Prompt Cast
The Holy Roman Empire: Not Holy, Roman, or an Empire
TLDR The Holy Roman Empire, despite its name, was not holy, Roman, or an empire. It was a collection of territories and nations with an elected monarch system and little control by the emperor, making it more like a federation.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
The Holy Roman Empire was not holy, Roman, or an empire, according to Voltaire.
01:58
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Franks began to consolidate a kingdom under the Carolingian dynasty, with Charlemagne being the greatest Carolingian king, and during this time, the Papacy was under the control of the Byzantine Empire until an opportunity arose for change in 797.
03:39
Charlemagne was crowned the new Roman emperor by Pope Leo III in 800, but most historians don't consider him to be the start of the Holy Roman Empire, which is usually considered to have begun in 962 with the crowning of Otto I of Germany.
05:26
The Holy Roman Empire was characterized by an elected monarch system and the Habsburg dynasty, which controlled the empire from 1440 onwards and had influence over many European royal families, but it ultimately dissolved in 1806 after being defeated by Napoleon.
07:11
The Holy Roman Empire was considered holy, at least until the year 1571, due to its close ties with the Catholic Church and its official state religion of Catholicism.
09:00
The Holy Roman Empire was not Roman in any meaningful sense of the term, as it neither controlled Rome nor was most of its territory part of the original Roman Empire, and it also wasn't an empire in the dictionary definition sense of the term.
10:54
The Holy Roman Empire was a collection of territories and nations, but the emperor usually had little control and the real power was held by lower-level nobility, making it more like a federation than an empire.
