I | INTRODUCTION |
Holy Roman
Empire, political entity of lands in western and central Europe, founded
by Charlemagne in ad 800 and
dissolved by Emperor Francis II in 1806. The extent and strength of the empire
largely depended on the military and diplomatic skill of its emperors, both of
which fluctuated considerably during the empire’s thousand-year lifetime.
However, the principal area of the empire was the German states. From the 10th
century, its leaders were German kings, who usually sought but did not always
receive coronation as emperor by the popes in Rome.
At its peak in the 12th century, the empire
comprised most of the territory of modern-day Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
eastern France, Belgium, Netherlands, western Poland, the Czech Republic, and
Italy. By the later Middle Ages, however, the emperors’ power had become
increasingly symbolic, with real legal and administrative power exercised at the
territorial and municipal levels. When the last Holy Roman emperor resigned in
1806, the realm had long matched Voltaire’s famous description of it as 'neither
Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.'
II | BACKGROUND |
The Holy Roman Empire was an attempt to revive
the Western Roman Empire, whose legal and political structure had deteriorated
during the 5th and 6th centuries and had been replaced by independent kingdoms
ruled by Germanic nobles. The Roman imperial office had been vacant after
Romulus Augustulus was deposed in ad 476. But, during the turbulent early
Middle Ages, the popes had kept alive the traditional concept of a temporal
realm coextensive with a spiritual realm of the church. The Byzantine Empire,
which controlled the Eastern Roman Empire from its capital, Constantinople (now
İstanbul, Turkey), retained nominal sovereignty over the territories formerly
controlled by the Western Empire, and many of the Germanic tribes that had
seized these territories formally recognized the Byzantine emperor as overlord.
Partly because of this and also because the popes depended on Byzantine
protection against the Lombards, a Germanic tribe in northern Italy, they
continued to recognize the sovereignty of the Eastern Empire.
As the political bonds that had held western
Europe together gradually gave way to a variety of successor states, the idea of
a universal and eternal Roman Empire did not die out, but was transformed among
recently converted barbarian peoples into the ideal of a Christian Empire. The
Western Christian, or Roman Catholic, church, had been the one institution that
remained unified throughout the former empire.
By the beginning of the 8th century, two
developments set the stage for a revived Western empire. First, the Byzantine
Empire lost much of its territory as the Muslims expanded during the 7th
century. As the political prestige and power of the Byzantine Empire declined,
the popes grew increasingly resentful of Byzantine interference in the affairs
of the Western church. Byzantine emperors then further increased tensions with
Popes Gregory II and Gregory III by increasing taxes and by banning the worship
of religious icons (see Iconoclasm). From 726 to 757 Byzantine emperors
prohibited all religious statues and paintings, while they continued to be used
in the West.
The Eastern emperors were not the only threat
to the pope’s power; the Lombards, who went unchecked by any Byzantine presence
in northern Italy, also threatened Rome. In seeking protection against the
Lombards, the popes turned to the Franks, a tribe that controlled a large amount
of territory in what is now France. The Frankish king Pepin the Short first took
the battlefield against the Lombards, but it was his son Charlemagne who
ultimately established papal sovereignty in what is now Italy. Charlemagne
brought the idea of a revived Western empire to life, and became its first
emperor.
III | THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE (800-912) |
During his reign of almost 50 years, from 768
to 814, Charlemagne expanded the Frankish kingdom until it encompassed almost
all of western Europe. Still, it is uncertain that he would have assumed the
title of Roman emperor were it not for the support and urging of Pope Leo III.
Leo sought an alliance with the Frankish kingdom because of its power, its
extent, and most of all its devout Christianity. For these reasons, he believed
it was fitted to become the guardian of Rome and the papacy in place of the
weakened Byzantine Empire.
The pope thus broke the ties with
Constantinople and created a new Western empire by crowning Charlemagne emperor
of the Romans on Christmas Day, 800. The new title did not confer any new powers
on Charlemagne, but it did legitimate his rule over central Italy, a fact
eventually acknowledged by the Byzantine emperor Michael I in 812. Though not
yet known as such, the Holy Roman Empire thus came into being.
Scholars continue to debate the significance
of Leo’s act for both the papacy and the Western empire. Leo and his successors
definitely benefited from gaining temporal authority over central Italy, in the
region known as the Papal States. The coronation also symbolically promoted both
the papacy and the Frankish kings to a level of authority comparable only to
that of the Byzantine emperor. The pope’s endorsement of Charlemagne’s rule,
however, had not been sought by the Frankish king. Charlemagne intended to have
his heir crowned without papal participation. When Leo’s successor seized an
opportunity to continue the tradition by crowning Charlemagne’s son Louis I in
817, the precedent of papal coronation was established. By granting the title of
emperor, the papacy gained a huge influence over all subsequent imperial
candidates, ensuring the pope’s role in legitimizing Western emperors for
centuries to come. Even bitter conflicts between the popes and the emperors
could not dissolve this important ceremony.
Charlemagne’s empire (called Carolingian
after Charlemagne’s Latin name, Carolus Magnus) assumed many of the
traditions and social distinctions of the late Roman Empire, but also introduced
some key governmental innovations. Charlemagne granted large landholdings called
fiefs to many tribal military leaders, known as dukes, and appointed
numerous Frankish officials to the lesser posts of counts and margraves. Under
Charlemagne’s system, the dukes were kings in miniature, with all the
administrative, military, and judicial authority of the emperor within their
territories. To oversee these people, Charlemagne established a system of
traveling inspectors and representatives of the king, who were known as missi
dominici. However, Charlemagne was unable to assimilate many of the tribal
leaders fully into the new empire, and as Charlemagne’s successors discovered,
these leaders often placed their personal interests above those of the
empire.
Already toward the end of Charlemagne’s
reign, the empire had stopped expanding and had adopted a defensive posture. It
was too large to administer effectively and consequently it was prey to tribal
dissension. The Carolingian Empire did not long survive Charlemagne’s death in
814. It was the creation of one man whose military strength and religious
devotion alone held the realm together. After his death, the diverging personal
interests of the Frankish nobles and the church proved too much for his
successors to handle.
Charlemagne’s successor, his son Louis I,
could not prevent the dukes and counts from transforming their feudal fiefs into
hereditary estates. The five major tribal fiefs were transformed into
stem (most likely from the German word stämme, meaning “tribal”)
duchies—Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine—and these became the
strongest in the empire, threatening the overall authority of the emperor. Civil
wars between Louis’s sons and these powerful rulers soon disrupted imperial
unity, and upon Louis’s death the empire was divided.
By the terms of the Treaty of Verdun in 843,
the empire was split among Louis’s three sons. Charles II received West Francia
(roughly modern-day France); Lothair I acquired the imperial title and an area
running from the North Sea through Lotharingia (Lorraine) and Burgundy to
northern Italy; Louis II received East Francia (the German duchies of Saxony,
Swabia, and Bavaria). In 870 Lothair’s middle kingdom was divided by the Treaty
of Mersen, which gave Lotharingia to East Francia and the rest to West
Francia.
This division created the foundation for
today’s states of Germany and France, respectively; however, in the 9th century
these were highly fractured dynastic states, not modern nation-states.
Subsequent attempts by both East and West Francian rulers to conquer the other
were unsuccessful.
German kings were elected by the most
prominent nobles of their realm, in accordance with ancient Frankish custom. The
imperial title was not, however, necessarily conferred at the same time a German
monarch was elected. Many German kings reigned for several years before their
coronation as emperors of Rome.
The election of the German king as emperor,
however, was only a formality as long as the Carolingian line remained intact.
In 911 the last of the East Francian Carolingians died, and the electors of East
Francia determined the first of many dynastic changes by electing Duke Conrad of
Franconia as their king.
In 918, on his deathbed, Conrad secured the
election of the skilled ruler Henry I, duke of Saxony, as his successor as
German king. Henry’s successors restored a measure of imperial control over the
German nobles and thereby established the Germanic kingdom as a power capable of
making its presence felt outside its own borders.
IV | THE OTTONIAN EMPIRE (936-1024) |
The kings of East Francia monopolized the
imperial crown after 881. However, it was not until the reign of Otto I, who was
elected king in 936, that the East Frankish kings were able to establish strong
control over the nobility and clergy, and in doing so restore the reality of the
Carolingian Empire. Like Charlemagne, Otto I combined military prowess with
genuine religious faith. He attempted to create a strong centralized monarchy by
giving the stem duchies to his relatives. For instance, Swabia and Bavaria were
ruled by Otto’s oldest son and his brother, respectively, who tried to claim
legitimacy by marrying the daughters of previous rulers from each duchy.
Unfortunately, this practice resulted in Otto’s double misfortune of unpopular
outsiders in positions of power, as well as relatives who were often disloyal
and plotted to overthrow him.
After several dangerous uprisings, Otto
changed his tactics and began to break up the stem duchies into nonhereditary
fiefs that he granted to bishops and abbots. By nominating these churchmen
(often referred to as capellani) and bringing them into the royal court,
he ensured their loyalty and was also able to use their literacy skills in
correspondence and legislation. Otto used the capellani much as Charlemagne had
used the missi dominici, as representatives of the king throughout his
realm. This alliance with the church and the gradual establishment of formal
institutions and laws within the empire were both carried much further by Otto’s
successors.
Otto had to defend his realm from outside
pressures, particularly against the Danes in the north and the Slavs in the
east. He defeated both of these tribes and added their lands to his own.
Additionally, he permanently broke the power of the Magyars—a nomadic tribe that
had conquered much of what is now Hungary—at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955.
Wishing to emulate Charlemagne as a devout missionary and protector of the
Christian faith, Otto established the archbishopric of Magdeburg in 968 and
other dioceses as centers of civilization in the conquered lands.
In addition to his attempts to exert a strict
control over Germany, Otto also wished to make Italy an integral part of the
empire. In 951 he invaded Italy, beginning the disastrous policy of German
attempts to control territory there. For centuries to come, all would-be Roman
emperors imitated Otto’s extremely costly fixation on the heart of the ancient
empire. This preoccupation not only drained resources from the emperors’ real
power base in Germany, it also kept the emperors preoccupied and away from
Germany. As a result, they were unable to control the German nobility.
Otto’s second Italian campaign was waged at
the behest of Pope John XII, who was being attacked by Berengar II, king of
Italy. Otto successfully defeated Berengar and was crowned emperor by the
grateful John in 962. By a treaty called the Ottonian Privilege, Otto guaranteed
the pope’s secular claim to most of central Italy. In exchange, the pope agreed
that all future papal candidates would swear loyalty to the emperor.
Otto's successors, known as Ottonians,
continued his domestic and Italian policies as best they could. Otto II, who
reigned from 973 to 983, established the Eastern March (now Austria) as a
military outpost. This outpost served to begin the policy of Germanizing the
local population. He was, however, defeated by the Muslims in his efforts to
secure southern Italy. He spent much of the remainder of his reign fighting off
revolts from his German nobles.
His successor, Otto III, was moved by his
father’s ambition and the lineage of his mother, the Byzantine princess
Theophano, to assume even grander imperial ideas. He ruled from Rome, hoping to
expand the German empire into a new Christian empire along the lines of those
created by Constantine and Charlemagne. Otto III continued his predecessors’
tradition of choosing popes—a tradition established by the Ottonian
Privilege—and appointed his cousin to the papal throne as Gregory V in 996.
After Gregory’s death, Otto made his tutor the pope, under the name Sylvester
II. Otto’s actions caused tensions with the people of Rome, however, and he was
forced to flee by a rebellion in 1001.
Otto died childless in 1002, and after a
short civil war, the German princes elected Henry II of Bavaria their new king.
Henry attempted to continue the imperial and ecclesiastical reform started by
Otto III by securing the loyalty of nobles and churchmen to strengthen his
control over the empire. However, his attempts to maintain control over Italy
led to his extended absence from Germany, and the German princes used this time
to consolidate their own power at the expense of that of the emperor.
V | THE SALIAN EMPERORS AND THE INVESTITURE CONTROVERSY (1024-1125) |
For the next 100 years, German kings were
chosen from the Salian line of Franconia, which was related to the Saxons. The
Salians greatly increased the power and extent of the empire, but also initiated
a period of intense political and religious strife, particularly the conflict
with the papacy known as the Investiture Controversy.
The origins of the Investiture Controversy date
back at least to the Carolingian Empire. By the 10th century, it had become
common practice to treat ecclesiastical, or church, lands such as dioceses and
monasteries as royal fiefs, which the German king could give out as he wished.
Upon the death of a bishop, the king or one of his vassals appointed the
successor, giving him the symbols of his office—the episcopal staff and ring—in
a ceremony known as investiture. Often, as in other feudal transactions,
money also changed hands; thus the entire process became tainted with the
religious abuse known as simony (the buying or selling of spiritual
offices or services).
During the 11th century, the issue of
investiture by laymen—such as kings and emperors—rather than by churchmen became
increasingly contentious. Much of the tension can be attributed to the monastic
reform movement originating in Cluny, in present-day France, which encouraged a
more austere, disciplined, and prayerful life within monasteries and convents.
Cluniac leaders sought to abolish all acts of simony and to end control of the
church by laymen. Some emperors were sympathetic to such reforms and fully
supported them. But in the second half of the century, a series of popes were
inspired by the Cluniac reforms to seek greater independence for the papacy, as
well.
Since the time of Otto I, new popes had been
nominated by the emperor and consistently relied on his support and protection
during their reigns. However, in 1059 a synod, or Church council, took this
power away from the emperors and established an independent college of
churchmen, known as cardinals, who would elect the popes. This and other reforms
began two centuries of power struggles between popes and the emperors, who had
long been allies.
The first and most famous conflict occurred
when the emperor Henry IV, who reigned from 1056 to 1106, attempted to preserve
his control over German clerical appointments. The young emperor came to power
during a particularly desperate time for the empire, when the German princes
were more divided and rebellious than ever. Henry had just fought off a Saxon
revolt in 1075 when he was confronted by the new pope, Gregory VII, who wanted
to free the entire church from control by laymen. When Gregory forbade the
practice of nonchurch officials installing churchmen in their religious offices,
Henry had him deposed by an episcopal synod at Worms, Germany, in 1076. The pope
promptly excommunicated Henry, denying him the services of the church, and
released all of his subjects, particularly his rebellious noble vassals, from
their oath of loyalty to him.
The rebellious German nobles gave Henry the
choice of either seeking forgiveness from the pope or being deposed by them.
Henry chose the former and sought the pope out at a palace in Canossa in the
Apennines in January 1077, waiting outside for three days as a barefoot penitent
in the snow. Thinking he had succeeded in humiliating a disobedient emperor,
Gregory forgave Henry.
Gregory, however, unwittingly angered the
German nobles, who felt betrayed. They elected a rival king, Rudolf of Swabia,
triggering nearly 20 years of civil war. In 1080 the pope recognized Rudolf as
king and again excommunicated Henry. Henry responded by declaring Gregory
deposed and having the Italian archbishop Guibert of Ravenna elected in his
stead as Pope Clement III. Rudolf was killed in 1080, and Henry regained control
of Germany. He then led his forces into Italy and captured Rome in 1084, where
he was crowned emperor by Clement. A Norman army came to the aid of Pope
Gregory, however, and drove Henry from Rome. Henry returned to Germany and there
participated in a long series of civil wars, in which his sons eventually turned
against him. In 1105 he was taken prisoner by his son Henry, later Emperor Henry
V, and forced to abdicate.
Henry V continued his father’s struggle for
supremacy over the papacy, but in the end the princes forced him to compromise
with Pope Callistus II on investiture. The result was the Concordat of Worms in
1122, which stipulated that the elections of church officials in Germany were to
take place in the imperial presence without the exchange of money. It also
required that the emperor invest the candidate with the symbols of his worldly
office before a bishop invested him with the spiritual ones.
The pope probably had the better of the
bargain. The continuing rivalry between empire and papacy contributed in many
ways to the weakening of the emperor’s authority and his powers. Although the
imperial role in investiture was acknowledged, the shift towards a more
independent church was unmistakable. Bishops, like other clerics, were
increasingly integrated into a separate church hierarchy, with its own law and
courts and its own autocratic ruler—the pope. The emperors, meanwhile, had not
only lost their dominance over the papacy but, by giving up their ability to
appoint bishops loyal to them, had also gained more potential rivals.
VI | THE HOHENSTAUFENS AND THE PEAK OF THE EMPIRE (1137-1254) |
During the 12th and 13th centuries, the
empire expanded to its greatest extent but was also divided by political feuding
between two old princely rivals. The Hohenstaufen or Waiblingen family of
Swabia, known in Italy as the Ghibellines, held the German and imperial crowns
for over a century. The Welfs of Bavaria and Saxony, known as Guelphs in Italy,
were allies of the papacy and persistently plotted against Hohenstaufen
rulers.
After Henry V, the last Salian emperor, died
without an heir, the Welfs and the Hohenstaufens competed for succession to the
imperial crown. The other German princes took advantage of this rivalry to
increase their own power at the expense of the empire, playing the factions off
against one another. They bypassed the more powerful members of the feuding
families who would have exerted greater imperial control and instead elected a
series of weak emperors who were unable to challenge their authority. This
resulted in a long civil war between the two factions, a war that eventually
spilled over into Italy as the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. The civil war in the
empire was finally settled in 1152 by the election of Frederick I, the son of a
Hohenstaufen father and a Welf mother.
However, the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict
continued for another two centuries. It became a specifically Italian conflict
between forces opposed to the papacy and those supporting it. See Guelphs
and Ghibellines.
A | Frederick I, Barbarossa |
Handsome, intelligent, warlike, judicious,
and charming, Frederick I, called Barbarossa, ruled from 1152 to 1190. Partly to
assert his status as a religious equal of the pope, he added Holy to his
title of Roman Emperor. He spent most of his reign shuttling between
Germany and Italy, trying to restore imperial glory to both regions and coming
closer than any other medieval ruler.
In the north, he married the daughter of
the Duke of Burgundy and joined that duchy to his hereditary lands. In the
south, Frederick made six expeditions to Italy to assert full imperial authority
over both the pope and the cities of the Lombards, which had become increasingly
independent of the empire. He was initially successful in defeating a variety of
alliances between these two challengers to imperial authority in Italy. During
his fifth Italian expedition, however, he was defeated by the Lombard League at
the Battle of Legnano in 1176 and was forced to recognize the cities’ political
autonomy. Frederick later died leading the Third Crusade.
B | The Last Hohenstaufen Kings |
More ambitious even than his father
Frederick, Henry VI seized Sicily, an island off southern Italy, and forced the
northern Italian cities to submit to him. Intending to create an empire in the
Mediterranean, he exacted tribute from North Africa and the weak Byzantine
emperor. However, when Henry died suddenly in 1197 while planning a new crusade,
the empire immediately fell apart. The German princes refused to accept his
infant son Frederick as king and thus initiated a new civil war between backers
of the Hohenstaufen, Philip of Swabia, and those of the Welf, Otto of Brunswick.
When Otto invaded Italy, Pope Innocent III secured the election of Frederick as
German king on the promise that the young king would give up Sicily so as not to
surround papal territory.
Outstandingly accomplished in many fields,
Frederick II, who reigned from 1212 to 1250, was called Stupor Mundi
(Latin for “wonder of the world”). Determined to keep Sicily as his base of
operations, he revised his coronation promise to the pope, giving Germany rather
than Sicily to his young son Henry. In exchange for the German princes’ support
of his Italian campaigns, Frederick allowed them to usurp many of his own
powers, making them virtually kings in their own territories. In an edict issued
in 1220, Frederick surrendered to the German princes the right to erect castles,
grant town charters, and levy taxes. Bishops and other ecclesiastical rulers
received similar concessions for their support. Such decentralization soon
backfired on Frederick and Henry, as the princes’ greater autonomy further
weakened the power of the emperor.
Frederick spent the remainder of his long
reign preoccupied with the struggle over northern Italy. He led a successful
crusade to Jerusalem in 1228 but was soon forced to return to reclaim Sicily
from the invading Pope Gregory IX. In 1237 the pope sided with the Lombard
League against the emperor, and this time, Frederick responded by seizing the
Papal States. Gregory’s successor, Innocent IV, fled to Lyon, France, and
declared the emperor deposed. Before he could secure his position against the
League, Frederick died. Under his successor Conrad IV, the Hohenstaufens were
finally ousted from Sicily.
The empire then suffered the turmoil of the
Great Interregnum (1254-1273), during which two non-Germans, Richard of Cornwall
and Alfonso X of Castile, claimed the imperial crown, though neither was ever
crowned emperor. The German princes, meanwhile, exploited the absence of an
emperor, to further solidify their own political independence. At the very time
that French and English kings were centralizing their power, German lands were
becoming further politically fragmented into numerous units, thus fracturing
central authority. The Great Interregnum marked a decisive turning point in the
history of Germany and the empire, beginning the long decline of real imperial
power.
VII | DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE AND ASCENDANCY OF THE HABSBURGS (1273-1806) |
During the next two centuries, leadership of
the Holy Roman Empire, as it was now known, was contested by three German
dynasties—the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs, and the Luxemburgs. Eventually, the
house of Habsburg prevailed, and the imperial crown became essentially a
hereditary possession. Their victory, which coincided with the steady decline of
imperial authority, was far from certain, however.
In 1273, the electors ended the Great
Interregnum by choosing a minor Swabian prince, Rudolf of Habsburg, whom they
believed would be no threat to their power and independence. Rudolf I instead
concentrated on enlarging his own dynastic holdings. He defeated Bohemia and
took from it Austria, Styria and Carinthia (both now provinces of Austria), and
Carniola (modern Slovenia), thus making the Habsburgs one of the most powerful
dynasties in the empire. By the following century, the Habsburgs had succeeded
in elevating Austria, their seat of power, into an archduchy, which made the
Habsburg family equal to the noble families who had originally sought out Rudolf
because of his insignificance.
A | The Luxemburg Emperors (1347-1437) |
After a series of continuing conflicts
with the papacy over the choice of emperor, the imperial electors decided in
1338 that henceforth, the candidate receiving the majority of votes would be
king of the Germans. The king would also automatically become the Holy Roman
emperor without being crowned by the pope. The emperor at the time, the rather
unpopular Louis IV, correctly perceived this as a threat to imperial power and
attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate with both the princes and the pope.
At the same time, Pope Clement VI
responded to the potential reduction of his own influence by sponsoring Charles
of Moravia, the king of Bohemia, as an imperial candidate. The pope hoped that
Charles would be easy to control, and upon Louis’s death in 1347, Charles was
chosen emperor by five of the seven electors. In 1355 he was crowned as Charles
IV in Rome by a papal representative.
Despite Clement’s hopes that Charles
would reverse the electors’ decision, the emperor diplomatically evaded the
question of the papal role in imperial elections altogether. In the Golden Bull
of 1356, Charles specified the seven electors as the archbishops of Mainz,
Trier, and Cologne; the count palatine of the Rhine; the duke of Saxony; the
margrave of Brandenburg; and the king of Bohemia. Though all of these princely
rulers had traditionally exercised this role, Charles’s bull formalized the
entire process and excluded some claimants from electoral status. The large
duchy of Bavaria was the most notable of these exclusions, and the power of its
rulers diminished somewhat as a result. The bull also made the seven electors’
lands indivisible, granted them monopolies on mining and tolls, and secured
gifts from all imperial candidates. As a result, these seven rulers became the
strongest of all German princes.
In a departure from all his predecessors,
Charles finally accepted two unalterable facts about the Holy Roman Empire: the
futility of imperial claims in Italy, and the political sovereignty of German
cities and princely territories. The bull itself also provided some legal
constitution to an empire that Charles himself recognized as an anachronism with
little real power. The Golden Bull signaled a new focus for imperial ambitions.
Charles began building a powerful state in the east by entrenching his own
dynasty in Bohemia; buying Brandenburg and adding it to his kingdom; taking
Silesia from Poland; and establishing an impressive court in his capital of
Prague (in present-day Czech Republic).
Charles’s son Sigismund, who continued to
rule from Prague, attempted to reassert the emperor’s role as the secular head
of Christendom by trying to resolve the Great Schism (1378-1417) of the papacy.
Since 1378 the church had been torn by the rival claims of two and later three
would-be popes. In 1414 Sigismund successfully forced one of the papal
claimants, John XXIII, to call the Council of Constance (1414-1418) in an
attempt to resolve the crisis. Due largely to the emperor’s careful and
extensive diplomacy, the council did eventually end the Great Schism of the
papacy.
The council also served another of
Sigismund’s goals. Sigismund saw himself as the defender of Christianity and was
concerned about the popular Czech preacher and religious reformer, Jan Hus (John
Huss), who was gaining popularity in the region. Huss was invited to the council
to state his views and was immediately condemned as a heretic, imprisoned,
tortured, and executed. His death was considered a martyrdom by many local
Bohemians and led to a series of confrontations with the emperor known as the
Hussite Wars (1419-1436).
B | Habsburg Line Restored |
When Sigismund died without an heir, the
electors unanimously chose his Habsburg son-in-law, Albert of Austria, who
became emperor as Albert II in 1438. From that time on, with the exception of
the short period from 1742 to 1745, the imperial crown was hereditary in the
Habsburg line. Because the political fragmentation of the empire had rendered
imperial control essentially impossible, Albert and his successor, Frederick
III, directed most of their energies toward defending the empire’s eastern
frontiers against the encroaching Ottoman Empire and its allies.
Frederick’s son Maximilian I
enthusiastically laid many plans for revitalizing the empire, but these plans
never materialized. He established an imperial court and an imperial tax to fund
it, but neither had much impact. The same is true of his continued attempts to
establish a perpetual truce within the empire, as well as the 1512 division of
the empire into ten administrative districts known as circles. Rather,
his chief success was in arranging marriages to benefit his family. The most
notable of these was the union of his son Philip of Burgundy with Joanna of
Castile, the daughter of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. The office
of emperor meanwhile became an increasingly symbolic position, used in the next
five centuries primarily to further Habsburg dynastic ambitions.
The process of imperial disintegration
was so advanced by the beginning of the 16th century that even Maximilian’s
powerful successor Charles V was unable to reverse it. The son of Philip of
Burgundy and Joanna of Castile, Charles gradually inherited a vast assortment of
territories, stretching from Netherlands, to Austria, to Spain and its holdings
in the Americas. In 1519 he was elected Holy Roman emperor. Though he personally
ruled more territory than any European leader since Charlemagne, Charles’s
legacy at his 1556 abdication was a Holy Roman Empire more politically fractured
by religious and other rivalries than at any time since the Great Interregnum of
the 13th century. He was also the last emperor crowned by the pope, which was by
this time a largely symbolic gesture.
Charles’s lifetime ambition was to
reestablish a united Christian empire, but this was consistently frustrated by
three sometimes-allied foes—the ruling Valois dynasty of France, the Ottoman
Empire, and the Protestant princes and cities in Germany. In the early part of
his reign, he was forced to fight a lengthy conflict with France, which was
alarmed by the extensive territory Charles governed and the power it gave him.
This conflict consumed a great deal of time and money, but was ultimately
indecisive. After peace was finally made in the late 1520s, Charles was forced
to defend his empire. The Ottomans were advancing in the east and already had
conquered much of Hungary and were approaching Austria. This conflict, like that
with the French, was also long, costly, and indecisive. It ended in a truce in
1545.
Charles’s biggest challenge, however, was
Protestantism, to which he was firmly opposed. The Protestant Reformation
started by Martin Luther in 1517 had made much progress in Germany. Many of the
German princes saw the cause of religious freedom espoused by the Reformation as
a vehicle for their own territorial and political independence from the empire,
and supported it wholeheartedly.
Despite this, the emperor did not make a
final break with the Lutherans until after the Augsburg Confession of 1530,
which stated the religious doctrines of the Lutherans and sharply criticized the
Catholic church. Following the Augsburg Confession, the Lutherans, who were now
called Protestants, formed a military alliance, the Schmalkaldic League. War
ensued, and in 1547 Charles won a major victory at Mühlberg in Saxony. Conflict
continued to build, however, until the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 finally
established peace among the empire's feuding Protestant and Catholic princes,
and maintained it for over half a century.
The Peace of Augsburg, in the fashion of
previous imperial concessions, allowed the empire’s princes to choose
Catholicism or Lutheranism as the official state religion for their areas. After
this point, Charles’s successors to the imperial throne largely gave up any
notions of a universal empire and instead concentrated on centralizing the
administration of their dynastic holdings in Austria.
By 1618, however, the religious peace
collapsed, resulting in a series of destructive conflicts known collectively as
the Thirty Years' War. The long war ended in a draw, finalized by the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648. By the terms of the treaty, reminiscent of the Peace of
Augsburg, each prince could determine the religion of his German state, choosing
among Lutheran, Catholic, or Calvinist. More significantly, the sovereignty and
independence of each of the 350-odd states of the Holy Roman Empire was now at
last formally recognized, making the emperor powerless. Despite a few fiscal and
diplomatic prerogatives, the Holy Roman Empire thus continued mainly in name,
having lost all claims to universality or effective centralized government. In
practice, it was now little more than a title passed on by the Habsburg rulers
of one German state—Austria—with its future tied to the fate of the Habsburg
dynasty.
VIII | THE END OF THE EMPIRE |
During most of the 18th century, the
Habsburg emperors were mainly concerned with the power struggles between their
own Austria and Prussia, the two most prominent German states. In the wake of
the French Revolution of 1789, however, they were forced to confront the threat
posed by a French invasion. From 1792 to 1802, Austria and Prussia joined forces
with other German states in wars of defense against revolutionary France. All
the wars ended in defeat, and France continued to expand its territory.
In the face of the successes of Napoleon
I, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II modified his title to a more modest
hereditary emperor of Austria in 1804. Two years later, however, Napoleon
organized the states of the Holy Roman Empire that he had conquered into the
Confederation of the Rhine. The 17 members of the confederation then broke away
from the empire, prompting Francis II to resign the title of Holy Roman emperor
altogether. On August 6, 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was formally
dissolved.
IX | LEGACY OF THE EMPIRE |
In truth, the empire had long existed more
in the realm of ideas than as a political or administrative reality. The ancient
obsession with Italy, the costly conflicts with the papacy, and the continuous
resistance of German nobles to any strong central authority had made the empire
essentially ungovernable for over five centuries. Many nationalist historians of
the 19th and 20th centuries agonized over the so-called failure of Germany to
unify as France and England had done, and regretted the political and economic
impotence that was legacy of this lack of unity.
Yet despite its ignominious decline and end,
the Holy Roman Empire continued to exercise a great influence on the
imaginations of later German imperialists. When Otto von Bismarck and the
Prussian king William I established the German Empire in 1871, they explicitly
encouraged the title Second Empire for the new state, so as to borrow some of
the glory and power enjoyed by the Holy Roman Empire at its peak. Adolf Hitler
and his National Socialist supporters similarly appropriated the legacy of the
First Empire by dubbing their own regime the Third Empire and pledging another
thousand years of German hegemony. Both regimes of course proved considerably
briefer than the original empire during its peak, although for a time they were
equally as dominant in the politics of western and central Europe.
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