Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

What to call the so-called Holy Roman Empire?

Voltaire had point when denied that the so-called Holy Roman Empire is holy, Roman, or even an empire, because polity has never managed to achieve sacred status beyond consecration by the papacy, Romanity beyond having Rome as its nominal seat of government, or strengthen its administration beyond being a confederation of relatively independent realms.

I suppose that historiography in Germany simply called it a "reich" or a domain, which can be useful for distinction from "imperium" or empire, which Romany in the east, with Constantinople as its capital city, essentially was.

To replace the Roman label, perhaps replacing it with the Romish label can help differentiate it from the empire in the east.

The holy label wasn't originally part of the name of the polity when it began in 962, so leaving it out won't do anything bad to the new designation of the so-called "Holy Roman Empire" as the "Romish Domain" to distinguish it from the Roman Empire or its successor Romany.

Reply 1

username5804874

"Romish" is a derogatory way of saying "Catholic", so it's both rude and inaccurate (if memory serves me rightly it was ruled by a Lutheran in the 18th century).

If the idea that the HRE is the legitimate continuation of the Western Roman Empire is that offensive to you, than call it the "German Empire", which was what lots of people both then and now call it.