Holy Roman Emperor

The East–West Schism, also known as the Great Schism or the Schism of 1054, is the break of communion between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church since 1054. A series of ecclesiastical differences, theological disputes and geopolitical tensions between the Greek East and Latin West preceded the formal split that occurred in 1054. Prominent among these were the procession of the Holy Spirit (Filioque), whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist, iconoclasm, the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the Romans in 800, the pope's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of the See of Constantinople in relation to the pentarchy.

The first action that led to a formal schism occurred in 1053 when Patriarch Michael I Cerularius of Constantinople ordered the closure of all Latin churches in Constantinople. In 1054, the papal legate sent by Leo IX travelled to Constantinople in order, among other things, to deny Cerularius the title of "ecumenical patriarch" and insist that he recognize the pope's claim to be the head of all of the churches. The main purposes of the papal legation were to seek help from the Byzantine emperor, Constantine IX Monomachos, in view of the Norman conquest of southern Italy, and to respond to Leo of Ohrid's attacks on the use of unleavened bread and other Western customs, attacks that had the support of Cerularius. The historian Axel Bayer says that the legation was sent in response to two letters, one from the emperor seeking help to organize a joint military campaign by the eastern and western empires against the Normans, and the other from Cerularius. When the leader of the legation, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, O.S.B., learned that Cerularius had refused to accept the demand, he excommunicated him, and in response Cerularius excommunicated Humbert and the other legates. According to Kallistos Ware, "Even after 1054 friendly relations between East and West continued. The two parts of Christendom were not yet conscious of a great gulf of separation between them ... The dispute remained something of which ordinary Christians in East and West were largely unaware".

The Codex Aureus of Saint Emmeram (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000) is a 9th-century illuminated Gospel Book. It takes its name from Saint Emmeram's Abbey in Bavaria, where it was for most of its history (named after Emmeram of Regensburg) and is lavishly illuminated. The cover of the codex is decorated with gems and relief figures in gold, can be precisely dated to 870, and is an important example of Carolingian art, as well as one of very few surviving treasure bindings of this date.

The upper cover of the Lindau Gospels is probably a product of the same workshop, though there are differences of style. This workshop is associated with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles II (the Bald), and often called his "Palace School". Its location (if it had a fixed one) remains uncertain and much discussed, but Saint-Denis Abbey outside Paris is one leading possibility. The Arnulf Ciborium (a miniature architectural ciborium rather than the vessel for hosts), now in the Munich Residenz, is the third major work in the group, along with the frame of an antique serpentine dish in the Louvre. Recent scholars tend to group the Lindau Gospels and the Arnulf Ciborium in closer relation to each other than the Codex Aureus to either.

The Carolingian dynasty (/ˌkærəˈlɪndʒiən/ KARR-ə-LIN-jee-ən; known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charles Martel and his grandson Charlemagne, descendants of the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The dynasty consolidated its power in the 8th century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary, and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the Merovingian throne. In 751 the Merovingian dynasty which had ruled the Franks was overthrown with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy, and Pepin the Short, son of Martel, was crowned king of the Franks. The Carolingian dynasty reached its peak in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first emperor of the Romans in the West in over three centuries. Charlemagne's death in 814 began an extended period of fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and decline that would eventually lead to the evolution of the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.

The history of Italy in the Middle Ages can be roughly defined as the time between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance. Late antiquity in Italy lingered on into the 7th century under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty, the Byzantine Papacy until the mid 8th century. The "Middle Ages" proper begin as the Byzantine Empire was weakening under the pressure of the Muslim conquests, and most of the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell under Lombard rule in 751. From this period, former states that were part of the Exarchate and were not conquered by the Lombard Kingdom, such as the Duchy of Naples, became de facto independent states, having less and less interference from the Eastern Roman Empire.

Lombard rule ended with the invasion of Charlemagne in 773, who established the Kingdom of Italy and the Papal States in large parts of Northern and Central Italy. This set the precedent for the main political conflict in Italy over the following centuries, between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, culminating with conflict between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV and the latter's "Walk to Canossa" in 1077.

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain (as Charles I) from 1516 to 1556, King of Sicily and Naples from 1516 to 1554, and also Lord of the Netherlands and titular Duke of Burgundy (as Charles II) from 1506 to 1555. He was heir to and then head of the rising House of Habsburg. His dominions in Europe included the Holy Roman Empire, extending from Germany to northern Italy with rule over the Austrian hereditary lands and Burgundian Low Countries, and Spain with its possessions of the southern Italian kingdoms of Sicily, Naples, and Sardinia. In the Americas, he oversaw the continuation of Spanish colonization and a short-lived German colonization. The personal union of the European and American territories he ruled was the first collection of realms labelled "the empire on which the sun never sets".

Charles was born in Flanders to Habsburg Archduke Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and Mary of Burgundy, and Joanna of Castile, younger child of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. Heir of his grandparents, Charles inherited his family dominions at a young age. After his father's death in 1506, he inherited the Habsburg Netherlands in the Low Countries. In 1516 he became King of Spain as co-monarch of Castile and Aragon with his mother. Spain's possessions included the Castilian colonies of the West Indies and the Spanish Main, as well as Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. At the death of his grandfather Maximilian in 1519, he inherited the Austrian hereditary lands and was elected as Holy Roman Emperor. He adopted the Imperial name of Charles V as his main title, and styled himself as a new Charlemagne.

Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with the main goal of capturing territory up to a line between Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, known as the A–A line. The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part in the opening phase and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on 5 December 1941. It marked a major escalation of World War II, opened the Eastern Front—the largest and deadliest land war in history—and brought the Soviet Union into the Allied powers.

The operation, code-named after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans under Generalplan Ost, which planned for the removal of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide. The material targets of the invasion were the agricultural and mineral resources of territories such as Ukraine and Byelorussia and oil fields in the Caucasus. The Axis eventually captured five million Soviet Red Army troops on the Eastern Front and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million prisoners of war, as well as millions of civilians. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German paramilitary death squads and collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.

Bamberg (/ˈbæmbɜːrɡ/, US also /ˈbɑːmbɛərk/, German: [ˈbambɛʁk] ; East Franconian: Bambärch) is a town in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, Germany, on the river Regnitz close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg had 79,000 inhabitants in 2022. The town dates back to the 9th century, when its name was derived from the nearby Babenberch castle. Cited as one of Germany's most beautiful towns, with medieval streets and buildings, the old town of Bamberg with around 2,400 timber houses has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993.

From the 10th century onwards, Bamberg became a key link with the Western Slavic peoples, notably those of Poland and Pomerania. It experienced a period of great prosperity from the 12th century onwards, during which time it was briefly the centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Henry II was buried in the old town, alongside his wife Kunigunde. The town's architecture from this period strongly influenced that in Northern Germany and Hungary. From the middle of the 13th century onwards, the bishops were princes of the Empire and ruled Bamberg, overseeing the construction of monumental buildings. This growth was complemented by the obtaining of large portions of the estates of the Counts of Meran in 1248 and 1260 by the sea, partly through purchase and partly through the appropriation of extinguished fiefs.

The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica (Ancient Greek: Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, romanized: Perì hylēs iatrikēs) by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 16th century, a century after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire.

The 491 vellum folios measure 37 cm (15 in) by 30 cm (12 in) and contain more than 400 pictures of animals and plants, most done in a naturalistic style. In addition to the text by Dioscorides, the manuscript has appended to it, the Carmen de herbis attributed to Rufus, a paraphrase of an ornithological treatise by a certain Dionysius, usually identified with Dionysius of Philadelphia, and a paraphrase of Nicander's treatise on the treatment of snake bites.

King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies (either absolute or constitutional). The title of king is used alongside other titles for monarchs: in the West, emperor, grand prince, prince, archduke, duke or grand duke, and in the Islamic world, malik, sultan, emir or hakim, etc.

The term king may also refer to a king consort, a title that is sometimes given to the husband of a queen regnant, but the title of prince consort is more common.

The Electoral Palatinate was a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire until it was annexed by the Electorate of Baden in 1803. From the end of the 13th century, its ruler was one of the Prince-electors who elected the Holy Roman Emperor, ranking them among the most significant secular Princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Palatinate consisted of a number of widely dispersed territories, ranging from the left bank of the Upper Rhine in the modern state of Rhineland-Palatinate, adjacent parts of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine to the opposite territory on the east bank of the Rhine in present-day Hesse and Baden-Württemberg up to the Odenwald range and the southern Kraichgau region, containing the capital cities of Heidelberg and Mannheim.

The prince-electors (German: Kurfürst [ˈkuːɐ̯ˌfʏʁst] , pl. Kurfürsten [ˈkuːɐ̯ˌfʏʁstn̩] , Czech: Kurfiřt, Latin: Princeps Elector) were the members of the Electoral College of the Holy Roman Empire, which elected the Holy Roman Emperor. Usually, half of the electors were archbishops.

From the 13th century onwards, a small group of prince-electors gained the privilege of electing the King of the Romans. The king would then later be crowned Emperor by the pope. Charles V (elected in 1519) was the last emperor to be crowned (1530); his successors assumed the title "Elected Emperor of the Romans" (German: erwählter Römischer Kaiser; Latin: electus Romanorum imperator) upon their coronation as kings.

The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages (beginning in either 800 or 924), and lasted for a millennium until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. Initially, it comprised three constituent kingdoms—Germany, Italy, and, from 1032, Burgundy—held together by the emperor's overlordship. By the 15th century, imperial governance became concentrated in the Kingdom of Germany, as the empire's effective control over Italy and Burgundy had largely disappeared.

On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne Roman emperor, reviving the title more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The title lapsed in 924, but was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor by Pope John XII, as Charlemagne's and the Carolingian Empire's successor. From 962 until the 12th century, the empire was one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe. It depended on cooperation between emperors and vassals; this was disturbed during the Salian period. The empire reached the apex of territorial expansion and power under the House of Hohenstaufen in the mid-13th century, but overextension led to a partial collapse. The imperial office was traditionally elective by the mostly German prince-electors. In theory and diplomacy, the emperors were considered the first among equals of all of Europe's Catholic monarchs.

An Imperial Estate (Latin: Status Imperii; German: Reichsstand, plural: Reichsstände) was an entity or an individual of the Holy Roman Empire with representation and the right to vote in the Imperial Diet (Reichstag). Rulers of these Estates were able to exercise significant rights and privileges and were "immediate", meaning the only authority above them was that of the Holy Roman Emperor. They were thus able to rule their territories with a considerable degree of autonomy.

The system of imperial states replaced the more regular division of Germany into stem duchies in the early medieval period. The old Carolingian stem duchies were retained as the major divisions of Germany under the Salian dynasty, but they became increasingly obsolete during the early high medieval period under the Hohenstaufen, and they were finally abolished in 1180 by Frederick Barbarossa in favour of more numerous territorial divisions. From 1489, the Imperial Estates represented in the Diet were divided into three chambers, the college of prince-electors (Kurfürstenkollegium/den Kurfürstenrat), the college of imperial princes (Reichsfürstenrat) and the college of imperial cities. Counts and nobles were not directly represented in the Diet in spite of their immediate status, but were grouped into "benches" (Grafenbänke) with a single vote each.Imperial Knights and imperial villages had immediate status but were not represented in the Diet.

Prague (/ˈprɑːɡ/ PRAHG; Czech: Praha [ˈpraɦa] ) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan area is home to approximately 2.3 million people.

Prague is a historical city with Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV (r. 1346–1378) and Rudolf II (r. 1575–1611). It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austria-Hungary. The city played major roles in the Bohemian and the Protestant Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, and in 20th-century history as the capital of Czechoslovakia between the World Wars and the post-war Communist era.

Dona Maria Leopoldina of Austria (22 January 1797 – 11 December 1826) was the first Empress of Brazil as the wife of Emperor Dom Pedro I from 12 October 1822 until her death. She was also Queen of Portugal during her husband's brief reign as King Dom Pedro IV from 10 March to 2 May 1826.

She was born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. Among her many siblings were Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Charlemagne (/ˈʃɑːrləmeɪn/ SHAR-lə-mayn; 2 April 748 – 28 January 814) was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of what is now known as the Carolingian Empire from 800. He united most of Western and Central Europe and was the first recognised emperor to rule from the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier. Charlemagne's reign was marked by political and social changes that had lasting influence on Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

A member of the Frankish Carolingian dynasty, Charlemagne was the eldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon. With his brother Carloman I, he became king of the Franks in 768 following Pepin's death and became the sole ruler three years later. Charlemagne continued his father's policy of protecting the papacy and became its chief defender, removing the Lombards from power in northern Italy in 774. His reign saw a period of expansion that led to the conquests of Bavaria, Saxony, and northern Spain, as well as other campaigns that led Charlemagne to extend his rule over a large part of Europe. Charlemagne spread Christianity to his new conquests (often by force), as seen at the Massacre of Verden against the Saxons. He also sent envoys and initiated diplomatic contact with Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph in the 790s, due to their mutual interest in Iberian affairs.

Albrecht Dürer (/ˈdjʊərər/ DURE-ər, German: [ˈalbʁɛçt ˈdyːʁɐ]; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528), sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.

Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts series are stylistically more Gothic than the rest of his work, but revolutionised the potential of that medium, while his extraordinary handling of the burin expanded especially the tonal range of his engravings.

The concept of Germany as a distinct region in Central Europe can be traced to Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul. The victory of the Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (AD 9) prevented annexation by the Roman Empire, although the Roman provinces of Germania Superior and Germania Inferior were established along the Rhine. Following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Franks conquered the other West Germanic tribes. When the Frankish Empire was divided among Charles the Great's heirs in 843, the eastern part became East Francia, and later Kingdom of Germany. In 962, Otto I became the first Holy Roman Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the medieval German state.

During the High Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League, dominated by German port cities, established itself along the Baltic and North Seas. The development of a crusading element within German Christendom led to the Northern Crusades and the establishment of the State of the Teutonic Order along the Southern Baltic coast in what would later become Prussia. In the Investiture Controversy, the German Emperors resisted Catholic Church authority. In the Late Middle Ages, the regional dukes, princes, and bishops gained power at the expense of the emperors. Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation within the Catholic Church after 1517, as the northern and eastern states became Protestant, while most of the southern and western states remained Catholic. The Thirty Years' War, a civil war from 1618 to 1648 brought tremendous destruction to the Holy Roman Empire. The estates of the empire attained great autonomy in the Peace of Westphalia, the most important being Austria, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony. With the Napoleonic Wars, feudalism fell away and the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806. Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine as a German puppet state, but after the French defeat, the German Confederation was established under Austrian presidency. The German revolutions of 1848–1849 failed but the Industrial Revolution modernized the German economy, leading to rapid urban growth and the emergence of the socialist movement. Prussia, with its capital Berlin, grew in power. German universities became world-class centers for science and humanities, while music and art flourished. The unification of Germany was achieved under the leadership of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the formation of the German Empire in 1871. The new Reichstag, an elected parliament, had only a limited role in the imperial government. Germany joined the other powers in colonial expansion in Africa and the Pacific.

The Investiture Controversy or Investiture Contest (Latin: Controversia de Investitura, German: Investiturstreit, pronounced [ɪnvɛstiˈtuːɐ̯ˌʃtʁaɪt] ) was a conflict between the Church and the state in medieval Europe over the ability to choose and install bishops (investiture), abbots of monasteries, and the Pope himself. A series of popes in the 11th and 12th centuries undercut the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and other European monarchies, and the controversy led to nearly 50 years of conflict.

It began as a power struggle between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV (then King, later Holy Roman Emperor) in 1076. The conflict ended in 1122, when Pope Callixtus II and Emperor Henry V agreed on the Concordat of Worms. The agreement required bishops to swear an oath of fealty to the secular monarch, who held authority "by the lance" but left selection to the church. It affirmed the right of the church to invest bishops with sacred authority, symbolized by a ring and staff. In Germany (but not Italy and Burgundy), the Emperor also retained the right to preside over elections of abbots and bishops by church authorities, and to arbitrate disputes. Holy Roman Emperors renounced the right to choose the Pope.