Observations on the Dead Emperor Collected from Annals and Laws

§. III.

Fraud committed in the persons of the dead;

Where it was not sufficiently verified to all that an Emperor had emigrated from life, perverse men have fallen into such audacity that they would feign the person of the Augustus, usurp supreme dignity, and thus fall into the crime of maiestas treason. For although they seem to have committed nothing but fraud in a person, yet we observe that by such fraud a path is paved to the gravest crimes, to be repressed by various punishments. Cf. Eisenhart, Dissertation on Fraud in Person, ch. X §. 10; Carpzov, Practical Criminal Law, qu. XCIII n. 95 to the end; Engelschall, Dissertation on the Change of Names, ch. III §. 19; and in the Lex Visigothorum, Book VII, tit. V, ch. 6, we read the caution: He who imposes a false name on himself, or changes his lineage, or feigns parents, or has made any imposture, shall be held guilty of falsity. Many kingdoms have had personated kings, concerning whom and other scoundrels of this kind, see the singular book of Johann Baptista de Recoles.

Also of Emperors, such as Henry V,

Therefore it is not a wonder that there have also been fake Emperors in the Roman-German Empire. Robert of Mont to the year 1126 in Pistor Johann Pistorius, Vol. I, Writers, p. 621, commemorates that the face of Henry V was usurped, saying: > Regarding this Emperor, certain things are said which we have learned are fabulous. For it is reported that he feigned himself as if dead and, secretly fleeing the presence of his own, undertook a pilgrimage, and in the end became a monk at Cluny. In truth, however (as it is said), there was a certain man greatly similar to the same Emperor and very strong in bodily powers, who, undertaking the monastic life at Cluny, asserted most firmly that he was the Emperor Henry. These things to the year 1138, unless he speaks of another impostor, which is less likely to be true, he declares thus: > In these times, a certain pseudo-emperor arose in the parts of Germany, who, living for some years at Solothurn in seclusion...