Sacrum imperium: Lombard Influence and the ‘Sacralization of the State’ in the Mid-twelfth Century Holy Roman Empire (1125–1167)

Abstract

Abstract Sacrum imperium (literally: holy empire) is a Latin phrase that entered the chancery of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190) in 1157. Sacrum imperium developed into the name of the Empire only much later, but scholars interpreted it as a programmatic phrase that Frederick and his chancellor, Rainald of Dassel, introduced as a part of their plan to ‘resacralize the state’ after its supposed desacralization by Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) and the Empire’s defeat in the Investiture Controversy (1076–1122). In this article I show that sacrum imperium was introduced not by Frederick and Rainald but by a group of Italian courtiers who had developed a new political vocabulary based on that of Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis and the contemporary Byzantine court language. I also demonstrate on the basis of Italian, Byzantine and papal sources that a desacralization of the state in 1122 never happened.