Saints' Discussion Forums

                          Lambert (880-898) was the son of Holy Roman Emperor Guy I.   
                           Lambert ruled alongside his father from 892. He and his father signed   
                           a pact with Pope Formosus confirming the Donation of Pepin.

                      Holy Roman Emperor Louis II secured the election of Pope Nicholas I in 858.

                       Otto I was Holy Roman Emperor from 962 until 973.   
                        He granted the various bishops and abbots of the kingdom   
                        the rank of count as well as the legal rights of counts within their territory.

                     Holy Roman Emperor Charles III reigned from 881 to 887.   
                     In 883 Charles signed a treaty with Giovanni II Participazio,   
                     Doge of Venice, granting that any assassin of a doge who     
                     fled to the territory of the Empire would be fined 100 pounds   
                     of gold and banished.

                               Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (reigned 962 to 973) transformed the Roman Catholic Church   
                                in Germany to strengthen the royal office and subjected its clergy to his personal control.

                      In 1530 Charles V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII in Bologna.   
                                  Charles was the last Emperor to receive a papal coronation.

Many thanks for this thread, which has stimulated me to wander in fascination for several hours into my Catholic history and encyclopedia.  I encourage all readers to try a search along the lines of "beginning of the Holy Roman Empire" in your favorite search engine and share your reaction here.  I think you will be amazed, appalled, and saddened at the extent of misinformation, contradiction, and bias.  I am reminded of Jesus' teaching to Nicodemus, Jn 3:19, "...the Light came into the world but (many) people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil."
I think Bing is much more objective than the other search engines, but sadly it too shows a wide range of dubious assertions.

   
 
eschator83, I am glad that you like this thread about the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire has years of history that can be learned about.

My favorite book of Church history (I should admit I don't have very many books) is Joseph McSorley's An Outline History of the Church.  He comments in a note on p 326 that the addition of the adjective Holy to the term Roman Empire appeared for the first time in the reign of Frederick I (c1151-?) and appeared only occasionally for more than a century, becoming customary only in the reign of Charles IV (1347-1378). 
This is an incredible contradiction to most of the several other contradictions that appear in Bing, but seems somewhat reasonable because the dissolution of the brief Carolingian Empire and other misfortunes led McSorley to refer to the 10th century as the darkest age of the Church (and perhaps he meant most of Western civilization).
I'm hoping someone else might comment on other history "versions," and am tempted to write a bit about Bing's version(s) if there is interest.

eschator83, Thank you for the information. I did not know about the adjective Holy in connection with the title.

Sadly, just because something is titled history doesn't assure it's true.  Richard McBrien states in his book Lives of the Popes p 157 that Leo XII established the Holy Roman Empire in 962 when he crowned Otto I.
One of my least favorite books is Bokenkotter's A Concise History of the Catholic Church.  He doesn't even list the Holy Roman Empire in his index, and I can't find the term anywhere in his book.  But he states on p 89 that a new unity (Christendom) was created in 890 when Pope Leo III crowned  Charlemagne.

       

Ironically, McSorley called the 900s the Darkest Age, in part because the Empire of Otto was much smaller than that of Charlemagne, and in just eleven years at Otto's death his empire was broken up, although later to be reconstructed and enlarged.  In contrast, painting history with a somewhat broader brush, Bokenkotter called the period from 600 to 1300 the Making of Christendom.  Who was it that said the devil is in the details?

The wonder, and I think I can say miracle, of the reemergence of the Holy Roman Empire can be appreciated through these words from a Protestant Pastor, but Professor at Notre Dame Univ, Morton Kelsey: "...Western Civilization began to crumble in the sixth century (Barbarian invasions).  Disaster followed disaster, and there was no renewal (like we expect today).  Great cities of several hundred thousand people, like Aquileia, simply ceased to exist.  Hundreds of other cities, from Italy to Britain and from Switzerland to Spain were deserted and remained only piles of rubble, soon totally forgotten...Rome was plundered and finally fell.  Arabs swept away much of the Roman Empire, all of Asia minor and North Africa, and most of Spain.  They gained control of the Mediterranean, and commerce simply disappeared, as did the urban civilization based upon it...the church was the only major institution to survive the chaos."  p201-202 Healing and Christianity.

St Henry II (972-1024) was chosen emperor in 1002 at the death of his cousin Otto III, and crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Benedict VIII, in 1014.  These were very turbulent times in most of the world, but Henry II and III did much to spread faith, justice, and peace.

This is an interesting but obviously very difficult question.  Maximillian II reigned from 1564-1576.  Pius IV served from 1559-1565, succeeded by St Pius V from 1566-1572.  It would be easier to try to search what was done or written or even said rather than what was thought.  I love to search Church issues, but not so much about heresies.  Did you happen to note a particular publication date? 
Here at camp I have few resources, but I vaguely recall reading about a good bit of turmoil when Luther first nailed his list to the Church door.  I hope to work on this question, especially since it is such a paradox that so many Lutherans are leading the way back to the Church.

With a little luck, there next appear a link to Britanica:
britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Thirty-Years-War#ref310545
By a curious coincidence I found that today's Saint DOC Lawrence was substantially involved in the numerous conflicts throughout the German region and so-called Holy Roman Empire, which was then basically about a thousand quite independent and fractious regional empires.  In 1555 the Augsburg agreement temporarily ended 30 years of war essentially between Lutheran and Catholic coalitions, establishing some free cities allowing both, and other regions exclusively Lutheran or Catholic.   In 1606 Fr Lawrence faced a Lutheran mob, but see if you wish how Brittanica tells the story.

   

I've gotten off your main comment, which I hope to understand better when I get home to review O'Brien's Lives of the Popes (kind of a nasty book but loaded with interesting data).  Like most of Brittanica, the Augsburg section's tone is very weakly Protestant, mostly agnostic or worse.  Efforts to seek reconciliation between the groups are essentially ignored, and Brittanica seems to enjoy reporting that Calvinists were also damaging both groups.

O'Brien is quite a terrible author to my recollection.

As I said, he is nasty, I'll go further and add that he's extensively and excessively critical of the church.  It is hard to imagine why he was allowed to teach at Notre Dame, and why his books are still assigned as texts.  But he has a lot of data which is not otherwise readily available.  I think he's in pretty much the same category as Bokenkotter and Durant.  Durant reportedly converted to Catholicism at the end of his life, but it is hard for me to imagine given his outspoken atheism and apparent communism.  O'Brien is much more clear and readable than the others.

Many thanks for this entry and its motivating me to several hours of web searching the Golden Fleece Order and the Burgandy history in general.  The Order exists today in two distinct and separate branches, Spanish and Austrian, of which the Spanish has claimed the most knights (1200), the greatest wealth, culture, and prestige, and yet abandoned its role as a Catholic order when Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, began admitting protestants as Knights.
Tile fragments from the Phinsenhof palace, one of many used by Fleece Grand Masters, indicate that two Holy Roman Emperors were Knights of the order, Maximillian of Austria and Charles V of Germany.
I'm tempted to write more, but web searches can be chaotic, especially trying to reconcile apparent discrepancies, and I wonder if these comments seem accurate.

Catholic Orders seem generally to have shared focus on several aspects of life, religious, military, merit, and culture.  The early religious orders seemed primarily to form among hermits for security, education, and discipline.  The first military and religious order was reportedly the Knights Templar, founded in 1118 to protect Catholic colonies in Outremer, Iberian Peninsula, and Eastern Europe.  But powerful individual and groups of knights emerged throughout Europe as the Roman armies were defeated by wave after wave of pagan invaders in the 4th century.  The model of St George as well as the legendary (?) Knights of the Round Table were popular and hopeful images.  Although cities built under Roman rule were often undefended and abandoned, monasteries and castles of local rulers were frequently fortified and defended.  Other early orders include Knights Hospitaller, Teutonic Knights, Knights of St James.  I noticed about 40 orders, although approximately half reportedly did not have official support from Church officials and of regional royalty.
English Orders of Knights which survive today include Order of the Garter (1349), Order of the Thistle (1354 Scotland), Order of the Bath (1399), although all have been Protestantised.
Six French Orders were suppressed by the Revolution.  Pontifical Orders continue, although military service is not required of knights.
See web 2013 The Splendor of Burgundy Conference on French absorption of Burgundian empire but claims by Spain and Austria of Knights of Burgundy.

I must thank you again for this thread.  Almost every time you post I go back through and reread many of these.  Several times I have rewritten your comments onto a chronological list, but I can't seem to remember how to use a split screen so I can avoid copying manually first and then revising my chronological list.  Today I reviewed again the Library Thing program to see what books it has listed on the HRE.  It is very sad how few books there are and how sparse the readership.  But then I wonder whether we should really make great effort to learn from history, or to concentrate on following and accepting God's Will, or can we do both?  I'm trying to do both but struggling to understand the lessons of history.  As our Lord Jesus Christ told us, evil will always oppose the Light and Truth of Christianity.  We must learn to oppose evil more effectively.

   

Today may be my day for Inspiration, aka amazing coincidences.  On the right side of my desk (ok to be precise the bed in the guest bedroom) I have a 3ring binder titled Monster Issues, which is opened to my several questions or concerns related to Jesus' teachings about evil and subsequent Church teaching, especially St Francis' on Just War.  I almost always follow a quite consistent schedule in the morning, but went instead to wondering if St Matthew combined many separate days of Jesus' teachings and combined some that were only intended for Apostles with others intended all disciples, or all followers, or even crowds.  I am very surprised to find myself back in this thread wondering what our Church history might have been if Christians had never opposed evil.  Please pray for me.
A Monster Book question is: Is everything that has happened God's Will?