The Roman empire terminated with the anarchy which followed the murder of Justinian II, the last sov- ereign of the family of Heraclius; and Leo III, or the Isaurian, must be ranked as the first Byzantine monarch (Finlay, Greece under the Romaics, p. 433).
The chief prophetic notices of the Roman empire are found in the book of Daniel, especially in xi, 30-40, and in ii, 40; vii, 7, 17-19, according to the common inter- pretation of the "fourth kingdom" (comp. 2 Esdr. xi, T). See Daniel. According to some interpreters the Ro- mans are intended in Dent, xxviii, 49-57. For the mj'stical notices of Rome in the Revelation, comp. Rome.
On the general subject of this article, consult Eschen- berg. Classical Manual, § " Roman Antiquities" (Lond. 1844 ) ; Ruperti, Ilandbuch der romisch. A Iterthumer (Hanover, 1841, 2 vols. 8vo); Maillott and Martin, Re- cherches sur les Costumes, les Moeurs, etc., des Anciens Peuples. See also Unger, iSitten und Gehrduche der Runier (\''ienna, 1805) ; XrwM, liiM, of Rome. Much information may be found by the English reader on the state of manners in the first centuries after Christ in the following fictions: Lockhart, Valerius; Bulwer, Pom- peii; Ware, Palmyra; and in Milman, Hist, of Latin Christianity, But especially consult Merivale, Hist, of the Roman Empire (Lond. 1864, 8vo).
ROMAN EMPIRE, The Holy, is the designation familiarly given to the mediaival and modern Roman Empire of the West, and especially to that empire after the imperial sceptre had passed into the hands of Ger- jnan sovereigns. For a whole millennium — from the coronation of Charlemagne to the abdication of Francis of Austria — the Roman empire occupied in Western Europe the first place, in dignitj' and prestige, of all secular governments. Though its actual power had continually fluctuated, and its influence on the affairs of the world had rapidly waned after the retirement of Charles V, it remained an imposing memorial of ancient grandeur and dominion, and was honored as a "clarum et venerabile nomen." " Heir of the universal sway of Rome, the holder of it claimed to be the suzerain of all earthly kings. First and oldest of European dignities, its very name had a sound of dignity."
Passing over the widely extended and thoroughly organized empire of Charlemagne, and the rapid decay
ROMAN EMPIRE, TPIE HOLY 93 ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY
of eminence and power, under his successors of the Car- lovingian line, and contining attention to the Germanic dynasties, the Holy Roman Empire maintained a lol'ty and potent ascendency over all kings and temporal rul- ers in the West for three centuries, extending from the first Otho, the Great, to the death of that "stupor mundi," the dazzling, energetic, and lordly Frederick II. Dur- ing this long and agitated period, the empire and the papacy marched abreast in constant discord and furious contention ; the one acknowledged to be supreme in the secular order, the other reverenced as supreme in the spiritual order. The rivalries, the jealousies, the ani- mosities, the virulent antagonisms, of these transcendent sovereignties — each endeavoring to secure its own posi- tion and predominancy by the depression of the other — tilled the centuries with strife, with acrimonies, and with perplexities worse than the bloody warfare which they engendered. For one brief interval in the subsequent ages, after long and dreary eclipse, the Holy Roman Empire, under an emperor of the house of Ha]isburg, threatened to regain a more arrogant control, a vaster domain, a more solitary domination, than it had pos- sessed under the first Cicsars or had claimed uniler the first Constantine. But Charles V, the most powerful of emperors since Charlemagne, was the last of emperors crowned in Italj'. He was frustrated of the dreams that had been nursed for him by both his grandfathers, and that had been eagerly cherished by himself through- out a long and busy reign. His energies were engross- ed and wasted, his enormous resources consumed, and his authority paralyzed by discords in his numerous scattered kingdoms and principalities, and by the divi- sions and civil wars produced by the Protestant Refor- mation, and favoring its extension. Worn out and baf- fled, he renounced his thrones in despair. He retired — shattered in health, in spirit, and in confidence, to fritter away the last months of a grand existence — amid the lovely scenery around the monastery of Juste. Thence- forward the empire continued to wane and shrivel u]i, till finally extinguished by the conquests and confeder- ations of the emperor Napoleon.
An institution of such long duration, of such splendid pretensions, of such intimate association with the eccle- siastical system of Christendom, of such profound influ- ence upon both the temporal and the spiritual fortunes of humanity — an institution which transmitted the con- summate result of all ancient civilization almost to our own day — merits careful appreciation, and requires it the more urgently because its name has already ceased to he familiar, and because its fortunes and vicissitudes are often slighted as the vanished " phantoms of forgot- ten rule."
I. Origin of the Name. — The name of The Holy Ro- man Empire cannot be distinctly traced in either its origin or its application. It is obscurely involved in the institution of the empire throughout all the phases of its existence. It may readily be discerned in pagan Rome. It is implied in the constitution of the reanimat- ed Empire of the West. In more modern times it fre- quently appears in treaties and imperial documents, in diplomatic papers, and in the official transactions of the imperial chancery. But it was never of obligatory or habitual employment. It does not occur in the Act of Abdication of Francis I in 1806, nor in the earlier Prag- matic, which paved the way for the abdication and pre- scribed his official titles as emperor elect. It has not been found in any of the numerous chronicles, specially examined for the present inquiry, which record the cor- onations from Charlemagne to Rodolph of Hapsburg. It has not been detected by us in the capitularies and edicts, nor in the Lihri Fevdorum. There is nothing on the subject in Pfeflfel's Abrer/e Chronnlof/iqiie, not- withstanding the well-merited commendations bestow- ed by Gibbon upon that painstaking and useful treatise. There is no explanation in Muratori nor in (iilibon. It would he vain, of course, to expect the solution of any real difficultj^ from The Middle Ages of the superficial