Translatio imperii Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The term translatio imperii, Latin for "transfer of rule", refers to the passing of the crown of the emperor to the Holy Roman Empire when, in 800, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, and then in 962, Otto I the Great, king of the East Franks, was crowned emperor by the pope in Rome.
The mythical background was that there could ever be only one Empire, and there only ever was one. It was considered to have started with the Babylonians, then passed to the Persians and finally to the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. The culmination of the translatio is with the Romans. The Church having given the imperium to Charlemagne from Byzantium where the seat of the Roman Empire was officially, it eventually landed in the Holy Roman Empire (and this explains the Roman component of the Empire's name). The German emperors thus thought of themselves as being in direct succession of those of the Roman empire.
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