Translatio imperii

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Translatio imperii

Translatio imperii, Latin for "transfer of rule", is a concept invented in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
for describing history

HIStory

HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is a double album by Michael Jackson, released on June 20, 1995, and is Jackson's ninth. The first disc, named "HIStory Begins" consists of a selection of Jackson's greatest hits from the singer's past fifteen years, while the second, named "HIStory Continues" features new songs, with the...
as a linear
Linear

The word linear comes from the Latin word linearis, which means created by lines.In mathematics, a linear map or function f is a function which satisfies the following two properties......
development: a succession of transfers of power from one supreme ruler (emperor

Emperor

An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress is the female equivalent. As a title, "empress" may indicate the wife of an emperor or a woman who rules in her own right ....
) to the next.

lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m1216086",this)' onMouseout='hide("m1216086")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Jacques_Le_Goff">Jacques Le Goff

Jacques Le Goff

Jacques Le Goff is a prolific France historian specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries.Le Goff champions the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term trends over politics, diplomacy, and war, which characterized 19th century historical research....
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".

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Encyclopedia

Translatio imperii, Latin for "transfer of rule", is a concept invented in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

HIStory

Emperor

Definition

Jacques Le Goff

Otto of Freising
Otto of Freising

Otto von Freising was a Germany bishop and chronicler....
(living in German region): Rome
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
? Byzantium
Byzantium

Byzantium was an Ancient Greece city, which was founded by Greeks colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas or Byzantas ....
? Franks
Franks

The Franks or Frankish people were a West Germanic ethnic group first identified in the 3rd century as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River....
? Longobards ? Germans
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
(=Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a union of territories in Central Europe during the Middle Ages and the Early modern Europe under a Holy Roman Emperor....
);
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes

Chr?tien de Troyes was a France poet and trouv?re who flourished in the late 12th century in poetry. Little is known of his life, but he seems to have been from Troyes, or at least intimately connected with it, and between 1160 and 1172 he served at the court of his patroness Count of Champagne Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquit...
(living in medieval France): Greece
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
? Rome ? France
Richard de Bury (England, 14th century): "Athens" (Greece) ? Rome ? "Paris" (France) ? England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...

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

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
's use of Aeneas

Aeneas

This article is about the Roman hero. For other uses, see Aeneas .In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Troy hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Venus_....
(a Trojan

Troy

Troy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle, and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer....
hero) as mythic founder of the city of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
in his Aeneid
Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
. Continuing with this tradition, the twelfth-century anglo-Norman authors Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a clergyman and one of the major figures in the English historians in the Middle Ages and the popularity of tales of King Arthur....
(in his Historia Regum Britanniae
Historia Regum Britanniae

The Historia Regum Britanniae is a pseudohistory account of Great Britain history, written c.1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the List of legendary kings of Britain in a chronological narrative spanning a time of two thousand years, beginning with the Troy of Homer's Iliad founding the Brython nation and conti...
) and Wace

Wace

Wace was an Anglo-Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy , ending his career as canon of Bayeux.His extant works include:...
(in his Brut
Roman de Brut

Roman de Brut or Brut is a verse literary history of Britain in the Middle Ages by the poet Wace. Written in the Norman language, it consists of 14,866 lines....
) linked the founding of Britain to the arrival of Brutus of Troy

Brutus of Troy

Brutus or Brute of Troy is a legendary descendant of the Troy hero Aeneas, was known in medieval British legend as the eponymous founder and first king of Great Britain....
, son of Aeneas. In a similar way, the French Renaissance author Jean Lemaire de Belges

Jean Lemaire de Belges

Jean Lemaire de Belges was a Wallonia poet and historian who lived primarily in France.He was born in County of Hainaut , the godson and possibly a nephew of Jean Molinet, and spent some time with him at Valenciennes, where the elder writer held a kind of academy of poetry....
(in his Les Illustrations de Gaule et Singularités de Troie) linked the founding of Celtic Gaul

Gaul

Gaul is the name used for the region of Western Europe comprising part of present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the River Rhine....
to the arrival of the Trojan "Francus

Francus

Francus is a legendary eponymous king of France, a descendant of the Troys, founder of the Merovingian dynasty and forefather of Charlemagne. In the Renaissance, Francus was generally considered to be another name for the Trojan Astyanax saved from the destruction of Troy....
" (i.e. Astyanax

Astyanax

In Greek mythology, Astyanax was the son of Hector and Andromache. His birth name was Scamandrius , but the people of Troy nicknamed him Astyanax , because he was the son of the city's great defender and the heir apparent's firstborn son....
), the son of Hector

Hector

In Greek mythology, Hector , or Hektor, is a Troy prince and one of the greatest fighters in the Trojan War. He is the son of Priam and Hecuba, descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy....
; and of Celtic Germany to the arrival of "Bavo", the cousin of Priam

Priam

In Greek mythology, Priam was the king of Troy during the Trojan War and youngest son of Laomedon. Modern scholars derive his name from the Luwian compound Priimuua, which means "exceptionally courageous"....
; in this way he established an illustrious genealogy for Pepin and Charlemagne

Charlemagne

Charlemagne was List of Frankish kings from 768 to his death. He expanded the Franks kingdoms into a Carolingian Empire that incorporated much of Western Europe and Central Europe....
(the legend of "Francus" would also serve as the basis for Ronsard's epic poem, "La Franciade").

Translatio imperii

Definition

See also