Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (10 page)

The possibility of dispensing with Rome altogether was strongest during the early Carolingian era. Charlemagne never returned to Italy after the spring of 801, and it was 22 years before another emperor visited Rome; whereas popes crossed the Alps three times, including for the coronation of Charlemagne’s son and successor, Louis I, in Reims (816). Louis had already been crowned co-emperor without papal involvement in 813 (before his father’s death next year), as was his eldest son Lothar I four years later. Aachen was the site of an important palace from 765 and was already known as
nova Roma
and
Roma secunda
before Charlemagne’s coronation in 800. The Aachen chapel was modelled on the Byzantine palace chapel at San Vitale in Ravenna and incorporated ancient columns and statues thought to represent Theodoric, thus symbolizing a link as much to the glorious Gothic past as to a Roman one.
⁴⁹
However, the turbulence of Carolingian politics from the 820s both made it imperative to involve the pope in legitimizing possession of the imperial title and decreased the incentive for the pope to travel over the Alps to please the Franks. Lothar’s decision to have his son Louis II crowned co-emperor in 850 is usually accepted as definitively fixing imperial coronations in Rome. Thereafter, it proved hard to break what appeared to be tradition.

While it became impossible to become emperor without being crowned by the pope, papal involvement was not necessary to rule the Empire. The so-called ‘interregna’ are misleading. The Empire had an almost unbroken succession of
kings
; it was just that not all of them were crowned
emperors
by the pope (see
Table 1
and
Appendices 1
and
2
). Otto I established the convention that the German king was automatically
imperator futurus
, or, as Conrad II asserted in 1026 before his coronation, ‘designated for the imperial crown of the Romans’.
⁵⁰
However, it proved fundamental to the Empire’s subsequent history that Otto did not merge the imperial with the German royal title. Despite being proclaimed emperor by his victorious army at Lechfeld, he waited until his coronation in 962 before presenting himself as such. Unlike later nationalist historians, Otto and his successors never regarded the Empire as a German nation state. In their eyes, what made them worthy to be emperor was that they already ruled such extensive lands. By the early eleventh century it had become accepted that whoever was German king was also king of Italy and Burgundy, even without separate coronations. The title King of the Romans (
Romanorum rex
) was added from 1110 in a bid to assert authority over Rome and reinforce claims that only the German king could be emperor.
⁵¹

Table 1. Imperial Reigns and German Kings

*including Otto IV (Welf family), 1198–1218

**including Charles VII (Wittelsbach), 1742–5

Translatio imperii

German claims evolved in response to the difficulties in dealing with the papacy, rather than rejection of the Roman imperial tradition. Indeed, the idea of unbroken continuity grew stronger with the spread of new ideas about the ‘imperial translation’ enacted in 800 by Leo III and Charlemagne. Like all powerful medieval ideas, this was rooted in the Bible. The Book of Daniel (2:31ff.) recounts how the Old Testament prophet responded to a request to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the future of his empire. Thanks to an influential reading by St Jerome in the fourth century, this was understood as a succession of four ‘world monarchies’: Babylon, Persia, Macedonia and Rome. The notion of ‘empire’ was singular and exclusive. Empires could not co-exist, but followed each other in a strict sequence that was epochal, involving the transfer of divinely ordained power and responsibility for humanity, rather than merely changes of ruler or dynasty. The Roman empire had to continue, since the appearance of a fifth monarchy would invalidate Daniel’s prophecy and contradict God’s plan.
⁵²

These beliefs hindered any Byzantine-imperial mutual recognition (see
pp. 138–43
), and are a reason why the Carolingians and Ottonians were often unclear how far they were directly continuing the Roman empire or merely reviving power which Byzantium had allowed to lapse. The mood changed around 1100 in response to the Investiture Dispute and scholastic interest in classical history. Frutolf of Michelsberg compiled a list of 87 emperors since Augustus, suggesting that Charlemagne had succeeded to the original Roman empire in 800, rather than merely reviving it.
⁵³
Translation ideology became increasingly flexible as other authors presented the shifts from Rome to Constantinople (fourth century), to Charlemagne (800), to his Carolingian successors in Italy (843), and finally to the German king (962), as merely a succession of glorious dynasties ruling the same empire. The papacy was obliged to endorse these arguments, since it wanted to preserve its role as agent in each ‘translation’ of the imperial title.

The belief that the Roman empire was the last monarchy included the idea of it as
Katechon
, or restrainer, keeping the divine schedule on track and preventing the premature destruction of the world by the Anti-Christ. Byzantine readings of the Book of Revelation produced the idea of the ‘last world emperor’, who would unite all Christians,
defeat Christ’s enemies, travel to Jerusalem and submit earthly power to God. Having already spread to western Europe, this idea readily lent itself to eulogizing Charlemagne, who, by the 970s, many believed was merely resting in Jerusalem, where he had allegedly gone as a pilgrim at the end of his reign.
⁵⁴
Abbot Adso articulated similar ideas in his
Book of the Anti-Christ
, written around 950 at the request of Gerberga, Otto I’s sister. Otto III and Henry II both had ceremonial cloaks embroidered with cosmic symbols and may have considered themselves emperors at the end of time. Frederick ‘Barbarossa’ is known to have attended a play about the Anti-Christ in 1160, and certainly apocalyptic arguments helped emperors justify deposing ‘false’ popes as potential Anti-Christs.
⁵⁵

As with all futurology, these ideas encouraged people to relate real events to the predictions. A central concern was to distinguish the good last world emperor from the evil Anti-Christ, since both were associated with Jerusalem and an expanding empire. It was thought that the Empire would reach its highest perfection as an earthly paradise under the former, suggesting that any signs of decline portended the latter. Already in the eleventh century, the monk Rodulfus Glaber identified the emergence of distinct Christian kingdoms as such a portent.
⁵⁶
The most influential writer was Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202), a Cistercian abbot who claimed the world would end 42 generations after Christ, predicting Judgement Day would fall sometime between 1200 and 1260 – precisely in the period of renewed papal–imperial conflict. Many people longed for the end, which was expected to herald a golden age of social justice and open all human hearts to God. Such ideas took hold amongst the radical Franciscans, Waldensians and other groups flourishing after 1200, who were swiftly condemned as heretics by the church establishment, which in 1215 also dropped its initial acceptance of Joachim’s arguments.
⁵⁷

Emperor Frederick II’s recovery of Jerusalem in 1229 intensified debate, since he had acted outside the official crusading movement and whilst excommunicated by the pope. His death in 1250 reinforced his place in Joachimist chronology and swiftly led to rumours that he was still alive. Initially, this took the form of various imposters, one of whom briefly issued his own decrees in the Rhineland using a forged imperial seal. By 1290 this rumour had transformed along the lines of the myths surrounding Charlemagne; the emperor was merely resting
and would return as part of the end of days. While it was initially claimed Frederick had disappeared into Mount Etna, by 1421 it was believed he was slumbering under the steep Kyffhäuser mountain near Nordhausen in the Harz region. The unrealistic expectations accompanying the accession of Charles V in 1519 prompted the last flowering of the Joachimist fantasy, by which time Frederick II had become confused with his grandfather, Frederick ‘Barbarossa’. This was probably because Barbarossa’s frequent visits to the Harz had embedded him in local memory, while his death on crusade and absence of a grave fitted the story better.
⁵⁸

EMPIRE

Singular and Universal

The belief in imperial translation might strike modern readers as far detached from the Empire’s reality, especially after the demise of the Staufers around 1250. Yet, of all the Latin European states, only the Empire developed a consistent, fully imperial (as opposed to simply monarchical-sovereign) ideal prior to the new age of global maritime empires in the sixteenth century.
⁵⁹
There were only 25 years with a crowned emperor between 1245 and 1415, but the Empire’s monarch continued to be considered more than an ordinary king.

Imperial apologists fully recognized that the Empire’s territory was much smaller than the extent of the known world (
Map 1
). Like the ancient Romans, they distinguished between the Empire’s actual territory and its divine imperial mission, which they considered limitless. French, Spanish and other western monarchs increasingly emphasized their own sovereign royal authority, but this did little to diminish arguments that the emperor was still superior. Even if they acknowledged practical limits to imperial authority, most writers still believed in the desirability of a single, secular Christian leader.
⁶⁰

The Empire was considered indivisible, since the theory of imperial translation ruled that there could only be one empire at a time. The clergy pressured the Franks to abandon their practice of partible inheritance. It is not clear how far Charlemagne accepted this, since two of his sons predeceased him, leaving only Louis I as heir in 814.
⁶¹
Louis
declared the Empire indivisible in 817 on the grounds that it was a gift from God. However, it was the Franks’ own conception of Empire that proved more significant since this envisaged imperial leadership of subordinate kingdoms, rather than a centralized, unitary state. Thus, Louis assigned Aquitaine (southern France) and Bavaria to his younger sons, with the bulk of the land going to the eldest, Lothar I, as emperor, while his nephew Bernard continued as king of Italy.
⁶²
Family jealousies wrecked these arrangements, leading to civil wars from 829 and a series of partitions after the Treaty of Verdun in 843 (
Map 2
), but the Carolingians continued to regard their lands as part of a wider unit and held at least 70 summit meetings between 843 and 877 alone.
⁶³
It is only subsequent historical convention that sees these partitions as creating distinct nation states. The same convention also stresses discontinuity, especially by ignoring the emperors based in Italy between 843 and 924, and instead interpreting Otto I’s acquisition of the title in 962 as the foundation of a new, ‘German’ empire.
⁶⁴
Although the last reunion of eastern and western Francia broke up in 887, none of the Paris-based Carolingian kings ever claimed their own imperial title. The singularity of empire was too deeply rooted in Christian political thought; there could only be one emperor, because there was only one God in heaven.

Practical politics reinforced this. For most of the Middle Ages, the Empire remained its own political world. Indeed, for the first four centuries of its existence, Byzantium and France were the only significant outsiders, and the latter remained ruled by kings from the Carolingian family until 987 when the western Frankish Carolingian line died out. There were no major external threats to the Empire between the defeat of the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 and the approach of the Mongols around 1240 – and these later fortunately turned back before they did serious harm. All other rulers could be considered peripheral to both the Empire and Christendom generally. Even as the Empire’s actual territory contracted, it remained far larger than that of any other Latin monarch (see
Chapter 4
).