Can Someone Explain the Holy Roman Empire?

[ThinkMinty]

I only know so much about history. I know a decent amount about the Classical era, and an eclectic podge-hodge of stuff from around the time of electricity to the present day.

I don't know doodly-glitters about the Holy Roman Empire though, other than that Germany's involved somehow. Would anyone like to explain the Holy Roman Empire to me as though I were some kind of children.

[Razade]

Pretty simple. The Holy Roman Empire wasn't any of those things.

[BWR]

Pretty simple. The Holy Roman Empire wasn't any of those things.
Helpful.

@ OP: Look it up on Wikipedia. That's probably the best brief introduction you can get without delving into the literature, and if literature is what you want Wikipedia is often a good place for finding sources.

[ThinkMinty]

Helpful.

@ OP: Look it up on Wikipedia. That's probably the best brief introduction you can get without delving into the literature, and if literature is what you want Wikipedia is often a good place for finding sources.

Looking it up didn't really stick in my head at all. 's why I was lookin' for a person to sum it up.

[Eldan]

After the fall of the western Roman Empire, Germanic tribes took over the area. After some wrangling and back-and-forth wars, the Franks became the dominant power in what was previously Gaul and today France, as well as a good chunk of modern Germany.

Enter Charlemagne. Under Germanic succession law, it was usual to divide lands up between sons, so he got half and his son the other half of the Frankish realm. However, after his brother's death, he united both parts into a gigantic powerful realm. Through a series of wars, he expanded it considerably, too. He allied with the pope against the Germanic Lombards who ruled Italy when the pope demanded the return of several formerly Roman cities. This gave him control over about half of Italy. Over raiding and religious differences, he started a 30 year war with the Saxons and finally conquered them. After also adding the Kingdom of Bavaria, he effectively ruled over modern France and Germany, as well as the smaller countries (Benelux, Switzerland) in between and a good part of Italy.

Because he was allied with the pope and had helped him considerably, the pope gave Charlemagne the rank of Emperor, hence Roman Empire. He also called him protector of all Christians, hence Holy.

After Charlemagne's death, there was some wrangling between successors again. The realm was effectively halved, more or less along the Rhine, with one half becoming the quite stable realm of Francia or France, the other one becoming the rather less stable Holy Roman Empire.

The last Carolingian king of the HRE died in 911. Its rulers, mostly powerful dukes, decided not to hand it back to the Western Francian King, but instead elected a new king. However, unlike the rulers of France, they decided to keep the title of Emperor and still considered their king the Emperor of Rome.

There were several factors that limited the Emperor's power for much of his reign. Since many of the dukes were quite powerful and he even had some kings as vassals, he was always elected and often had vassals more powerful than himself, who also elected him. There also was no permanent capital, as the Emperor was supposed to travel around and solve disputes between his vassals. And the pope still had to confirm the Imperial title each time, which he sometimes refused.

That's the formation as I remember it from school. It's medieval up to baroque histry is of course long and complicated.

[Fri]

When I can't wrap myself on a subject and I only need a summary, usually I go to simple english wikipedia.

I'm not saying anything against your or anyone's grasp of english, but honestly a lot of the time wikipedia is kinda overblown and obtuse, and it's better to learn simple summary of stuffs from simple english wikipedia, especially if you're not a native speaker. I know I sometimes direct my architect brother there for some physics summary in english (we're not native english speakers, and as much fluent he is in day-to-day english, wikipedia physics article is just too much).

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

[thorgrim29]

It might be worth mentioning that Charlemagne didn't pop out of nowhere. The kingdom of the Franks was first established by Clovis during the fall of the roman empire (he started out as a vassal king, defeated his roman overlord, the conquered all his neighbors). Then, even though it was unusually stable for the time it gradually eroded away into squabbling fiefdoms until Charles Martel, the bastard son of one of the last Merovingians (Clovis' family), rose to power (though he kept a puppet king around). The guy was by all accounts a bit of a badass, a skilled politician and an amazing general. He contributed to stopping the Umayyad incursions east of the current borders of Spain (he gained his nickname, essentially "the Hammer" after the battle of Poitier where him and the Duke of Aquitaine crushed the muslim army) and put back together most of the Frankish kingdoms. The his son, Pépin le Bref (the short), stabilized the whole thing before passing half to the future Charlemagne and half to Carloman (who died under very suspicious circumstances). People often forget how close the Umayyad caliphate came to swallowing up Europe. Though, given the living conditions and personal freedoms in the arab world vs europe at that time it might not have been such a bad thing...

So the mantle of defender of christianity was sort of a family thing but it was made official under Charlemagne (and that led to a disaster for him when he tried to take parts of spain for Christianity). His administrative style is perhaps even more interesting than his military one BTW. The guy basically invented feudalism, introduced a form of public education, and had one hell of a cult of personality going, despite being illiterate himself.

[Grytorm]

And he liked to take baths together with some of his guards and other random people.

I read a primary source history once and I found one thing really amusing. Charlemagnes brother was likely killed somehow for being inconvenient. But the official story was tragic accident. So the biographer was halfway between regretting the death of Charle's brother and trying to justify it.

[Flickerdart]

I don't know doodly-glitters about the Holy Roman Empire though, other than that Germany's involved somehow. Would anyone like to explain the Holy Roman Empire to me as though I were some kind of children.
People have covered the formation fairly well, but here's a rundown of what it was rather than the backstory:

The HRE consisted of a bunch of subjects (from single cities to duchies and kingdoms). The most important leaders of those subjects (electors) got together and elected the Emperor from among themselves. The Emperor reigned for life. He had almost no authority over individual subjects' lands, and his powers mostly involved vetoing laws and granting exceptions and privileges for those laws. He also controlled the empire's affairs abroad.

Over time, the subjects got more and more rights. By 1800, the Holy Roman Empire practically did not exist any more, since the individual subjects had become practically independent, and many straight-up left. The Empire was officially dissolved in 1805 after Napoleon defeated Francis II (then a double Emperor - of the Austrian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire).

After the demise of the HRE, Napoleon set up the Confederation of the Rhine, basically a puppet for his French Empire. After that collapsed, the various German nations were all like "hey, we should have one big country instead of all these tiny ones, because that didn't work so well." Austria and Prussia, as the most powerful German-speaking nations, fought over who was the strongest, Austria lost, and Prussia formed the German Empire out of many of the same nations that were once part of the Holy Roman Empire.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Thread closed. No matter the time period or how innocuous you believe it to be, please avoid real world religion and politics on this forum.