How did the Holy Roman Empire (sacrum imperium) become Holy? In this innovative book, Vedran Sulovsky explores the reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190), offering a new analysis of the key documents, artworks, and contemporary scholarship used to celebrate and commemorate the imperial regime, especially in the imperial coronation site and Charlemagne’s mausoleum, the Marienkirche in Aachen. By dismantling the Kulturkampf-inspired view of the history of the Holy Roman Empire – which was supposedly desacralised in the Investiture Controversy, and then resacralised by Barbarossa and the Reichskanzler Rainald of Dassel – Sulovsky, using new evidence, reveals the personal relations between various courtiers which led to the rise of the new, holy name of the Empire. Annals, chronicles, charters, forgeries, letters, liturgical texts and objects, relics, insignia, seals, architecture and rituals have all been exploited by Sulovsky to piece together a mosaic that shows the true roots of sacrum imperium.

Vedran Sulovsky is the first Saunders Research Fellow in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, and the recipient of the Göppinger Stauferpreis for 2023. This is his first book.

Table des matières :

Introduction

1. Sacrum imperium: Lombard Influence and the Sacralisation of the State in the mid-Twelfth Century (1125–1167)
2. Sacrum imperium II: The Barometer of Lombard Influence at Court (1167–1190)
3. The Cult of Charlemagne from His Death to the Accession of Frederick Barbarossa (814–1152)
4. The Canonisation of Charlemagne in 1165
5. The Barbarossaleuchter: Imperial Monument and Pious Donation
6. The Reliquary Shrine of Saint Charlemagne: The High Point of the Sacrum imperium?
   Conclusion.

Informations pratiques :

Vedran Sulovsky, Making the Holy Roman Empire Holy. Frederick Barbarossa, Saint Charlemagne and the sacrum imperium, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press ; 1 vol., 398 p. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series). ISBN : 978-1-00920-348-7. Prix : GBP 100,00.

Source : Cambridge University Press