The Holy Roman Empire

I think most Americans would be mystified to learn the the United States, in their early days, signed treaties with the 'Emperor of the Romans', but it is a verifiable fact. The Roman Empire, founded by Gaius Octavius, Caesar Augustus, under whose rule our Dear Lord Jesus Christ was born, and the title Emperor of the Romans survived until the year AD 1806!

James, Viscount Bryce began his great work, The Holy Roman Empire, with the following paragraph. (My emphasis)

Of those who in August, 1806, read in the newspapers that the Emperor Francis II had announced to the Germanic Diet his resignation of the imperial crown there were probably few who reflected that the oldest political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so. The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the Danube extinguished was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in extent, in power, and in character, a title and pretensions from which their ancient meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the old world to the new—nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into the Middle Ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognized centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an influence such as its material strength could never have commanded.

Bryce, Viscount James. The Holy Roman Empire (Kindle Locations 72-80). Vook, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

 It was in defence of the Holy Roman Empire that Dante wrote his De Monarchia, and it was of it that the anti-Christian Freemason Voltaire said '(T)he Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor empire', which is simply an Endarkenment canard. It was, or had been at one time, all three.

At any rate, this will not be my only post on the Empire I'm sure, but in the meantime, here is Chevalier Charles Coulombe discussing the Holy Roman Empire.