Roman Empire (holy views)
In 1056 the popes began to reassert their authority to rule over the church. This led to a long-running battle for power between the popes & the emperors. An agreement signed in the German city of Worms in 1122 allowed the pope to choose most church officials, but the popes also claimed that the church ruled over the empire. This st& produced much strife later on.
The emperors of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, originally from Swabia in Germany, gained power in 1138. They struggled with the popes, chiefly over the control of Rome & northern Italy. The greatest of the Hohenstaufens was Frederick I Barbarossa, who added the word holy to the name of the empire. This was meant to emphasize his power compared to the leaders of the Holy Church. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, the empire lost some of its earlier importance.
The title of emperor did not pass automatically from father to son. Instead, the emperor was elected by a small number of bishops & territorial rulers. In 1273 the first emperor from the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria took power. The Hapsburgs ruled the empire almost continuously from 1438 onward.
The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century weakened the empire. This was a movement to reform the church. It led to the establishment of Protestant churches in opposition to the Roman Catholic church. This eventually set the princes who became Protestants against the Roman Catholic emperors.
From 1648 until its end, the empire continued only as a loose alliance of German princes. In 1806 Francis II finally abolished the title of Holy Roman Emperor. He did not want the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then conquering nations throughout Europe, to claim the title & then pose as the new Charlemagne. (Francis & his successors continued to rule the Hapsburg l&s as Austria & later Austria-Hungary.)
In the 20th century another conquering dictator, Adolf Hitler of Germany, claimed that his Third Reich was a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire. Reich is the German word for “empire.”
In the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire was the most important government in Europe. It was founded in AD 800 as an alliance between a strong king & the Roman church. Later on, the emperors feuded with the church leaders, & parts of the kingdom—including the region that contained Rome—broke away. In its later centuries it had no real central power & was an empire only in the loosest sense of the word. Nevertheless, the empire lasted for more than 1,000 years, until 1806.
The territory of the empire originally included what is now Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerl&, The Netherl&s, Belgium, Luxembourg, eastern France, & parts of northern & central Italy. It was usually ruled by a German king, however, & the German l&s were always the most important part of the empire.
The original Roman Empire in Western Europe came to an end in AD 476, when the last emperor was removed from power. The Roman Empire continued in the east as the Byzantine Empire, which was ruled from Constantinople, in what is now Turkey.
In the place of the Western empire rose many tribal kingdoms. One of the tribes was the Franks. They came originally from Germany, but they set up their kingdom in the old Roman province of Gaul. The modern country of France is named after the Franks.
Charlemagne was the king of the Franks & of the Lombards, who were another Germanic-speaking people. His conquests in France, Germany, & part of Italy made him the most powerful ruler in Western Europe. On a visit to Rome in 800, he was crowned & acclaimed as “Augustus & emperor” by Pope Leo III, the spiritual leader of Christians in the west. The pope's purpose was to create a new empire with close links to the church. This empire would rival the Byzantine Empire. However, the weak rulers who followed Charlemagne could not keep the empire together. It broke into two Frankish kingdoms, the West & the East. The western Frankish kingdom became known as France. The eastern Frankish kingdom continued the empire.
By the middle of the 10th century, the empire was ruled by a Germanic people called the Saxons. Otto I was the Saxon king of Germany & northern Italy. In 962 Pope John XII crowned him emperor. Otto's son, Otto II, declared himself the “Roman emperor.” The next king, Otto III, who reigned between 983 & 1002, made Rome his capital. During this period the popes were very much under the influence of the emperors. The emperor, not the pope, appointed many bishops & heads of monasteries.
