James Bryce - The Holy Roman Empire

A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight of God, – an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood, where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the humblest curate, – and in the prevalence of one language for worship and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the source and needful condition of their authority in their several territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it. Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism: there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy of life.

The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international; though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands, but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.

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The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve as a sort of skeleton history of mediæval Germany and Italy.

According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the curiales in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property.

See the eloquent passage of Claudian, In secundum consulatum Stilichonis , 129, sqq. , from which the following lines are taken (150-60): —

In the Roman jurisprudence, ius sacrum is a branch of ius publicum .

Tertullian, writing circ. A.D. 200, says: 'Sed quid ego amplius de religione atque pietate Christiana in imperatorem quem necesse est suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus noster elegerit. Et merito dixerim, noster est magis Cæsar, ut a nostro Deo constitutus.' — Apologet. cap. 34.

See the book of Optatus, bishop of Milevis, Contra Donatistas . 'Non enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica, id est, in imperio Romano, cum super imperatorem non sit nisi solus Deus:' (p. 999 of vol. ii. of Migne's Patrologiæ Cursus completus .) The treatise of Optatus is full of interest, as shewing the growth of the idea of the visible Church, and of the primacy of Peter's chair, as constituting its centre and representing its unity.

'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.' – Tac. Ann. i. 2.

Tac. Ann. ii. 9.

Stilicho, the bulwark of the Empire, seems to have been himself a Vandal by extraction.

Of course not the consulship itself, but the ornamenta consularia .

Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis , cap. 28.

Tac. Hist. i. and iv.

'Vester quidem est populus meus sed me plus servire vobis quam illi præesse delectat. Traxit istud a proavis generis mei apud vos decessoresque vestros semper animo Romana devotio, ut illa nobis magis claritas putaretur, quam vestra per militiæ titulos porrigeret celsitudo: cunctisque auctoribus meis semper magis ambitum est quod a principibus sumerent quam quod a patribus attulissent. Cumque gentem nostram videamur regere, non aliud nos quam milites vestros credimus ordinari… Per nos administratis remotarum spatia regionum: patria nostra vester orbis est. Tangit Galliam suam lumen orientis, et radius qui illis partibus oriri creditur, hic refulget. Dominationem vobis divinitus præstitam obex nulla concludit, nec ullis provinciarum terminis diffusio felicium sceptrorum limitatur. Salvo divinitatis honore sit dictum.' – Letter printed among the works of Avitus, Bishop of Vienne. (Migne's Patrologia , vol. lix. p. 285.)

This letter, as its style shews, is the composition not of Sigismund himself, but of Avitus, writing on Sigismund's behalf. But this makes it scarcely less valuable evidence of the feelings of the time.

'Referre solitus est ( sc. Ataulphus) se in primis ardenter inhiasse: ut obliterato Romanorum nomine Romanum omne solum Gothorum imperium et faceret et vocaret: essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia quod Romania fuisset; fieretque nunc Ataulphus quod quondam Cæsar Augustus. At ubi multa experientia probavisset, neque Gothos ullo modo parere legibus posse propter effrenatam barbariem, neque reipublicæ interdici leges oportere sine quibus respublica non est respublica; elegisse se saltem, ut gloriam sibi de restituendo in integrum augendoque Romano nomine Gothorum viribus quæreret, habereturque apud posteros Romanæ restitutionis auctor postquam esse non potuerat immutator. Ob hoc abstinere a bello, ob hoc inhiare paci nitebatur.' – Orosius, vii. 43.