Translatio imperii (Latin for "transfer of rule") is a historiographical concept, originating in the Middle Ages, in which history is viewed as a linear succession of transfers of an imperium that invests supreme power in a singular ruler, an "emperor". The concept is closely linked to translatio studii (the geographic movement of learning). Both terms are thought to have their origins in the second chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible (verses 39–40).
Jacques Le Goff describes the translatio imperii concept as "typical" for the Middle Ages for several reasons:
the idea of linearity of time and history was typical for the Middle Ages;
the translatio imperii idea typically also neglected simultaneous developments in other parts of the world (of no importance to medieval Europeans);
the translatio imperii idea didn't separate "divine" history from the history of "worldly power": medieval Europeans considered divine (supernatural) and material things as part of the same continuum, which was their reality. Also the causality of one reign necessarily leading to its successor was often detailed by the medieval chroniclers, and is seen as a typical medieval approach.
Each medieval author described the translatio imperii as a succession leaving the supreme power in the hands of the monarch ruling the region of the author's provenance:
Otto of Freising (living in German region): Rome → Byzantium → Franks → Longobards → Germans (=Holy Roman Empire);
Chrétien de Troyes (living in medieval France): Greece → Rome → France
Richard de Bury (England, 14th century): "Athens" (Greece) → Rome → "Paris" (France) → England
Later, continued and reinterpreted by modern and contemporary movements and authors (some known examples):
Fifth Monarchists (England, 17th century): Caldeans (Babylonians) → Persians → Macedonian Empire → Rome → England (and the British Empire later)
António Vieira (Portugal, 17th century): Assyro-Caldeans (Babylonians) → Persians → Greeks → Romans → Portuguese Empire
Fernando Pessoa (Portugal, 20th century): Greece → Rome → Christianity → Europe → Portugal
Medieval and Renaissance authors often linked this transfer of power by genealogically attaching a ruling family to an ancient Greek or Trojan hero; this schema was modeled on Virgil's use of Aeneas (a Trojan hero) as mythic founder of the city of Rome in his Aeneid. Continuing with this tradition, the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman authors Geoffrey of Monmouth (in his Historia Regum Britanniae) and Wace (in his Brut) linked the founding of Britain to the arrival of Brutus of Troy, son of Aeneas.
In a similar way, the French Renaissance author Jean Lemaire de Belges (in his Les Illustrations de Gaule et Singularités de Troie) linked the founding of Celtic Gaul to the arrival of the Trojan "Francus" (i.e. Astyanax), the son of Hector; and of Celtic Germany to the arrival of "Bavo", the cousin of Priam; in this way he established an illustrious genealogy for Pepin and Charlemagne (the legend of "Francus" would also serve as the basis for Ronsard's epic poem, "La Franciade").
The translatio imperii of Europe runs somewhat parallel between the Holy See and the Holy Roman Empire, justified by series of events. A few examples below.
Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire, who saw himself as an "Emperor of the Christian people", issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, legalising Christianity.
Emperor Theodosius in 380 AD issued the Edict of Thessalonica making Nicene Christianity the State church of the Roman Empire.
The First Council of Constantinople (AD 381) suggested strongly that Roman primacy was already asserted. However, it should be noted that, because of the controversy of this claim, the pope did not personally attend this ecumencial council that was held in the capital of the eastern empire, rather than at Rome. It was not until 440 that Leo the Great more clearly articulated the extension of papal authority as doctrine, promulgating in edicts and in councils his right to exert "the full range of apostolic powers that Jesus had first bestowed on the apostle Peter".
Byzantine Empress Irene of Athens' most notable act was the restoration of the veneration of icons (images of Christ or the saints). Having elected Tarasios, one of her partisans and her former secretary, to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 784, she summoned two church councils. The first of these, held in 786 at Constantinople, was frustrated by the opposition of the soldiers faithful to the memory of the iconoclast emperors. The second, convened at Nicaea in 787, formally revived the veneration of icons and reunited the Eastern church with that of Rome. (See Seventh Ecumenical Council.)
The coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor of Charlemagne on 25 December 800 by Pope Leo III, first of the Carolingian Emperors, the Papacy determining the King of various territories rather than a man proclaiming himself king
The Donation of Pepin, the first in 754 and the second in 756, provided a legal basis for the formal organising of the "States of the Church", or "Papal States", which inaugurated papal temporal rule over civil authorities. The Donations were bestowed by Pepin the Short only three years after he became the first civil ruler appointed by a Pope, about the year 751
The launch of the Crusades in 1095 Pope Urban II, which, in an attempt to recover the Holy Land and territories of the Byzantine Empire which had been conquered by the Islamic Seljuk Empire, marshalled European nobility under Papal leadership
The re-asserting that the Pope, Bishop of Rome, is indeed the Protos, by the Declaration of Ravenna on 13 October 2007, signed by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox officials at the tenth plenary session of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church held from 8 to 14 October 2007 in Ravenna, Italy, although future discussions are to be held on the concrete ecclesiological exercise of papal primacy.
Emperor Constantine V married his son Leo IV to Irene of Athens on 17 December 768, brought to Constantinople by the father on 1 November 768. On 14 January 771, Irene gave birth to a son, Constantine. When her father-in-law Emperor Constantine V died in September 775, her husband Leo was to succeed to the throne at the age of twenty-five years. Nevertheless, when Leo died on 8 September 780, Irene became regent for their nine-year-old son Constantine, the future Constantine VI.
As early as 781, Irene of Athens began to seek a closer relationship with the Carolingian dynasty and the Papacy in Rome. She negotiated a marriage between her son Constantine and Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne by his third wife Hildegard. During this time Charlemagne was at war with the Saxons, and would later become the new king of the Franks. Irene went as far as to send an official to instruct the Frankish princess in Greek; however, Irene herself broke off the engagement in 787, against her son's wishes.
As Constantine approached maturity he began to grow restless under his mother's autocratic sway. An attempt to free himself by force was met and crushed by his mother, who demanded that the oath of fidelity should thenceforward be taken in her name alone. The discontent which this occasioned swelled in 790 into open resistance, and the soldiers, headed by the army of the Armeniacs, formally proclaimed Constantine VI as the sole ruler.
A hollow semblance of friendship was maintained between Constantine and Irene, whose title of empress was confirmed in 792; but the rival factions remained, and in 797 Irene, by cunning intrigues with the bishops and courtiers, organized a conspiracy on her own behalf. Constantine could only flee for aid to the provinces, but even there participants in the plot surrounded him. Seized by his attendants on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, Constantine was carried back to the palace at Constantinople. His eyes were gouged out, and he died from his wounds several days later. A solar eclipse and darkness lasting 17 days were attributed to the horror of Heaven.
Irene reigned for five years, from 797 to 802. Pope Leo III, who needed help against enemies in Rome and who saw the throne of the Byzantine Emperor as vacant (lacking a male occupant), crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800. This was seen as an insult to the Eastern Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Irene is said to have endeavoured to negotiate a marriage between herself and Charlemagne, but according to Theophanes the Confessor, who alone mentions it, the scheme was frustrated by Aetios, one of her favourites.
In 802 the patricians conspired against Irene of Athens and placed on the throne Nikephoros I, the minister of finance (logothetēs tou genikou). Irene was exiled to Lesbos and forced to support herself by spinning wool. She died the following year.
Pax Nicephori, a peace treaty in 803 between the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros I, Basileus of the Eastern Roman Empire
Recognition of Charlemagne as Emperor (Basileus) in 812 by Emperor Michael I Rangabe of the Byzantine Empire (crowned on 2 October 811 by the Patriarch of Constantinople), after he reopened negotiations with the Franks. In exchange for that recognition, Venice was returned to the Byzantine Empire.
On February 2 962, Otto I was solemnly crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII. Ten days later at a Roman synod, Pope John XII, at Otto's desire, founded the Archbishopric of Magdeburg and the Bishopric of Merseburg, bestowed the pallium on the Archbishop of Salzburg and Archbishop of Trier, and confirmed the appointment of Rother as Bishop of Verona. The next day, the emperor issued a decree, the famous Diploma Ottonianum, in which he confirmed the Roman Church in its possessions, particularly those granted by Charlemagne and by the Donation of Pepin, and provided at the same time that in future the Popes should be elected in canonical form, though their consecration was to take place only after the necessary pledges had been given to the emperor or his ambassadors. In essence, the Emperor was to be the guarantor of Papal independence, but to retain the right to confirm Papal elections. Historians debate, in terms of power and prestige, whether the Diploma Ottonianum was a prestigious advantage for the papacy or a political triumph for the emperor. The Papacy's strategies to free itself from the restrictions of the Diploma Ottonianum in the later 11th century form the background to the Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy.
After the Fourth crusade, Byzantine Emperor Alexios III attempted to organise resistance to the new regime from Adrianople and then Mosynopolis, where he was joined by the later usurper Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlos in April 1204, after the definitive fall of Constantinople to the crusaders and the establishment of the Latin Empire. At first Alexios III received Alexios V well, even allowing him to marry his daughter Eudokia Angelina. Later Alexios V was blinded and deserted by his father-in-law, who fled from the crusaders into Thessaly. Here Alexios III eventually surrendered when captivated with Euphrosyne, to Marquis Boniface of Montferrat, who established himself as ruler of the Kingdom of Thessalonica. Alexios III was sent to Asia Minor where he plotted against his son-in-law Theodore Laskaris, but was eventually arrested and spent his last days confined to the Monastery of Hyakinthos in Nicaea, where he died.
The last descendant of and pretender to the title as Byzantine Emperor after the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks, was Andreas Palaiologos (1453–1502). After his uncle Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Emperor of Constantinople, died defending the capital of the Byzantine Empire on May 29, 1453, Andreas went to live in exile in Rome, where he made a ceremonial entrance as Byzantine Emperor 7 March 1461, styling himself Imperator Constantinopolitanus ("Emperor of Constantinople"). Andreas was considered by his contemporaries, most prominently the Cardinal Bessarion the rightful heir to the Roman (Byzantine) throne who, curiously, lived in Rome years after the end of the Eastern Roman Empire. Despite the great expectations Papal officials had for Andreas, his behavior was not imperial. He got poor and sick, and he sold the rights to the Byzantine crown which he possessed since the death of his father. Charles VIII of France purchased the rights of succession from Andreas during 1494. The following Kings of France continued the claim and used the Imperial titles and honors. Before death on April 7, 1498, he again sold his titles and royal and imperial rights to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
