X-Nico

25 unusual facts about Holy Roman Empire


Aubrey Spencer

He was the son of William Spencer (1769–1834), younger son of Lord Charles Spencer, and a great-grandson of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough; his German mother Susan being a Countess of the Holy Roman Empire.

Bartimaeus Sequence

The novels are set in London in an alternate history, though many countries, cities, events, and people are from actual history (such as Prague, Solomon, the Holy Roman Empire, William Ewart Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, the American Revolution, etc.).

Benjamin Thompson House-Count Rumford Birthplace

The Benjamin Thompson House, also known as the Count Rumford Birthplace, located at 90 Elm Street, in the North Woburn area of Woburn, Massachusetts, is the birthplace of scientist and inventor Benjamin Thompson (1753–1814), who became Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire as well as Sir Benjamin Thompson of the United Kingdom.

Bishopric of Dorpat

In 1224, Estonian bishop Hermann took possession of parts of what is today southeastern Estonia and chose Dorpat as his new seat, 6 November 1225 he was enfeoffed with his principality by Heinrich, King of the Romans, and on 1 December created as a March of the Holy Roman Empire.

Bishopric of Verdun

The Bishopric of Verdun was also a state of the Holy Roman Empire; it was located at the western edge of the Empire and was bordered by France, the Duchy of Luxembourg, and the Duchy of Bar.

Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty

During this period the Byzantine princess Theophanu, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, served as regent of the Holy Roman Empire, paving the way for the westward spread of Byzantine culture.

Emmanuel de Croÿ-Solre

The only son of Philippe-Alexandre-Emmanuel de Croy, he was born a prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Due to his administrative tasks, the head of the chapel of the imperial palace during the Holy Roman Empire was called Chancellor.

The office of Chancellor has a long history, stemming back to the Holy Roman Empire.

Fernando Ulrich

The Ulrich family, whose members used to traditionally deal with banking and architecture, was originally German from Hamburg, Holy Roman Empire, but established themselves in Portugal during the mid-18th century.

Flags of the Holy Roman Empire

When the Holy Roman Empire took part in the Crusades, a war flag was flown alongside the black-gold imperial banner.

Hochstift

In the Holy Roman Empire the German term Hochstift (plural: Hochstifte or, in some regions, Hochstifter) was often used to denote the territory of secular authority held by bishops ruling a prince-bishopric as their temporalities.

Imperial Coach

The Imperial Coach (in German: Imperialwagen) was the golden carriage of the Imperial and Imperial Austrian court in Vienna.

Lyndal Roper

As she points out any historical explanation should, in part, explain "why the witch hunts were so heavily concentrated in the German speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire, why so many of the victims were women" (around 80%) with - in Germany "a shocking preponderance of old women", which given the life expectancy of the time, meant over forty.

Marie Armande de La Trémoille

She was engaged to a distant cousin Emmanuel Théodose de La Tour d'Auvergne, (1668–1730), son and heir of Godefroy Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, duke of Bouillon, (1641–1721), a Holy Roman Empire title going back as far as 1456, and a territory adscribed to the Holy Roman Empire adjoining the actual duchy of Luxembourg and Belgium but conquered and annexed to revolutionary France, only after 1795 .

Memoirs of the Twentieth Century

The eighteenth century had been one of war between Spain, France and the Holy Roman Empire but weakened by conflict and mismanagement all three powers became vassals to the Pope by the mid-nineteenth century.

Missus dominicus

The missi were the last attempt to preserve centralised control in the Holy Roman Empire.

Order of the Starry Cross

The Order of the Starry Cross (or Order of the Star Cross/Star Cross Order; German: Sternkreuz-Orden) was founded by Eleanora Gonzaga of Mantua, dowager empress of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1668.

Piero Valeriano Bolzani

He returned to Belluno later, but fled to Rome in 1509 to escape the occupation of the city by the Holy Roman Empire during the War of the League of Cambrai.

Prince Ludwig the Indestructible

He appears in "Chains", the final episode of Blackadder II, as a German master of disguise who kidnaps Lord Blackadder and Lord Melchett, in 1566 and imprisons them in his dungeon under the watch of German guards and a Spanish inquisitorial co-conspirator.

Prince-Bishopric of Freising

The Prince-Bishopric of Freising (German: Hochstift Freising) was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1294 until its secularisation in the early years of the 19th century.

Reichsadler

The Reichsadler can be traced back to the banner of the Holy Roman Empire, when the eagle was the insignia of the Imperial power as distinguished from the Imperial states.

Sayn-Wittgenstein-Vallendar

Sayn-Wittgenstein-Vallendar was a County of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany.

War of the First Coalition

With the Treaty of Campo Formio, the Holy Roman Empire ceded the Austrian Netherlands to France and Northern Italy was turned into several French "Sister Republics".

William Berczy

Berczy was born in Swabia, Electorate of Bavaria (part of the Holy Roman Empire and now in Germany) as a son of the Wirklicher Hofrat (Albrecht Theodor Moll) and Johanna Josepha Walpurga Moll (née Hefele).


Adam Lux

However, his parents managed to finance his studies at the University of Mainz (in the Archbishopric of Mainz of the Holy Roman Empire, nowadays in Rhineland-Palatinate), where he became a Dr. phil. with his Latin dissertation on the notion of enthusiasm.

Advocatus

In Germany, the title of Vogt (advocatus or "advocate") was given not only to the advocati of churches and abbeys but also, from early in the Middle Ages, to officials appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor to administer lands directly under his dominion, as opposed to the comital domains, owned by counts who had become hereditary princes of the Empire.

Albrecht Konrad Finck von Finckenstein

He was Lord Chamberlain for two crown princes, became in 1710 Imperial Count (Reichsgraf) of the Holy Roman Empire and Count (Graf) in Prussia after the Battle of Malplaquet in which he successfully led the Prussian forces under Prince Eugene.

Anthony I, Count of Oldenburg

Anthony I, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst (1505 – 22 January 1573 in Oldenburg) was a member of the House of Oldenburg and was the Imperial Count of the Counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst within the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.

Archduchess Marie Caroline of Austria

Archduchess Marie Caroline Ferdinanda of Austria, Crown Princess of Saxony (8 April 1801, Vienna, Austria – 22 May 1832, Pillnitz, Germany).

Aulic Council

Originating during the later Middle Ages as a paid Council of the Emperor, it was organized in its later form by Maximilian I in 1497, as a rival to the Imperial Chamber Court, which the Imperial Diet had forced upon him.

Battle of Göllheim

When the Diet met near Frankfurt the following year, they were discouraged to appoint Albert, thus they elected a cousin of one of the Electors, Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg.

Bundesstraße 1

A trade and military road was already mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography about 150 AD, parts of it formed the medieval Westphalian Hellweg trade route, vital for the transport of salt and crops, and the course of the Via Regia, the Ottonian "royal road" trough the Holy Roman Empire from Aachen to Magdeburg.

Compulsory education

During the Reformation in 1524, Martin Luther advocated compulsory schooling so that all parishioners would be able to read the Bible themselves, and Palatinate-Zweibrücken passed accordant legislation in 1592, followed by Strasbourg—then a free city of the Holy Roman Empire— in 1598.

County of Beilstein

The Lordship of Winneburg and Beilstein was a state of the Holy Roman Empire situated on the Moselle River around Winneburg Castle near Cochem.

Endingen am Kaiserstuhl

For a short time in the 15th century, Endingen held the status of an Imperial City (Reichsstadt) of the Holy Roman Empire.

Ernest II, Duke of Swabia

At the Diet of Easter 1030 Ernest was offered these powers, if he would crack down on the enemies of Conrad.

Ernesto Montecuccoli

Count Ernesto Montecuccoli (died 1633) was a General in the service of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War, a member of the prominent Italian Montecuccoli Family.

Europa regina

In 1537, when the Europa regina was introduced, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Habsburg had united the lands of the Habsburg's in his hands, including his country of origin, Spain.

Ferdinande Henriette, Countess of Stolberg-Gedern

Ferdinande Henriette, Countess of Stolberg-Gedern, born 2 October 1699 at Gedern, Oberhessen, Hesse-Darmstadt, then in the Holy Roman Empire, was a daughter of Louis Christian, Count of Stolberg-Gedern, and Princess Christine of Mecklenburg-Güstrow.

Fürth, Hesse

In the course of the monastery’s being raised to Imperial Abbey, answerable only to the Pope, and no longer within the grasp of the bishoprics of Mainz and Worms, the Emperor donated to the monastery the domain of Heppenheim in 773, which comprised the greater part of today’s Bergstraße district and great parts of the Odenwaldkreis.

Hauke-Bosak

First known ancestor of the Haukes was Johann Gaspar Hauck, a registrar at the Imperial Chamber Court of the Holy Roman Empire in Wetzlar, who died in 1722 and was buried in his home town.

Investiture Controversy

By undercutting the Imperial power established by the Salian emperors, the controversy led to nearly 50 years of civil war in Germany, and the triumph of the great dukes and abbots, until Imperial power was reestablished under the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

Jacopino della Scala

However, his friendship network and political skills granted him the title of Imperial vicar at Ostiglia, and podestà of Cerea.

John Casimir, Count Palatine of Lautern

Philip Sidney, an ambassador of Queen Elizabeth I of England, convinced John Casimir to begin the formation of a league of the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire.

John II, Duke of Opava-Ratibor

In 1397, John II and other noble councillors accused Wenceslaus IV of neglecting his duties as King of the Romans and asked him to summon an Imperial Diet.

Kings of Uí Maine

The descendants of the last Ó Cellaigh (O'Kelly) Uí Maine are currently known as the O'Kelly of Gallagh and Tycooly (see Irish nobility and Chief of the Name), and are Counts of the Holy Roman Empire.

Kunowice

It was devastated by the troops of Duke Jan II the Mad of Żagań on his 1477 expedition against the Brandenburg elector Albert Achilles of Hohenzollern and again by Imperial as well as Swedish forces during the Thirty Years' War.

Laupen Castle

Laupen Castle was built in the 10th-13th centuries as part of a line of imperial castles along the Sense and Saane rivers, which meet at Laupen.

Laying on of hands

The rite of the king's touch began in France with Robert II the Pious, but legend later attributed the practice to Clovis as Merovingian founder of the Holy Roman kingdom, and Edward the Confessor in England.

Limbourg

In the Middle Ages, the ruling family came to have the rank of duke and so the town was the seat of the Duchy of Limburg, which was a part of the Lower Lorraine region of the Holy Roman Empire.

Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld

Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld was a state of the Holy Roman Empire based around Birkenfeld in modern Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Palazzo del Te

In July 1630, during the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–31), Mantua and the palace were sacked over three days by an Imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries.

Sadová

In 1636 Sadová was part of the Smiřice lordship acquired by the Imperial General Lieutenant Matthias Gallas, who thereby reaped the awards for his conspiration against Generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein.

Soulcalibur Legends

Later, Siegfried is tasked by the Masked Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to find the remaining pieces of Soul Edge in order to use it to win the war against Barbaros of the Ottoman Empire.

Stand of the Swiss Guard

The Habsburg army, composed of Imperial and Spanish troops, was placed under the command of the Constable of France, the Duc de Bourbon, fallen from grace in France and now serving the enemy.

Thomas of Celano

In 1221, Thomas was sent to Germany with Caesarius of Speyer to promote the new order there, and in 1223 was named "sole guardian" (custos unicus) of the order's Rhineland province, which included convents at Cologne, Mainz, Worms, and Speyer.

Ulman Stromer

Ulman Stromer (6 January 1329 – 3 April 1407) was a German long-distance trader, factory owner and councillor of Nuremberg, then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire.

Urbanus Rhegius

Urbanus Henricus Rhegius or Urban Rieger (May 1489, Langenargen – 23 May 1541, Celle) was a Protestant Reformer who was active both in Northern and Southern Germany in order to promote Lutheran unity in the Holy Roman Empire.

Vivarais

In feudal times part of the Holy Roman Empire with its bishop as a count, it became in 1309 one of the Capetian territories as included in Languedoc province of the French realm, and continued to be a French province until 1789.

Vivelin of Strasbourg

(d. after 1347) was an Alsatian Jewish financier in the 14th century, presumably one of the richest persons within the Holy Roman Empire in that time.

Wolf of Ansbach

The Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality of Ansbach in 1685, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire.