The many Heinrichs of Reuss
Some thoughts on the Holy Roman Empire.
There are three reasons, I think, why even educated Britons often unfairly imagine one of medieval Europe’s most important states to have been a bit ridiculous. One is that, well, we’re a bit hazy on history, often including our own. We probably have some sense, from half remembered school history lessons, that the Holy Roman Empire was an old name for Germany, and that this was obviously absurd. But since the narrative of German history we’re taught in this country basically runs “Fragmentation, Otto Von Bismarck, Hitler”, anything that came earlier and can’t be directly linked to the rise of the Nazis never really comes up. The idea that the fragmented German realms might, at some point, have been important or powerful just doesn’t fit.
That leads us to our second reason why we’re a bit hazy on the Holy Roman Empire: Voltaire’s infuriatingly pithy comment that it was “in no respect either holy, Roman or an empire”. This was one of the best lines anyone has ever had about anything, of course, albeit one that was handed to the French philosopher on a plate, so everyone remembers it even if they don’t remember anything else about central European history.
Even bothering to read the first half of the same sentence, though (“This agglomeration which was called, and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire is in no respect...”) is enough to communicate that Voltaire was writing in the present tense. He was describing the situation as it was in 1756, well into the sunset years of the empire: exactly fifty years later it’d be dead.
By then, though, the Holy Roman Empire had been a going concern for between 795 (if you count from Otto the Great) and 956 years (if you go all the way back to Charlemagne), and either way it was an extremely old state. In its heyday, what’s more, it was, in any sensible sense, an empire (a large block of territory, bigger than many nation states, presided over by princes who answered to an emperor). It was, arguably, holy (to become emperor, rather than merely king, you had to be blessed by the pope). It was even Roman (even ignoring the claim to be the resurrection of the western empire, which is a bit [citation needed], it literally included Rome).
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None of those things – not the centuries in which the emperor was one of the most powerful rulers in Europe, nor the fact he ruled over lands from the Netherlands to Lazio, nor the fact that at one point Charles V ruled Spain, Naples and vast swathes of the new world, and his family stood to inherit England, too – are communicated by Voltaire’s neat aphorism. It has less in common with historical analysis than it does with the sort of viral tweet that runs “more like the disunited states, amirite”.
All of that said, however, it was a reasonable summary of the situation as it stood at the time he was writing, which leads us to the third reason why we sometimes think the Holy Roman Empire was ridiculous. That is: by its last couple of centuries, the Holy Roman Empire was ridiculous.
By then, it hadn’t included Rome for quite some time, so its name was looking increasingly silly. What’s more, the emperor’s ability to cow the lesser nobility into submission, always limited by the theoretically elective nature of the imperial crown, had by then been broken entirely by the Reformation, which made a bunch of princes think, “Hmm, if we go with this Luther guy, wouldn’t it increase our power at the expense of emperor and pope?” Another century, a couple of major wars and peace treaties later, and the emperor was no longer the most powerful ruler in Europe, but little more than a figurehead; now, the Holy Roman Empire consisted of an untold number of essentially independent states.
These weren’t all ridiculous. A few – Hanover, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia and so on – were almost plausible. The notion of free imperial cities like Cologne or Frankfurt was arguably at least a little bit silly, but Singapore seems to get along quite nicely today.
Alongside them, though, there were the imperial abbeys, which were basically bits of church and their associated lands, which might contain useful places like “towns” but then again might not; and there were the knightly estates, tiny patches of territory in the hands of relatively low-ranking nobles whose right to independence came directly from the emperor. Put it all together, and it was like Andy Burnham, Hugh Bonneville’s character in Downton Abbey and Father Ted, all effectively had their own independent states; and every time you crossed from one to the other, which given their scale was likely to happen quite a lot, you might have to change your money or pay a fee. And okay, it’s not like there weren’t examples of such fragementation elsewhere in Europe, too, but at least most of those other countries were moving towards centralisation: the German lands were going the other way. It was barking.
There were many ridiculous states in the Holy Roman Empire of Voltaire’s era – literally hundreds; no one seems to know how many because they fluxed and merged and split so often – but just three examples should suffice to give a flavour. There was Prüm Abbey, a benedictine monastery which actually owned extensive lands but which brought in much of its income by selling a glimpse of the sandals (yes) of Jesus Christ. There was the Imperial Free Secular Foundation of Gandersheim, which despite its name was another religious foundation, this one consisting entirely of unmarried daughters of the nobility, sent there to live a sort of monastic life where they couldn’t bother anyone without technically ever entering holy orders (this is what the word “secular” means there).
And then there was my personal favourite: the House of Reuss, which wasn’t a single state at all but a selection of constantly merging or dividing counties in Thuringia. To commemorate the patronage of Emperor Heinrich (Henry) VI in the late 12th century, the dynasty had adopted the practice of naming every baby boy born into the family after its benefactor. Then, they’d all get numbers, even if they didn’t stand to become crown prince, so that Heinrich XXIV, say, would name his three sons Heinrich XXV, Heinrich XXVI and Heinrich XXVII (providing of course he didn’t have brothers who’d produced male heirs first).
And then, once the regnal numbers began to get really silly – just in case you’re worried some sanity might come into play here at some point – they’d reset the numbering, either once a century or once a hundred Heinrichs depending on which branch of the family you’re in. So even with such ludicrous appellations as Heinrich LXXIII (73rd, the highest number I can find on Wikipedia’s helpful table of rulers), you can never be sure this is unique, and that when you’re reading about his no doubt incredible deeds, you’re not actually conflating multiple different Heinrichs (any Henrich LXXIII who didn’t get to be crown prince somewhere doesn’t get his name on the list).
So, yes, we probably should know more about the Holy Roman Empire, and yes, we should look past Voltaire. But he wasn’t entirely wrong. It really was ridiculous.
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