empires and dynasties: Europe 375 Holy Roman Empire The eastern part of Charlemagne’s empire passed to Louis the German in 843, according to the terms of the treaty of Verdun, which split the empire into three parts Most of the central kingdom of Lothair also quickly became attached to the eastern kingdom Northern Italy, too, was included in this territory The Papal States in central Italy remained independent, while southern Italy was controlled by Byzantine and Islamic invaders before finally being conquered by the Normans The kingdom of Sicily, including the southern half of the Italian Peninsula, eventually passed to the control of the kingdom of Aragon in Spain At first the imperial title was not of much importance and was held by various members of the Carolingian family However, once the Carolingian line died out, new kings of the eastern Frankish kingdom were chosen by election Earlier Germanic kings had been elected by meetings of the entire society A relic of this custom was the parliament or diet, a legislative body that existed in all western European kingdoms during the Middle Ages as a check on royal power But only in the eastern or German kingdom did the older practice of elective monarchy reassert itself The elections were originally conducted by the leading noblemen The first elected kings were the duke of Franconia, Conrad I, elected in 911, and his successor, the duke of Saxony, Henry the Fowler, elected in 919 Henry’s son, Otto I, also called Otto the Great, was elected king in 936 and took for himself the title of emperor in 962 in recognition of his continuing effort to revive and defend the tradition of the Roman Empire and of his victory over the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 This began the Ottonian Dynasty of emperors and the proper use of the name Holy Roman Empire Otto I ruled until 973 Election by the leading princes and churchmen continued until 1356, when the papal decree known as the Golden Bull fixed seven electors: the count of Palatine, the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, and the margrave of Brandenburg, together with the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier This electoral system made the German emperors even weaker than the other western European monarchs because the emperor would directly owe his throne to his leading noblemen and would usually have to bribe them at the time of election with land and cash and make promises not to infringe on their powers at the expense of the central government A tremendous blow was struck to the power of the emperor under the Salian Dynasty (1024–1125), when Henry IV (r 1056–1106) lost to the papacy the right to appoint bishops in the empire Frederick Barbarossa (r 1152–90), Frederick I of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty (1138–1254), increased the power of the emperor by reviving Roman law (the old system of law of the Roman Empire as opposed to the traditional law of the Germanic tribes), which held that the emperor was not bound by law or custom in his actions and that the nature of the law depended on imperial decisions and decrees rather than older judicial decisions (precedents), as in common law Frederick II (r 1212–50), however, was already the king of Sicily when he was elected in 1215, and he concentrated on reforming and strengthening his own kingdom Consequently, he was happy to devolve unprecedented power on the German nobles—for instance, recognizing the various dukes and princes as rulers of independent states in their own right rather than as his feudal vassals After the Hohenstaufens the position of emperor declined in power and importance Emperors from various families were elected, and sometimes competing emperors were elected by different sets of electors Emperors tended to concentrate on their own lands rather than the empire as a whole The beginning of the Hapsburg Dynasty reversed this trend, however Rudolph I (r 1273–91) of Hapsburg had served as emperor, but the Hapsburg Dynasty (which would rule the empire until its dissolution in 1806) properly begins with Frederick III (r 1440–93) and his son Maximilian I (r 1493–1519), who brought about legal and constitutional reforms to strengthen the structure of the empire, although the imperial government remained weak compared with contemporary states such as France or Spain Spain In 711 Spain had been conquered by Islamic Moors from North Africa After failing to conquer France also, the Moors fell back from the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian mountains in northern Spain because the region and people were particularly poor Local Visigothic peoples in these remote regions began to carry out raids and guerilla attacks against the Moors As early as 718 the Visigothic king Pelayo proclaimed himself ruler of this area as the king of Asturias By his death in 737 he had managed to recapture the city of Leon, beginning the Reconquista, the long period of retaking of Spain by Christian rulers Subsequently Christian knights carried out a policy of raids against nearby Moorish settlements, with occasional attacks against large Moorish cities deep in the interior of Spain when the opportunity offered This drove the Moors from lands adjacent to Asturias, which was then repopulated with Christian peasants; in this way the border between Christian and Moorish Spain gradually shifted south through the eighth and ninth centuries Eventually Asturias was divided because of the old Germanic custom of dividing a king’s lands among his sons By 1000 several independent kingdoms had been established in northern Spain: Portugal, León, Castile,