Context: The French philosopher Voltaire famously said that the Holy Roman Empire was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire". He made this sardonic remark in his 18th-century work, Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations (Essay on Customs), to criticize the empire's lack of centralization, limited ties to Rome, and secular, chaotic nature.
by Im_yor_boi
14 Comments
This is going to either be my greatest work yet or the worst meme ever posted in this sub lol
e: Albanian
E: none of the above
You can argue that it wasn’t holy or Roman but it absolutely was an empire.
Not holy , nor empire and not even close to be roman
Why did you randomly switched to french?
Edit: OP wrote this by the time we constructed the new Tower of Babel
C. Empire, the easiest to justify of the three epithets. There were undeniably Emperors that ruled over Central Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
The answer is all of the above when you consider that it
– was crowned by the highest religious authority in western europe for centuries
– was *invoking* Rome based on control of Italy and to establish its kaiser as the king of kings rather than literal, and even then effectively turned the Papacy into a border March from the 900s to the 1300s
– spanned Germany, the low countries, czechia, Prussia, eastern France and Italy.
Voltaire was making a quip on an at least a century in decline when employed by its enemies. And he was still wrong because absent the HRE as a legal framework Habsbrug Austria would’ve been significantly weaker.
How did European empires last so long? Roman Empire for 1500 years, HRE for a 1000 years.
I’m a bit tired of people repeating Voltaire. Especially when they divorce this quote from its context and start applying it to the HRE at completely different periods back when it was way more centralized and had close ties to the pope.
D is the only correct answer.
Depending on the period
Aha! But it didn’t say was, it says *is.*
As such, it must be an empire if it is any of the provided choices, as while theoretically speaking potential claimants to the throne exist (same way as how napoleon still has heirs even if France doesn’t have an emperor) none of said claimants would be Roman, nor would they be significant enough in any religious hierarchies to be Holy.
All of the above