earticle

영어

Many scholars have researched on the Holy Roman Empire, the typical medieval political community. The researchers have examined various subjects such as the policies and thoughts of the Emperors who ruled the Empire, the political and religious conflicts between Emperors and Popes, and the characters and significance of the Empire as an institute. In spite of their ardent studies on the Empire, researchers have overlooked the very important subject related to the starting point of the Empire.
Most of historians in this country have regarded the coronation of Otto the Great in 962 as the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire. But in case of foreign historians, about half of them saw the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 as the starting point of the Empire, while the rest tended to see the year 962 as the beginning. I found that these two views could not be compatible and should be unified. This is the main reason that I selected this subject in this paper.
This paper compared the characters of the Empire of Chralemagne with that of the Empire of Otto the Great in order to present an answer on this issue. This study first revealed the Empire of Charlemagne to be the first unique medieval empire which held universal characters, Roman and Christian. This paper subsequently examined the nature of the Empire of Otto the Great on the ground of the theories of the scholars who insisted that the history of the Holy Roman Empire had started from the coronation of Otto in 962. The true nature of the Empire of Otto was also both a Roman and a Christian Empire with universal characters.
In short, as a consequence of the comparison of two Empires, this paper concluded that the Empire of Otto was ideologically and theoretically an extension of that of Charlemagne. Therefore it seems to be reasonable that the starting point of the Holy Roman Empire should be fixed as the coronation of Charlemagne in 800.