Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Holy Roman Empire
Summary
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a political entity usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor in Central and Western Europe. It developed in the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Roman emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe more than three centuries after the fall of the ancient's Western Roman Empire in 476. The title lapsed in 924, but was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, fashioning himself as Charlemagne's and the Carolingian Empire's successor and beginning a continuous existence of the empire for over eight centuries. From 962 until the twelfth century, the empire was the most powerful monarchy in Europe. The functioning of government depended on the harmonious cooperation between emperor and vassals, but this harmony was disturbed during the Salian period. The empire reached the apex of territorial expansion and power under the House of Hohenstaufen in the mid-thirteenth century, but overextension led to a partial collapse.
Scholars generally concur in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, describing a gradual development of the imperial role. While the office of emperor had been reestablished, the exact term for his realm as the "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until the 13th century, although the Emperor's theoretical legitimacy from the beginning rested on the concept of translatio imperii, that he held supreme power inherited from the ancient emperors of Rome. Nonetheless, in the Holy Roman Empire, the imperial office was traditionally elective by the mostly German prince-electors. In theory and diplomacy, the emperors were considered the first among equals of all Europe's Catholic monarchs.
A process of Imperial Reform in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries transformed the empire, creating a set of institutions, which endured until its final demise in the nineteenth century.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.