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Another was Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. ). Tacitus was a Roman aristocrat born 150 years after Caesar, in Gaul, the province that the emperor had won. He enjoyed a successful political career, becoming senator, consul, and eventually governor of the Roman province of Asia, shortly before his death. , Tacitus described the Germanic tribes, providing a detailed ethnographic account. Despite its polemical intent—it was written in order to contrast the virtue and vigor of the “barbarians” with the decadence and debility of the Romans—and its reliance on secondhand accounts of the Germanic tribes’ customs, his work provides an interesting picture of the Romans’ views of their “barbaric” northern neighbors.

Peter, who shall not practice violence under the cloak of religion, but shall teach the sound doctrine of St. Peter. I Henry, king by the grace of God, do say unto thee, together with all our bishops: Descend, descend, to be damned throughout the ages. Source: Emperor Henry IV. ” In Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents, edited by Maureen C. Miller (New York: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2005), pp. 87–88. As these religious and political controversies raged at the highest rungs of the medieval social order, during the 11th and 12th centuries, the common people living in the German lands also experienced dramatic change.

In the 770s, Charlemagne extended the Carolingian Empire into northern Italy as well, liberating the papacy from the Germanic occupiers of the region, the Lombards. , when he marched on Rome to restore Pope Leo III (750–816) after a revolt. In return for his support of the Roman Catholic Church, Charlemagne’s imperial authority in western Europe was confirmed by his coronation as emperor by Pope Leo in Rome. , as the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, an institution that would dominate Germany for a millennium.