Nostalgia for the vanished Roman Empire in the West lasted for centuries after Romulus Augustulus, the final emperor, was deposed in 476. It eventually created one of history’s oddest institutions. The Holy Roman Empire, as Voltaire sardonically remarked, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Ironically, in view of future developments, the papacy took the lead in the attempt to create an overall secular authority in Europe when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, King of the Franks, Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans) in Rome in the year 800.
After Charlemagne’s death in 814 his empire split apart and the last Carolingian so-called emperors were confined to northern and central Italy. The last of them, Berengar of Friuli, was murdered in 924. The title became more of a reality after it passed to the kings of the East Franks in what became Germany.
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