[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Originally Posted by M.R.

And yes, it was holy, a real Catholic state.

It is highly controversial, whether there can be a thing like a "Catholic state" or let alone a "Catholic empire". I am rather inclined to say no than yes. There can be countries with Catholic majorities, which are permeated with the spirit emanating from the Catholic doctrine, countries in which the Catholic Church can assume a variety of functions in the civil life, whereby a fruitful and dialectical relationship between Church and the State can exist. I am all for it. But can a state as such, in its essence be Catholic? I think not. There was hardly ever anything like that throughout history. It is more of an Islamic concept.

Originally Posted by NatVox

Was it ever holy

Some ad hoc theological explanations, devised during the Middle Ages, tended to elevate it to the level of holiness, but it never became an article of faith. Nor it can be. According to those explanations, there were only two holy states in history: the Old Testament Kingdom of Israel and the Holy Roman Empire. Israel would have lost all of its attributes of holiness after having failed the mission to become "a nation of priests", after having abandoned God many times throughout the history of the Old Covenant (ie. by having turned to idols) and finally after having rejected Christ. The Holy Roman Empire would have been the heir to the old Israel, in a spiritual sense.

However, it was never generally accepted. Thence the history of the medieval Holy Roman Empire (which bore also title "of the German nation", but was never quintessentially and only German) was replete with struggles between the Pope and the Emperor. The emperors all too often displayed so-called Caesaropapistic tendencies (wanting to rule the Church and decide in Church matters), whereas Popes at times tried to impose the authority of the Church over the secular power (the theory of two swords or two keys, especially Gregory VII, but also Innocentius III).

Its holiness was never universally accepted. Holy can be the Church (the institution and the building), the Mass, the Eucharist etc. But can any empire be truly "holy"? Hardly. After the defection of the Old Israel (I am speaking here in theological terms, from the standpoint of the Christian doctrine), all believers in Christ and members of his Church are God's people. But no empire is truly God's empire. Different emperors, both in the East and in the West, at different times tried to justify themselves, their secular authority and aspirations (even the territorial ones) in purely theological language. But that is an un-Christian attitude, a misuse of the doctrine.

Finally, there was an event which happened in the early history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (it was then the Frankish Empire, to be precise, but there exists the clear ideological continuity between the Frankish and the Ottonian Empire), which represented, speaking from an eschatological point of view, a bad omen for the future of the Empire, as regards its "holiness" among other things. That event was the slaughter of the Saxons perpetrated by Charlemagne and their forced conversion, by the sword, to the Christianity. They were forced by the sword to "accept" Christ, which was not the method by which its faith should be spread. This event happened exactly around the time when the Empire (then Frankish) was established (end of 8th, beginning of 9th century). It was a kind of curse.

Originally Posted by NatVox

or even roman?

The Byzantines in the East claimed Romanity as exclusively theirs. But was the "Empire of the West" also heir to Rome? Culturally - yes, undoubtedly, because there was no other cultural tradition. Politically there was an interruption of three centuries. Although some historians, like Henri Pirenne, claim that the political tradition of the Roman Empire survived even in the West, that none of the new, "barbarian" rulers abolished it. Thence coronations of Charles the Great and later of Otto I would mean only revivifying an old and already existing tradition, under the new, more "Christian" (I am myself not sure whether or not the quotation marks should be put here) garb. However, no Roman emperor was ever crowned by the Pope, which was now the case. The Carolingian and later Ottonian Empire needed a de iure justification of its de facto existing power, there was a need to stress the continuity. Even in pre-Roman times it was often the case that rulers invoked their legal or even spiritual continuity with some preceding royal dynasties or political units. In this regard interpretations tend sometimes to be very flexible, let us say. First one has power gained through conquest, through force and then later an a posteriori (pseudo)-legalistic or even (pseudo)-theological explanation is devised to justify the already existing de facto power.

That power and state are sacred is an old and pre-Christian concept. In the Christian worldview it does not have necessarily to be that way. The Christian Middle Ages borrowed it from old pagan times and adjusted the principle somehow. But it was never understood in absolute terms, otherwise it borders on idolatry.

So in terms of cultural inheritance it was Roman (what else?), with some ingredients of the Germanic cultural remnants, as present in some codes of the common law (the Salic law etc) and in some traces of the old paganism integrated into the Catholic religion. Was it Roman in the original sense of word? Of course not. But it created, in the Western Europe, the tradition of stressing continuity with the Roman Empire and testifies to the essential Romanitas of the European Christendom. That continuity was very direct in the East.

Originally Posted by NatVox

was it even an empire?

Empires are usually very centralised or at least have a wish to become such, which was not the case with this empire. Its fragmentation and local autonomies started to assert themselves at an early hour. The later attempts of some emperors to "reunify" or to "recentralise" the Empire had only momentaneous, never a lasting success. But something like that happens often with empires. Inspite of the wish of the ruling classes to maintain unity ad infinitum, disintegrational forces come into prominence and ultimately turn it into a mosaic of small political units.