Misiune şi competiţie politică: Imperiul creştin şi Poporul Ales (III): de la Rex Romanorum la Rex imperator in suo regno
Spiritual mission and political competition: The Christian Empire and the Chosen People (III): from Rex Romanorum to Rex imperator in suo regno

Summary/Abstract: The empire, reestablished at the initiative of the Holy See and considered a prerequisite for restoring order and legality throughout the Christianitas, became instead an instrument of the German political elite engaged in offensive political action in the southern Alps, but also in relation to the apostolic kingdoms of the Eastern Central Europe. It occupied a central place on the agenda of the ecclesiastical policy of the papacy at the height of its worldly power, but the victory in the dispute with the Hohenstauffen dynasty, whose exponents challenged the legal basis of the pontifical authority by appealing to arguments provided by classical jurisprudence, has meant institutionalizing the informal power pluralism of the Middle Ages through a transfer of legitimacy to the territorial state, able to satisfy the security and legal requirements of its subjects and capitalize for its own benefit the new ethnic solidarity that mobilized medieval communities since the 13th century. If the empire continues to be an asset in the patrimony of the old German and Byzantine competitors of the papacy, the discourse promoted by jurists and prelates serving the sovereigns of medieval states claims quasi-imperial legitimacy inspired by readings of ancient writings and by ethical, national considerations as well as by new forms of individual and collective piety.

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