Translatio imperii

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Translatio imperii (Latin for 'transfer of rule') is a historiographical concept that was prominent in the Middle Ages in the thinking and writing of elite groups of the population in Europe, but was the reception of a concept from antiquity.^[1][2] In this concept the process of decline and fall of an empire theoretically is being replaced by a natural succession from one empire to another. Translatio implies that an empire metahistorically can be transferred from hand to hand and place to place, from Troy to Romans and Greeks to Franks (both remaining Romans) and further on to Spain, and has therefore survived.^[3]

In classic antiquity, an authoritative user of this scheme was Virgil, who has been traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. In his work Aeneid, that has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome, he linked the Rome in which he lived, reigned by its first emperor Caesar Augustus, with Troy. The discourse of translatio imperii may be traced from the ninth century to the fourteenth, and may be carried on into the sixteenth century or even further.^[3] In the Early modern period, the translatio scheme was used by many authors who wished to legitimate their new centre of power and to provide it with prestige. In Renaissance Florence, humanists wrote Latin poems fashioning their city as the new Rome, and members of the Medici family as Roman rulers.^[2]

More generally speaking, history is in this concept viewed as a linear succession of transfers of an imperium that invests supreme power in a singular ruler, an "emperor", or sometimes even several emperors, e.g., the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Holy Roman Empire.^{[citation needed]} The concept is closely linked to translatio studii, the geographic movement of learning. Both terms are thought to have their origins in the second chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible (verses 39–40).^[4]