The Holy Roman Empire, Reconsidered

The Holy Roman Empire, Reconsidered PDF

Author: Jason Philip Coy

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 184545992X

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The Holy Roman Empire has often been anachronistically assumed to have been defunct long before it was actually dissolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The authors of this volume reconsider the significance of the Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Their research reveals the continual importance of the Empire as a stage (and audience) for symbolic performance and communication; as a well utilized problem-solving and conflict-resolving supra-governmental institution; and as an imagined political, religious, and cultural "world" for contemporaries. This volume by leading scholars offers a dramatic reappraisal of politics, religion, and culture and also represents a major revision of the history of the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period.

Heart of Europe

Heart of Europe PDF

Author: Peter H. Wilson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-04-04

Total Pages: 1025

ISBN-13: 0674058097

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An Economist and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year “Deserves to be hailed as a magnum opus.” —Tom Holland, The Telegraph “Ambitious...seeks to rehabilitate the Holy Roman Empire’s reputation by re-examining its place within the larger sweep of European history...Succeeds splendidly in rescuing the empire from its critics.” —Wall Street Journal Massive, ancient, and powerful, the Holy Roman Empire formed the heart of Europe from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later. An engine for inventions and ideas, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture, it derived its legitimacy from the ideal of a unified Christian civilization—though this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope for supremacy. In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Holy Roman Empire worked, why it was so important, and how it changed over the course of its existence. The result is a tour de force that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power and the legacy of its offspring, from Nazi Germany to the European Union. “Engrossing...Wilson is to be congratulated on writing the only English-language work that deals with the empire from start to finish...A book that is relevant to our own times.” —Brendan Simms, The Times “The culmination of a lifetime of research and thought...an astonishing scholarly achievement.” —The Spectator “Remarkable...Wilson has set himself a staggering task, but it is one at which he succeeds heroically.” —Times Literary Supplement

The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire PDF

Author: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0691217319

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A new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that reveals why it was not a failed state as many historians believe The Holy Roman Empire emerged in the Middle Ages as a loosely integrated union of German states and city-states under the supreme rule of an emperor. Around 1500, it took on a more formal structure with the establishment of powerful institutions--such as the Reichstag and Imperial Chamber Court--that would endure more or less intact until the empire's dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger provides a concise history of the Holy Roman Empire, presenting an entirely new interpretation of the empire's political culture and remarkably durable institutions. Rather than comparing the empire to modern states or associations like the European Union, Stollberg-Rilinger shows how it was a political body unlike any other--it had no standing army, no clear boundaries, no general taxation or bureaucracy. She describes a heterogeneous association based on tradition and shared purpose, bound together by personal loyalty and reciprocity, and constantly reenacted by solemn rituals. In a narrative spanning three turbulent centuries, she takes readers from the reform era at the dawn of the sixteenth century to the crisis of the Reformation, from the consolidation of the Peace of Augsburg to the destructive fury of the Thirty Years' War, from the conflict between Austria and Prussia to the empire's downfall in the age of the French Revolution. Authoritative and accessible, The Holy Roman Empire is an incomparable introduction to this momentous period in the history of Europe.

The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire PDF

Author: James Bryce

Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 800

ISBN-13: 384965012X

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Bryce approached the subject of the Holy Roman Empire from only one angle, but that a very important one. What interested him was to trace the history of the imperial idea from the founding to the termination of the Holy Roman Empire. He was not interested in its actual history save in so far as that narrative illuminated his major thesis. He endeavored to interpret and to evaluate the influence of a great political idea in medieval and modern history. The facts throughout the book were reduced to that minimum necessary to give coherence and cohesiveness to the subject. The only descriptive chapter in the work is that entitled "The city of Rome in the middle ages," which is a masterpiece of historical composition, without equal in English literature.

The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire PDF

Author: Viscount James Bryce

Publisher: e-artnow

Published: 2019-07-15

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13:

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The main object of this book is to describe the Holy Roman Empire as an institution or system, the wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and traditions which have passed away from the world. Such a description, however, would not be intelligible without some account of the great events which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial power; and it has therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a narrative than of a dissertation; and to combine with an exposition of what may be called the theory of the Empire an outline of the political history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs of medieval Italy. The Roman Empire Before the Invasion of the Barbarians The Barbarian Invasions Restoration of the Empire in the West Empire and Policy of Charles Carolingian and Italian Emperors Theory of the Mediæval Empire The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom Saxon and Franconian Emperors Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa Imperial Titles and Pretensions Fall of the Hohenstaufen The Germanic Constitution—the Seven Electors The Empire as an International Power The City of Rome in the Middle Ages The Renaissance: Change in the Character of the Empire The Reformation and Its Effects Upon the Empire The Peace of Westphalia: Last Stage in the Decline of the Empire Fall of the Empire