THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 962–1806 · Europe

Holy Roman Empire

In 962 the German king Otto I was crowned emperor by the pope in Rome, renewing Charlemagne's imperial title. The resulting empire, called Holy Roman from the 12th century, joined the German lands with northern Italy and Burgundy, and later Bohemia.

Its emperors were elected by leading princes, a system fixed by the Golden Bull of 1356. Emperors clashed with the papacy over control of the Church and with Italian cities over taxes, and real power steadily passed to hundreds of princes, bishops and free cities. From 1438 the Habsburgs held the title almost continuously, and Charles V ruled a vast domain, but the Reformation and the Thirty Years War left the empire a loose federation. Napoleon's victories led Francis II to dissolve it in 1806.

Follow its story on the map

The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, made in the late 10th or early 11th century (Imperial Treasury, Vienna)
The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, made in the late 10th or early 11th century (Imperial Treasury, Vienna) User:MatthiasKabel · CC BY 2.5
Years
962–1806
Capital
No fixed capital; Aachen for coronations, later Prague and Vienna as imperial seats
Greatest extent
1050, about 1.00 million km²
Region
Europe

Under the Salian emperors: Germany, northern Italy, Burgundy and Bohemia; c. 1.0M km² c. 1050 (Taagepera 1997)

Legacy

The empire's layered, federal style of government shaped Germany, Austria and central Europe, though Voltaire quipped it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Timeline of Holy Roman Empire

  1. Pope John XII crowns Otto I emperor in Rome

    After the Carolingian Empire broke up, East Francia became a kingdom of German duchies. Otto I, Duke of Saxony and king from 936, made it the strongest power in Europe. In 955 he crushed the Magyars at the Lechfeld, ending their raids on the West, and by 961 he had conquered the Kingdom of Italy. Following Charlemagne's example, he was crowned emperor in Rome by Pope John XII in 962. Historians date the Holy Roman Empire from this coronation, which joined the German and Italian kingdoms under one emperor for centuries.

  2. Kingdom of Burgundy joins Germany and Italy under the emperor

    Rudolph III, the childless king of Burgundy (a kingdom in the Rhône valley and western Alps, between France and Italy), had promised his throne to the German rulers. When he died in 1032, Emperor Conrad II, the first of the Salian dynasty, claimed the kingdom and conquered it with German and Italian troops, becoming its king in 1033. Burgundy, later known as the Kingdom of Arles, joined Germany and Italy as the third of the empire's 'three kingdoms'. On the map the empire now reached south to the Mediterranean coast of Provence.

  3. Henry IV's Walk to Canossa during the Investiture Controversy

    Popes and emperors clashed over who had the right to appoint bishops, who were also powerful landholders. This was the 'Investiture Controversy'. When Pope Gregory VII tried to ban lay investiture, the German king Henry IV had his bishops reject the pope in 1076, and Gregory excommunicated and deposed him. With German nobles threatening revolt, Henry crossed the Alps in winter and in January 1077 came to Canossa Castle, where the pope was staying. According to contemporary sources he waited three days in the snow, in a penitent's hair shirt, before Gregory lifted the excommunication.

  4. Concordat of Worms settles the investiture dispute

    The Investiture Controversy dragged on for decades after Canossa, through civil wars in Germany and fighting in Italy. Henry IV's son, Emperor Henry V, finally negotiated a compromise with Pope Callixtus II. By the Concordat of Worms, signed on 23 September 1122, the emperor gave up investing bishops with the ring and staff, the symbols of their spiritual office, and allowed church elections. In return he could attend elections and invest bishops with a sceptre for the lands they held from him. The dispute had weakened imperial authority and strengthened the German princes.

  5. 'Holy' first used for the empire under Frederick I Barbarossa

    Frederick I, called Barbarossa ('Red Beard'), became emperor in 1155 and set out to restore imperial power, especially over the rich cities of northern Italy and in relation to the pope. In 1157 the word sacrum ('holy') first appeared in a document in connection with his empire. It expressed the idea that the empire was sacred in its own right, not dependent on the pope. The full form 'Holy Roman Empire' is recorded from 1254. Barbarossa spent much of his reign fighting in Italy, and he drowned in 1190 while on the Third Crusade.

  6. Frederick II dies; Hohenstaufen power collapses, interregnum follows

    Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty ruled Germany, Italy and the Kingdom of Sicily. Constantly in conflict with the papacy, which lay hemmed in between his lands, he was excommunicated four times, and Pope Innocent IV declared him deposed in 1245. When Frederick died in December 1250, his son Conrad IV fought on, but died in 1254, and the Hohenstaufen collapsed. Rival kings were elected, some of them foreigners with little power in Germany. This period, often called the Great Interregnum, let the German princes take over much of the king's power and lands.

  7. Rudolf of Habsburg elected King of the Romans

    After two decades without an effective king, the German princes wanted a ruler who could restore order but would not threaten their own power. In 1273 they elected Rudolf, Count of Habsburg, a minor noble from what is now Switzerland, as King of the Romans. Rudolf, who was never crowned emperor, defeated the powerful King Ottokar II of Bohemia and took Austria, Styria and Carinthia for his own family. This was the start of Habsburg power in the empire. From the 15th century almost every emperor was a Habsburg.

  8. Charles IV's Golden Bull fixes the seven prince-electors

    Imperial elections had often led to disputes and rival kings. In 1356 Emperor Charles IV issued the Golden Bull at diets in Nuremberg and Metz. It named the seven prince-electors who would choose the king: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg. It also set majority voting, with Frankfurt as the place of election. The Bull fixed the empire's constitution for more than four hundred years and strengthened the electors as near-independent rulers.

  9. Diet of Worms launches the Imperial Reform

    By the late 15th century the empire was a patchwork of hundreds of territories with weak central institutions. In 1495 King Maximilian I asked the Diet (assembly) at Worms for taxes and troops for his wars against the Ottomans and France. The princes, led by the Archbishop of Mainz, agreed but demanded reforms in return. The Diet declared a Perpetual Public Peace banning private feuds and created an Imperial Chamber Court for the whole empire. It also agreed a general tax, the Common Penny, and these reforms gave the empire institutions that lasted until 1806.

  10. Luther's break with the pope starts the Reformation

    In 1517 Martin Luther, a monk and professor at Wittenberg in Saxony, wrote his Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences, certificates said to reduce punishment for sins. On 31 October he sent them to the Archbishop of Mainz, and they soon spread across Germany in print. His challenge to the pope's authority grew into the Protestant Reformation, and he was excommunicated in 1521. Many German princes and cities adopted Lutheranism, splitting the empire along religious lines. The division led to decades of conflict between Catholic emperors and Protestant princes.

  11. Peace of Augsburg lets rulers choose Catholicism or Lutheranism

    After years of religious war in the empire, Emperor Charles V, through his brother Ferdinand, made peace with the Lutheran princes of the Schmalkaldic League. The Peace of Augsburg, signed on 25 September 1555, allowed each ruler to choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism as the official religion of his lands. This was later summed up as cuius regio, eius religio ('whose realm, his religion'). Calvinism was not included. The settlement made the religious division of the empire permanent and kept peace for over sixty years, until the Thirty Years' War.

  12. Bohemian revolt starts the Thirty Years' War

    Bohemia had a large Protestant population and feared losing its religious freedoms under the Catholic Habsburgs. In 1618 Protestant nobles in Prague threw two imperial officials out of a castle window, the Defenestration of Prague, and rebelled. They replaced Ferdinand II as their king with the Protestant Frederick V of the Palatinate. The revolt grew into the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which drew in Denmark, Sweden, France and Spain. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million people died from fighting, famine and disease, and parts of Germany lost more than half their population.

  13. Peace of Westphalia; Switzerland and the Dutch Republic leave

    The Thirty Years' War ended with two treaties signed in October 1648 at Münster and Osnabrück in Westphalia. Rulers could now choose Catholicism, Lutheranism or Calvinism. France gained lands in Alsace and Lorraine, and Sweden gained Western Pomerania and other territories on the Baltic and North Sea. The peace confirmed the legal independence of the Swiss Confederation, and the Dutch Republic, already recognised by Spain earlier that year, also left the empire. The empire survived, but its princes gained near-sovereign powers, and the emperor's authority was greatly weakened.

  14. Franche-Comté lost to France

    Franche-Comté, the 'Free County' of Burgundy around Besançon, belonged to the Spanish Habsburgs but was part of the empire. King Louis XIV of France conquered it during his wars, and the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678–1679), which ended the Franco-Dutch War, gave France control of the region. It was the only noticeable change to the empire's outer borders between 1648 and 1806. On the map, the empire's western edge pulls back from the Jura mountains, and France now reached the Swiss border.

  15. Francis II abdicates and dissolves the empire

    In 1804 Napoleon declared himself Emperor of the French, and Francis II responded by taking the extra title Emperor of Austria. After Austria's defeat at Austerlitz in December 1805, many of Francis's German vassals left the empire in July 1806 to form the Confederation of the Rhine under French protection. Fearing that Napoleon might claim the imperial title himself, Francis abdicated on 6 August 1806 and released all imperial states from their obligations. The Holy Roman Empire, which had lasted more than eight centuries, was dissolved and disappears from the map.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Wars

Chapters

Sources