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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What was the gradual process of the title of Emperor being diminished as so sacred a thing in Europe? In 800 it was believed that God ordained that there could only be one Christian Empire on Earth (obviously the Pope didn’t count the Romans in the East) but flash forward a thousand years to the 19th century and there were at least 3 plus the British in India. Pretty sure it was Napoleon calling himself one and then the other powers at the time wanted to be cool too
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Feb 3, 2019 05:14
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Figuring out the history of a term is really weird when you're used to reading history books that have all been translated into your language. Would the Byzantines even be caught dead using a latin term to define themselves? And then there's modern attempts define terms more specifically than they were contemporarily, or even vying for post-facto prestige. So far as I know, even the concept of "imperialism" comes from European colonial empires' use of the term, even if it dovetails nicely with older big ol' states and older empires.
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Feb 3, 2019 05:59
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The "Byzantines" were down with Latin, it just wasn't the language they spoke in their day to day or the language of the Church. One of the most fun things about "Byzantine" history is how Imperial propaganda in the 9th century associated the Emperor Michael III with Mark Antony in a bad way. Mark Antony was dead 1000 years but it still mattered to them because they were still Romans.
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Feb 3, 2019 06:25
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What was the gradual process of the title of Emperor being diminished as so sacred a thing in Europe? In 800 it was believed that God ordained that there could only be one Christian Empire on Earth (obviously the Pope didn’t count the Romans in the East) but flash forward a thousand years to the 19th century and there were at least 3 plus the British in India. The idea of "Emperor" being some super-special title is somewhat overstated; various Spanish kings styled themselves as "Emperor of all Spain" from the ninth century onwards, and while English monarchs didn't use the title, they did legally consider themselves as "imperator" within their domain.
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Feb 3, 2019 07:02
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The "Byzantines" were down with Latin, it just wasn't the language they spoke in their day to day or the language of the Church. Could you please elaborate
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Feb 3, 2019 07:09
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Why did the Pope find it so important to awkwardly bestow the title onto Charlemagne so he could stick it to the Eastern Romans?
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Feb 3, 2019 07:10
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Why did the Pope find it so important to awkwardly bestow the title onto Charlemagne so he could stick it to the Eastern Romans? Because Irene overthrew and killed her son to become Emperor, so her title was illegitimate, and besides, she was a lady, and everybody knew that ladies couldn't become Emperor.
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Feb 3, 2019 07:19
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also if memory serves, he really needed Charlemagne's support then
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Feb 3, 2019 07:34
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When a Frankish warlord comes down to conquer Italy in your name just so you can bestow him some legitimacy for his throne, you better goddamn have the biggest, fanciest title to give him. How much temporal power the pope had was kind of ambiguous and varied, but the one thing he did have going for him was being the arbiter of legitimacy in western Europe, so whatever he said went. Not like those mooks across the Adriatic were gonna have anything useful to say.
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Feb 3, 2019 07:49
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Elyv posted:also if memory serves, he really needed Charlemagne's support then Yes Pope Leo was driven out of Rome due to local political squabbles and ran off to Charlemagne, whose There is also some thought that this was a stepping stone to him potentially trying to take the throne of Constantinople, but that didn't come to much. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Feb 3, 2019 |
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Feb 3, 2019 07:58
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Constantine VI had also been betrothed to Charlemagne's daughter, Rotrude, and Irene broke that betrothal,
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Feb 3, 2019 08:18
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The trick is not calling yourself Emperor it's getting everyone else to.
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Feb 3, 2019 08:53
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Emperors just ain’t what they used to be. cf. presidents
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Feb 3, 2019 09:40
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SlothfulCobra posted:Would the Byzantines even be caught dead using a latin term to define themselves? Oh sure. They kept using Latin until very late in their history. It was nobody's native language, but people would learn it and there was Latin for specific situations. Military commands were still given in Latin for one big example, and some other military terminology remained Latin. Like how if you take karate classes you have to learn Japanese vocabulary for the various, uh, karate things. There was also lots of Hellenized Latin in use. In sources from the 1000s we have an assortment of governmental positions like kourator (curator), sakellarios (sacellarius), rhaektor (rector), domestikos (domestici)
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Feb 3, 2019 15:17
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How come it’s now usually agreed upon that the Holy Roman Empire didn’t “begin” until Otto was crowned in the 960s when Charlemagne was crowned in 800? Is the difference a modern historical construct or was it recognized at the time that there was a difference?
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Feb 3, 2019 16:18
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:How come it’s now usually agreed upon that the Holy Roman Empire didn’t “begin” until Otto was crowned in the 960s when Charlemagne was crowned in 800? Is the difference a modern historical construct or was it recognized at the time that there was a difference? Charlemagne’s state was very much not the same thing as the high/late Middle Ages empire in Germany/Italy. The Frankish empire at that point was a court-based autocracy; in the Saxon/German empire power was local and regionalized, like in France (maybe not quite as much as that stage though). When Charles the Fat got deposed from united empire of France, Germany and Italy, those political entities never became united again (unless you count Napoleon). The strong state that the Ottonians built was based on power and infrastructure from that empire, but was totally a different thing. Nonetheless, the Ottonians attempted to ignore the difference in some ways (they used the same title of Roman emperor after all) whole tacitly admitting to it in others (no attempt to reassert sovereignty over France for example).
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Feb 3, 2019 16:57
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I find the HRE just absolutely fascinating. Please everyone give me your most interesting HRE factoids!
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Feb 3, 2019 17:13
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HEY GUNS posted:crumbling concrete Roman/ancient history: Albuquerque is mostly crumbling concrete these days
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Feb 3, 2019 17:52
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I like how so many feudal leaders in the HRE were just trying to fake it 'til they made it. The guy in charge of Austria wanted to be better than just a duke, so he started calling himself "archduke" which wasn't a thing, but he just kept call himself that until it stuck, and they even forged a fake Roman decree to back up the title. Other dukes followed suit a bit by calling themselves "grand dukes" instead of just your garden variety duke. Guy ruling Prussia wanted to call himself king, but it was against HRE rules to have more than two kings, so he had this weird workaround title of "King in Prussia" as opposed to "King of Prussia", because that makes so much difference. Even the imperial title itself was kind of just the Emperor calling himself something big and fancy until people took him up on it. Some emperors claimed that the HRE technically had dominion over Rome itself, despite seldom actually exerting it, and of course most every pope worth his salt claimed some kind of authority over the emperor in a kind of China-Taiwan situation.
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Feb 3, 2019 18:15
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I find the HRE just absolutely fascinating. Please everyone give me your most interesting HRE factoids!
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Feb 3, 2019 23:48
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American presidents are def not emperors and we’re designed not to be. even now.
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Feb 4, 2019 00:06
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I find the HRE just absolutely fascinating. Please everyone give me your most interesting HRE factoids!
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Feb 4, 2019 00:25
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SlothfulCobra posted:Guy ruling Prussia wanted to call himself king, but it was against HRE rules to have more than two kings, so he had this weird workaround title of "King in Prussia" as opposed to "King of Prussia", because that makes so much difference.
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Feb 4, 2019 00:26
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How much of the history of all the different polities in the HRE can be summed up as “fake it till you make it”?
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Feb 4, 2019 02:19
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Why did the HRE constantly have such absurd snaking borders, each with tons of enclaves and exclaves, for all its internal political divisions over its entire lifespan? Just  what in the gently caress
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Feb 4, 2019 02:20
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Fuschia tude posted:Why did the HRE constantly have such absurd snaking borders, each with tons of enclaves and exclaves, for all its internal political divisions over its entire lifespan? well this thing is a thousand years old edit: what if feudalism, but too much HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Feb 4, 2019 |
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Feb 4, 2019 02:21
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Also keep in mind the way borders look on a medieval map has little bearing on the reality of people's existences. Manor X is owned by Lord Y who is a vassal of Duke Z and then a modern map maker takes all of Duke Z's land and draws a border around it and gives it a color. But it's not like there were checkpoints or border crossings or anything (for the most part, don't nitpick!!) so it's not like what we think of as a real political boundary. The HRE is just weird because it lasted long enough to exist into the period where, yes, there are actual borders now so you get nutty maps. But like France in the 1100s was also hundreds of tiny little areas connected by vassal relationships. But it all got turned into just the kingdom of France, while the HRE maintained its weird feudal situation.
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Feb 4, 2019 02:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Also keep in mind the way borders look on a medieval map has little bearing on the reality of people's existences. Manor X is owned by Lord Y who is a vassal of Duke Z and then a modern map maker takes all of Duke Z's land and draws a border around it and gives it a color. But it's not like there were checkpoints or border crossings or anything (for the most part, don't nitpick!!) so it's not like what we think of as a real political boundary. france also maintained all of its silly little feudal divisions as the kingdom of france. eventually this was a big contributor to the revolution after the aristocracy spent hundreds of years optimizing their tariffs for maximum extraction and as more trade goods began to flow around the country, paying import tax to fifteen minor lords just to take your goods from one city to another put serious structural stress on the french economy. it was such a tangled mess that laissez faire was actually an improvement Fuschia tude posted:Why did the HRE constantly have such absurd snaking borders, each with tons of enclaves and exclaves, for all its internal political divisions over its entire lifespan? keep in mind that there are literally hundreds of tiny polities not being shown because they consist of a reichsritter's house, a couple of villages, and maybe a bridge to tax and the colors don't all represent a single polity - some are categories. for example there are many ecclesiastical states that are all represented as dark blue/grey on the map, but which were in no way actually united Jazerus fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Feb 4, 2019 |
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Feb 4, 2019 02:50
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It's sort of a miracle that any power internal to that mess was able to straighten it out and turn it into a modern state
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Feb 4, 2019 02:55
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HEY GUNS posted:to my knowledge the smallest Imperial Free City has 80 people in it Was it just a village, or a New Jersey sort of situation where 10 blocks within a metropolitan are its own city for some reason.
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Feb 4, 2019 03:04
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Fuschia tude posted:Why did the HRE constantly have such absurd snaking borders, each with tons of enclaves and exclaves, for all its internal political divisions over its entire lifespan? Lmao that map leaves out Italy too
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Feb 4, 2019 03:05
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Jazerus posted:keep in mind that there are literally hundreds of tiny polities not being shown because they consist of a reichsritter's house, a couple of villages, and maybe a bridge to tax before 1648 nobody counted or mapped them, that's why this map is dated '48
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Feb 4, 2019 03:06
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Was it just a village, or a New Jersey sort of situation where 10 blocks within a metropolitan are its own city for some reason.
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Feb 4, 2019 03:08
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Grand Fromage posted:Also keep in mind the way borders look on a medieval map has little bearing on the reality of people's existences. this place had castles that were owned by multiple micro-polities at once
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Feb 4, 2019 03:15
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HEY GUNS posted:ZELL IS NOT A VILLAGE IT IS AN IMPERIAL CITY YOU CAN SEE BY THE COAT OF ARMS THEY ARE VERY IMPORTANT Why are the Counts "von und zu Hohengeroldseck" rather than just "von"? Is the answer "because middle ages Germanic pedantry and legal hairsplitting"?
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Feb 4, 2019 03:19
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HEY GUNS posted:ok but like I'm beginning to think that being HREmperor is like a curse for angering a wise woman or a wish on a monkey hand.
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Feb 4, 2019 03:22
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Elissimpark posted:Why are the Counts "von und zu Hohengeroldseck" rather than just "von"? Is the answer "because middle ages Germanic pedantry and legal hairsplitting"? sometimes the family subdivides itself, like the Vizthumbs are an East German noble family and one of the guys in my dissertation has the last name Vizthumb von Eckstädt but there's tons more "Vizthumb von [whatever]" https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitzthum_(Adelsgeschlecht) edit: then there's these people, two of them (at least) were 30yw officers, their names were Dodo and Enno HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Feb 4, 2019 |
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Feb 4, 2019 03:23
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It reminds me most of that thing with Roman buildings where people would own multiple rooms in the building, but not necessarily on the same floor or in any way contiguous. Individual feudal rulers and their families tried to spread and increase their holdings however they could. It's not that big of a deal if you have somebody else's territory blocking off bits of yours or whatever if your neighbor is part of the same country and subject to the same laws and court system. Besides, straightening out all the feudal territories is a lot of work that involves knocking heads and really straining vassal relations. Just look at all the trouble plans to slice up California have getting off the ground.
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Feb 4, 2019 03:26
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You know I bet if we mapped the US by like, original mortgage lender on the house at each location, it'd look a lot like HRE borders.SlothfulCobra posted:It reminds me most of that thing with Roman buildings where people would own multiple rooms in the building, but not necessarily on the same floor or in any way contiguous. People still do this in really big cities. One of my grandpa's friends had essentially 3 separate apartments rented throughout the apartment building on the Upper West Side in Manhattan that he lived in - one that was his normal apartment, one across the hall from the first that he used as storage/where he handmade stuff he sold in retirement/where family visiting the city could sleep, and then one on a much lower floor that was like just the most minimal studio apartment room and was for additional storage fishmech fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Feb 4, 2019 |
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Feb 4, 2019 03:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:It reminds me most of that thing with Roman buildings where people would own multiple rooms in the building, but not necessarily on the same floor or in any way contiguous. fishmech posted:You know I bet if we mapped the US by like, original mortgage lender on the house at each location, it'd look a lot like HRE borders. edit: now imagine each of those guys has a seperate legal code and different weights and measures HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Feb 4, 2019 |
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Feb 4, 2019 03:31
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