League of the Holy Roman Empire

“ If such was the nominal position of the emperor, what then was the real secret of his actual power? It rested, not on the tradition of kingship, but on the simple basis of military leadership. “Imperator,” as has been said, implied “commander of the legions”; and he who controlled the legions, controlled the Roman Empire. That was the whole secret. There is nothing occult or mysterious in it all. Rome’s position as mistress of the world depended solely upon her army; therefore, the man who controlled that army was master of the world. ”

“ And if fusion had been the thought, the desire, and the attempt of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ, even more certainly was it the only spirit by which Augustus and Tiberius could hope to rule in peace the world made subject to them. And not less than the extinction of Greek autonomy did the loss of self-government accompanying the institution of the empire force the Roman also back upon himself. ”

“ There was a great want of able sovereigns, and especially of men who were strong enough to fulfil the functions of the imperial office. To turn now especially towards 463Italy and Rome, it was the lack of a strong hand to preserve peace and order among the petty princes and states of Italy, and to protect the pope and the Holy See from the rebellions and intrigues of powerful nobles and contending factions within and around the Roman principality, which was the chief cause of the long obnubilation of the sun of Christendom—the Roman Church—during the tenth epoch. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For five hundred years there was neither anarchy nor military despotism. If every citizen knew how to fight, every citizen also knew how to govern, to submit. No consul dared to exceed his trust; no general, till Caesar, ventured to cross the Rubicon. The Roman Senate never lost its dignity— a supreme body which controlled all public interests. The Romans were sufficiently wise to bend to circumstances. Though proud, the patricians made concessions to plebeians whenever it was necessary. The right of citizenship was gradually extended throughout the Empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is unreasonable to suppose that Rome, the mother of laws, ever contemplated the rule of despotism and caprice in the administration of justice in any part of the empire. It is true that the effect of the imperium, "as applied to provincial governorship, was to make each imperator a king in his own domain"; but kings themselves have nearly always been subject to restrictions; and the authorities are agreed that the imperium of the Roman procurator of the time of Christ was hemmed in by many limitations. ”

“ The presence of barbarians at the gate created not so much consternation and despair among the citizens of Rome, as did the news of the mutiny of the soldiers of Germanicus on the Rhine. What the legion was to the body, the law was to the soul of Rome—the highest expression of its sanctity and majesty. And when her physical body that once extended from Scotland to Judea, and from Dacia to Abyssinia was dead, in the year 476 A.D., her soul rose triumphant in her laws and established a second Roman Empire over the minds and consciences of men. ”

“ It had taken Rome 120 years to complete the union of the Italian peninsula, broken up as it was by mountain ranges and naturally favoring the formation and preservation of various isolated states. But union it was, rather than a subjugation, and each nation was left to the practical management of its own affairs. Content with self-government, the various communities, for the most part, easily bore the yoke of Roman supremacy. ”

“ When the all-absorbing questions agitating a people are those relative to internal political contests, the energies of the ablest men of each generation are spent mainly in political contests instead of being exerted for the common welfare of the community.
The influence which the internal dissensions [37] at Rome must have exerted on her military success is shown by a comparison of the military history of the Roman republic prior to 367 B.C. with the wonderful career of conquest which the Roman republic entered into immediately after the passage of the Licinian Act. ”

“ If there be any right better founded and stronger than that of conquest, such right belongs unquestionably to the saviors of Rome. They have saved it for the Christian world, for mankind, for the Church. It is no man's property. It cannot be let, like a paltry farm, to those who shall bid the highest, in vain compromises and delusive hopes of liberty. Should the Roman people, of their own free will, pretend to give themselves away,—to sell themselves to a faction whose subversive principles they abhor, their forefathers of all preceding ages would protest against their base degeneracy ”

“ In no other despotism in the history of the world is there to be found so little racial or class distinction as in the Roman empire. Such distinctions were never able to exist at Rome during any portion of her history. The permanent privileged classes were those possessed of wealth, or of military power, and the descendants of both the conquerors and the conquered of one epoch would be found in the next indiscriminately divided among the exploiters and the exploited of the times. ”

“ The government of the late Roman empire was an autocracy, in which the emperor was the active head of the administration and at the same time the source of all legislative, judicial and military authority. For the exercise of this authority the support of the army and the bureaucracy was essential. All the sovereign rights of the Roman people were regarded as having been transferred to the imperial power. The emperor was no longer the First of the Roman citizens—the primus inter pares—but all within the empire were in equal degree his subjects. ”

“ The ruler of modern times has become what he was in the age of pretorian law, corrupted by the Caesarian jurors of the empire, of the middle ages, and particularly the Renaissance, that is to say, the people, who by a so-called "royal law" would have relinquished their rights into the hands of the Roman emperors. But if the sovereign people could not but be a majority purely numerical, arrogating in its turn the pretended laws of Caesar, the struggles of the middle age between the clergy and the empire would certainly be renewed. ”

“ It was they, as senators, governors, consuls, generals, quaestors, who gave the people baths, theatres, and temples. They headed factions as well as armies. They were the state.
The main object to which the reigning classes gave their attention was war,—the extension of the empire. "Ubi castra, ibi respublica." Republican Rome was a camp, controlled by aristocratic generals. Dominion and conquest were their great ideas, their aim, their ambition. To these were sacrificed pleasure, gain, ease, luxury, learning, and art. And when they had conquered they sought to rule, and they knew how to rule. ”

“ The rulers of imperial Rome had tried hard enough to build up loyalty with their temples devoted to the imperial cult, their monuments and public buildings, their ceremonies and festivals. Their efforts failed partly because the cult of emperor-worship and Rome-worship was synthetic, foisted on the people from above instead of springing spontaneously from popular beliefs and experiences — even more because the average inhabitant of the Roman Empire could take no interest in the affairs of an organization in which he played no significant role. ”

“ But as the position of Rome became more secure, and as Roman political institutions became more stable, the character of Roman government improved. Partly from the Greek philosophers, partly from their own experience, the Romans developed the concepts of a fundamental law binding all men, and of an ideal justice in which all should participate. Inspired by these ideals, guided by the great emperors of the second century A.D., the Roman Empire lost its predatory character and became a universal commonwealth. ”

“ The institutions of the pagan world were too firmly rooted to afford hope to Christian teachers, if ever so enlightened. The great cardinal principle of the common brotherhood of man could only be applied under more favorable circumstances. The unity of the empire did facilitate the outward triumphs and spread of Christianity, and perhaps that was the great mission which the Roman empire was designed by God to promote. But the social and political institutions of the Romans were exceedingly adverse to a healthy development of Christian virtue. ”

“ It comprises the whole history of the predominance of the iconoclasts in the established church, and of the reaction which reinstated the orthodox in power. It opens with the efforts by which Leo and the people of the empire saved the Roman law and the Christian religion from the conquering Saracens. It embraces a long and violent struggle between the government and the people, the emperors seeking to increase the central power by annihilating every local franchise, and even the right of private opinion, among their subjects. ”

“ The 32 people at home in Rome, not having a share in the campaigns on the borderland, did not appreciate the qualities of the great leaders who, like Cæsar, subdued the nations by forbearance, magnanimity, trust, and the recognition of a sphere of freedom secured to the conquered by the Roman civil laws, which were rigidly enforced by the conqueror, as much as by the violence of arms. The change from republic to empire meant the final subordination of this tyrannical Roman oligarchy, and the recognition of the rights of the provinces to Roman freedom. ”

“ And I pray to the Gods of heaven that they be satisfied with our disgrace, and that they prosper the arms of Rome even as they have prospered them in time past."
To these words two tribunes of the Commons, having been among the sureties, made objection, saying, "Ye cannot set the Roman people free by giving up the sureties, but only by restoring all things as they were at Caudium. Neither do we deserve punishment because we saved the army; and seeing that we are sacred we may not be surrendered to the enemy." ”

“ Secret societies have swarmed in Rome during his reign. What remonstrances from without has he silenced? Europe continues to complain unanimously, and day by day lifts up its voice a tone or two higher. He has failed to reconcile one single party or one single power to the Holy father. During his ten years' dictatorship, he has neither gained the esteem of one foreigner nor the confidence of one Roman. All he has gained is time. ”

“ As it was, the assemblies came to be dominated by the urban proletariat, a class absolutely unfitted to represent the Roman citizens as a whole.
The allies of Rome in Italy. The Latin and Italian allies, with the exception of such as were punished for their defection in the war with Hannibal, remained in their previous federate relationship with Rome. However, the Romans were no longer careful to adhere strictly to their treaty rights, and began to trespass upon the local independence of their allies. ”

“ When the Roman Empire gradually became an anarchy of hostile fragments, every large monastery, every small town, girded itself with walls and tended to become the germ of a new civilisation. Popes, kings, and great lords, haunted by reminiscence of the vanished empire, made spasmodic attempts to subject such centres to their rule and tax them for their maintenance. In the first times, the Church--the See of Rome--made by far the most successful attempt to get its supremacy acknowledged, and had therefore fewer occasions to resort to violence. ”