Holy Roman Empire Trivia
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50 free Holy Roman Empire trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Holy Roman Empire trivia for history students, strategy-game veterans and anyone who has wondered how a 'Roman' empire came to be run from Vienna. The quiz runs from Charlemagne's coronation on Christmas Day 800 and Otto the Great's in 962, through the Investiture Controversy and Henry IV's walk to Canossa, the Hohenstaufen emperors Barbarossa and Frederick II, the Interregnum and the Golden Bull of 1356 that fixed the seven electors. It then covers the Habsburg centuries: Maximilian's Imperial Reform and the Reichskammergericht, Charles V and the last papal coronation, Luther and the Peace of Augsburg, the Thirty Years' War and Westphalia, the Perpetual Diet at Regensburg, and Francis II laying down the crown in 1806 after Austerlitz. There are questions on how the Empire actually worked - King of the Romans, Imperial Circles, free imperial cities, the Kaiserpfalz - plus Voltaire's quip and which member states still survive as monarchies today. Difficulty runs from easy to properly obscure. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Frankish king was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne's backers argued that the Roman throne stood vacant, since Empress Irene ruled alone in Constantinople and they would not count a woman as emperor.
Q 02Which German king's 962 coronation by Pope John XII is often taken as the empire's true beginning?
Otto the Great
Otto the Great turned on his pope within two years: in 963 he deposed John XII for plotting with his Italian enemy and installed Leo VIII in his place.
Q 03Which emperor ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 under pressure from Napoleon?
Francis II
Francis II did more than abdicate: he released every state and official from their oaths to the empire, which kept Napoleon or anyone else from being elected in his place.
Q 04Which philosopher quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was 'in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire'?
Voltaire
Voltaire was writing about a century after the wars of religion had cost the empire land and central authority it never recovered, so the grand old title rang hollow.
Q 05Which Italian city did Barbarossa force to surrender in 1162 and then largely destroy?
Milan
Milan's people were driven out into the countryside, but the city was soon rebuilt, and in 1176 the allied cities of northern Italy dealt Barbarossa a heavy defeat.
Q 06After a 1512 decree, the empire was often styled the Holy Roman Empire 'of the' what?
German Nation
German Nation was added once the emperors had lost their grip on Italy, perhaps to mark the narrower realm, though historians dispute whether the suffix was ever truly official.
Q 07Nazi propaganda later labelled the Holy Roman Empire as which 'Reich'?
The First
The First Reich in Nazi counting, with the German Empire of 1871 as the Second: the scheme let Hitler's regime pose as the rightful heir to a thousand years of empire.
Q 08Besides Germany and Italy, which kingdom joined the empire in 1032 as its third main component?
Burgundy
Burgundy came to the emperor by bequest when its childless last king died in 1032; the realm was later known as the Kingdom of Arles.
Q 09To which pope did Emperor Henry IV make his humiliating 1077 'Walk to Canossa'?
Gregory VII
Gregory VII had excommunicated Henry, who by tradition stood three days in the snow outside Canossa castle as a penitent before the pope lifted the ban.
Q 10Which 1122 agreement between Henry V and the papacy ended the Investiture Controversy?
The Concordat of Worms
The Concordat of Worms split the ceremony in two: the Church invested bishops with ring and staff, while the emperor granted their lands with a sceptre, keeping them his vassals.
Q 11How did Emperor Frederick Barbarossa die in 1190 on the Third Crusade?
Drowning in a river
Drowning in a river in what is now southern Turkey ended his crusade before it reached the Holy Land, and most of his leaderless army simply turned for home.
Q 12Which excommunicated ruler won back Jerusalem by treaty rather than battle on the Sixth Crusade?
Frederick II
Frederick II entered Jerusalem under the pope's ban and placed the crown on his own head in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with no patriarch there to crown him.
Q 13Which Iberian kingdom's ruler, Alfonso X, was elected German king in 1257 but never set foot in Germany?
Castile
Q 21Which Habsburg, father of Maximilian I, was the last emperor crowned in Rome?
Frederick III
Frederick III was crowned by the pope in Rome in 1452 and then won most of his quarrels by simply outliving his rivals, reuniting the divided Austrian lands for his son.
Q 22What did the empire's 1495 reform diet outlaw, sending such disputes to a new supreme court?
Feuds between nobles
Feuds between nobles had been a lawful way to press a claim; the Perpetual Peace of 1495 banned them for ever and sent such quarrels to the new Imperial Chamber Court.
Q 23Which league of merchant cities, led by Lübeck, dominated Baltic and North Sea trade in the medieval empire?
The Hanseatic League
Castile's Alfonso X claimed the crown through his Hohenstaufen mother and spent heavily on the cause, but never travelled to Germany and gave up the claim in 1275.
Q 14Who in 1273 became the first Habsburg to hold the royal title, though he was never crowned emperor?
Rudolf I
Rudolf I twice defeated Ottokar II of Bohemia, who fell in battle in 1278, then granted the recovered duchies of Austria and Styria to his own sons, founding Habsburg power there.
Q 15Which 1356 decree by Charles IV fixed the college of prince-electors and imperial election rules?
The Golden Bull
The Golden Bull, named for its gold seal, made the electors near-sovereign in their own lands, with hereditary titles and the right to mint coins and hold their own courts.
Q 16How many prince-electors chose the emperor under Charles IV's 1356 decree?
Seven
Seven electors chose the king: the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne and four lay princes, and from 1356 four of their votes were enough to settle it.
Q 17Which city did Charles IV make the seat of the emperor, ushering in that land's 'Golden Age'?
Prague
He built up Bohemia as the Luxembourg dynasty's core land; the Kingdom of Bohemia had been raised from a duchy in 1198.
Q 18To what title did a prospective emperor first have to be elected before claiming the crown?
King of the Romans
King of the Romans was the title an election conferred; from 1508 rulers called themselves emperor-elect at once, with papal consent, instead of travelling to Rome to be crowned.
Q 19In which Italian city, rather than Rome, did Clement VII crown Charles V in 1530, the last papal imperial coronation?
Bologna
Bologna hosted the ceremony three years after Charles's own unpaid troops had sacked Rome, forcing Clement to shelter in Castel Sant'Angelo.
Q 20Which city regularly hosted imperial elections from the 14th century onward?
Frankfurt
Frankfurt's electors voted in a side chapel of St Bartholomew's church, and from 1562 new rulers were crowned in the same building as well.
The Hanseatic League began as an alliance of trading towns formed to protect their merchants abroad.
Q 24Which 1555 settlement let the empire's rulers choose Catholicism or Lutheranism for their territories?
The Peace of Augsburg
The Peace of Augsburg made each prince's choice binding on his subjects, a rule later summed up as cuius regio, eius religio; dissenters could only sell up and move away.
Q 25In which war of 1546–47 did Charles V defeat the Protestant princes without crushing Protestantism?
The Schmalkaldic War
The Schmalkaldic War ended with Charles V's victory at Mühlberg in 1547, but a second princes' revolt five years later put him to flight and ended his hopes of restoring one church by force.
Q 26When Charles V split his inheritance, who received the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian lands?
His brother Ferdinand
His brother Ferdinand had governed the Austrian lands since 1521 and was already the elected heir to the empire, while Charles's son Philip took Spain, the Netherlands and the Americas.
Q 27Which reclusive emperor, patron of the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Kepler, died in 1612 with the empire sliding toward war?
Rudolf II
Rudolf II preferred alchemy, astrology and his art collection to governing, and his brother Matthias forced him to hand over one crown after another before he died.
Q 28The 1648 Peace of Westphalia was negotiated and signed in which two cities?
Osnabrück and Münster
Osnabrück and Münster split the congress in two, Sweden treating with the emperor's envoys in one town and France in the other; both were declared neutral ground for the talks.
Q 29About how many territories were represented in the Imperial Diet at the time of the Peace of Westphalia?
300
About 300 territories had a voice there, because the list ran from the great electorates down to abbeys, free cities and counts whose lands covered only a few square miles.
Q 30From 1663 until the empire's dissolution the Imperial Diet sat in permanent session in which city?
Regensburg
Regensburg's diet met in 1663 to deal with the Ottoman threat and simply never went home, sitting on as a standing congress of envoys until the empire ended.