Rooms nos. 9 to 12 house the imperial regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, by far the
most powerful entity in medieval Europe. The most important items here date from
the first three centuries of the empire, when it included most of present-day
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, as well as large parts of
Belgium, France, and Northern Italy. To appreciate the symbolic value of the
items on display here, it is important to know the early history of the Holy
Roman Empire – a complicated and confusing subject.
The Holy Roman Empire is one of those delightful misnomers in history. It was
not an empire as we understand it today – it had no central capital; the emperor
was elected and his influence only stretched as far as he could inspire or buy
support. Dukes and other senior nobility constantly connived to increase their
power vis-à-vis the emperor, and from the mid-13th century, the empire was
more a concept than a real force. The citizens were mostly not Roman, and it was
definitely not holy – far from it. Although religion played a very important
role in the running of the empire, especially in the first centuries, the
political leadership tended towards pragmatism and realpolitik rather
than hoping for divine intervention. The odd deeply religious emperor was often
balanced by a particularly worldly pope.
The origins of the Holy Roman Empire is often traced back to Charlemagne, who
was crowned on Christmas Day AD 800 by the pope as emperor and legal successor
to the long-defunct Western Roman Empire. After his death, his empire was
divided and out of the eastern parts grew what at that time was known as the
East Frankish Kingdom. This formed the base of what later became known as the
Holy Roman. This kingdom was ruled by Frankish rulers, until Konrad I, who was
generally an ineffective ruler, redeemed himself on his deathbed with the
momentous recommendation that his chief rival, Heinrich, Duke of Saxony, rather
than his own brother, be elected as his successor.
In 919, Heinrich I was duly elected and crowned German king. The Saxons would
rule Germany for more than a century in an era often referred to as the Ottonian
Renaissance, seeing that the three Ottos were strong supporters of the arts,
culture, and science.
In 936, Heinrich I was succeeded by his son Otto I, who, in his own lifetime,
was already referred to as Otto the Great. He destroyed the Magyar army at the
battle of Lechfeld near Augsburg, and thus made Christian Western Europe safe
from non-Christian attacks from the east for more than five centuries. Still on
the battlefield, his soldiers proclaimed him Emperor. Otto did the natural
thing: ordered a crown to be made, probably from the master jewelers on the Lake
Constance Island of Reichenau. (This small island has three Romanesque churches
worth a journey.) This very crown is the one on display in room no. 11 and has been
the formal imperial crown until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.
The German senior nobility elected the German king, and although the position
was not hereditary, most kings with sons managed to secure one as successor.
However, it has been tradition since the crowning of Charlemagne that only the
pope could crown an emperor. Although King Otto had the soldiers support, he
wanted it to be rather more formal. Crown in hand, he went to Rome and was duly
crowned Roman Emperor in 962. Emperors and pretenders found that it was
generally easy to get rid of an uncooperative pope. The trick, as Heinrich IV
found out to his costs, was to do so before the pope could excommunicate
you. Popes generally found it harder to get rid of emperors, but that did not
stop them from trying.
In order to guarantee the succession, Otto I succeeded in having one of his
sons, Otto II, crowned as joint king. Otto II saw the merits of this system, and
once emperor himself, ordered that his own son, Otto III, be made joint king.
The ceremony was scheduled for December 21, 983 in Aachen. Unknown to the
Nobility, who gathered in Aachen on this occasion, or for anyone else north of
the Alps for that matter, Otto II, who was in Rome for the investiture of a new
pope, had died on 7 December. Messengers could not reach Aachen in time, and the
most powerful entity in Europe suddenly found itself with a 3-year-old king.
Despite very strong opposition, including the actual kidnapping of Otto, his
mother became regent and ruled most competently. Showing great maturity, Otto
III took over the reigns at age 15, a year earlier than the then norm.
Aged 28, Otto III died childless while in Italy. Several distant family
members claimed the throne, but his uncle Heinrich decided to gain a head start
on the rest by highjacking the funeral procession on its way from Italy to
Aachen. He thus came into possession of the imperial insignia including the
crown, scepter, and sword. The only missing piece was the Holy Lance – the
archbishop of Cologne, who was traveling with the body of the deceased king,
thought it wise to send the lance ahead with a separate party. A not
particularly clever move – Heinrich held the archbishop in custody until the
lance turned up. In 1002, Heinrich II was duly elected German king and later
crowned emperor.
Heinrich II and his wife, Kunighilde, had a platonic, non-sexual relationship
that naturally left no heir. (They were the only imperial couple that ever
became saints.) For the next century, the German Roman Empire was ruled by the
Frankish Salian dynasty. The period is typified by a lack of interests in the
arts, culture, and science, as well as severe animosity between the emperors and
popes, which is surprising, as the Salians built several churches, including the
marvelous Romanesque cathedral in
Speyer. The high or low point, depending on
the view of the observer, of this time was the excommunication of Henry IV and
his claimed 3 days of repentance in the snow at the pope’s fortress at
Canossa.
The Salians were followed by a century of rule by the Staufers. The first
Staufer king, Friedrich I Barbarossa, learned from his predecessors’ troubles
with the popes and, in order to elevate his own position to equal that of the
pope, introduced the concept of the Holy Roman Empire. The Staufer era
ended in the mid-13th century with the loss of the Italian provinces. The
empire from then to 1806 has generally been referred to as the Holy Roman Empire
of the German Nation, although several non-German areas remained part of the
empire for centuries. For example, Alsace and Lorraine were only lost to France
after the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), and the city of Strasbourg remained part
of the empire until the revolutionary wars of the late-18th century.
The Staufers were followed by emperors elected from various noble families,
until the Austrian Habsburg dynasty took control from 1438. Of the last 18
emperors, only one was not a Habsburg, and he ruled for only 3 years (long
enough to refurbish a mighty fine palace in Munich!) After the Staufers, no
emperor succeeded in ruling like Caesar – Germany remained divided into up to
3,000 different political entities, each with its own rulers – none interested
in placing the interest of Germany above that of his own.
The German king was elected by senior nobility and crowned by the archbishop
of Mainz in Aachen (later in Frankfurt). To be crowned emperor, it was for long
still necessary for the king to travel to the pope. During the reign of
Maximilian I (1493-1519), the pretence to be Roman emperor was dropped.
Subsequently, all elected German kings were crowned Holy Roman Emperor at the
same coronation function in Frankfurt.
The history of the Holy Roman Empire came to an abrupt end in 1806. With the
Napoleonic armies victorious throughout Europe, Emperor Franz II feared that
Napoleon would claim the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, too. Franz II therefore
abdicated and unconstitutionally announced the dissolution of the empire and all
its political and legal bodies. With Austria and Prussia fighting over supremacy
in the German-speaking world, attempts to reconstitute the empire after 1815
were always doomed to failure.
If the crowning of Charlemagne in 800, rather the crowning of Otto I (962), is
taken as the origin the empire, then it did indeed last more than 1,000
years. Attempts to recreate such empire in the 20th century of course
failed, and in 12 years, destroyed, amongst other things, the reputation of a
millennium.