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EUROPE: CATASTROPHE ANO
REVIVAL~~,r;;r;
Part3
he German Empire
of
fhe Dark
Ages
by
Paul W. Kroll
As Europeans
watched year
1000 ap –
proach, they
voiced dire fore–
bodings that the
end of the world
was at hand. Eu–
rope was in
shambles politi-
1/y. The papacy
had become, as one
historian phrased it, a
" Pornocracy. " Surpris–
ingly, when A .D. 1000
rolled around, Europe was united
and prospering. This third in the
series explains the immediate
cause of the reviva/ of European
civilization - the Holy Roman
Empire.
'g-prn
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,"
.1
~~marked
Voltaire, "is nei-
ther holy, nor Roman, nor
an empire." Voltaire, despite his
wry comment, was forced to speak
of the empire in the present tense.
28
The empire was still in existence
when he wrote in the eighteenth
century.
The empire had survived for
almost a tbousand years since
that historie Christmas day in A.D.
800 when Pope Leo 11 had placed
the golden crown on Charlemagne's
head, investing him "Emperor of
the Romans." But even that dra–
matic ceremony merely stamped
.finis
on a drama that itself had been
unfolding for hundreds of years pre–
viously , among the Germanic
Franks.
World's O ldest Political
Body
Though the Holy Roman Empire
may have been neither very holy,
nor particularly Roman nor notice–
ably powerful when Voltaire wrote,
it still outlived him by almost three
decades. The empire certainly sur–
vived asan institution until 1806. In
August of that year, following the
defeat of the empire's armies at
Jena by Napoleon, one could read
in
the newspapers that Emperor
Francis
JI
bad announced bis resig–
nation of the imperial crown to the
German diet. "There were probably
few who refl.ected," comments Ger–
man historian Friedrich Heer, "that
the oldest political institution in the
world had come to an end." Even
then, the ceremony and concept
tived on - in the transfer of impe–
rial power to the política! giant Na–
poleon.
Today,
in
a world of secular and
politically oriented states, the idea
of a European empire is emphat–
ically not dead.
The imperial crown of the Holy
Roman Empire still exists.
It
can be
seen at the Hofburg in Vienna.
Many statesmen, presidents, dicta–
tors, pretenders to thrones and other
world leaders have stood in its pres–
ence.
Otto Von Habsburg, as recently
as 1958, commented: "We do pos-
HENRY THE FOWLER defeats the Hun·
garians and makes Christianized Bo–
hemia a bulwark against the Magyars.
His success set the stage for the empire
of Otto the Great.
PLAIN TRUTH
January
1974