书名：The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History神圣罗马帝国：一千年的欧洲史 
作者：Peter H. Wilson彼得·H.威尔逊
出版社名称：Penguin
出版时间：2017
语种：英文
ISBN：9780141047478
商品尺寸：13 x 4.6 x 19.6 cm
包装：平装
页数：1008
神圣罗马帝国是962年至1806年地跨西欧和中欧的封建君主制帝国，版图以日耳曼尼亚为核心，包括一些周边地区，在鼎盛时期包括了意大利北部和勃艮第还有弗里西亚。神圣罗马帝国存在了近千年，对欧洲产生了深远影响。

神圣罗马帝国是一个庞大、古老、独特的实体，从查理曼大帝建立到1000年后被拿破仑摧毁，它构成了欧洲的心脏。它是许多发明和思想的伟大引擎，它是许多现代欧洲国家的起源，从德国到捷克共和国；它与意大利、法国和波兰的关系决定了无数战争的进程——事实上，没有它，欧洲历史作为一个整体就毫无意义。

牛津大学历史教授彼得•H.威尔逊（Peter H.Wilson）的这本The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History《神圣罗马帝国：一千年的欧洲史》是一本集大成的研究神圣罗马帝国的学术专著，涵盖了帝国从800年兴起于查理曼帝国起，直到1806年灭亡的历史进程。书中对帝国的缘起、背后的政治思想演变、帝国的组织机构、政治运作、社会生活、法律制度等进行了非常全面且细致的研究，内容客观、真实、公正，非常值得历史爱好者或研究者阅读。

A great, sprawling, ancient and unique entity, the Holy Roman Empire, from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later, formed the heart of Europe. It was a great engine for inventions and ideas, it was the origin of many modern European states, from Germany to the Czech Republic, its relations with Italy, France and Poland dictated the course of countless wars - indeed European history as a whole makes no sense without it.
In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Empire worked. It is not a chronological history, but an attempt to convey to readers why it was so important and how it changed over its existence. The result is a tour de force - a book that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power, about diplomacy and the nature of European civilization and about the legacy of the Empire, which has continued to haunt its offspring, from Imperial and Nazi Germany to the European Union.

Review
Masterly...Peter H Wilson condenses a great deal of modern scholarship while wearing his learning lightly.(Daniel Johnson The Sunday Times)

Wilson's history represents the culmination of a lifetime of research and thought, and in its scope and depth of detail is an astonishing scholarly achievement. The author moves from the grand themes to detail with felicity. (Jonathan Steinberg The Spectator)

As vast and capacious as the empire it describes, his book is as definitive a study of its subject as one could hope to read...The Holy Roman Empire deserves to be hailed as a magnum opus.
(Tom Holland The Telegraph)

Wilson makes the complex understandable.(Christopher Kissane The Guardian)

Peter Wilson is to be congratulated on writing the only English-language work that deals with the empire from start to finish and on the basis of staggering erudition. He will not thank anyone for saying so, but it is also a book that is relevant to our own times. (Brendan Simms The Times)
Peter H. Wilsonis the author of the highly acclaimed Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War (2009). He is the Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford.
Part I Ideal
1 Two Swords
2 Christendom
3 Sovereignty
Part II Belonging
4 Lands
5 Identities
6 Nation
Part III Governance
7 Kingship
8 Territory
9 Dynasty
Part IV Society
10 Authority
11 Association
12 Justice
13 Afterlife
The Holy Roman Empire’s history lies at the heart of the European experience. Understanding that history explains how much of the continent developed between the early Middle Ages and the nineteenth century. It reveals important aspects which have become obscured by the more familiar story of European history as that of separate nation states. The Empire lasted for more than a millennium, well over twice as long as imperial Rome itself, and encompassed much of the continent. In addition to present-day Germany, it included all or part often other modern countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. Others were also linked to it, like Hungary, Spain and Sweden, or involved in its history in often forgotten ways, such as England, which provided one German king (Richard of Cornwall, 1257-72). More fundamentally, the east—west and north—south tensions in Europe both intersect in the old core lands of the Empire between the Rhine, Elbe and Oder rivers and the Alps. These tensions were reflected in the fluidity of the Empire’s borders and the patchwork character of its internal subdivisions. In short, the Empire’s history is not merely part of numerous distinct national histories, but lies at the heart of the continents general development.
This, however, is not how the Empire’s history is usually presented. Preparing for the Continental Congress that would give his country its constitution in 1787, the future US president James Madison looked to Europe’s past and present states to build his case for a strong federal union. Reviewing the Holy Roman Empire, then still one of the largest European states, he concluded it was ‘a nerveless body; incapable of regulating its own members; insecure against external dangers: and agitated with unceasing fermentation in its own bowels.’ Its history was simply a catalogue ‘of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak… of general imbecility, confusion and misery.’
Madison was far from alone in this opinion. The seventeenth-century philosopher Samuel Pufendorf famously described the Empire as a ‘monstrosity’ because he felt it had degenerated from a regular’ monarchy into an ‘irregular body’. A century later, Voltaire quipped it was neither holy, Roman nor an empire.