Holy roman: Did you mean...?

The Holy Roman Empire officially lasted from 962 to 1806. It was one of Europe’s largest medieval and early modern states, but its power base was unstable and continually shifting. The Holy Roman Empire was not a unitary state, but a confederation...

"The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire," wrote Voltaire, and this interpretation still dominates the popular imagination, so the Holy Roman Empire is treated as a bad joke, a pale parody of the glory of Rome...

In this gallery of four maps we chart the rise and expansion of the Holy Roman Empire, a pivotal period in European history following the decline of the Roman Empire. Emerging from the ashes of Rome's collapse, the Merovingian Dynasty in...

Illustration of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r. 1519-1556 CE) and Ferdinand I. The illustration depicts the Habsburg brothers Charles V (left) sitting by the imperial coat of arms, while Ferdinand (right) is flanked by the Habsburg coat...

A map in German of central Europe during the time of the Hohenstaufen Emperors, primarily showing the territories of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily. The map is a vectorised version of this map from Professor G. Droysens...

A medieval manuscript illustration depicting the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (r. 1191-1197 CE). (Codex Manesse, 1305-1315 CE)

The Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) functioned as a decentralized political system in Central Europe, where imperial authority depended less on centralized power than on negotiation among its leading elites. Central to this structure were the...

Painted illustration of the quaternion eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, created by Jost de Negker in 1510 CE. It depicts the double-headed eagle crest of the Holy Roman Empire (adopted 1433 CE) with the banners of its towns. It became widely...

Woodcut portrait of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1084-1105) by Christoffel Jegher, c. 1631-1633. The British Museum, London.

Depiction of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II (r. 1564-1567 CE) on a medal created by Antonio Abondio, 1575 CE. From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, United States