Frankly, only England gets more attention than the HRE. I think people in general would be hard-pressed to say any facts whatsoever about any other part of the world at this time, at least those of us who know shit-all about Islamic and Chinese culture.
The HRE and the rest of central Europe seems to lie behind more of a language barrier than many other places in the early and high middle ages. There is a ton written about it but very little in English. Meanwhile someone interested in England, France, Spain, North Africa, the middle east, and some other places have a lot of resources about them written in English
I may be an uneducated lay hobbyist, but I'm beginning to think that to understand the HRE is to understand how premodern/non-state polities tended to work in general. It's also a fun reminder that it took centuries for the idea that the Roman Empire is gone to truly sink in, and how intertwined the East Romans/Byzantines were in a lot of west-European history.
As a medievalist who particularly loves the period from Charlemagne through about 1300, I absolutely ADORE that you included so many pictures of manuscripts from the Carolingian/Ottonian period.
I try as much as possible to include contemporary art. Of course it's harder for the early middle ages, but the Stuttgart Psalter especially pulls its weight and has a lot of great illuminations
I am German and never have heard an American speak about my country's history this eloquently and correctly. This was a great video, you clearly know your stuff very well, good job! :D
I find the events of the largely fateful but little-known year 1273 very interesting. At that time, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire had been in decline for almost thirty years, starting with the last excommunication of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, and ending with the presence of two kings at once, both of whom were infinitely far from Germany and did not want to interfere in local feudal squabbles. Then one of these kings, Richard of Cornwall, the younger Henry III of England and Edward Longshanks, died in 1272 and this launched a new series of elections. At that time, the most powerful and successful feudal lord in the Holy Roman Empire was the king of Bohemia, Přemysl Ottokar II, who subjugated most of the Alpine territories from Austria to Friuli. Fearing that such a powerful man could become emperor (and Ottokar clearly had such ambitions), the German feudal lords gathered in Aachen in the autumn of 1273 and elected 55-year-old Rudolf of Habsburg as a counterweight, expecting that this warrior count from Switzerland would turn out to be an obedient puppet. Well... Rudolf defeated Ottokar in a couple of years, completely destroyed all his conquests and then established his dynasty and gave it enough opportunities and power so that in the future they became permanent emperors of Germany, linking the late stage of the Holy Roman Empire with this house.
Thank you for this post. I wish people would talk about the Great Interregnum more as it is possibly the most pivotal moment in Medieval European history, responsible for shifting the centers of power away from the Rhein and to the (relative) peripheries of France and Bohemia/Hungary/Austria, thereby setting the course for European politics until WWI.
I would like to add that the Goldene Bulle is more a performative text of who is allowed to serve whom in the gathering...like serving drink and who has to sit next at the table. The actual procedure of the alection is about one third of the text. So I remember at least
@@carlose4314 I can't believe I never thought about that. I'll add it to the list, but given the size of my list of videos I want to do, don't be surprised if it doesn't come for a little while
Or even how the papacy became elective for the first time, changed, and eventually led to the College of Cardinals. and then cover the intrigues and power struggles among the great Italian families.
Maybe you said it and I missed it, but the reason why the electors would always vote unanimously was that allegedly it's not their vote at all but god speaking through them. The kingship was not a democratic one but divine.
I didn't mention it but you are right. The narratives of the early elections make a big deal about unanimous proclamation being caused by divine favor and this is seen as an advantage of elected monarchy over inherited.
@@EdgarStyles1234 Really hard to say. People in the middle ages generally were very devoutly religious. Maybe it was a little bit of both... they knew what they were doing but still thought their actions were somewhat divinely inspired.
A new video, what a treat, and what a superb subject. I've genuinely wondered before about the German Kingdom's famous electoral system and history - there are too many prominent Electors (and a few Electresses, shout-out to my girl Sophia) in history for a curious person not to muse on the presumably weighty election which so entitled them ;)
Because of the feudal structure of almost every state in medieval europe, thereby giving the nobility practically almost equal power to the king, pretty much every kingdom had the same method of choosing a king in practice. However, there was just less of a precedent to do so, but it still happened. In England especially, there were cases of this. Louis VIII of France was declared to be king of England by the rebellious English nobles in the first barons war for example.
I just realized that, as a native Portuguese speaker (Brazil), I can understand a whole lot more of those medieval Latin manuscripts (like at 13:00) if I just stop reading the weird S's as F's 😂
Some points that seem to stand out but don't get made often: 1) Everyone, then and now, agrees that *someone* has to rule; the interesting question is, who decides and how? What this period shows is a great deal of effort to accomplish this with some amount of reason and, note, consent. 2) Everyone also knew then how often becoming the ruler involved war; again, having some sort of "election" system would seem to be a way to have fewer wars. It may not have worked, but a good objective, no? 3) All this procedure and complexity also seemed aimed at resisting too much concentration of power. 4) Over time, the pressure is always there for consolidating power and for sweeping aside restraints. This seems a constant in history. But I think it's worth noting how, from the modern perspective, the old, patchwork system (which restrained central power) has almost always been viewed negatively, yet the way this "backward" system served to restrain concentrated power is often hidden in how history is recounted, to this day. 5) When we get into the more recent centuries, we have absolutism in monarchy that actually isn't rooted in Christendom at all, but pre-Christian history. And then, of course, that absolutism is ultimately swept away or defanged. How striking the transition from Henry VIII to Charles III!
In-depth historical study of HRE dynamics should be a mandatory curriculum in political sciences, international relations, and democracy, human rights and peace/conflict studies. At law uni I learned how Roman Law become important because of the reputation of the (og) roman empire. It is a process of "finding the law". When abbots and law scholars could find, often times litterally in some dusty monastery library, "how it's done" because "the Romans did so" there is less possibility of the war business becoming real. Fear can be an originator of conflict but uncertainty is the escalator. It's a matter of expectations. You expect to do more or less what your parents did, or at least use that as a guideline. And if your parents never faced that situation or were pretty bad at it, well, there is it, the All-Father, the og Roman Empire. It's human knowledge transfer.
You mentioned her briefly, but would you consider a more in-depth video about Theophanu, one of the most fascinating female protagonists in early medieval history?
The Dukes of Poland were nominally subjects of the German king and so they sometimes got involved in German politics. Here I was specifically referring to Bolesław I of Poland who was at the assembly in Saxony where the Saxons (and he) proclaimed Henry II king in 1002, though he would later join in a rebellion against Henry. And then of course he declared himself a king in 1025, which Conrad II saw as a direct affront to his authority over Poland. The German-Polish relations at this time were complex and constantly shifting
Even in the English coronation ceremony, there remain traces of the tradition of „electio“. The noblemen present get asked: Sirs, I here present unto you [name], your undoubted King/Queen. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same? And they answer loudly „yes“.
That's in Mainz along the shore of the Rhine (I was there in March of 2023). They are replicas of actual stone reliefs that were once on a market building nearby from the later middle ages. The originals are in the Mainz Landesmuseum alongside one of Saint Martin (the patron of the cathedral). There's also one for the emperor himself but he's cut off to the left of what I show here
I think a lot more emphasis should've been placed here on the material causes of the brief allusion to "the nobility becoming more powerful", as the cited work Heart of Europe does, since the changes to the economic conditions of Central and Western Europe and the changes to the agricultural economy (especially the introduction of iron tools to agriculture in northern germany), neccessitated a more elaborization of the political structure the Aristocracy utilized to maintain their power of the peasantry (and the extensive number of slaves still present) while allowing for internal power struggles. This falls into a lot of the pitfalls of a lot of pop medievsl history on youtube that omits essential socioeconomic context.
My philosophy in these videos is that they are an introduction. There is no way I can be exhaustive for every topic I discuss, both because of the time I actually have to work on each video and because these videos need to remain captivating and concise in order to actually maintain an audience. That's why I have a list of recommended readings in the description for those who wish to go deeper into the topic. If I make a video on the socioeconomic changes in the late Carolingian period, then I'll go into more depth about it (indeed, I have covered socioeconomic factors in other videos where I felt it was more central to the topic at hand), but it would have been too much to cover in this video which is primarily discussing how early elections worked and the ideology of election. If others in the comments feel like additional context would be beneficial, then I encourage them to share it. That said, I also recognise that my choices when making these videos are never flawless, and so I do take constructive feedback into consideration.
I wonder how a HRE election would go today. Like how you gonna elect a king without prince-electors? I guess Germany would have to return to this Assembly of Magnates, that used to elect the king in the early centuries of the empire.
@@Siegbert85 because you need princes to have prince-electors. But Germany has neither a monarchy, nor an aristocracy. So how will the prince-electors elect a king if they receive their principalitiies from the king but there is no king and therefore no electors?
@@deutschermichel5807 So, you mean modern Germany would choose to give itself a king in the style of the HRE? Well, we do have a precedence for that. In 1848 the Frankfurt parliament was elected by the German people with the expressed goal of electing a monarch for a yet to be founded German Empire. They then chose the king of Prussia as their candidate who then refused.
@@Siegbert85 yeah he refused because he was a fan of the old HRE and said it was cringe to be elected by the people. He said he 1 needs imperial blood and 2 to be elected by the electors. So we should apply this standard set by an actual king. He had his reasons to reject the crown
Kinda like the Israel issue where Judea isn't Israel, wasn't where modern Israel is, wasn't a tribe of Israel according to the oldest text of the Bible (Numbers 5), but came to be believed to be the same due to Israelite migration to Judea after the Israelite elite was exiled.
Can't trust those new ballots from the printing presses, BALLOTS SHOULD BE HANDWRITTEN! They even found Roquefort cheese crumbles on the ballots for Rudolf I, election interference from the French! Send it back to the Reichstag!
@@karlscher5170 First of all, no one ever put the language as an issue, the thing was the legitimacy of the empire and suddenly you said that our state, our freedom, our empire is not...legitimate, as always you do against us, then and now, secondly no you don't learn latin, the vast majority of the german population doesn't have any clue of latin and generally of the classical education, thirdly yes greek are more important. I can understand that for a German the antigreek sentiment is a cultural issue but we cannot change history.
@@anionchloriou3483 Now that I think about it Byzantine indeed seems more Roman than Greek, because they were able to run their empire on an efficient tax system without begging from their neighbours and later cry about it like little b|tch€s...
Yes I am a fan of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and no I cannot hear the name "Charles IV" without thinking about that intro cinematic
lol, Same. Great vid. Got confused at first thinking democratic style voting. Then I remembered the time period.
CHARLES THE FOURTH, KING OF BOHEMIA AND HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR, HAD A LONG AND SUCCESSFUL REIGN
@@MausOfTheHouse The empire he ruled from Prague expanded, and his subjects lived in peace and prosperity.
@RestitutorEuropa when he died, the whole Empire mourned. More than 7000 people accompanied him on his last procession.
HRE content is always so fascinating and rarely discussed elsewhere.
And always in a disparaging light too. I like the HRE
Frankly, only England gets more attention than the HRE. I think people in general would be hard-pressed to say any facts whatsoever about any other part of the world at this time, at least those of us who know shit-all about Islamic and Chinese culture.
The HRE and the rest of central Europe seems to lie behind more of a language barrier than many other places in the early and high middle ages. There is a ton written about it but very little in English. Meanwhile someone interested in England, France, Spain, North Africa, the middle east, and some other places have a lot of resources about them written in English
@@DrVictorVasconcelosIslamic culture? Lmao.
@@frikko2861it’s really only ever to say the line lol
I may be an uneducated lay hobbyist, but I'm beginning to think that to understand the HRE is to understand how premodern/non-state polities tended to work in general. It's also a fun reminder that it took centuries for the idea that the Roman Empire is gone to truly sink in, and how intertwined the East Romans/Byzantines were in a lot of west-European history.
As a medievalist who particularly loves the period from Charlemagne through about 1300, I absolutely ADORE that you included so many pictures of manuscripts from the Carolingian/Ottonian period.
I try as much as possible to include contemporary art. Of course it's harder for the early middle ages, but the Stuttgart Psalter especially pulls its weight and has a lot of great illuminations
@@studiumhistoriae yeah the Stuttgart Psalter is absolutely stunning. Some really cool stuff in there!
agreed!
I am German and never have heard an American speak about my country's history this eloquently and correctly. This was a great video, you clearly know your stuff very well, good job! :D
I find the events of the largely fateful but little-known year 1273 very interesting. At that time, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire had been in decline for almost thirty years, starting with the last excommunication of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, and ending with the presence of two kings at once, both of whom were infinitely far from Germany and did not want to interfere in local feudal squabbles. Then one of these kings, Richard of Cornwall, the younger Henry III of England and Edward Longshanks, died in 1272 and this launched a new series of elections. At that time, the most powerful and successful feudal lord in the Holy Roman Empire was the king of Bohemia, Přemysl Ottokar II, who subjugated most of the Alpine territories from Austria to Friuli. Fearing that such a powerful man could become emperor (and Ottokar clearly had such ambitions), the German feudal lords gathered in Aachen in the autumn of 1273 and elected 55-year-old Rudolf of Habsburg as a counterweight, expecting that this warrior count from Switzerland would turn out to be an obedient puppet. Well... Rudolf defeated Ottokar in a couple of years, completely destroyed all his conquests and then established his dynasty and gave it enough opportunities and power so that in the future they became permanent emperors of Germany, linking the late stage of the Holy Roman Empire with this house.
Thank you for this post. I wish people would talk about the Great Interregnum more as it is possibly the most pivotal moment in Medieval European history, responsible for shifting the centers of power away from the Rhein and to the (relative) peripheries of France and Bohemia/Hungary/Austria, thereby setting the course for European politics until WWI.
I would like to add that the Goldene Bulle is more a performative text of who is allowed to serve whom in the gathering...like serving drink and who has to sit next at the table. The actual procedure of the alection is about one third of the text. So I remember at least
You don't want a good party ruined by faulty procedure.
Could you do a video on how medieval popes were elected?
@@carlose4314 I can't believe I never thought about that. I'll add it to the list, but given the size of my list of videos I want to do, don't be surprised if it doesn't come for a little while
Or even how the papacy became elective for the first time, changed, and eventually led to the College of Cardinals. and then cover the intrigues and power struggles among the great Italian families.
@carlose4314 Monarchical Florida flag?
The HRE was fine and dandy... until the Shadow Kingdom event triggers.
This is great! The earlier periods of the HRE are so seldom discussed in detail.
Your narration and delivery are very clear and pleasing to listen to. Not every history channel has this kind of quality.
I've subscribed. ✌️
Maybe you said it and I missed it, but the reason why the electors would always vote unanimously was that allegedly it's not their vote at all but god speaking through them. The kingship was not a democratic one but divine.
I didn't mention it but you are right. The narratives of the early elections make a big deal about unanimous proclamation being caused by divine favor and this is seen as an advantage of elected monarchy over inherited.
And everyone except the more ignorant or naive thought it was bollocks
@@EdgarStyles1234 Really hard to say. People in the middle ages generally were very devoutly religious.
Maybe it was a little bit of both... they knew what they were doing but still thought their actions were somewhat divinely inspired.
@Siegbert85 i.e. a spectrum from "I'm doing it because it's God's will" to "If God doesn't like it He can try and stop me"
I actually did not know this. Thanks a lot for mentioning it!
Great video. Really informative on rarely talked about topic
Very enlightening, thank you my friend. The consenting to be ruled idea was very mind opening when it comes to this topic.
A new video, what a treat, and what a superb subject. I've genuinely wondered before about the German Kingdom's famous electoral system and history - there are too many prominent Electors (and a few Electresses, shout-out to my girl Sophia) in history for a curious person not to muse on the presumably weighty election which so entitled them ;)
Because of the feudal structure of almost every state in medieval europe, thereby giving the nobility practically almost equal power to the king, pretty much every kingdom had the same method of choosing a king in practice. However, there was just less of a precedent to do so, but it still happened. In England especially, there were cases of this. Louis VIII of France was declared to be king of England by the rebellious English nobles in the first barons war for example.
I just realized that, as a native Portuguese speaker (Brazil), I can understand a whole lot more of those medieval Latin manuscripts (like at 13:00) if I just stop reading the weird S's as F's 😂
Ah the infamous long S. It takes getting used to for sure
@@studiumhistoriaeI’ve seen documents with the long S published in the US as late as 1815, so it took a while to decline.
I LOVE THIS CHANNEL!!
Some points that seem to stand out but don't get made often:
1) Everyone, then and now, agrees that *someone* has to rule; the interesting question is, who decides and how? What this period shows is a great deal of effort to accomplish this with some amount of reason and, note, consent.
2) Everyone also knew then how often becoming the ruler involved war; again, having some sort of "election" system would seem to be a way to have fewer wars. It may not have worked, but a good objective, no?
3) All this procedure and complexity also seemed aimed at resisting too much concentration of power.
4) Over time, the pressure is always there for consolidating power and for sweeping aside restraints. This seems a constant in history. But I think it's worth noting how, from the modern perspective, the old, patchwork system (which restrained central power) has almost always been viewed negatively, yet the way this "backward" system served to restrain concentrated power is often hidden in how history is recounted, to this day.
5) When we get into the more recent centuries, we have absolutism in monarchy that actually isn't rooted in Christendom at all, but pre-Christian history. And then, of course, that absolutism is ultimately swept away or defanged. How striking the transition from Henry VIII to Charles III!
Great video, thanks for posting!
what an amazing video !! keep it up, king ☝️💯👑
Props for your pronunciation of German locations!
First video of yours I’m watching!! This is good!
You have a great voice
@@melgross122 I'm glad you like it, because it's one thing I don't have much control over when making these videos
In-depth historical study of HRE dynamics should be a mandatory curriculum in political sciences, international relations, and democracy, human rights and peace/conflict studies.
At law uni I learned how Roman Law become important because of the reputation of the (og) roman empire. It is a process of "finding the law". When abbots and law scholars could find, often times litterally in some dusty monastery library, "how it's done" because "the Romans did so" there is less possibility of the war business becoming real. Fear can be an originator of conflict but uncertainty is the escalator. It's a matter of expectations. You expect to do more or less what your parents did, or at least use that as a guideline. And if your parents never faced that situation or were pretty bad at it, well, there is it, the All-Father, the og Roman Empire. It's human knowledge transfer.
You mentioned her briefly, but would you consider a more in-depth video about Theophanu, one of the most fascinating female protagonists in early medieval history?
Could tou please provide more information about duke of poland being included in the election, thanks in advance!
The Dukes of Poland were nominally subjects of the German king and so they sometimes got involved in German politics. Here I was specifically referring to Bolesław I of Poland who was at the assembly in Saxony where the Saxons (and he) proclaimed Henry II king in 1002, though he would later join in a rebellion against Henry. And then of course he declared himself a king in 1025, which Conrad II saw as a direct affront to his authority over Poland. The German-Polish relations at this time were complex and constantly shifting
very good video!
Thank You very much, subbed, alwaysa plesure to listen about HRE!
Even in the English coronation ceremony, there remain traces of the tradition of „electio“.
The noblemen present get asked:
Sirs, I here present unto you [name], your undoubted King/Queen. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?
And they answer loudly „yes“.
5:41 SpongeBob ahh portrait
We Bavarians alwas been special 😅🩵🤍🩵🤍
This is cool
“I specifically fought multiple civil wars so that there wouldn’t be elections.”
-Augustus, probably
Where is the picture taken of the electors ~6:00?
That's in Mainz along the shore of the Rhine (I was there in March of 2023). They are replicas of actual stone reliefs that were once on a market building nearby from the later middle ages. The originals are in the Mainz Landesmuseum alongside one of Saint Martin (the patron of the cathedral). There's also one for the emperor himself but he's cut off to the left of what I show here
KCD MENTIONED - JESUS CHRIST BE PRAISED
This is really informative, bud. Good vid.
Of the Republican and Democrat, I choose the Bureaucrat
I think a lot more emphasis should've been placed here on the material causes of the brief allusion to "the nobility becoming more powerful", as the cited work Heart of Europe does, since the changes to the economic conditions of Central and Western Europe and the changes to the agricultural economy (especially the introduction of iron tools to agriculture in northern germany), neccessitated a more elaborization of the political structure the Aristocracy utilized to maintain their power of the peasantry (and the extensive number of slaves still present) while allowing for internal power struggles. This falls into a lot of the pitfalls of a lot of pop medievsl history on youtube that omits essential socioeconomic context.
My philosophy in these videos is that they are an introduction. There is no way I can be exhaustive for every topic I discuss, both because of the time I actually have to work on each video and because these videos need to remain captivating and concise in order to actually maintain an audience. That's why I have a list of recommended readings in the description for those who wish to go deeper into the topic. If I make a video on the socioeconomic changes in the late Carolingian period, then I'll go into more depth about it (indeed, I have covered socioeconomic factors in other videos where I felt it was more central to the topic at hand), but it would have been too much to cover in this video which is primarily discussing how early elections worked and the ideology of election. If others in the comments feel like additional context would be beneficial, then I encourage them to share it.
That said, I also recognise that my choices when making these videos are never flawless, and so I do take constructive feedback into consideration.
I wonder how a HRE election would go today. Like how you gonna elect a king without prince-electors? I guess Germany would have to return to this Assembly of Magnates, that used to elect the king in the early centuries of the empire.
Why wouldn't they be present?
@@Siegbert85 because you need princes to have prince-electors. But Germany has neither a monarchy, nor an aristocracy. So how will the prince-electors elect a king if they receive their principalitiies from the king but there is no king and therefore no electors?
@@deutschermichel5807 So, you mean modern Germany would choose to give itself a king in the style of the HRE?
Well, we do have a precedence for that. In 1848 the Frankfurt parliament was elected by the German people with the expressed goal of electing a monarch for a yet to be founded German Empire. They then chose the king of Prussia as their candidate who then refused.
@@Siegbert85 yeah he refused because he was a fan of the old HRE and said it was cringe to be elected by the people. He said he 1 needs imperial blood and 2 to be elected by the electors.
So we should apply this standard set by an actual king. He had his reasons to reject the crown
@@deutschermichel5807 lol, now I imagine him saying to the delegation "y'all are cringe" xD
so basically this was like how in 2024 the Democratic party supported Kamala harris lol
I was actually thinking about that while doing the research for this video
Democrats be like: “I don’t wanna play with you anymore” to Biden.
👏👏👏
You keep calling the first HREmperor Charle-mang.
Charle-mayne, King of Memphis and the Holy Columbian Confederation
Do you have a link to where Hassan has brought up the analogies between the eternal procession of the Quran with the Begetting of God the Son?
Kinda like the Israel issue where Judea isn't Israel, wasn't where modern Israel is, wasn't a tribe of Israel according to the oldest text of the Bible (Numbers 5), but came to be believed to be the same due to Israelite migration to Judea after the Israelite elite was exiled.
Juda is the largest tribe of Israel?
Numbers 5 is a test for female infidelity. I can't see anything about what the tribes of israel are in there.
where was Judea?
Is it “char-le-mang” or “char-le-mann”?
it's giving great councils at harrenhal, it's giving king jaeheris running out of heirs.... i see you mister R R Martin
Why on Earth do you say Charlemagne like that
I'm used to saying it the French way
I thought it what Shar Le man yuh
Stop the count
Can't trust those new ballots from the printing presses, BALLOTS SHOULD BE HANDWRITTEN! They even found Roquefort cheese crumbles on the ballots for Rudolf I, election interference from the French! Send it back to the Reichstag!
The only legitime roman empire was the so called today byzantine empire, that of the greek nation, like it or not pitty Frank.
According to them they lost their Romanness when they put a woman on the throne, hence Charlemagne would be the real emperor.
@@Siegbert85 The fraudsters of course would have some excusses.
Greek speaking romans? We germans at least cared to learn Latin (and still do).
@@karlscher5170 First of all, no one ever put the language as an issue, the thing was the legitimacy of the empire and suddenly you said that our state, our freedom, our empire is not...legitimate, as always you do against us, then and now, secondly no you don't learn latin, the vast majority of the german population doesn't have any clue of latin and generally of the classical education, thirdly yes greek are more important. I can understand that for a German the antigreek sentiment is a cultural issue but we cannot change history.
@@anionchloriou3483 Now that I think about it Byzantine indeed seems more Roman than Greek, because they were able to run their empire on an efficient tax system without begging from their neighbours and later cry about it like little b|tch€s...