A loosely federated central European political entity that began with the coronation of the German king Otto I as the first emperor in 962. The empire was long troubled, first by the conflict between papal and civil authority and later by religious strife and political fragmentation, and after the 1200s the emperors had little power in most of its constituent states. Upon Francis II's renunciation of his title at Napoleon's instigation in 1806, the empire ceased to exist.