the addition of a common personal See also:superior: to us it means the turning of a loose union of separate states already under a common personal superior—the King—into a federal commonwealth living under some common federal institutions. But the aim is much the same; it is the integration of a people under a single scheme which shall be consistent with a large measure of political autonomy. We speak of imperial federation; and indeed our modern imperialism is closely allied to federalism. Yet we do well to cling to the term empire rather than federation; for the one term emphasizes the whole and its unity, the other the part and its independence. This imperialism, which is federalism viewed as making for a single whole, is very different from that Bonapartist imperialism, which means autocracy; for its essence is free co-ordination, and the self-government of each co-ordinated part. The British Empire (q.v.) is, in a sense, an aspiration rather than a reality, a thought rather than a fact; but, just for that reason, it is like the old Empire of which we have spoken; and though it be neither Roman nor Holy, yet it has, like its prototype, one law, if not the law of Rome—one faith, if not in matters of religion, at any rate in the See also:field of political and social ideals. and " Princeps " in See also:Smith's See also:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (189o) ; (ii.) for the period from 476 down to 888, T.

See also:

Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (1880-1900); F. See also:Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom See also:im Mittelalter (1886-1894; Eng. trans., See also:London, 1894-1900); E. See also:Lavisse, Histoire de France, Ii. i. (1901); J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (1889) ; (iii.) for the Holy Roman ' This does not, of course, apply to Hungary, which since 1867 has not formed part of the Austrian empire and is ruled by the head of the house of Habsburg not as emperor, but as king of Hungary. Empire of the German nation, W. von See also:Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit (1881-189o); J. See also:Zeller, Histoire d'Allemagne (1872-1891); R. L. See also:Poole, Illustrations of Medieval Thought (1884); S. Riezler, See also:Die literarischen Widersacher der Papste sur Zeil Ludwigs See also:des Baiers (1874); J. Jannsen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit See also:dens Ausgang des Mittelalters (1885-1894); L. von See also:Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839-1847), and Zur deutschen Geschichte.

Vom Religionsfrieden bis zum dreissigjdhrigen Krieg (1869); and T. See also:

Carlyle, Frederick the Great (1872-1873). 01, the fall of the Roman Empire and the transition to the modern German Empire see See also:Sir J. R. See also:Seeley, Life and Times of See also:Stein (1878) ; H. von See also:Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte (1879-1894) ; and H. von See also:Sybel, Die Begrundung des deutschen Reichs (1890-1894, Eng. trans., The Founding of the Germ. Enzp., New See also:York, 189o-1891). For institutional history, see R. See also:Schroder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechlsgeschichte (1894). On the influence of the Holy Roman Empire upon the history of Germany, see J. Ficker, Das deutsche Kaiserreich (1861), and Deutsches Konigtum and Kaisertunz (1862); and H. von Sybel, Die deutsche Nation and das Kaiserreich (1861). (E.

End of Article: EMPIRE

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