Holy Roman Empire - Ottonian-Salian Dynasty

  General Description   The Holy Roman Empire encompassed, at various times, the present-day countries of Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. It had no central capital. The Emperor did not rule the individual nations in the coalition; thus, it was not a unitary state, but a confederation of constituent polities. It did not have common laws, language or customs. What did unite the countries of the empire was the Catholic faith, under the twin leadership of the papacy, and an emperor, the ‘Defender of the Roman Catholic Faith’. Though there was no centralised governance, it was Germany and its kings, who emerged as the core region of the empire. By 1030 German kings were consistently crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor. ^[1]
At an earlier stage, the Empire consisted of the Kingdoms of Germany, Italy and Burgundy (from 1052) and was known more commonly as the Ottonian Empire. It wasn’t until the mid-twelfth century that historians generally consider it to be the Holy Roman Empire when other states such as Bohemia and Hungary were taken within its borders. ^[2]
There is a lack of literature on the HRE as a single entity: “A major reason for the Empire’s relative scholarly neglect is that its history is so difficult to tell. The Empire lacked the things giving shape to conventional national history: a stable heartland, a capital city, centralized political institutions and, perhaps most fundamentally, a single ‘nation’. It was also very large and lasted a long time. A conventional chronological approach would become unfeasibly long, or risk conveying a false sense of linear development and reduce the Empire’s history to a high political narrative.” ^[3]
Because the Holy Roman Empire was such an inchoate polity, assigning its start and end dates, by necessity, involves a degree of arbitrariness. The origins of this polity go back to East Francia, which formed after the division of the Carolingian Empire in 843. In 919 the kingship of this polity passed from the Carolingian to the Ottonian dynasty. The first ruler of the Kingdom of Germany was the Duke of Saxony Henry the Fowler. His son, Otto I the Great, was crowned as Roman Emperor in 963. Thus, the medieval German Empire formed in stages between 843 and 963; we chose to assign the beginning date to 919, thus designating East Francia, ruled by Charlemagne descendants, to a separate Seshat polity.
The Ottonian period was generally characterized by (relative) internal peace and territorial expansion, and is considered as one of the three medieval renaissances.
When the last Ottonian emperor, Henry II, died childless, the imperial princes elected Conrad II as emperor. As a result, the empire passed from the Ottonian to Salian dynasty, the latter being based in Franconia. The Salian dynasty produced four Emperors.
Towards the end of the Salian rule, the Empire was riven by multiple conflicts between the emperor and the pope, imperial bishops, and secular princes. The last Salian emperor, Henry V, died childless in 1125, and the empire passed on to the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

[1]: Wilson 2016: 5-7. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/N5M9R9XA

[2]: Power 2006: 17, 210. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/4V4WE3ZK.

[3]: Wilson 2016: 5. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/N5M9R9XA