FOOTNOTES:

[1] The word _Tsar_, like the German _Kaiser_, is derived from Caesar

(see TSAR). Peter the Great introduced the use of the style

"Imperator," and the official designation is now "Emperor of all the

Russias, Tsar of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland," though the term

tsar is still popularly used in Russia.

[2] For the titles of [Greek: Basileus], _imperator Augustus_, &c.,

applied in the 10th century to the Anglo-Saxon kings, see EMPIRE

(note). The claim to the style of emperor, as a badge of equal rank,

played a considerable part in the diplomatic relations between the

Sultan and certain European sovereigns. Thus, at a time when this

style (_Padishah_) was refused by the Sultan to the tsars of Russia,

and even to the Holy Roman Emperor himself, it was allowed to the

French kings, who in diplomatic correspondence and treaties with

Turkey called themselves "emperor of France" (_empereur de

France_).--[ED.].

EMPHYSEMA (Gr. [Greek: emphysan] to inflate) is a word vaguely meaning

the abnormal presence of air in certain parts of the body. At the

present day, however, there are two conditions to which it refers,

"pulmonary emphysema" (and the word pulmonary is often omitted) and

"surgical emphysema." Of pulmonary emphysema there are two forms, true

vesicular and interstitial (or interlobular). Vesicular emphysema

signifies that there is an enlargement of air-vesicles, resulting either

from their excessive distension, from destruction of the septa, or from

both causes combined (see RESPIRATORY SYSTEM). In interstitial emphysema

the air is infiltrated into the connective tissue beneath the pleura and

between the pulmonary air-cells.

The former variety is by far the more common, and appears to be capable

of being produced by various causes, the chief of which are the

following:--

1. Where a portion of the lung has become wasted, or its vesicular

structure permanently obliterated by disease, without corresponding

falling in of the chest wall, the neighbouring air-vesicles or some of

them undergo dilatation to fill the vacuum (vicarious emphysema).

2. In some cases of bronchitis, where numbers of the smaller bronchial

tubes become obstructed, the air in the pulmonary vesicles remains

imprisoned, the force of expiration being insufficient to expel it;

while, on the other hand, the stronger force of inspiration being

adequate to overcome the resistance, the air-cells tend to become more

and more distended, and permanent alterations in their structure,

including emphysema, are the result (inspiratory theory).

3. Emphysema also arises from exertion involving violent expiratory

efforts, during which the glottis is constricted, as in paroxysms of

coughing, in straining, and in lifting heavy weights (expiratory

theory). Whooping-cough is well known as the exciting cause of emphysema

in many persons.

4. Another view, known as the nutritive theory, maintains that emphysema

depends essentially on a primary nutritive change in the walls of the

air-vesicles. Thus these are impaired in their resisting power, and are

far more likely to become distended by any force acting on them from

within.

5. Again in certain cases the cartilages of the chest become

hypertrophied and rigid, thus causing a primary chronic enlargement, and

the lungs become emphysematous in order to fill up the increased space

(Freund's theory).

In whatever manner produced, this disease gives rise to important morbid

changes in the affected portions of the lungs, especially the loss of

the natural elasticity of the air-cells, and likewise the destruction of

many of the pulmonary capillary blood-vessels, and the diminution of

aerating surface for the blood. As a consequence an increased strain is

thrown on the right ventricle with a consequent dilatation leading on to

heart failure and all its attendant troubles. The chief symptom in this

complaint is shortness of breath, more or less constant but greatly

aggravated by exertion, and by attacks of bronchitis, to which persons

suffering from emphysema appear to be specially liable. The respiration

is of similar character to that already described in the case of asthma.

In severe forms of the disease the patient comes to acquire a peculiar

puffy or bloated appearance, and the configuration of the chest is

altered, assuming the character known as the _barrel-shaped_ or

_emphysematous_ chest.

The main element in the treatment of emphysema consists in attention to

the general condition of the health, and in the avoidance of all causes

likely to aggravate the disease or induce its complications. Compressed

air baths and expiration into rarefied air may be useful. During attacks

of urgent dyspnoea and lividity, with engorgement of veins, the patient

should be repeatedly bled until relief is obtained. Interstitial

emphysema arising from the rupture of air-cells in the immediate

neighbourhood of the pleura may occur as a complication of the vesicular

form, or separately as the result of some sudden expulsive effort, such

as a fit of coughing, or, as has frequently happened, in parturition.

Gangrene or post-mortem decomposition may lead to the presence of air in

the interstitial tissue of the lung. Occasionally the air infiltrates

the cellular tissue of the posterior mediastinum, and thence comes to

distend the integument of the whole surface of the body (surgical

emphysema). Surgical emphysema signifies the effusion of air into the

general connective tissues of the body. The commonest causes are a wound

of some air-passage, or a penetrating wound of the chest wall without

injury to the lung. It may, however, occur in any situation of the body

and in many other ways. Its severity varies from very slight cases where

only a little crepitation may be felt under the skin, to extreme cases

where the whole body is blown up and death is imminent from impeded

respiration and failure of the action of the heart. In the milder cases

no treatment is necessary as the air gradually becomes absorbed, but in

the more severe cases incisions must be made in the swollen cellular

tissues to allow the air to escape.

EMPIRE, a term now used to denote a state of large size and also (as a

rule) of composite character, often, but not necessarily, ruled by an

emperor--a state which may be a federation, like the German empire, or a

unitary state, like the Russian, or even, like the British empire, a

loose commonwealth of free states united to a number of subordinate

dependencies. For many centuries the writers of the Church, basing

themselves on the Apocalyptic writings, conceived of a cycle of four

empires, generally explained--though there was no absolute unanimity

with regard to the members of the cycle--as the Assyrian, the Persian,

the Macedonian and the Roman. But in reality the conception of Empire,

like the term itself (Lat. _imperium_), is of Roman origin. The empire

of Alexander had indeed in some ways anticipated the empire of Rome. "In

his later years," Professor Bury writes, "Alexander formed the notion of

an empire, both European and Asiatic, in which the Asiatics should not

be dominated by the European invaders, but Europeans and Asiatics alike

should be ruled on an equality by a monarch, indifferent to the

distinction of Greek and barbarian, and looked upon as their own king by

Persians as well as by Macedonians." The contemporary Cynic philosophy

of cosmopolitanism harmonized with this notion, as Stoicism did later

with the practice of the Roman empire; and Alexander, like Diocletian

and Constantine, accustomed a Western people to the forms of an Oriental

court, while, like the earlier Caesars, he claimed and received the

recognition of his own divinity. But when he died in 323, his empire,

which had barely lasted ten years, died with him; and it was divided

among Diadochi who, if in some other respects (for instance, the

Hellenization of the East) they were heirs of their master's policy,

were destitute of the imperial conception. The work of Alexander was

rather that of the forerunner than the founder. He prepared the way for

the world-empire of Rome; he made possible the rise of a universal

religion. And these are the two factors which, throughout the middle

ages, went together to make the thing which men called Empire.

The Roman empire.

At Rome the term _imperium_ signified generally, in its earlier use, the

sovereignty of the state over the individual, a sovereignty which the

Romans had disengaged with singular clearness from all other kinds of

authority. Each of the higher magistrates of the Roman people was

vested, by a _lex curiata_ (for power was distinctly conceived as

resident in, and delegated by, the community), with an _imperium_ both

civil and military, which varied in degree with the magnitude of his

office. In the later days of the Republic such imperium was enjoyed,

partly in Rome by the resident consuls and praetors, partly in the

provinces by the various proconsuls or propraetors. There was thus a

certain _morcellement_ of _imperium_, delegated as it was by the people

to a number of magistrates: the coming of the Empire meant the

reintegration of this _imperium_, and its unification, by a gradual

process, in the hands of the _princeps_, or emperor. The means by which

this process was achieved had already been anticipated under the

Republic. Already in the days of Pompey it had been found convenient to

grant to an extraordinary officer an _imperium aequum_ or _majus_ over a

large area, and that officer thus received powers, within that area,

equal to, or greater than, the powers of the provincial governors. This

precedent was followed by Augustus in the year 27 B.C., when he acquired

for himself sole _imperium_ in a certain number of provinces (the

imperial provinces), and an _infinitum imperium majus_ in the remaining

provinces (which were termed senatorial). As a result, Augustus enjoyed

an _imperium_ coextensive indeed with the whole of the Roman world, but

concurrent, in part of that world, with the _imperium_ of the senatorial

proconsuls; and the early Empire may thus be described as a dyarchy. But

the distinction between imperial and senatorial provinces finally

disappeared; by the time of Constantine the emperor enjoyed sole

_imperium_, and an absolute monarchy had been established. We shall not,

however, fully understand the significance of the Roman empire, unless

we realize the importance of its military aspect. All the soldiers of

Rome had from the first to swear _in verba Caesaris Augusti_; and thus

the whole of the Roman army was his army, regiments of which he might

indeed lend, but of which he was sole _Imperator_ (see under EMPEROR).

Thus regarded as a permanent commander-in-chief, the emperor enjoyed the

privileges, and suffered from the weaknesses, of his position. He had

the power of the sword behind him; but he became more and more liable to

be deposed, and to be replaced by a new commander, at the will of those

who bore the sword in his service.

Development under Diocletian and Constantine.

Division of the Empire.

The period which is marked by the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine

(A.D. 284-337) marks a great transformation in the character of the

Empire. The old dyarchy, under which the emperor might still be regarded

as an official of the respublica Romana, passed into a new monarchy, in

which all political power became, as it were, the private property of

the monarch. There was now no distinction of provinces; and the old

public _aerarium_ became merely a municipal treasury, while the _fiscus_

of the emperor became the exchequer of the Empire. The officers of the

imperial praetorium, or bodyguard, are now the great officers of state;

his private council becomes the public consistory, or supreme court of

appeal; and the _comites_ of his court are the administrators of his

empire. "All is in him, and all comes from him," as our own year-books

say of the medieval king; his household, for instance, is not only a

household, but also an administration. On the other hand, this

unification seems to be accompanied by a new bifurcation. The exigencies

of frontier defence had long been drawing the Empire towards the

troubled East; and this tendency reached its culmination when a new Rome

arose by the Bosporus, and Constantinople became the centre of what

seemed a second Empire in the East (A.D. 324). Particularly after the

division of the Empire between Arcadius and Honorius in 395 does this

bifurcation appear to be marked; and one naturally speaks of the two

Empires of the West and the East. Yet it cannot be too much emphasized

that in reality such language is utterly inexact. The Roman empire was,

and always continued to be, ideally one and indivisible. There were two

emperors, but one Empire--two persons, but one power. The point is of

great importance for the understanding of the whole of the middle ages:

there only is, and can be, one Empire, which may indeed, for

convenience, be ruled conjointly by two emperors, resident, again for

convenience, in two separate capitals. And, as a matter of fact, not

only did the residence of an emperor in the East not spell bifurcation,

it actually fostered the tendency towards unification. It helped forward

the transformation of the Empire into an absolute and quasi-Asiatic

monarchy, under which all its subjects fell into a single level of loyal

submission: it helped to give the emperor a gorgeous court, marked by

all the ceremony and the servility of the East.[1] The deification of

the emperor himself dates from the days of Augustus; by the time of

Constantine it has infected the court and the government. Each emperor,

again, had from the first enjoyed the sacrosanct position which was

attached to the tribunate; but now his palace, his chamber, his

charities, his letters, are all "sacred," and one might almost speak in

advance of a "Holy Roman Empire."

Influence of Christianity.

But there is one factor, the greatest of all, which still remains to be

added, before we have counted the sum of the forces that made the world

think in terms of empire for centuries to come; and that is the

reception of Christianity into the Roman empire by Constantine. That

reception added a new sanction to the existence of the Empire and the

position of the emperor. The Empire, already one and indivisible in its

aspect of a political society, was welded still more firmly together

when it was informed and permeated by a common Christianity, and unified

by the force of a spiritual bond. The Empire was now the Church; it was

now indeed indestructible, for, if it perished as an empire, it would

live as a church. But the Church made it certain that it would not

perish, even as an empire, for many centuries to come. On the one hand

the Church thought in terms of empire and taught the millions of its

disciples (including the barbarians themselves) to think in the same

terms. No other political conception--no conception of a [Greek: polis]

or of a nation--was any longer possible. When the Church gained its hold

of the Roman world, the Empire, as it has been well said, was already

"not only a government, but a fashion of conceiving the world": it had

stood for three centuries, and no man could think of any other form of

political association. Moreover, the gospel of St Paul--that there is

_one_ Church, whereof Christ is the Head, and we are all members--could

not but reinforce for the Christian the conception of a necessary

political unity of all the world under a single head. _Una Chiesa in uno

Stato_--such, then, was the theory of the Church. But not only did the

Church perpetuate the conception of empire by making it a part of its

own theory of the world: it perpetuated that conception equally by

materializing it in its own organization of itself. Growing up under the

shadow of the Empire, the Church too became an empire, as the Empire had

become a church. As it took over something of the old pagan ceremonial,

so it took over much of the old secular organization. The pope borrowed

his title of _pontifex maximus_ from the emperor: what is far more, he

made himself gradually, and in the course of centuries, the Caesar and

Imperator of the Church. The offices and the dioceses of the Church are

parallel to the offices and dioceses of the Diocletian empire: the whole

spirit of orderly hierarchy and regular organization, which breathes in

the Roman Church, is the heritage of ancient Rome. The Donation of

Constantine is a forgery; but it expresses a great truth when it

represents Constantine as giving to the pope the imperial palace and

insignia, and to the clergy the ornaments of the imperial army (see

DONATION OF CONSTANTINE).

Barbarian invasions.

Upon this world, informed by these ideas, there finally descended, in

the 5th century, the avalanche of barbaric invasion. Its impact seemed

to split the Empire into fragmentary kingdoms; yet it left the universal

Church intact, and with it the conception of empire. With that

conception, indeed, the barbarians had already been for centuries

familiar: service in Roman armies, and settlement in Roman territories,

had made the Roman empire for them, as much as for the civilized

provincial, part of the order of the world. One of the barbarian

invaders, Odoacer (Odovakar), might seem, in 476, to have swept away the

Empire from the West, when he commanded the abdication of Romulus

Augustulus; and the date 476 has indeed been generally emphasized as

marking "the fall of the Western empire." Other invaders, again, men

like the Frank Clovis or the great Ostrogoth Theodoric, might seem, in

succeeding years, to have completed the work of Odoacer, and to have

shattered the sorry scheme of the later Empire, by remoulding it into

national kingdoms. _De facto_, there is some truth in such a view: _de

jure_, there is none.[2] All that Odoacer did was to abolish one of the

two joint rulers of the indivisible Empire, and to make the remaining

ruler at Constantinople sole emperor from the Bosporus to the pillars of

Hercules. He abolished the dual sovereignty which had been inaugurated

by Diocletian, and returned to the unity of the Empire in the days of

Marcus Aurelius. He did not abolish the Roman empire in the West: he

only abolished its separate ruler, and, leaving the Empire itself

subsisting, under the sway (nominal, it is true, but none the less

acknowledged) of the emperor resident at Constantinople, he claimed to

act as his vicar, under the name of patrician, in the administration of

the Italian provinces.[3] As Odoacer thus fitted himself into the scheme

of empire, so did both Clovis and Theodoric. They do not claim to be

emperors (that was reserved for Charlemagne): they claim to be the

vicars and lieutenants of the Empire. Theodoric spoke of himself to Zeno

as _imperio vestro famulans_; he left justice and administration in

Roman hands, and maintained two annual consuls in Rome. Clovis received

the title of consul from Anastasius; the Visigothic kings of Spain (like

the kings of the savage Lombards) styled themselves Flavii, and

permitted the cities of their eastern coast to send tribute to

Constantinople. Yet it must be admitted that, as a matter of fact, this

adhesion of the new barbaric kings to the Empire was little more than a

form. The Empire maintained its ideal unity by treating them as its

vicars; but they themselves were forming separate and independent

kingdoms within its borders. The Italy of the Ostrogoths cannot have

belonged, in any real sense, to the Empire; otherwise Justinian would

never have needed to attempt its reconquest. And in the 7th and 8th

centuries the form of adhesion itself decayed: the emperor was retiring

upon the Greek world of the East, and the German conquerors, settled

within their kingdoms, lost the width of outlook of their old migratory

days.

The Church and the Empire.

Growing divergence between East and West.

The popes.

It is here that the action of the Church becomes of supreme importance.

The Church had not ceased to believe in the continuous life of the

Empire. The Fathers had taught that when the cycle of empires was

finally ended by the disappearance of the empire of Rome, the days of

Antichrist would dawn; and, since Antichrist was not yet come, the

Church believed that the Empire still lived, and would continue to live

till his coming. Meanwhile the Eastern emperor, ever since Justinian's

reconquest of Italy, had been able to maintain his hold on the centre of

Italy; and Rome itself, the seat of the head of the Church, still ranked

as one of the cities under his sway. The imperialist theory of the

Church found its satisfaction in this connexion of its head with

Constantinople; and as long as this connexion continued to satisfy the

Church, there was little prospect of any change. For many years after

their invasion of 568, the pressure which the Lombards maintained on

central Italy, from their kingdom in the valley of the Po, kept the

popes steadily faithful to the emperor of the East and his

representative in Italy, the exarch of Ravenna. But it was not in the

nature of things that such fidelity should continue unimpaired. The

development of the East and the West could not but proceed along

constantly diverging lines, until the point was reached when their

connexion must snap. On the one hand, the development of the West set

towards the increase of the powers of the bishop of Rome until he

reached a height at which subjection to the emperor at Constantinople

became impossible. Residence in Rome, the old seat of empire, had in

itself given him a great prestige; and to this prestige St Gregory (pope

from 590 to 604) had added in a number of ways. He was one of the

Fathers of the Church, and turned its theology into the channels in

which it was to flow for centuries; he had acquired for his church the

great spiritual colony of England by the mission of St Augustine; he had

been the protector of Italy against the Lombards. As the popes thus

became more and more spiritual emperors of the West, they found

themselves less and less able to remain the subjects of the lay emperor

of the East. Meanwhile the emperors of the East were led to interfere in

ecclesiastical affairs in a manner which the popes and the Western

Church refused to tolerate. Brought into contact with the pure

monotheism of Mahommedanism, Leo the Isaurian (718-741) was stimulated

into a crusade against image-worship, in order to remove from the

Christian Church the charge of idolatry. The West clung to its images:

the popes revolted against his decrees; and the breach rapidly became

irreparable. As the hold of the Eastern emperor on central Italy began

to be shaken, the popes may have begun to cherish the hope of becoming

their successors and of founding a temporal dominion; and that hope can

only have contributed to the final dissolution of their connexion with

the Eastern empire.

Coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the West.

Thus, in the course of the 8th century, the Empire, _as represented by

the emperors at Constantinople_, had begun to fade utterly out of the

West. It had been forgotten by lay sovereigns; it was being abandoned by

the pope, who had been its chosen apostle. But it did not follow that,

because the Eastern emperor ceased to be the representative of the

Empire for the West, the conception of Empire itself therefore perished.

The popes only abandoned the representative; they did not abandon the

conception. If they had abandoned the conception, they would have

abandoned the idea that there was an order of the world; they would have

committed themselves to a belief in the coming of Antichrist. The

conception of the world as a single Empire-Church remained: what had to

be discovered was a new representative of one of the two sides of that

conception. For a brief time, it would seem, the pope himself cherished

the idea of becoming, in his own person, the successor of the ancient

Caesars in their own old capital. By the aid of the Frankish kings, he

had been able to stop the Lombards from acquiring the succession to the

derelict territories of the Eastern emperor in Italy (from which their

last exarch had fled overseas in 752), and he had become the temporal

sovereign of those territories. Successor to the Eastern emperor in

central Italy, why should he not also become his successor as

representative of the Empire--all the more, since he was the head of the

Church, which was coextensive with the Empire? Some such hope seems to

inspire the Donation of Constantine, a document forged between 754 and

774, in which Constantine is represented as having conferred on

Silvester I. the imperial palace and insignia, and therewith _omnes

Italiae seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates_. But

the hope, if it ever was cherished, proved to be futile. The popes had

not the material force at their command which would have made them

adequate to the position. The strong arm of the Frankish kings had alone

delivered them from the Lombards: the same strong arm, they found, was

needed to deliver them from the wild nobility of their own city. So they

turned to the power which was strong enough to undertake the task which

they could not themselves attempt, and they invited the Frankish king to

become the representative of the imperial conception they cherished.[4]

In the year 800 central Italy ceased to date its documents by the regnal

years of the Eastern emperors; for Charlemagne was crowned emperor in

their stead.

The king of the Franks was well fitted for the position which he was

chosen to fill. He was king of a stock which had been from the first

Athanasian, and had never been tainted, like most of the Germanic

tribes, by the adoption of Arian tenets. His grandfather, Charles

Martel, had saved Europe from the danger of a Mahommedan conquest by his

victory at Poitiers (732); his father, Pippin the Short, had helped the

English missionary Boniface to achieve the conversion of Germany. The

popes themselves had turned to the Frankish kings for support again and

again in the course of the 8th century. Gregory III., involved in bitter

hostilities with the iconoclastic reformers of the East, appealed to

Charles Martel for aid, and even offered the king, it is said, the

titles of consul and patrician. Zacharias pronounced the deposition of

the last of the Merovingians, and gave to Pippin the title of king

(751); while his successor, Stephen II., hard pressed by the Lombards,

who were eager to replace the Eastern emperors in the possession of

central Italy, not only asked and received the aid of the new king, but

also acquired, in virtue of Pippin's donation (754), the disputed

exarchate itself. Thus was laid the foundation of the States of the

Church; and the grateful pope rewarded the donation by the gift of the

title of _patricius Romanorum_, which conferred on its recipient the

duty and the privilege of protecting the Roman Church, along with some

undefined measure of authority in Rome itself.[5] Finally, in 773, Pope

Adrian I. had to appeal to Charles, the successor of Pippin, against the

aggressions of the last of the Lombard kings; and in 774 Charles

conquered the Lombard kingdom, and himself assumed its iron crown. Thus

by the end of the 8th century the Frankish king stood on the very steps

of the imperial throne. He ruled a realm which extended from the

Pyrenees to the Harz, and from Hamburg to Rome--a realm which might be

regarded as in itself a _de facto_ empire. He bore the title of

_patricius_, and he had shown that he did not bear it in vain by his

vigorous defence of the papacy in 774. Here there stood, ready to hand,

a natural representative of the conception of Empire; and Leo III.,

finding that he needed the aid of Charlemagne to maintain himself

against his own Romans, finally took the decisive step of crowning him

emperor, as he knelt in prayer at St Peter's, on Christmas Day, 800.

Theory of the Carolingian empire.

The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 marks the coalescence into a single

unity of two facts, or rather, more strictly speaking, of a fact and a

theory. The fact is German and secular: it is the wide _de facto_

empire, which the Frankish sword had conquered, and Frankish policy had

organized as a single whole. The theory is Latin and ecclesiastical: it

is a theory of the necessary political unity of the world, and its

necessary representation in the person of an emperor--a theory half

springing from the unity of the old Roman empire, and half derived from

the unity of the Christian Church as conceived in the New Testament. If

we seek for the force which caused this fact and this theory to coalesce

in the Carolingian empire, we can only answer--the papacy. The idea of

Empire was in the Church; and the head of the Church translated this

idea into fact. If, however, we seek to conceive the event of 800 from a

political or legal point of view, and to determine the residence of the

right of constituting an emperor, we at once drift into the fogs of

centuries of controversy. Three answers are possible from three points

of view; and all have their truth, according to the point of view. From

the ecclesiastical point of view, the right resides with the pope. This

theory was not promulgated (indeed no theory was promulgated) until the

struggles of Papacy and Empire in the course of the middle ages; but by

the time of Innocent III. it is becoming an established doctrine that a

_translatio Imperii_ took place in 800, whereby the pope transferred the

Roman empire from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of the

magnificent Charles.[6] One can only say that, as a matter of fact, the

popes ceased to recognize the Eastern emperors, and recognized Charles

instead, in the year 800; that, again, this recognition alone made

Charles emperor, as nothing else could have done; but that no question

arose, at the time, of any right of the pope to give the Empire to

Charlemagne, for the simple reason that neither of the actors was acting

or thinking in a legal spirit. If we now turn to study the point of view

of the civil lawyer, animated by such a spirit, and basing himself on

the code of Justinian, we shall find that an emperor must derive his

institution and power from a _lex regia_ passed by the _populus

Romanus_; and such a view, strictly interpreted, will lead us to the

conclusion that the citizens of Rome had given the crown to Charlemagne

in 800, and continued to bestow it on successive emperors afterwards.

There is indeed some speech, in the contemporary accounts of

Charlemagne's coronation, of the presence of "ancients among the Romans"

and of "the faithful people"; but they are merely present to witness or

applaud, and the conception of the Roman people as the source of Empire

is one that was only championed, at a far later date, by antiquarian

idealists like Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi. The _faex Romuli_,

a population of lodging-house keepers, living upon pilgrims to the papal

court, could hardly be conceived, except by an ardent imagination, as

heir to the _Quirites_ of the past. Finally, from the point of view of

the German tribesman, we must admit that the Empire was something which,

once received by his king (no matter how), descended in the royal family

as an heirloom; or to which (when the kingship became elective) a title

was conferred, along with the kingship, by the vote of electors.[7]

Relations of the Carolingian to the Eastern empire.

But apart from these questions of origin, two difficulties have still to

be faced with regard to the nature and position of the Carolingian

empire. Did Charlemagne and his successors enter into a new relation

with their subjects, in virtue of their coronation? And what was the

nature of the relation between the new emperor now established in the

West and the old emperor still reigning in the East? It is true that

Charlemagne exacted a new oath of allegiance from his subjects after his

coronation, and again that he had a revision of all the laws of his

dominions made in 802. But the revision did not amount to much in bulk:

what there was contained little that was Roman; and, on the whole, it

hardly seems probable that Charlemagne entered into any new relation

with his subjects. The relation of his empire to the empire in the East

is a more difficult and important problem. In 797 the empress Irene had

deposed and blinded her son, Constantine VI., and usurped his throne.

Now it would seem that Charlemagne, whose thoughts were already set on

Empire, hoped to depose and succeed Irene, and thus to become sole

representative of the conception of Empire, both for the East and for

the West. Suddenly there came, in 800, his own coronation as emperor, an

act apparently unpremeditated at the moment, taking him by surprise, as

one gathers from Einhard's _Vita Karoli_, and interrupting his plans. It

left him representative of the Empire for the West only, confronting

another representative in the East. Such a position he did not desire:

there had been a single Empire vested in a single person since 476, and

he desired that there should still continue to be a single Empire,

vested only in his own person. He now sought to achieve this unity by a

proposal of marriage to Irene. The proposal failed, and he had to

content himself with a recognition of his imperial title by the two

successors of the empress. This did not, however, mean (at any rate in

the issue) that henceforth there were to be two conjoint rulers,

amicably ruling as colleagues a single Empire, in the manner of Arcadius

and Honorius. The dual government of a single Empire established by

Diocletian had finally vanished in 476; and the unity of the Empire was

now conceived, as it had been conceived before the days of Diocletian,

to demand a single representative. Henceforth there were two rulers, one

at Aix-la-Chapelle and one at Constantinople, each claiming, whatever

temporary concessions he might make, to be the sole ruler and

representative of the Roman empire. On the one hand, the Western

emperors held that, upon the deposition of Constantine VI., Charlemagne

had succeeded him, after a slight interval, in the government of the

whole Empire, both in the East and in the West; on the other hand, the

Eastern emperors, in spite of their grudging recognition of Charlemagne

at the moment, regarded themselves as the only lawful successors of

Constantine VI., and viewed the Carolings and their later successors as

upstarts and usurpers, with no right to their imperial pretensions.

Henceforth two halves confronted one another, each claiming to be the

whole; two finite bodies touched, and each yet claimed to be infinite.

Character of the Carolingian empire.

Break-up of the Carolingian empire.

Attitude of the papacy.

If, as has been suggested, Charlemagne did not enter into any

fundamentally new relations with his subjects after his coronation, it

follows that the results of his coronation, in the sphere of policy and

administration, cannot have been considerable. The Empire added a new

sanction to a policy and administration already developed. Charlemagne

had already showed himself _episcopus episcoporum_, anxious not only to

suppress heresy and supervise the clergy within his borders, but also to

extend true Christianity without them even before the year when his

imperial coronation gave him a new title to supreme governorship in all

cases ecclesiastical. He had already organized his empire on a new

uniform system of counties, and the _missi dominici_ were already at

work to superintend the action of the counts, even before the _renovatio

imperii Romani_ came to suggest such uniformity and centralization.

Charlemagne had a new title; but his subjects still obeyed the king of

the Franks, and lived by Frankish law, in the old fashion. In their

eyes, and in the eyes of Charlemagne's own descendants, the Empire was

something appendant to the kingship of the Franks, which made that

kingship unique among others, but did not radically alter its character.

True, the kingship might be divided among brothers by the old Germanic

custom of partition, while the Empire must inhere in one person; but

that was the one difference, and the one difficulty, which might easily

be solved by attaching the name of emperor to the eldest brother. Such

was the conception of the Carolings: such was not, however, the

conception of the Church. To the popes the Empire was a solemn office,

to which the kings of the Franks might most naturally be called, in view

of their power and the traditions of their house, but which by no means

remained in their hands as a personal property. By thus seeking to

dissociate the Empire from any indissoluble connexion with the

Carolingian house, the popes were able to save it. Civil wars raged

among the descendants of Charlemagne: partitions recurred: the Empire

was finally dissolved, in the sense that the old realm of Charlemagne

fell asunder, in 888. But the Empire, as an office, did not perish.

During the 9th century the popes had insisted, as each emperor died,

that the new emperor needed coronation at their hands; and they had thus

kept alive the conception of the Empire as an office to which they

invited, if they did not appoint, each successive emperor. The quarrels

of the Carolingian house helped them to make good their claim. John

VIII. was able to select Charles the Bald in preference to other

claimants in 875; and before the end of his pontificate he could write

that "he who is to be ordained by us to the Empire must be by us first

and foremost invited and elected." Thus was the unity of the Empire

preserved, and the conception of a united Empire continued, in spite of

the eventual dissolution of the realm of Charlemagne. When the

Carolingian emperors disappeared, Benedict IV. could crown Louis of

Provence (901) and John X. could invite to the vacant throne an Italian

potentate like Berengar of Friuli (915); and even when Berengar died in

924, and the Empire was vacant of an emperor, they could hold, and hold

with truth, that the Empire was not dead, but only suspended, until such

time as they should invite a new ruler to assume the office.

The German kingdom and the empire.

The Holy Roman Empire.

Various causes had contributed to the dissolution of the realm of

Charlemagne. Partitions had split it; feudalism had begun to honeycomb

it; incessant wars had destroyed its core, the fighting Franks of

Austrasia. But, above all, the rise of divisions within the realm,

which, whether animated by the spirit of nationality or no, were

ultimately destined to develop into nations, had silently undermined the

structure of Pippin and Charlemagne. Already in 842 the oath of

Strassburg shows us one Caroling king swearing in French and another in

German: already in 870 the partition of Mersen shows us the kings of

France and Germany dividing the middle kingdom which lay between the two

countries by the linguistic frontier of the Meuse and Moselle. The year

888 is the birth-year of modern Europe. France, Germany, Italy, stood

distinct as three separate units, with Burgundy and Lorraine as

debatable lands, as they were destined to remain for centuries to come.

If the conception of Empire was still to survive, the pope must

ultimately invite the ruler of the strongest of these three units to

assume the imperial crown; and this was what happened when in 962 Pope

John XII. invited Otto I. of Germany to renew once more the Roman

Empire. As the imperial strength of the whole Frankish tribe had given

them the Empire in 800, so did the national strength of the East

Frankish kingdom, now resting indeed on a Saxon rather than a Frankish

basis, bring the Empire to its ruler in 962. The centre of political

gravity had already been shifting to the east of the Rhine in the course

of the 9th century. While the Northmen had carried their arms along the

rivers and into the heart of France, Louis the German had consolidated

his kingdom in a long reign of sixty years (817-876); and at the end of

the 9th century two kings of Germany had already worn the imperial

crown. Early in the 10th century the kingship of Germany had come to the

vigorous Saxon dukes (919); and strong in their Saxon basis Henry I. and

his son Otto had built a realm which, disunited as it was, was far more

compact than that which the Carolings of the West ruled from Laon. Henry

I. had thought in his later years of going to Rome for the imperial

crown: under Otto I. the imperial idea becomes manifest. On the one

hand, he established a semi-imperial position in the West: by 946 Louis

IV. d'Outremer is his protege, and it is his arms which maintain the

young Conrad of Burgundy on his throne. On the other hand, he showed, by

his policy towards the German Church, that he was the true heir of the

Carolingian traditions. He made churchmen his ministers; he established

missionary bishoprics on the Elbe which should spread Christianity among

the Wends; and his dearest project was a new archbishopric of Magdeburg.

The one thing needful was that he should, like Charlemagne, acquire the

throne of Italy; and the dissolute condition of that country during the

first half of the 10th century made its acquisition not only possible,

but almost imperative. Begun in 952, the acquisition was completed ten

years later; and all the conditions were now present for Otto's

assumption of the imperial throne. He was crowned by John XII. on

Candlemas Day 962, and thus was begun the Holy Roman Empire, which

lasted henceforth with a continuous life until 1806.[8]

The Empire and feudalism.

The same ideas underlay the new empire which had underlain that of

Charlemagne, strengthened and reinforced by the fact that they had

already found a visible expression before in that earlier empire.

Historically, there was the tradition of the old Roman empire, preserved

by the Church as an idea, and preserved in the Church, and its imperial

organization, as an actual fact. Ecclesiastically, there was the Pauline

conception of a single Christian Church, one in subjection to Christ as

its Head, and needing (so men still thought) a secular counterpart of

its indivisible unity.[9] To these two sanctions philosophy later added

a third; and the doctrine of Realism, that the one universal is the true

abiding substance--the doctrine which pervades the _De monarchia_ of

Dante,--reinforced the feeling which demanded that Europe should be

conceived as a single political unity. But if the Holy Roman empire of

the German nation has the old foundations, it is none the less a thing

_sui generis_. Externally, it meant far less than the empire of

Charlemagne; it meant simply a union of Germany and northern Italy (to

which, after 1032, one must also add Burgundy, though the addition is in

reality nominal) under a single rule. Historians of the 19th century,

during the years in which the modern German empire was in travail,

disputed sorely on the advantages of this union; but whatever its

advantages or disadvantages, the fact remains that the union of Teutonic

Germany and Latin Italy was, from an external point of view, the

essential fact in the structure of the medieval Empire. Internally,

again, the Empire of the Ottos and their successors was new and

unprecedented. If Latin imperialism had been combined with Frankish

tribalism in the Empire of Charlemagne, it now met and blended with

feudalism. The Holy Roman emperor of the middle ages, as Frederick I.

proudly told the Roman envoys, found his senate in the diet of the

German baronage, his _equites_ in the ranks of the German knights.

Feudalism, indeed, came in time to invade the very conception of Empire

itself. The emperors began to believe that their position of emperor

made them feudal overlords of other kings and princes; and they came to

be regarded as the topmost summit of the feudal pyramid, from whom kings

held their kingdoms, while they themselves held directly of God. In this

way the old conception of the world as a single political society

entered upon a new phase: but the translation of that conception into

feudal terms, which might have made Diocletian gasp, only gave it the

greater hold on the feudal society of the middle ages. Yet in one way

the feudal conception was a source of weakness to the Empire; for the

popes, from the middle of the 12th century onwards, began to claim for

themselves a feudal overlordship of the world, and to regard the emperor

as the chief of their vassals. The theory of the _Translatio_ buttressed

their claim to be overlords of the Empire; and the emperors found that

their very duty to defend the Papacy turned them into its vassals--for

was not the _advocatus_ who defended the lands of an abbey or church its

tenant by feudal service, and might not analogy extend the feudal

relation to the imperial advocate himself?

The Empire and the Papacy.

The relation of the Empire to the Papacy is indeed the cardinal fact in

its history for the three centuries which followed the coronation of

Otto I. (962-1250). For a century (962-1076) the relation was one of

amity. The pope and the emperor stood as co-ordinate sovereigns, ruling

together the commonwealth of Europe.[10] If either stood before the

other, the emperor stood before the pope. The Romans had sworn to Otto

I. that they would never elect or ordain a pope without his consent; and

the rights over papal elections conceived to belong to the office of

_patricius_, which they generally held, enabled the emperors, upon

occasion, to nominate the pope of their choice. The partnership of Otto

III., son of a Byzantine princess, and his nominee Silvester II.

(already distinguished as Gerbert, _scholasticus_ of the chapter school

of Reims) forms a remarkable page in the annals of Empire and Papacy.

Otto, once the pupil of Silvester in classical studies, and taught by

his mother the traditions of the Byzantine empire, dreamed of renewing

the Empire of Constantine, with Rome itself for its centre; and this

antiquarian idealism (which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi were

afterwards, though with some difference of aim, to share) was encouraged

in his pupil by the pope. Tradition afterwards ascribed to the two the

first project of a crusade, and the institution of the seven electors:

in truth their faces were turned to the past rather than to the future,

and they sought not to create, but to renovate. The dream of restoring

the age of Constantine passed with the premature death of Otto; and

after the death of Silvester II. the papacy was degraded into an

appendage of the Tusculan family. From that degradation the Church was

rescued by Henry III. (the second emperor of the new Salian house, which

reigned from 1024 to 1125), when in 1046 he caused the deposition of

three competing popes, and afterwards filled the papal chair with his

own nominees; but it was rescued more effectually by itself, when in

1059 the celebrated bull _In nomine Domini_ of Nicholas II. reserved the

right of electing the popes to the college of cardinals (see CONCLAVE).

A new era of the Papacy begins with the decree, and that era found its

exponent in Hildebrand. If under Henry III. the Empire stands in many

respects at its zenith, and the emperor nominates to the Papacy, it

sinks, under Henry IV., almost to the nadir of its fortunes, and a pope

attempts, with no little success, to fight and defeat an emperor.

The Investiture contest.

The rise of the Papacy, which the action of Henry III. in 1046 had

helped to begin, and the bull of 1059 had greatly promoted, was

ultimately due to an ecclesiastical revival, which goes by the name of

the Cluniac movement. The aim of that movement was to separate the

Church from the world, and thus to make it independent of the laity and

the lay power; and it sought to realize its aim first by the prohibition

of clerical marriage and simony, and ultimately by the prohibition of

lay investiture. A decree of Gregory VII. in 1075 forbade emperor, king

or prince to "presume to give investiture of bishoprics," under pain of

excommunication; and Henry IV., contravening the decree, fell under the

penalty, and the War of Investitures began (1076-1122). Whether or no

Henry humiliated himself at Canossa (and the opinion of German

historians now inclines to regard the traditional account as

exaggerated) the Empire certainly suffered in his reign a great loss of

prestige. The emperor lost his hold over Germany, where the aid of the

pope strengthened the hands of the discontented nobility: he lost his

hold over Italy, where the Lombard towns gradually acquired municipal

independence, and the donation of the Countess Matilda gave the popes

the germ of a new and stronger _dominium temporale_. The First Crusade

came, and the emperor, its natural leader, could not lead it; while the

centre of learning and civilization, in the course of the fifty years'

War of Investitures, gradually shifted to France. The struggle was

finally ended by a compromise--the Concordat of Worms--in 1122; but the

Papacy, which had fought the long War of Investitures and inspired the

First Crusade, was a far greater power than it had been at the beginning

of the struggle, and the emperor, shaken in his hold on Germany and

Italy, had lost both power and prestige (see INVESTITURE). It is

significant that a theory of the feudal subjection of the emperor to the

pope, foreshadowed in the pontificate of Innocent II., and definitely

enounced by the envoys of Adrian IV. at the diet of Besancon in 1157,

now begins to arise. The popes, who had called the emperors to be heads

of the European commonwealth in 800 and again in 962, begin to vindicate

that headship for themselves. Gregory VII. had already claimed that the

pope stood to the emperor, as the sun to the moon; and gradually the old

co-ordination disappeared in a new subordination of the Empire to the

papal _plenitudo potestatis_. The claim of ecclesiastical independence

of the middle of the 11th century was rapidly becoming a claim of

ecclesiastical supremacy in the middle of the 12th: the imperial claim

to nominate popes, which had lasted till 1059, was turning into the

papal claim to nominate emperors. Yet at this very time a new period of

splendour dawned for the Empire; and the rule of the three Hohenstaufen

emperors, Frederick I., Henry VI. and Frederick II. (1152-1250), marks

the period of its history which attracts most sympathy and admiration.

The Hohenstaufen emperors.

Overthrow of the Empire in Italy.

Frederick I. regained a new strength in Germany, partly because he

united in his veins the blood of the two great contending families, the

Welfs and the Waiblingens; partly because he had acquired large

patrimonial possessions in Swabia, which took the place of the last

Saxon demesne; partly because he had a greater control over the German

episcopate than his predecessors had enjoyed for many years past. At the

same time the revival of interest in the study of Roman law gave the

emperor, as source and centre of that law, a new dignity and prestige,

particularly in Italy, the home and hearth of the revival. Confident in

this new strength, he attempted to vindicate his claims on Italy, and

sought, by uniting the two under his sway, to inspire with new life the

old Ottonian Empire. He failed to crush Lombard municipal independence:

defeated at Legnano in 1176, he had to recognize his defeat at the

treaty of Constance in 1183. He failed to acquire control over the

Papacy: a new struggle of Empire and Papacy, begun in the pontificate of

Adrian IV. on the question of control over Rome, and continued in the

pontificate of Alexander III., because Frederick recognized an

anti-pope, ended in the emperor's recognition of his defeat at Venice in

1177. The one success was the acquisition of the Norman kingdom for

Henry VI., who was married to its heiress, Constance. But the one

success of Frederick's Italian policy proved the ruin of his house in

the reign of his grandson Frederick II. On the one hand, the possession

of Sicily induced Frederick II. to neglect Germany; and by two

documents, one of 1220 and one of 1231, he practically abdicated his

sovereign powers to the German princes in order to conciliate their

support for his Italian policy. On the other hand, the possession of

Sicily involved him in the third great struggle of Empire and Papacy.

Strong in his Sicilian kingdom in the south, and seeking, like his

grandfather, to establish his power in Lombardy, Frederick practically

aimed at the unification of Italy, a policy which threatened to engulf

the States of the Church and to reduce the Papacy to impotence. The

popes excommunicated the emperor: they aided the Lombard towns to

maintain their independence; finally, after Frederick's death (1250),

they summoned Charles of Anjou into Sicily to exterminate his house. By

1268 he had done his work, and the medieval Empire was practically at an

end. When Rudolph of Habsburg succeeded in 1273, he was only the head of

a federation of princes in Germany, while in Italy he abandoned all

claims over the centre and south, and only retained titular rights in

the Lombard plain.

Thus ended the first great chapter in the history of the Holy Roman

Empire which Otto had founded in 962. In those three centuries the great

fact had been its relation to the Papacy: in the last two of those three

centuries the relation had been one of enmity. The basis of the enmity

had been the papal claim to supreme headship of Latin Christianity, and

to an independent temporal demesne in Italy as the condition of that

headship. Because they desired supreme headship, the popes had sought to

reduce the emperor's headship to something lower than, and dependent

upon, their own--to a mere fief held of St Peter: because they desired a

temporal demesne, they had sought to expel him from Italy, since any

imperial hold on Italy threatened their independence. They had succeeded

in defeating the Empire, but they had also destroyed the Papacy; for the

French aid which they had invoked against the Hohenstaufen developed,

within fifty years of the fall of that house, into French control, and

the captivity at Avignon (1308-1378) was the logical result of the final

victory of Charles of Anjou at Tagliacozzo. The struggle seemed to have

ended in nothing but the exhaustion of both combatants. Yet in many

respects it had in reality made for progress. It had set men thinking of

the respective limits of church and state, as the many _libelli de lite

imperatorum et pontificum_ show; and from that thought had issued a new

conception of the state, as existing in its own right and supreme in its

own sphere, a conception which is the necessary basis of the modern

nation-state. If it had dislocated Germany into a number of territorial

principalities, it had produced a college of electors to represent the

cause of unity: if it had helped to prevent the unification of Italy,

and had left to Italy the fatal legacy of Guelph and Ghibelline feuds,

it had equally helped to produce Italian municipal independence.

The Empire from the election of Rudolph of Habsburg, 1273.

A new chapter of the history of the Empire fills the three centuries

from 1273 to 1556--from the accession of Rudolph of Habsburg to the

abdication of Charles V. Italy was now lost: the Empire had now no

peculiar connexion with Rome, and far less touch with the Papacy. A new

Germany had risen. The extinction of several royal stocks and the

nomination of anti-kings in the course of civil wars had made the

monarchy elective, and raised to the side of the emperor a college of

electors (see ELECTORS), which appears as definitely established soon

after 1250. With Italy lost, and Germany thus transmuted, why should the

Empire have still continued to exist? In the first place, it continued

to exist because the Germans still found a king necessary and because,

the German king having been called for three centuries emperor, it

seemed necessary that he should still continue to bear the name. In this

sense the Empire existed as the presidency of a Germanic confederation,

and as something analogous to the modern German empire, with the one

great difference that the Hohenzollerns now derive from Prussia a

strength which enables them to make their imperial position a reality,

while no Luxemburg or Habsburg was able to make his imperial position

otherwise than honorary and nominal. In the second place, it continued

to exist because the conception of the unity of western Europe still

lingered, and was still conceived to need an exponent. In this sense the

Empire existed as a presidency, still more honorary and still more

nominal, of the nations of western Europe. In both capacities the

emperor existed to a great extent because he was a legal

necessity--because, in Germany, he was necessary for the investiture of

princes with their principalities, and because, in Europe, he was

necessary, as the source of all rights, to bestow crowns upon would-be

kings, or to act as the head of the great orders of chivalry, or to give

patents to notaries. With the history of the Empire regarded as a German

confederation we are not here concerned. The reigns of the Habsburg,

Luxemburg and Wittelsbach emperors belong to the history of Germany.

Yet two of these emperors, Henry VII. and Louis IV., should not pass

without notice, the one for his own sake, the other for the sake of his

adherents, and both because, by interfering in Italy, and coming into

conflict with the Papacy, they brought once more into prominence the

European aspect of the Empire.

Henry VII., the contemporary and the hero of Dante, descended into Italy

in 1310, partly because he had no power and no occupation in Germany,

partly because he was deeply imbued with the sense of his imperial

dignity. Coming as a peacemaker and mediator, he was driven by Guelph

opposition into a Ghibelline role; and he came into conflict with

Clement V., the first of the Avignonese popes, who under the pressure of

France attempted to enforce upon Henry a recognition of his feudal

subjection. Henry asserted his independence: he claimed Rome for his

capital, and the lordship of the world for his right; but, just as a

struggle seemed impending, he died, in 1313. During the reign of his

successor, Louis IV., the struggle came. Louis had been excommunicated

by John XXII. in 1324 for acting as emperor before he had received papal

recognition. None the less, in 1328, he came to Rome for his coronation.

He had gathered round him strange allies; on the one hand, the more

advanced Franciscans, apostles of the cause of clerical disendowment,

and inimical to a wealthy papacy; on the other hand, jurists like

Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, who brought to the cause of Louis

the spirit and the doctrines which had already been used in the struggle

between Boniface VIII. and Philip IV. of France. Marsilius in

particular, in a treatise called the _Defensor Pacis_, insisted on the

majesty of the lay state, and even on its superiority to the Church.

Perhaps it was Marsilius, learned as he was in Roman law, and

remembering the _lex regia_ by which the Roman people had of old

conferred its power on the emperor, who suggested to Louis the policy,

which he followed, of receiving the imperial crown by the decree and at

the hands of the Roman people. The policy was remarkable: Louis embraced

an alliance which Frederick Barbarossa had spurned, and recognized the

medieval Romans as the source of imperial power. Not less remarkable was

the new attitude of the German electors, who for the first time

supported an emperor against the pope, because they now felt menaced in

their own electoral rights; and the one permanent result which finally

flowed from the struggle was the enunciation and definition of the

rights and privileges of the electors in the Golden Bull of 1356 (see

GOLDEN BULL).

The Empire and the rise of the idea of national states.

In this struggle with the Papacy the Empire had shown something of its

old universal aspect. It had come into connexion with Italy, and into

close connexion with Rome: it had enlisted in defence of its rights at

once an Italian like Marsilius and an Englishman like Ockham. The same

universal aspect appeared once more in the age of the conciliar

movement, at the beginning of the 15th century. One of the essential

duties of the emperor, as defender of the Church, was to help the

assembling and the deliberations of general councils of the Church. This

was the duty discharged by Sigismund, when he forced John XXIII. to

summon a council at Constance in 1414, and sought, though in vain, to

guide its deliberations. The journey which Sigismund undertook in the

interests of the council (1415-1417) is particularly noteworthy. He

sought to make peace throughout western Europe, acting as international

arbitrator--in virtue of his presidency of western Europe--between

England and France, between Burgundians and Armagnacs; but he failed in

his aim, and when he returned to the council, it was only to witness the

defeat of the party of reform which he championed. National feeling and

national antipathies proved too strong for Sigismund's attempt to revive

the medieval empire for the purposes of international arbitration: the

same feeling, the same antipathies, made inevitable the failure of the

council itself, in which western Europe had sought to meet once more as

a single religious commonwealth. Early in the 15th century, therefore,

the conception of the unity of western Europe, as a single

Empire-Church, was already waning in both its aspects. The unity of the

Church Universal was dissolving, and the conception of the nation-church

arising (as the separate concordats granted by Martin V. to the

different nations prove); while the unity of the Empire was proved a

dream, by the powerlessness of the emperor in the face of the struggle

of England and France.

Influence of the Reformation.

Renaissance and Reformation combined to complete the fall which the

failure of Sigismund to guide the conciliar movement had already

foreshadowed. The Renaissance, revolting against the medievalism of the

_studium_ and not sparing even the _sacerdotium_ of the middle ages, had

little respect for the medieval _imperium_; and, going back to pure

Latin and original Greek, it went back beyond even the classical empire

to find its ideals and inspirations. But it is the coming of the

Reformation, and with it of the nation-church, which finally marks the

epoch at which the last vestige of the old conception of the political

unity of the world disappears before the nation-state. Externally indeed

it seemed, at the time of the Reformation, as if the old Empire had been

revived in the person of Charles V., who owned territories as vast as

those of Charlemagne. But Charles's dominions were a dynastic

agglomeration, knit together by no vivifying conception; and, though

Charles was a champion of the one Catholic Church against the

Reformation, he did not in any way seek to revive the power of the

medieval empire. Meanwhile the reforming monarchs, while they cast off

the Roman Church, cast off with it the Roman empire. Henry VIII.

declared himself free, not only of the pope, but of all other foreign

power; not only so, but as he sought to take the place of the pope with

regard to his own church, so he sought to take the place of the emperor

with regard to his kingdom, and spoke of his "imperial" crown, a style

which recurs in later Tudor reigns.[11] The conception of one Empire

passed out of Europe, or, if it remained, it remained only in an

honorary precedence accorded by other sovereigns to the king of Germany,

who still entitled himself emperor. In Germany itself the honorary

presidency which the emperor enjoyed over the princes came to mean still

less than before, when religious differences divided the country, and

the principle of _cujus regio ejus religio_ accentuated the local

autonomy of the prince. When Charles abdicated in 1556, the change which

the accession of Rudolph of Habsburg had already marked was complete:

there was no empire except in Germany, and in Germany the Empire was

nothing more than a convenient legal conception. The Reformation, by

sweeping away the spiritual unity of western Christendom, had swept away

any real conception of its political unity, and with that conception it

had swept away the Empire; while it had also, by splitting Germany into

two religious camps, and making the emperor at the most the head of a

religious faction, dissipated the last vestiges of a real Empire in the

country which had, since 962, been its peculiar home.

The Empire as a German confederation.

From 1556 to 1806 the Empire means a loose federation of the different

princes of Germany, lay and ecclesiastical, under the presidency,

elective in theory but hereditary in practice, of the house of Habsburg.

It is an empire much in the same sense as the modern German empire, with

a diet somewhat analogous to the modern Bundesrat, and a cumbrous

imperial chamber for purposes of justice, hardly at all analogous to the

highly organized system of federal justice which prevails in Germany

to-day. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire into this loose

federation had already been anticipated by the concessions made to the

princes by Frederick II. in 1220 and 1231; but the final organization of

Germany on federal lines was only attained in the treaty of Westphalia

of 1648. The attempt of Ferdinand II., in the course of the Thirty

Years' War, to assert a practically monarchical authority over the

princes of Germany, only led to the regular vindication by the princes

of their own monarchical authority. The emperor, who had tried in the

15th century to be the international authority of all Europe, now sank

to the position of less than inter-state arbitrator in Germany. That the

Empire and the emperor were retained at all, when the princes became so

many independent sovereigns, was due partly to a lingering sense of

quasi-national sentiment for a _magni nominis umbra_, partly to the need

of some authority which should combine in one whole principalities of

very different sizes and strengths, and should protect the weak from the

strong, and all from France. But this authority only found its _symbol_

in the emperor. Such real federal authority as there was remained with

the diet, a congress of sovereign princes through their accredited

representatives; and the emperor's sole rights, as emperor, were those

of granting titles and confirming tolls. The Habsburgs, emperors in each

successive generation, never pursued an imperial, but always a dynastic

policy; and they were perfectly ready to sacrifice to the aggrandizement

of their house the honour of the Empire, as when they ceded Lorraine to

France in return for Tuscany (1735).

End of the Holy Roman Empire.

It needed the cataclysm of the French Revolution finally to overthrow

the Empire. Throughout the 18th century it lasted, a thing of

long-winded protocols and never-ending lawsuits, "neither Holy, nor

Roman, nor an Empire." But with Napoleon came its destroyer. As far back

as the end of the 13th century, French kings had been scheming to annex

the title or at any rate absorb the territories of the Empire: at the

beginning of the 19th century the annexation of the title by Napoleon

seemed very imminent. Posing as the New Charlemagne ("because, like

Charlemagne, I unite the crown of France to that of the Lombards, and my

Empire marches with the East"), he resolved in 1806, during the

dissolution and recomposition of Germany which followed the peace of

Luneville, to oust Francis II. from his title, and to make the Holy

Roman Empire part and parcel of the "Napoleonic idea." He was

anticipated, however, by the prompt action of the proud Habsburg, who

was equally resolved that no other should wear the crown which he

himself was powerless to defend, and accordingly, on the 6th of August

1806, Francis resigned the imperial dignity. So perished the Empire. Out

of its ashes sprang the Austrian Empire, for Francis, in 1804, partly to

counter Napoleon's assumption of the title of Emperor of the French,

partly to prepare for the impending dissolution of the old Empire, had

assumed the title of "Hereditary Emperor of Austria." And in yet more

recent times the German empire may be regarded, in a still more real

sense than Austria, as the descendant and representative of the old

Empire of the German nation.

General influence of the Empire.

What had been the results of the Holy Roman Empire, in the course of its

long history, upon Germany and upon Europe? It has been a _vexata

quaestio_ among German historians, whether or no the Empire ruined

Germany. Some have argued that it diverted the attention of the German

kings from their own country to Italy, and that, by bringing them into

conflict with the popes, and by thus strengthening the hands of their

rebellious baronage with a papal alliance, it prevented the development

of a national German monarchy, such as other sovereigns of western

Europe were able to found. Others again have emphasized the racial

division of Saxon and Frank, of High German and Low German, as the great

cause of the failure of Germany to grow into a united national whole,

and have sought to ascribe to the influence of the Empire such unity as

was achieved; while they have attributed the learning, the trade, the

pre-eminence of medieval Germany to the Italian connexion and the

prestige which the Empire brought. It is difficult to pronounce on

either side; but one feels that the old localism and individualism which

characterized the early German, and had never, on German soil, been

combined with and counteracted by a large measure of Roman population

and Roman civilization, as they were in Gaul and Spain, would in any

case have continued to divide and disturb Germany till late in her

history, even if the Empire had never come to reside within her borders.

Of the larger question of the influence of the Empire on Europe we can

here only say that it worked for good. An Empire which represented, as a

Holy Empire, the unity of all the faithful as one body in their secular,

no less than in their religious life--an Empire which, again, as a Roman

Empire, represented with an unbroken continuity the order of Roman

administration and law--such an empire could not but make for the

betterment of the world. It was not an empire resting on force, a

military empire; it was not, as in modern times empires have sometimes

been, an autocracy warranted and stamped by the plebiscite of the mob.

It was an empire resting neither on the sword nor on the ballot-box, but

on two great ideas, taught by the clergy and received by the laity, that

all believers in Christ form one body politic, and that the one model

and type for the organization of that body is to be found in the past of

Rome. It was indeed the weakness of the Empire that its roots were only

the thoughts of men; for the lack of material force, from which it

always suffered, hindered it from doing work it might well have

done--the work, for instance, of international arbitration. Yet, on the

other hand, it was the strength and glory of the Empire that it lived,

all through the middle ages, an unconquerable idea of the mind of man.

Because it was a being of their thought, it stirred men to reflection:

the Empire, particularly in its clash with the Papacy, produced a

political consciousness and a political speculation reflected for us in

the many _libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum_, and in the pages

of Dante and Marsilius of Padua. Roman, it perpetuated the greatest

monument of Roman thought--that ordered scheme of law, which either

became, as in England, the model for the building of a native system,

or, as in Germany from the end of the 15th century onwards, was received

in its integrity and administered in the courts. Holy, it fortified and

consolidated Christian thought, by giving a visible expression to the

kingdom of God upon earth; and not only so, but it maintained, however

imperfectly, some idea of international obligation, and some conception

of a commonwealth of Europe.[12]

The Holy Roman Empire of western Europe had in its own day a

contemporary and a rival--that east Roman empire of which we have

already spoken. From Arcadius to John Palaeologus, from A.D. 395 to

1453, the Roman empire was continued at Constantinople--not as a theory

and an idea, but as a simple and daily reality of politics and

administration. In one sense the East Roman Empire was more lineally and

really Roman than the West: it was absolutely continuous from ancient

times. In another sense the Western Empire was the most Roman; for its

capital--in theory at least--was Rome itself, and the Roman Church stood

by its side, while Constantinople was Hellenic and even Oriental.

Between the two Empires there was fixed an impassable gulf; and they

were divided by deep differences of thought and temper, which appeared

most particularly in the sphere of religion, and expressed themselves in

the cleavage between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Yet, as

when Rome fell, the Catholic Church survived, and ultimately found for

itself a new Empire of the West, so, when Constantinople fell, the

Orthodox Church continued its life, and found for itself a new Empire of

the East--the Empire of Russia. Under Ivan the Great (1462-1505) Moscow

became the metropolis of Orthodoxy; Byzantine law influenced his code;

and he took for his cognizance the double-headed eagle. Ivan the

Terrible, his grandson, finally assumed in 1547 the title of Tsar; and

henceforth the Russian emperor is, in theory and very largely in fact,

the successor of the old East Roman emperor,[13] the head of the

Orthodox Church, with the mission of vengeance on Islam for the fall of

Constantinople.

Modern Empires.

In the 19th century the word "empire" has had a large and important

bearing in politics. In France it has been the apanage of the

Bonapartes, and has meant a centralized system of government by an

efficient Caesar, resting immediately on the people, and annihilating

the powers of the people's representatives. Under Napoleon I. this

conception had a Carolingian colour: under Napoleon III. there is less

of Carolingianism, and more of Caesarism--more of a popular

dictatorship. While in modern France Empire has meant autocracy instead

of representative government, in Germany it has meant a greater national

unity and a federal government in the place of a confederation. The

modern German empire is at once like and unlike the old Holy Roman

Empire. It is unlike the old medieval Empire; for it has no connexion

with the Catholic Church, and no relation to Rome. But it is like the

Holy Roman Empire of the 17th and 18th centuries--for it represents a

federation, but a more real and more unitary federation, of the several

states of Germany. The likeness is perhaps more striking than the

dissimilarity; and in virtue of this likeness, and because the memory of

the old German _Kaiserzeit_ was a driving force in 1870, we may speak of

the modern German empire as the successor of the old Holy Roman Empire,

if we remember that we are speaking of that Empire in its last two

centuries of existence. The modern "Empire of Austria," on the other

hand, does not connote an empire in the sense of a federation, but is a

convenient designation for the sum of the territories ruled by a single

sovereign under various titles (king of Bohemia, archduke of Austria,

&c.) and unified in a single political system.[14] The title of Emperor

was assumed, as we have seen, through an historical accident; and,

though the Habsburgs of to-day are personally the lineal descendants of

the old Holy Roman emperors, they do not in any way possess an empire

that represents the old Holy Empire. In England, of recent years, the

term "Empire" and the conception of imperialism have become prominent

and crucial. To Englishmen to-day, as to Germans before 1870, the term

and the conception stand for the greater unity and definitely federal

government of a number of separate states. For the German, indeed,

Empire has meant, in great measure, the strengthening of a loose federal

institution by the addition of a common personal superior: to us it

means the turning of a loose union of separate states already under a

common personal superior--the King--into a federal commonwealth living

under some common federal institutions. But the aim is much the same; it

is the integration of a people under a single scheme which shall be

consistent with a large measure of political autonomy. We speak of

imperial federation; and indeed our modern imperialism is closely allied

to federalism. Yet we do well to cling to the term empire rather than

federation; for the one term emphasizes the whole and its unity, the

other the part and its independence. This imperialism, which is

federalism viewed as making for a single whole, is very different from

that Bonapartist imperialism, which means autocracy; for its essence is

free co-ordination, and the self-government of each co-ordinated part.

The British Empire (q.v.) is, in a sense, an aspiration rather than a

reality, a thought rather than a fact; but, just for that reason, it is

like the old Empire of which we have spoken; and though it be neither

Roman nor Holy, yet it has, like its prototype, one law, if not the law

of Rome--one faith, if not in matters of religion, at any rate in the

field of political and social ideals.

Authorities.--See, in the first place, J. Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_

(1904 edition); J. von Dollinger, article on "The Empire of Charles

the Great" (in _Essays on Historical and Literary Subjects_,

translated by Margaret Warre, 1894); H. Fisher, _The Medieval Empire_

(1898); E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, edited

by J.B. Bury. It would be impossible to refer to all the books bearing

on the article, but one may select (i.) for the period down to 476,

Stuart Jones, _The Roman Empire_ (1908), an excellent brief sketch; H.

Schiller, _Geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit_ (1883-1888); O. Seeck,

_Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt_ (Band I., Berlin,

1897-1898, Band II., 1901) (a remarkable and stimulating book); and

the two excellent articles on "Imperium" and "Princeps" in Smith's

_Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (1890); (ii.) for the

period from 476 down to 888, T. Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_

(1880-1900); F. Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter_

(1886-1894; Eng. trans., London, 1894-1900); E. Lavisse, _Histoire de

France_, II. i. (1901); J.B. Bury, _History of the Later Roman Empire_

(1889); (iii.) for the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, W. von

Giesebrecht, _Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit_ (1881-1890); J.

Zeller, _Histoire d'Allemagne_ (1872-1891); R.L. Poole, _Illustrations

of Medieval Thought_ (1884); S. Riezler, _Die literarischen

Widersacher der Papste zur Zeit Ludwigs des Baiers_ (1874); J.

Jannsen, _Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des

Mittelalters_ (1885-1894); L. von Ranke, _Deutsche Geschichte im

Zeitalter der Reformation_ (1839-1847), and _Zur deutschen

Geschichte_. _Vom Religionsfrieden bis zum dreissigjahrigen Krieg_

(1869); and T. Carlyle, _Frederick the Great_ (1872-1873). On the fall

of the Roman Empire and the transition to the modern German Empire see

Sir J.R. Seeley, _Life and Times of Stein_ (1878); H. von Treitschke,

_Deutsche Geschichte_ (1879-1894); and H. von Sybel, _Die Begrundung

des deutschen Reichs_ (1890-1894, Eng. trans., _The Founding of the

Germ. Emp._, New York, 1890-1891). For institutional history, see R.

Schroder, _Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_ (1894). On the

influence of the Holy Roman Empire upon the history of Germany, see J.

Ficker, _Das deutsche Kaiserreich_ (1861), and _Deutsches Konigtum und

Kaisertum_ (1862); and H. von Sybel, _Die deutsche Nation und das

Kaiserreich_ (1861). (E. Br.)