John Watts states that one of the most fundamental political ideas of the middle ages was the concept of the Roman Empire. Although the ancient empire of Rome was long past its glory, Watts maintains that “it had suited almost every succeeding regime across the Mediterranean and beyond to adopt some at least of what it understood to be the rights, rituals and accoutrements of imperial power, and to insist on some kind of continuity with the Roman imperial tradition”. Rome, as a concept and an idea, was the bedrock of almost every formal political structure in medieval Europe. The Holy Roman Empire was arguably the epitome of this political practice. These imperialist doctrines were, to borrow a phrase from J.V. Bryce, “set forth most strikingly”
