FREE THE HOLY : A THOUSAND YEARS OF EUROPES HISTORY PDF

Peter H. Wilson | 1008 pages | 28 Jan 2016 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9781846143182 | English | London, United Kingdom - Wikipedia

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Heart of Europe by Peter H. The Holy Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, far longer than ancient . Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire distilled the The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History of generations when he quipped it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states. And its legacy can be seen today in debates over the nature of the European Union. By the mid-tenth century its core rested in the German kingdom, and ultimately its territory stretched from France and Denmark to Italy and Poland. Yet the Empire remained stubbornly abstract, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture. Though the title of retained prestige, rising states such as Austria and Prussia wielded power in a way the Empire could not. While it gradually lost the flexibility to cope with political, economic, and social changes, the Empire was far from being in crisis until the onslaught of the French revolutionary wars, when a crushing defeat by at Austerlitz compelled Francis II to dissolve his realm. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. Published February 29th by Belknap Press first published February 23rd More Details Original Title. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Holy Roman Empire. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Heart of Europeplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. The historian facing an unmanageably large topic has a few strategies open to her. She can knuckle down and simply plough through in chronological order — in the manner of, let's say, Diarmaid MacCulloch's History of Christianity which is great. Or you can do what Peter H. Wilson does here: abandon chronology altogether, and structure your book entirely thematically. It sounds logical but having read this, I don't think it really works. Arguably, the problem of trying to maintain The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History working timeline in your head is even worse than the problem of trying to maintain themes in your head when reading a chronological study. What happens here is that you leap centuries from one paragraph to the next in pursuit of details relating to for instance the empire's interaction with the papacy, but you never stay anywhere long enough to get a sense of the personalities or societies at play. Frederick Barbarossa, the twelfth-century emperor, should have been a shoo-in for compelling hero: a dashingly handsome, multilingual polymath who rewrote law codes and led an army on the . Here, he's a nonentity who shuffles vaguely in and out at intervals of several hundred pages. Similarly, I've read a fair bit about Ferdinand II in books about the Thirty Years War, and was hoping to get a fuller picture of him: he remains a complete cipher. Social convulsions like the witchcraft craze or the Black Death might as well never have happened, and even such enormities as the Reformation only seem to feature when they intersect with one of Wilson's master-themes. I am told that the Nine Years War required the calling-up of 31, Kreistruppen — but when it comes to who they were fighting, or where, or why, I'm completely in the dark. Schmalkaldic League! It's funny to see how this detail reappears in almost every printed review of The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History book — because it's the only thing even vaguely anecdotal in the whole one thousand pages. If you have a particular area of interest, and look it up in the index, then Wilson's book is sure to be very enlightening I was interested in how Switzerland came about, and he's great on that subject. He's enlightening and thorough and admirable on loads of subjects. But the book's structure abandons any attempt at narrative history by definition — it leaves the whole thing working fairly well in an encyclopaedic way, but not as something to read through in sequence. Perhaps the most interesting and important sections are Part Two, which discusses the geographical entities that made up the Empire why he delays this for so long is beyond meand the last section where Wilson looks The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History the empire's reputation in subsequent historiography. Through the blunt force of repetition, his central argument is at least pretty clear: that the empire, as a decentralised entity with multiple sites of power still doesn't have a single dominant metropolisdid not fit the emerging model of sovereign states — but that it worked rather well all the same, and might be a useful study for contemporary structures like the European Union. This is a counterargument to the traditional view, which is that The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History was already an inefficient and moribund dinosaur when Napoleon put it out of its misery in Which is ironic, considering that one of the things that has interfered with reassessments of the Holy Roman Empire is the fact that the very word Reicheven in German, has become tainted by Nazism. I think overall this book feels like a necessary, but sometimes tedious, laying-out of the groundwork, presenting a lot of otherwise inaccessible German historiography to an English audience and bringing the conversation up to date. The Holy Roman Empire was qualitatively different, and including such differences might be a crucial necessity for modern politics. It's a fascinating idea, but in the end I don't think you really need to push through this whole thing to get the point. View all 16 comments. Jul 19, Justin Evans rated it liked it Shelves: history-etc. A beautifully designed book that is almost entirely unreadable: less a monograph than an encyclopedia. Wilson gets to avoid the perils of Great Man History i. He gets to privilege the very hip no-really-ideas-matter-a-lot perspective of contemporary history. The form doe A beautifully designed book that is almost entirely unreadable: less a monograph than an encyclopedia. The form doesn't really help in what seems to be the main goal of this book, which The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History to convince people that old historiography of the HRE is wrong to see it as a doddering mess always holding back the development of nation states. It is, you'll be surprised to learn, more complex than that. All well and good; do we need to be reminded in every section? In every chapter? Every part of every chapter? Yes, because that's the only thing holding this mass of small bits together. Otherwise it is a compendium of short essays on various topics, each one very worthwhile, but on the whole utterly unreadable. A better way to hold them together would have been some sense of narrative, but that would have The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History a more traditionally chronological book, which would have vitiated all that great avoiding the Great Men and avoiding the Materialists stuff. Unless that stuff isn't really all that much of a worry, when the third option is a collection of very well-researched, cutting edge wikipedia entries on, e. Two things to note: Wilson clearly knows a lot about his subject matter, and I'd love to take a class with him on it. And there's a chronology at the back of the book, f0r mere mortals like me who can't handle the constant flipping between time periods. It's 54 pages long, detailed, but focused. If only the book had more in common with that. View all 7 comments. If you like your history bone dry, this is the book for you! Clearly superior to a series of Wikipedia entries, so who can complain? The notes for the most part refer to secondary sources, but hey, there are an awful lot of them. Wilson has wisely included lists of the emperors and in the back of the book, without which most readers would be lost. Some will surely be lost anyway. There were times when I had that feeling — e. Besides this ten If you like your history bone dry, this is the book for you! Besides this tendency to generalize across the centuries, there is also that of simply piling fact upon fact, and to forego such things as narrative and chronology. The latter, Wilson writes, "would be unfeasibly long" — but is found, to a degree, in Part III Governance and also in the last couple of chapters of Part IV, as well as in the Appendix - but narrative only occasionally. I am quite stubborn, which is proven by the fact that I actually did finish this book. There were times when I feared it might be my bane. It clearly has the potential at least. For in case you are not sufficiently awestruck by the Holy Roman Empire, not to worry. Wilson will do his best to try to reduce you to a dazed, trembling mess. One way he achieves this is by jumping around in time like a squirrel on amphetamine. At one point I only figured out from the footnote that he had moved a century ahead from where he was just a couple of sentences ago. ’s legacy | The Spectator

Watch fullscreen. Wilson is an assured guide through the millennium-long labyrinth of papal-imperial relations' Literary ReviewA great, sprawling, ancient and unique entity, the Holy Roman Empire, from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later, formed the heart of Europe. It was a great engine for inventions and ideas, it was the origin of many modern European states, from Germany to the Czech Republic, its relations with Italy, France and Poland dictated the course of countless wars - indeed European history as a whole makes no sense without it. In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Empire worked. It is not a chronological history, but an attempt to convey to readers why it was so important and how it changed over its existence. The result is a tour de force - a book that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power, about diplomacy and the nature of European civilization and about the legacy of the Empire, which has continued The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History haunt its offspring, from Imperial and to the European Union. Playing next Tim L Wright. Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History Europe. Dona Juwan. Shel May. Mignon Muniz. Clemon Lance. Holy Roman Empire Explained. Featured channels. Books similar to Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire

However, while by the 15th century the Empire was still in theory composed of three major blocks — Italy, Germany, and Burgundy — in practice only the remained, with the Burgundian territories lost to France and the Italian territories, ignored in the Imperial Reform, mostly either ruled directly by the Habsburg emperors or subject to competing foreign influence. By then, it largely contained only German-speaking territories, plus the . The title continued in the Carolingian family until and from toafter which it was contested by the rulers of Italy in a series of civil wars until the death of the last Italian claimant, Berengar Iin The title was revived again in when Otto IKing of Germany, was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne [10] and beginning a continuous existence of the empire for over eight centuries. The exact term "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until the 13th century, before which the empire was referred to variously as universum regnum "the whole kingdom", as opposed to the regional kingdomsimperium christianum "Christian empire"or Romanum imperium "Roman empire"[18] but the Emperor's legitimacy always rested on the concept of translatio imperii[d] that he held supreme power inherited from the ancient emperors of Rome. The empire never achieved the extent The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History political unification as was formed to the west in Franceevolving instead into a decentralized, limited composed of hundreds of sub-units : kingdomsprincipalitiesduchiescountiesprince-bishopricsFree Imperial Citiesand other domains. Beforethe realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire. Contradicting the traditional view concerning that designation, Hermann Weisert has argued in a study on imperial titulature that, despite the claims of many textbooks, the name "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" never had an official status and points out that documents were thirty times as likely to omit the national suffix as include it. In a famous assessment of the name, the political philosopher Voltaire remarked sardonically: "This body which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. As Roman power in declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control. InPepin's son Charlemagne became of the Franks and began an extensive expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, the Low Countries and beyond, linking the Frankish kingdom with Papal lands. Although antagonism about the expense of Byzantine domination had long persisted within Italy, a political rupture was set in motion in earnest in by the iconoclasm of Emperor Leo III the Isaurianin what Gregory II saw as the latest in a series of imperial heresies. As the Church, influenced by Gothic law forbidding female leadership and property ownership, [ citation needed ] only regarded a male Roman Emperor as the head of ChristendomPope Leo III sought a new candidate for the dignity, excluding consultation with the Patriarch of . Charlemagne's good service to the Church in The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History defense of The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History possessions against the Lombards made him the ideal candidate. Charlemagne adopted the formula Renovatio imperii Romanorum "renewal of the Roman Empire". InIrene was overthrown and exiled by Nikephoros I and henceforth there were two Roman Emperors. After Charlemagne died inthe imperial crown passed to his son, . Upon Louis' death init passed to his son Lothairwho had been his co-ruler. By this point the territory of Charlemagne had been divided into several territories cf. After the Carolingian king died without issue inEast did not turn to the Carolingian ruler of to take over the realm but instead elected one of the dukes, Conrad of Franconiaas Rex Francorum Orientalium. Henry died inbut his descendants, the Liudolfing or Ottonian dynastywould continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Upon 's death, OttoThe Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History son and designated successor, [44] was elected King in in After that, the king managed to control the The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History of dukes and often also employed bishops in administrative affairs. InOtto came to the aid of Adelaidethe widowed queen of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her, and taking control over Italy. Otto's as Emperor marked the German kings as successors to the Empire of Charlemagne, which through the concept of translatio imperiialso made them consider themselves as successors to Ancient Rome. The kingdom had no permanent capital city. Kingship continued to be transferred by election, but Kings often ensured their own sons were elected during their lifetimes, enabling them to keep the crown for their families. This only changed after the end of the Salian in the 12th century. Up to that time, he had remained in Germany, while a deposed duke, Crescentius IIruled over Rome and part of Italy, ostensibly in his stead. Otto died young inand was succeeded by his cousin Henry IIwho focused on Germany. This group eventually developed into the college of Electors. Kings often employed bishops in administrative affairs and often determined who would be appointed to ecclesiastical offices. Meanwhile, the German princes had elected another king, Rudolf of Swabia. After his death, his second son, Henry Vreached an agreement with the Pope and the bishops in the Concordat of Worms. The Pope and the German princes had surfaced as major players in the political system of the empire. As the result of Ostsiedlungless-populated regions of Central Europe i. Silesia became part of the Holy Roman Empire as the result of the local Piast dukes' push for autonomy from the Polish Crown. When the ended with Henry V's death inthe princes chose not to elect the next of kin, but rather Lothairthe moderately powerful but already old Duke of Saxony. When he died inthe princes again aimed to check royal power; accordingly they did not elect Lothair's favoured heir, his son-in-law Henry the Proud of the Welf family, but Conrad III of the family, the grandson of Emperor Henry IV and thus a nephew of Emperor Henry V. This led to over a century of strife between the two houses. Conrad ousted the Welfs from their possessions, but after his death inhis nephew Frederick I "Barbarossa" succeeded him and made peace with the Welfs, restoring his cousin to his — albeit diminished — possessions. The Hohenstaufen rulers increasingly lent land to ministerialiaformerly non-free servicemen, who Frederick hoped would be more reliable than dukes. Initially used mainly for war services, this new class of people would form the basis for the later knightsanother basis of imperial power. A further important constitutional move at Roncaglia was the establishment of a new peace mechanism for the entire empire, the Landfriedenwith the first imperial one being issued in under Henry IV at . Another new concept of the time was the systematic foundation of new cities by the Emperor and by the local dukes. These were partly caused by the explosion in population, and they also concentrated economic power at strategic locations. Before this, cities had only existed in the form of old Roman foundations or older bishoprics. Cities that were founded in the 12th century include Freiburgpossibly the economic model for many later cities, and Munich. Frederick Ialso called Frederick Barbarossa, was crowned Emperor in He emphasized the "Romanness" of the empire, partly in an attempt to justify the power of the Emperor independent of the now strengthened Pope. An The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History assembly at the fields of Roncaglia in reclaimed imperial rights in reference to Justinian 's Corpus Juris Civilis. Imperial rights had been referred to as regalia since the but were enumerated for the first time at Roncaglia. This comprehensive list included public roads, tariffs, coining, collecting punitive fees, and the investiture or seating and unseating of office holders. These rights were now explicitly rooted in Roman Law, a far-reaching constitutional act. Frederick's policies were primarily directed at Italy, where he clashed with the increasingly wealthy and free-minded cities of the north, especially The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History. He also embroiled himself in another conflict with the Papacy by supporting a candidate elected by a minority against Pope Alexander The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History — Frederick supported a succession of antipopes before finally making peace with Alexander in Henry gave only lackluster support to Frederick's policies, and in a critical situation during the , Henry refused the Emperor's plea for military support. After returning to Germany, an embittered Frederick opened proceedings against the Duke, resulting in a public ban and the confiscation of all his territories. During the Hohenstaufen period, German princes facilitated a successful, peaceful eastward settlement of lands that were uninhabited or inhabited sparsely by West Slavs. German speaking farmers, traders, and craftsmen from the western part of the Empire, both Christians and Jews, moved into these areas. The gradual Germanization of these lands was a complex phenomenon that should not be interpreted in the biased terms of 19th-century nationalism. The eastward settlement expanded the influence of the empire to include Pomerania and Silesiaas did the intermarriage of the local, still mostly Slavic, rulers with German spouses. Henry added the Norman to his domains, held English king Richard the Lionheart captive, and aimed to establish a hereditary monarchy when he died in As his son, Frederick IIthough already elected king, was still a small child and living in Sicily, German princes chose to elect an adult king, resulting in the dual election of Frederick Barbarossa's youngest son and Henry the Lion's son Otto of Brunswickwho competed for the crown. Otto prevailed for a while after Philip was murdered in a private squabble in until he began to also claim Sicily. After his victory, Frederick did not act upon his promise to keep the two realms separate. Though he had made his son Henry king of Sicily before marching on Germany, he still reserved real political power for himself. This continued after Frederick was crowned Emperor in Fearing Frederick's concentration of power, the Pope finally excommunicated the Emperor. Another point of contention was the crusade, which Frederick had promised but repeatedly postponed. Now, although excommunicated, Frederick led the Sixth Crusade inwhich ended in negotiations and a temporary restoration of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Despite his imperial claims, Frederick's rule was a major turning point towards the disintegration of central rule in the Empire. While concentrated on establishing a modern, centralized state in Sicily, he was mostly absent from Germany and issued far-reaching privileges to Germany's secular and ecclesiastical princes: in the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticisFrederick gave up a number of regalia in favour of the bishops, among them tariffs, coining, and fortification. The Statutum in favorem principum mostly extended these privileges to secular territories. Although many of these privileges had existed earlier, they were now granted globally, and once and for all, to allow the German princes to maintain order north of the while Frederick concentrated on Italy. The Kingdom of Bohemia The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History a significant regional power during the . InKing Ottokar I bearing the title "king" since extracted a Golden Bull of Sicily a formal edict from the emperor Frederick IIconfirming the royal title for Ottokar and his descendants and the was raised to a kingdom. Bohemian kings would be exempt from all future obligations to the Holy Roman Empire except for participation in the imperial councils. Conrad's death was followed by the Interregnumduring which no king could achieve universal recognition, allowing the princes to consolidate their holdings and become even more independent rulers. Afterthe crown was contested between Richard of Cornwallwho was supported by the Guelph partyand Alfonso X of Castilewho was recognized by the Hohenstaufen party but never set foot on German soil. He was the first of the Habsburgs to hold a royal title, but he was never crowned emperor. After Rudolf's death inAdolf and Albert were two further weak kings who were never crowned emperor. Albert was assassinated in Philip thought he had the backing of the French Pope Clement V established at Avignon inand that his prospects of bringing the empire into the orbit of the French royal house were good. He lavishly spread French money in the hope of bribing the German electors. Although Charles of Valois had the backing of Henry, Archbishop of , a French supporter, many were not keen to see an expansion of French power, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europes History of all Clement V. The principal rival to Charles appeared to be Rudolf, the . Given his background, although he was a vassal of king Philip, Henry was bound by few national ties, an aspect of his suitability as a compromise candidate among the electors, the great territorial magnates who had lived without a crowned emperor for decades, and who were unhappy with both Charles and Rudolf. Henry of Cologne's brother, Baldwin, Archbishop of Trier, won over a number of the electors, including Henry, in exchange for some substantial concessions. During the 13th century, a general structural change in how land was administered prepared the shift of political power towards the rising bourgeoisie at the expense of the aristocratic that would characterize the Late Middle Ages. The rise of the cities and the emergence of the new burgher class eroded the societal, legal and economic order of feudalism. Peasants were increasingly required to pay tribute to their lands. The concept of "property" began to replace more ancient forms of jurisdiction, although they were still very much tied together. In the territories not at the level of the Empirepower became increasingly bundled: whoever owned the land had jurisdiction, from which other powers derived. However, that jurisdiction at the time did not include legislation, which was virtually non-existent until well into the 15th century. Court practice heavily relied on traditional customs or rules described as customary. During this time territories began to transform into the predecessors of modern states.