[245] Pertz, M. G. H., legg. ii.
[246] 'Apostolic majesty' was the proper title of the king of Hungary. The Austrian court has recently revived it.
[247] Moser, Römische Kayser.
[248] Urban IV used the title in 1259: Francis I (of France) calls the Empire 'sacrosanctum.'
[249] Cf. 'Holy Russia.'
[250] It is almost superfluous to observe that the beginning of the title 'Holy' has nothing to do with the beginning of the Empire itself. Essentially and substantially, the Holy Roman Empire was, as has been shewn already, the creation of Charles the Great. Looking at it more technically, as the monarchy, not of the whole West, like that of Charles, but of Germany and Italy, with a claim, which was never more than a claim, to universal sovereignty, its beginning is fixed by most of the German writers, whose practice has been followed in the text, at the coronation of Otto the Great. But the title was at least one, and probably two centuries later.
[251] I quote from the Liber Augustalis printed among Petrarch's works the following curious description of Frederick: 'Fuit armorum strenuus, linguarum peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus, epicurus, nihil curans vel credens nisi temporale: fuit malleus Romanae ecclesiae.'
As Otto III had been called 'mirabilia mundi,' so Frederick II is often spoken of in his own time as 'stupor mundi Fridericus.'
[252] 'Quà entro è lo secondo Federico.'—Inferno, canto x.
[253] The interregnum is by some reckoned as the two years before Richard's election; by others, as the whole period from the death of Frederick II or that of his son Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession in 1273.