Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire

"This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

The phrase

Language	Form
French	Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.
English	This body which called itself, and still calls itself, the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
Popular short form	"Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

Origin

The line comes from Voltaire's Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations (1756), chapter 70, in his discussion of the German princes and the imperial title under Charles IV. It is one of the most quoted single sentences in European historiography — partly because it is funny, and partly because by the time Voltaire wrote it, it was already obviously true.

By 1756 the Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation — the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation — was a confederation of more than 300 sovereign-ish territories: kingdoms, duchies, prince-bishoprics, free cities, imperial knights. The Emperor was elected (usually a Habsburg) but had no real fiscal or military authority over the member states. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) had formalized that arrangement a century earlier. What remained was a legal framework, an imperial diet, and a title.

Voltaire was writing during the Seven Years' War, in which the Reich had just been thoroughly outclassed by Frederick the Great's Prussia — itself one of its own member states.

The three-part dismissal

Voltaire's structure is the joke. He attacks each adjective in the official name in order:

1. "Holy"

The Empire claimed sacral legitimacy as the continuation of Charlemagne's empire crowned by the Pope in 800. By the 18th century:

The Pope and the Emperor had been in open conflict for centuries (the Investiture Controversy, the various excommunications, the Reformation).
Half the member states were Protestant after 1555 (Peace of Augsburg) and 1648 (Westphalia). A "Holy" empire that contained Lutheran Saxony, Calvinist Brandenburg, and Catholic Bavaria as theological equals had abandoned the original meaning of the word.

2. "Roman"

The claim of continuity with ancient Rome was always thin and by Voltaire's time was archaeological. The Empire was:

Centered in Germany and ruled in German.
Composed mostly of territories Rome never controlled (everything east of the Rhine and north of the Danube).
Politically and legally a feudal Germanic structure, not a Mediterranean imperial one.

3. "An Empire"

This was the cleanest hit. An empire implies central authority over subordinate territories. By 1756:

The Emperor could not levy taxes without the Diet's consent.
He could not raise an army from member states except by negotiation.
Princes signed their own treaties, fought their own wars (sometimes against the Emperor), and minted their own coins.
Prussia and Austria — the two largest member states — were currently at war with each other.

Whatever this was, it was not an empire in any working sense of the word.

Why the line endures

Three reasons:

It is a complete argument in one sentence. Voltaire isolates a name, breaks it into three claims, and refutes each. The form is itself the lesson: when an institution's official self-description has drifted from reality, list the words and check them one by one.
It models a specific kind of historical skepticism. Take an institution at its own word, then check whether the word still means anything. This is a transferable move — it works on "People's Republic of —", "Democratic —", "Free —", and most corporate mission statements.
It outlived its target. The Holy Roman Empire was formally dissolved fifty years later, in 1806, when Francis II abdicated the imperial title under pressure from Napoleon. Voltaire's sentence had already buried it rhetorically.

In practice

Useful as a check on any name that does heavy lifting:

When an institution insists on a label. The insistence is usually a tell. Things that are obviously holy, Roman, or imperial don't need to keep saying so.
When a name has survived its meaning. Names are sticky; the things they refer to are not. The gap between the two is where Voltaire's joke lives, and it is almost always worth measuring.