Charlemagne

Charlemagne
Rex Francorum (King of the Franks)
Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans)

A coin of Charlemagne with the inscription KAROLVS

IMP AVG ("Carolus Imperator Augustus")
Reign 768–814
Coronation 25 December 800
Predecessor Pepin the Short
Successor Louis the Pious
 Father Pepin the Short
Mother Bertrada of Laon
Born possibly 742
Liège
Died 28 January 814
Aachen
Burial Aachen Cathedral
Blessed Carolus Magnus

Reliquary of Blessed Charles Augustus

Venerated Roman Catholic Church (Germany
in and France)
Beatified 814, Aachen by a court bishop,
later confirmed by Pope Benedict
XIV [1]
Canonized 1166 by Antipope Paschal III [2]
Major Aachen Cathedral
shrine
Feast 28 January (Aachen and
Osnabrück)
Attributes Fleur-de-lis; German Eagle
Patronage Lovers (both licit and illicit),
schoolchildren, the Kings of
France and Germany, men on
horseback, men on the scaffold,
crusaders
Carolingian dynasty
Pippinids

• Pippin the Elder (c. 580–640)

• Grimoald (616–656)

• Childebert the Adopted (d. 662)

Arnulfings

• Arnulf of Metz (582–640)

• Chlodulf of Metz (d. 696 or 697)
• Ansegisel (c.602–before 679)
• Pippin the Middle (c.635–714)
• Grimoald II (d. 714)
• Drogo of Champagne (670–708)

• Theudoald (d. 714)

Carolingians

• Charles Martel (686–741)

• Carloman (d. 754)
• Pepin the Short (714–768)
• Carloman I (751–771)
 • Charlemagne (d. 814)

• Louis the Pious (778–840)

After the Treaty of Verdun (843)

• Lothair I, Holy Roman Emperor (795–855)

(Middle Francia)
• Charles the Bald (823–877)
(Western Francia)

• Louis the German (804–876)

(Eastern Francia)

Charlemagne (pronounced /ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/; Latin:

Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus, meaning
Charles the Great; possibly 742 – 28 January
814) was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor
of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800
to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish
kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of
Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he
conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator
Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800.
This temporarily made him a rival of the Byzantine
Emperor in Constantinople. His rule is also
associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a
revival of art, religion, and culture through the
medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign
conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne
helped define both Western Europe and the Middle
Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal
lists of Germany (where he is known as Karl der
Große), the Holy Roman Empire, and France.

The son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of

Laon, a Frankish queen, he succeeded his father in
768 and co-ruled with his brother Carloman I. The
latter got on badly with Charlemagne, but war was
prevented by the sudden death of Carloman in 771.
Charlemagne continued the policy of his father
towards the papacy and became its protector,
removing the Lombards from power in Italy, and
leading an incursion into Muslim Spain, to which he
was invited by the Muslim governor of Barcelona.
Charlemagne was promised several Iberian cities in
return for giving military aid to the governor;
however, the deal was withdrawn. Subsequently,
Charlemagne's retreating army experienced its
worst defeat at the hands of the Basques, at the
Battle of Roncesvalles (778) (memorialised,
although heavily fictionalised, in the Song of
Roland). He also campaigned against the peoples to
his east, especially the Saxons, and after a
protracted war subjected them to his rule. By
forcibly converting them to Christianity, he
integrated them into his realm and thus paved the
way for the later Ottonian dynasty.

Today he is regarded not only as the founding

father of both French and German monarchies, but
also as a Pater Europae (father of Europe)[3]: his
empire united most of Western Europe for the first
time since the Romans, and the Carolingian
renaissance encouraged the formation of a common
European identity.[4]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Background
• 2 Personal traits
o 2.1 Date and place of birth
o 2.2 Language
o 2.3 Personal appearance
o 2.4 Dress
• 3 Rise to power
o 3.1 Early life
o 3.2 Joint rule
• 4 Italian campaigns
o 4.1 Conquest of Lombardy
o 4.2 Southern Italy
• 5 Charles and his children
• 6 Spanish campaigns
o 6.1 Roncesvalles campaign
o 6.2 Wars with the Moors
• 7 Eastern campaigns
o 7.1 Saxon Wars
o 7.2 Submission of Bavaria
o 7.3 Avar campaigns
o 7.4 Northeast Slav expeditions
o 7.5 Southeast Slav expeditions
• 8 Imperium
o 8.1 Imperial diplomacy
o 8.2 Danish attacks
o 8.3 Death
• 9 Administration
o 9.1 Military
o 9.2 Economic and monetary reforms
o 9.3 Education reforms
o 9.4 Church reforms
o 9.5 Writing reforms
o 9.6 Political reforms
 9.6.1 Organization
 9.6.2 Imperial coronation
  9.6.3 Divisio regnorum
• 10 Cultural uses
• 11 Ancestry
• 12 Family
o 12.1 Marriages and heirs
o 12.2 Concubinages and illegitimate
children
• 13 References
o 13.1 Footnotes
o 13.2 Bibliography

• 14 External links

Background
Charlemagne, by Albrecht Dürer.

By the 6th century the West Germanic Franks were

Christianised and Francia, ruled by the
Merovingians, had become the most powerful of the
kingdoms which succeeded the Western Roman
Empire. But following the Battle of Tertry, the
Merovingians declined into a state of
powerlessness, for which they have been dubbed
do-nothing kings (rois fainéants). Almost all
government powers of any consequence were
exercised by their chief officer, the mayor of the
palace or major domus.
In 687, the big Pippin of Herstal, mayor of the
palace of Austrasia, ended the strife between
various kings and their mayors with his victory at
Tertry and became the sole governor of the entire
Frankish kingdom. Pippin himself was the grandson
of two most important figures of the Austrasian
Kingdom, Saint Arnulf of Metz and Pippin of
Landen. Pippin the Middle was eventually
succeeded by his illegitimate son Charles, later
known as Charles Martel (the Hammer). After 737,
Charles governed the Franks without a king on the
throne but desisted from calling himself "king".
Charles was succeeded by his sons Carloman and
Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne. To
curb separatism in the periphery of the realm, the
brothers placed on the throne Childeric III, who
was to be the last Merovingian king.

After Carloman resigned his office, Pepin, with Pope

Zachary's approval, had Childeric III deposed. In
751, Pepin was elected and anointed King of the
Franks and in 754 Pope Stephen II again anointed
him and his young sons, now heirs to the great
realm which already covered most of western and
central Europe. Thus was the Merovingian dynasty
replaced by the Carolingian dynasty, named after
Pepin's father, Charles Martel.

Under the new dynasty, the Frankish kingdom

spread to encompass an area including most of
Western Europe. The division of that kingdom
formed France and Germany;[5] and the religious,
political, and artistic evolutions originating from a
centrally positioned Francia made a defining imprint
on the whole of Western Europe.

[edit] Personal traits

[edit] Date and place of birth

Charlemagne is believed to have been born in 741;

however, several factors have led to a
reconsideration of this date. First, the year 742 was
calculated from his age given at death, rather than
from attestation in primary sources. Another date is
given in the Annales Petaviani, that of 2 April[not in
citation given]
747.[6] In that year, 2 April was at Easter.
The birth of an emperor at Eastertime is a
coincidence likely to provoke comment, but there
was no such comment documented in 747, leading
some to suspect that the Easter birthday was a
pious fiction concocted as a way of honoring the
Emperor. Other commentators weighing the
primary records have suggested that his birth was
one year later, in 748. At present, it is impossible
to be certain of the date of the birth of
Charlemagne. The best guesses include 1 April 747,
after 15 April 747, or 1 April 748, in Herstal (where
his father was born, a town close to Liège in
modern day Belgium), the region from where both
the Merovingian and Carolingian families originated.
He went to live in his father's villa in Jupille when
he was around seven, which caused Jupille to be
listed as a possible place of birth in almost every
history book. Other cities have been suggested,
including, Prüm, Düren, Gauting and Aachen.

Charlemagne (left) and Pippin the Hunchback.

Tenth-century copy of a lost original from about
830.

Dubbed Charles le Magne "Charles the Great", he

was named after his grandfather, Charles Martel.
The name derives from Germanic *karlaz "free
man, commoner",[7] which gave German Kerl "man,
guy" and English churl. His name, however, is first
attested in its Latin form, "Carolus" or "Karolus."

In many European languages, the very word for

"king" derives from Charles' name. (e.g., Polish:
król, Czech: král, Lithuanian: karalius, Latvian:
karalis, Hungarian: király, Bulgarian: крал,
Serbian: краљ, Croatian: kralj, Russian: король,
Turkish: kral, Slovak: král)

[edit] Language

Charlemagne's native language was undoubtedly a

form of Germanic idiom; however, the specifics as
to which remain a matter of controversy. It was
probably a Germanic dialect of the Ripuarian
Franks, but linguists differ on its identity and
chronology. Some linguists go so far as to say that
he did not speak Old Frankish. Old Frankish is
reconstructed from its descendant, Old Low
Franconian, which would give rise to the Dutch
language and to the modern dialects in the German
North Rhineland, which were dubbed Ripuarian in
modern times. Another important source are
loanwords in Old French. Linguists know very little
about Old Frankish, as it is attested mainly as
phrases and words in the law codes of the main
Frankish tribes (especially those of the Salian and
Ripuarian Franks), which are written in Latin
interspersed with Germanic elements.[8] The
Franconian language, which was a form of Lower
German, had been replaced with an Old High
German form in the area comprising the
contemporary Southern Rhineland, The Palatinate
South Hessen and Northern parts of Baden-
Württemberg and Bavaria. The present Dutch
language area along with the modern Ripuarian
areas in the North Rhine region preserved a Lower
German form of Franconian dubbed Old Low
Franconian or Old Dutch.

The area of Charlemagne's birth does not make

determination of his native language easier. Most
historians agree he was born around Liège, like his
father, but some say he was born in or around
Aachen, some 50 km (31 mi) away. At that time,
this was an area of some linguistic diversity. If we
take Liège (around 750) as the centre, we find:

• Old East Low Franconian in the city, north

and northwest;
• the closely related Old Ripuarian Franconian
to the east and in Aachen; and
• Gallo-Romance (the ancestor of the Walloon
dialect of Old French) in the south and
southwest.
The names he gave his children may be indicators
of the language he spoke, as all of his daughters
received Old High German names.

Apart from his native language he also spoke Latin

"as fluently as his own tongue" and understood a
bit of Greek: Grecam vero melius intellegere quam
pronuntiare poterat, "He understood Greek better
than he could pronounce it."[9]

According to a fifteenth century Irish source, he

also spoke Arabic. In the 'Gabhaltais Shearluis
Mhoir' or 'Conquests of Charlemagne' from the
Book of Lismore edited by Douglas Hyde, ch. 10,
p. 35:

When Agiolandus heard the Saracen language from

Charles he marvelled at it greatly. For when
Charles was a youth he had been among the
Paynims in the city which is called Toletum (Toledo)
and he had learnt the language of the Saracens in
that city.

[edit] Personal appearance

Though no description from Charlemagne's lifetime

exists, his personal appearance is known from a
good description by Einhard, author of the
biography Vita Karoli Magni. Einhard tells in his
twenty-second chapter:[10]
He was heavily built, sturdy, and of considerable
stature, although not exceptionally so, since his
height was seven times the length of his own foot.
He had a round head, large and lively eyes, a
slightly larger nose than usual, white but still
attractive hair, a bright and cheerful expression, a
short and fat neck, and he enjoyed good health,
except for the fevers that affected him in the last
few years of his life. Toward the end he dragged
one leg. Even then, he stubbornly did what he
wanted and refused to listen to doctors, indeed he
detested them, because they wanted to persuade
him to stop eating roast meat, as was his wont,
and to be content with boiled meat.

The physical portrait provided by Einhard is

confirmed by contemporary depictions of the
emperor, such as coins and his 8-inch bronze
statue kept in the Louvre. In 1861, Charlemagne's
tomb was opened by scientists who reconstructed
his skeleton and estimated it to be measured
74.9 inches (190 centimeters).[11] A modern study
based on the dimensions of his tibia estimated his
height as 1.84 m. This puts him in the 99th
percentile of tall people of his period given that
average male height of his time was 1.69 m. The
width of the bone suggested he was gracile but not
robust in body build[12]
Charles is well known to have been fair-haired, tall,
and stately, with a disproportionately thick neck.
The Roman tradition of realistic personal portraiture
was in complete eclipse in his time, where
individual traits were submerged in iconic
typecastings. Charlemagne, as an ideal ruler, ought
to be portrayed in the corresponding fashion, any
contemporary would have assumed. The images of
enthroned Charlemagne, God's representative on
Earth, bear more connections to the icons of Christ
in majesty than to modern (or antique) conceptions
of portraiture. Charlemagne in later imagery (as in
the Dürer portrait) is often portrayed with flowing
blond hair, due to a misunderstanding of Einhard,
who describes Charlemagne as having canitie
pulchra, or "beautiful white hair", which has been
rendered as blonde or fair in many translations.

[edit] Dress

Charlemagne wore the traditional, inconspicuous

and distinctly non-aristocratic costume of the
Frankish people, described by Einhard thus:

He used to wear the national, that is to say, the

Frank dress: next to his skin a linen shirt and linen
breeches, and above these a tunic fringed with silk;
while hose fastened by bands covered his lower
limbs, and shoes his feet, and he protected his
shoulders and chest in winter by a close-fitting coat
of otter or marten skins.

He wore a blue cloak and always carried a sword

with him. The typical sword was of a golden or
silver hilt. He wore fancy jewelled swords to
banquets or ambassadorial receptions.
Nevertheless:

He despised foreign costumes, however handsome,

and never allowed himself to be robed in them,
except twice in Rome, when he donned the Roman
tunic, chlamys, and shoes; the first time at the
request of Pope Hadrian, the second to gratify Leo,
Hadrian's successor.

He could rise to the occasion when necessary. On

great feast days, he wore embroidery and jewels
on his clothing and shoes. He had a golden buckle
for his cloak on such occasions and would appear
with his great diadem, but he despised such
apparel, according to Einhard, and usually dressed
like the common people.

[edit] Rise to power

[edit] Early life

Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pepin the

Short (714 – 24 September 768, reigned from 751)
and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720 – 12 July 783),
daughter of Caribert of Laon and Bertrada of
Cologne. Records name only Carloman, Gisela, and
a short-lived child named Pippin as his younger
siblings. The semi-mythical Redburga, wife of King
Egbert of Wessex, is sometimes claimed to be his
sister (or sister-in-law or niece), and the legendary
material makes him Roland's maternal uncle
through a lady Bertha.

Much of what is known of Charlemagne's life comes

from his biographer, Einhard, who wrote a Vita
Caroli Magni (or Vita Karoli Magni), the Life of
Charlemagne. Einhard says of the early life of
Charles:

It would be folly, I think, to write a word

concerning Charles' birth and infancy, or even his
boyhood, for nothing has ever been written on the
subject, and there is no one alive now who can give
information on it. Accordingly, I determined to pass
that by as unknown, and to proceed at once to
treat of his character, his deeds, and such other
facts of his life as are worth telling and setting
forth, and shall first give an account of his deeds at
home and abroad, then of his character and
pursuits, and lastly of his administration and death,
omitting nothing worth knowing or necessary to
know.
On the death of Pepin, the kingdom of the Franks
was divided—following tradition—between
Charlemagne and Carloman. Charles took the outer
parts of the kingdom, bordering on the sea, namely
Neustria, western Aquitaine, and the northern parts
of Austrasia, while Carloman retained the inner
parts: southern Austrasia, Septimania, eastern
Aquitaine, Burgundy, Provence, and Swabia, lands
bordering on Italy.

[edit] Joint rule

On 9 October, immediately after the funeral of their

father, both the kings withdrew from Saint Denis to
be proclaimed by their nobles and consecrated by
the bishops, Charlemagne in Noyon and Carloman
in Soissons.

The first event of the brothers' reign was the

uprising of the Aquitainians and Gascons, in 769, in
that territory split between the two kings. Years
before, Pippin had suppressed the revolt of Waifer,
Duke of Aquitaine. Now, one Hunold (seemingly
other than Hunald the duke) led the Aquitainians as
far north as Angoulême. Charlemagne met
Carloman, but Carloman refused to participate and
returned to Burgundy. Charlemagne went to war,
leading an army to Bordeaux, where he set up a
camp at Fronsac. Hunold was forced to flee to the
court of Duke Lupus II of Gascony. Lupus, fearing
Charlemagne, turned Hunold over in exchange for
peace. He was put in a monastery. Aquitaine was
finally fully subdued by the Franks.

The brothers maintained lukewarm relations with

the assistance of their mother Bertrada, but in 770
Charlemagne signed a treaty with Duke Tassilo III
of Bavaria and married a Lombard Princess
(commonly known today as Desiderata), the
daughter of King Desiderius, to surround Carloman
with his own allies. Though Pope Stephen III first
opposed the marriage with the Lombard princess,
he would soon have little to fear from a Frankish-
Lombard alliance.

Less than a year after his marriage, Charlemagne

repudiated Desiderata, and quickly remarried to a
13-year-old Swabian named Hildegard. The
repudiated Desiderata returned to her father's court
at Pavia. The Lombard's wrath was now aroused
and he would gladly have allied with Carloman to
defeat Charles. But before war could break out,
Carloman died on 5 December 771. Carloman's
wife Gerberga fled to Desiderius' court with her
sons for protection.

[edit] Italian campaigns

[edit] Conquest of Lombardy
The Frankish king Charlemagne was a devout
Catholic who maintained a close relationship with
the papacy throughout his life. In 772, when Pope
Hadrian I was threatened by invaders, the king
rushed to Rome to provide assistance. Shown here,
the pope asks Charlemagne for help at a meeting
near Rome

At the succession of Pope Hadrian I in 772, he

demanded the return of certain cities in the former
exarchate of Ravenna as in accordance with a
promise of Desiderius' succession. Desiderius
instead took over certain papal cities and invaded
the Pentapolis, heading for Rome. Hadrian sent
embassies to Charlemagne in autumn requesting
he enforce the policies of his father, Pippin.
Desiderius sent his own embassies denying the
pope's charges. The embassies both met at
Thionville and Charlemagne upheld the pope's side.
Charlemagne promptly demanded what the pope
had demanded and Desiderius promptly swore
never to comply. Charlemagne and his uncle
Bernard crossed the Alps in 773 and chased the
Lombards back to Pavia, which they then besieged.
Charlemagne temporarily left the siege to deal with
Adelchis, son of Desiderius, who was raising an
army at Verona. The young prince was chased to
the Adriatic littoral and he fled to Constantinople to
plead for assistance from Constantine V, who was
waging war with Bulgaria.

The siege lasted until the spring of 774, when

Charlemagne visited the pope in Rome. There he
confirmed his father's grants of land, with some
later chronicles claiming—falsely—that he also
expanded them, granting Tuscany, Emilia, Venice,
and Corsica. The pope granted him the title
patrician. He then returned to Pavia, where the
Lombards were on the verge of surrendering.

In return for their lives, the Lombards surrendered

and opened the gates in early summer. Desiderius
was sent to the abbey of Corbie and his son
Adelchis died in Constantinople a patrician. Charles,
unusually, had himself crowned with the Iron
Crown and made the magnates of Lombardy do
homage to him at Pavia. Only Duke Arechis II of
Benevento refused to submit and proclaimed
independence. Charlemagne was then master of
Italy as king of the Lombards. He left Italy with a
garrison in Pavia and a few Frankish counts in place
that very year.
There was still instability, however, in Italy. In 776,
Dukes Hrodgaud of Friuli and Hildeprand of Spoleto
rebelled. Charlemagne rushed back from Saxony
and defeated the duke of Friuli in battle. The duke
was slain. The duke of Spoleto signed a treaty.
Their co-conspirator, Arechis, was not subdued,
and Adelchis, their candidate in Byzantium, never
left that city. Northern Italy was now faithfully his.

[edit] Southern Italy

In 787 Charlemagne directed his attention toward

Benevento, where Arechis was reigning
independently. Charlemagne besieged Salerno, and
Arechis submitted to vassalage. However, with his
death in 792, Benevento again proclaimed
independence under his son Grimoald III. Grimoald
was attacked by armies of Charles or his sons
many times, but Charlemagne himself never
returned to the Mezzogiorno, and Grimoald never
was forced to surrender to Frankish suzerainty.

[edit] Charles and his children

During the first peace of any substantial length
(780–782), Charles began to appoint his sons to
positions of authority within the realm, in the
tradition of the kings and mayors of the past. In
781 he made his two younger sons kings, having
them crowned by the Pope. The elder of these two,
Carloman, was made king of Italy, taking the Iron
Crown which his father had first worn in 774, and in
the same ceremony was renamed "Pippin." The
younger of the two, Louis, became king of
Aquitaine. Charlemagne ordered Pippin and Louis to
be raised in the customs of their kingdoms, and he
gave their regents some control of their
subkingdoms, but real power was always in his
hands, though he intended his sons to inherit their
realms some day. Nor did he tolerate
insubordination in his sons: in 792, he banished his
eldest, though illegitimate, son, Pippin the
Hunchback, to the monastery of Prüm, because the
young man had joined a rebellion against him.

Charles was determined to have his children

educated, including his daughters, as he himself
was not. His children were taught all the arts, and
his daughters were learned in the way of women.
His sons took archery, horsemanship, and other
outdoor activities.

The sons fought many wars on behalf of their

father when they came of age. Charles was mostly
preoccupied with the Bretons, whose border he
shared and who insurrected on at least two
occasions and were easily put down, but he was
also sent against the Saxons on multiple occasions.
In 805 and 806, he was sent into the Böhmerwald
(modern Bohemia) to deal with the Slavs living
there (Czechs). He subjected them to Frankish
authority and devastated the valley of the Elbe,
forcing a tribute on them. Pippin had to hold the
Avar and Beneventan borders but also fought the
Slavs to his north. He was uniquely poised to fight
the Byzantine Empire when finally that conflict
arose after Charlemagne's imperial coronation and
a Venetian rebellion. Finally, Louis was in charge of
the Spanish March and also went to southern Italy
to fight the duke of Benevento on at least one
occasion. He took Barcelona in a great siege in the
year 797 (see below).

Charlemagne's attitude toward his daughters has

been the subject of much discussion. He kept them
at home with him and refused to allow them to
contract sacramental marriages – possibly to
prevent the creation of cadet branches of the family
to challenge the main line, as had been the case
with Tassilo of Bavaria – yet he tolerated their
extramarital relationships, even rewarding their
common-law husbands, and treasured the
illegitimate grandchildren they produced for him.
He also, apparently, refused to believe stories of
their wild behavior. After his death the surviving
daughters were banished from the court by their
brother, the pious Louis, to take up residence in the
convents they had been bequeathed by their
father. At least one of them, Bertha, had a
recognised relationship, if not a marriage, with
Angilbert, a member of Charlemagne's court circle.

[edit] Spanish campaigns

See also: Abbasid-Carolingian alliance

[edit] Roncesvalles campaign

Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne in an

illustration taken from a manuscript of a chanson
de geste

According to the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir, the

Diet of Paderborn had received the representatives
of the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, Girona,
Barcelona, and Huesca. Their masters had been
cornered in the Iberian peninsula by Abd ar-
Rahman I, the Umayyad emir of Córdoba. These
Moorish or "Saracen" rulers offered their homage to
the great king of the Franks in return for military
support. Seeing an opportunity to extend
Christendom and his own power and believing the
Saxons to be a fully conquered nation,
Charlemagne agreed to go to Spain.

In 778, he led the Neustrian army across the

Western Pyrenees, while the Austrasians,
Lombards, and Burgundians passed over the
Eastern Pyrenees. The armies met at Zaragoza and
Charlemagne received the homage of the Muslim
rulers, Sulayman al-Arabi and Kasmin ibn Yusuf,
but the city did not fall for him. Indeed,
Charlemagne was facing the toughest battle of his
career where the Muslims had the upper hand and
forced him to retreat. He decided to go home, since
he could not trust the Basques, whom he had
subdued by conquering Pamplona. He turned to
leave Iberia, but as he was passing through the
Pass of Roncesvalles one of the most famous
events of his long reign occurred. The Basques fell
on his rearguard and baggage train, utterly
destroying it. The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, less a
battle than a mere skirmish, left many famous
dead: among which were the seneschal Eggihard,
the count of the palace Anselm, and the warden of
the Breton March, Roland, inspiring the subsequent
creation of the Song of Roland (La Chanson de
Roland).

[edit] Wars with the Moors

Harun al-Rashid receiving a delegation of

Charlemagne in Baghdad, by Julius Köckert.

The conquest of Italy brought Charlemagne in

contact with the Saracens who, at the time,
controlled the Mediterranean. Pippin, his son, was
much occupied with Saracens in Italy. Charlemagne
conquered Corsica and Sardinia at an unknown
date and in 799 the Balearic Islands. The islands
were often attacked by Saracen pirates, but the
counts of Genoa and Tuscany (Boniface) kept them
at bay with large fleets until the end of
Charlemagne's reign. Charlemagne even had
contact with the caliphal court in Baghdad. In 797
(or possibly 801), the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-
Rashid, presented Charlemagne with an Asian
elephant named Abul-Abbas and a clock.[13]
In Hispania the struggle against the Moors
continued unabated throughout the latter half of his
reign. His son Louis was in charge of the Spanish
border. In 785, his men captured Gerona
permanently and extended Frankish control into the
Catalan littoral for the duration of Charlemagne's
reign (and much longer, it remained nominally
Frankish until the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258). The
Muslim chiefs in the northeast of Islamic Spain
were constantly revolting against Córdoban
authority, and they often turned to the Franks for
help. The Frankish border was slowly extended until
795, when Gerona, Cardona, Ausona, and Urgel
were united into the new Spanish March, within the
old duchy of Septimania.

In 797 Barcelona, the greatest city of the region,

fell to the Franks when Zeid, its governor, rebelled
against Córdoba and, failing, handed it to them.
The Umayyad authority recaptured it in 799.
However, Louis of Aquitaine marched the entire
army of his kingdom over the Pyrenees and
besieged it for two years, wintering there from 800
to 801, when it capitulated. The Franks continued
to press forward against the emir. They took
Tarragona in 809 and Tortosa in 811. The last
conquest brought them to the mouth of the Ebro
and gave them raiding access to Valencia,
prompting the Emir al-Hakam I to recognize their
conquests in 812.
[edit] Eastern campaigns
[edit] Saxon Wars

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Map showing Charlemagne's additions (in light

green) to the Frankish Kingdom.

Charlemagne was engaged in almost constant

battle throughout his reign, often at the head of his
elite scara bodyguard squadrons, with his
legendary sword Joyeuse in hand. After thirty years
of war and eighteen battles—the Saxon Wars—he
conquered Saxonia and proceeded to convert the
conquered to Christianity, sometimes using force.
The Germanic Saxons were divided into four
subgroups in four regions. Nearest to Austrasia was
Westphalia and furthest away was Eastphalia. In
between these two kingdoms was that of Engria
and north of these three, at the base of the Jutland
peninsula, was Nordalbingia.

In his first campaign, Charlemagne forced the

Engrians in 773 to submit and cut down an Irminsul
pillar near Paderborn. The campaign was cut short
by his first expedition to Italy. He returned in 775,
marching through Westphalia and conquered the
Saxon fort of Sigiburg. He then crossed Engria,
where he defeated the Saxons again. Finally, in
Eastphalia, he defeated a Saxon force, and its
leader Hessi converted to Christianity. He returned
through Westphalia, leaving encampments at
Sigiburg and Eresburg, which had, up until then,
been important Saxon bastions. All of Saxony but
Nordalbingia was under his control, but Saxon
resistance had not ended.

Following his campaign in Italy subjugating the

dukes of Friuli and Spoleto, Charlemagne returned
very rapidly to Saxony in 776, where a rebellion
had destroyed his fortress at Eresburg. The Saxons
were once again brought to heel, but their main
leader, duke Widukind, managed to escape to
Denmark, home of his wife. Charlemagne built a
new camp at Karlstadt. In 777, he called a national
diet at Paderborn to integrate Saxony fully into the
Frankish kingdom. Many Saxons were baptised as
Christians.

In the summer of 779, he again invaded Saxony

and reconquered Eastphalia, Engria, and
Westphalia. At a diet near Lippe, he divided the
land into missionary districts and himself assisted
in several mass baptisms (780). He then returned
to Italy and, for the first time, there was no
immediate Saxon revolt. In 780 Charlemagne
decreed the death penalty for all Saxons who failed
to be baptised, who failed to keep Christian
festivals, and who cremated their dead. Saxony
was peaceful from 780 to 782.

Charlemagne (742-814) receiving the submission

of Witikind at Paderborn in 785, by Ary Scheffer
(1795-1858). Versailles.

He returned to Saxony in 782 and instituted a code

of law and appointed counts, both Saxon and
Frank. The laws were draconian on religious issues,
and the indigenous forms of Germanic polytheism
were gravely threatened by Christianisation. This
revived a renewal of the old conflict. That year, in
autumn, Widukind returned and led a new revolt,
which resulted in several assaults on the church. In
response, at Verden in Lower Saxony, Charlemagne
allegedly ordered the beheading of 4,500 Saxons
who had been caught practising their native
paganism after conversion to Christianity, known as
the Massacre of Verden ("Verdener Blutgericht").
The killings triggered three years of renewed
bloody warfare (783-785). During this war the
Frisians were also finally subdued and a large part
of their fleet was burned. The war ended with
Widukind accepting baptism.

Thereafter, the Saxons maintained the peace for

seven years, but in 792 the Westphalians again
rose against their conquerors. The Eastphalians and
Nordalbingians joined them in 793, but the
insurrection did not catch on and was put down by
794. An Engrian rebellion followed in 796, but the
presence of Charlemagne, Christian Saxons and
Slavs quickly crushed it. The last insurrection of the
independent-minded people occurred in 804, more
than thirty years after Charlemagne's first
campaign against them. This time, the most restive
of them, the Nordalbingians, found themselves
effectively disempowered from rebellion. According
to Einhard:

The war that had lasted so many years was at

length ended by their acceding to the terms offered
by the King; which were renunciation of their
national religious customs and the worship of
devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the
Christian faith and religion, and union with the
Franks to form one people.

[edit] Submission of Bavaria

In 788, Charlemagne turned his attention to

Bavaria. He claimed Tassilo was an unfit ruler, on
account of his oath-breaking. The charges were
trumped up, but Tassilo was deposed anyway and
put in the monastery of Jumièges. In 794, he was
made to renounce any claim to Bavaria for himself
and his family (the Agilolfings) at the synod of
Frankfurt. Bavaria was subdivided into Frankish
counties, as had been done with Saxony.

[edit] Avar campaigns

In 788, the Avars, a pagan Asian horde which had

settled down in what is today Hungary (Einhard
called them Huns), invaded Friuli and Bavaria.
Charlemagne was preoccupied until 790 with other
things, but in that year, he marched down the
Danube into their territory and ravaged it to the
Raab. Then, a Lombard army under Pippin marched
into the Drava valley and ravaged Pannonia. The
campaigns would have continued if the Saxons had
not revolted again in 792, breaking seven years of
peace.
For the next two years, Charlemagne was occupied
with the Slavs against the Saxons. Pippin and Duke
Eric of Friuli continued, however, to assault the
Avars' ring-shaped strongholds. The great Ring of
the Avars, their capital fortress, was taken twice.
The booty was sent to Charlemagne at his capital,
Aachen, and redistributed to all his followers and
even to foreign rulers, including King Offa of
Mercia. Soon the Avar tuduns had thrown in the
towel and travelled to Aachen to subject
themselves to Charlemagne as vassals and
Christians. This Charlemagne accepted and sent
one native chief, baptised Abraham, back to Avaria
with the ancient title of khagan. Abraham kept his
people in line, but in 800 the Bulgarians under
Khan Krum swept the Avar state away. In the 10th
century, the Magyars settled the Pannonian plain
and presented a new threat to Charlemagne's
descendants.

[edit] Northeast Slav expeditions

In 789, in recognition of his new pagan neighbours,

the Slavs, Charlemagne marched an Austrasian-
Saxon army across the Elbe into Obotrite territory.
The Slavs immediately submitted under their leader
Witzin. Charlemagne then accepted the surrender
of the Wiltzes under Dragovit and demanded many
hostages and the permission to send, unmolested,
missionaries into the pagan region. The army
marched to the Baltic before turning around and
marching to the Rhine with much booty and no
harassment. The tributary Slavs became loyal
allies. In 795, when the Saxons broke the peace,
the Abotrites and Wiltzes rose in arms with their
new master against the Saxons. Witzin died in
battle and Charlemagne avenged him by harrying
the Eastphalians on the Elbe. Thrasuco, his
successor, led his men to conquest over the
Nordalbingians and handed their leaders over to
Charlemagne, who greatly honoured him. The
Abotrites remained loyal until Charles' death and
fought later against the Danes.

[edit] Southeast Slav expeditions

When Charlemagne incorporated much of Central

Europe, he brought the Frankish state face to face
with the Avars and Slavs in the southeast.[14] The
most southeast Frankish neighbors were Croats,
who settled in Pannonian Croatia and Littoral
Croatian Duchy. While fighting the Avars, the
Franks had called for their support.[15] During the
790s, when Charlemagne campaigned against the
Avars, he won a major victory in 796.[16] Pannonian
Croatian duke Vojnomir of Pannonian Croatia aided
Charlemagne, and the Franks made themselves
overlords over the Croatians of northern Dalmatia,
Slavonia, and Pannonia.[16]
The Frankish commander Eric of Friuli wanted to
extend his dominion by conquering Littoral Croatian
Duchy. During that time, Littoral Croatia was ruled
by duke Višeslav of Croatia, who was one of the
first known Croatian dukes.[17] In the Battle of
Trsat, the forces of Eric fled their positions and
were totally routed by the forces of Višeslav.[17] Eric
himself was among the killed, and his death and
defeat proved a great blow for the Carolingian
Empire.[14][17][18]

Charlemagne also directed his attention to the

Slavs to the west of the Avar khaganate: the
Carantanians and Carniolans. These people were
subdued by the Lombards and Bavarii, were made
tributaries, but were never fully incorporated into
the Frankish state.

[edit] Imperium
[edit] Imperial diplomacy
Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen Cathedral.

In 799, Pope Leo III had been mistreated by the

Romans, who tried to put out his eyes and tear out
his tongue. Leo escaped and fled to Charlemagne
at Paderborn, asking him to intervene in Rome and
restore him. Charlemagne, advised by Alcuin of
York, agreed to travel to Rome, doing so in
November 800 and holding a council on December
1. On 23 December Leo swore an oath of
innocence. At Mass, on Christmas Day (25
December), when Charlemagne knelt at the altar to
pray, the Pope crowned him Imperator Romanorum
("Emperor of the Romans") in Saint Peter's Basilica.
In so doing, the Pope was effectively attempting to
transfer the office from Constantinople to Charles.
Einhard says that Charlemagne was ignorant of the
Pope's intent and did not want any such
coronation:

[H]e at first had such an aversion that he declared

that he would not have set foot in the Church the
day that they [the imperial titles] were conferred,
although it was a great feast-day, if he could have
foreseen the design of the Pope.

Many modern scholars[19] suggest that Charlemagne

was indeed aware of the coronation; certainly he
cannot have missed the bejeweled crown waiting
on the altar when he came to pray. In any event,
he used these circumstances to claim that he was
the renewer of the Roman Empire, which had
apparently fallen into degradation under the
Byzantines. In his official charters, Charles
preferred the style Karolus serenissimus Augustus
a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator
Romanum gubernans imperium[20] ("Charles, most
serene Augustus crowned by God, the great,
peaceful emperor ruling the Roman empire") to a
more direct Imperator Romanorum ("Emperor of
the Romans").

The Iconoclasm of the Isaurian Dynasty and

resulting religious conflicts with the Empress Irene,
sitting on the throne in Constantinople in 800, were
probably the chief causes of the Pope's desire to
formally acclaim Charles as Roman Emperor.[citation
needed]
He also most certainly desired to increase the
influence of the papacy, honour his saviour
Charlemagne, and solve the constitutional issues
then most troubling to European jurists in an era
when Rome was not in the hands of an emperor.
Thus, Charlemagne's assumption of the imperial
title was not an usurpation in the eyes of the
Franks or Italians. It was, however, in Byzantium,
where it was protested by Irene and her successor
Nicephorus I—neither of whom had any great effect
in enforcing their protests.

The Byzantines, however, still held several

territories in Italy: Venice (what was left of the
Exarchate of Ravenna), Reggio (in Calabria),
Brindisi (in Apulia), and Naples (the Ducatus
Neapolitanus). These regions remained outside of
Frankish hands until 804, when the Venetians, torn
by infighting, transferred their allegiance to the
Iron Crown of Pippin, Charles' son. The Pax
Nicephori ended. Nicephorus ravaged the coasts
with a fleet, and the only instance of war between
the Byzantines and the Franks, as it was, began. It
lasted until 810, when the pro-Byzantine party in
Venice gave their city back to the Byzantine
Emperor, and the two emperors of Europe made
peace: Charlemagne received the Istrian peninsula
and in 812 the emperor Michael I Rhangabes
recognised his status as Emperor,[21] although not
necessarily as "Emperor of the Romans".[22]

[edit] Danish attacks

After the conquest of Nordalbingia, the Frankish

frontier was brought into contact with Scandinavia.
The pagan Danes, "a race almost unknown to his
ancestors, but destined to be only too well known
to his sons" as Charles Oman described them,
inhabiting the Jutland peninsula, had heard many
stories from Widukind and his allies who had taken
refuge with them about the dangers of the Franks
and the fury which their Christian king could direct
against pagan neighbours.

In 808, the king of the Danes, Godfred, built the

vast Danevirke across the isthmus of Schleswig.
This defence, last employed in the Danish-Prussian
War of 1864, was at its beginning a 30 km (19 mi)
long earthenwork rampart. The Danevirke
protected Danish land and gave Godfred the
opportunity to harass Frisia and Flanders with
pirate raids. He also subdued the Frank-allied
Wiltzes and fought the Abotrites.

Godfred invaded Frisia, joked of visiting Aachen,

but was murdered before he could do any more,
either by a Frankish assassin or by one of his own
men. Godfred was succeeded by his nephew
Hemming, who concluded the Treaty of Heiligen
with Charlemagne in late 811.

[edit] Death

Persephone sarcophagus of Charlemagne

Portion of the 814 death shroud of Charlemagne. It

represents a quadriga and was manufactured in
Constantinople.

In 813, Charlemagne called Louis the Pious, king of

Aquitaine, his only surviving legitimate son, to his
court. There Charlemagne crowned his son with his
own hands as co-emperor and sent him back to
Aquitaine. He then spent the autumn hunting
before returning to Aachen on 1 November. In
January, he fell ill with pleurisy.[23] In deep
depression (mostly because many of his plans were
not yet realized), he took to his bed on 21 January
and as Einhard tells it:

He died January twenty-eighth, the seventh day

from the time that he took to his bed, at nine
o'clock in the morning, after partaking of the Holy
Communion, in the seventy-second year of his age
and the forty-seventh of his reign.

Frederick II's gold and silver casket for

Charlemagne

He was buried on the day of his death, in Aachen

Cathedral, although the cold weather and the
nature of his illness made such a hurried burial
unnecessary. The earliest surviving planctus, the
Planctus de obitu Karoli, was composed by a monk
of Bobbio, which he had patronised.[24] A later
story, told by Otho of Lomello, Count of the Palace
at Aachen in the time of Otto III, would claim that
he and Emperor Otto had discovered
Charlemagne's tomb: the emperor, they claimed,
was seated upon a throne, wearing a crown and
holding a sceptre, his flesh almost entirely
incorrupt. In 1165, Frederick I re-opened the tomb
again and placed the emperor in a sarcophagus
beneath the floor of the cathedral.[25] In 1215
Frederick II re-interred him in a casket made of
gold and silver.

Charlemagne's death greatly affected many of his

subjects, particularly those of the literary clique
who had surrounded him at Aachen. An anonymous
monk of Bobbio lamented:

From the lands where the sun rises to western

shores, People are crying and wailing...the Franks,
the Romans, all Christians, are stung with
mourning and great worry...the young and old,
glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their
Caesar...the world laments the death of Charles...O
Christ, you who govern the heavenly host, grant a
peaceful place to Charles in your kingdom. Alas for
miserable me.[26]

He was succeeded by his surviving son, Louis, who

had been crowned the previous year. His empire
lasted only another generation in its entirety; its
division, according to custom, between Louis's own
sons after their father's death laid the foundation
for the modern states of Germany and France.
[edit] Administration
As an administrator, Charlemagne stands out for
his many reforms: monetary, governmental,
military, cultural, and ecclesiastical. He is the main
protagonist of the "Carolingian Renaissance."

[edit] Military

It has long been held that the dominance of

Charlemagne's military was based on a "cavalry
revolution" lead by Charles Martel in 730s.
However, the stirrup, which made the "shock
cavalry" lance charge possible, was not introduced
to the Frankish kingdom until the late eighth
century.[27] Instead, Charlemagne's success rested
primarily on novel siege technologies and excellent
logistics.[28] However, large numbers of horses were
used by the Frankish military during the age of
Charlemagne. This was because horses provided a
quick, long-distance method of transporting troops,
which was critical to building and maintaining such
a large empire.[27]

[edit] Economic and monetary reforms

Monogram of Charlemagne, from the subscription
of a royal diploma: "Signum (monogr.: KAROLVS)
Karoli gloriosissimi regis"

Charlemagne had an important role in determining

the immediate economic future of Europe. Pursuing
his father's reforms, Charlemagne abolished the
monetary system based on the gold sou, and he
and the Anglo-Saxon King Offa of Mercia took up
the system set in place by Pippin. There were
strong pragmatic reasons for this abandonment of
a gold standard, notably a shortage of gold itself,
which was a direct consequence of the conclusion
of peace with Byzantium, which resulted in the
ceding of Venice and Sicily and the loss of their
trade routes to Africa and to the East. This
standardisation also had the effect of economically
harmonising and unifying the complex array of
currencies which had been in use at the
commencement of his reign, thus simplifying trade
and commerce.
Charlemagne, denier, Tours, 793-812.

He established a new standard, the livre

carolinienne (from the Latin libra, the modern
pound), which was based upon a pound of silver—a
unit of both money and weight—which was worth
20 sous (from the Latin solidus [which was
primarily an accounting device and never actually
minted], the modern shilling) or 240 deniers (from
the Latin denarius, the modern penny). During this
period, the livre and the sou were counting units;
only the denier was a coin of the realm.

Charlemagne instituted principles for accounting

practice by means of the Capitulare de villis of 802,
which laid down strict rules for the way in which
incomes and expenses were to be recorded.

The lending of money for interest was prohibited

and then strengthened in 814, when Charlemagne
introduced the Capitulary for the Jews, a draconian
prohibition on Jews engaging in money-lending.

In addition to this macro-oriented reform of the

economy of his empire, Charlemagne also
performed a significant number of microeconomic
reforms, such as direct control of prices and levies
on certain goods and commodities.

Charlemagne applied the system to much of the

European continent, and Offa's standard was
voluntarily adopted by much of England. After
Charlemagne's death, continental coinage
degraded, and most of Europe resorted to using the
continued high-quality English coin until about
1100.

[edit] Education reforms

A part of Charlemagne's success as warrior and

administrator can be traced to his admiration for
learning. His reign and the era it ushered in are
often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance
because of the flowering of scholarship, literature,
art, and architecture which characterize it.
Charlemagne, brought into contact with the culture
and learning of other countries (especially
Visigothic Spain, Anglo-Saxon England, and
Lombard Italy) due to his vast conquests, greatly
increased the provision of monastic schools and
scriptoria (centres for book-copying) in Francia.
Most of the presently surviving works of classical
Latin were copied and preserved by Carolingian
scholars. Indeed, the earliest manuscripts available
for many ancient texts are Carolingian. It is almost
certain that a text which survived to the Carolingian
age survives still. The pan-European nature of
Charlemagne's influence is indicated by the origins
of many of the men who worked for him: Alcuin, an
Anglo-Saxon from York; Theodulf, a Visigoth,
probably from Septimania; Paul the Deacon,
Lombard; Peter of Pisa and Paulinus of Aquileia,
Italians; and Angilbert, Angilram, Einhard, and
Waldo of Reichenau, Franks.

Charlemagne took a serious interest in scholarship,

promoting the liberal arts at the court, ordering
that his children and grandchildren be well-
educated, and even studying himself (in a time
when even leaders who promoted education did not
take time to learn themselves) under the tutelage
of Paul the Deacon, from whom he learned
grammar; Alcuin, with whom he studied rhetoric,
dialectic (logic), and astronomy (he was particularly
interested in the movements of the stars); and
Einhard, who assisted him in his studies of
arithmetic. His great scholarly failure, as Einhard
relates, was his inability to write: when in his old
age he began attempts to learn—practicing the
formation of letters in his bed during his free time
on books and wax tablets he hid under his pillow
—"his effort came too late in life and achieved little
success", and his ability to read – which Einhard is
silent about, and which no contemporary source
supports—has also been called into question.[29]

In 800, Charlemagne enlarged the hostel at the

Muristan in Jerusalem and added a library to it. He
certainly had not been personally in Jerusalem.[30]
[31]

[edit] Church reforms

See also: Charlemagne and church music

[edit] Writing reforms

Page from the Lorsch Gospels of Charlemagne's
reign

During Charles' reign, the Roman half uncial script

and its cursive version, which had given rise to
various continental minuscule scripts, were
combined with features from the insular scripts that
were being used in Irish and English monasteries.
Carolingian minuscule was created partly under the
patronage of Charlemagne. Alcuin of York, who ran
the palace school and scriptorium at Aachen, was
probably a chief influence in this. The revolutionary
character of the Carolingian reform, however, can
be over-emphasised; efforts at taming the crabbed
Merovingian and Germanic hands had been
underway before Alcuin arrived at Aachen. The new
minuscule was disseminated first from Aachen and
later from the influential scriptorium at Tours,
where Alcuin retired as an abbot.

[edit] Political reforms

Charlemagne engaged in many reforms of Frankish

governance, but he continued also in many
traditional practices, such as the division of the
kingdom among sons.

[edit] Organization

Main article: Government of the Carolingian Empire

The Carolingian king exercised the bannum, the

right to rule and command. He had supreme
jurisdiction in judicial matters, made legislation, led
the army, and protected both the Church and the
poor. His administration was an attempt to
organise the kingdom, church, and nobility around
him. However, the effort was heavily dependent
upon the efficiency, loyalty, and support of his
subjects.

[edit] Imperial coronation

Throne of Charlemagne and the subsequent
German Kings in Aachen Cathedral

Historians have debated for centuries whether

Charlemagne was aware of the Pope's intent to
crown him Emperor prior to the coronation
(Charlemagne declared that he would not have
entered Saint Peter's had he known), but that
debate has often obscured the more significant
question of why the Pope granted the title and why
Charlemagne chose to accept it once he did.

Roger Collins points out[32] "That the motivation

behind the acceptance of the imperial title was a
romantic and antiquarian interest in reviving the
Roman empire is highly unlikely." For one thing,
such romance would not have appealed either to
Franks or Roman Catholics at the turn of the ninth
century, both of whom viewed the Classical
heritage of the Roman Empire with distrust. The
Franks took pride in having "fought against and
thrown from their shoulders the heavy yoke of the
Romans" and "from the knowledge gained in
baptism, clothed in gold and precious stones the
bodies of the holy martyrs whom the Romans had
killed by fire, by the sword and by wild animals", as
Pippin III described it in a law of 763 or 764
(Collins 151). Furthermore, the new title—carrying
with it the risk that the new emperor would "make
drastic changes to the traditional styles and
procedures of government" or "concentrate his
attentions on Italy or on Mediterranean concerns
more generally"—risked alienating the Frankish
leadership.[33]

For both the Pope and Charlemagne, the Roman

Empire remained a significant power in European
politics at this time, and continued to hold a
substantial portion of Italy, with borders not very
far south of the city of Rome itself—this is the
empire historiography has labelled the Byzantine
Empire, for its capital was Constantinople (ancient
Byzantium) and its people and rulers were Greek; it
was a thoroughly Hellenic state. Indeed,
Charlemagne was usurping the prerogatives of the
Roman Emperor in Constantinople simply by sitting
in judgement over the Pope in the first place:

By whom, however, could he [the Pope] be tried?

Who, in other words, was qualified to pass
judgement on the Vicar of Christ? In normal
circumstances the only conceivable answer to that
question would have been the Emperor at
Constantinople; but the imperial throne was at this
moment occupied by Irene. That the Empress was
notorious for having blinded and murdered her own
son was, in the minds of both Leo and Charles,
almost immaterial: it was enough that she was a
woman. The female sex was known to be incapable
of governing, and by the old Salic tradition was
debarred from doing so. As far as Western Europe
was concerned, the Throne of the Emperors was
vacant: Irene's claim to it was merely an additional
proof, if any were needed, of the degradation into
which the so-called Roman Empire had fallen.
—John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early
Centuries, pg. 378
Coronation of an idealised king, depicted in the
Sacramentary of Charles the Bald (about 870)

For the Pope, then, there was "no living Emperor at

the that time" (Norwich 379), though Henri Pirenne
(Mohammed and Charlemagne, pg. 234n) disputes
this saying that the coronation "was not in any
sense explained by the fact that at this moment a
woman was reigning in Constantinople."
Nonetheless, the Pope took the extraordinary step
of creating one. The papacy had since 727 been in
conflict with Irene's predecessors in Constantinople
over a number of issues, chiefly the continued
Byzantine adherence to the doctrine of iconoclasm,
the destruction of Christian images; while from
750, the secular power of the Byzantine Empire in
central Italy had been nullified. By bestowing the
Imperial crown upon Charlemagne, the Pope
arrogated to himself "the right to appoint ... the
Emperor of the Romans, ... establishing the
imperial crown as his own personal gift but
simultaneously granting himself implicit superiority
over the Emperor whom he had created." And
"because the Byzantines had proved so
unsatisfactory from every point of view—political,
military and doctrinal—he would select a
westerner: the one man who by his wisdom and
statesmanship and the vastness of his dominions ...
stood out head and shoulders above his
contemporaries."

With Charlemagne's coronation, therefore, "the

Roman Empire remained, so far as either of them
[Charlemagne and Leo] were concerned, one and
indivisible, with Charles as its Emperor", though
there can have been "little doubt that the
coronation, with all that it implied, would be
furiously contested in Constantinople." (Norwich,
Byzantium: The Apogee, pg. 3) How realistic either
Charlemagne or the Pope felt it to be that the
people of Constantinople would ever accept the
King of the Franks as their Emperor, we cannot
know; Alcuin speaks hopefully in his letters of an
Imperium Christianum ("Christian Empire"),
wherein, "just as the inhabitants of the [Roman
Empire] had been united by a common Roman
citizenship", presumably this new empire would be
united by a common Christian faith (Collins 151),
certainly this is the view of Pirenne when he says
"Charles was the Emperor of the ecclesia as the
Pope conceived it, of the Roman Church, regarded
as the universal Church" (Pirenne 233).

19th century depiction of the imperial coronation of

Charlemagne

What we do know, from the Byzantine chronicler

Theophanes (Collins 153), is that Charlemagne's
reaction to his coronation was to take the initial
steps toward securing the Constantinopolitan
throne by sending envoys of marriage to Irene, and
that Irene reacted somewhat favorably to them.
Only when the people of Constantinople reacted to
Irene's failure to immediately rebuff the proposal
by deposing her and replacing her with one of her
ministers, Nicephorus I, did Charlemagne drop any
ambitions toward the Byzantine throne and begin
minimising his new Imperial title,[citation needed] and
instead return to describing himself primarily as rex
Francorum et Langobardum.

The title of emperor remained in his family for

years to come, however, as brothers fought over
who had the supremacy in the Frankish state. The
papacy itself never forgot the title nor abandoned
the right to bestow it. When the family of Charles
ceased to produce worthy heirs, the pope gladly
crowned whichever Italian magnate could best
protect him from his local enemies. This devolution
led, as could have been expected, to the dormancy
of the title for almost forty years (924–962).
Finally, in 962, in a radically different Europe from
Charlemagne's, a new Roman Emperor was
crowned in Rome by a grateful pope. This emperor,
Otto the Great, brought the title into the hands of
the kings of Germany for almost a millennium, for
it was to become the Holy Roman Empire, a true
imperial successor to Charles, if not Augustus.

[edit] Divisio regnorum

In 806, Charlemagne first made provision for the

traditional division of the empire on his death. For
Charles the Younger he designated Austrasia and
Neustria, Saxony, Burgundy, and Thuringia. To
Pippin he gave Italy, Bavaria, and Swabia. Louis
received Aquitaine, the Spanish March, and
Provence. There was no mention of the imperial
title however, which has led to the suggestion that,
at that particular time, Charlemagne regarded the
title as an honorary achievement which held no
hereditary significance.

This division might have worked, but it was never

to be tested. Pippin died in 810 and Charles in 811.
Charlemagne then reconsidered the matter, and in
813, crowned his youngest son, Louis, co-emperor
and co-King of the Franks, granting him a half-
share of the empire and the rest upon
Charlemagne's own death. The only part of the
Empire which Louis was not promised was Italy,
which Charlemagne specifically bestowed upon
Pippin's illegitimate son Bernard.

The Coronation of Charlemagne, by assistants of

Raphael , circa 1516-1517

[edit] Cultural uses

Charlemagne had an immediate afterlife. The
author of the Visio Karoli Magni written around 865
uses facts gathered apparently from Einhard and
his own observations on the decline of
Charlemagne's family after the dissensions of civil
war (840–43) as the basis for a visionary tale of
Charles' meeting with a prophetic spectre in a
dream.

Statue of Charlemagne by Agostino Cornacchini

(1725), St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican, Italy.

Charlemagne, being a model knight as one of the

Nine Worthies, enjoyed an important afterlife in
European culture. One of the great medieval
literary cycles, the Charlemagne cycle or the Matter
of France, centres on the deeds of Charlemagne—
the Emperor with the Flowing Beard of Roland fame
—and his historical commander of the border with
Brittany, Roland, and the paladins who are
analogous to the knights of the Round Table or
King Arthur's court. Their tales constitute the first
chansons de geste.

Charlemagne himself was accorded sainthood

inside the Holy Roman Empire after the twelfth
century. His canonisation by Antipope Paschal III,
to gain the favour of Frederick Barbarossa in 1165,
was never recognised by the Holy See, which
annulled all of Paschal's ordinances at the Third
Lateran Council in 1179. However, his beatification
has been acknowledged as cultus confirmed and is
celebrated on January 28. In the Divine Comedy
the spirit of Charlemagne appears to Dante in the
Heaven of Mars, among the other "warriors of the
faith."

Charlemagne is sometimes credited with supporting

the insertion of the filioque into the Nicene Creed.
The Franks had inherited a Visigothic tradition of
referring to the Holy Spirit as deriving from God the
Father and Son (Filioque), and under Charlemagne,
the Franks challenged the 381 Council of
Constantinople proclamation that the Holy Spirit
proceeded from the Father alone. Pope Leo III
rejected this notion, and had the Nicene Creed
carved into the doors of Old St. Peter's Basilica
without the offending phrase; the Frankish
insistence led to bad relations between Rome and
Francia. Later, the Roman Catholic Church would
adopt the phrase, leading to dispute between Rome
and Constantinople. Some see this as one of many
pre-cursors to the East-West Schism centuries
later.[34]

French volunteers in the Wehrmacht and later

Waffen-SS during World War II were organised in a
unit called 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the
SS Charlemagne (1st French). A German Waffen-
SS unit used "Karl der Große" for some time in
1943, but then chose the name 10th SS Panzer
Division Frundsberg instead.

The city of Aachen has, since 1949, awarded an

international prize (called the Karlspreis der Stadt
Aachen) in honour of Charlemagne. It is awarded
annually to "personages of merit who have
promoted the idea of western unity by their
political, economic and literary endeavours."[35]
Winners of the prize include Count Richard
Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the pan-
European movement, Alcide De Gasperi, and
Winston Churchill.

Charlemagne is memorably quoted by Dr Henry

Jones Sr. (played by Sean Connery) in the film,
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Immediately
after using his umbrella to induce a flock of
seagulls to smash through the glass cockpit of a
pursuing German fighter plane, Henry Jones
remarks "I suddenly remembered my
Charlemagne: 'Let my armies be the rocks and the
trees and the birds in the sky'." Despite the quote's
popularity since the movie, there is no evidence
that Charlemagne actually said this.[36]

The Economist, the weekly news and international

affairs newspaper, features a one-page article
every week entitled "Charlemagne", focusing
generally on European affairs and, more usually
and specifically, on the European Union and its
politics. While Economist writers are all technically
anonymous, the column is known to be written by
David Rennie, who took the position in 2007.

There is a play named "Carelman Charitham" in the

Indian art-form Chavittu Nadakam which is based
on the life of Charlemagne.