CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: General summary.]
[Sidenote: Perpetuation of the name of Rome.]
After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the
phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its
nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help
being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are
as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during
which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the
Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was
extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint
imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a
city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal
weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as
a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes
of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they
found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering
confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor
raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more.
Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German
successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European
chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and after
promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks
at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an
international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions
so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first
sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious
mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever
based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during
three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her
empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen
with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the
destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so
limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its
power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races
whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the
weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal
rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of
honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city
had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the
theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new
religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology,
her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had
never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes
on the Ganges and the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: Parallel instances.]
[Sidenote: Claims to represent the Roman Empire.]
[Sidenote: Austria.]
[Sidenote: France.]
[Sidenote: Russia.]
[Sidenote: Greece.]
[Sidenote: The Turks.]
Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions
by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political
history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not
insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason.
It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine
the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the
Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria
clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in
Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position
there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more
legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might
pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire,
and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as
the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the
self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the
sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European
politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called
Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed
of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Cæsars, and
trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand
years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an
imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable
engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism.
Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political
combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has
embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived
Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the
intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has
more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern
Cæsars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent
assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his
successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by
twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the
consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the
Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent
legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction
of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto[419].
[Sidenote: Parallel of the Papacy.]
These examples, however, are minor parallels: the complement and
illustration of the history of the Empire is to be found in that of
the Holy See. The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the
offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her
parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age
once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of
her own approaching doom[420].
Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the human spirit was
utterly prostrated before authority and tradition, when the exercise
of private judgment was impossible to most and sinful to all. Those
who believed the miracles recorded in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and did
not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained
of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded, as it seemed to be, on
so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of
undisputed possession.
Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle Ages for
unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of
that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something
which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of
sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in
the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise
above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true
difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible
Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and
strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for
itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from
the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful
than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in
heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church
militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church
triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of
traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great
is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases
we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the
world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its
feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is
necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading
one. Obedience, almost the first of mediæval virtues, is now often
spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of
praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual
will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the
belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be
a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an
abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not,
cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one
all-pervading church exercised upon their mediæval forefathers. A life
in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she
blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper
hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus
of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by
penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for
contemplation and worship,--this was the life which they of the Middle
Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life
of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed
to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier
between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the
portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already
self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediæval
document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the
feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven.
For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely,
heaven for the sake of the church[421].'
Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on
physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came,
the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was
firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the
death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and
Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a
single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the
Swabian Cæsars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the
principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they
resisted the spiritual power.
[Sidenote: Papacy and Empire compared as perpetuations of a name.]
Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power
of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been
said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances,
but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the
character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly,
was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of
Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous
peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by
controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by
being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its
old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of
both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also
within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it
sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the
substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of
the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never
weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist
unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for
them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for
ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often
useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as
when it leads men who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors,
to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than
their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by
the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that
which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that
no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to
preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under
conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed
save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle
Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in
common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though
it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a
new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and
represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a
power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring,
because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its
contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great
ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular
life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages
sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is
that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed
the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights
which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And
as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays
of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone
with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
[Sidenote: In what sense was the Empire Roman?]
The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly mediæval. Was it
then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better
than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a
comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew
nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century
every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a
strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of
those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable
even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could
scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether
judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it
existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had
persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the
strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The
thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and
drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It
has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for
many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian
was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages,
that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek
their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the
palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had
floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken
legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would
have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus;
but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the
childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palæologus was installed! It
was not in purple buskins that the dignity of the Luxemburger
lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death
lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it
had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans
is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might
muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient
contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.
[Sidenote: 'Imperialism:' Roman, French, and mediæval.]
[Sidenote: Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races.]
The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic
representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed
of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Cæsar and his subtle
nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome
has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a
certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or
rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the
name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the
concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of
the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the
maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of
the influence of public opinion for the control of representative
assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to
characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before
now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of
aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that
may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in
the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and
Antonine Cæsars of old, and at the beginning of this century by
Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and
government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Cæsars and
the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate
upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley
of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left
them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none
of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the
strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the
administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social
uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no
one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the
imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle
Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In
the political character of the French people, whether it be the result
of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the
original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a
claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the
Romans[423] of the modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is
to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion,
if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted
with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is
more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common
idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states
have been little more successful than their neighbours in the
establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote,
and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure
without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable
French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of
government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a
freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of
politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like
that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at
Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or
the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which
the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours
somewhat different from his.
[Sidenote: Essential principles of the mediæval Empire.]
There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediæval imperialism, a
theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government,
which has been described once already, and need not be described
again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its
properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the
existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact
coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its
workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was
its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political
organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local
authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But
although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a
despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and
blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on
municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for
religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which
constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who
was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic
power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an
unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it
now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because
he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed
him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a
time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those
ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when
thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free
from the bonds of sense.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Holy Empire on Germany.]
The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be
more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether
unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry
crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the
deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she
suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people
forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of
the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a
compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the
race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth
century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of
intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled
and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all
the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted
Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty
from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still,
cannot be attributed to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous
as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no
greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians,
and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so
great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the
decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife
with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for
universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring
countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his
feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation
from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation
of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish,
justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own
liberty--liberty to oppress the subject--and ready on the least
occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the
people were deprived of all political training, and have found the
lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.
For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some
compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the
ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can
never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful
in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power,
submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments
of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories
of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul
and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received
a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought,
and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had
not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the
German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman
conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire
flowed all the richness of their mediæval life and literature: it
first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history
has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent
politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the
future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion.
When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the
harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival
displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety
which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed
the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue
of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed
the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as
gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn
that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a
capital.
[Sidenote: Austria as heir of the Holy Empire.]
The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a
brisk controversy among several German professors of history[425]. The
spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten
years ago was not less powerful in some of the minor South German
States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg monarchy the honour of
being the legitimate representative of the mediæval Empire, and
declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could
Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The
North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they
replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true
daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less
aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of
priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national
feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and
anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and
Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest.
The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is
possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the
Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in
some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and
Swabian Cæsars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian
people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians
themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the
races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of
spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of
pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her,
they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it
when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like
her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were
composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of
peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task
of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of
another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned
in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze
of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediæval faith and
simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and
is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle
Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in
some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more
recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings
have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the
ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the
treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes
wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military
monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of
modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the
old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial
greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the
throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from
Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog
and incumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not
how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old
Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any
harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those
of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems
to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is
wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of
modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of mediæval chivalry,
the noblest creation of mediæval thought.
[Sidenote: Bearing of the Empire upon the progress of European
civilization.]
[Sidenote: Influence upon modern jurisprudence.]
We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend or state
rightly its bearing on European progress. The mountain lies behind us,
but miles must be traversed before we can take in at a glance its
peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its
height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts
and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only
less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many
ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and
through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of
modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally
and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other
monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same
origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the
prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical importance
in our own days. For while in Southern France and Central Italy, where
the subject population greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old
system would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted that in
Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have
grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch
was the legitimate successor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be
binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a
faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy, who naturally
disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could
not but admit its validity, and before the end of the Middle Ages
Roman law prevailed through all Germany[426]. When it is considered
how great are the services which German writers have rendered and
continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this
result will appear far from insignificant. But another of still wider
import followed. When by the Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty
principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the
need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That
code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the
private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the
system of international jurisprudence has been built up during the
last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German
creation, and could have arisen in no country where the law of Rome
had not been the fountain of legal ideas and the groundwork of
positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice,
and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only,
title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind.
Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived
unmolested beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the
Germanic body feeling that the rights of the weakest of his brethren
were also his own.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Empire upon the history of the Church.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and
the Popes.]
The most important chapter in the history of the Empire is that which
describes its relation to the Church and the Papacy. Of the
ecclesiastical power it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In
the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of
Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss
of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The
struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political
rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to
the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended, with the
death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a
victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat.
The anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern
nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a violence which
alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors
once more the allies of the Popedom, and the partners of its declining
fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which
had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but not
the less a serious error to suppose, as modern writers often seem to
do, that the pretensions of the Empire and the Popedom were mutually
exclusive; that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular, of
a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find
mediæval writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves,
expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government--two
potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in
things eternal, Cæsar in things temporal. The relative position of the
two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the
days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and
could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was
practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries
later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas
had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to
its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance
inclined the other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being
of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil
administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration
nor to degrade its head: the great struggle of the eleventh and two
following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other
power, but turns solely upon the character of their connexion.
Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the
obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal
responsibility for the souls of their common subjects: he demands, not
that the functions of temporal government shall be directly committed
to himself, but that they shall be exercised in conformity with the
will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no
means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny the spiritual
supremacy of the Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal
salvation. They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being
also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and remind
the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There was in truth no
way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever
things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the
world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most
pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to
extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the
same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when
the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came
when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other; from
the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for
supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes
with every blast.
[Sidenote: Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.]
Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less
momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward
dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the
Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the
formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the
concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious
state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire.
Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the
connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and
the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it
took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually
rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by
it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness,
and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier
civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight
upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that
mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not
the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman
Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so
by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a
brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose
sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
[Sidenote: Principles adverse to the Empire.]
As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic
Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of
which their forerunners of the elder Rome had triumphed,--those of
Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles
were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the
emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary,
Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism,
menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded,
after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in
Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent
principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few
military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal
kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on
physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the
hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than
necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to
crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free
towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere
of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the
necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the
same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld
from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial
absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual
tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the
proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the
liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning
the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet,
should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
[Sidenote: Change marked by its fall.]
[Sidenote: Relations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.]
Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed the face of
Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of
every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old
forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the
most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the
Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has
been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest
province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so
long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom
Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the
possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the
Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since
Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of
the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has
now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize,
with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy--efforts
confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all
but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general
reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may
be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent
intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the
character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant
prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common
interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the
history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who
studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible
for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to
repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome: to gather into one
vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more
and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great
measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that
the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler
than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after
summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his
treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Cæsar found it
the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless
abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste,
and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world,
and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The
blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet
with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a
tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical
night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher
aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Cæsar had sprung
up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national
individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great
founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second
founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The
work of the mediæval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered,
while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to
replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them
within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature
of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its
subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose
watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national
hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth.
And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a
centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable
of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to
that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above
law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it
is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what
has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how
many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions
of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire
gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to
those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its
existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian
theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it
perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and
the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
[Sidenote: Difficulties arising from the nature of the subject.]
This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost
inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its extent but from its
profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue
we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of
expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least
possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single
institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries--whose
outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly
changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the
difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to
explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as
it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which
we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a
heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able
to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts
and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who
see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition,
planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from
entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political
philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth,
analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures
the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of
tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the
Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is
impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but
that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by
men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations
are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we
should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Cæsar
when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when
he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when
they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding
generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than
we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is
mediæval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and
understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much
as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things
less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the
horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey
onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it
can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was
gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[418] See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the
object of the expedition to Mexico.
[419] One may also compare the retention of the office of consul at
Rome till the time of Justinian: indeed it even survived his formal
abolition. The relinquishment of the title 'King of Great Britain,
France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed many excellent persons.
[420] I speak, of course, of the Papacy as an autocratic power
claiming a more than spiritual authority.
[421] 'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior Deo est quam cœlum. Non enim propter
cœlum ecclesia, sed e converso propter ecclesiam cœlum.' From the
tract entitled 'A Letter of the four Universities to Wenzel and Urban
VIII,' quoted in an earlier chapter.
[422] Von Raumer, _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen_, v.
[423] Meaning thereby not the citizens of Rome in her republican days,
but the Italo-Hellenic subjects of the Roman Empire.
[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht,
_Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit_; and Rotteck and Welcker's _Staats Lexikon_.
The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
[425] See especially Von Sybel, _Die Deutsche Nation und das
Kaiserreich_; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the
feudal law of land.
[427] Mommsen, _Römische Geschichte_, iii. _sub. fin._
APPENDIX.
NOTE A.
ON THE BURGUNDIES.
It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its
application at different times to different districts, has caused, and
continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may,
therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of
those applications. Without going into the minutiæ of the subject, the
following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most
frequently to be met with:--
I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (_regnum Burgundionum_), founded
A.D. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone,
from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half
of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.D. 534.
II. The kingdom of Burgundy (_regnum Burgundiæ_), mentioned
occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality,
confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of
the older kingdom last named.
III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (_regnum Provinciæ seu
Burgundiæ_)--also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of
Cis-Jurane Burgundy--was founded by Boso in A.D. 877, and included
Provence, Dauphiné, the southern part of Savoy, and the country
between the Saone and the Jura.
IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (_regnum Iurense_, _Burgundia
Transiurensis_), founded by Rudolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same
year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and
all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (_regnum Burgundiæ_, _regnum
Arelatense_), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in A.D.
937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in
1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by
bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II
(the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the
thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now
(since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss
portion of it.
VI. The Lesser Duchy (_Burgundia Minor_), (Klein Burgund),
corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the
Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) _minus_
the parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears
from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the
thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till A.D. 1648,
though practically independent long before that date.
VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comté),
(Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of
Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the
Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a
fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were invested with it
in A.D. 1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western
Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It
was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned
after the thirteenth century.
IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division
of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the
Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the
Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary,
daughter of Charles the Bold.
X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most
northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a
fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the
Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles
the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
* * * * *
The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure
history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in
the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois
historian, to the _Archiv für Schweizer Geschichte_. See also an
admirable article in the _National Review_ for October 1860, entitled
'The Franks and the Gauls.'
NOTE B.
ON THE RELATIONS TO THE EMPIRE OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, AND THE
DUCHIES OF SCHLESWIG AND HOLSTEIN.
The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the
Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great
Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up
with two questions properly quite distinct,--the first, as to the
relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish
crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish
kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,--it has
borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and
interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half.
Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as
follows:--
I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish
Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their
independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the
Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and
Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of
Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time
Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the
treaty of A.D. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for
Holstein.
II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as
Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana
(Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum (wherein lay the town of
Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great
conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the
southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire,
erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad
II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his
suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time
the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since
the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined,
and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to
sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at
this day of the North German Bund.
NOTE C.
ON CERTAIN IMPERIAL TITLES AND CEREMONIES.
This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more
than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use;
for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time
to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some
clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of
title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is
very far from being a barren or a dull one.
I. TITLES OF EMPERORS. Charles the Great styled himself 'Carolus
serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator,
Romanum (_or_ Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam
Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply
'Imperator Augustus.' Sometimes 'rex Francorum et Langobardorum' was
added[428].
Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome, 'rex,' or 'rex
Francorum Orientalium,' or 'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;' after it,
simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Otto III is usually said to have
introduced the form 'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,' but some
authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor
till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion
which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the
sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown,
began to call themselves 'reges Romanorum.' The title did not,
however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose
proclamations it occurs constantly.
From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice
was for the monarch to be called 'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,' till
his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it, 'Romanorum Imperator
semper Augustus.'
In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the
Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call
himself 'Imperator electus' (erwählter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I
(brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately
upon their German coronation, and it was till A.D. 1806 their strict
legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in
proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was
however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was
addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice
he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
Maximilian added the title 'Germaniæ rex,' which had never been known
before, although the phrase 'rex Germanorum' may be found employed
once or twice in early times. 'Rex Teutonicorum,' 'regnum
Teutonicum[430],' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A
great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time.
Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in
virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the
same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It
is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous
than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is
given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and
Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by
new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with
Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of
King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times
there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with
a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and
associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His
office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature
elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or
the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War
could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people
could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of
God.
II. THE CROWNS.
Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were
those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy,
sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at
Rome.
The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the
Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the
Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it
would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick
I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most
Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who
obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal
manner. But down to A.D. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his
capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was
necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have
been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For
as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son
of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany,
so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not
kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings
of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save
the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider
rights remained in full force, and were never subsequently
relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and
absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself
crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
III. THE KING OF THE ROMANS (RÖMISCHER KÖNIG).
It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the
German monarch began to entitle himself 'Romanorum rex.' Now it was
not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to
be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the
latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be
remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not
only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.)
This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as
Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and
dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed
against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as
the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on
the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor
during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his
successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and
took the title of 'King of the Romans.' During the presence of the
Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of
Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at
once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after
the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before
Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be
crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch
generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near
relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts
to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's
death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of
an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of
Rome.
NOTE D.
LINES CONTRASTING THE PAST AND PRESENT OF ROME.
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:
At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,
Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,
Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;
Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;
Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:
Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,
Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,
Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of
Tours (born A.D. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne,
_Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_[436].
FOOTNOTES:
[428] Waitz (_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_) says that the phrase
'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but
not in official documents.
[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire
people had begun to fancy that 'erwählter' did not mean 'elect,' but
'elective.' Cf. note 410, p. 362.
[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the
kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or
Gallicized Franks (Francigenæ), which having been for some time
'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum
Franciæ,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as
only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among
even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the
forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine
documents of the early Empire. Goldast's _Collections_, for instance,
are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be
found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Pütter, and in the host of writers to
whom they refer.
[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement
in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three
Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from
the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss
Confederation.
[434] Nevertheless, Otto II was crowned Emperor, and reigned for some
time along with his father, under the title of 'Co-Imperator.' So
Lothar I was associated in the Empire with Lewis the Pious, as Lewis
himself had been crowned in the lifetime of Charles. Many analogies to
the practice of the Romano-Germanic Empire in this respect might be
adduced from the history of the old Roman, as well as of the Byzantine
Empire.
[435] Maximilian had obtained this title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the
Pope. Ferdinand took it as of right, and his successors followed the
example.
[436] See note 326, p. 270.
INDEX.
A.
Aachen, 72, 77, 86, 148, 212, 316 note, 403.
ADALBERT (St.), 245; the church founded at Rome to receive
his ashes, 286.
ADELHEID (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 83.
ADOLF of Nassau, 221, 222, 262.
ADSO, his _Vita Antichristi_, 114 note.
AISTULF the Lombard, 39.
ALARIC, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
Empire, 17, 19.
ALBERIC (consul or senator), 83.
ALBERT I (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), 221, 224, 262.
Albigenses, revolt of the, 241.
ALBOIN, his invasion of Italy, 36.
ALCUIN of York, 59, 66, 96, 201.
ALEXANDER III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 170;
their meeting at Venice, 171.
ALFONSO of Castile, his double election with Richard of
England, 212, 229.
America, discovery of, 311.
ANASTASIUS, his account of the coronation of Charles, 55.
ANGELO (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, 295.
Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages,
114 note; in later times, 334.
Architecture, Roman, 48, 290; analogy between it and the
civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; preservation of
an antique character in both, 296.
ARDOIN (Marquis of Ivrea), 149.
Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, 289;
struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, 388.
Arles; _see_ Burgundy.
ARNOLD of Brescia, Rome under, 174, 252, 276; put to death
at the instance of Pope Hadrian, 278, 299 note.
ARNULF (Emperor), 78.
ATHANARIC, 17.
ATHANASIUS, the triumph of, 12.
ATHAULF the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting
the Roman Empire, 19, 30.
Augsburg, 259; treaty of, 334.
AUGUSTINE, 94.
Aulic Council, the, 340, 342 note.
Austria, privilege of, 199; her claim to represent the
Roman Empire, 368, 381.
Austrian succession, war of the, 352.
Avignon, exactions of the court of, 219; its subservience
to France, 219, 243.
AVITUS, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, 18.
B.
Barbarians, feared by the Romans, 14; Roman armies largely
composed of, 14; admitted to Roman titles and honours, 15;
their feelings towards the Roman Empire, 16; their desire
to preserve its institutions, 17; value of the Roman
officials and Christian bishops to the, 19.
BARTOLOMMEO (San), the church of, 287.
BASIL the Macedonian and Lewis II, 191.
'Basileus,' the title of, 143, 191.
Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, 76 note.
BELISARIUS, his war with the Ostrogoths, 29, 273.
Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 294.
BENEDICT of Soracte, 51 note.
BENEDICT VIII (Pope), alleged decree of, 197.
Benevento, the Annals of, 150.
BERENGAR of Friuli, 82; his death, 83.
BERENGAR II (King of Italy), 83.
BERNARD (St.), 109 note.
Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 112;
perversion of its meaning, 114.
Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 222; the king
of, an elector, 230.
BONIFACE VIII (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, 109,
247; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 219 note.
BOSO, 81, 395.
Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 154.
Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, 24; Roman Civil
Law not forgotten in, at a late date, 32; Roman ensigns and
devices in, 258.
Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by
invaders, 291; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 292; by
modern restorers of churches, 292.
Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, 143; added
to the Empire under Conrad II, 151; effect of its loss on
the Empire, 305; confusion caused by the name, 395; ten
senses in which it is met with, 395-7.
Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to,
9; Otto's policy towards, 141; attitude towards Emperor,
189.
C.
Campanile; _see_ Bell-tower.
Canon law, correspondence between it and the Corpus Juris
Civilis, 101; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 112, 217.
CAPET (Hugh), 142.
Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 295.
Capitulary of A. D. 802, 65.
CARACALLA (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
Carolingian Emperors, 76.
Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in A. D. 888, 78;
Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 85 note.
Carroccio, the, 178 note, 328.
Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 241.
Catholicity or Romanism, 94, 106.
Celibacy, enforcement of, 158.
Cenci, name of, 289 note.
CHARLEMAGNE; _see_ Charles I.
CHARLES I (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom,
41; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the
people, 41; his personal ambition, 42; his treatment of
Pope Leo III, 44; title of 'Champion of the Faith and
Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 47; crowned at
Rome, 48; important consequences of his coronation, 50, 52;
its real meaning, 52, 80, 81; contemporary accounts, 53,
64, 65, 84; their uniformity, 56; illegality of the
transaction, 56; three theories respecting it held four
centuries after, 57; was the coronation a surprise? 58; his
reluctance to assume the imperial title, 60; solution
suggested by Döllinger, 60; seeks the hand of Irene, 61;
defect of his imperial title, 61; theoretically the
successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, 62, 63;
has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, 63; his
authority in matters ecclesiastical, 64; presses Hadrian to
declare Constantine VI a heretic, 64; his spiritual
despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 64; importance
attached by him to the Imperial name, 65; issues a
Capitulary, 65; draws closer the connexion of Church and
State, 66; new position in civil affairs acquired with the
Imperial title, 67, 68, 69; his position as Frankish king,
69, 70; partial failure of his attempt to breathe a
Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, 70, 71; his personal
habits and sympathies, 71; groundlessness of the claims of
the modern French to, 71; the conception of his Empire
Roman, not Teutonic, 72; his Empire held together by the
Church, 73; appreciation of his character generally, 73,
74; impress of his mind on mediæval society, 74; buried at
Aachen, 74; inscription on his tomb, 74; canonised as a
saint, 75; his plan of Empire, 76.
CHARLES II (the BALD), 77, 156, 157.
CHARLES III (the FAT), 78, 81.
CHARLES IV, 223; his electoral constitution, 225; his
Golden Bull, 225, 236; general results of his policy, 236;
his object through life, 236; the University of Prague
founded by, 237; welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, 254.
CHARLES V, accession of, 319; casts in his lot with the
Catholics, 321; the momentous results, 322; failure of his
repressive policy, 322.
CHARLES VI, 348, 351, 352.
CHARLES VII, his disastrous reign, 351.
CHARLES VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples
and Milan, 315.
CHARLES MARTEL, 36, 38.
CHARLES of Valois, 223.
CHARLES the BOLD and Frederick III, 249.
CHEMNITZ, his comments on the condition and prospects of
the Empire, 339.
CHILDERIC, his deposition by the Holy See, 39.
Chivalry, the orders of, 250.
Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, 10; growth of, 10;
alliance of, with the State, 10, 66, 107, 387; organization
of, framed on the model of the secular administration, 11;
the Emperor the head of, 12; maintains the Imperial idea,
13; attitude of Charles the Great towards, 65, 66; the bond
that holds together the Empire of Charles, 73; first gives
men a sense of unity, 92; how regarded in Middle Ages, 92,
370; draws tighter all bonds of outward union, 94; unity
of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, 93; becomes
the exact counterpart of the Empire, 99, 101, 107, 328;
position of, in Germany, 128; Otto's position towards, 129;
effect of the Reformation upon, 327; influence of the
Empire upon the history of, 384.
Churches, national, 95, 330.
Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern
restorers of, 292; mosaics and bell-tower in the, 294.
Cities, in Lombardy, 175; growth of in Germany, 179; their
power, 223.
Civil law, revival of the study of, 172; its study
forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 253.
CIVILIS, the Batavian, 17.
Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 37; their idea of
political unity, 96; their power in the eleventh century,
128; Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to
the, 158; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle
Age, 290.
CLOVIS, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
Empire, 17, 30; his unbroken success, 35.
Coins, papal, 278 note.
COLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 270 and note; the
family of, 281.
Commons, the, 132, 314.
Concordat of Worms, 163.
Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, 362.
CONRAD I (King of the East Franks), 122, 226.
CONRAD II, the reign of, 151; comparison between the
prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V,
165; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 194.
CONRAD III, 165, 277.
CONRAD IV, 210.
CONRADIN (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, 211.
Constance, the Council of, 220, 253, 301; the peace of,
signed by Frederick I, 178.
CONSTANTINE, his vigorous policy, 8; the Donation of, 43,
100, 288 note.
Constantinople, capture of, 303, 311.
Coronations, ceremonies at, 112; the four, gone through by
the Emperors, 193, 403; their meaning, 195; churches in
which they were performed, 284, 288.
Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon
Law, 101.
Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, 111.
Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 125.
CRESCENTIUS, 146.
Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, 57, 61, 81; not
legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, 81; how
treated by the Popes, 82.
Crowns, the four, 193, 403.
Crusades, the, 164, 166, 179, 193, 205, 209.
D.
DANTE, 208; his attitude towards the Empire, 255; his
treatise _De Monarchia_, 262; sketch of its argument, 264
et seq.; its omissions, 268, 299.
Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 294.
Decretals, the False, 156.
Denmark, and the Slaves, 143; imperial authority in, 184;
its relations to the Empire, 398.
Diet, the, 126, 314, 353; its rights as settled A. D. 1648,
340; its altered character A. D. 1654, 344; its triflings,
353.
DIOCLETIAN, his vigorous policy, 8.
Divine right of the Emperor, 246.
DÖLLINGER (Dr.), 60 note.
Dominicans, the order of, 205.
Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 43, 100, 118 note,
261 note.
Dukes, the, in Germany, 125.
E.
East, imperial pretensions in the, 189.
Eastern Church, the, 191.
Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 24, 25;
decay of its power in the West, 45; how regarded by the
Popes, 46.
Edict of Caracalla, 6.
EDWARD II (King of England), his declaration of England's
independence of the Empire, 187.
EDWARD III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 187;
his election against Charles IV, 223.
EGINHARD, his statement respecting Charles's coronation,
58, 60.
Elective constitution, the, 227; difficulty of maintaining
the principle in practice, 233; its object the choice of
the fittest man, 233; restraint of the sovereign, 233;
recognition of the popular will, 234.
Elector, the title of, its advantage, 232 note; personages
upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 232.
Electoral body in primitive times, 226.
Electoral function, conception of the, 235.
Electorate, the Eighth, 231; the Ninth, 231.
Electors, the Seven, 165, 229; their names and offices, 230
note; the question of their vote, 257 note.
Emperor, the position of, in the second century, 5, 6; the
head of the Church, 12, 23, 111; sanctity of the name, 22,
120; correspondence between his position and functions and
those of the Pope, 104; proofs from mediæval documents,
109; and from the coronation ceremonies, 112; illustrations
from mediæval art, 116; nature of his power, 120; fusion of
his functions with those of German King, 127; his office
feudalized, 130; attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards,
189; his dignities and titles, 193, 257, 261, 400; the
title not assumed till the Roman coronation, 196; origin
and results of this practice, 196; policy of, 222; his
office as peace-maker, 244, 245; divine right of the, 246;
his right of creating kings, 249; his international place
at the Council of Constance, 253; change in titles of, 316;
his rights as settled A.D. 1648, 340; altered meaning of
the word now-a-days, 402.
Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 193, 195, 403;
persons eligible as, 251; after Henry VII, 263; their
short-sighted policy towards Rome, 277; their visits to
Rome, 282; their approach, 283; their entrance, 284;
hostility of the Pope and people to the, 284; their
burial-places, 287 note; nature of the question at issue
between the Popes and the, 385; their titles, 400.
Emperors, Carolingian, 76.
Emperors, Franconian, 133.
Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in
Germany, 310; their policy, 305, 348; repeated attempts to
set them aside, 350; causes of the long retention of the
throne by the, 349; modern pretensions of, 368, 381.
Emperors, Italian, 80.
Emperors, Saxon, 133.
Emperors, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, 57, 165, 167.
Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 61; their
short-sighted policy, 277; their memorials in Rome, 286;
names of those buried in Italy, 287 note; their struggles
against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, 388.
Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, 5; obliteration
of national distinctions in, 6; unity of, threatened from
without and from within, 7, 8; preserved for a time by the
policy of Diocletian and Constantine, 8, 9; partition of,
9; influence of the Church in supporting, 13; armies of,
composed of barbarians, 15; how regarded by the barbarians,
16; belief in eternity of, 20; reunion of Italy to, 29; its
influence in the Transalpine provinces, 30; influence of
religion and jurisprudence in supporting, 31, 32; belief
in, not extinct in the eighth century, 44; restoration of
by Charles the Great, 48; the 'translation' of the, 52,
111, 175, 218; divided between the grandsons of Charles,
77; dissolution of, 78; ideal state supposed to be embodied
in, 99; never, strictly speaking, restored, 102.
Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, 80, 103;
a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, 80; wherein it
differed therefrom, 80; motives for establishment of, 84;
identical with Holy Roman Church, 106; its rights proved
from the Bible, 112; its anti-national character, 120; its
union with the German kingdom, 122; dissimilarity between
the two, 127; results of the union, 128; its pretensions in
Hungary, 183; in Poland, 184; in Denmark, 184; in France,
185; in Sweden, 185; in Spain, 185; in England, 186; in
Naples, 188; in Venice, 188; in the East, 189; the epithet
'Holy' applied by Frederick I, 199; origin and meaning of
epithet, 200; its fall with Frederick II, 210; Italy lost
to, 211; change in its position, 214; its continuance due
to its connexion with the German kingdom, 214; its
relations with the Papacy, 153, 155, 216; its financial
distress, 223; theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, 238; its duties as an international judge and
mediator, 244; why an international power, 248;
illustrations, 249; attitude of new learning towards, 251,
254, 256; doctrine of its rights and functions never
carried out in fact, 253; end of its history in Italy, 263,
304; relation between it and the city, 297; reaches its
lowest point in Frederick III's reign, 301; its loss of
Burgundy, 305, and of Switzerland, 306; change in its
character, 308, 313; effects of the Renaissance upon, 312;
effects of the Reformation upon, 319, 325; its influence
upon the name and associations of, 332; narrowing of its
bounds, 341; causes of the continuance of, 344; its
relation to the balance of power, 345; its position in
Europe, 346; its last phase, 352; signs of its approaching
fall, 356; its end, 363; the desire for its
re-establishment, 364; unwillingness of certain states,
364; technically never extinguished, 364 note; summary of
its nature and results, 366; claim of Austria to represent,
368; of France, 368; of Russia, 368; of Greece, 368; of the
Turks, 368; parallel between the Papacy and, 369, 373;
never truly mediæval, 373; sense in which it was Roman,
374; its condition in the tenth century, 374; essential
principles of, 377; its influence on Germany, 378; Austria
as heir of, 381; its bearing on the progress of Europe,
383; ways in which it affected the political institutions
of the Middle Ages, 383; its influence upon modern
jurisprudence, 383; upon the history of the Church, 384;
influence of its inner life on the minds of men, 387;
principles adverse to, 388; change marked by its fall, 389;
its relations to the nationalities of Europe, 390;
difficulty of fully understanding, 392.
Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, 101; consequences,
102; struggle between, 153; their relations, 155, 216;
parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name,
372.
Empire Western, last days of the, 24; its extinction by
Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
Empire, French, under Napoleon, 360.
ENGELBERT, 113 note.
England, 45; Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
exercised by any Emperors in, 186; vague notion that it
must depend on the Empire, 186; imperial pretensions
towards, 187; position of the regal power in, as compared
with Germany, 215; feudalism in, 343.
Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great,
132.
EUDES (Count of Champagne), 151.
Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 383; on
the nationalities of, 390.
F.
False Decretals, the, 156.
FERDINAND I, 316 note, 323, 401.
FERDINAND II, accession of, 335; his plans, 335; deprives
the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, 231.
Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 221.
Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 124.
Feudalism, 90, 123; reason of its firm grasp upon society,
124; hostility between it and imperialism, 131; its results
in France, 343; in England, 343; in Germany, 344; struggles
of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
Financial distress of the Empire, 223.
FLORUS the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the
Carolingian Empire, 85 note.
Fontenay, battle of, 77.
France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, 142; imperial
authority exercised in, 185; her irritation at Germany's
precedence, 185; growth of the regal power in, as compared
with Germany, 215; alliance of the Protestants with, 325;
territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, 341; feudalism
in, 343; under Napoleon, 360; her claim to represent the
Roman Empire, 368, 376.
Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, 77.
FRANCIS I, reign of, 351.
FRANCIS II, accession of, 356; resignation of imperial
crown by, 1, 363.
Franciscans, the order of, 205.
Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
Franconian Emperors, 133.
'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, 142 note.
Franks, rise of the, 34; success of their arms, 35;
Catholics from the first, 36; their greatness chiefly due
to the clergy, 36; enter Rome, 48.
Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 142.
Frankfort, synod held at, 64; coronations at, 316 note,
404.
FREDERICK I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 167, 179;
his relations to the Popedom, 167; his contest with Pope
Hadrian IV, 169, 316; incident at their meeting on the way
to Rome, 314 note; his contest with Pope Alexander III,
170; their meeting at Venice, 171; magnificent ascriptions
of dignity to, 173; assertion of his prerogative in Italy,
174; his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' 175;
his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 175; his
temporary success, 177; victory of the Lombards over, 178;
his prosperity as German king, 178; his glorious life and
happy death, 179; legend respecting him, 180; extent of his
jurisdiction, 182; his dominion in the East, 189; his
letter to Saladin, 189; anecdote of, 214.
FREDERICK II, character of, 207; events of his struggle
with the Papacy, 209; results of his reign, 221; the charge
of heresy against, 251 note; memorials left by, in Rome,
287.
FREDERICK III, abases himself before the Romish court, 220;
Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, 249; his
calamitous reign, 301.
FREDERICK (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by
Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, 231.
FREDERICK of Prussia (the Great), 347, 352, 353 note.
Freedom popular, growth of, 240; struggles of the Teutonic
Emperors against, 388.
G.
Gallic race, political character of the, 376.
Gauverfassung, the so-called, 123.
GERBERT (Pope Sylvester II), 146.
'German Emperor,' the title of, 127, 317.
Germanic constitution, the, 221; influence upon, of the
theory of the Empire as an international power, 307;
attempted reforms of, 313; means by which it was proposed
to effect them, 314; causes of their failure, 314.
Germany, beginning of the national existence of, 77;
chooses Arnulf as king, 78; overrun by Hungarians, 79;
establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, 79;
desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, 86;
position of in the tenth century, 122; union of the Empire
with, 122; results of the union, 128; dissimilarity of the
two systems, 127; feudalism in, 123; the feudal polity of,
generally, 125; nature of the history of, till the twelfth
century, 126; princes of, ally themselves with the Pope
against the Emperor, 162; its hatred of the Romish Court,
169; the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, 179;
growth of towns in, 179, 223; decline of imperial power in,
211; state of during Great Interregnum, 213; decline of
regal power in, 215; encroachments of nobles in, 221, 228;
kingdom of, not originally elective, 225; how it ultimately
became elective, 226; changes in the constitution of, 228;
its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 302;
its loss of imperial territories, 303; its internal
weakness, 306; position of the Emperor in, compared with
that of his predecessors in Europe, 309; beginning of the
Hapsburg influence in, 310; first consciousness of its
nationality, 315; destruction of its State-system, 324; its
troubles, 324; finally severed from Rome, 340; after the
peace of Westphalia, 342; effect of a number of petty
independent states upon, 343; feudalism in, 343; its
political life in the eighteenth century, 345; foreign
thrones acquired by its princes, 346; French aggression
upon, 346; its weakness and stagnation, 347; popular
feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, 354;
Napoleon in, 361; changes in, by war of 1866, 365 note;
influence of the Holy Empire on, 378.
GERSON, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 301.
Ghibeline, the name of, 304.
GOETHE, 236 note, 316 note, 356.
Golden Bull of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, 28;
Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, 29.
Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, 240, 252; her claim to represent the Roman
Empire, 368.
Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, 37 note.
Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire,
210.
GREGORY THE GREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 31;
means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority,
154.
GREGORY II (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with
the Byzantine princes, 102.
GREGORY III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour
against the Lombards, 39.
GREGORY V (Pope), 146.
GREGORY VII (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures
to the clergy, 158; war between him and Henry IV, 159; his
letter to William the Conqueror, 160; passage in his second
excommunication of Henry, 161; results of the struggle
between them, 162; his death, 162; his theory as to the
rights of the Pope with respect to the election of
Emperors, 217; his silence about the Translation of the
Empire, 218; his simile between the Empire and the Popedom,
373; his demands on the Emperor, 386.
GREGORY IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 102; receives
the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' 102.
GREGORY X (Pope), 219.
GROTIUS, 384.
Guelf, the name of, 304.
GUIDO, or GUY, of Spoleto, 82.
GUISCARD, Robert, 292.
GUNDOBALD the Burgundian, 25.
GUNTHER of Schwartzburg, 222.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 336.
H.
HADRIAN I (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the
Lombards, 41; motives of his policy, 42; his allusion to
Constantine's Donation, 118 note.
HADRIAN IV (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 169, 285;
his pretensions, 197.
HALLAM, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis,
30 note.
Hanseatic Confederacy, 223, 347.
Hapsburg, the castle of, 213 note.
HAROLD the BLUE-TOOTHED, 143.
HENRY I (the Fowler), 79, 122, 132, 226.
HENRY II crowned Emperor, 149.
HENRY II (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector
of the German Liberties,' 325.
HENRY II (King of England), his submissive tone towards
Frederick I, 186.
HENRY III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 151;
his reform of the Popedom, 152; fatal results of his
encroachments, 152; his death, 152.
HENRY IV, election of, 226 note; war between him and
Gregory VII, 159; his humiliation, 159; results of the
struggle, 162; his death, 162.
HENRY V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 163; his
quarrel with Pope Paschal II, 163; his perilous position,
163; comparison between the prerogative at his death and
that at the accession of Conrad II, 165; tumults produced
by his coronation, 285.
HENRY V (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor
Sigismund, 187.
HENRY VI, 188; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to
the Empire, 206; opposition to the scheme, 206; his
untimely death, 206.
HENRY VII, 221, 223; in Italy, 262; his death, 263.
HENRY VIII (King of England), 334 note.
Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, 232.
HILARY, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, 21 note.
HILDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past
and present of Rome, 406.
HILDEBRAND; _see_ Gregory VII.
HIPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise of, 339.
Hohenstaufen; _see_ Emperors, Swabian.
Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 165 note.
Holland, declared independent, 342.
Holstein, its relations to the Empire, 398.
HUGH CAPET, 42.
HUGH of Burgundy, 83.
Hungarians, the, 143.
Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, 183; its
connexion with the Hapsburgs, 184 note.
HUSS, the writings of, 241.
I.
Iconoclastic controversy, 38.
'Imperator electus,' the title of, 316, 405.
Imperialism, Roman, French, and Mediæval, 375.
Imperial titles and ceremonies, 193, 400.
INNOCENT III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV,
206; his pretensions, 209, 217; his struggle with Frederick
II, 208.
INNOCENT X and the sacred number Seven of the electors, 227
note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 341.
International power, the need of an, 242; why the Roman
Empire an, 248.
Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during,
213; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power,
221.
Investitures, the struggle of the, 162.
IRENE (Empress), behaviour of, 47, 61, 68.
Irminsûl, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, 69; meaning
of term, 69 note.
Italian Emperors, 80.
Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments
appeared, 140.
Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, 299.
Italy, under Odoacer, 26, 27; attempt of Theodoric to
establish a national monarchy in, 27; reconquered by
Justinian, 29; harassed by the Lombards, 37; condition of,
previous to Otto's descent into, 80; Otto the Great's first
expedition into, 84; its connexion with Germany, 87; Otto's
rule in, 139; liberties of the northern cities of, 150;
Frederick I in, 174; Henry VII in, 263; lost to the Empire,
211, 304; names of Emperors buried in, 287 note; the nation
at the present day, 389.
Italy, Southern, 150.
J.
JOHN VIII (Pope), 156.
JOHN XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 87; plots against
him, 134; his reprobate life, 134; Liudprand's list of the
charges against, 135; letter recounting them sent to him,
136; his reply, 136; Otto's answer, 136; deposed by Otto,
137; regret of the Romans at his expulsion, 137; his return
and death, 138.
JOHN XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 220.
JOSEPH II, reign of, 352.
JULIUS CÆSAR, 390, 392.
JULIUS II (Pope), 316.
Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31;
aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, 252; influence
of the Empire on modern, 383.
Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, 256.
JUSTINIAN, Italy reconquered by, 29; study of the
legislation of, 240, 256.
'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory
IX, 102.
Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 143.
K.
Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, 249.
Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 250.
L.
LACTANTIUS, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire,
21.
LAMBERT (son of Guido of Spoleto), 82.
Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the
Pope, 219.
Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, 117, 288.
Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 37 note.
Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of
Charles, 53.
Law, old, the influence exercised by, 32; era of the
revived study of, 276.
Learning, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
imperialism, 254.
LEO I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 154.
LEO the ISAURIAN (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the
worship of images, 38.
LEO III (Pope), his accession, 43; his adventures, 44;
crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, 3, 49;
charter of, issued on same day, 106; relation of, to the
act of coronation, 52, 53; lectured by Charles, 64.
LEO VIII (Pope), 138.
Leonine city, the, 286 note.
LEOPOLD I, ninth electorate conferred by, 231.
LEOPOLD II, 352.
LEWIS I (the Pious), 76, 77.
LEWIS II, 77, 104 note, 191, 403.
LEWIS III (son of Boso), 82.
LEWIS IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 220.
LEWIS XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and
Milan, 315.
LEWIS XIV (King of France), 346.
LEWIS (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), 77.
LEWIS the CHILD (son of Arnulf), 121.
Literature, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
imperialism, 254.
LIUDPRAND (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations
against John XII, 135; account of his embassy to the
princess Theophano, 141.
LIUDPRAND (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the
exarchate, 38.
Lombard cities, 175; their victory over Frederick I, 178.
Lombards, arrival of the, A.D. 568, 29, 37; their aversion
to the clergy, 37; the Popes seek help from the Franks
against the, 39; extinction of their kingdom by
Charlemagne, 41.
LOTHAR I (son of Lewis the Pious), 77, 403.
LOTHAR II, election of, 165, 228.
LOTHAR (son of Hugh of Burgundy), 83.
Lotharingia or Lorraine, 78, 79, 143, 183, 341, 349.
Luneville, the Peace of, 361.
LUTHER, 319.
M.
Majesty, the title of, 247 note.
Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
MANUEL COMNENUS, 193.
Mario (Monte), 283.
MARSILIUS of Padua, his 'de Imperio Romano,' 231 note.
MAXIMILIAN I, 231, 310; character of his epoch, 310; events
of his reign, 313; his title of 'Imperator electus,' 316,
405; his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 317.
MAXIMILIAN II, 323.
Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 126.
Mediæval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 116.
Mediæval monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, 289.
MICHAEL, 61.
MICHAEL ANGELO, capital rebuilt by, 295.
Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, 90; theology
of, 95; philosophy of, 97; relations of Church and State
during, 107, 387; mode of interpreting Scriptures in, 114;
art of, 116; opposition of theory and practice in, 133,
261; real beginning of, 204; reverence for ancient forms
and phrases in, 258; absence of the idea of change or
progress in, 259; the city of Rome in, 269; barbarism of
the aristocracy in, 289; ambition and corruption of the
clergy in the latter, 290; destruction of old buildings by
the Romans of, 292; existing relics of, 294; aspiration for
unity during, 370; the Visible Church in the, 370; ferocity
of the heroes of, 382; ways in which the Empire affected the
political institutions of, 383; idea of the communion of
saints during, 387.
Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 125; the
rebuilding of, 178; victory of Frederick II over, 287;
pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on,
315.
Mahommedanism, rise of, 45.
Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of
Charles, 54, 84.
MOMMSEN, 390.
Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, 91, 97.
Monarchy, elective, 232.
Mosaics in the churches of Rome, 294.
MÜLLER, Johannes von, 354.
Münster, the treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
N.
Naples, imperial authority in, 188, 205; pretensions of
Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
NAPOLEON, as compared with Charles the Great, 74;
extinction of Electorates by, 232; Emperor of the West,
357; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne,
358; attitude of the Papacy towards, 359; his mission in
Germany, 361.
Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, 242; relations
of the Empire to the, 390.
Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against,
388.
Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, 7.
Nicæa, first council of, 23, 301; second council of, 64.
NICEPHORUS, 61, 192.
NICHOLAS I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 252.
NICHOLAS II (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope,
158.
NICHOLAS V (Pope), 279, 292, 312.
Nobles, the, in feudal times, 125, 221; encroachments of
the, 228.
Nürnberg, 259.
O.
OCCAM, the English Franciscan, 220.
ODO, 81.
ODOACER, extinction of the Western Empire by, A.D. 476, 25;
his original position, 25 note; his assumption of the title
of King, 26; nature of his government, 27.
OPTATUS (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise _Contra
Donatistas_, 13 note.
Orsini, the family of, 281.
Osnabrück, treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
Ostrogoths, 24; war between Belisarius and the, 273.
OTTO I, the GREAT, appealed to by Adelheid, 83; his first
expedition into Italy, 84; invitation sent by the Pope to,
84; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; crowned king of
Italy at Rome, 87; his coronation a favourable opening to
sacerdotal claims, 155; causes of the revival of the Empire
under, 84; his coronation feast the inauguration of the
Teutonic realm, 123; consequences of his assumption of the
imperial title, 128; his position towards the Church, 128;
changes in title, 129; his imperial office feudalized, 130;
the Germans made a single people by, 131; incidents which
befel him in Rome, 134; inquires into the character and
manners of Pope John XII, 135; his letters to John, 136;
deposes John, 136; appoints Leo in his stead, 137; his
suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of
John, 138; his rule in Italy, 139; resumes Charles's plans
of foreign conquest, 140; his policy towards Byzantium,
141; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano,
141; his policy towards the West Franks, 142; his Northern
and Eastern conquests, 143; extent of his empire, 144;
comparison between it and that of Charles, 144; beneficial
results of his rule, 145; how styled by Nicephorus, 211.
OTTO II, 142; memorials left by, in Rome, 317.
OTTO III, his plans and ideas, 146, 147, 148; his intense
religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 147; his reason
for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' 147; his early
death, 148, 228; his burial at Aachen, 148; respect in
which his life was so memorable, 149; compared with
Frederick II, 207; his expostulation with the Roman people,
285 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 286.
OTTO IV, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, 206;
overthrown by Innocent, 207; explanation of a curious seal
of, 266 note.
P.
PALGRAVE (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity
to Clovis, 30 note.
PALSGRAVE, deprived of his vote, 231; reinstated, 231.
Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, 368.
Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 146; Frederick I's bad
relations with, 168; Henry III's purification of, 152, 204;
growth of its power, 153; its relations with the Empire,
153, 155, 216; its condition after the dissolution of the
Carolingian Empire, 275; its attitude towards Napoleon,
359.
Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, 101; its
consequences, 102; struggle between them, 153; their
relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as
perpetuation of a name, 372.
Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, 138, 155.
Partition treaty of Verdun, 77.
PASCHAL II (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, 163.
Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, 40; date when
it was bestowed on Pipin, 40 note.
PATRITIUS, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of
the Empire, 224.
Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 156.
Persecution, Protestant, 330.
Peter's (St.), old, 48.
PETRARCH, his feelings towards the Empire, 254; towards the
city of Rome, 270.
PFEFFINGER, 351 note.
PHILIP of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick
and, 206; his assassination, 206.
Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth
century, 240.
PIPIN of Herstal, 35.
PIPIN the SHORT appointed successor to Childeric, 39; twice
rescues Rome from the Lombards, 39; receives the title of
Patrician of the Romans, 40; import of this title, 40; date
at which it was bestowed, 40 note.
PIUS VII (Pope), 359.
Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
PODIEBRAD (George), (King of Bohemia), 223.
Poland, imperial authority in, 184; partition of, 345.
Politics, beginning of the existence of, 241.
Popes, emancipation of the, 27, 37, 281, 282; appeal to the
Franks for succour against the Lombards, 39; their reasons
for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, 45, 46;
their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 57;
their profligacy in the tenth century, 82, 85, 275; their
theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, 99; their
position and functions, 104; growth of their pretensions,
108, 156, 217; and power, 153; their relations to the
Emperor, 155; their temporal power, 157; their position as
international judges, 243; reaction against their
pretensions, 243, 275; their aversion to the study of
ancient jurisprudence, 252; hostility of, to the Germans,
284; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors
and, 385.
PORCARO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 279.
Prætaxation, the so-called right of, 228, 229.
Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 212, 221.
Prague, University of, 237.
Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad
II and death of Henry V, 165.
Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, 250.
Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, 352.
Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation,
330.
Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, 325.
Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the,
313.
R.
RADULFUS DE COLONNA, his account of the origin of the
separation of Greeks and Latins, 37 note.
Ravenna, exarch of, 27.
Reformation, dawnings of the, 240; Charles V's attitude
towards the, 321; influence of its spirit on the Empire,
319, 325; its real meaning, 325; its effect on the
doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 327; consequent
effect upon the Empire, 328; its small immediate influence
on political and religious liberty, 329; conduct of the
Protestant States after the, 330; its influence on the name
and associations of the Empire, 332.
Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; wars
of, 330.
Renaissance, the, 240, 311.
'Renovatio Romani Imperii,' signification of the seal
bearing legend of, 103.
Rhine, towns of the, 223; provisions of the Confederation
of the, 362.
RICHARD I (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor
Henry VI, 186; his release, 187.
RICHARD (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with
Alfonso X of Castile, 212, 229.
RICHELIEU, policy of, 336.
RICIMER (patrician), 25.
RIENZI, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting,
255; his character and career, 278.
Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII,
137, 138; Otto's vigorous measures against the, 138; their
revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 274; the
title of King of the, 404.
Romanism or Catholicity, 94, 106.
Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, 7;
prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire,
9; lingering influences of her Church and Law, 31, 32;
claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown,
57, 61, 81; republican institutions of, renewed, 83;
profligacy of, in the tenth century, 82, 85; under Arnold
of Brescia, 174; imitations of old, 257; in the Middle
Ages, 269; absence of Gothic in, 271; the modern traveller
in, 271, 283; causes of her rapid decay, 273; peculiarities
of her position, 274; her internal history from the sixth
to the twelfth century, 274; her condition in the ninth and
tenth centuries, 274; growth of a republican feeling in,
276; short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, 277;
causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in,
280; her internal condition, 280; her people, 280; her
nobility, 281; her bishop, 281; relation of the Emperor to,
282; the Emperors' visits to, 282; dislike of, to the
Germans, 285; memorials of Otto III in, 286; of Otto II,
287; of Frederick II, 287; causes of the want of mediæval
monuments in, 289; barbarism of the aristocracy of, 289;
ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, 290;
tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner,
290; destruction and alteration of old buildings in, 291;
her modern churches, 293; existing relics of Dark and
Middle Ages in, 291; changed aspect of, 295; analogy
between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution, 296; relation of, to the Empire, 297;
feelings of modern Italians towards, 299; perpetuation of
the name of, 367; parallel instances, 367; Hildebert's
lines contrasting the past and present of, 406.
ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding,
25.
RUDOLF (King of Transjurane), 81.
RUDOLF of Hapsburg, 213, 219, 221, 222; financial distress
under, 224; Schiller's description of the coronation feast
of, 231 note, 262.
RUDOLF II, 335.
RUDOLF III, 151.
RUDOLF of Swabia, 162.
RUDOLF III (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath
Burgundy to Henry II, 151.
Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
S.
Sachsenspiegel, the, 108 note.
SALADIN (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, 189.
Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, 118.
Saxon Emperors, 133.
Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, 143; its relation to the
Empire, 398.
Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth
century, 240.
Seal, ascribed to A. D. 800, 103.
SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, concentration of power in his hands, 5,
6.
SERGIUS IV (Pope), 228 note.
Seven Years' War, 352.
Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation,
34.
Sicily, imperial authority in, 188, 205.
SIGISMUND (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the
institutions of the Empire, 18.
SIGISMUND (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, 187; at the
Council of Constance, 253, 301.
Simony, measures taken against, 158.
Slavic races, the, 27, 143, 260, 378.
Smalkaldic league, the, 322.
Southern Italy, 150.
Spain, Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
exercised by any Emperor in, 185; compared with Germany,
303.
Speyer, Diet of, 111 note.
STEPHANIA (widow of Crescentius), 148.
Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222; the towns of,
223, 313; theory of the Emperors of the house of,
respecting the coronation of Charles, 57.
Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, 185.
Swiss Confederation, the, 306; her gains by treaties of
Westphalia, 341.
Switzerland lost to the Empire, 306, 342.
SYLVESTER (Pope), 43.
T.
Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, 9 note.
TERTULLIAN, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, 21
note, 23 note.
TEUTBERGA (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, 252.
Teutonic race, political character of the, 376.
THEODEBERT (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the
institutions of the Empire, 18.
THEODORIC the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a
national monarchy in Italy, 27, 28; its failure, 29; his
usual place of residence, 28 note; prosperity under his
reign, 29.
THEODOSIUS (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose,
12.
THEOPHANO (princess), 141.
Thirty Years' War, 335; its unsatisfactory results, 336;
its substantial advantage to the German princes, 338.
THOMAS (St.), his statement respecting the election of
Emperors, 227.
Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, 67.
Titles, change of, 129, 316, 400.
Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, 175.
Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, 30.
'Translation of the Empire,' 52, 111, 175, 218.
Transubstantiation, 326 note.
Turks, the, 303; their claim to represent the Roman Empire,
368.
TURPIN (Archbishop), 51 note.
U.
University of Prague, foundation of, 237.
Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 96.
URBAN IV (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king,
229.
V.
Venice, her attitude, 171; imperial pretensions towards,
188; maintains her independence, 188.
Verdun, partition treaty of, 77.
VESPASIAN, his dying jest, 23 note.
Vienna, Congress of, 364.
VILLANI (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 304;
his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, 304 note.
Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by
the, 30.
W.
WALLENSTEIN, 335.
WENZEL of Bohemia, 223.
Western Empire, its last days, 24, 25; its extinction by
Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
Westphalia, the Peace of, 336; its advantages to France,
341; to Sweden, 341; its importance in imperial history,
342.
WICKLIFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 241.
WILLIAM the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, 160.
WIPPO, 227 note.
WITUKIND, 85 note.
WOITECH (St. Adalbert), 269.
World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 91; influence of metaphysics
upon the theory, 97.
World-Religion, the idea of a, 91; coincides with the
World-Empire, 92.
Worms, Concordant of, 163; Diet of, 319, 334.