Otto the Great
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In AD 936, Otto the Great, son of a Saxon duke, came to power, having been elected by participants who raised their right hand and shouted, “Sieg und Heil!”—victory and salvation—eerily similar to the Nazis of the twentieth century. Otto then went about expanding his kingdom.
The continent drifted into another period of decline. Pope John XII in 961 asked Otto to restore order and defend the church. Otto soon swept into Italy and defeated all enemies. The grateful pontiff crowned him “Holy Roman Emperor.” Once again, church and state moved together. Otto’s kingdom was the beginning of what would be called “The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.” This was the First Reich (or empire).
The Holy Roman Empire and Germany were now forever linked, with German leaders assuming the mantle of kingship with the imperial crown—the symbol of European unity—on their heads. Germany became Europe’s power center.
However, a struggle for power between church and state developed throughout the Middle Ages. Again Europe declined. In the 1100s and 1200s, Europeans launched unsuccessful Crusades to take Jerusalem from the Muslims.
In AD 1453, disaster struck. Constantinople, capital of the eastern Roman Empire (known as the Byzantine Empire), fell to the Muslim Turks.
A shaky Europe desperately looked for a strong leader to lead it back to its proper place.
Charles V
In the 1500s, an influential Germanic family, the Habsburgs, came to prominence, having amassed huge swaths of land across Europe. Pope Clement crowned Charles V Holy Roman Emperor in 1530, making him “defender of the faith.”
The Habsburgs, through a series of marriages, were so connected with Spanish, Dutch and other European royalty that Charles’ empire stretched from Europe to South America. Through Charles’ efforts, the Habsburgs controlled a vast global empire—the first of modern times. He proudly declared, “In my realm the sun never sets.”
The emperor’s goal was all Europe under one religion. This idea endured, with the march toward a united Europe and religious ecumenism moving forward. With the ascent of the Habsburg Empire, many dreamed of a world-ruling “Christian” European empire. But with Charles’ death, decline once more set in.
The 1600s and 1700s would see the church struggle against threats to its power. These included the rise of Protestantism, the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, conflict between France and Germany, and the emergence of the Ottoman Turks and Protestant Britain as formidable powers.
So the church again awaited a leader to champion its cause.
Napoleon
A dashing superstar suddenly emerged in the late 1700s. Napoleon Bonaparte, a young, brash but brilliant military leader from the French island of Corsica, burst onto the scene. By age 26, he was already commanding the French army in Italy, and by 30 he had seized power in France.
Ambitious, this student of Roman history dreamed of a resurrected Roman Empire, with himself as emperor. He declared himself such in 1804 after snatching the imperial crown from the pope’s hand to crown himself! This goal accomplished, he set about unifying Europe.
Napoleon saw many early successes—most notably, the defeat of Prussia in 1806. However, one disastrous campaign after another eventually led to his defeat and downfall, first in Russia and then by the British at Waterloo. With his defeat in 1814, 1,260 years of the Holy Roman Empire came to an end.
The Vatican had lost another champion.
Garibaldi and Bismarck to Mussolini and Hitler
A period of rebuilding in Europe followed. By 1870, Giuseppe Garibaldi had reunited Italy. Otto von Bismarck reunited Germany the following year—calling it the Second Reich. Bismarck then forged an alliance with Italy, rekindling ties to the days of Charlemagne.
In the twentieth century, Benito Mussolini sought to revive the Holy Roman Empire. He reconciled a longstanding rift between church and state, and even entered into a Concordat—a secretly signed agreement—with the Vatican. But his reign was short-lived. It ended in abysmal failure with his public hanging in 1945.
Adolf Hitler’s visions of glory for now a Third Reich also failed.
But the dream of European unity lived on. After World War II, the European Economic Community was established to improve trade between European nations. This later became the European Union, or EU. With the EU’s 2009 ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, replacing the constitution that was struck down in 2005, a giant step was taken to establish the EU as an empowered and unified government, replacing a body of individual, sometimes squabbling, member-states. The treaty also created a stronger president. This union has expressly stated that the goal for Europe is to create a “world power.”
But Europe has many problems to overcome. Strong leadership is required.