Who Was the Emperor?

OK. First off, I want to make this post the only thing you will ever read about the Holy Roman Empire that doesn’t tell you what Voltaire said.

Secondly, I have to admit that I gave up on a book, something I’ve only done a handful of times in all my life. It’s not like Peter Wilson’s Heart of Europe is a classic of great literature, so I don’t feel too guilty, just a little lopsided in a mild-OCD way. Wilson claims up front that he didn’t arrange his 600-page book chronologically but thematically, with a timeline at the end. So when he says that such-and-such an event hadn’t happened since Otto II without having told the reader about Otto II or provided any contextual dates, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Could any reader know?

I’d rather have a story with an appendix of interpretation than a thematically ordered history with an appendix of dates. Of course, I’d really rather have something like a narrative with explanation and interpretation folded in all along the way. But it seems that’s too much to hope for in a history of the HRE. The other longish book I saw on Amazon claimed the same thematically driven organization. So I just settled for the Very Short Introduction to . . .  from the Oxford series (this one by Joachim Whaley). These little guides are also not anything like great literature, but every one I’ve tried has done a good job of laying down a foundation of understanding about some difficult topic.

The big question on this topic is always, “What was the Holy Roman Empire?” I’ve come to the oxymoronically temporary conclusion that the question is perennial because it’s simply the wrong question. The better question is, “Who was the Holy Roman Emperor, and what did he think the Empire was?” The Empire was at least an ideal whose chance of realization definitely started in 800 and definitely ended in 1806, but apart from that, it doesn’t seem to have been much of anything. There were many years in the Empire’s history in which no emperor was crowned. The Emperor never had a central army or the ability to raise taxes. Starting in the fourteenth century, the electorate was codified as one set of seven (later eight, and then nine) German leaders who wanted the prestige and stability of an emperor. So the Emperor represented seven out of millions, but to what extent did this elected figurehead preside over and unify the territories of these princes, not to speak of the hundred-fifty or so towns, duchies, and bishoprics that got no vote? At times over the years, some groups of towns and territories within the Empire, most famously the Hanseatic League, formed mutual defense and economic pacts, leaving other parts of the Empire out. The Empire fought a civil war in the seventeenth century that lasted thirty years. In the eighteenth century, various pieces of the kingdom sided at different times with France against “the Empire” and yet remained within the Empire. And in Napoleon’s time, several of the Empire’s territories voted to become part of France.

Now what kind of country would the United States be if, say, West Virginia had been able to form an alliance with ISIS and yet stay within the U.S.? What would Italy be if Tuscany and Umbria could form their own army and make a trade pact that excluded Venezia? What would Canada be if Alberta could just vote to become a part of Mexico and then be exactly that, without any further ado?

So the story of the HRE, I think, is really a story of people. It’s the story of Otto I, the first German Emperor; of Henry IV, who made obeisance to the Pope in the snow at Canossa; of Frederick II, the stupor mundi (wonder of the world); of Charles IV, who wrote the Golden Bull enshrining the election process; of Charles V, who cared more about Spain and American colonies than he did about German lands and left his brother to try to handle the Reformation; and of Charles VI, who really only cared about Austria. These fascinating people all had ideas about what the Empire was and tried to make it what they wanted it to be. But if generations of potters continually work at the wheel trying to make and reshape the same vase, is it ever really a vase?