Holy Roman Empire

American  

noun

1. a Germanic empire located chiefly in central Europe that began with the coronation of Charlemagne as Roman emperor in a.d. 800 (or, according to some historians, with the coronation of Otto the Great, king of Germany, in a.d. 962) and ended with the renunciation of the Roman imperial title by Francis II in 1806, and was regarded theoretically as the continuation of the Western Empire and as the temporal form of a universal dominion whose spiritual head was the pope.

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Holy Roman Empire British  

noun

1. the complex of European territories under the rule of the Frankish or German king who bore the title of Roman emperor, beginning with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 _ad . The last emperor, Francis II, relinquished his crown in 1806

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Holy Roman Empire Cultural  

1. A major political institution in Europe that lasted from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries. It was loosely organized and modeled somewhat on the ancient Roman Empire. It included great amounts of territory in the central and western parts of Europe. Charlemagne was its first emperor. In later years, the emperors were Germans and Austrians. The empire declined greatly in power after the sixteenth century.

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The eighteenth-century French author Voltaire once wrote that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.”

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• Roman Empire vs. Holy Roman Empire

Example Sentences

Florence, wracked by dissent and besieged by the Holy Roman Empire, remained in ferment until the Medicis consolidated power in 1530 into what became the Duchy of Florence.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 27, 2026

Habsburg universalism rested on the Catholic Church, the symbolic order of the Holy Roman Empire and the use of Latin as the “neutral language of administration.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 26, 2025

The Holy Roman Empire had seven electors: Three were members of the Catholic Church and four were significant members of the nobility.

From Salon • Oct. 15, 2024

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of territories that existed in central Europe from 962 to 1806.

From Salon • Oct. 15, 2024

His code name for the invasion was “Operation Barbarossa,” after the great twelfth-century tactician and emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who unified many European kingdoms under German rule as leader of the Holy Roman Empire.

From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein