The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire

Their meeting changed history.

POPE JOHN XII was one of the worst of a long line of reprobate Italian vicars. King Otto I was one of the best of a promising succession of strong German sovereigns. When their paths crossed, Pope John XII crowned Otto as Roman Emperor of the West on February 2, 962, and effectually signed his own political death warrant and the rebirth certificate of the Holy Roman Empire in one grand and ceremonious stroke.

The Holy Roman Empire was first born Christmas Day A.D. 800. On that day, while Charlemagne, the conquering king of western Europe, was quietly worshiping at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Leo III stepped down from the altar and crowned him successor to the caesars of Rome.

But the heirs of Charlemagne could not maintain the empire he had built. Separate kingdoms once again arose with no central government to hold them together. Invading Norsemen splintered the kingdoms further. Robbers and looters roamed the land, and feudalism emerged as a system of local allegiance, alliance, and protection in an increasingly brutal age.

Near the end of the ninth century and through the first half of the tenth, the papacy fell into political subservience and moral decadence. Powerful secular leaders in Italy acquired control of Rome and the papacy, contaminating the highest offices of the church with greed, violence, and intrigue. Immoral popes were seated and deposed at whim, the lives of many of them ending with murder or imprisonment. During this infamous period John XII became pope in 955. His papal reign included drunken orgies in the Lateran Palace.

Meanwhile in Germany, young Otto I was growing in power and prestige. Wielding Christianity as a unifying sword, King Otto formed wise and careful alliances with other German tribes. Appointing bishops at the same time as he anointed civil authorities, he gave generous land grants to the German church, building it into a national institution independent of Rome.

At sword point he sought to bring the Wends, a western Slavic tribe, to the foot of the cross. Denmark, Poland, and Bohemia bowed to him as their feudal sovereign. And then, with his eye on the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, he led his army into Italy to rescue the widowed Adelaide, the former queen of Italy, whom King Berengar II (her late husband’s successor) had imprisoned. Otto married Adelaide, reduced Berengar to a fief of the German crown, and returned to Germany.

Several years later Otto came up against Berengar again when Pope John XII sent an appeal for his help against the king. This time Otto rode into Italy at the head of a massive army, marched peaceably into Rome, and there, on February 2, 962, was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by John XII. In Rome Otto also witnessed firsthand the moral degradation of the papacy and was greatly alarmed at what he saw.

The next year Otto returned to Rome and summoned Pope John XII to stand trial before an ecclesiastical court. Cardinals charged the pope with adultery, incest, taking bribes for bishoprics, and turning the papal palace into a brothel. Refusing to appear before the court, John went hunting instead. The cardinals removed him from his papal office, replacing him with Otto’s choice for the job, a capable but ecclesiastically unaccredited layman. The new pope, Leo VIII, and many successive popes would now answer to the Holy Roman Emperor.

Thus began a reformation of the papacy that lasted nearly three centuries. From Otto the Great, the “Charlemagne of Germany,” the Holy Roman Empire would exist continuously until Napoleon Bonaparte replaced it with his Confederation of the Rhine in 1806.

Reflection

When you read of the corruption and misuse of power in the church in the Middle Ages, where do you see God fitting into the picture? Do you see any reason for the state ever to control the church? The prophet Daniel describes how the kingdom of heaven will replace the flawed kingdoms of this world.

During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed; no one will ever conquer it. It will shatter all these kingdoms into nothingness, but it will stand forever.

Daniel 2:44