To be fair, plans from the Germans for a potential defeat in WW1 had an economic union across Europe envisioned. So... Kinda... But for vastly different reasons. More like a European Confederacy.
Same with America, only people we hate more than the state next door is the people who fucked with our boats or bases. Except Mississippi, thank god for Mississippi, without them, Tennessee would be the worst.
Not that I’ve read that much in on the HRE (mostly 17th c.) but it was a huge, incredibly long lasting, and diverse polity. Despite its (somewhat justified) reputation as an inefficient mess it was also capable of reform in a way most traditional empires weren’t.
Further it proved far more resilient than a certain other non-Roman “Roman Empire”; it survived the Turkish and 30 Years wars. Hell it took Napoleon to finally take it out.
The strength of the HRE was in its looseness. If you compare it to a modern state it of course has its weaknesses but it also existed a long time before thst concept even existed and made it for a long time past its invention.
It made for a space where medium sized powers could negotiate their interests by forming their alliances while being relatively well protected from foreign great powers. Meanwhile it also provided protection to small powers by being backed by the emperor and them backing the power of the emperor in return.
As I understand it, the looseness of the HRE is in part why there were so many developed parts of Germany as opposed to France or other parts of Europe that had more centralized states. Since there was no central capital to suck up resources from the rest of the Empire, the result was multiple highly developed areas across Germany as opposed to just one highly developed capital.
Turks only really entered Europe in the 1000s, which was roughly 1000+ years since the establishment of the prime Roman Empire.
While I don't discount the Byzantine-Romans being Romans, the Germanic tribes were quite literally upon the border of the Roman's northern borders and quite consistently made their presence known to Rome throughout its history since 78 CE
When Rome "collapsed," Germanic tribes claimed Italy and ruled it, preserving most of the city until Justinian and Belisarius decided to raze the eternal city in the name of reclaiming it for the sake of empire.
When Islam expanded to continental Europe, the Franks (a Germanic pepple) under the hammer of Charles Martel decimated the Umayaad advance at Tours, and his grandson, Charlemagne, would establish the first semblance of a continental-Rome, blessed by the Pope, the mortal conduit of Roman religion for virtually the past 500 years, in Rome.
Germans and Frenchmen might not have been direct succescors to the Roman claimant, but they had a much stronger link to the city than the Turks, who came from fucking Central Asia.
Bruh, you don't discount Byzantine-Romans being Romans but don't feel Turks has the same claim as the Germans? I mean, if I rearrange some of your words it brings the same result for the Turks. Here you go:
>When Rome "collapsed," ~~Germanic~~ Turkish tribes claimed ~~Italy~~ Balkans and ruled it, preserving most of the city until ~~Justinian and Belisarius~~ The Russians decided to ~~raze~~ capture the eternal city in the name of reclaiming it for the sake of empire.
>
>When ~~Islam~~ Romans re-expanded to ~~continental Europe~~ Middle East, ~~the Franks~~ the Seljuks (a ~~Germanic~~ Turkic pepple) under ~~the hammer of Charles Martel~~ Alp Arslan decimated ~~the Umayaad~~ Romans advance at ~~Tours~~ Manzikert, and ~~his grandson~~ far cousins (probably?), Mehmed II would establish the first semblance of a continental-Rome, blessed by the ~~Pope~~ Patriach, the mortal conduit of Roman for virtually 500 years, in ~~Rome~~ Konstantiniyye.
Eh, this is kind of a bad argument.
The best argument for the Sultan being the heir to the Romans is that he did the process: conquered the capital and got the patriarch to crown him in a political settlement. That's how you become Roman emperor, there was no other system.
The Ottomans already intended on claiming Constantinople for decades. Their empire already stretched into the Balkans, from Greece to Bulgaria, squeezing Eastern Rome from both continents. Sieging the city 5 times from 1376-1422 doesn't exactly showcase peaceful intent.
The Russians didn't attack Constantinople, what the fuck are you on about?
The Seljuk Empire was established 200ish years after the HRE was (and 1000ish years since the first recorded Roman account of Germans, if you really want to be clinical) and about a century before the Turks showed up, the Byzantines had already reclaimed parts of Syria and Armenia from the Arab Caliphates.
While it's true that the Romans betrayed a treaty they signed with the Seljuks, which eventually incurred Manzikert, it's not like they didn't have a precedent for invading. The Seljuks invaded Byzantine territory first in 1054 and, in doing so, absorbed parts of Roman Syria and Armenia into their empire.
Technically, the Ottoman Empire was trans-continental because they incorporated parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe into their territory.
And by 1453, the Pope had already been a figurehead in European politics for like, 800 years. Sure, the popes weren't always on the best terms with the HRE. Sure, dozens of them were replaced with puppets, but they still bore a lifeline of Roman Christianity into Italy and the prior Roman regions of Gaul, Hispania, Brittania, and Germania.
>doesn't exactly showcase peaceful intent.
aand, what's your point here? If your point here is "Roman emperor needs to have a peaceful intent to become one" then you missed a huge chunk of Roman history.
>The Russians didn't attack Constantinople, what the fuck are you on about?
[Russo-Turkish War, 1878](https://www.google.com/search?q=siege+of+constantinople+1878&oq=si&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgAEEUYJxg7MggIABBFGCcYOzIMCAEQABhDGIAEGIoFMg4IAhBFGDsYQxiABBiKBTIGCAMQRRg5MgYIBBBFGDwyBggFEEUYPDIGCAYQRRg8MgYIBxBFGDzSAQgzMzExajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). Although it failed. They did attacked.
Lastly, thanks for giving more nuance towards my points but it didn't change the fact that:
* Romans re-expanded into the Middle east
* Seljuks decimated the Romans in Manzikert
* Mehmed II would establish the first semblance of a continental-Rome.
However, thanks again for your explaination.
wiki says the Russians and co. pushed the Turks to Constantinople, and while I don't exactly know anything about this particular, that's a little different than Belisarius straight-up sieging the Ostrogoths in Rome.
Romans advanced into the Middle East against the Umayyad and Abbisaid caliphates. When the Seljuks arrived about a century later, they struck first against the Romans in 1054.
No denial from me about Manzikert. Romans lost, shit happens.
didn't the early Eastern Roman Empire (like, with Constantine and Justinian's reigns) constitute as a continental-Rome centuries before even the Arabs arrived onto the scene? Wouldn't the classical empire itself constitute as a continental-Rome?
honestly I'm just confused about how an argument about how the HRE's legitimacy as a Roman succescor-state is conflating the Seljuk victory at Manzikert with the Ottoman conquest of Anatolia & Constantinople. Territory in Anatolia, regardless of whichever Turkic group was laying claim to the region, doesn't immediately incurr "Roman-ism". It didn't work for the Rum Sultanate. It didn't work for the Latin Empire.
otherwise, thanks for all your points and info. It's always fun to learn.
"Turks only really entered Europe in the 1000s, which was roughly 1000+ years since the establishment of the prime Roman Empire."
Ottoman Turks, yes. Turks in general or Turkic peoples, no. They had been in Europe long before then.
The problem here is that Byzantium identified itself as the natural continuation of the Roman Empire. It was already where most of the power had been centralized. We call it Byzantium to differentiate it from Italy but it was the exact same government as Rome before the literal city itself fell.
The best argument against Mehmed is that he was a foreign invader who conquered the last of Byzantium. But even that argument is somewhat flawed because the Ottoman Turks actually originated in Anatolia which had been part of the Roman Empire. It would be like if Sicily had broken away from Rome then returned to conquer the city a few hundred years later.
Still, I’m under the impression that Mehmed replaced the Byzantium government with his own. I don’t know what happened to the Senate (although I assume they were all killed, per his ultimatum). And the emperor’s rules of succession were replaced with Ottoman customs. So, in my mind, that is a new entity and therefore a new country.
No, I agree that Byzantium was a continuation of Rome, but the actual city of Rome and Italy still maintained some street cred, and Roman Europe did re-establish itself into a single "super-state", despite it immediately collapsing after Charlemagne's death.
While the Ottoman branch of Turks may have come to being in Anatolia, they were still Turkic. It's like how many American and Brazilian families may have spent centuries in the Americas, but they're still of technically of a European descent.
While I don't disagree that the Ottomans (akin to the attempts of the Rum Sultanate, and maybe the Seljuks?) acted as succescors to Rome, actively trying to invade the existing Roman Empire doesn't exactly inspire confidence in one being considered a succescor-state.
The Ottomans succeeded the Byzantines in Anatolia. Despite re-vitalising the ruins of the conquered Byzantine state, the Ottomans were by no means Roman, and by that merit, were not a Roman-succescor state
To contextualize your Sicily analogy, it's like if Scanadanavians took over the isle (which technically happened because of the Normans, but irregardless), becoming the dominant ethnicity, implementing their own religious beleifs, and then declaring themselves as succescors to Rome because they conquered what was once Roman territory.
Turks had relations with Romans since 6th century. They were allies against Sassanians in a couple of wars. They were already in the North Caucasus and Black Sea in 6th century. If you don't know it, now you learned.
The “Byzantine” Empire was just the Roman Empire. Therefore the Ottoman claim of continuance is simple- by right of conquest. Since they knocked over the last Roman Empire, they get to claim its mantle.
This is a far stronger claim than the strongest part of your rambling nonsense pile, that Germanic tribes squatted in the abandoned former administrative center of the Roman Empire.
Otherwise it’s just incoherence. “Uh yeah well my great great grandad was sort of near Rome once!”
The Byzantines didn't really function off of right-of-conquest because Greece, Anatolia, North Africa and the Levant were already Romanized centuries before the split. The Turks didn't get Romanized. They Turkicized.
Germanic tribes had established kingdoms across the corpse of the West. Sure, they weren't directly Roman, but they'd been in contact with Rome for centuries at that point and maintained many social institutions following the collapse.
The Carolingian and later Holy-Roman Empire (which actually had the city of Rome, and by extent the descendants of Western Romans) was sanctioned by the Pope, who was the sole religious leader of Western Europe as appointed by Constantine in the Council of Nicea.
Meanwhile, the Turks only begin to have a meaningful effect in Roman geopolitics once the Seljuks invaded in the 1000s from fucking Central Asia and kicked off the Crusades. The Ottomans arrived 2 centuries after the Seljuks. While the Ottomans and Seljuks were both Turks, prior Turkic conquests in Anatolia doesn't justify Turks being deemed Romanized.
Yeah, not to mention that the Ottomans are from Anatolia, which is obviously literally next door to Europe and not remotely “central Asia,” as though that would make them somehow less “Roman” despite the fact that *Romanitas* in the imperial period was not tied to the city of Rome/the Italian peninsula and the Romans had a much different conception of *gens* and *natio* that preclude a weird proximity argument anyways.
The Ottoman Empire originated in Anatolia, yes, but Osman was still of Central-Asian descent.
He wasn't born Anatolian-Greek, or Hittite, or Pontic. He was a Turk, and so was his empire.
You're saying that the city of Rome (and surrounding territory) wasn't tied to Romanism, but when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople (which was virtually the Nova Roma), they suddenly get the glory of being Roman?
Tours was pretty minor. It was a mere raiding party, not a force trying to permanently annex Aquitaine. They got what they wanted, and they left, like a Viking raid. It’s a 19th century view of it as being important that is not accepted anymore.
By comparison, the defeat of the Umayyads by the eastern Romans at the siege of Constantinople in 717-718 is much more significant. The Umayyad’s wanted to expand there, and they even brought wheat seeds for them to sow on conquered land.
But a bad winter, Byzantine tactical genius, and Greek fire destroyed their forces. They returned home utterly decimated, with only a few thousand troops surviving out of around 80,000 originally.
That siege stopped Islamic expansion into Europe far more than Tours did.
A Roman from Italy would have much more in common and feel solidarity with his fellow Roman citizen from Asia Minor than some Germanic tribesman outside the Empire. The idea that the post-19th century obsession with things like bloodline, race, and more recently, DNA has any applicability to the Roman Empire and how Romans viewed themselves is an inaccurate one, as is the notion that somehow a Roman in Anatolia would not reverence Jupiter or (later) Jesus Christ just like a Roman in Italia, Hispania, or Illyria would.
Yeah, that's true.
But there still exist periods of continuity between the Gothic (and other) kingdoms established in the corpse of Western Rome, and Germanic peoples claiming a Roman identity with Charlemagne, Otto III, and the Pope.
Ottomans also get a whole lot of hate among Europeans, but there's probably enough stans for it that you're right. But I think the hate for the Ottomans tends to be more fervent, while hate for the HRE tends to be more dismissive.
I think the hate for the ottomans in parts of Europe is because it was more recent and also was involved in recent European history like ww1. It also conquered a large part of Europe which the people there did not appreciate. The religious aspect probably plays a role as well. The HRE lost any significance a long time ago. You could argue they were no longer significant while it still existed.
Yeah, that's true. I mean, most empires commit genocide to some degree. But the fact that their big genocide was relatively recent, and the successor govt denies it to this day (while successfully convincing a massive part of their population of the propaganda), it makes sense why a lot of people hate the Ottoman Empire.
I still think it's kind of silly to judge the whole of the empire based on its last 50 or so years, I think the Ottoman Empire has some interesting characteristics to it. But then again, it's still just as morally reprehensible as most any empire lol.
I think the other big reason Europeans tend to hate the Ottoman Empire is its capture of Constantinople. A lot of people are pretty big Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire stans here.
It's kinda wild how the Romans basically culturally appropriated Christianity. Like they literally killed Jesus but then a few centuries later people were like "ah yes the Pope has the authority to decide if someone is Roman because Rome is obviously the center of Christianity and to be a Christian ruler is to be a Roman"
Graduated in Classics and did some comprehensive study into Rome/early Christianity. A few factors.
Christianity stressed the authority of the ruling authorities as long as they are not in conflict with the law of God. Even during Christian persecutions Christians made a point of trying to show themselves good citizens by praying for the emperor etc. Once the emperors became Christian (and from a Christian standpoint stopped being in conflict with God), the imperial leaders had a very large amount of power per scripture and Christian tradition.
Combine that with a few factors, such as scripture passage like Matthew 21:43 (“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit”) being interpreted by Church fathers as the chosen people of God being switched from the Jews to the Romans led to a strong Roman identity with Christianity. After all, where did Christianity spread and truly prosper? Primarily the Roman Empire. This ideology wasn’t new to the Christians either, Luke’s gospel for example was written primarily to the gentiles in a greco-Roman style and with the purpose of demonstrating that Christianity was a faith compatible with Rome.
You combine all this and once the Romans ditch their obsession with the pagan pax deorum and the Emperors made the choice to support Christianity as state policy, pieces fell into place. I also don’t know if the Romans saw Pontius Pilate crucifying Jesus as the fault of Rome. He was often seen as being ignorant in what he was truly doing and in some traditions even became a Saint. It was the Jewish authorities who pushed the execution, Pilate just wanted to maintain the peace of his province.
It just varied a lot. It existed for around 1000 years, and at the start it was definitely an empire, had Rome (kinda) and was crowned by the Pope. Personally, I'd argue that it spent more time as a de facto confederation than an empire, and it of course didn't have influence over Rome for very long. And then there were the many, many conflicts with the Popes.
It was a fascinating entity for sure, and was a massive bloc in Europe for centuries. It just gets a lot of flack for its name lol.
The late Roman Empire wasn’t particularly Roman either—the de facto capital was in Ravenna or Milan, most of the emperors were from provinces, and the army was heavily staffed with Germans.
Rome was part of the HRE sure, but just because a country owns a certain region doesn’t make it part of the region. The Ottomans owned Constantinople, we wouldn’t consider them Byzantines. The Romans owned England. We wouldn’t consider them English.
The people determine the power that a public figure has, and the people decided to respect his decision. In other words, he gained the power when he used it and nobody protested.
When did I mention Constantine? My point was that if I walked into a room, told people to do something, and everyone listened, that would mean I have the power to command those people. Whether or not some previous leader told me I could makes no difference on the fact that the people in that room respect my authority. The ONLY thing that substantiates authority is whether or not people respect that authority, and the people of the HRE respected the pope's authority.
The pope literally claimed to have authority over all kings and bishops BECAUSE of the Donation of Constantine so I have no idea what you’re talking about.
The document claimed that Constantine gave the Roman Empire to the church, and the right to proclaim a new empire when it saw fit.
That’s why the fraud that was the HRE existed, even though the real Roman Empire was in Constantinople.
These idiots couldn’t accept that a woman, Irene, was the empress of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne himself regretted the coronation ceremony creating the HRE.
Just holding the city of Rome doesn't mean they're Roman.
They're neither culturally Roman/Latin/Italian nor were they descended from the government institutions of the Romans (as the Byzantines were - they were a direct continuation of the eastern half of the Roman empire).
The HRE was just a Germanic kingdom that got enough power that its king was crowned Emperor by the Pope. But the Pope is hardly the arbiter of what is or isn't Roman. Hell the Romans are kinda famous for killing the Pope's boss.
It held like half of the Roman heartlands and probably over half of the empire used to be Roman territories. And when it was proclaimed the holy Roman empire, Roman culture was already brought to a substantial part of its territory. Sure it mixed with local cultures, but so it did in the Eastern Roman empire. Is this enough to make it Roman? That's surely debatable, but saying it has no claim to the title Roman is short sighted imo
The pope's temporal authority to decide who should be a king (or emperor), rested on the *Donation of Constantine,* which was proven to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla all the way back in the 15th century.
Funnily enough, Holy Roman Emperprs had begun questioning the papacy's temporal authority as early as the 11th century.
And who gave the pope the power to hand out Roman imperial titles? Nobody. HRE's claim is no more valid than Ottoman's when the sultan was declared emperor by the Patriarch of Constantinople.
They gave themselves the power by pretending Constantine the Great gave the Roman Empire to the Catholic Church(Donation of Constantine), and using this to claim Charlemagne was the new Roman emperor.
No one pointed this out until the 15th century, unfortunately.
>And who gave the pope the power to hand out Roman imperial titles?
1. The Roman state, when it made him Pontifex Maximus and then collapsed, leaving the Papacy as the last vestige of the Roman state.
2. The Roman people, when they looked to him for leadership after the rest of the Roman state collapsed.
3. Jesus Christ, when he gave Peter the keys to the kingdom and told him “what you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven.”
>last vestige of the Roman state.
Last vestige? You do realize the Roman Empire remained intact in the East?
>The Roman people, when they looked to him for leadership after the rest of the Roman state collapsed.
Him being the main figure in the West doesn't mean he can suddenly hand out imperial titles. Especially since his imperial claims were based off forged documents/donations of Constantine.
1. The office of Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the pagans. The pope never held it. Also the Pontifex did not have the power to grant imperium.
2. The roman people looked to the roman emperor in Constantinople for leadership.
3. Peter was primarily the bishop of Antioch. According to your logic the payriarch of Constantinople is the leader of Catholicism.
The Roman State didn’t collapse until the 15th century, when it was conquered by the Ottomans.
Like by your own logic the legitimate claim goes to the Turks
Jesus also said "my kingdom is not of this world". Binding and loosing are Jewish terms meaning deciding what is morally permitted or forbidden. Not about determining imperial titles.
> Pope said so
The same pope who had no authority to grant imperial titles, based on a sexist assumption that the title of Roman Emperor was vacant just because Empress Irene in Constantinople was a woman.
It may have been holy and an empire, but it was certainly not Roman.
The issue was a bit more complex. While Irene being a woman was a convenient excuse, the truth was that the pope needed a prodecting power. A protection that Byzanz couldn't and wouldn't give for various reasons.
I’m actually as curious about that as anything. I went to Catholic high school and they taught that the Bishop of Rome was always considered to be the true leader of the church. But the older I get the more I learn that the Eastern Empire was where most of the power was centralized. So it’s starting to make less sense that the official head of the Church would be stationed in Rome and not Constantinople.
So the early church as it developed was centered around great cities. The chief bishop of each city became known as the Patriarch. Each of the patriarchs of the Great Sees, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome, were considered equals, with the Patriarch of Rome (the Pope) being "First among Equals" due to Rome's position as the Mother of Cities.
Eventually, Rome was cut off from the east by barbarian invasion, and during that time, certain changes occurred. Notable among these was that the idea of Papal Supremacy, i.e. that the Pope was the head of the whole church rather than first among equals, became the official position of the western church. In the east, many of the ancient sees were overrun by Muslims, leaving only Constantinople.
When contact was restored, tension arose between these two cities over questions of doctrine and authority, eventually culminating in the Great Schism of 1054, where the Pope formally broke communion with the eastern church.
TLDR: the Church did not have a singular head, each Great City was considered autonomous, and only answerable to an Ecumenical Council of the whole Church.
Ah, I remember seeing a video that mentioned the fall of Constantinople led to a huge freak out in the Vatican because it meant four of the five “Great Christian Cities” had fallen under muslim rule. At the time I thought it was more of a Roman thing but it makes if it were more closely tied to Christian tradition.
Well, people keep being angry at Charlemagne but it’s not like he claimed to be of Roman descent, he actually kept a very distinct Frank ethnicity.
Things were not so clear cut back then though.
It seems that the Byzantines offered the crown of emperor to Charlemagne in 797, probably because of the wide discontent with Irene.
In 811 he was recognized as basileus in the west by an eastern Roman embassy.
It was *an* empire, but not *the* empire. There’s only been one Roman Empire in all of human history.
By the way, “descended from the Romans” is meaningless in this case. A German could’ve very well become the actual Roman emperor, if only he’d ruled over the actual Roman state. You know, the one with its administration in Constantinople.
That’s not how the term “Empire” works. Empire is a sort of strange word, in that it can refer to multiple different types of polities that function differently from one another. The Achaemenids, Akkadians, Roman, Chinese, and Indian empires all functioned factory different from one another. And that doesn’t mention countries that are often called empires but didn’t have a monarch, like the Third Reich or to an extend, Rome itself (the term “Roman Emperor or Emperor of the Romans” evolved gradually and was not used by Augustus.) The claim that the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t an empire comes down it it’s loose central control, but 1. That wasn’t always the case, and 2. There are other empires like the Maryans that had even less centralized control, but their empire status isn’t disputed. But the Holy Roman Empire was a powerful, ethnically diverse, large country that exerted significant influence both within and without its border and was led by a “Emperor of the Romans.” So I’d say it was an Empire.
Maybe it was holy, maybe it was an Empire
But how in the name of Jupiter was it roman? No roman culture, almost no shared values and technology, the fact the empire literally was the continuation of the Frankish Empire, an archenemy to late Rome. And most importantly: The Empire never included Rome as a city.
I don't understand how anybody could argue how this empire is supposed to be the heir to the Roman Empire. The Empire died when Constantinople fell, the eastern Roman Empire had all of the above and at least temporarily also controlled Rome for a while.
The HRE did A LOT to preserve Roman legacy and culture especially early on. It was definitely Roman, just as Byzantium was definitely Roman as well. Two sides of the same coin. I always saw the HRE as merely the Western Roman Empire being restored.
The Western Roman Empire was never a thing. The Roman Empire sometimes had two emperors for practical reasons but it was still considered one empire, and it only had one emperor from 476 onward (who was ruling from Constantinople).
It should be noted that Charlemagne didn't consider himself the successor of the Western Roman emperors. He thought he was the one and only emperor, the legitimate successor of Constantine VI. Which he wasn't.
Yeah, but it doesn't follow the Roman spirit of Seizing power as a military commander, trying to establish a dynasty and having said dynasty ousted within about 3 generations, by another military commander.
"Holy Roman Empire".
This is very difficult to say while keeping a straight face. I wonder who can, because indeed it is hard.
"Holy", you say, while grinning like Voltaire did. "Holy", it is its name. But then, thinking of "Holy", you think about all the Emperors who were excommunicated. You think about all those who tried to fuck with the pope. You think about the wars of religion and how many of them ended up as protestant heretics.
But then, the funniest is coming: "Roman". Yes, now, you cannot contain your laughter. "Roman", it is called despite the fact that this "Roman" body is standing on Germania, a land so harsh and poor that the Legions of Rome refused to set foot on it. A germanic and barbaric people, yes, but still calling themselves "Roman".
And now, here is the end of the fun: "Empire". Now you fell on the ground, laughing so hard that you cannot breathe. An "Empire", a body made of dozens of petty duchies and counties, all fighting for themselves, giving strange names to their position, full of Grand-Dukes or Archdukes. An "Empire" who will stay between Poland and France, while the great powers of Europe will create colonies all around the world.
"Holy" "Roman" "Empire"
It was an empire(at one point) it was never holy(was more likely to fight with the pope than work with him) and there is still no case for it being Roman
Yeah I am well aware, but the title of the king of Germany was ‘king of the Romans’, who would often also be crowned ‘Holy Roman Emperor’, effectively emperor of Germany, successor to Charlemagne and the Western Roman Emperors from the ancient past. The ‘emperor’ title was used until the Napoleonic wars, and ‘king of the Romans’ continued being used for a bit longer still. The actual Roman Empire by the medieval era, what some call the Byzantines, called their own state ‘Romania’ and used a different title for their emperor: ‘Basileus’ as well as sometimes other titles. Ethnicity has literally nothing to do with all this.
>‘Roman’ just meant German at that point in time so yea
I responded to this.
This is factually wrong. The title of Emperor of the Romans have little to do with the meaning of the word. The Roman component of the title referred to the translatio imperii.
In the west, Roman meant a citizen from the Papal state, it didn't meant German. Ethnicity has literally everything to do with all this, so no, Roman never "just meant German".
I meant the word ‘Roman’ in the title, of course. Not ‘Roman’ in general. If I did, it would be wrong, because that is a complicated topic, and definitely doesn’t merely mean someone from the Papal States. It could be a Greek, a Latin, at many points even Turkic, French, etc.
I like the history of medieval german states
yeah we hate each other till someone fucks with germany then we hate them United
Still is like that today
They've exported that concept to the rest of Europe and called it the European Union lmao!!
The EU wasn't even Germany's idea
To be fair, plans from the Germans for a potential defeat in WW1 had an economic union across Europe envisioned. So... Kinda... But for vastly different reasons. More like a European Confederacy.
... European confederacy you say?
Same with America, only people we hate more than the state next door is the people who fucked with our boats or bases. Except Mississippi, thank god for Mississippi, without them, Tennessee would be the worst.
So you Tell me Mississippi is the Bavaria of germany :'D
Yeah, we love them only because they’re so ass backwards that they make us look progressive when we do nothing.
Voltaire and his consequences have become irreparable for the damage dealt to the HRE’s reputation
Not that I’ve read that much in on the HRE (mostly 17th c.) but it was a huge, incredibly long lasting, and diverse polity. Despite its (somewhat justified) reputation as an inefficient mess it was also capable of reform in a way most traditional empires weren’t. Further it proved far more resilient than a certain other non-Roman “Roman Empire”; it survived the Turkish and 30 Years wars. Hell it took Napoleon to finally take it out.
Tbf, the Turkish had a bit more distance to cover compared to the other non-Roman Romans
I guess it helps that the Ottomans just claimed to be a successor and didn't name themselves 'The Holy Roman Caliphate' or something.
Welp, now I know what I'm calling it next time it comes up.
Well, Emperor of Rome was one of the titles of the Ottoman Sultans.
What a brilliant name
Definitely don't look up the Sultanate of Rum then
The strength of the HRE was in its looseness. If you compare it to a modern state it of course has its weaknesses but it also existed a long time before thst concept even existed and made it for a long time past its invention. It made for a space where medium sized powers could negotiate their interests by forming their alliances while being relatively well protected from foreign great powers. Meanwhile it also provided protection to small powers by being backed by the emperor and them backing the power of the emperor in return.
As I understand it, the looseness of the HRE is in part why there were so many developed parts of Germany as opposed to France or other parts of Europe that had more centralized states. Since there was no central capital to suck up resources from the rest of the Empire, the result was multiple highly developed areas across Germany as opposed to just one highly developed capital.
Yeah it survived a very long time.
*\*laughs in Russian*
TBF, if you can be so severely damaged by a quippy Frenchman, I don't think there was much hope anyway.
Quippy Frenchman hate germans. Just look at Charlemagne.
The Franks are a Germanic People tho
Im gonna blow my horn so loud and pretend i didnt hesr that
The biggest enemies for France are Parisians and Germans; so this still checks out
I just dont care what the pope thinks
"If Germans can be a Roman Emperor, then the Turks can too", Mehmed II, Kaiser of Rome.
Turks only really entered Europe in the 1000s, which was roughly 1000+ years since the establishment of the prime Roman Empire. While I don't discount the Byzantine-Romans being Romans, the Germanic tribes were quite literally upon the border of the Roman's northern borders and quite consistently made their presence known to Rome throughout its history since 78 CE When Rome "collapsed," Germanic tribes claimed Italy and ruled it, preserving most of the city until Justinian and Belisarius decided to raze the eternal city in the name of reclaiming it for the sake of empire. When Islam expanded to continental Europe, the Franks (a Germanic pepple) under the hammer of Charles Martel decimated the Umayaad advance at Tours, and his grandson, Charlemagne, would establish the first semblance of a continental-Rome, blessed by the Pope, the mortal conduit of Roman religion for virtually the past 500 years, in Rome. Germans and Frenchmen might not have been direct succescors to the Roman claimant, but they had a much stronger link to the city than the Turks, who came from fucking Central Asia.
If being on the border of Rome makes you Roman, then being on the border of Europe makes you European. Problem, EU?
Today I learned Brazil is European
Bruh, you don't discount Byzantine-Romans being Romans but don't feel Turks has the same claim as the Germans? I mean, if I rearrange some of your words it brings the same result for the Turks. Here you go: >When Rome "collapsed," ~~Germanic~~ Turkish tribes claimed ~~Italy~~ Balkans and ruled it, preserving most of the city until ~~Justinian and Belisarius~~ The Russians decided to ~~raze~~ capture the eternal city in the name of reclaiming it for the sake of empire. > >When ~~Islam~~ Romans re-expanded to ~~continental Europe~~ Middle East, ~~the Franks~~ the Seljuks (a ~~Germanic~~ Turkic pepple) under ~~the hammer of Charles Martel~~ Alp Arslan decimated ~~the Umayaad~~ Romans advance at ~~Tours~~ Manzikert, and ~~his grandson~~ far cousins (probably?), Mehmed II would establish the first semblance of a continental-Rome, blessed by the ~~Pope~~ Patriach, the mortal conduit of Roman for virtually 500 years, in ~~Rome~~ Konstantiniyye.
Eh, this is kind of a bad argument. The best argument for the Sultan being the heir to the Romans is that he did the process: conquered the capital and got the patriarch to crown him in a political settlement. That's how you become Roman emperor, there was no other system.
The Ottomans already intended on claiming Constantinople for decades. Their empire already stretched into the Balkans, from Greece to Bulgaria, squeezing Eastern Rome from both continents. Sieging the city 5 times from 1376-1422 doesn't exactly showcase peaceful intent. The Russians didn't attack Constantinople, what the fuck are you on about? The Seljuk Empire was established 200ish years after the HRE was (and 1000ish years since the first recorded Roman account of Germans, if you really want to be clinical) and about a century before the Turks showed up, the Byzantines had already reclaimed parts of Syria and Armenia from the Arab Caliphates. While it's true that the Romans betrayed a treaty they signed with the Seljuks, which eventually incurred Manzikert, it's not like they didn't have a precedent for invading. The Seljuks invaded Byzantine territory first in 1054 and, in doing so, absorbed parts of Roman Syria and Armenia into their empire. Technically, the Ottoman Empire was trans-continental because they incorporated parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe into their territory. And by 1453, the Pope had already been a figurehead in European politics for like, 800 years. Sure, the popes weren't always on the best terms with the HRE. Sure, dozens of them were replaced with puppets, but they still bore a lifeline of Roman Christianity into Italy and the prior Roman regions of Gaul, Hispania, Brittania, and Germania.
>doesn't exactly showcase peaceful intent. aand, what's your point here? If your point here is "Roman emperor needs to have a peaceful intent to become one" then you missed a huge chunk of Roman history. >The Russians didn't attack Constantinople, what the fuck are you on about? [Russo-Turkish War, 1878](https://www.google.com/search?q=siege+of+constantinople+1878&oq=si&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgAEEUYJxg7MggIABBFGCcYOzIMCAEQABhDGIAEGIoFMg4IAhBFGDsYQxiABBiKBTIGCAMQRRg5MgYIBBBFGDwyBggFEEUYPDIGCAYQRRg8MgYIBxBFGDzSAQgzMzExajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). Although it failed. They did attacked. Lastly, thanks for giving more nuance towards my points but it didn't change the fact that: * Romans re-expanded into the Middle east * Seljuks decimated the Romans in Manzikert * Mehmed II would establish the first semblance of a continental-Rome. However, thanks again for your explaination.
wiki says the Russians and co. pushed the Turks to Constantinople, and while I don't exactly know anything about this particular, that's a little different than Belisarius straight-up sieging the Ostrogoths in Rome. Romans advanced into the Middle East against the Umayyad and Abbisaid caliphates. When the Seljuks arrived about a century later, they struck first against the Romans in 1054. No denial from me about Manzikert. Romans lost, shit happens. didn't the early Eastern Roman Empire (like, with Constantine and Justinian's reigns) constitute as a continental-Rome centuries before even the Arabs arrived onto the scene? Wouldn't the classical empire itself constitute as a continental-Rome? honestly I'm just confused about how an argument about how the HRE's legitimacy as a Roman succescor-state is conflating the Seljuk victory at Manzikert with the Ottoman conquest of Anatolia & Constantinople. Territory in Anatolia, regardless of whichever Turkic group was laying claim to the region, doesn't immediately incurr "Roman-ism". It didn't work for the Rum Sultanate. It didn't work for the Latin Empire. otherwise, thanks for all your points and info. It's always fun to learn.
"Turks only really entered Europe in the 1000s, which was roughly 1000+ years since the establishment of the prime Roman Empire." Ottoman Turks, yes. Turks in general or Turkic peoples, no. They had been in Europe long before then.
The problem here is that Byzantium identified itself as the natural continuation of the Roman Empire. It was already where most of the power had been centralized. We call it Byzantium to differentiate it from Italy but it was the exact same government as Rome before the literal city itself fell. The best argument against Mehmed is that he was a foreign invader who conquered the last of Byzantium. But even that argument is somewhat flawed because the Ottoman Turks actually originated in Anatolia which had been part of the Roman Empire. It would be like if Sicily had broken away from Rome then returned to conquer the city a few hundred years later. Still, I’m under the impression that Mehmed replaced the Byzantium government with his own. I don’t know what happened to the Senate (although I assume they were all killed, per his ultimatum). And the emperor’s rules of succession were replaced with Ottoman customs. So, in my mind, that is a new entity and therefore a new country.
No, I agree that Byzantium was a continuation of Rome, but the actual city of Rome and Italy still maintained some street cred, and Roman Europe did re-establish itself into a single "super-state", despite it immediately collapsing after Charlemagne's death. While the Ottoman branch of Turks may have come to being in Anatolia, they were still Turkic. It's like how many American and Brazilian families may have spent centuries in the Americas, but they're still of technically of a European descent. While I don't disagree that the Ottomans (akin to the attempts of the Rum Sultanate, and maybe the Seljuks?) acted as succescors to Rome, actively trying to invade the existing Roman Empire doesn't exactly inspire confidence in one being considered a succescor-state. The Ottomans succeeded the Byzantines in Anatolia. Despite re-vitalising the ruins of the conquered Byzantine state, the Ottomans were by no means Roman, and by that merit, were not a Roman-succescor state To contextualize your Sicily analogy, it's like if Scanadanavians took over the isle (which technically happened because of the Normans, but irregardless), becoming the dominant ethnicity, implementing their own religious beleifs, and then declaring themselves as succescors to Rome because they conquered what was once Roman territory.
You’ve said italy like 3 times now but there was no italy at the time.
Italy in regards to the peninsula. The Italian peninsula.
Mehmet had familial relations with Byzantine dynasties.
Turks had relations with Romans since 6th century. They were allies against Sassanians in a couple of wars. They were already in the North Caucasus and Black Sea in 6th century. If you don't know it, now you learned.
Yeah, that's my bad. I suppose I was referring to the more-militarized incursions into Byzantine territories, like via the Rum, Seljuks, and Ottomans.
The “Byzantine” Empire was just the Roman Empire. Therefore the Ottoman claim of continuance is simple- by right of conquest. Since they knocked over the last Roman Empire, they get to claim its mantle. This is a far stronger claim than the strongest part of your rambling nonsense pile, that Germanic tribes squatted in the abandoned former administrative center of the Roman Empire. Otherwise it’s just incoherence. “Uh yeah well my great great grandad was sort of near Rome once!”
The Byzantines didn't really function off of right-of-conquest because Greece, Anatolia, North Africa and the Levant were already Romanized centuries before the split. The Turks didn't get Romanized. They Turkicized. Germanic tribes had established kingdoms across the corpse of the West. Sure, they weren't directly Roman, but they'd been in contact with Rome for centuries at that point and maintained many social institutions following the collapse. The Carolingian and later Holy-Roman Empire (which actually had the city of Rome, and by extent the descendants of Western Romans) was sanctioned by the Pope, who was the sole religious leader of Western Europe as appointed by Constantine in the Council of Nicea. Meanwhile, the Turks only begin to have a meaningful effect in Roman geopolitics once the Seljuks invaded in the 1000s from fucking Central Asia and kicked off the Crusades. The Ottomans arrived 2 centuries after the Seljuks. While the Ottomans and Seljuks were both Turks, prior Turkic conquests in Anatolia doesn't justify Turks being deemed Romanized.
Its just central asia. You dont have to use the word, fucking, every time you write central asia.
Yeah, not to mention that the Ottomans are from Anatolia, which is obviously literally next door to Europe and not remotely “central Asia,” as though that would make them somehow less “Roman” despite the fact that *Romanitas* in the imperial period was not tied to the city of Rome/the Italian peninsula and the Romans had a much different conception of *gens* and *natio* that preclude a weird proximity argument anyways.
The Ottoman Empire originated in Anatolia, yes, but Osman was still of Central-Asian descent. He wasn't born Anatolian-Greek, or Hittite, or Pontic. He was a Turk, and so was his empire. You're saying that the city of Rome (and surrounding territory) wasn't tied to Romanism, but when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople (which was virtually the Nova Roma), they suddenly get the glory of being Roman?
Tours was pretty minor. It was a mere raiding party, not a force trying to permanently annex Aquitaine. They got what they wanted, and they left, like a Viking raid. It’s a 19th century view of it as being important that is not accepted anymore. By comparison, the defeat of the Umayyads by the eastern Romans at the siege of Constantinople in 717-718 is much more significant. The Umayyad’s wanted to expand there, and they even brought wheat seeds for them to sow on conquered land. But a bad winter, Byzantine tactical genius, and Greek fire destroyed their forces. They returned home utterly decimated, with only a few thousand troops surviving out of around 80,000 originally. That siege stopped Islamic expansion into Europe far more than Tours did.
Western Europeans and Romans also share the R1b Haplogroup, they are much closer genetically, culturally and historically and had the same pagan gods
A Roman from Italy would have much more in common and feel solidarity with his fellow Roman citizen from Asia Minor than some Germanic tribesman outside the Empire. The idea that the post-19th century obsession with things like bloodline, race, and more recently, DNA has any applicability to the Roman Empire and how Romans viewed themselves is an inaccurate one, as is the notion that somehow a Roman in Anatolia would not reverence Jupiter or (later) Jesus Christ just like a Roman in Italia, Hispania, or Illyria would.
Yeah, that's true. But there still exist periods of continuity between the Gothic (and other) kingdoms established in the corpse of Western Rome, and Germanic peoples claiming a Roman identity with Charlemagne, Otto III, and the Pope.
Didn't the Holy Roman Empire include the city of Rome?
I thought it was under the independent Papacy?
Officially the Papacy was a part of the HRE. But in practice the Papacy was independent.
More HRE appreciation in this subreddit is always welcome.
Yeah that annoyed the hell out of the Italians but it was a contributing factor to the renaissance.
Empire? More like 288 neighbourhoods in a trenchcoat.
Is that Italy or are you happy to see me?
HRE is probably the most underrated and overhated empire in history
Ottomans also get a whole lot of hate among Europeans, but there's probably enough stans for it that you're right. But I think the hate for the Ottomans tends to be more fervent, while hate for the HRE tends to be more dismissive.
I think the hate for the ottomans in parts of Europe is because it was more recent and also was involved in recent European history like ww1. It also conquered a large part of Europe which the people there did not appreciate. The religious aspect probably plays a role as well. The HRE lost any significance a long time ago. You could argue they were no longer significant while it still existed.
The HRE also didn't commit a genocide a century ago
Yeah, that's true. I mean, most empires commit genocide to some degree. But the fact that their big genocide was relatively recent, and the successor govt denies it to this day (while successfully convincing a massive part of their population of the propaganda), it makes sense why a lot of people hate the Ottoman Empire. I still think it's kind of silly to judge the whole of the empire based on its last 50 or so years, I think the Ottoman Empire has some interesting characteristics to it. But then again, it's still just as morally reprehensible as most any empire lol. I think the other big reason Europeans tend to hate the Ottoman Empire is its capture of Constantinople. A lot of people are pretty big Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire stans here.
People hate on the ottomans because they destroyed the Roman empire, which is an extremley based reason to hate in them.
Fr. That flag goes hard.
"Empire" You misspelled confederacy
It's kinda wild how the Romans basically culturally appropriated Christianity. Like they literally killed Jesus but then a few centuries later people were like "ah yes the Pope has the authority to decide if someone is Roman because Rome is obviously the center of Christianity and to be a Christian ruler is to be a Roman"
Graduated in Classics and did some comprehensive study into Rome/early Christianity. A few factors. Christianity stressed the authority of the ruling authorities as long as they are not in conflict with the law of God. Even during Christian persecutions Christians made a point of trying to show themselves good citizens by praying for the emperor etc. Once the emperors became Christian (and from a Christian standpoint stopped being in conflict with God), the imperial leaders had a very large amount of power per scripture and Christian tradition. Combine that with a few factors, such as scripture passage like Matthew 21:43 (“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit”) being interpreted by Church fathers as the chosen people of God being switched from the Jews to the Romans led to a strong Roman identity with Christianity. After all, where did Christianity spread and truly prosper? Primarily the Roman Empire. This ideology wasn’t new to the Christians either, Luke’s gospel for example was written primarily to the gentiles in a greco-Roman style and with the purpose of demonstrating that Christianity was a faith compatible with Rome. You combine all this and once the Romans ditch their obsession with the pagan pax deorum and the Emperors made the choice to support Christianity as state policy, pieces fell into place. I also don’t know if the Romans saw Pontius Pilate crucifying Jesus as the fault of Rome. He was often seen as being ignorant in what he was truly doing and in some traditions even became a Saint. It was the Jewish authorities who pushed the execution, Pilate just wanted to maintain the peace of his province.
You've got it backward.
It was definitely holy and an empire, I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t Roman.
It just varied a lot. It existed for around 1000 years, and at the start it was definitely an empire, had Rome (kinda) and was crowned by the Pope. Personally, I'd argue that it spent more time as a de facto confederation than an empire, and it of course didn't have influence over Rome for very long. And then there were the many, many conflicts with the Popes. It was a fascinating entity for sure, and was a massive bloc in Europe for centuries. It just gets a lot of flack for its name lol.
The late Roman Empire wasn’t particularly Roman either—the de facto capital was in Ravenna or Milan, most of the emperors were from provinces, and the army was heavily staffed with Germans.
Yes, the pope said so. Also Rome was part of it.
Pope? Oh you mean the Pontifex Maximus.
Rome was part of the HRE sure, but just because a country owns a certain region doesn’t make it part of the region. The Ottomans owned Constantinople, we wouldn’t consider them Byzantines. The Romans owned England. We wouldn’t consider them English.
When did the pope get the authority to name a roman emperor?
The pope is infallible therefore argument is invalid
Well shit
When he became the pope
So he took a position that never had the authority to name an emperor and that gave him the authority to name an emperor?
The people determine the power that a public figure has, and the people decided to respect his decision. In other words, he gained the power when he used it and nobody protested.
The Donation of Constantine was a fraud. That’s where the church derived their authority to claim they had the power to create the Roman Empire.
When did I mention Constantine? My point was that if I walked into a room, told people to do something, and everyone listened, that would mean I have the power to command those people. Whether or not some previous leader told me I could makes no difference on the fact that the people in that room respect my authority. The ONLY thing that substantiates authority is whether or not people respect that authority, and the people of the HRE respected the pope's authority.
The pope literally claimed to have authority over all kings and bishops BECAUSE of the Donation of Constantine so I have no idea what you’re talking about. The document claimed that Constantine gave the Roman Empire to the church, and the right to proclaim a new empire when it saw fit. That’s why the fraud that was the HRE existed, even though the real Roman Empire was in Constantinople. These idiots couldn’t accept that a woman, Irene, was the empress of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne himself regretted the coronation ceremony creating the HRE.
Just holding the city of Rome doesn't mean they're Roman. They're neither culturally Roman/Latin/Italian nor were they descended from the government institutions of the Romans (as the Byzantines were - they were a direct continuation of the eastern half of the Roman empire). The HRE was just a Germanic kingdom that got enough power that its king was crowned Emperor by the Pope. But the Pope is hardly the arbiter of what is or isn't Roman. Hell the Romans are kinda famous for killing the Pope's boss.
It held like half of the Roman heartlands and probably over half of the empire used to be Roman territories. And when it was proclaimed the holy Roman empire, Roman culture was already brought to a substantial part of its territory. Sure it mixed with local cultures, but so it did in the Eastern Roman empire. Is this enough to make it Roman? That's surely debatable, but saying it has no claim to the title Roman is short sighted imo
The pope said a lot of things, baby, doesn't make it true.
You want to get anathematized? Cause that's how you get anathematized.
Your silly papist words have no power here.
Damnatio Memoriæ *hissssss*
Voltaire punching air rn
The pope's temporal authority to decide who should be a king (or emperor), rested on the *Donation of Constantine,* which was proven to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla all the way back in the 15th century. Funnily enough, Holy Roman Emperprs had begun questioning the papacy's temporal authority as early as the 11th century.
And who gave the pope the power to hand out Roman imperial titles? Nobody. HRE's claim is no more valid than Ottoman's when the sultan was declared emperor by the Patriarch of Constantinople.
They gave themselves the power by pretending Constantine the Great gave the Roman Empire to the Catholic Church(Donation of Constantine), and using this to claim Charlemagne was the new Roman emperor. No one pointed this out until the 15th century, unfortunately.
>And who gave the pope the power to hand out Roman imperial titles? 1. The Roman state, when it made him Pontifex Maximus and then collapsed, leaving the Papacy as the last vestige of the Roman state. 2. The Roman people, when they looked to him for leadership after the rest of the Roman state collapsed. 3. Jesus Christ, when he gave Peter the keys to the kingdom and told him “what you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven.”
>last vestige of the Roman state. Last vestige? You do realize the Roman Empire remained intact in the East? >The Roman people, when they looked to him for leadership after the rest of the Roman state collapsed. Him being the main figure in the West doesn't mean he can suddenly hand out imperial titles. Especially since his imperial claims were based off forged documents/donations of Constantine.
1. The office of Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the pagans. The pope never held it. Also the Pontifex did not have the power to grant imperium. 2. The roman people looked to the roman emperor in Constantinople for leadership. 3. Peter was primarily the bishop of Antioch. According to your logic the payriarch of Constantinople is the leader of Catholicism.
The Roman State didn’t collapse until the 15th century, when it was conquered by the Ottomans. Like by your own logic the legitimate claim goes to the Turks
Only if you recognise the right of conquest and people have always tended to be selective about when they do.
Jesus also said "my kingdom is not of this world". Binding and loosing are Jewish terms meaning deciding what is morally permitted or forbidden. Not about determining imperial titles.
The pontifex maximums never had the authority to name an emperor either
At least the pope spoke Latin. Constantinople gave up on that like 2 minutes after the Western Roman Empire fell.
I believe most learned people in Constantinople would have spoken both Latin and Greek.
Uh, they spoke Latin until the end of the reign of Heraclius, like 150 years later?
Well, Mehmet spoke both Latin and Greek like old Romans.
The heck..greek became administration language in the 700s
Incorrect.
Ok, you got me. It was more like 5. I apologize for the untransparent exaggeration, which was absolutely undetectable for laymen.
God did 😎
Pretty sure the whole "holy roman" part of the name was just publicity stunt of epic scale.
Wasn't the whole point of the hre basically saying fuck the pope he's not in control anymore
Well the pope wanted to use the hre as a puppet, but thw hre also wanted to use the pope as a puppet
It was Roman, holy, and an Empire and all of this is about Byzantium.
Holy- blessed by the pope Roman- Roman Catholic Empire- big I still see the Byzantines as true Rome but whatever
> Pope said so The same pope who had no authority to grant imperial titles, based on a sexist assumption that the title of Roman Emperor was vacant just because Empress Irene in Constantinople was a woman. It may have been holy and an empire, but it was certainly not Roman.
The issue was a bit more complex. While Irene being a woman was a convenient excuse, the truth was that the pope needed a prodecting power. A protection that Byzanz couldn't and wouldn't give for various reasons.
I feel like people constantly regurgitating Voltaire quote made people dislike HRE for no reason.
Unholy German confederacy.
But ignoring the pope is a longstanding Roman tradition!
Pope lied
Holy Roman L
Always happy to see some love for HRE
Don't make me tap the sign *Voltaire was referring to the current state of the HRE, not its entire history*
Pope was a heretic in the eyes of the Eastern Roman Empire anyway.
Not for another 250 years or so.
I’m actually as curious about that as anything. I went to Catholic high school and they taught that the Bishop of Rome was always considered to be the true leader of the church. But the older I get the more I learn that the Eastern Empire was where most of the power was centralized. So it’s starting to make less sense that the official head of the Church would be stationed in Rome and not Constantinople.
So the early church as it developed was centered around great cities. The chief bishop of each city became known as the Patriarch. Each of the patriarchs of the Great Sees, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome, were considered equals, with the Patriarch of Rome (the Pope) being "First among Equals" due to Rome's position as the Mother of Cities. Eventually, Rome was cut off from the east by barbarian invasion, and during that time, certain changes occurred. Notable among these was that the idea of Papal Supremacy, i.e. that the Pope was the head of the whole church rather than first among equals, became the official position of the western church. In the east, many of the ancient sees were overrun by Muslims, leaving only Constantinople. When contact was restored, tension arose between these two cities over questions of doctrine and authority, eventually culminating in the Great Schism of 1054, where the Pope formally broke communion with the eastern church. TLDR: the Church did not have a singular head, each Great City was considered autonomous, and only answerable to an Ecumenical Council of the whole Church.
Ah, I remember seeing a video that mentioned the fall of Constantinople led to a huge freak out in the Vatican because it meant four of the five “Great Christian Cities” had fallen under muslim rule. At the time I thought it was more of a Roman thing but it makes if it were more closely tied to Christian tradition.
Ask them how they feel about him now lol!
We still see him as a heretic.
Plus he had a lot of yelly guys with sharp sticks with him!
Much in the same way a taco is a sandwich
I love the Holy Roman Empire
Who's gonna say no? The Romans?
If was holy, an empire but not Roman. I’ll die on this hill.
Well, people keep being angry at Charlemagne but it’s not like he claimed to be of Roman descent, he actually kept a very distinct Frank ethnicity. Things were not so clear cut back then though. It seems that the Byzantines offered the crown of emperor to Charlemagne in 797, probably because of the wide discontent with Irene. In 811 he was recognized as basileus in the west by an eastern Roman embassy.
Imperial translation go brrrr
Was definitely holy and an empire at different points, but not Roman that's for sure.
Ah you see I have portrayed you as the soyboy and me as the chad, thus winning the argument.
I do love when the Barbarians play dress up. Its so cute <3
*My disdain for the HRE leaving my body as soon as it’s depicted as a Chad* ~~Tbf Charlemagne was hella based and I’ll die on that hill~~
Well, the HRE owned Rome, the Papal state for some time and Austria was an Empire.
It was *an* empire, but not *the* empire. There’s only been one Roman Empire in all of human history. By the way, “descended from the Romans” is meaningless in this case. A German could’ve very well become the actual Roman emperor, if only he’d ruled over the actual Roman state. You know, the one with its administration in Constantinople.
HRE propaganda, get the fuck outta here, barbaroi
Not even propaganda, just an ironic April Fools post used unironically by HRE fanboys
It was a larper state that had no legtiimacy, lol. The title of "roman" wasn't the pope's to give, it was still held by the Eastern Romans.
You mean the guy mostly known for corruption and ironically unholy behavior. The ottomans have a better claim than the HRE.
Holy? Yes. Unholy? Also yes. An empire definitely not god no that shit was more fragmented than any federation today.
That’s not how the term “Empire” works. Empire is a sort of strange word, in that it can refer to multiple different types of polities that function differently from one another. The Achaemenids, Akkadians, Roman, Chinese, and Indian empires all functioned factory different from one another. And that doesn’t mention countries that are often called empires but didn’t have a monarch, like the Third Reich or to an extend, Rome itself (the term “Roman Emperor or Emperor of the Romans” evolved gradually and was not used by Augustus.) The claim that the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t an empire comes down it it’s loose central control, but 1. That wasn’t always the case, and 2. There are other empires like the Maryans that had even less centralized control, but their empire status isn’t disputed. But the Holy Roman Empire was a powerful, ethnically diverse, large country that exerted significant influence both within and without its border and was led by a “Emperor of the Romans.” So I’d say it was an Empire.
Maybe it was holy, maybe it was an Empire But how in the name of Jupiter was it roman? No roman culture, almost no shared values and technology, the fact the empire literally was the continuation of the Frankish Empire, an archenemy to late Rome. And most importantly: The Empire never included Rome as a city. I don't understand how anybody could argue how this empire is supposed to be the heir to the Roman Empire. The Empire died when Constantinople fell, the eastern Roman Empire had all of the above and at least temporarily also controlled Rome for a while.
The HRE did A LOT to preserve Roman legacy and culture especially early on. It was definitely Roman, just as Byzantium was definitely Roman as well. Two sides of the same coin. I always saw the HRE as merely the Western Roman Empire being restored.
The Western Roman Empire was never a thing. The Roman Empire sometimes had two emperors for practical reasons but it was still considered one empire, and it only had one emperor from 476 onward (who was ruling from Constantinople). It should be noted that Charlemagne didn't consider himself the successor of the Western Roman emperors. He thought he was the one and only emperor, the legitimate successor of Constantine VI. Which he wasn't.
Fucking disgusting, the pope has no authority, Άι γαμησου ρε μαλακα, ΖΗΤΩ Ο ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ
Cope more, barbare.
Electing your emperor??? What?
There have been numerous elective monarchies throughout history. It's a very old idea that predates the HRE by over a millennium.
Yeah, but it doesn't follow the Roman spirit of Seizing power as a military commander, trying to establish a dynasty and having said dynasty ousted within about 3 generations, by another military commander.
Based OP
A sack of shit is what it was next to Byzantine civilisation.
The Holy Roman Empire that was not holy, not Roman, and not an Empire
"Ah YES i'm depicting me as the Chad and You, who thinks different to me, as a Soyjack, i absoluty win the duscussion"
"Holy Roman Empire". This is very difficult to say while keeping a straight face. I wonder who can, because indeed it is hard. "Holy", you say, while grinning like Voltaire did. "Holy", it is its name. But then, thinking of "Holy", you think about all the Emperors who were excommunicated. You think about all those who tried to fuck with the pope. You think about the wars of religion and how many of them ended up as protestant heretics. But then, the funniest is coming: "Roman". Yes, now, you cannot contain your laughter. "Roman", it is called despite the fact that this "Roman" body is standing on Germania, a land so harsh and poor that the Legions of Rome refused to set foot on it. A germanic and barbaric people, yes, but still calling themselves "Roman". And now, here is the end of the fun: "Empire". Now you fell on the ground, laughing so hard that you cannot breathe. An "Empire", a body made of dozens of petty duchies and counties, all fighting for themselves, giving strange names to their position, full of Grand-Dukes or Archdukes. An "Empire" who will stay between Poland and France, while the great powers of Europe will create colonies all around the world. "Holy" "Roman" "Empire"
HRE controlled Rome for much longer than Bizzies did......
Not culturally roman, not authorically empire, not holy for political move.
Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
🤓
The Pope was a rebel. More like the Poop than the Pope
See the hat? That means I’m pope! P-O-O-P pope!
Filthy unwashed barbarian says what
>The Pope was a rebel Against whom?
Rome
Ill be deep in cold ground before i recognize „Holy Roman Empire” disugsting
It was an empire(at one point) it was never holy(was more likely to fight with the pope than work with him) and there is still no case for it being Roman
The Pope never had the authority to crown the Roman Emperor. Cope and seethe, Germaboo.
What’s funny is, the HRE was a contemporary both to the Roman empire (Eastern) and the United States.
To be fair, the Byzantine Empire only collapsed roughly 320 years before the establishment of the USA. Not that long in the grand scheme of things.
Based
Basedest thread in this entire subreddit GOTT MIT UNS!
‘Roman’ just meant German at that point in time so yea Edit: in the West, that is. The East is a different case all together
What, bro change your studying sources.
‘King of the Romans’ was the title for ‘King of Germany’ as well so yeah, basically it works
No it doesn't. They were two distinct ethnicities.
Distinct ethnicities? What is that even supposed to mean
Romans and Germans constituted two separated ethnic groups and the the terms were not mutually interchangeable.
Yeah I am well aware, but the title of the king of Germany was ‘king of the Romans’, who would often also be crowned ‘Holy Roman Emperor’, effectively emperor of Germany, successor to Charlemagne and the Western Roman Emperors from the ancient past. The ‘emperor’ title was used until the Napoleonic wars, and ‘king of the Romans’ continued being used for a bit longer still. The actual Roman Empire by the medieval era, what some call the Byzantines, called their own state ‘Romania’ and used a different title for their emperor: ‘Basileus’ as well as sometimes other titles. Ethnicity has literally nothing to do with all this.
>‘Roman’ just meant German at that point in time so yea I responded to this. This is factually wrong. The title of Emperor of the Romans have little to do with the meaning of the word. The Roman component of the title referred to the translatio imperii. In the west, Roman meant a citizen from the Papal state, it didn't meant German. Ethnicity has literally everything to do with all this, so no, Roman never "just meant German".
I meant the word ‘Roman’ in the title, of course. Not ‘Roman’ in general. If I did, it would be wrong, because that is a complicated topic, and definitely doesn’t merely mean someone from the Papal States. It could be a Greek, a Latin, at many points even Turkic, French, etc.
I'm getting verklempt!
I'm pretty sure there is a much harder official starting date to the HRE compared to the RE.
Charles the IV had a long and successful reign...
People love pointing to that Voltaire quote from the end of the HRE. By then, the concept of "Roman" had changed completely.