What was the Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was one of the countries in early modern Europe that just doesn’t map well onto the ideas we have today about what countries should look like and how they should operate. Learn more about this fascinating place below!
The Holy Roman Empire was famously neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Instead, it was a collection of states spread across western, central, and southern Europe under the (sometimes weak) control of an elected emperor. It included parts of what is today France, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. It was a confusing tangle of power dynamics, property claims, and political rights. And yet somehow, the Holy Roman Empire managed to exist for around 1000 years.
Formation
When the western Roman Empire collapsed, the main organizing force of western European politics collapsed as well. For several centuries, various smaller states and peoples fought to claim power in this new power void in western Europe, while the Byzantine Empire continued the tradition of Roman rule in the east. In 800, Charlemagne, who had united much of Europe, was crowned Emperor of the Romans by the Catholic pope. Some historians cite this as the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire. While the name wouldn’t appear for a few more centuries, from Charlemagne’s coronation onwards, the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire claimed that they derived their imperial power directly from the emperors of ancient Rome. However, as opposed to the pagan empire of ancient Rome, these new emperors considered the Christian empire to be ‘holy.’
Geography
The Holy Roman Empire solidified its borders throughout the later centuries of the 1st millennium. What was created was not a country in the sense that we think of it today. The first reason that it seems very unusual to the modern eye is the issue of geography. It was instead a collection of many different states. In a sense, this is what the name signals: just like empires consist of many smaller entities (like when the 13 Colonies were a part of the British Empire), so too did the Holy Roman Empire consist of an umbrella framework over many smaller places. The Holy Roman Empire did not work exactly like the British Empire, but this is just to give a starting point.
The states that were a part of the Holy Roman Empire came in many shapes and sizes. Some of these constituent states were relatively large and powerful. Take, for instance, the case of Bavaria. Bavaria was a member state of the Holy Roman Empire but it had existed in various forms since the ancient world. It had its own king and was a relatively powerful state. Indeed, Bavaria is still one of the states in Germany today. Other members of the Holy Roman Empire were relatively small, just the size of a town and its surrounding area.
All this means is that to the modern eye, the map of the Holy Roman Empire looks rather chaotic. This empire spread across western, central, and southern Europe, covering hundreds of different states, some large and some small. Across its entire history, some states were added and other states left. And to make matters even worse, many of the constituent states were non-contiguous, meaning that not all the territories within a state were necessarily connected geographically. Much the same as Alaska is not contiguous with the lower 48 states, so too did some states in the Holy Roman Empire start and stop across the map. In a constellation of different states, the non-contiguous nature of many of the members did little to help clarify border relations.
Politics
In addition to this unusual geographical arrangement, the politics of the Holy Roman Empire did not work as we might expect in a modern state. For instance, it was highly decentralized. Whereas other European states consolidated central power in the figure of the monarch and in the capital city, the Holy Roman Empire existed mostly as a large collection of various states that governed their territories independently from one another. The emperor had only limited power. By the 1700s, say, there were clear differences between the ways in which the monarchs of France were able to assert their control and their authority across the country and the lack of authority that Holy Roman Emperors had. Especially, something like centralized coordination was not possible within the Holy Roman Empire. Any goods or infrastructure traveling an appreciable distance would likely have to cross in and out of several constituent states.
Moreover, the position of the emperor was unusual. In empires, we typically expect to see hereditary monarchies. The British or French imperial crowns, for instance, were supposed to pass directly from emperors to their closest kin during these years. The crown of the Holy Roman Empire, however, was not inherited. Instead, Holy Roman Emperors were elected by high-ranking members of the nobility (called ‘prince-electors’). These prince-electors not only decided the new monarch but also held great power and enjoyed many privileges within the empire.
Disintegration
The Holy Roman Empire gradually lost land and power across the centuries, especially as a consequence of wars and revolutions. The Protestant Reformation further divided the empire between Catholic and Protestant states. Indeed, as Europe began to industrialize and modernize its governance in the modern period, the Holy Roman Empire was increasingly left behind its neighbors.
The final collapse came during the wars with France at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Following a defeat by Napoleon in 1806, the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, abdicated. The Holy Roman Empire then ceased to exist. Many of the German-speaking countries that had once been in the Holy Roman Empire were reorganized in 1815 into a new (and also confusing!) collection of states, known as the German Confederation.
