holy-roman-emperors

"In Oberkaufungen in Hesse, Germany, Saint Cunegonda: she brought many benefits to the Church together with her husband, Saint Henry the Emperor, and after his death, she herself passed away in the convent where she had retired as a nun, making Christ her inheritance. Her body was laid to rest with full honours next to the remains of Saint Henry in Bamberg."

"He had been a curious mixture of piety, chastity and ferocity. He had killed with the same zeal with which he had prayed. The Church forgot the murders, remembered the prayers, and some twenty years after [his death] canonised him."

"Henry II was a pious and sincerely devout emperor. He managed to remain so even after seeing for himself what had become of the Church of Rome, where he had come to be consecrated in 1013."

"It is clear that while Arrigo [Henry II] was merely the King of Bishops, Arduin was the King of the People. These two powers were vying for supremacy in Italy, and the scattered fragments of the great feudal aristocracy, the few lay lords still in existence, changed sides from one to the other, intent more on providing for their own safety than on tipping the balance in favour of one party or the other."

"What painter could portray all the bizarre transformations of the Devil? It is not true that he always appeared as ugly as certain Catholic authors depict him. On the contrary, Satan can also take on the most seductive forms when necessary: that of a knight, a woman, even... would you believe it? a monk and a saint. One night, he leaves the chamber of Saint Cunegonda, Queen of Bohemia, dressed as a knight; surprised, the unhappy sovereign is subjected to the trial by fire... for adultery..."

"She had prayed and made offerings to Mary, who had given birth to Jesus; to Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, who, having been barren for twenty years, had been told by an angel that she would give birth to a daughter; to Saint Cunegunda who, despite having taken a vow of chastity with her husband, Emperor Henry, prepared miraculous potions to help women conceive."

"Frederick II's attempt was part of the European process of forming the first modern states, which culminated first in the Battle of Bouvines (1214) and then in the bitter clash between secular powers and the Church. In this conflict, which led to the conquest of full secular sovereignty by France and England, Frederick failed. He failed as emperor but also as unifier of Italy. He was, after all, Italian, the son of a Sicilian mother, heir to the Norman kingdom of the South, educated in the nascent Italian culture of which he was a promoter and also a protagonist."

"Italy is my inheritance, and this is well known to all the world. To covet the property of others and abandon my own, would be ambitious and sinful, particularly as the insolence of the Italians, and especially the Milanese, has provoked me, showing no proper respect to me in any way. Moreover, I am a Christian, and, however unworthy a servant of Christ, I am prepared to subdue the enemies of the cross. Since, therefore, so many heresies are not only springing up, but are even growing thick in Italy, and the tares are beginning to choke the wheat throughout the cities of Italy, and especially Milan, to proceed to subdue the Saracens and to leave these unpunished, would be to rub the wound where the steel has entered with superficial fomentations, and to cause an ugly scar, not a cure. Again, I am alone and am human, and therefore not capable of such a great undertaking as that of subduing the enemies of the cross, without a great force to assist me; as they are so numerous and powerful. Again, as I am not of myself sufficient to carry out such an arduous matter without a great deal of money, I have determined to apply the wealth of the said country to lend assistance to, and to avenge the crucified One; for Italy abounds in arms, horses, and wealth, as all the world knows."

"Ê ich mích ir verzige, ich verzige mich ê der krône."

"Ein Keyser sey niemand underthan als Gott und der Gerechtigkeit."

"Misfortune comes uninvited"

"I am king of the Romans and above grammar."

"Nothing of that which was gained by fraud can go to the liberation of his soul. Let his wealth be divided among the workmen of this our building, and the poorer servants of our palace."

"Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right."

"You nobles, you sons of my leading men, soft and dandified, trusting in your birth and your wealth, paying no attention to my command and your advancement, you neglected the pursuit of learning and indulged yourselves in the sport of pleasure and idleness and foolish pastimes. By the King of the heavens I think nothing of your nobility and your beauty. Others can admire you. Know this without any doubt; unless you rapidly make up for your idleness by eager effort, you will never receive any benefit from Charlemagne."

"If only I could have a dozen churchmen as wise and as well taught in all human knowledge as were Jerome and Augustine!"

"It is not lack of self-restraint but care for others which makes me dine in Lent before the hour of evening."

"Fathers and guardians, bishops of our Church, you ought to minister to the poor, or rather to Christ in them, and not to seek after vanities. But now you act quite contrary to this; and are vainglorious and avaricious beyond all other men."

"Bishops should despise this world and inspire others by their example to seek after heavenly things. But now you are corrupted by ambition beyond all the rest of mankind; and one of them not content with holding the first episcopal see in Germany has dared without my approval to claim my golden scepter, which I carry to signify my royal will, in order that he might use it as his pastoral staff."

"Take care that none of them escapes."

"Under this tomb lies the body of Charles, the great and orthodox emperor, who gloriously increased the Kingdom of the Franks and reigned with great success for forty-seven years. He died in his seventies in the year of our Lord 814, in the seventh Indiction, on the twenty-eighth day of January."

"This blond, barbarian giant, who slept with a slate under his pillow, and made the English scholar, Alcuin of York, his chief counsellor and head of his palace school, conceived the tremendous ambition of reuniting the West in a new Roman empire in place of the remote and now almost entirely oriental empire of Byzantium."

"Yet more than to the eastern forests from which his forbears had come, Charlemagne's spirit was drawn to the Roman south. He saw himself as the head of Christendom and its guardian. Like his father, Pepin, he led a Frankish army across the Alps against the Lombard conquerors of north Italy. And on Christmas day 800, as he knelt at mass in St. Peter's, Rome, his ally the pope crowned him with traditional imperial rites as Augustus and emperor of the Romans. To dreamers it appeared as if the hand of time had been set back and the Roman Empire was restored. And it was now, it seemed, a Holy Roman Empire."

"His brief-lived empire, with its capitals and palaces, its artists and scholars, seems to swim out of the night of the Dark Ages and back into historical twilight like a brightly lit port on a Greek island as the steamer that bears us puts in for an hour and moves on."

"The most famous and greatest of men."

"I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the œconomy of his farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government; but in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and, after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism."

"[T]he encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne. The dignity of his person, the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigour of his government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new æra from his restoration of the Western empire."

"This great empire Charlemagne formed into a systematically organized State, and gave the Frank dominion settled institutions adapted to impart to it strength and consistency. This must however not be understood, as if he first introduced the Constitution of his empire in its whole extent, but as implying that institutions partly already in existence, were developed under his guidance, and attained a more decided and unobstructed efficiency. The King stood at the head of the officers of the empire, and the principle of hereditary monarchy was already recognized."

"Charles was the keenest of all kings to seek out and support wise men so that they might philosophize with all delight. Almost all of the kingdom entrusted to him by God was so foggy and almost blind, but he made it luminous with the new ray of knowledge, almost unknown to this barbarous land, with God lighting the way so it could see. But now studies are growing weak, and the light of wisdom because it is less loved grows rarer among most people."

"Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky."

"Make us eternal truths receive, And practice all that we believe; Give us Thyself that we may see The Father and the Son by Thee."

"Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus."

"I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings."

"The sheer heterogeneity and diffusion of these lands, which will be examined further below, might suggest that the Habsburg imperium could never be a real equivalent to the uniform, centralized empires of Asia. Even in the 1520s, Charles was handing over to his younger brother Ferdinand the administration and princely sovereignty of the Austrian hereditary lands, and also of the new acquisitions of Hungary and Bohemia—a recognition, well before Charles’s own abdication, that the Spanish and Austrian inheritances could not be effectively ruled by the same person. Nonetheless, that was not how the other princes and states viewed this mighty agglomeration of Habsburg power. To the Valois kings of France, fresh from consolidating their own authority internally and eager to expand into the rich Italian peninsula, Charles V’s possessions seemed to encircle the French state—and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the chief aim of the French in Europe over the next two centuries would be to break the influence of the Habsburgs. Similarly, the German princes and electors, who had long struggled against the emperor’s having any real authority within Germany itself, could not but be alarmed when they saw Charles V’s position was buttressed by so many additional territories, which might now give him the resources to impose his will. Many of the popes, too, disliked this accumulation of Habsburg power, even if it was often needed to combat the Turks, the Lutherans, and other foes."

"By 1552, French armies had moved into Germany, in support of the Protestant states, who were thereby able to resist the centralizing tendencies of the emperor. This was acknowledged by the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which brought the religious wars in Germany to a temporary end, and by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), which brought the Franco-Spanish conflict to a close. It was also acknowledged, in its way, by Charles V’s own abdications—in 1555 as Holy Roman emperor to his brother Ferdinand I (emperor, 1555–1564), and in 1556 as king of Spain in favor of his son Philip II (1556–1598). If the Austrian and Spanish branches remained closely related after this time, it now was the case (as the historian Mamatey puts it) that “henceforth, like the doubleheaded black eagle in the imperial coat of arms, the Habsburgs had two heads at Vienna and at Madrid, looking east and west.”"

"I have a glove into which I can put your whole city of Paris."

"You know that my ancestors were the most Christian emperors of the great nation of Germany, the Catholic kings of Spain, the archdukes of Austria, and the dukes of Burgundy, who all were, until death, faithful sons of the Roman Church.… I am therefore resolved to maintain everything which these my forebears have established to the present…and to settle this matter I will use all my dominions and possessions, my friends, my body, my blood, my life, and my soul. It would be a disgrace for you and me, the illustrious and renowned nation of Germany, privileged and pre-eminent as protector and defender of the Catholic faith, if heresy, or even just the suspicion of heresy, and the degradation of the Christian religion were to return to the hearts of men in our time to our perpetual dishonour."

"“We are more inclined to marry [your] sister the infanta, Isabella, than anyone else because there is no daughter of a king as ready as her.”"

"My life has been one long journey."

"(in regard to a counter attack against the Turks) “…because that is what I have wanted to do since I was a child and also to fulfill the responsibilities of my imperial title as chief protector and defender of our Christian religion. Therefore, despite the vast costs and distractions that I face at present on account of the war against the French, I have resolved to assemble a fleet as soon as I can to relieve Rhodes… ready to spare nothing to preserve, defend and deliver Rhodes from these tyrannical infidel enemies, devoting all our kingdom and dominions and our person if necessary.”"

"“Ever since our emancipation and entry into the lordship and governance of our Netherlands provinces, we have constantly tried and strongly desired and wanted to create good order and sound policies in all our affairs and end the disorder that has existed in the past because of the wars and divisions that prevailed, as well as for other reasons, and even in the organisation of our own household on which the wellbeing, honour and tranquility of ourselves and of our ministers, dominions and subjects largely depends.”"

"“Because we cannot by ourselves give sufficient thanks to God, our creator, for the grace, honour, health and success that He has granted us thus far, nor amass sufficient merit to secure the continuation of His grace in the future… to beseech God to continue to raise us in virtue and good customs, to govern our dominions and subjects in peace, union and concord, and to guide our affairs to His honour, our wellbeing, and the prosperity, utility and tranquility of our said dominions and subjects.”"

"“It pleased the emperor, my lord and grandfather, to emancipate me and free me from his ward and guardianship, placing in our hands the governance of our lands and lordships in the Netherlands… our affairs shall in future be transacted in our name… the titles that we intend to use from now on… by the grace of God, prince of Spain, of Sicily and Naples, of Jerusalem and others, archduke of Austria, duke of Burgundy, Lorraine, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg and Gelderland… count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Artois, Burgundy and Hainaut, landgrave of Alsace, prince of Swabia, margrave of Burgau, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur and Zutphen, lord of Frisia, Sclavonia, Pordenone, Salins and Mechelen.”"

"Autant de langues que l'homme sçait parler, autant de fois est-il homme."

"The Nuncio Baldesari Castilione: “[His majesty] should make up his mind and fast, because delay is very dangerous.”"

"Emperor Charles: “[Our policy] has always been to deal first with matters which are easiest to resolve and leave the most difficult ones until last.”"

"Fortune hath somewhat the nature of a woman; if she be too much wooed, she is the farther off."

"“Without the prior pacification of Italy, it could happen that as soon as I leave to succor you, Venice, Florence, Ferrara and Francesco Sforza will ally together, pull all their resources and invite the French to support them… Since I will need to take with me to Germany the army besieging Florence, we need a swift decision by His Holiness in this matter.”"

"“Since our Lord, who gave Fernando to us, wished to have him back, we must bend to His will and thank Him and beg Him to protect what is left. With great affection, my lady, I beg you to do this and to forget and leave behind all pain and grief.”"

"“These heretics have been so obstinate that no policy has worked or sufficed to get them to recognise their errors… I can see that if there were a way of forcing them we could justly move against them, but that is not the case now, nor do I currently have the means, because I am tired, alone and without help and there are so many of them that great force would be needed to overcome them. The true remedy is to convene a general council.”"