Golden Bull

GOLDEN BULL).

In this struggle with the papacy the empire had shown some thing of its old universal aspect. It had come into connection with Italy, and into close connection with Rome : it had enlisted in defence of its rights at once an Italian like Marsilius and an Englishman like Ockham. The same universal aspect appeared once more in the age of the conciliar movement, at the beginning of the i 5th century. One of the essential duties of the emperor, as defender of the church, was to help the assembling and the deliberations of general councils of the church. This was the duty discharged by Sigismund, when he forced John XXIII. to summon a council at Constance in 1414, and sought, though in vain, to guide its deliberations. The journey which Sigismund undertook in the interests of the council (1415-17) is particularly noteworthy. He sought to make peace throughout western Europe, acting as in ternational arbitrator—in virtue of his presidency of western Europe—between England and France, between Burgundians and Armagnacs; but he failed in his aim, and when he returned to the council, it was only to witness the defeat of the party of reform which he championed. National feeling and national antipathies proved too strong for Sigismund's attempt to revive the mediaeval empire for the purposes of international arbitration ; the same feel ing, the same antipathies, made inevitable the failure of the council itself, in which western Europe had sought to meet once more as a single religious commonwealth. Early in the 15th century, there fore, the conception of the unity of western Europe, as a single empire-church, was already waning in both its aspects. The unity of the Church Universal was dissolving, and the conception of the nation-church arising (as the separate concordats granted by Martin V. to the different nations prove) ; while the unity of the empire was proved a dream by the powerlessness of the emperor in the face of the struggle of England and France.

Influence of the Reformation.

Renaissance and Reforma tion combined to complete the fall which the failure of Sigismund to guide the conciliar. movement had already foreshadowed. The Renaissance, revolting against the mediaevalism of the studium, and not sparing even the sacerdotium of the middle ages, had little respect for the mediaeval imperium; and, going back to pure Latin and original Greek, it went back beyond even the classical empire to find its ideals and inspirations. But it is the coming of the Reformation, and with it of the nation-church, which finally marks the epoch at which the last vestige of the old conception of the political unity of the world disappears before the nation state. Externally indeed it seemed, at the time of the Reforma tion, as if the old empire had been revived in the person of Charles V., who owned territories as vast as those of Charlemagne. But Charles's dominions were a dynastic agglomeration, knit together by no vivifying conception; and, though Charles was a champion of the one Catholic Church against the Reformation, he did not in any way seek to revive the power of the mediaeval empire. Mean while the reforming monarchs, while they cast off the Roman Church, cast off with it the Roman empire. Henry VIII. declared himself free, not only of the pope, but of all other foreign power; and not only so, but as he sought to take the place of the pope with regard to his own church, so he sought to take the place of the emperor with regard to his kingdom, and spoke of his "im perial" crown, a style which recurs in later Tudor reigns. The con ception of one empire passed out of Europe, or, if it remained, it remained only in an honorary precedence accorded by other sovereigns to the king of Germany, who still entitled himself emperor. In Germany itself the honorary presidency which the emperor enjoyed over the princes came to mean still less than before, when religious differences divided the country, and the principle of cujus regio ejus religio accentuated the local autonomy of the prince. When Charles abdicated in 1556, the change which the accession of Rudolph of Habsburg had already marked was complete : there was no empire except in Germany, and in Ger many the empire was nothing more than a convenient legal con ception. The Reformation, by sweeping away the spiritual unity of western Christendom, had swept away any real conception of its political unity, and with that conception it had swept away the empire; while it had also, by splitting Germany into two religious camps, and making the emperor at the most the head of a , religious faction, dissipated the last vestiges of a real empire in the country which had, since 962, been its peculiar home.

From 1556 to 18o6 the empire means a loose federation of the different princes of Germany, lay and ecclesiastical, under the presidency, elective in theory but hereditary in practice, of the house of Habsburg. The dissolution of the Holy Roman empire into this loose federation had already been anticipated by the concessions made to the princes by Frederick II. in 1220 and 1231 ; but the final organization of Germany on federal lines was only attained in the treaty of Westphalia of 1648. The attempt of Ferdinand II., in the course of the Thirty Years' War, to assert a practically monarchical authority over the princes of Germany, only led to the regular vindication by the princes of their own monarchical authority. The emperor, who had tried in the 15th century to be the international authority of all Europe, now sank to the position of less than inter-state arbitrator in Germany. That the empire and the emperor were retained at all, when the princes became so many independent sovereigns, was due partly to a lingering sense of quasi-national sentiment for a magni nominis umbra, partly to the need of some authority which should combine in one body principalities of very different sizes and strengths, and should protect the weak from the strong, and all from France. But this authority only found its symbol in the emperor. Such real federal authority as there was remained with the diet, a congress of sovereign princes through their accredited representatives ; and the emperor's sole rights, as emperor, were those of granting titles and confirming tolls. The Habsburgs, emperors in each successive generation, never pursued an im perial, but always a dynastic policy; and they were perfectly ready to sacrifice to the aggrandizement of their house the honour of the empire, as when they ceded Lorraine to France in return for Tuscany End of the Holy Roman Empire.—It needed the cataclysm of the French Revolution finally to overthrow the empire. Through out the 18th century it lasted, a thing of long-winded protocols and never-ending lawsuits, "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire." But with Napoleon came its destroyer. As far back as the end of the 13th century, French kings had been scheming to annex the title or at any rate absorb the territories of the empire : at the beginning of the 19th century the annexation of the title by Napoleon seemed very imminent. Posing as the New Charlemagne ("because, like Charlemagne, I unite the crown of France to that of the Lombards, and my Empire marches with the East"), he resolved in 1806, during the dissolution and recomposi tion of Germany which followed the peace of Luneville, to oust Francis II. from his title, and to make the Holy Roman empire part and parcel of the "Napoleonic idea." He was anticipated, however, by the prompt action of the proud Habsburg, who was equally resolved that no other should wear the crown which he himself was powerless to defend, and accordingly, on Aug. 6, 18o6, Francis resigned the imperial dignity. So perished the empire. Out of its ashes sprang the Austrian empire, for Francis, in 1804, partly to counter Napoleon's assumption of the title of Emperor of the French, partly to prepare for the impending dissolution of the old empire, had assumed the title of "Hereditary Emperor of Austria." General Influence of the Empire.—What had been the results of the Holy Roman empire, in the course of its long history, upon Germany and upon Europe? It has been a vexed question among German historians, whether or not the Empire ruined Germany. Some have argued that it diverted the attention of the German kings from their own country to Italy, and that, by bringing them into conflict with the popes, and by thus strengthening the hands of their rebellious baronage with a papal alliance, it prevented the development of a national monarchy in Germany, such as other sovereigns of western Europe were able to found. Others again have emphasized the racial division of Saxon and Frank, of High German and Low German, as the real cause of the failure of Germany to grow into a united national whole : they have sought to ascribe to the influence of the empire such unity as was achieved ; and they have attributed the learning, the trade, the pre-eminence of mediaeval Germany to the Italian connection and the prestige which the empire brought. It is difficult to pronounce on either side; but it is possible that the old localism and individualism which characterized the early German, and had never, on German soil, been combined with and counter acted by a large measure of Roman population and Roman civili zation, as they were in Gaul and Spain, would in any case have continued to divide and disturb Germany till late in her history, even if the empire had never come to reside within her borders. On the larger question of the influence of the empire on Europe at large, all that can here be said is that Europe was all the better for the survival of some idea of unity. An empire which repre sented, as a Holy empire, the unity of all the faithful in one body--an empire which, as a Roman empire, represented with an unbroken continuity the order of Roman administration and law— such an empire could not but make for the betterment of the world. It was not an empire resting on force, a military empire; it was not, as in modern times empires have sometimes been, an autocracy warranted and stamped by the plebiscite of the mob. It was an empire resting neither on the sword nor on the ballot box, but on two great ideas, taught by the clergy and received by the laity, that all believers in Christ form one body politic, and that the one model and type for the organization of that body is to be found in the past of Rome. It was indeed the weakness of the empire that its roots were only the thoughts of men; for the lack of material force, from which it always suffered, hindered it from doing work it might well have done—the work, for instance, of international arbitration. Yet, on the other hand, it was the strength and glory of the empire that it lived, all through the middle ages, an unconquerable idea of the mind of man. Because it was a being of their thought, it stirred men to reflection : the empire, particularly in its clash with the papacy, produced a political consciousness and a political speculation reflected for us in the writings of mediaeval schoolmen and lawyers, not least in those of Dante and Marsilius of Padua. Roman, it perpetuated the greatest monument of Roman thought—that ordered scheme of law, which either became, as in England, the model for the building of a native system, or, as in Germany from the end of the 15th century onwards, was received in its integrity and ad ministered in the courts. Holy, it fortified and consolidated Christian thought, by giving a visible expression to the kingdom of God upon earth; and not only so, but it maintained, however imperfectly, some idea of international obligation, and some con ception of a commonwealth of Europe.

The Holy Roman empire of western Europe had in its own day a contemporary and a rival—that East Roman empire of which we have already spoken. From Arcadius to John Palaeologus, from A.D. 395 to the Roman empire was continued at Con stantinople—not as a theory and an idea, but as a simple and daily reality of politics and administration. In one sense the East Roman empire was more lineally and really Roman than the West : it was absolutely continuous from ancient times. In another sense the Western empire was the more Roman ; for its capital—in theory at least—was Rome itself, and the Roman Church stood by its side, while Constantinople was Hellenic and even Oriental. Between the two empires there was fixed an impassable gulf. They were divided by deep differences of thought and temper, which appeared more particularly in the sphere of religion, and ex pressed themselves in the cleavage between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. But as, when Rome fell, the Catholic Church survived, and ultimately found for itself a new empire of the West, so, when Constantinople fell, the Orthodox Church con tinued its life, and found for itself a new empire of the East— the empire of Russia. Under Ivan the Great (1462-1505) Moscow became the metropolis of Orthodoxy; Byzantine law influenced his code ; and he took for his cognizance the double-headed eagle. Ivan the Terrible, his grandson, finally assumed in 1547 the title of Tsar; and henceforth the Russian emperors became, in theory and very largely in fact, the successors of the old East Roman emperors,' the heads of the Orthodox Church, with the mission of vengeance on Islam for the fall of Constantinople.

'The Turks, occupying Constantinople, have also claimed to be the heirs of the old emperors of Constantinople ; and their sultans have styled themselves Keisar-i-R4m.

Subsequent Empires.--In

the 19th century the word "empire" has had a large and important bearing in politics. In France it has been the apanage of the Bonapartes, and has meant a centralized system of government by an efficient Caesar, resting immediately on the people, and annihilating the powers of the people's repre sentatives. Under Napoleon I. this conception had a Carolingian colour: under Napoleon III. there is less of Carolingianism, and more of Caesarism—more of a popular dictatorship. While in modern France empire has meant autocracy instead of representa tive government, in Germany it has meant a greater national unity and a federal government in the place of a confederation. The German empire (187o–'1918) was at once like and unlike the old Holy Roman empire. It was unlike the old mediaeval empire; for it had no connection with the Catholic Church, and no peculiar relation to Rome. But it was like the Holy Roman empire of the 17th and 18th centuries—for it represented a federation, if a more real and more unitary federation, of the several states of Germany. The likeness is perhaps more striking than the dis similarity; and in virtue of this likeness, and because the memory of the old German Kaiserzeit was a driving force in 187o, we may speak of the modern German empire as the successor of the old Holy Roman empire, if only we remember that we are speak ing of that empire in its last two centuries of existence. The "empire of Austria," on the other hand, as it existed from 1804 to 1918, was not an empire in the sense of a federation, but a convenient designation for a sum of territories, ruled by a single sovereign under various titles (king of Bohemia, archduke of Austria, etc.), and very imperfectly unified in a single political system. The title of emperor was assumed in Austria, as we have seen, through an historical accident ; and, though the Habsburgs of the 19th century were personally the lineal descendants of the old Holy Roman emperors, their empire was in no sense the successor or representative of the old Holy Roman empire of the middle ages.

There is one empire which remains to be mentioned—an empire which, unlike the other empires of which we have spoken, is entirely independent of the tradition and memory of Rome. Thus is the British empire (q.v.) or, as it is coming more and more to be called, the British commonwealth. It is an empire so much sui federation of national states at once so independent and so interconnected—that it is altogether a matter for separate consideration. This much, however, may be said of its nature. The British empire is, in a sense, an aspiration rather than a reality, a thought rather than a fact, a common culture and not a common government ; but, just for that reason, it is like the old empire of which we have spoken; and though it be neither Roman nor Holy, yet it has, like its prototype, one law, if not the law of Rome, at any rate the common law of England—one faith, if not in matters of religion, at any rate in the field of political and social ideals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY —See, in the first place, J. Bryce, Holy Roman Bibliography—See, in the first place, J. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire (1904 ed.) ; J. von Dellinger, "The Empire of Charles the Great" (in Essays on Historical and Literary Subjects, trans. by Margaret Warre, 1894) ; H. Fisher, The Mediaeval Empire (1898) ; E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by J. B. Bury. It would be impossible to refer to all the books bearing on the article, but one may select (i.) for the period down to 476, H. Stuart Jones, The Roman Empire (1908), an excellent brief sketch ; H. Schiller, Geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit (1883-88) ; O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt (1897, etc.) ; and the two excellent articles on "Imperium" and "Princeps" in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (189o) ; (ii.) for the period from 476 down to 888, T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (1880-1900); F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (1886-94; F. trans. 1894-1900) ; E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, II. i. (19o1) ; J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (1889) ; (iii.) for the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, W. von Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit (1881-9o) ; J. Zeller, Histoire d'Allemagne (1872-91) ; J. Jannsen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters ; L. von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Refor mation (1839-47), and Zur deutschen Geschichte, vom Religionsfrieden bis zum dreissigjdhrigen Krieg (1869) and T. Carlyle, Frederick the Great (1872-73) . On the fall of the Holy Roman empire and the developments of the 19th century, see Sir J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein (1878) ; H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte ; and H. von Sybel, Die Begriindung des deutschen Reichs (189o-94) , Eng. trans., The Founding of the Germ. Emp. (New York, 189o-91). For institutional history, see R. Schroder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (1894) . On the influence of the Holy Roman empire upon the history of Germany, see J. Ficker, Das deutsche Kaiserreich (1861) , and Deutsches Konigtum and Kaisertum (1862) ; and H. von Sybel, Die deutsche Nation and des Kaiserreich (1861). (E. B.)