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Carolingian
Charlemagne 800-814
Louis I the Pious of France 814-840
Lothair I 843-855
Louis II 855-875
Charles II 875-877
Interregnum 877-881
Charles III 881-887
Interregnum 887-891
House of Spoleto
Guy 891-894
Lambert 894-898
Arnulf 896-899
Louis III 901-905
House of Franconia
Conrad I 911-918
Carolingian dynasty
Berengar 915-924
House of Saxony (Liudolfings)
Henry the Fowler 919-936
Otto I 936-973
Otto II 973-983
Otto III 983-1002
Henry II 1002-24
Salian dynasty
Conrad II 1024-39
Henry III 1039-56
Henry IV of Germany 1056-1106
Rival claimants
Rudolf 1077-80
Hermann 1081-93
Conrad 1093-1101
Henry V 1105/06-25
House of Supplinburg
Lothaire II of Saxony 1125-37
House of Hohenstaufen
Conrad III 1138-52
Frederick Barbarossa 1152-90
Henry VI 1190-97
Philip of Swabia 1198-1208
Welf dynasty
Otto IV1198-1214
House of Hohenstaufen
Frederick II 1215-50
Rival claimants
Henry (VII) 1220-35
Henry Raspe 1246-47
William of Holland 1247-56
Conrad IV 1250-54
Great Interregnum
Richard 1257-72
Alfonso (Alfonso X of Castile) 1257-75
and others . . .
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The Holy Roman Empire was a successor state to the empire founded in 800 by Charlemagne, who revived the title of Roman emperor in the West. According to Carolingian theory, the Roman Empire had merely been suspended, not ended, by the abdication of the last Roman emperor in 476. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Roman emperor, probably perceived more as a personal title than as a reference to a particular territorial rule. From the death of Arnulf (899), the last Carolingian to hold the imperial title, until Otto’s coronation in Rome by Pope John XII, various rulers bore the imperial title but exercised no authority; among them were Louis III, king of Provence, and Berengar I, king of Italy.
From the time of Otto’s reign the imperial office was based on the German kingship. The German king, elected by the German princes, automatically sought imperial coronation by the pope. After 1045 a king who was not yet crowned emperor was known as king of the Romans, a title that asserted his right to the imperial throne and implied that he was emperor-designate. Not every German king became emperor, however, because the popes, especially when elections to the kingships were disputed, often claimed that the selection of the emperor was their prerogative. Despite the fact that the German kingship and the imperial office were technically elective, they tended to become hereditary.
At times the electors, the German princes who approved the succession to the German kingship, exercised real authority in choosing the king, although papal confirmation was still necessary for accession to the imperial throne. In 1338 at the diets of Rhense and Frankfurt the German princes proclaimed the electors’ right to choose the emperor without papal intervention. The Golden Bull of 1356 issued by Charles IV reaffirmed this and regulated the election procedure. Emperors continued to be crowned by the pope until after the coronation (1530) of Charles V. Thereafter, following the precedent (1508) of Maximilian I, they were crowned at Frankfurt. Several early emperors were also crowned king of Italy with the iron crown of the Lombards. After 1438 the imperial office was held, with one exception, by the house of Hapsburg.
The empire was justified by the claim that, just as the pope was the vicar of God on earth in spiritual matters, so the emperor was God’s temporal vicar; hence he claimed to be the supreme temporal ruler of Christendom. Actually, the power of the emperor never equaled his pretensions. Although the emperors were accorded diplomatic precedence over other rulers, their suzerainty early ceased over France, S Italy, Denmark, Poland, and Hungary; and their control over England, Sweden, and Spain was never more than nominal. The authority of the emperors in Italy and Germany was sometimes nonexistent, sometimes real.
The territorial limits of the empire varied, but it generally included Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, parts of N Italy, present-day Belgium, and, until 1648, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Some countries (e.g., Hungary) were ruled by the emperor or imperial prince but were outside the empire, while others (e.g., Flanders, Pomerania, Schleswig, and Holstein) were part of the empire but were ruled by foreign princes who held their lands in fief from the emperor and took part in the imperial diet.
When Otto I became emperor, he renewed the traditions of the Carolingian empire that had been eroding for decades before Arnulf’s death. Otto’s empire comprised the German duchies, Lorraine (or Lotharingia), Italy, and Burgundy, which had its own nominal king. Burgundy was formally annexed in 1033.
The imperial position, however, was precarious from the start. A conflict over the relationship between the papacy and the imperial throne resulted in the investiture controversy during the reign of Henry IV (1084-1105), who appointed bishops to three sees already under the direction of papal appointees. He was also suspected of tolerating simony and other practices that the pope was trying to curb. In 1076, Henry IV withdrew his obedience to Pope Gregory VII and was excommunicated. Subsequent struggles between the popes Alexander III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV and the emperors Frederick I and Frederick II concerned papal sovereignty in Italy. The papacy was victorious, and the emperors ceased to interfere seriously with papal affairs except during the Great Schism of the 15th cent. and in the Italian Wars of the 16th cent.
Also untenable was the dual position of the emperors as rulers of Germany and of Italy; geography as well as cultural and political conditions separated the two countries. The defense of the empire against foreign attack was made more difficult by the repeated attempts of the emperors to maintain their authority in Italy against the opposition of the city-states , the papacy, and the petty princes. Frederick I failed to suppress the Lombard League, which had papal support. Frederick II, after inheriting Naples and Sicily, was primarily interested in Italian affairs; his conflict with the papacy produced the feud between Guelphs and Ghibellines throughout Italy and ruined the imperial authority there. Although this office was elected, it often followed dynastic lines, and could be seen as a prize for the family which served most greatly the ends of the Catholic Church.
| FRANCONIAN KING | |
|---|---|
| Conrad I of Franconia | 911-918 |
When Louis the Child died in 911, the Eastern Carolingian line came to a neat end. There were still Carolingians around who could have succeeded, but the German Princes elected one of their own instead. This already was a portent for the future. The affirmation of the elective principle, athough something that might have been overcome later, wasn't; and we already have the seed of a Monarchy that ultimately would not be able to maintain even the unity of the state, which less organize its resources for the projection of external power. At the time, the defection of Lorraine on behalf of Carolingian legitimacy was not a good sign.
| SAXON KINGS & EMPERORS | |
|---|---|
| Henry I the Fowler | 918-936 |
| Otto I | 936-973; Emperor, 962-973 |
| Otto II | 973-983 |
| Otto III | 983-1002 |
| (St.) Henry II the Saint | 1002-1025 |
The weak start of East Francia, however, seemed to be soon remedied. Henry I and Otto I asserted Royal authority over the great nobles and gained great prestige, as well as an experienced fighting force, by defeating the Magyars -- Henry at Riade in 933 and then, decisively, by Otto at Lechfield in 955. Otto was strong enough to interfere in Italy, attaching its affairs to Germany for centuries, and to receive the Imperial Crown from the Pope.
This created the classic Mediaeval Empire, whose very identity is a lesson in confusion and retrospection. The easiest thing is to call it "Germany," but that was not done at the time. The Kingdom was East Francia, and the Empire was the Roman Empire, both of which now sound confusing. More confusing, the Kingdom was soon called that of the Romans, as a way for the Kings to expess their claim on the Empire even before being crowned by the Pope, without which they were not legally Emperors. It is convenient to resolve that the Kingdom is what became Germany. The Empire is also conveniently called, retroactively, the "Holy Roman Empire," though it was in practice, as the Germans themselves later thought, Germany also (claims to Italy and Burgundy were formally surrendered in 1648).
What was going to be the continuing problem for this new Empire was just money. Without much in the way of trade, cities, or industry, there just wasn't any. Without money there could be no paid army or paid administrators. For military force the Kings were thus dependant on feudal loyalty, which was rarely entirely reliable and depended on the personality of individual rulers. For administration, however, the Kings could long use the Church, educated and self-supporting, until the Popes decided that the Church should be independent.
| SALIAN/FRANCONIAN EMPERORS | |
|---|---|
| Conrad II the Salian | 1024-1039 |
| Henry III the Black | 1039-1056 |
| Henry IV | 1056-1106 |
| [Rudolf of Swabia] | 1077-1080, rival |
| [Hermann of Luxemburg] | 1081-1093, rival |
| [Conrad of Franconia] | 1093-1101, rival |
| Henry V | 1106-1125 |
| Lothar II of Saxony | 1125-1137 |
The Salian Emperors (from, as Dukes of Franconia, the "Salian" Franks) probably stood the best chance of maintaining Germany as a coherent and stable Kingdom, with a chance to progress easily to modernity. The domain attained its classic form when Conrad II inherited the Kingdom of Burgundy, rounding off the "four crowns" of the Emperor. However, the use of the Church, with its literate clergy, as an arm of the government introduced a fatal flaw. The Popes wanted an independent Church, which they fought for in the Investiture Controversy of 1076-1122. An excommunicated Emperor Henry IV, standing penitently barefoot in the snow outside the Papal castle at Canossa, is one of the most striking images of the Middle Ages. To the Germans this would later be one of the most humiliating events in their history. Actually, Henry was forcing the Pope's hand, since the Pope could not refuse a penitant. The excommunication had legitimized rebellion in Germany. This, indeed, would be the pattern for many years. The Pope seeking allies in the rear of the Emperors.
Henry V achieved what looked like a favorable compromise to the Controversy, but the damage had been done and the precedents set. The Imperial grip in both Germany and Italy had been loosened, many concerns neglected, and the Popes knew what they could do to preserve their independence and powers, however little they were able to maintain themselves sometimes even against the people of the city of Rome. The spirit of resistance in both Germany and Italy was heartened; the German Church began to exercise even its own territorial sovereinty (with independent states, like that of the Archbishop of Salzburg, that persisted until Napoleon); and subsequent history would be a steadily losing battle for the Monarchy. Just as bad, the lapse again of the male line perpetuated the elective principle of the Throne, which never became truly hereditary, as it had in France (in truth, nothing was easier in the Middle Ages than for things to become hereditary, if only obvious heirs existed). The elections then became a drain on the finances and even the powers of the Emperors, since sovereign concessions as well as money could be used to buy votes.
| SWABIAN/HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS | |
|---|---|
| Conrad III | 1138-1152, uncrowned |
| Frederick I Barbarossa | 1152-1190 |
| Third Crusade, 1189-1192; sacks Seljuk capital of Konya, but dies fording a river, 1190 | |
| Henry VI | 1190-1197 |
| [Philip of Swabia] | 1198-1208, rival |
| Otto IV of Brunswick | 1198-1212 |
| Frederick II | 1212-1250 |
| [Henry Raspe] | 1246-1247, rival |
| [William of Holland] | 1247-1256, rival |
| Conrad IV | 1250-1254, uncrowned |
| [Manfred] | Regent of Sicily, 1250-1266 |
| [Conradin] | invades Italy, 1267-1268 |
| interregnum, 1254-1273 | |
The Hohenstaufen (Dukes of Swabia) were the last chance to preserve a strong German Monarchy. The successes of the great Frederick Barbarossa ("Red Beard") in Germany (the defeat of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, in 1180), however, were largely negated by the failure of his efforts in Italy. Times were changing, and northern Italian cities, developing a post-Mediaeval commercial culture, were becoming individually wealthy and powerful. Combined, as the Lombard League, their resources could easily contend with those of the whole of Germany. They defeated him at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. Then Frederick went on the Third Crusade and died crossing a river in Asia Minor (1190). This remote death spawned the legend that Frederick had not died, but returned to sleep under the Kyffhäuser Mountains in Germany. In 1945 a desperate and delusional Adolf Hitler assured Germans that Frederick would awaken to deliver the country from the Allies.
An Imperial Party, however, existed even in Italy, deriving its name, Ghibelline from the Waiblingen castle of the Hohenstaufen. The Papal Party, in turn, got its name Guelf, from the Welf house of Germany. When a Welf candiate, Otto of Brunswick (son of Henry the Lion), finally was elected Emperor, however, the Popes were not much better pleased at his pursuit of Imperial interests. This, however, paled beside the position of the next Hohenstaufen, Frederick II, who inherited the domain of the Popes' erstwhile allies, the Normans of Naples and Sicily. Frederick all but abandoned the position of the Throne in Germany, in order to take advantage of his powerful southern Kingdom. This worked well enough in his lifetime, but writing off Germany was of no benefit at all, and the southern Kingdom, eventually in the hands of his bastard son Manfred, was the target of every device that the Popes could bring to bear. Before long that meant Charles of Anjou, whose French invasion extinguished the house of Hohenstaufen.
The end of the Hohenstaufen makes a natural break in the history of Germany and Italy. The German princes did not want to elect a new Emperor, and the Popes would just as soon not deal with one again. Also, the genealogy of all the Emperors to this point forms a natural unit, since they are all (except for Lothar II) related, at least by marriage. On the basis of the practice introduced with Charlemagne, no king was an Emperor without being crowned by the Pope.
As the Empire became traditional in Germany, however, the customary idea became established that the King was Emperor by right, with the crowning by the Pope a legal formality. It was never that much of a formality, since the Popes made demands, and it became increasingly difficult to exert authority in Italy, because of the resistance both of the Italians and of the Popes themselves. Consequently, so as to assert their claim without the presumption of prematurely calling themselves "Emperor," the Kings of the Eastern Franks began to call themselves "King of the Romans" (Rex Romanorum) on election. Between Henry II and Henry IV this became standard. As the title "Rex Francorum Orientalium" lapsed, the "Rex Francorum Occidentalium" became increasingly, to himself and to others, simply the "Rex Franciae," King of France. By 1353 a German bishop was complaining about this presumption by the Western King. Eventually, the Emperors found themselves with no business and no interest in Italy, so in 1508 Maximilian I got permission from the Pope to call himself "Imperator electus." This became the official title on election from then on, and is in effect retroactively applied to the earlier uncrowned Emperors, just because we commonly call them "Emperors," which they would not have been by the practice of their own day. Maximilian also, for the first time, called himself "Germaniae Rex," King of Germany, and so may be thought of as beginning the retrospective view that the Mediaeval Empire was the German Empire, i.e. the "First Reich," to be followed by the Hohenzollern "Second Reich" and the Hitlerian "Third." With more modest retrospection, we can simply equate "Germany" with the old East Frankish kingdom (Francia Orientalis).
The crown of Lombardy, or Italy, involved no Italian institutions or effective power and was assumed perfunctorily with the Imperial crown; so it is not indicated after Otto I acquired it through his marriage to the Italian heiress Adelaide, who had been imprisoned after her husband, Lothar II of Italy, had been murdered by Berengar II of Ivrea. Of potentially greater value was the crown of Burgundy, claimed by Conrad II by inheritance in 1032. The Kingdom, however, was off the beaten track and was neglected by the Emperors. Only four were ever actually crowned in Arles, ending with Charles IV in 1365. The other two, besides Conrad II himself, were Henry III and Frederick I, both indicated in the chart with the numbered Burgundian crown. Burgundy soon was largely in the hands of France, with Savoy and Switzerland heading for independence, though this was not formally recognized until 1648.
A fifth crown, obtained by Henry VI through marriage to Constance, daughter of Roger II of Naples and Sicily (the Regnum), was a great strategic coup. The Popes had been cultivating the Normans in southern Italy and Sicily as a counterweight to the Emperors, but now the Emperors would have that very power. The real center of the rule of Frederick II, the Stupor Mundi, "Wonder of the World," became Palermo. Unfortunately, this meant neglect of Germany, where power flowed easily to local princes, and it persuaded the Popes that the Hohenstaufen must be destroyed at all costs. Eventually, Charles of Anjou was recruited and killed Frederick's son Manfred and grandson Conradin. Charles' triumph was brief, however, as one of the most dramatic events of the Middle Ages, the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers (1282), tore Sicily from his grasp. Peter III of Aragón, who had married Manfred's daughter Constance, jumped in and was offered the crown of Sicily. There was little the Pope, let alone non-existent Emperors, could do about this. Naples and Sicily, never formally part of the Empire, now passed back into the dynamic of Mediterranean politics. An Emperor, Charles V, returned later only because both Sicily and Naples passed to him from his Aragonese inheritance.
The crowns of the Emperors, usually thought of as just the first three, were the subject of considerable symbolic discussion. The Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), a legal text of 1230, described them this way:
Dy erste ist tho Aken: dar kronet men mit der Yseren Krone, so is he Konig over alle Dudesche Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, de is Sulvern, so is he Here der Walen. Dy drüdde is tho Rome; dy is guilden, so is he Keyser over alle dy Werlt.
This is quoted by James Bryce [The Holy Roman Empire, 1904, Schocken Books, 1961, p.194], who doesn't bother to give a translation. Perhaps he thought everyone has on hand a dictionary for 13th century Low German. The charm of the passage, however, is that it sounds just enough like English to make it look like a parody of modern German. Of interest here is that the first crown is already said to be of the "Dudesche Ryke," i.e. the German Reich (here clearly "kingdom," not "Empire"). Italy is called "Wales," for the same reason, being non-Germanic, as the word is used in Britain. Milan, in Lombardy, was one of the places for the Lombard/Italian coronation. Although the German crown is said to be iron and the Milanese silver, this was sometimes reversed, and the latter was typically called the "Iron Crown of Lombardy" in any case because is was supposed to contain a Nail from the True Cross. The Roman crown (gold) conferred rule of "alle dy Werlt." Unmentioned here, Burgundy was widely recognized as providing a "fourth crown"; but the Regnum of Naples and Sicily, although in effect providing a fifth crown for Henry VI, Frederick II, and Conrad IV, was not an Imperial possession long enough for this to become a traditional claim.
