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Roman Empire: Holy Roman Empire
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The Holy Roman Empire was a successor state to the empire founded in 800 by Charlemagne (see ... Carolingians ), who revived the title of Roman emperor in the West. According to Carolingian theory, the Roman Empire had merely been suspended, not ended, by the abdication of the last Roman emperor in 476. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Roman emperor, probably perceived more as a personal title than as a reference to a particular territorial rule. From the death of Arnulf (899), the last Carolingian to hold the imperial title, until Otto's coronation in Rome by Pope John XII, various rulers bore the imperial title but exercised no authority; among them were Louis III, king of Provence, and Berengar I, king of Italy.
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Until the 13th century, the Holy Roman Empire was powerful. Later, all the duchies and counties inside the Empire started to get more power. At the end, the Emperors didn't have a lot of real power any more, and the country existed only in name.
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The Holy Roman Empire always walked a fine line with total disintegration. A collection of almost, but not-quite autonomous city-states, baronies, princedoms, bishoprics and miscellaneous other political units, which ranged in size from literally a few city blocks to a few thousand square miles (or square kilometers, if that's your thing), all of differing degrees of power, allegiance to each other, and religious, ethnic and ideological orientations, united by a vague allegiance to an elected (though not democratically in any modern sense) Emperor, whose powers would be overstated by calling them purely symbolic.
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Holy Roman Empire