Holy Roman Empire

“ Even when the Roman Empire was at its greatest point of power and wealth, the actual founders of the Holy Roman Empire were at work in Rome itself, in the persons of the Christian Fathers; for, after all, it was the Church that was to rule the world once swayed by Roman legions. The men who, as representatives of Christ, were later to tame the barbarians, really laid the foundations for the future greatness of Christian Rome, amid258 the very luxury and opulence of the pagan Rome soon to pass away. ”

“ There is a second wonder in human history, on which it is the purpose of this volume to dwell. The Roman empire, in which the Pax Romana had provided a mould of widespread civilisation for the Church's growth, was [Pg 6] at length broken up in the western half of it, by Teuton invaders occupying its provinces. These were all, at the time of their settlement, either pagan or Arian. There followed, in a certain lapse of time, the creation of a body of States whose centre of union and belief was the See of Peter. That is the creation of Christendom proper. ”

“ This is the more worthy of notice since popular notions of Swiss history take the opposite direction, and introduce us to the Emperor and his ministers as the oppressors who drove an exasperated people to arms. In fact, there still lurk in popular history many fallacies and mistakes about the nature of the 'Holy Roman Empire' as an institution of the middle ages [see ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY] . ... It is not natural or easy indeed to associate that mighty central organisation with popular liberty and power ”

“ In the first place the Church is the lineal successor of the Empire in the sense that she saved Europe from chaos when the political ties which bound its several component parts to Rome were severed, and she conserved with all her power through the Middle Ages the Roman elements which escaped being engulfed by the wave of barbarism. More than that, she kept alive the old tradition of world-empire, no longer of the flesh, but of the spirit. Like the old Empire her domain embraced diverse lands and peoples. ”

“ The Roman empire—that greatest monument of human power, as Dean Church has called it—began the fusion of races into one vast political society; its dominion extended continuously from Britain on the west to Asia Minor and the countries bordering on the Caspian Sea; it settled the law and language of Southern Europe. The establishment of the Roman empire is a cardinal epoch of the world's political history. ”

“ Now, although the Pope has violently and unjustly robbed the true emperor of the Roman empire, or its name, and has given it to us Germans, yet it is certain that God has used the Pope's wickedness to give the German nation this empire and to raise up a new Roman empire, that exists now, after the fall of the old empire. ”

“ In all the lands which had obeyed Rome, and were included in the nominal supremacy of the revived Western Empire, it [Roman Law] acquired a prevalence and power not derived from the sanction of any distinct human authority. No such authority was for the time being strong enough to compete in men's esteem and reverence with the shadow of majesty that still clung to the relics of Roman dominion. ”

“ So, again, in the words of the interpretation: "The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces" (v. 23) . Now all this exactly depicts the Roman power in its subjugation and control of the nations which eventually composed its empire. ”

“ But though the Latin-speaking Roman Empire died in the fifth century, something else had been born within it that was to avail itself enormously of its prestige and tradition, and that was the Latin-speaking half of the Catholic Church. This lived while the empire died because it appealed to the minds and wills of men, because it had books and a great system of teachers and missionaries to hold it together, things stronger than any law or legions. Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. while the empire was decaying, Christianity was spreading to a universal dominion in Europe. ”

“ For three long centuries, the Roman Empire, abusing its brute force, scattered the bodies of martyrs through all its provinces, and bathed with their blood every foot of ground in this sacred city of Rome; while heresy, acting in concert, whether hidden beneath a mask or with open effrontery, with sophistry and snare, endeavored to destroy at least the harmony and unity of faith. ”

“ If for three centuries Christianity has been gradually returning to its origin, that is, becoming purely a religion and a moral teaching, for some centuries in the ancient world it was a thing much more complicated; a government and an administration that willed not only to regulate the relations between man and God, but to govern the intellectual, social, moral, political, and economic life of the people! The historian ought to explain how this new Empire--for it was indeed a new Empire--was formed in Rome and upon its ruins: this is a problem much more intricate than at first appears. ”

“ After this manner the Roman empire combined the tolerance of great religious diversity with the supremacy of a centralised government. Political amalgamation brought about a fusion of divine attributes; and latterly the emperor was adored as the symbol of manifest power, ruler and pontiff; he was the visible image of supreme authority.
This régime was easily accepted by the simple unsophisticated paganism of Europe. The Romans, with all their statecraft, had as yet no experience of a high religious temperature, of enthusiastic devotion and divine mysteries. ”

“ In the historic survey upon which we are now to enter, we shall see that the Roman Empire represented a crude method of nation-making which began with a masterful career of triumph over earlier and cruder methods, but has now for several centuries been giving way before a more potent and satisfactory method. And just as the merest glance at the history of Europe shows us Germanic peoples wresting the supremacy from Rome, so in this deeper study we shall discover a grand and far-reaching Teutonic Idea of political life overthrowing and supplanting the Roman Idea. ”

“ Soon after, upon Christmas-day, the people of Rome, who had hitherto elected their Bishop, and reckoned that they and their Senate inherited the rights of the antient Senate and people of Rome, voted Charles their Emperor, and subjected themselves to him in such manner as the old Roman Empire and their Senate were subjected to the old Roman Emperors. The Pope crowned him, and anointed him with holy oil, and worshipped him on his knees after the manner of adoring the old Roman Emperors; as the aforesaid Poet thus relates:
Post laudes igitur dictas & summus eundem
Præsul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim ”

“ Under the most despotic days of the empire any Roman citizen might rise to any position of power or dignity under the emperor; nay, more than this, any subject of the Roman empire, no matter how low his origin or condition in society, might be thrust, by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, into the imperial purple itself. ”

“ The power of this empire of men of letters increased, as little by little the other empire, that of the generals and diplomats, declined. Christianity saw with indifference the Roman Empire decay; indeed, when it could, it helped on the disintegration and was one of the causes of that political and economic pulverising which everywhere succeeded the great Roman unity. Political and economic unity on the one hand, moral and intellectual on the other, seem in the history of European civilisation things opposite and irreconcilable; when one is formed, the other is undone. ”

“ May not that memorable defeat have been ordered by Providence to give consolidation and peace and prosperity to the Roman Empire, so long groaning under the complicated miseries of anarchy and civil war? If an imperial government was necessary for the existing political and social condition of the Roman world,--and this is maintained by most historians,--how fortunate it was that the empire fell into the hands of a man whose subsequent policy was peace, the development of resources of nations, and a vigorous administration of government! ”

“ If religion wanes before the dazzling forces of a brilliant material civilization, and scarcely holds her own, when all profess to be governed by Christian truth, so that in a moral and spiritual view, society rather retrogrades than advances, I am amazed that it made so considerable a progress in the Roman empire, and increased from generation to generation until it shook the throne of emperors. ”

“ In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. The Roman Empire, indeed, aimed at being one in its administration and law; and it was not a nation nor were its provinces nations, yet everywhere but in Italy it prepared them for becoming nations. ”

“ Out of the wreck of the imperial Rome of the Caesars has risen papal Rome. Once more, though through different agents, the City of the Seven Hills is ruling an orbis terrarum Romanus, a Roman world-empire. The rule extends through nearly a thousand years. How deftly do cunning priests manipulate every means at their command to increase their power! Learning, wealth, beauty, art, piety,—everything is used as an asset in the ambitious game for absolute supremacy which the mitered vicegerent of Christ is playing against the world. ”

“ The Church of the West inherited from old Rome something of that logical, juridical, administrative spirit which had created the Roman law, and something of that ambition and dogged, energetic perseverance that had formed nearly the whole known world into a great centralised empire. The Bishops of Rome early conceived the design of reconstructing that old empire on a new basis, and long strove to create a universal Christian theocratic State, in which kings and other civil authorities should be the subordinates of Christ's Vicar upon earth. ”

“ The Roman Empire, the inheritor of all the power, the civilization, the intellectual and material wealth and grandeur of its predecessors, with its own new and specific force in addition, made of the whole world one dominion, brought the East into subjection to the West, and established in Rome, the Eternal City, the permanent capital of the earth. ”

“ We are also indebted to Rome for many practical skills and for important engineering knowledge, which was saved and passed on to Western Europe through the medium of the monks. On the other side of the picture, the recent great World War, with all its awful destruction of life and property, and injury to the orderly progress of civilization, may be traced directly to the Roman idea of world empire and the sway of one imperial government, imposing its rule and its culture on the rest of mankind. ”

“ Whoever fancies the government of Rome modelled after the type of modern governments, invading, omnipotent, omnipresent, deceives himself. There were sent into the provinces nobles belonging to rich and noted families, who had therefore no need to rob the subjects too much; and these men ruled, making use of the laws, customs, institutions, families of nobles, of each place, exactly as England now does in many parts of its Empire. ”

“ Like all the endeavours of heathenism, this struggle for absolute sovereignty had a twofold aspect; there are thereby made prominent men’s own ways and God’s ways, the undivine aims of men, and the blessed results which God’s government of the world could secure for them. We have here to do first of all simply with the Roman universal empire, but the powers that rose in succession after it are only rejuvenations and powerful continuations of the endeavour of the earlier power, and so that is true of every state which is true of the Roman. ”

“ THE RISE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE Nations rose and fell, leaving the earth to a few powerful ones who attacked one another until, finally, the vast and powerful Roman Empire rose upon the ruins of the others. The central point of unification was nearer, and it appeared when Christ was born, the Saviour of all the world. ”

“ O all ye deities who have exalted the present magnitude of the Roman empire to a position of supremacy over the world, guard, preserve, and protect, I entreat and conjure you, in the name of the Commonwealth, our present state, our present peace, [our present prince [104] !] And when he shall have completed a long course on earth, grant him successors to the remotest ages, and such as shall have abilities to support the empire of the world as powerfully as we have seen him support it! ”

“ First, the whole eastern part of the Roman empire was made up of many various nations having a long and sometimes renowned history, kingdoms, and politics much anterior to Rome herself, of which the Romans had taken violent possession, but wherein remained still the fruits of a rich and undisturbed civilisation. ”

“ These, with many other striking resemblances, demonstrate that the Roman hierarchy, in all its great features, was a counterpart to imperial Rome—an image of, and belonging to, the seven-headed, ten-horned monster, whose deadly wound was healed.
Life was to be given to this image by the two-horned beast. The papal hierarchy is created when its supremacy over other churches is declared and sustained; and the power by which this is done, is that which gives life to it. This was done, according to the following history, by the Eastern empire. ”