Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (9 page)

The obvious benefit of penitential acts was that they allowed you to do bad things and get away with them. For example, the tenth-century Emperor Otto III walked barefoot from Rome to Benevento to spend two weeks as a hermit after violently crushing a rebellion in 996.
²⁸
Piety peaked under Henry III, who banished musicians seeking work
at his wedding in 1043, and who often wore penitential clothes and even asked for forgiveness
after
his victory over the Hungarians at Menfö in 1044, in contrast to the usual prayers before battle.
²⁹
Nonetheless, as the controversy over Louis I’s behaviour shows, penitence could easily appear humiliating, as will be seen later with Henry IV’s experience at Canossa (see
pp. 57–8
).

Piety remained important, particularly with the start of the First Crusade in 1095, but otherwise it became less obviously politicized until the emergence of baroque Catholicism in the seventeenth century when emperors regularly led religious processions and dedicated elaborate monuments as thanksgiving for victories or deliveries from danger. Throughout the Empire’s existence, the routine of the imperial court remained regulated by the Christian calendar, with the highly visible presence of the imperial family at important religious services.
³⁰

The notion that emperors were sacred rather than merely pious took hold during the tenth century. Its most visible expression was the practice of appearing at public events accompanied by 12 bishops, such as the consecration of new cathedrals – something that contemporaries clearly understood as
imitatio Christi
with the Apostles. Otto I’s deliberate
Renovatio
, or renewal of the Empire in the 960s, included emphasis on his role as Christ’s vicar (
vicarius Christi
) wielding a divine mandate to rule.
³¹
Some caution is required in interpreting such acts, not least because the primary evidence is liturgical texts. Early medieval emperors remained warriors, including Henry II, who was subsequently canonized in 1146 and who consciously presented the Empire as God’s House. Nonetheless, the period 960–1050 clearly saw a more sacral style of kingship (
regale sacerdotium
) intended to manifest the divine imperial mission through public acts. The most prominent of these was Otto III’s grand tour in the millennial year 1000, which assumed the character of a pilgrimage via Rome and Gniezno, culminating in Aachen, where the young emperor personally opened Charlemagne’s tomb. Finding his predecessor sitting upright ‘as if he were living’, Otto ‘robed him on the spot with white garments, cut his nails, and [replaced his decayed nose] with gold, took a tooth from Charles’s mouth, walled up the entrance to the chamber, and withdrew again’.
³²
Treating the imperial corpse like a holy relic was an obvious first step towards canonization; this project was interrupted by Otto’s death shortly after, but completed by Frederick I ‘Barbarossa’ in 1165.

Like their Roman predecessors, the Empire’s rulers stopped short of claiming to be priests, but their coronation ritual resembled a bishop’s ordination by the mid-tenth century, including anointing, assuming vestments and receiving objects that symbolized spiritual as well as secular authority.
³³
In the two centuries following Charlemagne, emperors regularly followed Constantine’s example from 325 and convened church synods to discuss ecclesiastical management and doctrine. Otto II introduced new images on coins, seals and illuminated liturgical texts showing him elevated on a high throne, receiving his crown directly from God, while the royal insignia were increasingly treated like holy relics.
³⁴
Otto and his next three successors assumed positions as cathedral and abbey canons, thereby combining secular and ecclesiastical roles, though not in top clerical positions.
³⁵

This trend was interrupted by the seismic clash with the papacy known as the Investiture Dispute (see
pp. 56–60
below), in which Henry IV suffered the humiliation of being excommunicated by the pope in 1076. After this blow, it was harder to believe the emperor was holy, let alone pious, and the stress on the divinity of the imperial mission sounded increasingly shrill. It proved impossible for kings to live up to the ideal of Christ in their personal lives and public actions. More fundamentally, as Henry IV’s notary Gottschalk pointed out, claims for the emperor’s sacrality derived from anointing by the pope and so risked acknowledging papal supremacy.
³⁶
Thus, the Empire did not pursue sacral monarchy to the extent found in England and France, where kings claimed the miraculous powers of the Royal Touch.
³⁷
This probably explains why the cult of St Charlemagne took firmer roots in France, where it was celebrated as a public holiday from 1475 to the Revolution of 1789.
³⁸
Neither Charlemagne, nor Henry II and his wife Kunigunde – both of whom were canonized (in 1146 and 1200, respectively) – emerged as royal national saints of the Empire, unlike Wenceslas in Bohemia (from 985), Stephen in Hungary (1083), Knut in Denmark (1100), Edward the Confessor in England (1165), or Louis IX in France (1297).

A renewed bout of papal-imperial tension in the mid-twelfth century (see
pp. 63–7
) confirmed the impracticality of sacral kingship to legitimate power in the Empire. The Staufer family, ruling from 1138, changed the emphasis from the monarch to a transpersonal holy Empire, first using the title
Sacrum Imperium
in March 1157.
³⁹
Already sanctified by its divine mission, the Empire did not need the pope’s
approbation. This powerful idea survived the Staufers’ political demise in 1250, persisting thereafter even in the long periods when no German king was crowned emperor.

ROMAN

The Legacy of Rome

The Roman legacy was powerfully attractive, but hard to assimilate within the new Empire. Knowledge of ancient Rome was imperfect, though it improved during the ninth century with the intellectual and literary movement known as the Carolingian Renaissance.
⁴⁰
The Bible and classical sources presented Rome as the last and greatest in a succession of world empires. Both the German
Kaiser
and Russian
tsar
derive from
Caesar
, while the name
Augustus
was also synonymous with ‘emperor’. Charlemagne was depicted on coins in profile dressed as a Roman emperor crowned with oak leaves.
⁴¹
However, he quickly dropped the title
Imperator Romanorum
conferred by Leo III, perhaps to avoid provoking Byzantium, which still regarded itself as the Roman empire (see
pp. 138–43
). Another reason was that the adjective ‘Roman’ was not considered necessary since there was no need of such a qualification at a time when no other power was recognized as ‘imperial’.

There were also domestic pressures against embracing Rome. Charlemagne already ruled his own realm, which itself stimulated imitation: the Polish
król
, Czech
král
and Russian
korol
, all meaning ‘king’, derive from ‘Charles’. The Franks were not prepared to renounce their own identity and merge themselves with the peoples they had recently conquered to become a common body of Roman citizens. While the Franks were Romanized, the centre of their power lay on or beyond the
Limes
– the frontiers of the ancient Roman empire. Memories lingered, such as the widespread stories that Caesar himself had laid the foundations of various important buildings, but most Roman settlements had contracted or been abandoned completely. Likewise, Roman institutions influenced Merovingian governance, but had also been heavily modified or replaced by entirely new methods.
⁴²
The situation was different in Italy, where three-quarters of ancient towns were still economic and population centres in the tenth century, often retaining their
original street pattern.
⁴³
Frankish control of Italy only dated from 774 and was disrupted by the partition of the Carolingian empire in 843. Italy and the imperial title were reunited with the former eastern Frankish lands in 962, but by this point these were ruled by the Ottonians from Saxony – a region that had never been part of the Roman empire.

The Ottonians curried favour north of the Alps by ostentatiously incorporating Frankish traditions. Otto I dressed as a Frankish noble and presented himself at Aachen as the direct continuation of Carolingian, rather than Roman, rule. His court chronicler, Widukind of Corvey, ignored the lavish imperial coronation in Rome (962) in his history, and instead presented Otto as already ‘Father of the Fatherland, Master of the World and Emperor’ after his victory over the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955.
⁴⁴
Nonetheless, Roman traditions were important to Otto I and his successors. It is unlikely that Otto III’s adoption of the motto
Renovatio imperii Romanorum
in 998 was part of a coherent plan, but the subsequent historical controversy is useful in pointing to Rome’s dual significance both as a secular imperial centre and as the city of the Apostles and mother of the Christian church.
⁴⁵

The title
imperator
originally meant ‘military commander’. It acquired political meaning through Caesar and, especially, his adoptive son and successor, Octavian, who assumed the name Augustus and ruled as the first full emperor from 27 bc. The title avoided offending Roman identity, which rested on the expulsion of the original kings at the end of the sixth century bc, and disguised the transition from republican to monarchical rule. A victorious general’s acclamation as emperor by his troops suggested choice by merit and ability, rather than hereditary succession, and could be reconciled with the continuation of the Roman senate, which formally endorsed the soldiers’ action.
⁴⁶
This method could be easily accommodated within Frankish and Christian traditions. Germanic kingship also rested on the idea that rulers were acclaimed by their warriors, allowing the Frankish elite to buy into Charlemagne’s coronation in 800. Victory was regarded as a sign of divine favour, while the fiction that all present voiced their consent unanimously was interpreted as a direct expression of God’s will.
⁴⁷

While Roman traditions could be accommodated, the actual city of Rome was another matter. In 754 the pope had already granted Pippin the title of Roman patrician, suggesting some kind of stewardship for
the city. However, Frankish nobles were warrior-landlords with no desire to reside in Rome as senators. Some later emperors also accepted the title of patrician, probably because they hoped it would bring influence in papal elections, but they were not prepared to receive their imperial dignity from the Romans directly. The best opportunity to forge closer ties to Rome’s inhabitants came as the senate re-emerged to challenge papal control of the city in the 1140s. Despite their own troubled relationship with the pope, the Staufer kings rebuffed Roman delegations offering them the imperial title in 1149 and 1154. At least the pope was head of the universal church, whereas the senators merely governed a large Italian city. The Romans felt betrayed and the knights of Frederick ‘Barbarossa’ had to prevent an angry mob from disrupting his coronation by Pope Hadrian IV in 1155. Only Louis IV accepted a Roman invitation, in January 1328, but under the special circumstances of a papal schism and when he had been excommunicated by Pope John XXII. Once his position improved four months later he had himself crowned by his own pliant pope, Nicholas V. The last offer came from Cola di Rienzo, who had seized control of Rome in 1347, later during the same schism. His arrival in Prague proved an embarrassment for King Charles IV, who arrested him and sent him home, where he was murdered by local opponents.
⁴⁸

A Rome-free Empire?

There were only about 50,000 people in Rome in 800, and despite some Carolingian rebuilding, the numerous ancient ruins indicated just how much time had passed since it had been capital of the known world. Although still large by contemporary standards, it was not big enough to accommodate pope and emperor simultaneously. Following the Carolingian partition of the Empire in 843 into three kingdoms (West Francia, East Francia and Lotharingia), the imperial title was generally held by the Frankish kings of Italy until 924, but they were relatively weak, especially after 870, and they usually resided in the old Lombard capital at Pavia, or in the former Byzantine base at Ravenna. While imperial coronations were often years in the planning, subsequent emperors rarely stayed in Rome for long. Otto III did build a new imperial palace, but even he returned to Aachen after his coronation and began fresh construction there too.

Although they sometimes wanted to displace the pope as emperor-maker, the Romans shared the pontiff’s hostility towards a prolonged presence. Emperors might be feted with sumptuous banquets and even applauded for deposing unpopular popes, but they should not outstay their welcome. Rome was in any case too far from Germany, which became the main seat of imperial power after 962. The Frankish expeditions to Italy in 754–6 and 773–4 by Pippin and Charlemagne respectively attracted strong support from Carolingian nobles, who welcomed an excuse to plunder the Lombards, but such opportunities declined once Italy was incorporated into Charlemagne’s realm. Plunder remained possible if the emperor was engaged on a punitive expedition to punish Italian rebels, depose a pope, or assert control over the still largely independent southern part of the peninsula. However, a prolonged presence required more peaceful methods, removing the incentive for most northerners to cooperate. Usually, support swiftly transformed into accusations that the emperor was neglecting his subjects north of the Alps.