CHAPTER XXI.
CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: General summary.]
[Sidenote: Perpetuation of the name of Rome.]
After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more. Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and after promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology, her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes on the Ganges and the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: Parallel instances.]
[Sidenote: Claims to represent the Roman Empire.]
[Sidenote: Austria.]
[Sidenote: France.]
[Sidenote: Russia.]
[Sidenote: Greece.]
[Sidenote: The Turks.]
Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason. It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire, and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Cæsars, and trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism. Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern Cæsars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto[419].
[Sidenote: Parallel of the Papacy.]
These examples, however, are minor parallels: the complement and illustration of the history of the Empire is to be found in that of the Holy See. The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of her own approaching doom[420].
Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the human spirit was utterly prostrated before authority and tradition, when the exercise of private judgment was impossible to most and sinful to all. Those who believed the miracles recorded in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and did not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded, as it seemed to be, on so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of undisputed possession.
Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle Ages for unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading one. Obedience, almost the first of mediæval virtues, is now often spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not, cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one all-pervading church exercised upon their mediæval forefathers. A life in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship,--this was the life which they of the Middle Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediæval document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven. For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely, heaven for the sake of the church[421].'
Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came, the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the Swabian Cæsars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they resisted the spiritual power.
[Sidenote: Papacy and Empire compared as perpetuations of a name.]
Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances, but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly, was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as when it leads men who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors, to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring, because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
[Sidenote: In what sense was the Empire Roman?]
The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly mediæval. Was it then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages, that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus; but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palæologus was installed! It was not in purple buskins that the dignity of the Luxemburger lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.
[Sidenote: 'Imperialism:' Roman, French, and mediæval.]
[Sidenote: Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races.]
The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Cæsar and his subtle nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of the influence of public opinion for the control of representative assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and Antonine Cæsars of old, and at the beginning of this century by Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Cæsars and the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In the political character of the French people, whether it be the result of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the Romans[423] of the modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion, if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states have been little more successful than their neighbours in the establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote, and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours somewhat different from his.
[Sidenote: Essential principles of the mediæval Empire.]
There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediæval imperialism, a theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government, which has been described once already, and need not be described again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free from the bonds of sense.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Holy Empire on Germany.]
The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still, cannot be attributed to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians, and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish, justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own liberty--liberty to oppress the subject--and ready on the least occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the people were deprived of all political training, and have found the lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.
For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power, submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought, and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire flowed all the richness of their mediæval life and literature: it first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion. When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a capital.
[Sidenote: Austria as heir of the Holy Empire.]
The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a brisk controversy among several German professors of history[425]. The spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten years ago was not less powerful in some of the minor South German States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg monarchy the honour of being the legitimate representative of the mediæval Empire, and declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest. The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and Swabian Cæsars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her, they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediæval faith and simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog and incumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of mediæval chivalry, the noblest creation of mediæval thought.
[Sidenote: Bearing of the Empire upon the progress of European civilization.]
[Sidenote: Influence upon modern jurisprudence.]
We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend or state rightly its bearing on European progress. The mountain lies behind us, but miles must be traversed before we can take in at a glance its peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical importance in our own days. For while in Southern France and Central Italy, where the subject population greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old system would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted that in Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch was the legitimate successor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy, who naturally disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could not but admit its validity, and before the end of the Middle Ages Roman law prevailed through all Germany[426]. When it is considered how great are the services which German writers have rendered and continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this result will appear far from insignificant. But another of still wider import followed. When by the Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the system of international jurisprudence has been built up during the last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German creation, and could have arisen in no country where the law of Rome had not been the fountain of legal ideas and the groundwork of positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice, and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only, title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind. Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived unmolested beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the Germanic body feeling that the rights of the weakest of his brethren were also his own.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Empire upon the history of the Church.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and the Popes.]
The most important chapter in the history of the Empire is that which describes its relation to the Church and the Papacy. Of the ecclesiastical power it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended, with the death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat. The anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a violence which alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors once more the allies of the Popedom, and the partners of its declining fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but not the less a serious error to suppose, as modern writers often seem to do, that the pretensions of the Empire and the Popedom were mutually exclusive; that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular, of a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find mediæval writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves, expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government--two potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in things eternal, Cæsar in things temporal. The relative position of the two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance inclined the other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration nor to degrade its head: the great struggle of the eleventh and two following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other power, but turns solely upon the character of their connexion. Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal responsibility for the souls of their common subjects: he demands, not that the functions of temporal government shall be directly committed to himself, but that they shall be exercised in conformity with the will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal salvation. They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and remind the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There was in truth no way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other; from the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes with every blast.
[Sidenote: Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.]
Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire. Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness, and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
[Sidenote: Principles adverse to the Empire.]
As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of which their forerunners of the elder Rome had triumphed,--those of Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism, menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded, after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet, should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
[Sidenote: Change marked by its fall.]
[Sidenote: Relations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.]
Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed the face of Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize, with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy--efforts confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome: to gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Cæsar found it the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste, and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world, and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Cæsar had sprung up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The work of the mediæval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
[Sidenote: Difficulties arising from the nature of the subject.]
This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its extent but from its profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries--whose outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition, planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth, analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Cæsar when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is mediæval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[418] See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the object of the expedition to Mexico.
[419] One may also compare the retention of the office of consul at Rome till the time of Justinian: indeed it even survived his formal abolition. The relinquishment of the title 'King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed many excellent persons.
[420] I speak, of course, of the Papacy as an autocratic power claiming a more than spiritual authority.
[421] 'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior Deo est quam cœlum. Non enim propter cœlum ecclesia, sed e converso propter ecclesiam cœlum.' From the tract entitled 'A Letter of the four Universities to Wenzel and Urban VIII,' quoted in an earlier chapter.
[422] Von Raumer, _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen_, v.
[423] Meaning thereby not the citizens of Rome in her republican days, but the Italo-Hellenic subjects of the Roman Empire.
[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht, _Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit_; and Rotteck and Welcker's _Staats Lexikon_. The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
[425] See especially Von Sybel, _Die Deutsche Nation und das Kaiserreich_; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the feudal law of land.
[427] Mommsen, _Römische Geschichte_, iii. _sub. fin._
APPENDIX.
NOTE A.
ON THE BURGUNDIES.
It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its application at different times to different districts, has caused, and continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may, therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of those applications. Without going into the minutiæ of the subject, the following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most frequently to be met with:--
I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (_regnum Burgundionum_), founded A.D. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone, from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.D. 534.
II. The kingdom of Burgundy (_regnum Burgundiæ_), mentioned occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality, confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of the older kingdom last named.
III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (_regnum Provinciæ seu Burgundiæ_)--also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of Cis-Jurane Burgundy--was founded by Boso in A.D. 877, and included Provence, Dauphiné, the southern part of Savoy, and the country between the Saone and the Jura.
IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (_regnum Iurense_, _Burgundia Transiurensis_), founded by Rudolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (_regnum Burgundiæ_, _regnum Arelatense_), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in A.D. 937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in 1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II (the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now (since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss portion of it.
VI. The Lesser Duchy (_Burgundia Minor_), (Klein Burgund), corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) _minus_ the parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till A.D. 1648, though practically independent long before that date.
VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comté), (Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were invested with it in A.D. 1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned after the thirteenth century.
IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold.
X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
* * * * *
The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois historian, to the _Archiv für Schweizer Geschichte_. See also an admirable article in the _National Review_ for October 1860, entitled 'The Franks and the Gauls.'
NOTE B.
ON THE RELATIONS TO THE EMPIRE OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, AND THE DUCHIES OF SCHLESWIG AND HOLSTEIN.
The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up with two questions properly quite distinct,--the first, as to the relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,--it has borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half. Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as follows:--
I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the treaty of A.D. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for Holstein.
II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana (Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum (wherein lay the town of Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire, erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined, and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at this day of the North German Bund.
NOTE C.
ON CERTAIN IMPERIAL TITLES AND CEREMONIES.
This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use; for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is very far from being a barren or a dull one.
I. TITLES OF EMPERORS. Charles the Great styled himself 'Carolus serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator, Romanum (_or_ Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Sometimes 'rex Francorum et Langobardorum' was added[428].
Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome, 'rex,' or 'rex Francorum Orientalium,' or 'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;' after it, simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Otto III is usually said to have introduced the form 'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,' but some authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown, began to call themselves 'reges Romanorum.' The title did not, however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose proclamations it occurs constantly.
From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice was for the monarch to be called 'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,' till his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it, 'Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus.'
In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call himself 'Imperator electus' (erwählter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I (brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately upon their German coronation, and it was till A.D. 1806 their strict legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
Maximilian added the title 'Germaniæ rex,' which had never been known before, although the phrase 'rex Germanorum' may be found employed once or twice in early times. 'Rex Teutonicorum,' 'regnum Teutonicum[430],' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time. Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of God.
II. THE CROWNS.
Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy, sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at Rome.
The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal manner. But down to A.D. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany, so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider rights remained in full force, and were never subsequently relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
III. THE KING OF THE ROMANS (RÖMISCHER KÖNIG).
It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the German monarch began to entitle himself 'Romanorum rex.' Now it was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.) This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and took the title of 'King of the Romans.' During the presence of the Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of Rome.
NOTE D.
LINES CONTRASTING THE PAST AND PRESENT OF ROME.
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant, Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui: At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo, Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm, Servivit populus, degeneravit eques. Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor; Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei. Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis; Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens: Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus, Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit. Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso, Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego. Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of Tours (born A.D. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne, _Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_[436].
FOOTNOTES:
[428] Waitz (_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_) says that the phrase 'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but not in official documents.
[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire people had begun to fancy that 'erwählter' did not mean 'elect,' but 'elective.' Cf. note 410, p. 362.
[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or Gallicized Franks (Francigenæ), which having been for some time 'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum Franciæ,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine documents of the early Empire. Goldast's _Collections_, for instance, are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Pütter, and in the host of writers to whom they refer.
[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss Confederation.
[434] Nevertheless, Otto II was crowned Emperor, and reigned for some time along with his father, under the title of 'Co-Imperator.' So Lothar I was associated in the Empire with Lewis the Pious, as Lewis himself had been crowned in the lifetime of Charles. Many analogies to the practice of the Romano-Germanic Empire in this respect might be adduced from the history of the old Roman, as well as of the Byzantine Empire.
[435] Maximilian had obtained this title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the Pope. Ferdinand took it as of right, and his successors followed the example.
[436] See note 326, p. 270.
INDEX.
A.
Aachen, 72, 77, 86, 148, 212, 316 note, 403.
ADALBERT (St.), 245; the church founded at Rome to receive his ashes, 286.
ADELHEID (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 83.
ADOLF of Nassau, 221, 222, 262.
ADSO, his _Vita Antichristi_, 114 note.
AISTULF the Lombard, 39.
ALARIC, his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, 17, 19.
ALBERIC (consul or senator), 83.
ALBERT I (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), 221, 224, 262.
Albigenses, revolt of the, 241.
ALBOIN, his invasion of Italy, 36.
ALCUIN of York, 59, 66, 96, 201.
ALEXANDER III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 170; their meeting at Venice, 171.
ALFONSO of Castile, his double election with Richard of England, 212, 229.
America, discovery of, 311.
ANASTASIUS, his account of the coronation of Charles, 55.
ANGELO (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, 295.
Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages, 114 note; in later times, 334.
Architecture, Roman, 48, 290; analogy between it and the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; preservation of an antique character in both, 296.
ARDOIN (Marquis of Ivrea), 149.
Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, 289; struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, 388.
Arles; _see_ Burgundy.
ARNOLD of Brescia, Rome under, 174, 252, 276; put to death at the instance of Pope Hadrian, 278, 299 note.
ARNULF (Emperor), 78.
ATHANARIC, 17.
ATHANASIUS, the triumph of, 12.
ATHAULF the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting the Roman Empire, 19, 30.
Augsburg, 259; treaty of, 334.
AUGUSTINE, 94.
Aulic Council, the, 340, 342 note.
Austria, privilege of, 199; her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368, 381.
Austrian succession, war of the, 352.
Avignon, exactions of the court of, 219; its subservience to France, 219, 243.
AVITUS, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, 18.
B.
Barbarians, feared by the Romans, 14; Roman armies largely composed of, 14; admitted to Roman titles and honours, 15; their feelings towards the Roman Empire, 16; their desire to preserve its institutions, 17; value of the Roman officials and Christian bishops to the, 19.
BARTOLOMMEO (San), the church of, 287.
BASIL the Macedonian and Lewis II, 191.
'Basileus,' the title of, 143, 191.
Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, 76 note.
BELISARIUS, his war with the Ostrogoths, 29, 273.
Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 294.
BENEDICT of Soracte, 51 note.
BENEDICT VIII (Pope), alleged decree of, 197.
Benevento, the Annals of, 150.
BERENGAR of Friuli, 82; his death, 83.
BERENGAR II (King of Italy), 83.
BERNARD (St.), 109 note.
Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 112; perversion of its meaning, 114.
Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 222; the king of, an elector, 230.
BONIFACE VIII (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, 109, 247; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 219 note.
BOSO, 81, 395.
Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 154.
Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, 24; Roman Civil Law not forgotten in, at a late date, 32; Roman ensigns and devices in, 258.
Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by invaders, 291; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 292; by modern restorers of churches, 292.
Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, 143; added to the Empire under Conrad II, 151; effect of its loss on the Empire, 305; confusion caused by the name, 395; ten senses in which it is met with, 395-7.
Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to, 9; Otto's policy towards, 141; attitude towards Emperor, 189.
C.
Campanile; _see_ Bell-tower.
Canon law, correspondence between it and the Corpus Juris Civilis, 101; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 112, 217.
CAPET (Hugh), 142.
Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 295.
Capitulary of A. D. 802, 65.
CARACALLA (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
Carolingian Emperors, 76.
Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in A. D. 888, 78; Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 85 note.
Carroccio, the, 178 note, 328.
Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 241.
Catholicity or Romanism, 94, 106.
Celibacy, enforcement of, 158.
Cenci, name of, 289 note.
CHARLEMAGNE; _see_ Charles I.
CHARLES I (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom, 41; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the people, 41; his personal ambition, 42; his treatment of Pope Leo III, 44; title of 'Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 47; crowned at Rome, 48; important consequences of his coronation, 50, 52; its real meaning, 52, 80, 81; contemporary accounts, 53, 64, 65, 84; their uniformity, 56; illegality of the transaction, 56; three theories respecting it held four centuries after, 57; was the coronation a surprise? 58; his reluctance to assume the imperial title, 60; solution suggested by Döllinger, 60; seeks the hand of Irene, 61; defect of his imperial title, 61; theoretically the successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, 62, 63; has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, 63; his authority in matters ecclesiastical, 64; presses Hadrian to declare Constantine VI a heretic, 64; his spiritual despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 64; importance attached by him to the Imperial name, 65; issues a Capitulary, 65; draws closer the connexion of Church and State, 66; new position in civil affairs acquired with the Imperial title, 67, 68, 69; his position as Frankish king, 69, 70; partial failure of his attempt to breathe a Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, 70, 71; his personal habits and sympathies, 71; groundlessness of the claims of the modern French to, 71; the conception of his Empire Roman, not Teutonic, 72; his Empire held together by the Church, 73; appreciation of his character generally, 73, 74; impress of his mind on mediæval society, 74; buried at Aachen, 74; inscription on his tomb, 74; canonised as a saint, 75; his plan of Empire, 76.
CHARLES II (the BALD), 77, 156, 157.
CHARLES III (the FAT), 78, 81.
CHARLES IV, 223; his electoral constitution, 225; his Golden Bull, 225, 236; general results of his policy, 236; his object through life, 236; the University of Prague founded by, 237; welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, 254.
CHARLES V, accession of, 319; casts in his lot with the Catholics, 321; the momentous results, 322; failure of his repressive policy, 322.
CHARLES VI, 348, 351, 352.
CHARLES VII, his disastrous reign, 351.
CHARLES VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and Milan, 315.
CHARLES MARTEL, 36, 38.
CHARLES of Valois, 223.
CHARLES the BOLD and Frederick III, 249.
CHEMNITZ, his comments on the condition and prospects of the Empire, 339.
CHILDERIC, his deposition by the Holy See, 39.
Chivalry, the orders of, 250.
Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, 10; growth of, 10; alliance of, with the State, 10, 66, 107, 387; organization of, framed on the model of the secular administration, 11; the Emperor the head of, 12; maintains the Imperial idea, 13; attitude of Charles the Great towards, 65, 66; the bond that holds together the Empire of Charles, 73; first gives men a sense of unity, 92; how regarded in Middle Ages, 92, 370; draws tighter all bonds of outward union, 94; unity of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, 93; becomes the exact counterpart of the Empire, 99, 101, 107, 328; position of, in Germany, 128; Otto's position towards, 129; effect of the Reformation upon, 327; influence of the Empire upon the history of, 384.
Churches, national, 95, 330.
Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern restorers of, 292; mosaics and bell-tower in the, 294.
Cities, in Lombardy, 175; growth of in Germany, 179; their power, 223.
Civil law, revival of the study of, 172; its study forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 253.
CIVILIS, the Batavian, 17.
Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 37; their idea of political unity, 96; their power in the eleventh century, 128; Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to the, 158; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle Age, 290.
CLOVIS, his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, 17, 30; his unbroken success, 35.
Coins, papal, 278 note.
COLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 270 and note; the family of, 281.
Commons, the, 132, 314.
Concordat of Worms, 163.
Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, 362.
CONRAD I (King of the East Franks), 122, 226.
CONRAD II, the reign of, 151; comparison between the prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V, 165; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 194.
CONRAD III, 165, 277.
CONRAD IV, 210.
CONRADIN (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, 211.
Constance, the Council of, 220, 253, 301; the peace of, signed by Frederick I, 178.
CONSTANTINE, his vigorous policy, 8; the Donation of, 43, 100, 288 note.
Constantinople, capture of, 303, 311.
Coronations, ceremonies at, 112; the four, gone through by the Emperors, 193, 403; their meaning, 195; churches in which they were performed, 284, 288.
Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon Law, 101.
Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, 111.
Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 125.
CRESCENTIUS, 146.
Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, 57, 61, 81; not legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, 81; how treated by the Popes, 82.
Crowns, the four, 193, 403.
Crusades, the, 164, 166, 179, 193, 205, 209.
D.
DANTE, 208; his attitude towards the Empire, 255; his treatise _De Monarchia_, 262; sketch of its argument, 264 et seq.; its omissions, 268, 299.
Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 294.
Decretals, the False, 156.
Denmark, and the Slaves, 143; imperial authority in, 184; its relations to the Empire, 398.
Diet, the, 126, 314, 353; its rights as settled A. D. 1648, 340; its altered character A. D. 1654, 344; its triflings, 353.
DIOCLETIAN, his vigorous policy, 8.
Divine right of the Emperor, 246.
DÖLLINGER (Dr.), 60 note.
Dominicans, the order of, 205.
Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 43, 100, 118 note, 261 note.
Dukes, the, in Germany, 125.
E.
East, imperial pretensions in the, 189.
Eastern Church, the, 191.
Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 24, 25; decay of its power in the West, 45; how regarded by the Popes, 46.
Edict of Caracalla, 6.
EDWARD II (King of England), his declaration of England's independence of the Empire, 187.
EDWARD III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 187; his election against Charles IV, 223.
EGINHARD, his statement respecting Charles's coronation, 58, 60.
Elective constitution, the, 227; difficulty of maintaining the principle in practice, 233; its object the choice of the fittest man, 233; restraint of the sovereign, 233; recognition of the popular will, 234.
Elector, the title of, its advantage, 232 note; personages upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 232.
Electoral body in primitive times, 226.
Electoral function, conception of the, 235.
Electorate, the Eighth, 231; the Ninth, 231.
Electors, the Seven, 165, 229; their names and offices, 230 note; the question of their vote, 257 note.
Emperor, the position of, in the second century, 5, 6; the head of the Church, 12, 23, 111; sanctity of the name, 22, 120; correspondence between his position and functions and those of the Pope, 104; proofs from mediæval documents, 109; and from the coronation ceremonies, 112; illustrations from mediæval art, 116; nature of his power, 120; fusion of his functions with those of German King, 127; his office feudalized, 130; attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards, 189; his dignities and titles, 193, 257, 261, 400; the title not assumed till the Roman coronation, 196; origin and results of this practice, 196; policy of, 222; his office as peace-maker, 244, 245; divine right of the, 246; his right of creating kings, 249; his international place at the Council of Constance, 253; change in titles of, 316; his rights as settled A.D. 1648, 340; altered meaning of the word now-a-days, 402.
Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 193, 195, 403; persons eligible as, 251; after Henry VII, 263; their short-sighted policy towards Rome, 277; their visits to Rome, 282; their approach, 283; their entrance, 284; hostility of the Pope and people to the, 284; their burial-places, 287 note; nature of the question at issue between the Popes and the, 385; their titles, 400.
Emperors, Carolingian, 76.
Emperors, Franconian, 133.
Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in Germany, 310; their policy, 305, 348; repeated attempts to set them aside, 350; causes of the long retention of the throne by the, 349; modern pretensions of, 368, 381.
Emperors, Italian, 80.
Emperors, Saxon, 133.
Emperors, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, 57, 165, 167.
Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 61; their short-sighted policy, 277; their memorials in Rome, 286; names of those buried in Italy, 287 note; their struggles against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, 388.
Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, 5; obliteration of national distinctions in, 6; unity of, threatened from without and from within, 7, 8; preserved for a time by the policy of Diocletian and Constantine, 8, 9; partition of, 9; influence of the Church in supporting, 13; armies of, composed of barbarians, 15; how regarded by the barbarians, 16; belief in eternity of, 20; reunion of Italy to, 29; its influence in the Transalpine provinces, 30; influence of religion and jurisprudence in supporting, 31, 32; belief in, not extinct in the eighth century, 44; restoration of by Charles the Great, 48; the 'translation' of the, 52, 111, 175, 218; divided between the grandsons of Charles, 77; dissolution of, 78; ideal state supposed to be embodied in, 99; never, strictly speaking, restored, 102.
Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, 80, 103; a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, 80; wherein it differed therefrom, 80; motives for establishment of, 84; identical with Holy Roman Church, 106; its rights proved from the Bible, 112; its anti-national character, 120; its union with the German kingdom, 122; dissimilarity between the two, 127; results of the union, 128; its pretensions in Hungary, 183; in Poland, 184; in Denmark, 184; in France, 185; in Sweden, 185; in Spain, 185; in England, 186; in Naples, 188; in Venice, 188; in the East, 189; the epithet 'Holy' applied by Frederick I, 199; origin and meaning of epithet, 200; its fall with Frederick II, 210; Italy lost to, 211; change in its position, 214; its continuance due to its connexion with the German kingdom, 214; its relations with the Papacy, 153, 155, 216; its financial distress, 223; theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 238; its duties as an international judge and mediator, 244; why an international power, 248; illustrations, 249; attitude of new learning towards, 251, 254, 256; doctrine of its rights and functions never carried out in fact, 253; end of its history in Italy, 263, 304; relation between it and the city, 297; reaches its lowest point in Frederick III's reign, 301; its loss of Burgundy, 305, and of Switzerland, 306; change in its character, 308, 313; effects of the Renaissance upon, 312; effects of the Reformation upon, 319, 325; its influence upon the name and associations of, 332; narrowing of its bounds, 341; causes of the continuance of, 344; its relation to the balance of power, 345; its position in Europe, 346; its last phase, 352; signs of its approaching fall, 356; its end, 363; the desire for its re-establishment, 364; unwillingness of certain states, 364; technically never extinguished, 364 note; summary of its nature and results, 366; claim of Austria to represent, 368; of France, 368; of Russia, 368; of Greece, 368; of the Turks, 368; parallel between the Papacy and, 369, 373; never truly mediæval, 373; sense in which it was Roman, 374; its condition in the tenth century, 374; essential principles of, 377; its influence on Germany, 378; Austria as heir of, 381; its bearing on the progress of Europe, 383; ways in which it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, 383; its influence upon modern jurisprudence, 383; upon the history of the Church, 384; influence of its inner life on the minds of men, 387; principles adverse to, 388; change marked by its fall, 389; its relations to the nationalities of Europe, 390; difficulty of fully understanding, 392.
Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, 101; consequences, 102; struggle between, 153; their relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name, 372.
Empire Western, last days of the, 24; its extinction by Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
Empire, French, under Napoleon, 360.
ENGELBERT, 113 note.
England, 45; Otto's position towards, 143; authority not exercised by any Emperors in, 186; vague notion that it must depend on the Empire, 186; imperial pretensions towards, 187; position of the regal power in, as compared with Germany, 215; feudalism in, 343.
Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great, 132.
EUDES (Count of Champagne), 151.
Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 383; on the nationalities of, 390.
F.
False Decretals, the, 156.
FERDINAND I, 316 note, 323, 401.
FERDINAND II, accession of, 335; his plans, 335; deprives the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, 231.
Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 221.
Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 124.
Feudalism, 90, 123; reason of its firm grasp upon society, 124; hostility between it and imperialism, 131; its results in France, 343; in England, 343; in Germany, 344; struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
Financial distress of the Empire, 223.
FLORUS the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, 85 note.
Fontenay, battle of, 77.
France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, 142; imperial authority exercised in, 185; her irritation at Germany's precedence, 185; growth of the regal power in, as compared with Germany, 215; alliance of the Protestants with, 325; territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, 341; feudalism in, 343; under Napoleon, 360; her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368, 376.
Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, 77.
FRANCIS I, reign of, 351.
FRANCIS II, accession of, 356; resignation of imperial crown by, 1, 363.
Franciscans, the order of, 205.
Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
Franconian Emperors, 133.
'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, 142 note.
Franks, rise of the, 34; success of their arms, 35; Catholics from the first, 36; their greatness chiefly due to the clergy, 36; enter Rome, 48.
Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 142.
Frankfort, synod held at, 64; coronations at, 316 note, 404.
FREDERICK I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 167, 179; his relations to the Popedom, 167; his contest with Pope Hadrian IV, 169, 316; incident at their meeting on the way to Rome, 314 note; his contest with Pope Alexander III, 170; their meeting at Venice, 171; magnificent ascriptions of dignity to, 173; assertion of his prerogative in Italy, 174; his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' 175; his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 175; his temporary success, 177; victory of the Lombards over, 178; his prosperity as German king, 178; his glorious life and happy death, 179; legend respecting him, 180; extent of his jurisdiction, 182; his dominion in the East, 189; his letter to Saladin, 189; anecdote of, 214.
FREDERICK II, character of, 207; events of his struggle with the Papacy, 209; results of his reign, 221; the charge of heresy against, 251 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 287.
FREDERICK III, abases himself before the Romish court, 220; Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, 249; his calamitous reign, 301.
FREDERICK (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, 231.
FREDERICK of Prussia (the Great), 347, 352, 353 note.
Freedom popular, growth of, 240; struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
G.
Gallic race, political character of the, 376.
Gauverfassung, the so-called, 123.
GERBERT (Pope Sylvester II), 146.
'German Emperor,' the title of, 127, 317.
Germanic constitution, the, 221; influence upon, of the theory of the Empire as an international power, 307; attempted reforms of, 313; means by which it was proposed to effect them, 314; causes of their failure, 314.
Germany, beginning of the national existence of, 77; chooses Arnulf as king, 78; overrun by Hungarians, 79; establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, 79; desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, 86; position of in the tenth century, 122; union of the Empire with, 122; results of the union, 128; dissimilarity of the two systems, 127; feudalism in, 123; the feudal polity of, generally, 125; nature of the history of, till the twelfth century, 126; princes of, ally themselves with the Pope against the Emperor, 162; its hatred of the Romish Court, 169; the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, 179; growth of towns in, 179, 223; decline of imperial power in, 211; state of during Great Interregnum, 213; decline of regal power in, 215; encroachments of nobles in, 221, 228; kingdom of, not originally elective, 225; how it ultimately became elective, 226; changes in the constitution of, 228; its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 302; its loss of imperial territories, 303; its internal weakness, 306; position of the Emperor in, compared with that of his predecessors in Europe, 309; beginning of the Hapsburg influence in, 310; first consciousness of its nationality, 315; destruction of its State-system, 324; its troubles, 324; finally severed from Rome, 340; after the peace of Westphalia, 342; effect of a number of petty independent states upon, 343; feudalism in, 343; its political life in the eighteenth century, 345; foreign thrones acquired by its princes, 346; French aggression upon, 346; its weakness and stagnation, 347; popular feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, 354; Napoleon in, 361; changes in, by war of 1866, 365 note; influence of the Holy Empire on, 378.
GERSON, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 301.
Ghibeline, the name of, 304.
GOETHE, 236 note, 316 note, 356.
Golden Bull of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, 28; Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, 29.
Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 240, 252; her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, 37 note.
Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire, 210.
GREGORY THE GREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 31; means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority, 154.
GREGORY II (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with the Byzantine princes, 102.
GREGORY III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour against the Lombards, 39.
GREGORY V (Pope), 146.
GREGORY VII (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures to the clergy, 158; war between him and Henry IV, 159; his letter to William the Conqueror, 160; passage in his second excommunication of Henry, 161; results of the struggle between them, 162; his death, 162; his theory as to the rights of the Pope with respect to the election of Emperors, 217; his silence about the Translation of the Empire, 218; his simile between the Empire and the Popedom, 373; his demands on the Emperor, 386.
GREGORY IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 102; receives the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' 102.
GREGORY X (Pope), 219.
GROTIUS, 384.
Guelf, the name of, 304.
GUIDO, or GUY, of Spoleto, 82.
GUISCARD, Robert, 292.
GUNDOBALD the Burgundian, 25.
GUNTHER of Schwartzburg, 222.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 336.
H.
HADRIAN I (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the Lombards, 41; motives of his policy, 42; his allusion to Constantine's Donation, 118 note.
HADRIAN IV (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 169, 285; his pretensions, 197.
HALLAM, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis, 30 note.
Hanseatic Confederacy, 223, 347.
Hapsburg, the castle of, 213 note.
HAROLD the BLUE-TOOTHED, 143.
HENRY I (the Fowler), 79, 122, 132, 226.
HENRY II crowned Emperor, 149.
HENRY II (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector of the German Liberties,' 325.
HENRY II (King of England), his submissive tone towards Frederick I, 186.
HENRY III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 151; his reform of the Popedom, 152; fatal results of his encroachments, 152; his death, 152.
HENRY IV, election of, 226 note; war between him and Gregory VII, 159; his humiliation, 159; results of the struggle, 162; his death, 162.
HENRY V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 163; his quarrel with Pope Paschal II, 163; his perilous position, 163; comparison between the prerogative at his death and that at the accession of Conrad II, 165; tumults produced by his coronation, 285.
HENRY V (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor Sigismund, 187.
HENRY VI, 188; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to the Empire, 206; opposition to the scheme, 206; his untimely death, 206.
HENRY VII, 221, 223; in Italy, 262; his death, 263.
HENRY VIII (King of England), 334 note.
Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, 232.
HILARY, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, 21 note.
HILDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past and present of Rome, 406.
HILDEBRAND; _see_ Gregory VII.
HIPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise of, 339.
Hohenstaufen; _see_ Emperors, Swabian.
Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 165 note.
Holland, declared independent, 342.
Holstein, its relations to the Empire, 398.
HUGH CAPET, 42.
HUGH of Burgundy, 83.
Hungarians, the, 143.
Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, 183; its connexion with the Hapsburgs, 184 note.
HUSS, the writings of, 241.
I.
Iconoclastic controversy, 38.
'Imperator electus,' the title of, 316, 405.
Imperialism, Roman, French, and Mediæval, 375.
Imperial titles and ceremonies, 193, 400.
INNOCENT III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV, 206; his pretensions, 209, 217; his struggle with Frederick II, 208.
INNOCENT X and the sacred number Seven of the electors, 227 note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 341.
International power, the need of an, 242; why the Roman Empire an, 248.
Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during, 213; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power, 221.
Investitures, the struggle of the, 162.
IRENE (Empress), behaviour of, 47, 61, 68.
Irminsûl, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, 69; meaning of term, 69 note.
Italian Emperors, 80.
Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments appeared, 140.
Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, 299.
Italy, under Odoacer, 26, 27; attempt of Theodoric to establish a national monarchy in, 27; reconquered by Justinian, 29; harassed by the Lombards, 37; condition of, previous to Otto's descent into, 80; Otto the Great's first expedition into, 84; its connexion with Germany, 87; Otto's rule in, 139; liberties of the northern cities of, 150; Frederick I in, 174; Henry VII in, 263; lost to the Empire, 211, 304; names of Emperors buried in, 287 note; the nation at the present day, 389.
Italy, Southern, 150.
J.
JOHN VIII (Pope), 156.
JOHN XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 87; plots against him, 134; his reprobate life, 134; Liudprand's list of the charges against, 135; letter recounting them sent to him, 136; his reply, 136; Otto's answer, 136; deposed by Otto, 137; regret of the Romans at his expulsion, 137; his return and death, 138.
JOHN XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 220.
JOSEPH II, reign of, 352.
JULIUS CÆSAR, 390, 392.
JULIUS II (Pope), 316.
Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, 252; influence of the Empire on modern, 383.
Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, 256.
JUSTINIAN, Italy reconquered by, 29; study of the legislation of, 240, 256.
'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory IX, 102.
Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 143.
K.
Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, 249.
Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 250.
L.
LACTANTIUS, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire, 21.
LAMBERT (son of Guido of Spoleto), 82.
Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the Pope, 219.
Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, 117, 288.
Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 37 note.
Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of Charles, 53.
Law, old, the influence exercised by, 32; era of the revived study of, 276.
Learning, revival of, 240; connexion between it and imperialism, 254.
LEO I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 154.
LEO the ISAURIAN (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the worship of images, 38.
LEO III (Pope), his accession, 43; his adventures, 44; crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, 3, 49; charter of, issued on same day, 106; relation of, to the act of coronation, 52, 53; lectured by Charles, 64.
LEO VIII (Pope), 138.
Leonine city, the, 286 note.
LEOPOLD I, ninth electorate conferred by, 231.
LEOPOLD II, 352.
LEWIS I (the Pious), 76, 77.
LEWIS II, 77, 104 note, 191, 403.
LEWIS III (son of Boso), 82.
LEWIS IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 220.
LEWIS XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and Milan, 315.
LEWIS XIV (King of France), 346.
LEWIS (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), 77.
LEWIS the CHILD (son of Arnulf), 121.
Literature, revival of, 240; connexion between it and imperialism, 254.
LIUDPRAND (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations against John XII, 135; account of his embassy to the princess Theophano, 141.
LIUDPRAND (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the exarchate, 38.
Lombard cities, 175; their victory over Frederick I, 178.
Lombards, arrival of the, A.D. 568, 29, 37; their aversion to the clergy, 37; the Popes seek help from the Franks against the, 39; extinction of their kingdom by Charlemagne, 41.
LOTHAR I (son of Lewis the Pious), 77, 403.
LOTHAR II, election of, 165, 228.
LOTHAR (son of Hugh of Burgundy), 83.
Lotharingia or Lorraine, 78, 79, 143, 183, 341, 349.
Luneville, the Peace of, 361.
LUTHER, 319.
M.
Majesty, the title of, 247 note.
Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
MANUEL COMNENUS, 193.
Mario (Monte), 283.
MARSILIUS of Padua, his 'de Imperio Romano,' 231 note.
MAXIMILIAN I, 231, 310; character of his epoch, 310; events of his reign, 313; his title of 'Imperator electus,' 316, 405; his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 317.
MAXIMILIAN II, 323.
Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 126.
Mediæval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 116.
Mediæval monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, 289.
MICHAEL, 61.
MICHAEL ANGELO, capital rebuilt by, 295.
Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, 90; theology of, 95; philosophy of, 97; relations of Church and State during, 107, 387; mode of interpreting Scriptures in, 114; art of, 116; opposition of theory and practice in, 133, 261; real beginning of, 204; reverence for ancient forms and phrases in, 258; absence of the idea of change or progress in, 259; the city of Rome in, 269; barbarism of the aristocracy in, 289; ambition and corruption of the clergy in the latter, 290; destruction of old buildings by the Romans of, 292; existing relics of, 294; aspiration for unity during, 370; the Visible Church in the, 370; ferocity of the heroes of, 382; ways in which the Empire affected the political institutions of, 383; idea of the communion of saints during, 387.
Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 125; the rebuilding of, 178; victory of Frederick II over, 287; pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
Mahommedanism, rise of, 45.
Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of Charles, 54, 84.
MOMMSEN, 390.
Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, 91, 97.
Monarchy, elective, 232.
Mosaics in the churches of Rome, 294.
MÜLLER, Johannes von, 354.
Münster, the treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
N.
Naples, imperial authority in, 188, 205; pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
NAPOLEON, as compared with Charles the Great, 74; extinction of Electorates by, 232; Emperor of the West, 357; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne, 358; attitude of the Papacy towards, 359; his mission in Germany, 361.
Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, 242; relations of the Empire to the, 390.
Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, 7.
Nicæa, first council of, 23, 301; second council of, 64.
NICEPHORUS, 61, 192.
NICHOLAS I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 252.
NICHOLAS II (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope, 158.
NICHOLAS V (Pope), 279, 292, 312.
Nobles, the, in feudal times, 125, 221; encroachments of the, 228.
Nürnberg, 259.
O.
OCCAM, the English Franciscan, 220.
ODO, 81.
ODOACER, extinction of the Western Empire by, A.D. 476, 25; his original position, 25 note; his assumption of the title of King, 26; nature of his government, 27.
OPTATUS (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise _Contra Donatistas_, 13 note.
Orsini, the family of, 281.
Osnabrück, treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
Ostrogoths, 24; war between Belisarius and the, 273.
OTTO I, the GREAT, appealed to by Adelheid, 83; his first expedition into Italy, 84; invitation sent by the Pope to, 84; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; crowned king of Italy at Rome, 87; his coronation a favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, 155; causes of the revival of the Empire under, 84; his coronation feast the inauguration of the Teutonic realm, 123; consequences of his assumption of the imperial title, 128; his position towards the Church, 128; changes in title, 129; his imperial office feudalized, 130; the Germans made a single people by, 131; incidents which befel him in Rome, 134; inquires into the character and manners of Pope John XII, 135; his letters to John, 136; deposes John, 136; appoints Leo in his stead, 137; his suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of John, 138; his rule in Italy, 139; resumes Charles's plans of foreign conquest, 140; his policy towards Byzantium, 141; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano, 141; his policy towards the West Franks, 142; his Northern and Eastern conquests, 143; extent of his empire, 144; comparison between it and that of Charles, 144; beneficial results of his rule, 145; how styled by Nicephorus, 211.
OTTO II, 142; memorials left by, in Rome, 317.
OTTO III, his plans and ideas, 146, 147, 148; his intense religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 147; his reason for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' 147; his early death, 148, 228; his burial at Aachen, 148; respect in which his life was so memorable, 149; compared with Frederick II, 207; his expostulation with the Roman people, 285 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 286.
OTTO IV, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, 206; overthrown by Innocent, 207; explanation of a curious seal of, 266 note.
P.
PALGRAVE (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis, 30 note.
PALSGRAVE, deprived of his vote, 231; reinstated, 231.
Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, 368.
Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 146; Frederick I's bad relations with, 168; Henry III's purification of, 152, 204; growth of its power, 153; its relations with the Empire, 153, 155, 216; its condition after the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, 275; its attitude towards Napoleon, 359.
Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, 101; its consequences, 102; struggle between them, 153; their relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name, 372.
Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, 138, 155.
Partition treaty of Verdun, 77.
PASCHAL II (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, 163.
Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, 40; date when it was bestowed on Pipin, 40 note.
PATRITIUS, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of the Empire, 224.
Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 156.
Persecution, Protestant, 330.
Peter's (St.), old, 48.
PETRARCH, his feelings towards the Empire, 254; towards the city of Rome, 270.
PFEFFINGER, 351 note.
PHILIP of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick and, 206; his assassination, 206.
Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth century, 240.
PIPIN of Herstal, 35.
PIPIN the SHORT appointed successor to Childeric, 39; twice rescues Rome from the Lombards, 39; receives the title of Patrician of the Romans, 40; import of this title, 40; date at which it was bestowed, 40 note.
PIUS VII (Pope), 359.
Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
PODIEBRAD (George), (King of Bohemia), 223.
Poland, imperial authority in, 184; partition of, 345.
Politics, beginning of the existence of, 241.
Popes, emancipation of the, 27, 37, 281, 282; appeal to the Franks for succour against the Lombards, 39; their reasons for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, 45, 46; their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 57; their profligacy in the tenth century, 82, 85, 275; their theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, 99; their position and functions, 104; growth of their pretensions, 108, 156, 217; and power, 153; their relations to the Emperor, 155; their temporal power, 157; their position as international judges, 243; reaction against their pretensions, 243, 275; their aversion to the study of ancient jurisprudence, 252; hostility of, to the Germans, 284; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and, 385.
PORCARO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 279.
Prætaxation, the so-called right of, 228, 229.
Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 212, 221.
Prague, University of, 237.
Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad II and death of Henry V, 165.
Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, 250.
Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, 352.
Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation, 330.
Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, 325.
Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the, 313.
R.
RADULFUS DE COLONNA, his account of the origin of the separation of Greeks and Latins, 37 note.
Ravenna, exarch of, 27.
Reformation, dawnings of the, 240; Charles V's attitude towards the, 321; influence of its spirit on the Empire, 319, 325; its real meaning, 325; its effect on the doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 327; consequent effect upon the Empire, 328; its small immediate influence on political and religious liberty, 329; conduct of the Protestant States after the, 330; its influence on the name and associations of the Empire, 332.
Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; wars of, 330.
Renaissance, the, 240, 311.
'Renovatio Romani Imperii,' signification of the seal bearing legend of, 103.
Rhine, towns of the, 223; provisions of the Confederation of the, 362.
RICHARD I (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor Henry VI, 186; his release, 187.
RICHARD (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with Alfonso X of Castile, 212, 229.
RICHELIEU, policy of, 336.
RICIMER (patrician), 25.
RIENZI, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting, 255; his character and career, 278.
Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII, 137, 138; Otto's vigorous measures against the, 138; their revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 274; the title of King of the, 404.
Romanism or Catholicity, 94, 106.
Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, 7; prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire, 9; lingering influences of her Church and Law, 31, 32; claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown, 57, 61, 81; republican institutions of, renewed, 83; profligacy of, in the tenth century, 82, 85; under Arnold of Brescia, 174; imitations of old, 257; in the Middle Ages, 269; absence of Gothic in, 271; the modern traveller in, 271, 283; causes of her rapid decay, 273; peculiarities of her position, 274; her internal history from the sixth to the twelfth century, 274; her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries, 274; growth of a republican feeling in, 276; short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, 277; causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in, 280; her internal condition, 280; her people, 280; her nobility, 281; her bishop, 281; relation of the Emperor to, 282; the Emperors' visits to, 282; dislike of, to the Germans, 285; memorials of Otto III in, 286; of Otto II, 287; of Frederick II, 287; causes of the want of mediæval monuments in, 289; barbarism of the aristocracy of, 289; ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, 290; tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner, 290; destruction and alteration of old buildings in, 291; her modern churches, 293; existing relics of Dark and Middle Ages in, 291; changed aspect of, 295; analogy between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; relation of, to the Empire, 297; feelings of modern Italians towards, 299; perpetuation of the name of, 367; parallel instances, 367; Hildebert's lines contrasting the past and present of, 406.
ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding, 25.
RUDOLF (King of Transjurane), 81.
RUDOLF of Hapsburg, 213, 219, 221, 222; financial distress under, 224; Schiller's description of the coronation feast of, 231 note, 262.
RUDOLF II, 335.
RUDOLF III, 151.
RUDOLF of Swabia, 162.
RUDOLF III (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath Burgundy to Henry II, 151.
Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
S.
Sachsenspiegel, the, 108 note.
SALADIN (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, 189.
Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, 118.
Saxon Emperors, 133.
Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, 143; its relation to the Empire, 398.
Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth century, 240.
Seal, ascribed to A. D. 800, 103.
SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, concentration of power in his hands, 5, 6.
SERGIUS IV (Pope), 228 note.
Seven Years' War, 352.
Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation, 34.
Sicily, imperial authority in, 188, 205.
SIGISMUND (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, 18.
SIGISMUND (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, 187; at the Council of Constance, 253, 301.
Simony, measures taken against, 158.
Slavic races, the, 27, 143, 260, 378.
Smalkaldic league, the, 322.
Southern Italy, 150.
Spain, Otto's position towards, 143; authority not exercised by any Emperor in, 185; compared with Germany, 303.
Speyer, Diet of, 111 note.
STEPHANIA (widow of Crescentius), 148.
Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222; the towns of, 223, 313; theory of the Emperors of the house of, respecting the coronation of Charles, 57.
Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, 185.
Swiss Confederation, the, 306; her gains by treaties of Westphalia, 341.
Switzerland lost to the Empire, 306, 342.
SYLVESTER (Pope), 43.
T.
Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, 9 note.
TERTULLIAN, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, 21 note, 23 note.
TEUTBERGA (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, 252.
Teutonic race, political character of the, 376.
THEODEBERT (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, 18.
THEODORIC the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a national monarchy in Italy, 27, 28; its failure, 29; his usual place of residence, 28 note; prosperity under his reign, 29.
THEODOSIUS (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose, 12.
THEOPHANO (princess), 141.
Thirty Years' War, 335; its unsatisfactory results, 336; its substantial advantage to the German princes, 338.
THOMAS (St.), his statement respecting the election of Emperors, 227.
Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, 67.
Titles, change of, 129, 316, 400.
Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, 175.
Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, 30.
'Translation of the Empire,' 52, 111, 175, 218.
Transubstantiation, 326 note.
Turks, the, 303; their claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
TURPIN (Archbishop), 51 note.
U.
University of Prague, foundation of, 237.
Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 96.
URBAN IV (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king, 229.
V.
Venice, her attitude, 171; imperial pretensions towards, 188; maintains her independence, 188.
Verdun, partition treaty of, 77.
VESPASIAN, his dying jest, 23 note.
Vienna, Congress of, 364.
VILLANI (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 304; his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, 304 note.
Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by the, 30.
W.
WALLENSTEIN, 335.
WENZEL of Bohemia, 223.
Western Empire, its last days, 24, 25; its extinction by Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
Westphalia, the Peace of, 336; its advantages to France, 341; to Sweden, 341; its importance in imperial history, 342.
WICKLIFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 241.
WILLIAM the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, 160.
WIPPO, 227 note.
WITUKIND, 85 note.
WOITECH (St. Adalbert), 269.
World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 91; influence of metaphysics upon the theory, 97.
World-Religion, the idea of a, 91; coincides with the World-Empire, 92.
Worms, Concordant of, 163; Diet of, 319, 334.