Download Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire AudioBook Free
The Holy Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years, way longer than historical Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never encouraged the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire quipped that it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter H. Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire instructs a millennial storyline of Europe better than the histories of specific nation-states. Heart of European countries traces the empire from its roots within Charlemagne's kingdom in 800 to its demise in 1806. By mid-tenth century, its key rested in the German kingdom, and eventually its territory stretched from France and Denmark to Italy and Poland. Yet the empire remained abstract, without fixed capital and no common vocabulary or culture. The source of its continuity and legitimacy was the perfect of the unified Religious civilization, but this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope over supremacy. Although title of Holy Roman Emperor retained prestige, rising state governments such as Austria and Prussia wielded electric power in ways the empire could not. While it gradually lost the overall flexibility to cope with political, economic, and interpersonal changes, the empire was far from being in crisis until the onslaught of the French revolutionary wars.
