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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
political history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs
of mediaeval Italy. To make the