![Denarius of the Roman usurper Carausius, depicting on the reverse (at right) Romulus and Remus surrounded by the legend RENOVAT[io] ROMANO[rum], "renewal of the Romans". Silver denarius of Carausius RIC 571 (FindID 854967).jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Silver_denarius_of_Carausius_RIC_571_%28FindID_854967%29.jpg/220px-Silver_denarius_of_Carausius_RIC_571_%28FindID_854967%29.jpg)
Renovatio imperii Romanorum ("renewal of the empire of the Romans") was a formula declaring an intention to restore or revive the Roman Empire. [1] [2] The formula (and variations) was used by several emperors of the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties, but the idea was common during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The phrases renovatio Romanorum ("renewal of the Romans") and renovatio urbis Romae ("renewal of the city of Rome") had been used already during Antiquity. [3] The word renovatio ("renewal") and its relatives, restitutio ("restitution") and reparatio ("restoration"), appeared on some Roman coins from the reign of Hadrian onward, usually signifying the restoration of peace after a rebellion. [4] The formula seems favoured especially by usurpers, such as Carausius, Magnentius and Decentius. [5]
Even Theoderic the Great, the king of the Ostrogoths in Italy (r. 493–526), made use of the language of Roman renewal. The records of his reign in the writings of Cassiodorus, Ennodius and the Anonymus Valesianus are replete with reference to renewing, repairing and rejuvenating. [6]
During the reign of Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565), renewal was associated with the restoration of the empire's frontiers by reconquest. This policy appealed to the Roman aristocracy and to such writers as Procopius and John Lydus, who wrote in his De magistratibus: "To Rome Justinian restored what was Rome's". [7] This was not enough for the poet Corippus, who considered the end of Justinian's reign as a period of reckless spending and neglect. His poem In Laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris has as its theme the renewal of the empire by Justin II. [8]
The form renovatio Romanorum imperii was used first in a diploma issued by Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor in 800. [3] He was probably inspired, at least partly, by Roman coins. [5] Evidence for the "renewal" of the city of Rome by Charlemagne comes largely from the Liber pontificalis . There were major building and renovation programmes by Popes Hadrian I and Leo III, and there is also evidence for population growth and an increase of Christian pilgrimage. [9] Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious, omitted the formula in favour of a new one: renovatio regni Francorum ("renewal of the kingdom of the Franks"). [10] When Louis's younger son, Charles the Bald, became emperor in 875 he adopted the combined formula renovatio imperii Romani et Francorum for his seal. [11]
The formula renovatio imperii Romanorum reappears on a lead seal of the Emperor Otto III in August 998. This seal was replaced in January 1001 by one bearing the legend aurea Roma ("golden Rome"). Otto III also built a palace in Rome, which none of his predecessors had done. [12] Otto III's use of the formula has been assigned great weight in light of his enigmatic career and politics. The historian Percy Ernst Schramm argued that the formula represented a coherent programme for the restoration of the Roman Empire on a secular and universal basis. [3] Knut Görich has written a riposte to Schramm's thesis, arguing instead that Otto III and Pope Gregory V were attempting a renewal of the papacy only. [12]
The idea of the renewal of Rome the city (renovatio Romae), of the empire (renovatio imperii) and of Roman virtue (renovatio morum) were related in early Italian humanist thinking. [13] The Roman popular leader Cola di Rienzo believed that the renewal of the empire would be brought about by popular sovereignty and not the Holy Roman Emperors. Most humanists, like Dante and Petrarch, [14] believed that the renewal of imperial authority in Italy would precede the renewal of the city and encouraged kings Henry VII and Charles IV to make the journey to Rome for imperial coronation. [15] [16]
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of the Carolingian Empire from 800, holding all these titles until his death in 814. Charlemagne succeeded in uniting the majority of Western Central Europe, and was the first recognized emperor to rule in the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier. Charlemagne's rule saw a program of political and social changes that had a lasting impact on Europe in the Middle Ages.
Charles IV, also known as Charles of Luxembourg, born Wenceslaus, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1355 until his death in 1378. He was elected King of Germany in 1346 and became King of Bohemia that same year. He was a member of the House of Luxembourg from his father's side and the Bohemian House of Přemyslid from his mother's side; he emphasized the latter due to his lifelong affinity for the Bohemian side of his inheritance, and also because his direct ancestors in the Přemyslid line included two saints.
Otto III was Holy Roman Emperor from 996 until his death in 1002. A member of the Ottonian dynasty, Otto III was the only son of the Emperor Otto II and his wife Theophanu.
Charles the Bald, also known as Charles II, was a 9th-century king of West Francia (843–877), King of Italy (875–877) and emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a series of civil wars during the reign of his father, Louis the Pious, Charles succeeded, by the Treaty of Verdun (843), in acquiring the western third of the empire. He was a grandson of Charlemagne and the youngest son of Louis the Pious by his second wife, Judith.
The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period, was the ruler and head of state of the Holy Roman Empire. The title was held in conjunction with the title of king of Italy from the 8th to the 16th century, and, almost without interruption, with the title of king of Germany throughout the 12th to 18th centuries.
Translatio imperii is a historiographical concept that was prominent in the Middle Ages in the thinking and writing of elite groups of the population in Europe, but was the reception of a concept from antiquity. In this concept the proces of decline and fall of an empire theoretically is being replaced by a natural succession from one empire to another. Translatio implies that an empire metahistorically can be transferred from hand to hand and place to place, from Troy to Romans and Greeks to Franks and further on to Spain, and has therefore survived.
King of the Romans was the title used by the king of East Francia following his election by the princes from the reign of Henry II (1002–1024) onward.
The Congress of Gniezno was an amicable meeting between the Polish Duke Bolesław I the Brave and Emperor Otto III, which took place at Gniezno in Poland on 11 March 1000. Scholars disagree over the details of the decisions made at the convention, especially whether the ruler of Poland was pledged the king's crown or not.
King of Italy was the title given to the ruler of the Kingdom of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The first to take the title was Odoacer, a barbarian warlord, in the late 5th century, followed by the Ostrogothic kings up to the mid-6th century. With the Frankish conquest of Italy in the 8th century, the Carolingians assumed the title, which was maintained by subsequent Holy Roman Emperors throughout the Middle Ages. The last Emperor to claim the title was Charles V in the 16th century. During this period, the holders of the title were crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
Flavio Biondo was an Italian Renaissance humanist historian. He was one of the first historians to use a three-period division of history and is known as one of the first archaeologists. Born in the capital city of Forlì, in the Romagna region, Flavio was well schooled from an early age, studying under Ballistario of Cremona. During a brief stay in Milan, he discovered and transcribed the unique manuscript of Cicero's dialogue Brutus. He moved to Rome in 1433 where he began work on his writing career; he was appointed secretary to the Cancelleria under Eugene IV in 1444 and accompanied Eugene in his exile in Ferrara and Florence. After his patron's death, Flavio was employed by his papal successors, Nicholas V, Callixtus III and the humanist Pius II.
Lambert was the King of Italy from 891, Holy Roman Emperor, co-ruling with his father from 892, and Duke of Spoleto and Camerino from his father's death in 894. He was the son of Guy III of Spoleto and Ageltrude, born in San Rufino. He was the last ruler to issue a capitulary in the Carolingian tradition.
The Kingdom of Germany or German Kingdom was the mostly Germanic-speaking East Frankish kingdom, which was formed by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, especially after the kingship passed from Frankish kings to the Saxon Ottonian dynasty in 919. The king was elected, initially by the rulers of the stem duchies, who generally chose one of their own. After 962, when Otto I was crowned emperor, East Francia formed the bulk of the Holy Roman Empire, which also included the Kingdom of Italy and, after 1032, the Kingdom of Burgundy.
The Kingdom of Italy, also called Imperial Italy, was one of the constituent kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, and Burgundy. It originally comprised large parts of northern and central Italy. Its original capital was Pavia until the 11th century.
Augustus was the main title of the Roman emperors during Antiquity. It was given as both name and title to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus in 27 BC, marking his accession as Rome's first emperor. On his death, it became an official title of his successor, and was so used by all emperors thereafter. The feminine form Augusta was used for Roman empresses and other female members of the imperial family. The masculine and feminine forms originated in the time of the Roman Republic, in connection with things considered divine or sacred in traditional Roman religion. Their use as titles for major and minor Roman deities of the Empire associated the imperial system and family with traditional Roman virtues and the divine will and may be considered a feature of the Roman imperial cult.
A hoop crown, arched crown, or closed crown, is a crown consisting of a "band around the temples and one or two bands over the head". First used by the Carolingian dynasty, hoop crowns became increasingly popular among royal dynasties in the Late Middle Ages, and the dominant type of crown in the Modern Era.
Henry II, also known as Saint Henry the Exuberant, Obl. S. B., was Holy Roman Emperor from 1014. He died without an heir in 1024, and was the last ruler of the Ottonian line. As Duke of Bavaria, appointed in 995, Henry became King of the Romans following the sudden death of his second cousin, Emperor Otto III in 1002, was made King of Italy in 1004, and crowned emperor by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014.
The motto Renovatio regni Francorum was used by several monarchs of the Carolingian, Widonid and Ottonian dynasties in the 9th through 11th centuries. It served to emphasise the importance of the ethnic Franks and the Frankish tradition in the multinational empires of the Carolingians and Ottonians.
The problem of two emperors or two-emperor problem is the historiographical term for the historical contradiction between the idea of the universal empire, that there was only ever one true emperor at any one given time, and the truth that there were often multiple individuals who claimed the position simultaneously. The term is primarily used in regards to medieval European history and often refers to in particular the long-lasting dispute between the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople and the Holy Roman emperors in modern-day Germany and Austria as to which monarch represented the legitimate Roman emperor.
Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, also called miribilia mundi, despite his short life, is a historical figure who attracts considerable scholarly attention as well as inspires numerous artistic and popular depictions.