Posted on 09/07/2009 4:14:54 PM PDT by NYer
Of possible interest, ping!
I prefer Karl der Grosse, danke.
A new Charlemagne? A new Holy Roman Empire? Let’s hope so!
I didn’t realize you were such a fan of Patrick Madrid.
When the Holy Roman Empire was at its peak, there was a running joke among the nobility of the era. They said that its name was a misnomer: it wasn’t an empire, it wasn’t Roman, and it certainly wasn’t holy.
I think they have things backwards. Charlemagne created the Holy Roman Empire, which became an utterly meaningless and impotent bureaucracy as soon as he died, that managed to survive almost to modern times, only finally being officially ended in 1806.
Well, the Europeans have created a replacement for the HRE, which is showing signs of becoming as meaningless and useless as its predecessor, and they did it without Charlemagne.
This is amusing, but I think it’s a little ungallant of Mr. Madrid to go picking on Rev. J. Random Dispensationalist from Nobodyever Heardofit Church of God.
The sun rises, the baby needs a new diaper, and some pastor is in a to-do about the European Community. I saw this movie.
I also read the whole article and can’t figure out what the pastor thinks the new German Chancellor is going to do that so much worse than “ghastly.” What is much, much worse than ghastly, anyway? Ghastly is pretty strong!
Yo! Do I got a dog in this fight? From the 1500s? Cringe. I'll stand up for the J. Random name, but I'm thinking... Nevermind what I'm thinking. It's dangerous, and not European.
/johnny
Technically, I'm off the reservation. WOO HOO!
Except for the part where we receive grace through faith. Life is tough enough,and then someone adds layers of misunderstanding to the after-life. Can't we all just die and go to heaven?
/johnny
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence of the same first name, not that you’re related to Rev. Dispensationalist. Teh Interwebs are full of people with the first name “Tax,” too.
Most of my family, factiods being bandied about.
/johnny
When the German Roman Empire was at its peak (say, 1180s or so), no one told this stupid joke because “Holy Roman Empire” was first used in the 1600s, after the Empire had become an empty shell (it collapsed about 1250 and was replaced on the European stage by the rising consolidated kingdoms of France and England; the title continued but it became the basis for the Habsburg house dynasty, which itself split into two branches, one in the nation-state of Spain (and the Netherlands), the other in Austria, eventually the Austro-Hungarian empire).
Holy Roman Empire is a modern term. The actual medieval empire was Frankish under Charles the Great then shifted to the eastern, German, portion of what had been Charles’s realm. It was really established as the German Kingdom/Roman Empire by Otto I ca. 950 and lasted to about 1250. It covered German and northern Italy. At the end it also added southern Italy and Sicily briefly. The elected king of the Germans also held the title of Roman Emperor (since Charlemagne).
So the joke is one of those modern anti-medieval snotnosed jibes at a supposed evil medieval past.
There were no bureaucracies in the Middle Ages. They didn’t have the technical ability to be bureaucracies. And Charlemagne’s empire was divided after his death among his three grandsons but the eastern third of it was transformed into a real empire by the Ottonian kings in the 900s.
And “Holy” was not used for either Charles’s or the German-Italian empire at all.
I got some goofballs in the family, too, but I don’t blame them for the soi-disant Holy Roman Empire, or the eventual end of the world. We’re just not that interesting.
That's nice. Actually, I've got 2 in the running, and I may be lead.
But family is family. Not the HRE again. Sigh.
/johnny
You wrote:
“When the Holy Roman Empire was at its peak, there was a running joke among the nobility of the era. They said that its name was a misnomer: it wasn’t an empire, it wasn’t Roman, and it certainly wasn’t holy.”
Actually, the saying is from Voltaire. He invented it in 1756 - about 50 years before the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved.
Voltaire wrote: “Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.”
Translation: “This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
you wrote:
“There were no bureaucracies in the Middle Ages. They didn’t have the technical ability to be bureaucracies.”
There were bureaucracies.
Just read From Ad Hoc to Routine: A Case Study in Medieval Bureaucracy. Contributors: Ellen E. Kittell - author. Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press. Place of Publication: Philadelphia. Publication Year: 1991.
A more recent book that at least touches on bureaucracies in the Middle Ages is:
Edwin S. Hunt, A History of Business in Medieval Europe 1200-1500, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Hunt shows that the medieval bureaucracies were small, but they still existed. The same people who invented double-entry accounting seemed destined to have some bureaucracies!
Madrid points people to such insanity, but doesn’t debunk it, probably thinking its ridiculousness is obvious to his readers. For lurkers, however:
The Holy Roman Empire wasn’t a single empire. Such was a designation given several empires which received the political designation from the papacy as being something the papacy supported politically. Habsburg, mentioned in the article, was pretender to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was also called the Holy Roman Empire. Certainly, Hitler’s intent in using the propagandist name, “3rd Reich” was not to align himself with the papacy; Hitler was a neo-pagan who favored the Lutheran Church (out of politics, not his own faith; lacking an external power structure, it was easier to dominate.) Rather, it was to cast Germans as the true Romans (Rome, contrary to the quoted article’s implications, was supposed to be the first Reich). The Christian Church, argued Hitler, was a Jewish-led bastardization of the ancient, Germanic faith of Aryanism.
So who is the Habsburg who the author insinuates is trying to build a 4th Reich? For starters, Otto von Habsburg was a fervent anti-Nazi who was condemned to death by Hitler. The invasion of Austria was code-named “Otto” because they expected a movement to place Habsburg on the throne of Austria, which would trigger their immediate invasion to oust him.
Such kook groups probably don’t have any influence on the European Union, but if anything, they probably help ensure that the EU rejects any ties to a common, Christian heritage. Further, although certain early leaders in the pan-European movement clearly did hope to construct an entity which would greatly feel the influence of the Catholic Church, if anything the EU has an anti-clerical, anti-Christian, anti-Catholic bend to it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.