They meant that the Roman Caesar was not the lord of all, as he was styled by his worshippers, but that only Christ was Lord (Revelation 17:17).
"The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar".
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, took it as given that the legacy belonged rightfully to the Habsburgs, but the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV believed just as fervently that the title of Roman Caesar was his.
Mehmed had assumed the title of Kayser-i Rum (Roman Caesar) and, at the same time, described himself as "the lord of the two lands and the two seas" (i.e., Anatolia and the Balkans, the Aegean and Black seas), a designation that reflected his idea of the empire.
The term "Holy Roman emperor" is now generally used, for convenience, to designate the Western sovereigns, though the title was at first simply "emperor" (imperator; the German form kaiser being derived from the Roman caesar), then "august emperor," then, from 971, "Roman emperor".
My room has chocolate-and-coffee flock wallpaper, a monochrome portrait of Arnold Bennett courtesy of the Café Royal, a dubious painting of Exmoor ponies, a portrait (Delia in the Country), wall-mounted plates, books, lamps, a small teapot shaped like a butcher's shop, a gold brocade chair, a large resin bust of a Roman Caesar … I could go on.
Borrowed from Roman caesars via ancient Russia, it sweeps aside considerations of consultation or democracy.
"They are like the Roman Caesars who had to give people bread and circuses," he said.
This dye, known as Tyrian purple, was later used to colour the cloaks of the Roman Caesars.
In the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, the reception of Roman law was facilitated because its emperors cherished the idea of being the direct successors of the Roman Caesars; Roman law, collected in the Code of Justinian (Corpus Juris Civilis) by the emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565, could be regarded as still being in effect simply because it was the imperial law.
The capture of Constantinople bestowed on Mehmed incomparable glory and prestige and immense authority in his own country, so that he began to look upon himself as the heir of the Roman Caesars and the champion of Islam in holy war.
