It would be useful to insert a date for the beginning of the 'Holy' part of the title. Sure not the Carolingians. Whose fault is it? Things to add for a better entry: the Electors; coronation by the popes, frequently in Milan; King of Germany; King of Rome; list of dynasties; anything else pressing? --
MichaelTinkler
I think HRE came in with Otto in 962, but don't hold me to it. I have always heard that Otto's family were the Saxon dynasty, but the Imperial dynasty was the Ottonians...it's that Arnulfing/Pippinid
?/Carolingian
? thing. Aha -- Cantor (not entirely to be trusted because it's a gloss-everything-over textbook) Claims the HRE Started with Charlemagne but that C was crowned the first Western Roman Emperor (which makes me wonder what the Western Roman Emperors of the 4th and 5th centuries called themselves). Otto I was supposedly called king of the Romans. Otto II was first to use the title Emperor Augustus of the Romans -- no Holy. Just checked another source -- Otto I or II, Saxon OR Ottonian dynasty.
J Hofmann Kemp
- *sigh*. What ever got us interested in these people who couldn't even adopt clear entitulation? --MichaelTinkler
What end of the Middle Ages? just wondering.
JHK
Any of them, depending on exactly how weak you want the Emperor to get. ;)
Out of curiosity, how is it unsupportable to claim that the HRE was one of the most centralized kingdoms in Europe? French kings had very little control outside of Paris, the east and north were still somewhat chaotic, but the Imperial government could make decrees and expect people would at least pretend to listen.
- perhaps I should have said unsupported. The lack of clear succession, the shifting role of ministeriales, the endless Italian problem - all those sprang to my mind. The word 'centralized' has a definite implication for modern readers which has to be severely qualified to apply to any pre-modern organization, even including the Roman and Byzantine empires. (oh, and I hold no brief for the French - they were even worse, but that doesn't make the HRE a success!) --MichaelTinkler
Hence the qualifier most. I'll agree the HRE had great disparities among its parts, and was never a tight knit government. However, since it is so often presented as the shadow it became in the 1600s and 1700s, I think it is worth commenting that at one point it was doing as well as could be expected. Otherwise it would seem we are simply replacing exaggerated success by exaggerated failure, the same applying to the Romans, Byzantines, and others as well.
- well, I suppose. I'm not a pessimist about much of anything else, but I find it hard to be enthusiastic about the success of government institutions in the middle ages. --MichaelTinkler
Holy Roman Empire (of German Nation) was often written in official documents in Latin language as Sacrum Romanum Imperium , abbr. S.R.I. or in German language H. R. R. ('Heilig Roemisch Reich').
Took this from the front page; can one of our historians extract the useful information and integrate it? --STG
- To my thinking, it needs to go. Also, I am absolutely not convinced of the whole first use of SRI thing. I would like to see the source and a confirmation that 1254 was the first instance. Everybody agrees that HRE started with the Ottonians (unless they try to take it back to Charlemagne). I have NEVER seen anything to indicate that the Ottonians styled themselves plain old emperors. This is VERY DUBIOUS...JHK
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