Civilization #34: The Useful Fiction of the Holy Roman Empire

The Byzantine Empire is considered the continuation of the Roman Empire in Eastern Europe. The Holy Roman Empire is considered the continuation of the Roman Empire in Western Europe.

When we think about the Holy Roman Empire in the West, we think of the famous Voltaire quotation. Voltaire was a very famous French Enlightenment thinker. What he said was the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. This sounds funny, and a lot of historians thought it was a joke, but I will show you that this is actually very true.

The Holy Roman Empire was started in the year 800 when the Frankish King Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome. This marked a turning point in Western history because this was really the first time that the pope could anoint a monarch. Before, it was the Emperor who anointed the pope; now, it's a bit reversed, and this shows the supremacy of the Catholic Church.

Historians have debated for a long time why Charlemagne would agree to such an arrangement. This is the topic we will examine: What motivated Charlemagne to agree to such a deal, and what gave the Catholic Church so much power and prestige that they had the power to anoint emperors?

Charlemagne's Motivations and the Carolingian Renaissance

Charlemagne’s name means "Charles the Great," and he was of the Frankish Empire. He was able to unite most of Europe through major innovations in the military. He was the first to introduce the idea of armored knights, which became the standard military doctrine and practice in Europe for centuries. The idea of the knight would also pave the way for feudalism in Europe.

What Charlemagne is most celebrated for is the fact that he started something called the Carolingian Renaissance. "Carolingian" is the name of his family, and the Renaissance was this period of peace and prosperity in Europe. He's most famous for the building of cathedrals; he built 14 of them. This is the most famous: the Aachen Cathedral in Aachen, Germany. You can still go visit it. It is beautiful.

The cathedrals of medieval Europe are really like the pyramids. They are meant to give people a sense of awe and unity. The cathedral was meant to bring Heaven onto Earth. One really amazing aspect of the cathedral is the acoustics. The sound within the buildings is designed in a way that when the priest speaks, his voice is projected all around the cathedral, and the walls bounce the voice back. The parishioners, the people who listen to the priest, feel they're surrounded by the voice of God. The voice literally enters you and makes you feel transcendent, like you are moving towards heaven and approaching God. These buildings are still around, so you can actually go and visit them.

These buildings were designed to be eternal.

The Geographic Disadvantage of Europe

Before I talk about Charlemagne and why he chose to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, I need to give you a little background about the geography of Europe. If we look at the four major civilization empires of early human history—mainly Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China—we will discover that there are three major similarities among all four.

1. Latitude: They are in the same latitudinal place. They all benefit from a temperate climate which allows for year-long agriculture.
2. Rivers: These are all river civilizations, meaning that at the center is a major river surrounded by flat lands that allow for the production of agriculture. In Egypt, there's the Nile; in Mesopotamia, there are two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates; in the Indus Valley Civilization, it's obviously the Indus River; and in China, there are two rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze.
3. Natural Boundaries: They're surrounded by natural boundaries, whether it's mountains, deserts, oceans, or seas.

From this map, you can see these three characteristics very clearly for Egypt. Egypt has the Nile and is surrounded by natural boundaries: the Sahara Desert to the west and mountains that protect it. That's what allows unity to take hold very quickly in these civilizations and what allows them to defend against outside invaders. The same is true in China, which is surrounded by mountains to the south, west, and north, and then the sea. For most of its history, China was protected from outside invaders.

This is all especially true in humanity's greatest empire, the United States. If you look at the United States, it is a fortress, basically. It's protected by two oceans and then mountains. Within the United States, it's serviced by the Mississippi River, which allows for agricultural surplus and for trade and communication. Very early on, the United States could become very wealthy as well as unified. It didn't have to fear external enemies and therefore could prosper without worrying too much about its national defense.

This is very important because none of these three things are true for the European continent, especially Western Europe. It's much too far north, and it's surrounded by lots and lots of mountains. It also has no major rivers.Southern Western Europe is mainly mountains, and to the north, there are flat lands, but they're usually covered by forest. For most of its history, Europe was divided, poor, and isolated from the rest of the world.

The other thing about Europe that made it distinct from the other civilizations is that within Europe, there are lots of natural boundaries, and that's why Europe remained divided for such a long time. It was extremely hard to unite Europe. Please remember, Rome was not a European Empire; it was a Mediterranean Empire. That's a huge difference.

Throughout most of its history, Europe was divided into different fiefdoms, and the princes and kings had complete authority over their kingdoms. It was very hard to compel them to listen to your authority. Charlemagne had, at that time, the greatest army in Europe, but even then, he was still compelled to cooperate with the other kings. He achieved a lot of what he did through conquest, but he also achieved a lot through alliances, treaties, friendships, and marriages.

What this means is if you want to unify Europe, you cannot do so through military conquest. You have to do so through the idea of legitimacy. People have to believe you are the legitimate ruler. You cannot compel them; you must win their hearts and minds. This explains why Charlemagne would want to be crowned by the pope, because the pope did have legitimacy. He did have authority because the pope was the leader of the Catholic Church, and at this time, there were many kings in Europe who were of the Catholic faith.

At the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was a divided, weak, and poor place. The great irony here, of course, is that despite its disadvantages, Europe was still able to conquer the world. It did so because of these disadvantages. If you think about it, these disadvantages compel you as a people, as a culture, to be innovative to overcome them.

The Constant Threat of Invasion

The other thing about Europe that's very important is that it was constantly being invaded. If you look at this map, you will see that there are a lot of mountains protecting Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China, but there are almost none protecting Europe from the steppes.

The steppes have traditionally been the most aggressive place in human history. People are always fighting each other for territory. These are pastoral people who need land to raise their sheep and cattle, so they're always fighting. What happens over time is these people are pushed further out into the borderlands. They are often pushed into Europe. Remember the Yamnaya people, how they migrated from the steppes to Europe and basically conquered all of it? This process never really stops.

In the time of the Roman Empire, towards the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, there were huge migrations of people from the steppes into Europe. They were being pushed out by a new, more aggressive people called the Huns. You may have heard of Attila the Hun; he's of that group. They are extremely violent and have made major military innovations that allow them to outcompete others in the steppes, which forced these other tribes and groups into Europe, which was the only place they could go.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, these different groups started to form their own kingdoms. Around Germany were the Franks, and eventually, over time, as these groups competed against each other, the Franks would ultimately defeat them and expand. But this was a process that would take centuries, through multiple kings and multiple dynasties. Eventually, the Franks would expand out from Germany and conquer most of Europe. In the process, what's interesting for us is they would make contact with the once-isolated Scandinavian countries—the Norsemen. They're called the Norse; we often refer to them as Vikings, and we will study them next. But now they're brought into the orbit of this new Frankish Empire.

This is the Frankish Empire at the time of Charlemagne when he creates the Holy Roman Empire. But because this is not really an empire—it's more of a confederation—it doesn't really last much longer after his death. What's really interesting for us is to remember that these emperors are not born as emperors; they are elected by other kings. You should see this as an alliance, a confederacy, where each king has voting power. This is not a hereditary title; this is something that you are elected to.

After the death of Charlemagne, a couple of decades later, the empire split into three. Even though on paper this empire does last until the year 1806, it's a history that is extremely tumultuous, and there are some times when the empire completely disintegrates. But they keep up the pretense of having an empire because, in Europe, what matters is not territory or military or resources. What matters the most is legitimacy, and the idea of the Holy Roman Empire confers legitimacy, mainly through the Catholic Church.

The Source of Legitimacy: The Catholic Church

Now I want to discuss why the Catholic Church was able to confer legitimacy. What gave the Catholic Church the power and authority to confer legitimacy to kings and emperors?

Who is the Pope?

An audience member asks about Pope Leo III.

The pope is considered the leader of the church in Rome. He's a bishop. We call him "Pope" because, historically, Rome was the most powerful of all the churches.

How did the Catholic Church become so powerful in Europe?

First, I want to present to you the official history of the Catholic Church, as presented by the Catholic Church.

There was a man named Jesus who was actually a God. We didn't know he was a God, but he was a God who came down from heaven in order to sacrifice himself to free us of our sins, to redeem us. Jesus had disciples—there were 12 major ones, but there were others—and after his death, Jesus reappeared before them and told them to spread the gospel, the good news that he has freed humanity of their sins and that he will return to create a heaven on Earth.

So these disciples, who were illiterate peasants, went all around the world and set up churches in the honor of Jesus. These are the first fathers of the church, and these people are called bishops. The bishop is the head of the church in a certain area. The tradition is that the very first bishop of all the major churches—and there were five—were disciples of Jesus. That's where their authority and legitimacy comes from: from Jesus himself.

As the movement was spreading, Rome saw them as a threat because Romans were pagans, and Christianity is an anti-pagan religion. There was a lot of persecution going on, but the Christians were armored by their faith and their love of Jesus and the miracle that is God. They eventually triumphed and converted all of Rome to Christianity. Now, Christianity is the official religion of Rome, and they have the power to spread the message to all people around the world, but especially the barbarians of Europe, and convert them.

That's the official history of the church. There are lots and lots of issues with this story. The major issue is, how is it that a peasant religion was able to conquer the Roman Empire? There were certainly other belief systems that were much more compelling than the Christian faith. There's the Greek system, the philosophy of Plato; paganism itself has many traditions. And as I keep explaining, culture is persistent. People do not want to change their cultures. It's a complete mystery how Christianity was able to spread and conquer Europe. The explanation, if you talk to Christians, especially the Catholic Church, is that it's a miracle. It's the power of faith. That's the explanation.

An Alternative History of the Church

I want to give you my understanding of the history. What's important for us to understand is that during the time of the Roman Empire, the Romans had major conflicts with the provincials, especially the Jews. Romans and Jews did not get along. In fact, they were often in conflict with each other. The Romans were pagan, and the Jews were monotheistic people who only worshiped Yahweh. They refused to worship the Roman Emperor, which was demanded of them by the Romans. Sometimes the Romans were tolerant and would make a special exception for the Jews, but sometimes they were extremely violent. This led to a series of terrible wars in Judea between the Jews and the Romans that killed millions of people.

Another problem is that the Jews were spread all around the Roman Empire, so this was not a problem isolated to one poor province called Judea. This was a problem throughout the Roman Empire. Historians estimate that Jews accounted for about 10% of the population of the Roman Empire. That's a lot of people. In certain cities like Alexandria, it was a third of the population, and there were a couple of riots in Alexandria by the Jews against Roman rule.

The Jews were, as a whole, a pretty cosmopolitan people who were well-educated and very well-established, who looked down upon the Romans. The Jews had respect for the Greeks because the Greeks had a very superior culture. Jews and Persians got along really well because Persians are extremely tolerant people. But Jews really didn't like Romans, and the Romans really didn't like the Jews either. There are stories of how after the wars between the Romans and the Jews, Jews were enslaved and sent to Rome, and the Romans released the Jews from slavery because they didn't like them. Jews became traders and settled in other parts of the empire.

There's this constant conflict going on. But there are certain Jews, like Paul of Tarsus, who was a Roman citizen and very well-established within the empire. He got along very well with the Romans and very much wanted to be part of the Roman Empire. These wars were badly affecting him, his family, and their friends. There was a certain segment of the Jewish diaspora who very much wanted to assimilate into the Roman Empire, but their religion presented a problem. Their religion believed that eventually a messiah, who is a prince from the House of David, would return and lead the Jews to ultimate victory against the Romans. This presented a problem for Paul of Tarsus and other Jews who wanted to assimilate.

When Jesus died, he became like a rock star within the Jewish community. The fact that he was crucified, which is a horrible way to die, captured the imagination of many Jews. After his death, a lot of people started to flock to his disciples. His brother James led this movement called the Poor of Jerusalem (later they'll be called the Ebionites), and these are the people who will influence the Islamic religion. But there were other groups who started around the idea of Jesus as well. Jesus was growing in popularity in the Jewish world after his death.

In Jesus, Paul saw an opportunity to resolve this conflict between Romans and Jews. The problem for Jews was the religion believed that a messiah would return who would lead them to victory against the Romans. Paul knew that if the Jews united against the Romans, the Romans would probably win. Jesus was the solution because Jesus was a prophet of peace. Jesus was a prophet who preached the importance of peace, mercy, and forgiveness. Forgive the Romans for destroying our Temple. Forgive the Romans for persecuting us. Show mercy, because what mattered is not what happens here; what matters is what happens in Heaven.

Paul of Tarsus, backed by the Roman state, started this religion as a way for Jews to practice their faith without incurring the wrath of the Roman Empire, without being a threat to the Roman Empire. Over time, as the conflict between the Romans and Jews became worse and worse, the Christian movement spread. Eventually, to gain legitimacy, they won the patronage of Roman patriarchs. You had a certain segment of elite Jews and a certain segment of elite Romans who came together in the Christian church to build an alliance. In other words, the beginning of the Catholic Church was basically an elite social club for Jews and Romans to get together and work together.

There were other Christian factions during this time, but because the proto-Catholic church was backed by the Roman state, and because of its organization and wealth, it was able to ultimately win out over the other Christian sects.

The Church as an Assimilation Machine

Over time, what the Romans recognized is, "Wow, the Christian church is great at solving the Jewish problem." Then they recognized that it would be good for solving all their problems. Eventually, the Jews ceased to be the major problem, and the barbarians coming in from the steppes and from the north became the major problem. And there were just too many of them.

What's important to remember about these barbarians is this is not an invasion. Historians will often use the word "barbarian invasion." They're not invaders; they're migrants. It's a migration. What's the difference? If it's an invasion, these people are looking to conquer the Roman Empire and instill upon the empire their worldview, their culture, their religion. If it's a migration, these people are looking for better economic opportunities and therefore are willing to conform to your worldview, to your religion.

Think about the United States, where on the southern border there are millions of people every year who are trying to get in. They're not there to conquer the United States; they're there to migrate and seek a better life. They know that if they are to succeed in the United States, they must assimilate. The best way to assimilate in the United States is to go to university, because once you're part of the university, you're now part of the social elite. But a lot of people don't have the wealth or education to go to university, so what they often do is join the church. The group of Chinese students who have gone to the United States that has assimilated the best are Chinese Christians. When they're Christians, there's an immediate social community for them that welcomes and supports them.

This was true during the late Roman Empire as well. You have all these barbarians coming in, and they're trying to assimilate, and the Roman Empire needs to assimilate them. What they discovered is the best way to do that is through the Catholic Church. Remember, these barbarians are pagans. They worship war, they worship violence. They're a problem in the long term. But if they convert to Christianity, which is a religion that preaches peace, mercy, forgiveness, and kindness, then they're easier to manage. And a lot do convert.

Now, some of you may say this sounds very cynical, that these people are changing their religion for their own material benefit. What's important for us to understand is that if you look at any religion, you will find that the people who most believe in it, who are the most fanatical about it, are new converts. If you're born into the religion, if your parents are Christians, you take it for granted. You are often dubious and skeptical because children like to rebel against their parents. But if you convert to Christianity, if you do so out of your own choice, then you are fully committed.

This is because of a psychological principle called the sunk cost fallacy. To turn to a new religion means to give up your community, your traditions, your history, your sense of identity. Because of all this, you are stuck with this new religion, whether or not you truly believe it. Because you have lost so much in the process, you are now fully committed to the religion. You are so fanatical that you not only convert but you want to convert others as well. With the barbarian migrations, the Catholic Church experienced tremendous growth because now they were letting in lots of converts who were fanatical about the new religion.

The church was also a mechanism of social mobility for the barbarians. Roman society was very parochial and close-minded; it did not like foreigners. But traditionally in human history, the church and the military were the two major mechanisms of social mobility. If you're an outsider and you want to rise in society, you either join the church or you join the military. This has been true in Europe for hundreds of years.

The last thing about the church that's very important is that in trying to co-opt new people, it recognizes that it must first co-opt the elite. Most barbarians do not have a concept of a hereditary elite. Their leaders are often people who are elected for the moment. It's possible to switch leaders if they aren't performing a good job. What the church does is, in exchange for joining the church, it can make these leaders, who are only temporary, into a hereditary elite, meaning their advantages and social status will pass on to their children. This was an extremely appealing deal for these barbarian leaders.

As the barbarians kept migrating to Rome, the Catholic Church was the main mechanism that absorbed them, along with the military. Because the church was the mechanism which allowed you to join the Roman Empire, it acquired tremendous legitimacy, prestige, and status.

The Great Schism: A Struggle for Power

In this system, local churches had local autonomy because you're trying to let in local elites. Towards the end of the Roman Empire, there were five major churches that ruled collectively:

• Rome
• Constantinople
• Antioch
• Alexandria
• Jerusalem (included for its prestige)

Throughout most of this history, these five major churches were independent of each other. There were other churches in other places that were also extremely independent, meaning they were allowed to develop their own doctrine and practices within the Christian framework. But it was understood the primary church was Rome because Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire. Because of this, the bishop here is called the Pope to distinguish him from the other bishops.

The problem with the system is that the capital, in 330, switched from Rome over to Constantinople. Over time, the church in Constantinople, because it was now the capital, wanted to assert its authority over the other churches, mainly through the idea of orthodoxy or doctrine. For most of this history, each local church was free to create its own ideology within the Christian framework, mainly because no one was in a position to enforce doctrine on others. Now Constantinople, because it's the capital of the empire, wanted to impose orthodoxy on others. This is what led to the Nicene Creed—the idea of the Holy Trinity.

At this time, when the Nicene Creed was formulated, most churches did not buy into it. But Constantinople saw the power of the Catholic Church as a source of its legitimacy. Therefore, it would, over the decades, embark on military expeditions to enforce the Nicene Creed on all the centers. Eventually, the Nicene Creed would triumph over other doctrines. The Catholic Church was able to build legitimacy and power by imposing orthodoxy.

But over time, the Byzantine Empire would decline in power and prestige. Militarily, it was not as strong as it used to be. At this point, as the church in Constantinople was declining, other churches, especially in Rome, wanted to assert their local autonomy. This created a major controversy called iconoclasm. Iconoclasm just means that Constantinople believed that God should not be celebrated in images. You cannot paint God; you cannot paint Jesus. The church in Rome, the pope, saw this as an opportunity to push back because this was actually a very unpopular decree. This created a major conflict between Rome and Constantinople.

What this iconoclasm debate shows us is that Rome wanted to maintain its independence. Not only did Rome want to maintain its independence, it wanted to regain its lost authority. That's why when Charlemagne came along, the church saw him as the perfect opportunity to reassert its dominance over the idea of legitimacy. They worked together to create the idea of the Holy Roman Empire as a competitor to the Byzantine Empire and as a mechanism to ensure the legitimacy and prestige of the Catholic Church in Rome against that of its competing churches.

This would eventually climax in something called the Great Schism, which happened around 1054. The idea of the Great Schism is that these two churches, Rome and Constantinople, permanently broke off. They refused to acknowledge each other. Before, they would have meetings and share doctrine, but now they absolutely refused to talk to each other.

• Rome would become the basis of the Catholic Church (Catholic means "universal"), which is still around today and is followed by about one billion people.
• Constantinople became the basis of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is followed by about 230 million people, mainly in Eastern Europe.

If you're in Western Europe, you're Catholic. If you're in Eastern Europe, you're Orthodox. At first look, there's only one major doctrinal difference. Rome asserts that the pope is the first among equals, so the pope has the ultimate authority. The pope is the true representative of God on Earth; everyone else is lesser than the pope. The Orthodox Church asserts that all the churches are equal to each other; there is no higher authority. Later on, because the church in Rome would experience the Protestant Reformation, their doctrines would radically diverge over time.

The Intellectual Blueprint: Augustine's City of God

Let's go back to the year 800 when Charlemagne is in St. Peter's Basilica and he's been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Leo III. Why does this happen?

For Charlemagne, the three major reasons are:

• Legitimacy: "I'm the rightful king because God said so."
• Unity: "We're all part of the community of God."
• Differentiation: "We are Christians, and everyone else is pagan or infidel or heretic. We are not the Byzantine Empire."

This has been true for kings throughout human history. Why did King David sponsor the writing of the Bible? For these three reasons. Why did Augustus Caesar sponsor the writing of the Aeneid? For these three reasons.

For Pope Leo III, his motivations were:

• Authority: He was trying to assert his authority, to establish the fact that the pope is the true representative of God on Earth.
• Protection: In this world, there was no central power, and the pope was elected by other bishops. In this process, you always had a faction who refused to accept the authority of the pope, leading to civil conflict. Before Pope Leo made Charlemagne emperor, he was almost assassinated by his enemies. By making Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor, he was actually appealing to him for military protection.
• Competition: The Catholic Church in Rome was in constant conflict with the one in Byzantium. Both were trying to assert that they were the legitimate heirs to the Roman Empire. Byzantium had a better case than Rome, and that's why Pope Leo felt compelled to create the idea of the Holy Roman Empire.

What I want to show you also is that the idea of the Holy Roman Empire comes from Augustine. One thing that's very different here is the power of ideas. You're taught usually that it's economics or power or kings that move history. Here, it's ideas that move history.

Augustine wrote a book called City of God. Augustine was a high leader of the church, the Bishop of Hippo in Northern Africa. He had a problem because in the year 410, Rome was sacked by the Goths, who were pagans. This was only a couple of decades after Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire. A lot of people started to believe that the pagan gods were enacting vengeance against Rome for abandoning them. In other words, the Christian God was the false god; the pagan gods were the true gods. This historical event was so traumatizing that people started to believe this. Augustine felt compelled to write City of God to explain the sack and why Christianity is the true faith.

In City of God, Augustine says there are two cities:

1. The City of Man (Rome): This is a place where people pursue power, where kings try to outdo each other. Rome is temporal; it is in time; it is of Earth. Rome is trying to create the end of history, meaning that it is trying to create an eternal peace, the Pax Romana.
2. The City of God (Jerusalem): This is metaphorical. Jerusalem is heaven itself. In heaven, it's a spiritual place where people practice their faith and their devotion to God, and that is what we should be pursuing. Jerusalem means "out of history." You are taking yourself out of human affairs because human affairs don't really matter. What matters is spiritual faith because only spiritual faith will give you salvation and redemption.

Our mission is to create Jerusalem, and that's what the Catholic Church does. The Catholic Church is the City of God. It's the New Jerusalem. It's what allows humanity to step out of history and to celebrate God on Earth. City of God, in other words, becomes the basis of the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne and Leo worked together to create the Holy Roman Empire in order to achieve Augustine's vision of Heaven on Earth. City of God was the intellectual blueprint.

What's really interesting is Charlemagne, who apparently was illiterate, every day had the City of God read to him. That's how much he loved it, and he basically made City of God the official text of the Holy Roman Empire. That's the power of ideas. Augustine, in the City of God, had already created the intellectual framework for the Holy Roman Empire that, 400 years later, Leo and Charlemagne could take in order to build it. Without City of God, they could not have imagined the Holy Roman Empire. You need someone to imagine the idea before you can actually implement it on Earth.

Conclusion: Neither Holy, Nor Roman, Nor an Empire

Let me conclude by going back to Voltaire's quotation: "The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." As I promised, I will show you that this is true.

• Holy? The idea that the Catholic Church is really the power in charge is just pageantry. It's a fiction. The entire Holy Roman Empire is a useful fiction. The king and the pope benefit from pretending the Catholic Church is in charge in order to confer legitimacy onto the king. They benefit from displaying an alliance to the people of Europe to create a sense of unity. But this fiction depends on the pope and the emperor getting along. After Charlemagne, they don't get along because the pope insists on having power over the emperor, and the emperor insists on having power over the pope. Not only that, but the pope and the emperor are both elected by local lords. The pope is elected by the bishops of Western Europe; the emperor is elected by the prince-electors. These people are also extremely ambitious. They want to be the pope; they want to be the emperor. So with the idea of the Holy Roman Empire, there's still conflict, wars, and competition going on that will last for centuries. It all goes underground. They all hide it, pretending that Europe is at peace when really it's at war. Some of the most atrocious, gruesome stories will come from this medieval period. It's a Game of Thrones situation. So it's not holy. Everyone pretends the church is in charge, but it's not really.
• Roman? The authority of the Catholic Church comes from the fact that it is the direct descendant of the Roman Empire. In fact, the Catholic Church goes out of its way to appear like the Roman Empire. Latin is the language the Catholic Church uses for bureaucracy, and a lot of their cultural practices are like the Romans'. Remember that in the Roman Empire, it's the Senate that confers legitimacy onto the emperor. In this world, it's the Catholic Church that confers legitimacy onto the emperor. The Catholic Church is trying to present itself as a continuation of the Roman Senate. But what matters is the culture, and the culture of the Romans died with the empire. The death of this culture started in the year 212 when Roman citizenship was given to everyone within the empire. The Roman Empire died a long time ago. The Catholic Church is not Roman.
• Empire? The Byzantines were an empire because they had an imperial bureaucracy and its own military that could enforce its will on the provinces. The Holy Roman Empire was never truly an empire in the sense that the emperor's will was absolute. He needed the support of his allies. There were many times throughout this history when the emperor tried to enforce his will on the prince-electors of Germany, and they rebelled against him because they needed to protect their autonomy. This idea that the real power is in these princes, in the local areas, is what will give rise to the idea of feudalism in Europe.

The Holy Roman Empire was a useful fiction for its time in order to present the idea of legitimacy and unity across a divided Europe at war with itself.

What was the relationship of the prince-electors to the emperor?

An audience member asks: "What's the relationship of the prince-electors to the emperor?"

This is a really interesting question. If you are a prince-elector, you are a local prince in Europe. How do you benefit from the Holy Roman Empire? You benefit because the Holy Roman Empire confers legitimacy to you as well. If you're a local prince, you also have people who want your throne. You also need to keep your people united. The Catholic Church, the religion of Catholicism, was an important mechanism for you to assert authority over your people and to keep you safe from your enemies.

In many ways, the Catholic Church is trying to be the freelance imperial bureaucracy of Europe. There's no emperor with real power, so the Catholic Church is trying to be the imperial bureaucracy, creating the culture, the meta-reality of all Europeans. It does that through its local churches and priests. The people are interacting with the local priests, not with bureaucrats. Through the priest, you can collect information on the people, like how much money they're making so you can tax them better, and you can better control their thoughts.

Everyone's benefiting from this relationship, but it's a delicate balance. The local princes, even though they're benefiting, still demand autonomy. The Catholic Church and the emperor want to assert their central authority over the local areas. It's a delicate balance.