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Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.




     THE
     HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

     BY
     JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L.

     _FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
     and
     PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_


     THIRD EDITION REVISED


     London
     MACMILLAN AND CO.
     1871




     OXFORD:
     By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Pickard Hall,
     PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.




PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.


The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history
of the countries included in the Romano-Germanic Empire--Italy during
the middle ages, Germany from the ninth century to the nineteenth--as
to describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the
wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and traditions which have
almost wholly passed away from the world. Such a description, however,
would not be intelligible without some account of the great events
which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial power; and it has
therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a
narrative than of a dissertation; and to combine with an exposition of
what may be called the theory of the Empire an outline of the