A new book on the Holy Roman Empire

A friend and regular reader of this blog has sent me the link to a review of The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History by Peter H. Wilson (Allen Lane, pp.1008, £35, ISBN: 9781846143182) in The Spectator.

Image: Amazon

The review can be read at http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/the-holy-roman-empire-has-been-much-maligned/

This looks to be a very useful and impressive work of scholarship.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV

Today is the 635th anniversary of the death in 1378 of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, of whom there is an illustrated online biography here. There is another online account here, also with illustrations, but in occasionally quaint English  and a third one, with links to accounts of other aspects of Bohemian history and places of interest, can be accessed here.

Emperor Charles IV kneeling before the Virgin and Child

The Emperor, who is sponsored by St Sigismund, wears the Imperial Crown with the white mitre which was worn with it until the sixteenth century, and inspired the form of the crown of Emperor Rudolf II - the later Austrian crown

From the votive painting of Archbishop Jan Ocko (from the atelier of Master Theodoric), before 1371

Image:oocities.org 

As those accounts all show it is with his kingdom of Bohemia that the Emperor Charles and his artistic patronage is always particularly associated. He encouraged the building of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, which had been begun in 1344, two years before his accession, with its shrine chapel of the national patron St Wenceslas, to whom Charles, whose own original name was indeed Wenceslas, a name he also gave to at least two of his sons, was devoted. He commisioned the Crown of St Wenceslas  in 1347,  founded the Charles University, the first within the Holy Roman Empire, built the Charles Bridge with its great ceremonial gateway, redolent of Imperial glory, and created the palace fortress of Karlštejn, south west of Prague.Under his influence and encouragement mid-fourteenth century Bohemia had a rich and vibrant court culture, with a wonderful legacy in art and architecture. The religious revival encouraged by the Emperor was to bear fruit in these aspects as well as eventually leading to the rise of Hussitism - a legacy that would no doubt have horrified him.

Within the wider Empire he is best remembered for the Golden Bull of 1356 which regulated the election of subsequent Kings of the Romans and Holy Roman Emperors down to 1806.

One of his daughters by his fourth marriage was Anne of Bohemia, who married King Richard II in 1382, and there were clear and important links between the two courts and countries - one can see obvious parallels between the courts of the Emperor Charles and of King Richard, as well, of course, as the Wyclif-Hus nexus.

 

Emperor Charles IV and his third wife Anne of Swidnica (Schweidnitz) - who died in 1362 - adore the Cross 

Karlstejn Castle, on the west wall of the Chapel of Relics of the Suffering of the Lord 

Nicholas Wurmser of Strasbourg, late 1350s.

Image: 'German 1' by arthistory390 on Flickriver 

Thinking and writing about the Emperor and his life and times has inspired me to go and hunt down a copy of Fr Bede Jarrett's biography of him.

Coronation of Emperor Otto I in 962

Today, Candlemas, is the 1050th anniversary of the coronation in St Peter's in Rome of the Emperor Otto I (d.973) as Roman Emperor by the apparently spectacularly unsuitable Pope John XII (955-964).

The Imperial dignity had not been held since 924, and, as in 800 with the coronation of Charlemagne, it was a means whereby the Pope secured help from beyond the Alps in return for the bestowal of the Imperial title and status. This came ten days later with the concession of the Diploma Ottonianum which was a guarantee for the Papacy and mutual recognition of rights and claims.

The coronation effected the Translatio imperii to the German monarchs following on from that to the Franks in 800. As such, in all its variant forms, it was to remains in place until 1806, and continued thereafter as part of the cultural and constitutional inheritance of the Austrian Empire, and, after 1871, of the new German empire, as well as inviting the emulation of Peter the Great of Russia from the early eighteenth century. There is an introductory article on the history of what became from 1157 to be known as the Holy Roman Empire here.

One link with the Emperor Otto I is the Imperial Crown, now in Vienna. The crown is generally thought to have been made for him, perhaps at the abbey of Reichenau, and originally to have consisted of the eight linked panels. To this a pectoral cross belonging to the Emperor St Henry II who died in 1024 was added presumably at the same time as the arch which bears the name of the Emperor Conrad II 1027-39 . This separated the horns of the mitre worn under the crown, but not used at coronations from the seventeenth century, although it survived in the crown made for Emperor Rudolph II which later became the Imperial Crown of Austria after 1806. The front panel with its twelve stones derives from the breast plate of the High Priest of the Mosaic dispensation.

There is an illustrated and informative article about the crown here.

The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire

Image: farm4.staticflickr.com

The last person to wear the crown was the Emperor Francis II at his coronation in 1792 and who died, as the Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1835. His last illness distressed his five year old grandson who himself died as Emperor Francis Joseph in 1916, and who was photographed with and whose funeral was attended by the Archduke Otto who died last year. Thus are the generations linked.

A modern Austrian coin depicting the Imperial Crown and the Emperor Otto from a manuscript of c.1200 seated in front of Old St Peters

Image:coinnews.net