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And... what part of the process was less organic about Roman assimilation?
Are you fucking kidding me right now?
The HRE was overwhelmingly a German-speaking state.
This... this the same Byzantine Empire whose cultural footprint outside of religion is negligible outside of the Greek heartland it clung to?
That is a profound misunderstanding of early Christianity.
... except the practices and values of Nicaean Christianity differ radically from traditional Roman religion, traditional Hellenic religion, and the Neoplatonism of the 3rd century AD.
Fucking what.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Okay, this is just objectively how the holy Roman empire worked. That's not even a slightly controversial statement
How do you think the Pope was able to dictate terms to royalty? They controlled coronations, marriages, and pacified the people. The nobility tolerated this because there was a give and take, their relatives were given high rank... It's the origin of the term nepotism
This is also very basic European history.
A lot of this I can excuse as you being a too literal and uncharitable, but there's no two interpretations on this one
I don't know if you have a hard on for Rome or what, but I don't think you're being serious
The HRE was one player in European politics in the Medieval period and Early Modern period. There was no 'secret club' of European royalty; dynasties ruling European polities rose and fell all the goddamn time. The HRE in particular was infamous for being unable to control its aristocracy, or its bourgeois, for that matter.
Legitimacy of other European royalty was not significantly connected to the HRE or to Rome.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The only coronation the Pope nominally controlled was that of the Holy Roman Emperor himself. And that only nominally. The Pope was involved in royal marriages only insofar as issues of consanguinity or dissolving marriages was concerned. The Pope's control over the common people was fucking marginal, considering how many kings were excommunicated and considered it only a minor annoyance.
The Pope didn't 'dictate terms' to royalty. Fuck, the Pope was literally imprisoned and overthrown by royals numerous times throughout the Medieval period, including by the Holy Roman Emperor.
The origin of the term nepotism is from Popes appointing their own nephews as cardinals. Nepos.
Nothing about this discussion, regarding the Medieval period and the HRE, has anything to do with the Roman Empire. This is purely over some really bizarre Da Vinci Code level perception of the Catholic Church and Medieval period that you have.
Jesus... They're the same damn group! Yes the power of the Pope waxed and waned. The church and the nobility were intertwined! The Pope doesn't matter, the institution does!
And every coronation was done by at least an arch bishop. Who were a compromise between the church and the king.
And do you have any idea how incestuous the royal families of all of Europe were? Not just individually, but between each other
Your don't seem to understand the difference between hard and soft power. And my whole point is people in power flowed from Rome, to the church, to the aristocracy of Europe, to capitol
The same Catholic Church whose dictates were repeatedly ignored by both the common people and the nobility?
That's not even close to true. In many coronations in many kingdoms, bishops presided, or even no clergy at all. You really don't have the slightest clue about what you're talking about.
For most of the Medieval period, not very. The intensified incest was largely a product of consolidated royal families and increased international travel in the Early Modern Period.
No, my point is that your perception of the soft power of the Church and of Rome is utterly bizarre conspiracy shite with an extremely modern view of how society functioned at a basic level during the Medieval period, and thus having no fucking relation to the reality of the Medieval period.
Hard and soft power. You really don't get it. Well, better than you just being a troll
I'll try to be as literal as possible for you. Rome split. The pieces continued to act like Rome behaviorally. The remaining institution of Rome, the Roman Catholic church, had incredible power over many of these pieces, even growing power for a time, then later soft influence, over most of Europe known as the holy Roman empire. The soft power of the church faded with the rise of capitalism.
We still act like Rome. The behaviors never ended. That's the through line
Hard power is the ability to impose one's will by force; soft power is the ability to impose one's will by persuasion or subtlety. In no case does it mean "Utterly failing to push an objective forward". That is a lack of soft power.
In what sense? Your entire bizarre view of Rome is based around an idea that their assimilative institutions were somehow more rigid and formalized than previous ones. European polities after the fall of the Western Empire not only lacked any rigid assimilative institutions, they often rejected assimilation altogether, and numerous ethnicities were born of the lack of institutions capable of assimilating or even maintaining cultural hegemonies in the post-Roman polities.
No.
The hard power of the Papal States was minimal and regional at best, quarreling with other Italian states and sometimes the borders of the HRE; the only Europe-wide power the Catholic Church had was always soft power.
...
The HRE was not most of Europe, even at its height as the Carolingian Empire.
The soft power of the Church died in the Thirty Years' War, as increasingly centralized states began to deal with issues of pluralism and national unity; itself derived from the Protestant Reformation. The soft power of the Church was dead in the most backwards states of Europe even before the bourgeoisie became ascendant.
Your core objection to the unique influence of Rome was that it 'conquered'; you defined conquest by assimilative processes, but your points have absolutely nothing to do with cultural assimilation or, for that matter, reality.
It's like you understand every era by the definition at the end of it. And soft power is soft because it can be denied - it's just influence.
Let's go back to the source then... Who had institutionalized assimilation before the Romans? I don't just mean there was assimilation...I mean a group comes in and converts others into becoming them in a systematic fashion
Okay cool, so your argument is now nothing more than "soft power exists", not "The Catholic Church had any serious amount of soft power", fan-fucking-tastic, glad you've spent all this time to say absolutely nothing.
The Ancient Hebrews, for one, whose process of assimilation was far more ritualized and rigid, and mandatory for existence in the polity, than Rome's. The Assyrians. Han China in the Warring States period.
Yeah ok bro. These are totally the same things.
How about we say you win, since my goal was to be understood and we're never getting there