Noble Blood - In No Way Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

What is the "Holy Roman Empire" and why does it seem to be in... Germany? The answer goes back to the King of the Franks, and a very vulnerable Pope. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book,  'Anatomy: A Love Story' and pre-order its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. If you are a regular Noble Blood listener or even a casual student of European history, you've likely come across the phrase, Holy Roman Empire. Ah, you might have thought upon seeing those words, Rome, Italy, Holy, the Vatican.

But then you look deeper and you find out what was known as the Holy Roman Empire seem to have mainly occupied the land that we know today as Germany. Well, surely it should have been known as the Holy German Empire then. And what makes it so holy German Empire then? anyways. If you found yourself asking those questions, know that you are not alone. The famous

French writer Voltaire once famously wrote, quote, this body, which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire, was in no way holy nor Roman, nor an empire. Like many things medieval and monarchical, the term Holy Roman Empire seems to defy modern, but we do know at least the origins of the term. To understand why much of central Europe was for centuries referred to as the Holy Roman Empire, will have to go back to the 8th century, when an ambitious Frankish king, a bold Byzantine empress, a vulnerable pope, and a shocking coronation, changed the shape of Europe forever.

I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The winding road that led to the creation of the Holy Roman Empire began, fittingly, in Rome. It was April 25, 799, the day of the procession of the greater litanyes, and Christian Romans were marching in the streets, singing praises of God and praying for the favor of heaven. At the head of the group was Pope Leo III. Relatively new to the office, Leo's reign had not always been smooth sailing. He had been elected Pope on December 26, 795, the same day that his predecessor, Pope Adrian I, had been buried.

It was a hasty election. Too hasty, some thought, perhaps designed to exclude Leo's opponents from the process. The exact objections of these opponents, many of whom had been close to Pope Adrian, have been partially lost to history, but we do have vague outlines of their concerns. Some disliked Leo because of his relatively humble background, unlike many popes before and after, Leo did not come from the aristocracy. Others were concerned that Leo was unable to maintain the political balance between the two greatest Catholic powers, the Franks and the Byzantines. Over the first four years of Leo's rule as Pope, these opponents had gradually ramped up

their attacks on him, but no one foresaw just how far those men would go to bring the new Pope down. As the procession neared the Flaminian Gate, armed a assailants suddenly lunged at Pope Leo. Holding the Pope down, they cut off his clothes, stabbed at his eyes, and wrenched open his mouth, trying to cut out his tongue. They didn't want to kill him, only remove his speech and sight, figuring that would prevent him from fulfilling his papal duties. The flailing Pope and the panicked crowd made it too difficult for the attackers to complete their work, though. So they dragged the Pope into a nearby chapel, where they cut at his tongue and eyes and beat him bloody. Then they took the gravely injured Pope to the monastery of St. Erasmus,

where he was locked in a cell. But inside the cell, something strange happened. Pope Leo began to heal. His eyes could make out shapes. His tongue could form sound. We don't know exactly how injured Leo had been to begin with, but many medieval observers called his recovery miraculous. Once he was well enough, Leo escaped from the monastery and made his way to St. Peter's Basilica, where loyal attendants met him and escorted him to safety, first in Spiletto and then on to Potterbourne, where Pope Leo went to seek the protection of Charlemagne, King of the Franks. Born plain old Charles, sometime in the 740s,

Charlemagne is a contraction of the French Charlemagne, or Charles the Great. He inherited the kingdom of Francia, located in northwestern Europe, upon the death of his father, Pepin the Short, in 768. Peppin and his father, Charles Martel, before him, had greatly expanded Francius Holdings, and over the course of Charlemagne's 46-year reign, he took the legacy of his conquering forebearers even further, taking on and defeating nearly all neighboring kingdoms, including the Saxons to the north, the Lombards and the Moors to the south, and the Slavs ofars and Bavarians to the east. His quest to dominate was both politically and religiously motivated,

people conquered by the Franks were required to convert to Christianity on pain of death. By 799, Charlemagne's lands included nearly all of mainland Western Europe. Charlemagne had a close relationship with the church's leaders. He and his father, Pepin, had fought off the Lombards in northern Italy, regaining control of the areas around Rome on behalf of the papacy. Upon Leo's appointment as Pope in 795, Charlemagne had sent him an enormous treasure, captured from the Avars, which Leo used to strengthen church institutions and secure his own tenuous position. And of course, there was Charlemagne's forcible and often violent conversion of pagan tribes,

which brought thousands more into the Catholic Church's ranks. After escaping from the monastery, Leo hoped to get Charlemagne's support, and he was not disappointed. Charlemagne received him in Paderborn, a city in present-day North Central Germany, with ceremony and honor. Unrest in the church leadership meant instability for Charlemagne's own realm, and he wanted the problem resolved quickly. And as we'll see later, he might have seen a lot. away to gain more than he gave. After two weeks in Paderborn, Leo returned to Rome, alongside a delegation of Franks, assigned to his enemies that he had at least some degree of the powerful Charlemagne's protection. However, the Pope's opponents did not fully relent. They claimed

that the Pope had committed adultery and perjury, and they demanded he stand trial for his crimes. After nearly a year of political maneuvering over Leo's fate, Charlemagne himself came to Rome, arriving at the steps of St. Peter's Basilica on November 24th in the year 800, were splendid in his power, laden with hundreds of pounds of gold and silver gifts for the church, and surrounded by an enormous retinue. Final discussions began in haste.

Leo's opponents demanded a trial, in which Leo's accusers would testify against him. Leo's supporters, aided by Charlemagne's religious advisors, argued that church law did not allow the Pope to be tried, and they suggested instead that Leo perform a public oath of purgation, in which he could both declare his innocence and also pray for forgiveness for any alleged sins. Eventually, that plan won out.

On December 23, 800, Pope Leo stood in front of the congregation assembled at St. Peter's and performed the oath of purgation. His position as Pope was now secure. And now that he was back on top, Leo had one more pressing piece of business. Two days later, on December 25th, Charlemagne celebrated Christmas in Rome. Like most of Rome's elite, attended services in St. Peter's. At the Mass's end, Charlemagne approached the altar of the basilica and knelt to pray. As he rose, Pope Leo came to his side, and as the royal Frankish Annals describes it, quote, placed a crown on his head, and he was acclaimed by the whole people of the Romans. to Charles Augustus, the God-crowned great and Pacific Emperor of the Romans, life and victory, and after the acclamations, he was saluted by the Pope

in the customary manner of ancient emperors, and he was called Emperor and Augustus. End quote. Charlemagne had entered the church as King of the Franks. He left it as Emperor of the Romans. quite the Christmas present. There was only one slight problem with this ascension, though. There was, technically, already a Roman emperor. Her name was Irene.

The Franks weren't the only ones to control massive swaths of territory in the 8th century, wrapping around the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, from the southern tip of Italy to the eastern region, of present-day Turkey was another powerful empire, the Byzantines. For more on this history, which lasted more than a millennium, so for just a little bit more, you can listen to the episode called the Secret History of Emperor Justinian. But for now, all you need to know is that Byzantium was born from the ruins of the Eastern Roman Empire, and they saw themselves as being successors to that legacy, the legacy of the Romans.

For this reason, they were known to themselves and to the rest of the world as the Romans, or Eastern Romans. The term Byzantine is a more modern appellation, and we'll use it here to keep the distinction between the Byzantines and the occupants of Rome clear. By 800, Byzantium was more than 400 years old, and had seen its share of ups and downs. But it had never seen a crisis like the one it was now facing. Three years earlier, the Dowager Empress Irene had had her son, Emperor Constantine the 6th, kidnapped, blinded, and possibly killed. Irene then took power for herself. Ruling was not new for Irene. After the death of her husband, Emperor Leo IV, not to be confused with Pope Leo III, Irene had served as regent for their son Constantine, who was a judge of

was only nine. Her control lasted for more than a decade, but as Constantine grew older and more rebellious, her hold on power became more tenuous. Tensions between mother and son escalated until, afraid for his life, Constantine fled from the palace in Constantinople, but he wasn't fast enough, and Irene's allies seized him, returning him to the palace to be blinded. Irene was now the sole empress of the Byzantines, or as she would have called herself, empress of the Romans. So how could Charlemagne be the emperor of the Romans? It's simple, says historian Janet Nelson. Quote, Charlemagne's contemporaries in West and East were willing to agree.

Feminine rule was a contradiction. Nelson cites the Lorch Annals, a 9th century. source, which stated, quote, because the name of the emperor was at that time in cessation in the land of the Greeks, and they had a woman's rule among them, it seemed to the Pope and to the Christian fathers and to the rest of the Christian people that they ought to give the name of emperor to Charles, end quote. In other words, a woman in power was so illogical in the eyes of contemporary men that it rendered the very idea of empire invalid. This isn't to girl bossify Irene, because remember, she did, after all, have her own son blinded, but this is what happened.

That logic that a woman couldn't rule then secured Charlemagne's title. But not for long. Irene was deposed in 802, the first and last sole empress of the Byzantines. Her male successors all used the title, Emperor of the Romans. The argument presented by the Franks then had to look to history. Charlemagne, the lore channels explained, quote, held Rome where the Caesars had always been accustomed to sit, as well as many of the former Roman provinces like Italy and Galt, end quote.

Because he ruled those physical territories then, Charlemagne was thus the true inheritor of the Roman tradition and the rightful emperor of Rome. This argument was not entirely convincing to the Byzantines, and the conflict was never entirely solved, creating what historians have called the problem of two emperors. Constantine himself seemed to have recognized the diplomatic delicacy of the situation, and he preferred to refer to his role as Romans-Guberman's Imperium, or governing the Roman Empire, instead of as Emperor of,

the Romans. But Charlemagne wasn't ambiguous about his new title. Though Einhard, one of Charlemagne's contemporaries, writes that the Emperor had no idea what the Pope had planned and was initially reluctant to accept. Other contemporaries and most modern scholars disagree. Charlemagne and Pope Leo had likely planned this Christmas ceremony together, perhaps when Leo was at Paderborn, perhaps the year after. It was an arrangement that suited both. It allowed Charlemagne to add an additional seal of legitimacy to his ambitions, painting them as sanctioned by both the church and the ancient Caesars, and it allowed Pope Leo, so newly returned to the papal throne, to tie himself publicly to the most powerful man on the continent. After all this fuss, though, did the title of Emperor

actually change anything for Charlemagne? Ultimately, not really. It cemented his relationship with the church, solidified his identity as a defender of the faith, and gilded his family's name. But his power had already been enormous. The title, in many ways, was just the cherry on top of 40 years

of relentless, merciless, empire building. The greatest life, legacy of that Christmas Day in 800 was the idea of the Holy Roman Empire, though that exact term wouldn't be used until several centuries later. By the year 900, Charlemagne's hard-won empire had crumbled, having been subdivided into warring duchies controlled by various descendants. Otto I, the first ruler of an eastern section of the former empire located in Germany, reunited the territories, and revived the title of emperor, being crowned by the Pope in 962. Some historians argue that it is Otto's coronation, not Charlemains, that marks the real

beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, but the origins of the concept, historian Joachim Whaley notes, quote, lay in the translation of the inheritance of the Roman Empire northwards by Charlemagne, end quote. Emperor Frederick I Barbosa was the first to officially tack Holy onto the title as part of his quest to reconquer Italy in the mid-12th century. His quest would ultimately fail and, over time, the bounds of the Holy Roman Empire drew in, centered around Germany, Austria, and Bohemia. In 1512, at the Imperial Diet of Cologne, the name Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, was made official. Throughout the centuries, the role of the Holy Roman Emperor himself, both who he was and what functions he served, changed dramatically. From 911 onward, the emperor was chosen by electors, the heads of noble families, who voted for the emperor at meetings

of the imperial deities. The system occasionally caused chaos. In 1314, two men were elected by rival factions of electors leading to war. To regulate the process, the Golden Bull of 1356 set a number of rules into place, the most important of which codified who the electors were, how the role of elector would be passed down, and how the elections would take place. Over time, power in the empire shifted from the emperor to these electors, each of whom controlled vast lands and treasuries. The role of emperor became more symbolic, and who was elected to the role mattered less than who had the power to elect him. Princely families in the empire worked not to become emperor, but to enter the electorate. As you may remember the Hanover family doing in our episode, the princess imprisoned in her cell.

Power became increasingly decentralized with these various kingdoms, principalities, cities, and territories of the empire, largely ruling themselves. By the time the empire ended in 1806, it looked much more like its successor, the associated states of the German Confederation, than it did the medieval, multi-regional empire of Charlemagne or Otto. Those men would likely have identified less with the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, then they would have identified with the man who defeated him

at the Battle of Austerlitz, the man who ended the Holy Roman Empire once and for all, Napoleon Bonaparte. So what of Voltaire's famous quote? Was the Holy Roman Empire really neither holy nor Roman nor an empire? Well, yes and no. It was an empire, surely, although for many years it operated as an electorate.

It was occasionally Roman, both literally via control over Rome, and metaphorically via its mythological ties to ancient Rome. As for the last criterion, can any empire born of battle and bloodshed ever really be holy whether or not it was blessed by a pope? I'll leave that one. Dear listener, up to you. That's the story of the,

Holy Roman Empire, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about Charlemagne's legacy. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar. of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the. best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you

ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

The term Holy Roman Empire isn't Charlemagne's only linguistic legacy. If you look at the term for King in a. number of Slavic and Baltic languages, among others, you'll notice their similarity. The Polish Krolll sounds like the Czech Kral, and both are close cousins of the Latvian Graalus and the Hungarian Kierli. The predominant theory among linguists is that all of these words can be traced back to the old high German word Karl, which, you may have guessed, is the Germanic spelling of Charles, and is what many of Charlemagne's Slavic contemporaries

would have known him as. That's right, Charlemagne was so influential that, in many countries, the very word for king comes from his first name. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio and Grimmin-Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.

The show is produced by Rima Il Kiali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Bodom. My next guest, it's Will. Farrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah. It would not be. Right.

It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the eye heart. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.