Succession of the Roman Empire

The continuation, succession, and revival of the Roman Empire is an important theme in the history of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. It shows how people remembered the power and unity of the Roman Empire even long after it ended.

Several empires and states have claimed they were direct successors of the Roman Empire. In the East, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire claimed to continue the Byzantine Empire after 1453. In the West, the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century and the Holy Roman Empire from 800 to 1806 also made such claims.

These claims were often made by kings and rich elites. Some groups still use the name "Roman" today, such as the Italians of Rome, the Romansh people of Switzerland, and the Romanians, who call themselves români. The Greek people sometimes also refer to themselves as Romioi.

There have also been ideas to revive the Roman Empire, with some in Orthodox Russia calling their country the "Third Rome," after Rome in Italy and Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire.

Historiography and nomenclature

See also: Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire

In Western Europe, people began to see the year 476 AD — when the last ruler of the Western Roman Empire was removed — as a big change. This idea started in the 1400s and grew stronger over time. But the idea of empire didn’t really end; it lived on in many places, even in areas that had never been ruled by Rome before.

After the city of Constantinople fell in 1453, many thought the Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, had ended. But some leaders still claimed they were the true successors of Rome. For example, the leader who took Constantinople said he was the new Roman Emperor. However, most of Europe did not accept this claim. Over time, these ideas faded away.

Different groups called the Eastern Roman Empire many things. The people there always called themselves the Roman Empire. But in Western Europe, they were often called the “Greek Empire.” In Muslim areas, they were known as “Romans.” The name “Byzantine” was only used much later by historians.

The empires that came after, like the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires, also thought of themselves as the Roman Empire. Even though others called them by different names, their leaders saw themselves as continuing the Roman tradition.

Roman imperial legitimacy

In the early days of the Roman Empire, leaders got their power from old Roman Republic rules and from families like the Julio-Claudians. Later, emperors often became leaders because the army chose them, or because the ruler before them picked them through a special choice called adoption. The city of Rome was always important, but over time the capital moved to different places like Milan, Nicomedia, and Sirmium. Finally, Emperor Constantine the Great made a new capital called Constantinople in the city of Byzantium.

What made someone a true Roman emperor wasn’t just one thing. It could be about having power in a big area, ruling Rome or Constantinople, protecting fair laws and the Christian religion, or even family ties and traditions.

Conflicting claims

Main article: Problem of two emperors

Because there were many ways to claim to be the real Roman emperor, there were often big debates and fights about who should be in charge. These fights became less important later on as people started to share ideas more easily.

A letter from a leader named Louis II to another leader, Basil I, shows how people thought about this in the past. Louis argued that there could be more than one emperor at the same time if they got along well. He also said that being emperor wasn’t just for people from Constantinople and that his family had a long history of being emperors, going back to his great-grandfather, Charlemagne.

Empire and Christianity

Since the 300s, protecting and supporting Christianity has been a big part of what it meant to be a Roman emperor. Even though the empire and the Christian church didn’t always match up perfectly, this connection lasted a long time. For example, when the Eastern and Western churches split apart in 1054, it was partly because of old arguments about who should be in charge. Similar splits happened later.

Even today, Rome is important to the Catholic Church, and Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) is important to the Eastern Orthodox Church. The history of these empires also connects to Islam, as Istanbul was once the home of an important Muslim leader called a Caliph until 1924.

Continuation in the East

Roman/Byzantine Empire until 1204

Main article: Byzantine Empire

There is a clear link between the Roman and Byzantine Empires. The Byzantines always called themselves Romans, even after they began using Greek as their main language in the 7th century. Traditional Western European history marks 395 as the start of the Byzantine Empire, when Theodosius I was succeeded by Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West. Other dates, like 330 when the capital moved from Rome to Constantinople, or the reign of Heraclius, are also sometimes used.

The Byzantine Empire faced many challenges but kept its central government in Constantinople until 1204. This city was never taken during that time. Other groups in the area, like the Avars, Slavs, Sasanians, and Muslims, had different ways of ruling and did not try to act like Romans. This was partly because they could not capture Constantinople, unlike the Ottoman Sultans who later claimed the Imperial title.

Bulgarian Empire

Main article: Bulgarian Empire

Before 1204, the main challenge to Byzantine rule came in 913 when Simeon I the Great, ruler of Bulgaria, was crowned "Emperor and Autocrat of all Bulgarians and Romans" by the Patriarch of Constantinople. This led to a war from 914 to 927. Eventually, the Bulgarian monarch was recognized as "Emperor of the Bulgarians" by the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lakapenos in 924. This followed a custom also used with the Carolingian Empire, where the title "basileus" meant king or emperor but was not equal to the Roman Emperor as long as it did not claim authority over the "Romans". The Bulgarian title "tsar" was used by all Bulgarian rulers until the Ottoman conquest.

During the Second Bulgarian Empire, the capital Tarnovo was seen as a successor to Rome and Constantinople. Bulgarians called it "Tsarevgrad Tarnov", the Imperial city of Tarnovo, similar to the name they used for Constantinople, Tsarigrad.

Fourth Crusade and its aftermath

Main articles: Fourth Crusade and Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae

See also: Frankokratia

The Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 were major events that split the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. The crusading invaders divided the Empire among themselves through a formal treaty. The Latin Empire of Constantinople ruled mainly the city itself, including the Straits and nearby areas like Adrianople and Nicomedia, but not places like Salonica or Nicaea. Other parts of the former Empire were held by remnants of the old Greek Empire.

Several new states claimed to be the true successor of the old Empire. The Latin Empire held the Imperial capital. The rulers of the Empire of Trebizond came from the Komnenos family. Those of the Despotate of Epirus, briefly the Empire of Thessalonica, were from the Angelos family, though they later accepted rule from Nicaea. The Empire of Nicaea claimed the patriarchate in 1206 and eventually recaptured Constantinople in 1261.

Latin Empire of Constantinople

Main article: Latin Empire

See also: Podestà of Constantinople and Treaty of Viterbo

The Latin Empire had its own line of rulers, first led by the House of Flanders and then the French House of Courtenay. It was often in conflict and was not dominant among the crusader states, which Easterners called Latin or Frankish.

After being driven out of Constantinople in 1261, some of its rulers still held land in parts of modern Greece. Jacques des Baux was Prince of Achaea from 1381 to 1383 and the last known claimant to the Latin Imperial title.

Late Byzantine era

Main article: Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos dynasty

The Palaiologos dynasty kept the Roman Imperial tradition alive from 1261 until the Ottoman conquest in 1453. The Empire became smaller over time, and by the end, it was just the city of Constantinople and most of the Peloponnese, usually ruled by one of the Emperor's sons with the title of Despot. This line of rulers ended in 1453. The Despotate of the Morea continued for a few more years but its rulers did not claim to be Emperors.

Serbian Empire

See also: Emperor of the Serbs

In 1345, Serbian King Stefan Dušan called himself Emperor (Tsar) and was crowned in Skopje in 1346. His title was recognized by the Bulgarian Empire but not by the Byzantine Empire. In Serbia, the title "Emperor of Serbs and Romans" was used by Stefan Dušan's son Stefan Uroš V until 1371. A half-brother of Dušan, Simeon Uroš, and then his son Jovan Uroš, also used this title until 1373 while ruling in Thessaly.

Empire of Trebizond

Main article: Empire of Trebizond

The Empire of Trebizond, which began after the early 13th century split, lasted until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1461. Its Komnenos rulers claimed the Imperial title, competing with those in Constantinople, though they were not widely recognized.

A separate state on the Crimean coast, the Principality of Theodoro, fell to the Ottomans in 1475. There is no sign that its rulers claimed to be Roman Emperors.

Andreas Palaiologos's cessions

Main article: Pretenders to the Byzantine throne

Andreas Palaiologos, a nephew of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, began calling himself Emperor of Constantinople in 1483. He sold what he saw as his imperial title to Charles VIII of France in 1494. French kings kept this claim until Charles IX in 1566, when it was abandoned. Charles IX said the Byzantine imperial title "is not more eminent than that of king, which sounds better and sweeter."

In his last will in 1502, Andreas Palaiologos gave his self-given imperial title to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Other claimants to the Byzantine throne appeared after his death, with increasingly uncertain claims over the centuries. Charles I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, who claimed descent from the Palaiologos family, declared in 1612 his intention to reclaim Constantinople but only caused an uprising in the Mani Peninsula, which lasted until 1619.

Ottoman Empire after 1453

Main articles: Ottoman Empire and Ottoman claim to Roman succession

After capturing Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II called himself Roman Emperor: Kayser-i Rum, meaning "Caesar of the Romans", the title used by earlier Byzantine Emperors in Arab, Persian, and Turkish lands. In 1454, he appointed Gennadius Scholarius as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and ethnarch of the Rum Millet, the Greek Orthodox Christians in the Empire. Gennadius supported Mehmed's claim to be the successor of the Roman Empire.

Mehmed's claim was based on Constantinople being the rightful seat of the Roman Empire for over a thousand years, even if the period from 1204 to 1261 is excluded. A scholar named George of Trebizond wrote that "the seat of the Roman Empire is Constantinople ... and he who is and remains Emperor of the Romans is also the Emperor of the whole world". Mehmed also had marriage ties to the Byzantine Imperial family and an unsupported story that he was a descendant of John Tzelepes Komnenos.

The Ottoman Sultans saw themselves as the true heirs of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, along with their Turkish and Muslim heritage, even if Western observers did not always agree. In deals with the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans at first refused to recognize its Imperial claim, seeing themselves as the only true successors of Rome. In the Treaty of Constantinople in 1533, Austrian negotiators did not mention the Holy Roman Empire, only referring to Ferdinand I as King of Germany and Charles V as King of Spain. The Ottomans gave up this requirement in the Treaty of Sitvatorok in 1606 and with the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774.

Chinese records from the Ming dynasty called the Ottomans Lumi, from Rûmi, meaning "Roman".

Continuation in the West

Political fragmentation and imperial overlordship

Main article: Fall of the Western Roman Empire

See also: Frankish Table of Nations

By the start of the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire was large but its rule was weak. The Empire left Great Britain, allowing Anglo-Saxon settlement. Increasing foreign incursions led to Germanic and other groups settling in areas that became independent. Some were recognized by treaties with the Western Empire.

The Vandals crossed into Northern Africa and the Western Mediterranean islands, establishing their own kingdom. The Suebi created a kingdom in Western Iberia in 409, and the Visigoths established their kingdom in the Garonne Valley, later expanding into the Iberian Peninsula. The Alamanni moved into Alsace, and the Burgundians set up their kingdom around the Rhone River. An independent Kingdom of Soissons was formed between the Seine and Somme rivers. The Franks, who had been settled north of the Rhine since 358, expanded into what is now Belgium and Northern France. When the last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was removed by Odoacer in 476, his rule barely reached beyond Northern Italy. Another leader, Julius Nepos, held land in Dalmatia and kept the Imperial title until he was killed in 480.

Odoacer sent the Imperial items of Romulus Augustulus back to the Eastern Emperor Zeno in Constantinople. This showed that Odoacer recognized Zeno's authority. He took the title of King and ruled in the name of the remaining Emperors. This continued under Theodoric the Great, who defeated and killed Odoacer in 493 and became King of Italy.

Political borders kept changing in the later 5th and 6th centuries. Clovis I, king of the Franks, conquered Alemannia, the Kingdom of Soissons, and most of the Visigothic Kingdom north of the Pyrenees, and his sons took over the Kingdom of the Burgundians in 534. Meanwhile, Eastern Emperor Justinian I reestablished Imperial rule in southern Spain, North Africa, and especially Italy, reconquering it during the Gothic War (535–554). Later in the 6th century, Emperor Maurice supported Gundoald, a member of Clovis's family, in his claim to the Frankish kingdom, but this failed in 585.

Even though it was far from the Empire's direct control, Francia continued to recognize the authority of Constantinople. In early 508 in Tours, Clovis received items sent by Emperor Anastasius I which showed his service to the Empire. Similarly, in the early 6th century, King Gundobad of the Burgundians served as a military leader in the name of the Emperor. A book about the Bishops of Auxerre, first written in the late 9th century, refers to the reigning Roman Emperor up to Desiderius (d. 621).

Imperial rule in the West weakened further from the late 6th century. In Britain, Roman rule was a distant memory. In Francia, references to Imperial authority disappeared in the early 7th century. In the Iberian Peninsula, the Visigothic King Suintila removed the last Imperial forces from southern Spain in 625. In Italy, the Lombards invaded in 568, and the resulting Kingdom of the Lombards opposed the Empire.

Papal pivot

Main article: Byzantine Papacy

The Roman Papacy became the means for the Imperial idea to return in the West. Rome became more separated from Constantinople after the damage of the Gothic War (535–554), Imperial decisions to favor Ravenna over Rome, and the Lombard invasion of Italy starting in 568. The Column of Phocas in the Roman Forum, put up in 608, is one of the last big signs of (eastern) Imperial power in Rome. In 649, Pope Martin I was chosen and approved without waiting for Imperial agreement. Constans II was the last (eastern) emperor to visit Rome for centuries, in 663.

Meanwhile, Catholicism finally replaced Arianism in the Western kingdoms. Pope Gregory I (590–604) laid the groundwork for the papacy's growing role as the leader of Christianity in the West.

The promotion of a certain belief by Emperor Leo III the Isaurian from 726 caused a deeper split between the Eastern Empire and the Papacy. Pope Gregory II saw this belief as the latest in a series of Imperial mistakes. In 731, his successor Pope Gregory III organized a meeting in Rome which declared this belief punishable by removal from the church. Leo III responded by taking all papal lands in southern Italy and Sicily, and removing the areas of Thessalonica, Corinth, Syracuse, Reggio, Nicopolis, Athens, and Patras from papal control, putting them under the Patriarch of Constantinople. This was effectively a division.

The Popes needed to quickly change their relationship with secular power. Though the nearby Lombard kings were often unfriendly, the more powerful and distant Franks were an alternative choice as possible protectors. In 739, Gregory III sent a first message to Charles Martel asking for protection against Liutprand, King of the Lombards. The Papacy had more success with Pepin the Short, who took over from Charles in October 741 along with his older brother Carloman (who left public life and became a monk in 747). Pope Zachary was pushed to act by the final Lombard attack on the exarchate of Ravenna, whose fall in mid-751 marked the end of Byzantine rule in Central Italy. In March 751 he moved to remove Childeric III, the last Merovingian King, after which Pepin was made King of France in Soissons. In 754, Zachary's successor Pope Stephen II made the first-ever papal visit north of the Alps, met Pepin in Ponthion and anointed him as king at Saint-Denis on July 28, setting the pattern for later rites of coronation of French Kings. Stephen also approved the Carolingian dynasty by anointing Pepin's sons Charles and Carloman, forbidding the choice of any non-descendant of Pepin as king, and declaring that "the Frankish nation is above all nations". This in return led to the Donation of Pepin in 756, solidifying the Popes' rule over the Papal States for the next eleven centuries. Later, in 773–774, Pepin's son and successor Charlemagne took over the Lombard Kingdom of Italy.

Holy Roman Empire

Main article: Holy Roman Empire

The crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day 800 was clearly meant to continue the Roman Empire that still existed in the East. In Constantinople, Irene of Athens had blinded and removed her son Emperor Constantine VI a few years earlier. With no example of a woman alone holding the Imperial title, her critics in the West saw the Imperial throne as empty rather than recognizing her as Empress. Thus, as Peter H. Wilson said, "it is very likely Charlemagne believed he was being made Roman Emperor" at the time of his crowning; however, Charlemagne's Imperial title was based on a different foundation from any of the Roman emperors before him, as it relied structurally on the partnership with the Papacy, shown in the act of his crowning by the Pope.

Meanwhile, the rise to the Byzantine throne of Nikephoros I in 802 confirmed the conflict of legitimacy between the Frankish and Byzantine versions of the Roman Empire, known in history as the problem of two emperors (in German, Zweikaiserproblem). According to Theophanes the Confessor, Charlemagne had tried to avoid that conflict with a plan to marry Irene, but this did not happen. The land conflicts were settled in the following years through a series of discussions known as the Pax Nicephori, but the broader conflict with Constantinople about Imperial legitimacy proved very lasting.

Political power broke up within the Empire after Charlemagne's death. The result was an association of the Imperial title with the easternmost ("German") lands of the Carolingian world, but that was not clear at the start and took a long time to happen. From 843 to 875, the holders of the Imperial title only ruled over Northern Italy and, at the start, the "middle kingdom" of Lotharingia. On Christmas Day 875, exactly 75 years after Charlemagne, Charles the Bald of West Francia was crowned Emperor in Rome by Pope John VIII. Charles died soon after in 877, and his successor Charles the Fat only briefly reunited all the Carolingian lands, and after his death in 888 the Western part of Francia was led by the non-Carolingian Robertians, later the Capetian dynasty. For over seven decades, the Emperors' power was mostly limited to Northern Italy, until Otto I renewed the Imperial idea and was crowned by Pope John XII in Rome in 962. From then on, all Emperors had family roots in the German-speaking lands.

During the thousand years of the Holy Roman Empire, several specific attempts were made to remember the Empire's classical history. Emperor Otto III ruled from Rome from 998 to his death in 1002, and made a short-lived try to bring back ancient Roman institutions and traditions in partnership with Pope Sylvester II. Frederick II had a strong interest in Roman history, supported archaeological digs, organized a Roman-style triumph in Cremona in 1238 to celebrate his win at the battle of Cortenuova, and had himself shown in classical pictures. Similarly, Maximilian I was very aware of classical references in his "memorial" projects of the 1510s that included the three big woodblock prints of the Triumphal Arch, Triumphal Procession and Large Triumphal Carriage.

Papacy and the imperial title

According to his biographer Einhard, Charlemagne was unhappy about his crowning, a fact that later historians have seen as dislike of the Pope's key role in the approval of Imperial rule. Instead of the traditional approval by the people, Leo III had crowned Charlemagne at the start of the ceremony, just before the crowd approved him. In September 813, Charlemagne tried to change that by himself crowning his son Louis the Pious in Aachen, but the idea of Papal crowning remained and was repeated in 962 when Otto I renewed the Empire and its traditions after years of trouble and received the Imperial Crown from Pope John XII.

The link between Pope and Emperor led to conflict after the Papacy began asserting its position with the Gregorian Reform of the mid-11th century. The Investiture Controversy (1076–1122) included dramatic meetings, in which the pope tried to take away the emperor's Imperial title. The Dictatus papae, a papal paper given in 1075 shortly after the choice of Gregory VII, states that the pope "alone may use the Imperial Signs", that "All leaders shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone", and that "It may be allowed to him to remove emperors". Following Emperor Henry IV's walk to Canossa in January 1077, Gregory VII said his forgiveness but called him rex Teutonicorum ("king of the Germans"), thus skipping the Imperial title and the fact that Henry was king (rex) of several lands, including Burgundy and Italy. Wars of Guelphs and Ghibellines, the followers of the Pope and the Emperor, lasted until the 15th century. In 1527, the Pope's part in the Italian Wars led to the painful sack of Rome by Charles V's Imperial soldiers, after which the Papacy's influence in world politics greatly decreased.

Kingdoms and the imperial title

Early in the Empire's history, Louis the Pious formally stated the Empire's control over Catholic kingdoms through the paper given in 817 and later called Ordinatio Imperii. The view at the time was that the Empire covered all Western Christendom under one rule. Under Louis's plan, only his older son Lothair would hold the title of Emperor, and Lothair's younger brothers Pepin and Louis should follow him even though they were kings, respectively, of Aquitaine and Bavaria. That paper was controversial from the start, not least because it did not match Frankish rules and habits of choosing leaders. After Louis the Pious's death in June 840, the Battle of Fontenoy (841), Oaths of Strasbourg (842) and Treaty of Verdun (843) set a different reality, in which the Imperial title stayed whole but its holder fought with kings for land, even though at the time all were still linked by family ties of the Carolingian dynasty and the bonds of Catholic Christianity.

After the slow end of the Carolingian family in the late 9th and 10th centuries, the fight between the Empire and individual kingdoms grew from these early examples. The Kingdom of France, developing from Charles the Bald's West Francia, was always unwilling to accept the Emperor's top place among European rulers. As Latin Christendom grew in the High Middle Ages, new kingdoms appeared outside of the Empire and would also seek land and power. France itself played a part in the changes that led to the Empire's political weakening from the 16th to the early 19th centuries.

Modern-era nationalist revivals

Many political groups have tried to connect themselves to the old Roman Empire, even though many years passed since the Empire ended. These ideas often became part of strong national pride.

Moscow in Russia began using Roman and Byzantine traditions in the 1470s. Leaders like Ivan III and Ivan IV took on titles like “Tsar,” showing they saw Moscow as a new Rome. Spain also saw itself as a successor to Rome, using Roman symbols and titles. Italy, after uniting in the 19th century, called itself the “Third Rome,” and leaders like Mussolini used Roman ideas to support their rule. Other countries, including Britain, the United States, and Greece, also looked to Rome for inspiration in their own goals and identities.

Supranationalism and the Roman imperial idea

See also: Pax Americana

In the 20th century, some leaders and thinkers compared the way the Roman Empire was organized to modern ideas about countries working together. They saw similarities between the Roman way of sharing power and language and today's ideas of shared government and international cooperation.

League of Nations

Main article: League of Nations

A French historian in 1926 suggested that the League of Nations, created after World War I, was a new version of an old idea of unity. He believed the League brought back the spirit of peace and order that the Roman Empire once had.

European Union

Main article: European integration

The idea of the Roman Empire has been important to the European Union since it began in 1950. The EU, like many nations, uses ideas and language from Roman law, including the language Latin, in some official documents.

Some people compare the European Union to the Holy Roman Empire. In the United Kingdom, the EU was sometimes seen as a new Roman Empire. In some Christian groups, especially in the United States, the EU is seen as part of a larger plan connected to future events in their beliefs.