The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire

What is known as the Holy Roman Empire was basically a creation of the papacy, in an effort to reassert control. It was, in particular, a jab at the eastern Christians, centered around what was then known as Constantinople. These eastern Christians would, in time, break away to form a branch of Christianity separate from the Catholic Church, what we see today as the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Constantinople was named for the Roman emperor Constantine, who had founded it, and the underlying reason for the creation of the Holy Roman Empire was to bring these eastern Christians back into line with papal authority by symbolically putting the Roman Empire back together, in the form of the Holy Roman Empire.

If we want to understand the world today, it is necessary to understand all of the implications of the Holy Roman Empire. The previous posting on this blog, "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", described the long-term implications of the actual split between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, but this posting will expand on that by focusing on the Holy Roman Empire which was created in the west before the split took place.

To most people today, the Holy Roman Empire means little more than a name from history class. But even if the Holy Roman Empire was ultimately unsuccessful in asserting control over the eastern Christians, it has had a tremendous effect in shaping the world that we live in today, and I would like readers to understand those effects. Remember that something does not have to be rooted in history in order for it to happen, but it is more likely to happen if it is.

On Christmas day, in the year 800, the famed king Charlemagne was crowned by the pope as Holy Roman Emperor. The coronation took place in the old St. Peter's Basilica. The present St. Peter's Basilica was built during the Sixteenth Century, on the site believed to be where St. Peter had been buried, after being martyred in Rome. But there had been a much older St. Peter's Basilica on the site, which had fallen into disrepair. It had been in there that Charlemagne had been crowned.

The Holy Roman Empire wasn't really an empire, at least not in the conventional sense. It was a somewhat loosely organized arrangement of nations in central Europe. The emperor was actually supposed to be elected, and that was how it usually worked, but there were dynasties that managed to rule. The best-remembered of these dynasties are the Habsburgs. I don't think that the Holy Roman Empire really even had a capital city, the emperor usually lived in his home area. The boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire changed over time and, despite the name, did not usually include Rome.

(Note-Has anyone noticed that the title of "emperor" seems to have faded into history? An emperor is the highest secular title, higher than a king, but no one seems to refer to himself as an emperor anymore. not even the leaders of countries that are empires refer to themselves as emperors).

The significant thing about the Holy Roman Empire is not it's power at any given time, but simply how long it lasted. It existed for over a thousand years, finally brought to an end by the conquests of Napoleon. It was certainly it's loose organization that enabled it to last for so long.

Has anyone ever noticed how ironic it is that the Holy Roman Empire was ended by Napoleon's conquests? Napoleon, like Charlemagne, had the pope there when he was crowned as emperor. But, in contrast to Charlemagne, Napoleon took the crown and put it on himself, rather than having the pope put it on, thus putting himself above the pope. This event can be said to herald the modern age of secularism.

Any historical entity that lasts for so long must have a great long-term effect and I find that it is the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire, rather than the original Roman Empire, which has done the most to shape the west that we see today. Without the way that the Holy Roman Emperor was elected, we might not have democracy today.

The western Roman Empire, including Rome, was conquered by Germanic tribes from the north. The eastern part of the empire, centered on Constantinople, became the Byzantine Empire. It spoke Greek, unlike the western part which spoke Latin, and this was part of the division between the two.

As we know, the Eastern Orthodox Church finally made the split official, with the mutual excommunication of the pope and the Archbishop of Constantinople, in the year 1054 after representatives of the pope visited the Hagia Sophia and tried to reassert authority over the east. (The long-term effects of this is what the posting on this blog, "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began" is based on).

But what later happened in the east is that the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, in 1453. The Hagia Sophia was the largest church in Christianity, and was nearly a thousand years old. The Ottomans re-purposed it as a mosque and, to show that they too were capable of such architecture, built the Blue Mosque on an axis with the Hagia Sophia. There was a twin church to the Hagia Sophia, known as the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had fallen into disrepair. The Ottomans razed it and built the Fatih Mosque on the site.

As far as I know, this is the only representation we have of what the lost Church of the Holy Apostles looked like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Apostles#/media/File:Kokkinobaphos_Holy_Apostles.jpg

When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, which had been the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the new center was eventually established in Moscow. The primary symbolic cathedral of the Eastern Orthodox Church thus went from being the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, renamed Istanbul by the Ottomans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#/media/File:Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg

To being St. Basil's cathedral, just outside the Kremlin and adjacent to red Square, in Moscow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral#/media/File:Moscow_StBasilCathedral_d18.jpg

I find it to be no coincidence at all that the Reformation, in 1517, which split the Protestant churches from the Catholic, started right in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire. The pope created the Holy Roman Empire in an effort to reestablish the unity that the church had in the latter days of the Roman Empire after the emperor Constantine, who founded Constantinople, had converted to Christianity. It was especially aimed at reigning in the eastern Christians.

But the Holy Roman Empire turned into more of a rival to the power of the popes. It was the continuing Catholic effort to maintain control that ultimately set the groundwork for the Reformation. Not only had the creation of the Holy Roman Empire failed to prevent one great split in the church, the Schism of 1054, it also led to another split as the Reformation. Germany, where the Reformation began, was the heart of the Holy Roman Empire.

The fact that the Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire, whose emperors became rivals to papal power, can easily be seen in the geography of the Reformation. France was an early part of the Holy Roman Empire, but it became more based in Germany. The Reformation in France parallels this. French Protestants, called Huguenots, dominated much of the country, but the Catholic side ultimately triumphed.

In Italy, a widespread movement began in the mountain valleys in the northern part of the country, that was in the Holy Roman Empire, before the Reformation, the Waldensians, which had a similar religious philosophy to the Protestants, and would later join them. But no movement of the kind was seen in the southern part of Italy, which had not been a part of the Holy Roman Empire. The power of the Holy Roman Empire had become a rival to the pope, and that was reflected in the Reformation taking place in it's territory.

When a religious order ends, with modern secularism emerging, we just reenact the previous historical patterns in secular form. The Reformation happened nearly five hundred years after the schism between eastern and western Christians, in 1054. But the wars of the Reformation began immediately, and have long since played out. There was no comparable wars between east and west after the schism of 1054, with the exception of the temporary recapture of Constantinople during the Crusades, and it's temporary re-conversion to Christianity, in 1204.

But really, the wars that had to come with the east-west split of 1054 were simply delayed. They came 750-900 years later, not in religious form like those of the Reformation, but in modern secular form. The inevitable wars between east and west, following their great split in 1054, were interrupted by wars with the Ottomans in the east, the focus on recapturing the Holy Land from the Moslems by the Crusades and then later the Reformation in the west.

In my view, the Holy Roman Empire was created to reassert control over the eastern Christians by symbolically reviving the Roman Empire, which had ruled the area of the eastern Christians as well as those in the west. But after the schism of 1054, which it could not prevent, it acted not only as a balance within western Europe, but also as a balance with the Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Napoleon's conquests in central Europe brought the Holy Roman Empire, which had existed for more than a thousand years, to an end. In doing so, it upset the balance that there had been between east and west and the wars, which otherwise would have occurred immediately after the split of 1054, now did occur.

Soon after the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and it's balancing effect, came the first of the great European invasions of Russia, that of Napoleon. The second was that of the Nazis. It was Germany that had been the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. The early conquests of the Nazis were putting the Holy Roman Empire back together. Then, in June of 1941, came the move eastward into Russia.

Remember that the Nazis, the Third Reich, were effectively the recreation of the Holy Roman Empire, which was the First Reich, and that the purpose of the creation of the Holy Roman Empire was to reassert control over the east. This Nazi invasion of Russia was not inevitable. But things are more likely to happen when they are rooted in history. I do not think the Second World War would have happened, if not for the Market Crash of 1929, which devastated Germany.

Remember also that the Nazis' code name for their invasion of Russia was Operation Barbarossa. The name comes from two great emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, one of which was a major rival to the pope, being excommunicated as a result, before drowning during the Crusades. Operation Barbarossa was thus the modern secular reenactment of a great crusade, the Nazi flag bore a resemblance to the red-on-white cross banner of the Crusaders, but this time against the territory of the eastern Christians. The Eastern Front, the most lethal combat that has ever taken place, was a delayed version of the wars, like the wars after the Reformation, that otherwise would have immediately followed the great schism of 1054 between east and west.

The Nazis were reenacting the Crusades to reassemble the Holy Roman Empire, with Hitler as a secular version of Charlemagne, and Mussolini as a secular version of the pope who crowned Charlemagne. Mussolini came to power before Hitler did and was, in some ways, his mentor. Mussolini was, ironically, also the creator of the modern Vatican. Hitler called his empire "the Third Reich". Charlemagne had led the "First Reich". The "Second Reich" was considered to be that of Kaiser Wilhelm, before and during the time of the First World War, after Germany had become a united nation. Moscow became known, in religious terms, as the "Third Rome", Constantinople had been the second, and it's conquest was the ultimate goal of the Third Reich.

Notice also that Hitler often referred to the "thousand year Reich", while the Holy Roman Empire had lasted just over a thousand years. The Fourth Crusade had been diverted to Constantinople, in 1204 by political intrigue to restore a deposed leader, and had ended up conquering the city and, at least temporarily, restoring it to Catholicism. But when the Ottomans had conquered the city, in 1453, the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church had moved to Moscow. So now, Moscow was the target of the Crusade and Hitler, in the role of Barbarossa, launched his invasion of 1941 with Moscow as the primary objective.

There were certainly other influences on Nazi ideology. It was primarily German archeologists who uncovered ancient Babylon, and many artifacts were on museum display on the island in the Spree River, in Berlin. But what did the Babylonians do? They had once been a great kingdom, led by the fabled King Hammurabi, but had then been conquered by the Assyrians. The Babylonians, invigorated by the Chaldeans, rose up against and conquered those who had earlier conquered them, and then took the Jews captive.

Interestingly, there were also invasions of Russia by Poland, in the Seventeenth Century and in 1920. The first happened before the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and it's balancing effect. But consider that most of Poland had been outside the Holy Roman Empire, and so it's balancing effect did not apply to Poland. But, in any case, these wars were a manifestation of the east-west split of 1054 because Poland remained Catholic while Russia went Eastern Orthodox.

The wartime relationship between Nazi Germany and Italy is also clearly explained by the long legacy of the Holy Roman Empire. Italians clearly had very mixed feelings about the war, and about being Hitler's ally. That was because it wasn't about putting the Roman Empire back together, of which Italy had been the center, but the Holy Roman Empire, of which Germany had been the center. The north African campaign reflected the conquests of the Roman Empire, but the Romans never had anything to do with Hitler's eastern field of conquest, particularly Russia.

The mixed feelings toward the war is, in fact, a reflection of the country being divided by the Holy Roman Empire, with the northern half in but the southern half not. Rome, where the papacy is based, had actually been a rival of the Holy Roman Empire. With the reenactment of history such a powerful force in the Second World War, these important differences were bound to come into play.

We can reenact history without really realizing it, because the patterns of the past will seem like the right thing to do in the present. The British landing at Gallipoli near Istanbul, in the the First World War, may seem like too much of a long shot. The goal was to take the Ottomans out of the war by landing close to their center of power, at Istanbul. But the Ottomans were still strong and the operation was ultimately unsuccessful.

But history is a powerful force. Savoy had recaptured Gallipoli from the Ottomans, before they had conquered Constantinople. Although that did not last either, it set the precedent for another such attempt to take Gallipoli 850 years later. Just as the temporary recapture of the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, in the Crusade of 1204, would set the precedent for a future crusade against the secularized center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, now Moscow, more than 730 years later.

The Holy Roman Empire actually has been restored. Notice that Europe was at war between the end of the Holy Roman Empire, at the time of Napoleon's conquests, and it's modern restoration as the European Union. Just as the Middle East is at war because it has not reached a new equilibrium after the end of the Ottoman Empire, so was Europe until it reached a new equilibrium after the end of the Holy Roman Empire.

Also notice how the European Union fits with the methodology of the Holy Roman Empire with it's general rule by consensus, and it's rotating leadership. This shows again how we might not have democracy today were it not for the long reign of the Holy Roman Empire.

But yet we just cannot get away from the Cold War, which was just a secular reenactment of the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox split in the modern secular form of Capitalism versus Communism. Pope John Paul was such a factor in the end of the Cold War because, being from Poland, he was a reminder that the Eastern Orthodox side, in it's secular act as Communism, had overreached too far west beyond the traditional Eastern Orthodox-Catholic boundary. The end of the Cold War in eastern Europe, was the appropriate correction of the boundary, but that had only been a reaction to a western overreaching in the form of the Nazi invasion of Russia.We thought the Cold War was over, but now it seems to be back.

To really see the long-term effects of the Holy Roman Empire, let's have a look at the historical effects that it's boundaries have had.

Spain was not a part of the Holy Roman Empire, it was under Moslem rule for most of the time. The important implication of this is that the Age of Discovery, the discovery and exploration of distant lands and the setting up of colonies, began with Spain and Portugal. Columbus actually sailed in the same year that the last of the peninsula was recaptured from the Moslems.

The purpose of the Holy Roman Empire was to balance the east and I have the feeling that, if Spain and Portugal had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Age of Discovery would have been greatly delayed, or may not have happened at all. This is why the Age of Discovery began with Spain and Portugal, they were not part of the Holy Roman Empire. France and Britain were the next countries to join the Age of Discovery, France was under the control of it's own king, and not the Holy Roman Emperor, and Britain had never been part of the Holy Roman Empire at all.

The original focus of the Holy Roman Empire was eastward, which is why the nations that were within it were not in on the Age of Discovery, which meant sailing westward, into the Atlantic. Venice had been a maritime power but, being in the Holy Roman Empire, it's focus was eastward. What the Holy Roman Empire did achieve, in terms of discovery, was to receive the many ancient manuscripts from Greek and Roman times carried by scholars fleeing from Constantinople after it's fall to the Ottomans in 1453.

The translation of these manuscripts brought about the Renaissance, beginning in northern Italy which was part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Renaissance changed everything in Europe, by opening up new ways of thinking. Just as Christianity had propagated quickly through the Roman Empire, the Renaissance propagated through the Holy Roman Empire.

It's scientific manifestation was the enlightenment. It's political manifestation was the French Revolution, which opened the modern political era in the world as we saw in the posting on this blog "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris". It's technical manifestation was the Industrial Revolution. Most importantly, it's religious manifestation was the Reformation which was brought about and spread by the printing press after ancient Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible were translated into the western Europeans languages, and this threatened the monopoly of the Catholic Church as people could now read the Bible for themselves and in their own languages, rather than in Latin.

Why did Italy take so long to become a united country? Modern Italy became a united country at about the same time that Germany did. Both countries were united by a common language but Germany, where the Reformation began, had long been precluded from unity because the many small German-speaking duchies and principalities across central Europe were divided between Protestant and Catholic. It was really only the coming of modern secularism which made German unity possible. Italy, however, had no such barrier to unity.

The reason that Italy did not become a united country until the time of modern railroads and telegraphy is the division remaining from the thousand years of the Holy Roman Empire. Remember that the north of the country was part of the Holy Roman Empire but the southern part, the Mezzogiorno, wasn't. This division remains today, with northern Italian politicians occasionally proposing independence from the south.

In the Second World War, after Italy had gone over to the Allied side and Mussolini had been arrested, the Nazis rescued him in a daring commando raid. He was put to rule over the so-called Italian Socialist Republic, usually referred to as the Republic of Salo. At first I thought this to be a quixotic attempt to reverse the tide of the war, that scarcely seemed worth the effort.

But then I realized how important the consciousness of the Holy Roman Empire was. The Italian Socialist Republic encompassed only northern Italy, and it's boundary with the southern part of the country was just about exactly that of the southern limit of the Holy Roman Empire. The creation of this new republic was an attempt to invoke the forces of history, in the hope that the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire would hold.

The effects on boundaries of empires from long ago can be seen in Britain. It was not part of the Holy Roman Empire, but had been partially colonized by the Roman Empire. this is where the divisions within Britain originated. The part that colonized became England. The area to the west that was not colonized became Wales, and the area to the north that had not been colonized became Scotland.

When Britain faced the Blitz, and possible invasion, in 1940, it actually had a powerful historical factor in it's favor. The Nazis were really trying to put the Holy Roman Empire back together, which originally included France. They were then going to gather their forces and fulfill the original objective of the Holy Roman Empire, to reassert control over the east. The "Thousand Year Reich" would then go on, in secular form, having achieved it's mission, with Hitler as the new Charlemagne.

The historical factor that Britain had going for it in 1940 was that it had never been part of the Holy Roman Empire. The reason that many in Britain are skeptical of the European Union, and are thinking of leaving, is the same. The European Union is effectively the modern restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. Notice that the other countries in the European Union that do not use the Euro, insisting on keeping their own currency, are also those that were not part of the Holy Roman Empire.