Search Results: Holy Roman Empire

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...

The Investiture Controversy, also referred to as the Investiture Contest or Investiture Dispute, was a conflict lasting from 1076 to 1122 between the papacy of the Catholic Church and the Salian Dynasty of German monarchs who ruled the Holy...

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...

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...

In the 17th century, many groups of British Christians rose and fought against religious intolerance and corruption. The Puritans sought a return to biblical religion and a purified form of Christianity in England. This resulted in the Puritan...

Matilda of Canossa (c. 1046-1115), the Countess of Tuscany (r. 1055-1115) and Vice-Queen of Italy (r. 1111-1115), was the final head of the noble House of Canossa following the deaths of her father in 1052 and her elder brother in 1055. One...

The Protestant Reformation was a period of religious history marked by a great defining, debating, and divergence on what it meant to be an orthodox, faithful Christian. To this end, many theologians offered their own explanations of the...

The Carolingian Dynasty (751-887) was a family of Frankish nobles who ruled Francia and its successor kingdoms in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. The dynasty expanded from Francia as far as modern Italy, Spain, and...

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...