The Other(Secular) Empire
That a papal empire, or perhaps quasi-empire, existed at the time of the battle of Antioch should not make us forget that the secular emperor back in Europe had not given up his ambitions of dominion in Christendom (and ideally in the whole world).
His rivalry with the pope was the reason why only one of the princes that he had directly appointed, Duke Godfrey of Lower Lorraine (Godfrey of Bouillon), took part in the Crusade. Modern historical atlases portray the empire in the age of the Palestinian Crusades as if it was a clearly distinct area that some parts of Christendom were part of and others not. Bohemia is included; France, Hungary, and Denmark excluded. This cartography fails to depict not only ideology, but also the reality of twelfth-century Christendom, since some kings of “independent” kingdoms like Denmark were at times under much firmer control than some of the German magnates. The emperor was constantly striving for control in Germany and Italy. Sometimes he had the power to reach out for Denmark and Hungary. England and the Scandinavian Peninsula lay beyond the horizon.The ambition of universal empire led the kings of the Regnum Teutonicorum (“Germany”) to spend many of their resources to gain control over the city of Rome, without which there could be no real Roman empire. In three centuries, the Saxon dynasty, the Salian dynasty, and the Swabian (Hohenstaufen) dynasty fought with various intensity and success over the lordship of Italy.[1602]
Nationalistic German historians of the nineteenth century blamed emperors like Frederick II (d. 1250) for sacrificing the making of a German state for the sake of European dominance (a project that failed anyway). Apart from the obvious political and ideological agenda in such statements, they definitely had a point. Not only were political and material resources spent on ventures outside Germany that did not benefit within: the very process that transformed other European monarchies from early medieval warlord-hegemonies to the bureaucratically structured kingdoms of the Renaissance was never truly initiated because of the pursuit of universal empire. On one occasion, Frederick bought the support of the unruly German magnates by granting them many of the prerogatives held by kings in other parts of Christendom.
Especially the legislative and judicial powers are interesting because other princes used these as the vehicles with which they consolidated and expanded their power base at that time. No Western kings had arbitrary judicial or legislative power, yet all monarchies in the thirteenth century outside the Regnum Teutonicorum saw kingly power consolidating itself by establishing and presiding over supreme courts, summoning the legislative assemblies that promulgated new law codes, etc. The monarchy was becoming jurisdictional.[1603]Seen from the point of view of later territorial monarchies, this development of sovereign kingdoms outside the empire was a matter of triumph. But in the Middle Ages several authors, including Dante, held out the united Christian empire as the unsurpassable political ideal for the future, just like Muslim writers dreamed of a re-establishment of the Caliphate.[1604]
There still was an empire in the fifteenth century, but the Sacrum Imperium Romanum Nationis Germanicae was only a Central European affair, stretching from the Meuse to the Memel, from the Adige to the Belt, as a later song would have it. Even within this area, the power of the emperor was quite limited, with most authority being vested at a lower (princely) level.[1605] Outside this area, Christendom was a cluster of independent kingdoms, each of them defined in terms of areas with
a certain jurisdiction. The principle of hereditary succession was well established, even in kingdoms that were officially elective. Instead of electing new kings from vast and populous royal kindreds, succession was secured from an exclusive lineage with cadet branches quickly excluded from the throne. Late medieval kingdoms were not divided among heirs, as happened several times in the early medieval Regnum Francorum. Instead, they were indivisible, lineal monarchies with appointive succession.[1606]