Is the EU an Attempt to Revive the Holy Roman Empire?
Exactly two centuries after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire—the First Reich of the German Nation—the European Union seems set to revive this ancient institution.
by Melvin Rhodes
Friday, Jan. 20, was the 200th anniversary of the dissolution of a remarkable institution that had dominated Europe for over a thousand years.
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation traced its origins back to the time of Charlemagne (Karl Der Grosse in German), crowned by the pope on Dec. 25, A.D. 800. It ended with Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of the Three Emperors, when the empires of Russia and Austria were defeated. The Austrian Emperor Francis was forced to renounce the title of Holy Roman emperor, thereby formally ending an empire that had lasted a thousand years.
The coronation of Charlemagne was a deliberate act on the part of Pope Leo III. In crowning Charlemagne emperor, the pope was effectively declaring the rebirth of the western Roman Empire, which had collapsed in the fifth century.
The only Roman emperor in the year 800 was the ruler of Byzantium, the eastern Roman Empire, who ruled from Constantinople. To the Byzantines there could be only one "Imperator Romanorum" (Roman emperor). An earlier attempt to revive the western empire had been led by an eastern emperor, Justinian, in the sixth century. Pope Leo's crowning of Charlemagne, in their minds, was an illegal act and a deliberately provocative one.
Charlemagne's elevation to emperor was "the result of Charlemagne having defended the pope against the rebellious inhabitants of Rome, which initiated the notion of the Reich being the protector of the Church" (wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire).
Reich is the German word for empire. The Holy Roman Empire was the First Reich.
The French philosopher Voltaire in the 18th century famously said that the Holy Roman Empire was "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire."
