The French writer and historian Voltaire famously quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire. Names aside, a new book shows that this wide-ranging confederation ...

Jake is a writer from the United Kingdom. With a focus on first-person shooters, RPGs, and achievement hunting, writing about the gaming industry comes naturally and is a real point of pride. Outside ...

The Kingdom of East Francia was established in 843 following the Treaty of Verdun as a division of the Frankish Empire. It expanded significantly over 200 years through Crusades, conquests, and ...

The Bowl Championship Series climaxes Monday, with a game in New Orleans between Louisiana State and Alabama for the national bragging rights to Dixie. As there is a joke about the Holy Roman Empire — ...

“The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” Voltaire’s famous verdict is remembered today because it's equal amounts surprising and merciless, all the while being an insightful ...

Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 941 pp., $39.95. IT SAYS something about the power of historical memory that, 132 ...

The Holy Roman Empire looked powerful on paper, but in reality it functioned more like a loose confederation than a centralized state. Its emperors were elected rather than fully hereditary, its ...

SUMMITS were more fun in those days. When Ferdinand III, the Habsburg monarch of the Holy Roman Empire, arrived in Regensburg, the Brussels of its time, in late 1652, he brought 60 musicians and three ...

In his new book The Silver Empire: how Germany created its first common currency, which forms the basis of this event, Oliver Volckart analyses why the vast majority of the approximate 300 members of ...

.blur-text{ color: transparent; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95) 0px 0px 10px; }.buffon { display: inline-block; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle; padding ...

The eastern Roman empire was founded by Constantine the Great on May 11, A.D. 330. The empire fell on May 29, 1453, when the army of the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II breached the walls of Constantinople.