THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

EMPERORS AND POPES.

Year of Accession.	Bishops of Rome, or Popes.	Emperors.	Year of Accession
A.D.			B.C.
		Augustus.	27
			A.D.
		Tiberius.	14
		Caligula.	37
		Claudius.	41
42	St. Peter, (according to Jerome).
		Nero.	54
67	Linus, (according to Jerome, Irenæus, Eusebius).
68	Clement, (according to Tertullian and Rufinus).	Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian.	68
78	Anacletus (?).
		Titus.	79
		Domitian.	81
91	Clement, (according to later writers).
		Nerva.	96
		Trajan.	98
100	Evaristus (?).
109	Alexander (?).
		Hadrian.	117
119	Sixtus I.
129	Telesphorus.
		Antoninus Pius.	138
139	Hyginus.
143	Pius I.		xviii
157	Anicetus.
		Marcus Aurelius.	161
168	Soter.
177	Eleutherius.
		Commodus.	180
		Pertinax.	190
		Didius Julianus.	191
		Niger.	192
193	Victor (?).	Septimius Severus.	193
202	Zephyrinus (?).
		Caracalla, Geta, Diadumenian.	211
		Opilius Macrinus.	217
		Elagabalus.	218
219	Calixtus I.
		Alexander Severus.	222
223	Urban I.
230	Pontianus.
235	Anterius or Anteros.	Maximin.	235
236	Fabianus.
		The two Gordians, Maximus Pupienus, Balbinus.	237
		Gordian the Younger.	238
		Philip.	244
		Decius.	249
251	Cornelius.	Gallus.	251
252	Lucius I.	Volusian.	252
253	Stephen I.	Æmilian, Valerian, Gallienus.	253
257	Sixtus II.
259	Dionysius.
		Claudius II.	268
269	Felix.
		Aurelian.	270
275	Eutychianus.	Tacitus.	275
		Probus.	276
		Carus.	282
283	Caius.
		Carinus, Numerian, Diocletian.	284
		Maximian, joint Emperor with Diocletian.	286
296	Marcellinus.		[305(?)
304	Vacancy.	Constantius, Galerius.	304(?) xix
		Licinius.	or 307]
308	Marcellus I.	Maximin.	308
		Constantine, Galerius, Licinius, Maximin, Maxentius, and Maximian reigning jointly.	309
310	Eusebius.
311	Melchiades.
314	Sylvester I.
		Constantine (the Great) alone.	323
336	Marcus I.
337	Julius I.	Constantine II, Constantius II, Constans.	337
		Magnentius.	350
352	Liberius.
		Constantius alone.	353
356	Felix (Anti-pope).
		Julian.	361
		Jovian.	363
		Valens and Valentinian I.	364
366	Damasus I.
		Gratian and Valentinian I.	367
		Valentinian II and Gratian.	375
		Theodosius.	379
384	Siricius.
		Arcadius (in the East), Honorius (in the West).	395
398	Anastasius I.
402	Innocent I.
		Theodosius II. (E)	408
417	Zosimus.
418	Boniface I.
418	Eulalius (Anti-pope).
422	Celestine I.
		Valentinian III. (W)	424
432	Sixtus III.
440	Leo I (the Great).
		Marcian. (E)	450
		Maximus, Avitus. (W)	455
		Majorian. (W)	455
		Leo I. (E)	457
461	Hilarius.	Severus. (W)	461 xx
		Vacancy. (W)	465
		Anthemius. (W)	467
468	Simplicius.
		Olybrius. (W)	472
		Glycerius. (W)	473
		Julius Nepos. (W)	474
		Leo II, Zeno, Basiliscus (all E.)	474
		Romulus Augustulus. (W)	475
		(End of the Western Line in Romulus Augustus.	476)
		(Henceforth, till A.D. 800, Emperors reigning at Constantinople).
483	Felix III[2].
		Anastasius I.	491
492	Gelasius I.
496	Anastasius II.
498	Symmachus.
498	Laurentius (Anti-pope).
514	Hormisdas.
		Justin I.	518
523	John I.
526	Felix IV.
		Justinian.	527
530	Boniface II.
530	Dioscorus (Anti-pope).
532	John II.
535	Agapetus I.
536	Silverius.
537	Vigilius.
555	Pelagius I.
560	John III.
		Justin II.	565
574	Benedict I.
578	Pelagius II.	Tiberius II.	578
		Maurice.	582
590	Gregory I (the Great).
		Phocas.	602
604	Sabinianus.
607	Boniface III.
607	Boniface IV.
		Heraclius.	610
615	Deus dedit.
618	Boniface V.		xxi
625	Honorius I.
638	Severinus.
640	John IV.
		Constantine III, Heracleonas, Constans II.	641
642	Theodorus I.
649	Martin I.
654	Eugenius I.
657	Vitalianus.
		Constantine IV (Pogonatus).	668
672	Adeodatus.
676	Domnus or Donus I.
678	Agatho.
682	Leo II.
683(?)	Benedict II.
685	John V.	Justinian II.	685
685(?)	Conon.
687	Sergius I.
687	Paschal (Anti-pope).
687	Theodorus (Anti-pope).
		Leontius.	694
		Tiberius.	697
701	John VI.
705	John VII.	Justinian II restored.	705
708	Sisinnius.
708	Constantine.
		Philippicus Bardanes.	711
		Anastasius II.	713
715	Gregory II.
		Theodosius III.	716
		Leo III (the Isaurian).	718
731	Gregory III.
741	Zacharias.	Constantine V (Copronymus).	741
752	Stephen (II).
752	Stephen II (or III).
757	Paul I.
767	Constantine (Anti-pope).
768	Stephen III (IV).
772	Hadrian I.
		Leo IV.	775
		Constantine VI.	780
795	Leo III.
		Deposition of Constantine VI by Irene.	797 xxii
		Charles I (the Great).	800
		(Following henceforth the new Western line).
		Lewis I (the Pious).	814
816	Stephen IV.
817	Paschal I.
824	Eugenius II.
827	Valentinus.
827	Gregory IV.
		Lothar I.	840
844	Sergius II.
847	Leo IV.
855	Benedict III.	Lewis II.	855
855	Anastasius (Anti-pope).
858	Nicholas I.
867	Hadrian II.
872	John VIII.
		Charles II (the Bald).	875
		Charles III (the Fat).	881
882	Martin II.
884	Hadrian III.
885	Stephen V.
891	Formosus.	Guido.	891
		Lambert.	894
896	Boniface VI.	Arnulf.	896
896	Stephen VI.
897	Romanus.
897	Theodore II.
898	John IX.
		Lewis (the Child).[†]	899
900	Benedict IV.
		Lewis III (of Provence).	901
903	Leo V.
903	Christopher.
904	Sergius III.
911	Anastasius III.
		Conrad I.	912(?)
913	Lando.
914	John X.
		Berengar.	915
		Henry I (the Fowler).	918
928	Leo VI.		xxiii
929	Stephen VII.
931	John XI.
936	Leo VII.	Otto I (the Great).	936
939	Stephen VIII.
941	Martin III.
946	Agapetus II.
955	John XII.
		Otto I, crowned at Rome.	962
963	Leo VIII.
964	Benedict V (Anti-Pope?).
965	John XIII.
972	Benedict VI.
		Otto II.	973
974	Boniface VII (Anti-pope?).
974	Domnus II (?).
974	Benedict VII.
983	John XIV.	Otto III	983
985	John XV.
996	Gregory V.
996	John XVI (Anti-pope).
999	Sylvester II.
		Henry II (the Saint).	1002
1003	John XVII.
1003	John XVIII.
1009	Sergius IV.
1012	Benedict VIII.
1024	John XIX.	Conrad II (the Salic).	1024
1033	Benedict IX.
		Henry III.	1039
1044	Sylvester (Anti-pope).
1045(?)	Gregory VI.
1046	Clement II.
1048	Damasus II.
1048	Leo IX.
1054	Victor II.
		Henry IV.	1056
1057	Stephen IX.
1058	Benedict X.
1059	Nicholas II.
1061	Alexander II.
1073	Gregory VII (Hildebrand).
1080	(Clement, Anti-pope).
1086	Victor III.
1087	Urban II.		xxiv
1099	Paschal II.
		Henry V.	1106
1118	Gelasius II.
1118	Gregory, (Anti-pope).
1119	Calixtus II.
1121	(Celestine, Anti-pope).
1124	Honorius II.
		Lothar II (the Saxon).	1125
1130	Innocent II.
	(Anacletus, Anti-pope).
1138	Victor (Anti-pope).	[*]Conrad III.	1138
1143	Celestine II.
1144	Lucius II.
1145	Eugenius III.
		Frederick I (Barbarossa).	1152
1153	Anastasius IV.
1154	Hadrian IV.
1159	Alexander III.
1159	(Victor, Anti-pope).
1164	(Paschal, Anti-pope).
1168	(Calixtus, Anti-pope).
1181	Lucius III.
1185	Urban III.
1187	Gregory VIII.
1187	Clement III.
		Henry VI.	1190
1191	Celestine III.
1198	Innocent III.	[*]Philip, Otto IV (rivals).	1198
		Otto IV.	1208
		Frederick II.	1212
1216	Honorius III.
1227	Gregory IX.
1241	Celestine IV.
1241	Vacancy.
1243	Innocent IV.
		[*]Conrad IV, [*]William, (rivals).	1250
1254	Alexander IV.	Interregnum.	1254
		[*]Richard (earl of Cornwall). [*]Alfonso (king of Castile), (rivals).	1257
1261	Urban IV.		xxv
1265	Clement IV.
1269	Vacancy.
1271	Gregory X.
		[*]Rudolf I (of Hapsburg).	1272
1276	Innocent V.
1276	Hadrian V.
1277	John XX or XXI.
1277	Nicholas I
1281	Martin IV.
1285	Honorius IV.
1289	Nicholas IV.
1292	Vacancy.	[*]Adolf (of Nassau).	1292
1294	Celestine V.
1294	Boniface VIII.
		[*]Albert I.	1298
1303	Benedict XI.
1305	Clement V.
		Henry VII.	1308
1314	Vacancy.	Lewis IV.	1314
		(Frederick of Austria, rival).
1316	John XXI or XXII.
1334	Benedict XII.
1342	Clement VI.
		Charles IV.	1347
1352	Innocent VI.	(Günther of Schwartzburg, rival).
1362	Urban V.
1370	Gregory XI.
1378	Urban VI, Clement VII (Anti-pope).	[*]Wenzel.	1378
1389	Boniface IX.
1394	Benedict (Anti-pope).
		[*]Rupert.	1400
1404	Innocent VII.
1406	Gregory XII.
1409	Alexander V.
1410	John XXII or XXIII.	Sigismund.	1410
		(Jobst of Moravia, rival).
1417	Martin V.
1431	Eugene IV.
		[*]Albert II.	1438
1439	Felix V (Anti-pope).		xxvi
		Frederick III.	1440
1447	Nicholas V.
1455	Calixtus IV.
1458	Pius II.
1464	Paul II.
1471	Sixtus IV.
1484	Innocent VIII.
1493	Alexander VI.	[*]Maximilian I.	1493
1503	Pius III.
1503	Julius II.
1513	Leo X.
		Charles V.[3]	1519
1522	Hadrian VI.
1523	Clement VII.
1534	Paul III.
1550	Julius III.
1555	Marcellus II.
1555	Paul IV.
		[*]Ferdinand I.	1558
1559	Pius IV.
		[*]Maximilian II.	1564
1566	Pius V.
1572	Gregory XIII.
		[*]Rudolf II.	1576
1585	Sixtus V.
1590	Urban VII.
1590	Gregory XIV.
1591	Innocent IX.
1592	Clement VIII.
1604	Leo XI.
1604	Paul V.
		[*]Matthias.	1612
		[*]Ferdinand II.	1619
1621	Gregory XV.
1623	Urban VIII.
		[*]Ferdinand III.	1637
1644	Innocent X.
1655	Alexander VII.
		[*]Leopold I.	1658
1667	Clement IX.		xxvii
1670	Clement X.
1676	Innocent XI.
1689	Alexander VIII.
1691	Innocent XII.
1700	Clement XI.
		[*]Joseph I.	1705
		[*]Charles VI.	1711
1720	Innocent XIII.
1724	Benedict XIII.
1740	Benedict XIV.
		[*]Charles VII.	1742
		[*]Francis I.	1745
1758	Clement XII.
		[*]Joseph II.	1765
1769	Clement XIII.
1775	Pius VI.
		[*]Leopold II.	1790
		[*]Francis II.	1792
1800	Pius VII.
		Abdication of Francis II.	1806
1823	Leo XII.
1829	Pius VIII.
1831	Gregory XVI.
1846	Pius IX.

[†]The names in italics are those of German kings who never made any claim to the imperial title.

[*] Those marked with an asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44101/44101-h/44101-h.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44101/44101-h/44101-h.htm#Page_15

FALL OF THE EMPIRE.

Francis II, 1792-1806.

Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in the days of his childhood, the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the Roman Hall covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till space was left for few, at last for one[399]. In A.D. 1792 Francis the Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled. Three years before there had arisen on the western horizon a little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with storms of ruin. There was a prophecy[400], dating from the first days of the Empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin, and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back peace and purify religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in A.D. 1804, the parallel between the heir of a long 357 Napoleon, Emperor of the West. line of fierce Teutonic chieftains, whose vigorous genius had seized what it could of the monkish learning of the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the ideas of the Encyclopædists, swept up into the seat of absolute power by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity between their positions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods, the other drunk with revolutionary fury. Both aspired to found, and seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies. Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if it sometimes overbore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome, so the other thought to model himself after Cæsar and Charlemagne. For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to be king after the fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a connexion to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it was no studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon Belief of Napoleon that he was the successor of Charlemagne. to remind his subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who reads the records of his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France 358 the centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe from Paris, as the Cæsars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last Merovingian[402]. The same desire 359 to be regarded as lawful Emperor of the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French Emperors, have made[403] ;' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead. Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Cæsars of Byzantium. It was Attitude of the Papacy towards Napoleon. curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his ancient ally to the reviving power of France—France, where the Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before—just as he had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,' and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither 360 comparison is much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406].

The French Empire.

A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new title when he began to mark a distinction between 'la France' and 'l'Empire Française.' France had, since A.D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and, by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities, the allies of France in the same sense in which the 'socii populi Romani' were allies of Rome[407]. When the last of Pitt's coalitions had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come. He had now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia, claiming to represent the old and the new Rome 361 respectively, and had in eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court presented a grotesque imitation[408]. The task was an easy one after what had been already accomplished. Previous wars and treaties had so redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the Germanic Empire Napoleon in Germany. that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order: the author of a code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who dethroned him were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution, and conquered only to destroy. It was his mission—a mission more beneficent in its result than in its means[409] —to break up in Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and better forms of political life. Since A.D. 1797, when Austria at Campo Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns west of the Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the arrangements 362 of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,' dictated by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected, electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized, the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis, partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name of its peculiar meaning, began in A.D. 1805 to style himself 'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his former title[410]. The next act of the drama was one in which we may more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the Confederation[411] The Confederation of the Rhine. of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and several other states, 363 sixteen in all, withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that his master, who had consented to become Protector of the Confederate princes, no longer recognized the existence of the Empire. Francis the Second resolved at once Abdication of the Emperor Francis II. to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity. His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitulation, he considers as dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic body, releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under the title of 'Emperor of Austria[412].' Throughout, the term 'German Empire' (Deutsches Reich) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years End of the Empire. after Leo the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight years after Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy Roman Empire came to its end.
There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that the last days of the world were at 364 hand. But in the whirl of change that had bewildered men since A.D. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed. No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon's universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the Empire would be re-established on its former footing[413]. Such was indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover, representing Great Britain[414]. Though a simple revival of the old Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, it still appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining peace among the members of the confederation. But the new kingdoms, Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a superior; Prussia, elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting Germany by a federative bond[415], Congress of Vienna. and the Congress of Vienna was decided by the wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus 365 was brought about the present German federal constitution, which is itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a mere temporary expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, and useless for the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school of liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by the princes after the enthusiastic uprising of A.D. 1814, has aspired to the restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a head elected by the people[416]. The obstacles in the way of such plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it[417]. 

 ================================
 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44101/44101-h/44101-h.htm#Page_366

 After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more. Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, 367 Perpetuation of the name of Rome. and after promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology, her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes on the Ganges and the Mississippi.

 Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not insignificant now, how 368 Claims to represent the Roman Empire. Austria. much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason. It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire, and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as the France. oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed of Byzantium, Russia. Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Cæsars, and trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism. Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has embraced the notion of Greece. gathering all the Greek races into a revived Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has more than once declared himself the representative 369 of the Eastern Cæsars, whose dominion he The Turks. extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto

 Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle 370 Ages for unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading one. Obedience, almost the first of mediæval virtues, is now often spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be a positive good. The great mass have certainly no 371 longing for an abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not, cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one all-pervading church exercised upon their mediæval forefathers. A life in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship,—this was the life which they of the Middle Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediæval document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven. For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely, heaven for the sake of the church

 Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came, the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the death of the 372 body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the Swabian Cæsars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they resisted the spiritual power.

 Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances, but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly, was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as when it leads men 373 who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors, to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring, because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.

 The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly 374 In what sense was the Empire Roman? mediæval. Was it then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages, that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus; but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palæologus was installed! It was not in purple buskins that the 375 dignity of the Luxemburger lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.

 The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Cæsar and his subtle nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of the influence of public opinion for the control of representative assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and Antonine Cæsars of old, and at the beginning of this century by Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive 376 reforms in law and government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Cæsars and the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In the political character of the French people, whether it be the result of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the Romans[423] of the Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races. modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion, if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states have been little more successful than their neighbours in the establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote, and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure without greatly resenting 377 outrages that would raise the more excitable French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours somewhat different from his.

 There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediæval imperialism, a theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government, which has been described once already, and need not be described again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which constantly maintained in theory 378 the principle that he should rule who was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free from the bonds of sense.
 The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still, cannot be attributed 379 to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians, and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish, justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own liberty—liberty to oppress the subject—and ready on the least occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the people were deprived of all political training, and have found the lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.

 For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power, submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received a keen 380 stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought, and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire flowed all the richness of their mediæval life and literature: it first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion. When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a capital.


 
 hapsburgs
 For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power, submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received a keen 380 stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought, and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire flowed all the richness of their mediæval life and literature: it first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion. When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a capital.


 
EMPEROR CHARLES II
Hapsburg monarchy the honour of being the legitimate representative of the mediæval Empire, and declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest. The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and Swabian Cæsars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her, they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task of perpetuating 382 their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze of modern civilization


 
 EMPEROR MAXIMILLIAN
 The enthusiasm for mediæval faith and simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog and incumbrance,