Charlemagne, 'The Great', King of the Franks, Holy Roman Emperor
742-814
Born: Hesse, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany
Died: Aachen, , Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
742-814
Born: Hesse, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany
Died: Aachen, , Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Charlemagne <div>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <p><strong>Charlemagne</strong> (pronounced <span><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode">/ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/</font></span>; Latin: <span><em>Carolus Magnus</em> or <em>Karolus Magnus</em></span>, meaning <strong>Charles the Great</strong>) (2 April 742 – 28 January 814) was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned <span><em>Imperator Augustus</em></span> by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 as 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 <strong>Charles I</strong> in the regnal lists of France, Germany, and the Holy Roman Empire.</p><p>The son of King Pippin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, he succeeded his father 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 waging war on the Saracens, who menaced his realm from Spain. It was during one of these campaigns that Charlemagne experienced the worst defeat of his life, at the Battle of Roncesvalles (778) memorialised in the <em>Song of Roland</em>. 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.</p><p>Today he is regarded not only as the founding father of both French and German monarchies, but also as <em>the father of Europe</em>: 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. </p><span>Background</span> <p>By the 6th century, the 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 (<em>rois fainéants</em>). Almost all government powers of any consequence were exercised by their chief officer, the mayor of the palace or <em>major domus</em>.</p><p>In 687, 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 Pippin 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.</p><p>After Carloman resigned his office, Pippin had Childeric III deposed with Pope Zachary's approval. In 751, Pippin 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 Pippin's father Charles Martel.</p><p>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; and the religious, political, and artistic evolutions originating from a centrally-positioned Francia made a defining imprint on the whole of Western Europe.</p><span>Date and place of birth</span> <p>Charlemagne is believed to have been born in 742; 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 <em>Annales Petaviani</em>, that of 2 April 747.<sup> </sup> In that year, April 2 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 April 1, 747, after April 15, 747, or April 1, 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 originate. 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.</p><p>Dubbed <em>Charles le Magne</em> "Charles the Great", he was named after his grandfather, Charles Martel. The name derives from Germanic *<em>karlaz</em> "free man, commoner",<sup> </sup> which gave German <em>Kerl</em> "man, guy" and English <em>churl</em>. His name, however, is first attested in its Latin form, "<em>Carolus</em>" or "<em>Karolus</em>."</p><p>In many eastern European languages, the very word for "king" derives from Charles' name. (<em>e.g.</em>, Polish: <span><em>król</em></span>, Lithuanian: <span><em>karalius</em></span>, Hungarian: <span><em>király</em></span>, Serbian: <span>kralj</span>, Russian: <span>король</span>, Turkish: <span><em>kral</em></span>)</p><p><span>Language</span> </p><p>Charlemagne's native language is 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 as he was born in 742 or 747, by which time Old Frankish had become extinct. 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.<sup> </sup> 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.</p><p>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 away. At that time, this was an area of great linguistic diversity. If we take Liège (around 750) as the centre, we find:</p><ul><li>Old East Low Franconian (the forerunner of Limburgish) in the city, north and northwest; </li><li>the closely related Old Ripuarian Franconian (a central Old High German dialect) to the east and in Aachen; and </li><li>Gallo-Romance (the ancestor of the Walloon dialect of Old French) in the south and southwest. </li></ul><p>The names he gave his children are also good indicators of the language he spoke, as all of his daughters received Old High German names.</p><p>Apart from his native language he also spoke Latin "as fluently as his own tongue" and understood a bit of Greek: <em>Grecam vero melius intellegere quam pronuntiare poterat</em>, "He understood Greek better than he could pronounce it."<sup> </sup></p><p><span>Personal appearance</span> </p><p>Though no description from Charlemagne's lifetime exists, his personal appearance is known from a good description by Einhard, author of the biographical <em>Vita Karoli Magni</em>. Einhard tells in his twenty-second chapter:</p><blockquote><p><em>He was heavily built, sturdy, and of considerable stature, although not exceptionally so, given that he stood seven feet tall. 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 a slightly protruding stomach. His voice was clear, but a little higher than one would have expected for a man of his build. 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.</em></p></blockquote><p>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. Charles description of Charlemagne's height at 7 feet (6 feet 3 inches, or 190.50 centimeters) was not far off. Though it was Herculean stature, particularly in a period in which people were a little shorter than we are today, archaeology has confirmed his tallness: in 1861, Charlemagne's tomb was opened by scientists who reconstructed his skeleton and found that it indeed measured 74.9 inches (192 centimeters). </p><p>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 <em>canitie pulchra</em>, or "beautiful white hair", which has been rendered as blonde or fair in many translations.</p><p><span>Dress</span> </p><p>Charlemagne wore the traditional, inconspicuous and distinctly non-aristocratic costume of the Frankish people, described by Einhard thus:</p><blockquote><p><em>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</em>.</p></blockquote><p>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:</p><blockquote><p><em>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 success</em>or.</p></blockquote><p>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.</p><p><span>Rise to power</span> </p><p><span>Early life</span> </p><p>Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pippin 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.</p><p>Much of what is known of Charlemagne's life comes from his biographer, Einhard, who wrote a <em>Vita Caroli Magni</em> (or <em>Vita Karoli Magni</em>), the <em>Life of Charlemagne</em>. Einhard says of the early life of Charles:</p><blockquote><p><em>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</em>.</p></blockquote><p>On the death of Pippin, 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.</p><p><span>Joint rule</span> </p><p>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.</p><p>The first event of the brothers' reign was the rising 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 Hunald (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.</p><p>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, in order 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.</p><p>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.</p><p><span>Italian campaigns</span> </p><p><span>Conquest of Lombardy</span> </p><div>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.</div><p>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 <em>patrician</em>. He then returned to Pavia, where the Lombards were on the verge of surrendering.</p><p>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 now master of Italy as king of the Lombards. He left Italy with a garrison in Pavia and few Frankish counts in place that very year.</p><p>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.</p><p> <span>Southern Italy</span> </p><p>In 787 Charlemagne directed his attention towards Benevento, where Arechis was reigning independently. He 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.</p><p><span>Charles and his children</span> </p><p>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 each to inherit their realm 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.</p><p>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).</p><p>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 bastard grandchildren they produced for him. He also, apparently, refused to believe stories of their wild behaviour. 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.</p><p><span>Spanish campaigns</span> / See also: Abbasid-Carolingian alliance</p><p><span>Roncesvalles campaign</span> </p><p>According to the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir, the Diet of Paderborn had received the representatives of the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, Gerona, 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, he agreed to go to Spain.</p><p>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 (<em>La Chanson de Roland</em>).</p><p><span>Wars with the Moors</span> </p><div>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.<sup> </sup></div><p>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.</p><p>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 forwards 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 recognise their conquests in 812.</p><p><span>Eastern campaigns</span> </p><p><span>Saxon Wars</span> </p><p>Charlemagne was engaged in almost constant battle throughout his reign, often at the head of his elite <em>scara</em> 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 Roman Catholicism, using force where necessary.</p><p>The 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.</p><p>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 the year 775, marching through Westphalia and conquering 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 Saxony but Nordalbingia was under his control, but Saxon resistance had not ended.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 had peace from 780 to 782.</p><p>He returned in 782 to Saxony 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 stirred 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 massacre 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.</p><p>Thereafter, the Saxons maintained the peace for seven years, but in 792 the Westphalians once 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 Charlemagne's personal presence and the presence of Christian Saxons and Slavs quickly crushed it. The last insurrection of the independence-minded people occurred in 804, more than thirty years after Charlemagne's first campaign against them. This time, the most unruly of them, the Nordalbingians, found themselves effectively disempowered from rebellion. According to Einhard:</p><blockquote><p><em>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</em>.</p></blockquote><p>Saxon resistance to Charlemagne's rule was at an end.</p><p><span>Submission of Bavaria</span> </p><p>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, like Saxony.</p><p><span>Avar campaigns</span> </p><p>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. Charles 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.</p><p>For the next two years, Charles 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 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.</p><p><span>Slav expeditions</span> </p><p>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. He 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, the peace broken by the Saxons, 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.</p><p>Charlemagne also directed his attention to the Slavs to the south of the Avar khaganate: the Carantanians and Carniolans. These people were subdued by the Lombards and Bavarii and made tributaries, but never incorporated into the Frankish state.</p><p><span>Imperium</span> </p><p>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 December 23 Leo swore an oath of innocence. At Mass, on Christmas Day (December 25), when Charlemagne knelt at the altar to pray, the pope crowned him <em>Imperator Romanorum</em> ("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:</p><blockquote><p>[<em>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</em>.</p></blockquote><p>Many modern scholars 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 would now use 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 from 801 onward, Charles preferred the style <em>Karolus serenissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperium</em> ("Charles, most serene Augustus crowned by God, the great, peaceful emperor ruling the Roman empire") to the more direct <em>Imperator Romanorum</em> ("Emperor of the Romans").<sup><span>[</span>10<span>]</span></sup></p><p>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. 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.</p><p>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 <em>Ducatus Neapolitanus</em>). 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 <em>Pax Nicephori</em> 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,<sup> </sup>although not necessarily as "Emperor of the Romans".<sup> </sup></p><p><span>Danish attacks</span> </p><p>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.</p><p>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 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.</p><p>Godfred invaded Frisia and 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.</p><p><span>Death</span> </p><p>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.<sup> </sup> He took to his bed on 21 January and as Einhard tells it:</p><blockquote><p><em>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</em>.</p></blockquote><p>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 <em>planctus</em>, the <em>Planctus de obitu Karoli</em>, was composed by a monk of Bobbio, which he had patronised.<sup> </sup> 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.<sup> </sup> In 1215 Frederick II would re-inter him in a casket made of gold and silver.</p><p>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:</p>“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.<sup><span>[</span>16<span>]</span></sup>” <p>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 France and Germany.</p><p><span>Administration</span> </p><p>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."</p><p><span>Economic and monetary reforms</span> </p><div>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 <span><em>sou</em></span>, 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, a direct consequence of the conclusion of peace with Byzantium and 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 in use at the commencement of his reign, thus simplifying trade and commerce.</div><div><div style="width: 182px"><div>Charlemagne, denier, Tours, 793-812.</div></div></div><p>He established a new standard, the <span><em>livre carolinienne</em></span> (from the Latin <span><em>libra</em></span>, the modern pound), and based upon a pound of silver – a unit of both money and weight – which was worth 20 sous (from the Latin <span><em>solidus</em></span> [which was primarily an accounting device, and never actually minted], the modern shilling) or 240 <span><em>deniers</em></span> (from the Latin <span><em>denarius</em></span>, the modern penny). During this period, the <span><em>livre</em></span> and the <span><em>sou</em></span> were counting units, only the <span><em>denier</em></span> was a coin of the realm.</p><p>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.</p><p>The lending of money for interest was prohibited, strengthened in 814, when Charlemagne introduced the <em>Capitulary for the Jews</em>, a draconian prohibition on Jews engaging in money-lending.</p><p>In addition to this macro-management of the economy of his empire, Charlemagne also performed a significant number of acts of micro-management, such as direct control of prices and levies on certain goods and commodities.</p><p>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.</p><p><span>Education reforms</span> </p><p>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 characterise 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 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, Angilramm, Einhard and Waldo of Reichenau, Franks.</p><p>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.<sup> </sup></p><p><span>Church reforms</span> </p><div>See also: Charlemagne and church music</div><p><span>Writing reforms</span> </p><p>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.</p><p><span>Political reforms</span> </p><p>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.</p><p><span>Organisation</span> </p><div>Main article: Government of the Carolingian Empire</div><p>The Carolingian king exercised the <em>bannum</em>, 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, it was entirely dependent upon the efficiency, loyalty and support of his subjects.</p><p><span>Imperial coronation</span> </p><div>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 <em>why</em> the Pope granted the title and why Charlemagne chose to accept it once he did.</div><p>Roger Collins points out "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.</p><p>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:</p><blockquote><div><p><em>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</em>.</p></div><div>—John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, pg. 378</div></blockquote><p>For the Pope, then, there was "no living Emperor at the that time" (Norwich 379), though Henri Pirenne (<em>Mohammed and Charlemagne</em>, 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."</p><p>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, <em>Byzantium: The Apogee</em>, 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 <em>Imperium Christianum</em> ("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 <em>ecclesia</em> as the Pope conceived it, of the Roman Church, regarded as the universal Church" (Pirenne 233).</p><p>What we <em>do</em> 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, and instead return to describing himself primarily as <em>rex Francorum et Langobardum</em>.</p><p>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 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.</p><p><span>Divisio regnorum</span> </p><p>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.</p><p>This division may 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.</p><p><span>Cultural significance</span> </p><p>Charlemagne had an immediate afterlife. The author of the <em>Visio Karoli Magni</em> 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.</p><p>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 <em>Matter of France</em>, centres on the deeds of Charlemagne—the King with the Grizzly Beard of <em>Roland</em> 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 <em>chansons de geste</em>.</p><p>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, he has been acknowledged as <em>cultus confirmed</em>. In the Divine Comedy the spirit of Charlemagne appears to Dante in the Heaven of Mars, among the other "warriors of the faith."</p><p>Charlemagne is sometimes credited with supporting the insertion of the <em>filioque</em> into the Nicene Creed. The Franks had inherited a Visigothic tradition of referring to the Holy Spirit as deriving from God the Father <em>and Son</em> (<em>Filioque</em>), 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 lead 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.</p><p>French volunteers in the Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS during the World War II were organised in a unit called <em>33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)</em>. A German Waffen-SS unit used "Karl der Große" for some time in 1943, but then chose the name <em>10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg</em> instead.</p><p>The city of Aachen has, since 1949, awarded an international prize (called the <em>Karlspreis der Stadt Aachen</em>) 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."<sup><span>[</span>21<span>]</span></sup> Winners of the prize include Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the pan-European movement, Alcide De Gasperi, and Winston Churchill.</p><p>Charlemagne is memorably quoted by Dr Henry Jones Sr. (played by Sean Connery) in the film, <em>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade</em>. 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.<sup><span>[</span>22<span>]</span></sup></p><p>The Economist, the weekly news and international affairs newspaper, features a one page article every week entitled "Charlemagne", focusing on European government.</p><p> <span style="font-size: 110%">Ancestors of Charlemagne</span> 16. Ansegisel 8. Pippin of Herstal 17. Begga 4. Charles Martel 18. Dodo 9. Alpaida 2. Pippin the Short 20. Warinus 10. Leudwinus 21. Kunza of Metz 5. Rotrude of Trier 22. Chrodobertus II 11. d. of Chrodobertus II 23. Doda 1. <strong>Charlemagne</strong> 24. Ansegisel 12. Martin of Laon 25. Begga 6. Caribert of Laon 13. Bertrada of Prüm 3. Bertrada of Laon 7. Bertrada, Countess of Laon </p><p><span>Family-</span> <span>Marriages and heirs</span> </p><p>Charlemagne had twenty children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. Nonetheless, he only had four legitimate grandsons, the four sons of his third son Louis, plus a grandson who was born illegitimate, but included in the line of inheritance in any case (Bernard of Italy, only son of Charlemagne's third son Pepin of Italy), so that the claimants to his inheritance remained few.</p><ul><li>His first relationship was with Himiltrude. The nature of this relationship is variously described as concubinage, a legal marriage or as a Friedelehe. (Charlemagne put her aside when he married Desiderata.) The union with Himiltrude produced two children: <ul><li>Amaudru, a daughter</li><li>Pippin the Hunchback (c. 769-811) </li></ul></li></ul><ul><li>After her, his first wife was Desiderata, daughter of Desiderius, king of the Lombards; married in 770, annulled in 771 </li><li>His second wife was Hildegard (757 or 758-783), married 771, died 783. By her he had nine children: <ul><li>Charles the Younger (c.772-4 December 811), Duke of Maine, and crowned King of the Franks on 25 December 800 </li><li>Carloman, renamed Pippin (April 773-8 July 810), King of Italy </li><li>Adalhaid (774), who was born whilst her parents were on campaign in Italy. She was sent back to Francia, but died before reaching Lyons </li><li>Rotrude (or Hruodrud) (775-6 June 810) </li><li>Louis (778-20 June 840), twin of Lothair, King of Aquitaine since 781, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 813, senior Emperor from 814 </li><li>Lothair (778-6 February 779/780), twin of Louis, he died in infancy<sup><span>[</span>25<span>]</span></sup> </li><li>Bertha (779-826) </li><li>Gisela (781-808) </li><li>Hildegarde (782-783) </li></ul></li><li>His third wife was Fastrada, married 784, died 794. By her he had: <ul><li>Theodrada (b.784), abbess of Argenteuil </li><li>Hiltrude (b.787) </li></ul></li><li>His fourth wife was Luitgard, married 794, died childless </li></ul><p><span>Concubinages and illegitimate children</span> </p><ul><li>His first known concubine was Gersuinda. By her he had: <ul><li>Adaltrude (b.774) </li></ul></li><li>His second known concubine was Madelgard. By her he had: <ul><li>Ruodhaid (775-810), abbess of Faremoutiers </li></ul></li><li>His third known concubine was Amaltrud of Vienne. By her he had: <ul><li>Alpaida (b.794) </li></ul></li><li>His fourth known concubine was Regina. By her he had: <ul><li>Drogo (801-855), Bishop of Metz from 823 and abbot of Luxeuil Abbey </li><li>Hugh (802-844), archchancellor of the Empire </li></ul></li><li>His fifth known concubine was Ethelind. By her he had: <ul><li>Richbod (805-844), Abbott of Saint-Riquier </li><li>Theodoric (b. 807) </li></ul></li></ul></div>
Charlemagne<span>tt=29</span><!--note fathers--> <p>(<!--yyy=xxyyyk.htm-->French<!--k30--> for <em>Carolus Magnus</em>, or <em>Carlus Magnus</em> ("Charles the Great"); <!--yyy=xxyyyk.htm-->German<!--k30--> <em>Karl der Grosse</em>). </p><p>The name given by later generations to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, King of the Franks, first sovereign of the Christian <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Empire<!--k30--> of the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->West<!--k30-->; born 2 April, 742; died at Aachen, 28 January, 814. Note, however, that the place of his birth (whether Aachen or Liège) has never been fully ascertained, while the <!--k53=15006b.htm-->traditional<!--k30--> <!--k53=04636c.htm-->date<!--k30--> has been set one or more years later by recent writers; if Alcuin is to be interpreted literally the year should be 745. At the <!--k53=14726a.htm-->time<!--k30--> of <!--k53=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> birth, his father, Pepin the Short, <!--k53=10090a.htm-->Mayor<!--k30--> of the Palace, of the line of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Arnulf<!--k30-->, was, theoretically, only the first subject of Childeric III, the last Merovingian King of the Franks; but this <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->modest<!--k30--> title implied that real power, military, civil, and even ecclesiastical, of which Childeric's crown was only the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->symbol<!--k30-->. It is not <!--k53=03539b.htm-->certain<!--k30--> that <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Bertrada<!--k30--> (or Bertha), the mother of <!--k53=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30-->, a daughter of Charibert, Count of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Laon<!--k30-->, was <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->legally<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->married<!--k30--> to Pepin until some years later than either 742 or 745.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>Charlemagne's career led to his acknowledgment by the Holy See as its chief protector and coadjutor in temporals, by <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30--> as at least <em>Basileus</em> of the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->West<!--k30-->. This reign, which involved to a greater degree than that of any other <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->historical<!--k30--> personage the organic development, and still more, the consolidation of Christian Europe, will be sketched in this article in the successive periods into which it <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->naturally<!--k30--> divides. The period of <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30--> was also an epoch of reform for the Church in Gaul, and of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->foundation<!--k30--> for the Church in Germany, marked, moreover, by an efflorescence of learning which <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->fructified<!--k30--> in the great Christian schools of the twelfth and later centuries.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p>To the fall of Pavia (742-774)<p>In 752, when <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was a child of not more than ten years, Pepin the Short had <!--k53=01652a.htm-->appealed<!--k30--> to Pope Zachary to recognize his <!--k53=01124a.htm-->actual<!--k30--> rule with the kingly title and dignity. The practical effect of this <!--k54=01652a.htm-->appeal<!--k30--> to the Holy See was the journey of Stephen III across the Alps two years later, for the purpose of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->anointing<!--k30--> with the oil of kingship not only Pepin, but also his son <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> and a younger son, Carloman. The pope then laid upon the Christian Franks a <!--k53=12372b.htm-->precept<!--k30-->, under the gravest <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> penalties, never "to choose their kings from any other family". Primogeniture did not hold in the Frankish <!--k53=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30--> of <!--k53=01641a.htm-->succession<!--k30-->; the monarchy was elective, though eligibility was limited to the male members of the one <!--k53=12436b.htm-->privileged<!--k30--> family. Thus, then, at <!--k53=04721a.htm-->St. Denis<!--k30--> on the Seine, in the <!--k53=08646a.htm-->Kingdom<!--k30--> of Neustria, on the 28th of July, 754, the house of <!--k36=xxyyyk.htm-->Arnulf<!--k30--> was, by a <!--k53=14133a.htm-->solemn<!--k30--> <!--k53=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30--> of the supreme pontiff established upon the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->throne<!--k30--> until then nominally occupied by the house of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Merowig<!--k30--> (Merovingians).<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>Charles, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->anointed<!--k30--> to the kingly office while yet a mere child, learned the rudiments of war while still many years short of manhood, accompanying his father in several campaigns. This early experience is worth noting chiefly because it developed in the boy those military <!--k53=15472a.htm-->virtues<!--k30--> which, joined with his extraordinary physical strength and intense nationalism, made him a popular hero of the Franks long before he became their rightful ruler. At length, in September, 768, Pepin the Short, foreseeing his end, made a partition of his dominions between his two sons. Not many days later the old king passed away.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>To better comprehend the effect of the <!--k54=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30--> of partition under which <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> and Carloman inherited their father's dominions, as well as the whole subsequent <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->history<!--k30--> of <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> reign, it is to be observed that those dominions comprised: </p><ul><li>first, Frankland (<em>Frankreich</em>) proper; </li><li>secondly, as many as seven more or less self-governing dependencies, peopled by <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->races<!--k30--> of various origins and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->obeying<!--k30--> various <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->codes<!--k30--> of <!--k54=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30-->. </li></ul><!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--><p>Of these two divisions, the former extended, roughly speaking, from the boundaries of <!--k53=14712a.htm-->Thuringia<!--k30-->, on the east, to what is now the Belgian and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Norman<!--k30--> coastline, on the west; it bordered to the north on <!--k53=13497b.htm-->Saxony<!--k30-->, and included both banks of the Rhine from <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Cologne<!--k30--> (the ancient <em>Colonia <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Agrippina<!--k30--></em>) to the North Sea; its southern neighbours were the <!--k53=02353c.htm-->Bavarians<!--k30-->, the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Alemanni<!--k30-->, and the Burgundians. The dependent states were: the fundamentally <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Gaulish<!--k30--> Neustria (including within its borders Paris), which was, nevertheless, well leavened with a dominant Frankish element; to the southwest of Neustria, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Brittany<!--k30-->, formerly Armorica, with a <!--k53=05445a.htm-->British<!--k30--> and <!--k53=06395b.htm-->Gallo-Roman<!--k30--> population; to the south of Neustria the Duchy of Aquitaine, <!--k53=09469a.htm-->lying<!--k30-->, for the most part, between the Loire and the Garonne, with a decidedly <!--k36=06395b.htm-->Gallo-Roman<!--k30--> population; and east of Aquitaine, along the valley of the Rhone, the Burgundians, a people of much the same mixed origin as those of Aquitaine, though with a large infusion of <!--k53=06517a.htm-->Teutonic<!--k30--> blood. These States, with perhaps the exception of <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Brittany<!--k30-->, recognized the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Theodosian<!--k30--> Code as their <!--k54=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30-->. The <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->German<!--k30--> dependencies of the Frankish <!--k54=08646a.htm-->kingdom<!--k30--> were <!--k54=14712a.htm-->Thuringia<!--k30-->, in the valley of the Main, Bavaria, and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Alemannia<!--k30--> (corresponding to what was later known as Swabia). These last, at the time of Pepin's death, had but recently been won to Christianity, mainly through the preaching of St. Boniface. The share which fell to <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> consisted of all Austrasia (the original Frankland), most of Neustria, and all of Aquitaine except the southeast corner. In this way the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->possessions<!--k30--> of the elder brother surrounded the younger on two sides, but on the other hand the distribution of <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->races<!--k30--> under their respective rules was such as to preclude any risk of discord arising out of the national sentiments of their various subjects.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>In spite of this provident arrangement, Carloman contrived to quarrel with his brother. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Hunald<!--k30-->, formerly <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke<!--k30--> of Aquitaine, vanquished by Pepin the Short, broke from the cloister, where he had lived as a monk for twenty years, and stirred up a revolt in the western part of the duchy. By Frankish <!--k53=04576a.htm-->custom<!--k30--> Carloman should have aided <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->; the younger brother himself held part of Aquitaine; but he pretended that, as his dominion were unaffected by this revolt, it was no business of his. <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Hunald<!--k30-->, however, was vanquished by <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> single-handed; he was betrayed by a nephew with whom he had sought refuge, was sent to Rome to answer for the violation of his <!--k53=10459a.htm-->monastic<!--k30--> vows, and at last, after once more breaking cloister, was <!--k53=14308a.htm-->stoned<!--k30--> to death by the <!--k53=09336b.htm-->Lombards<!--k30--> of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Pavia<!--k30-->. For <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> the true importance of this <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Aquitanian<!--k30--> episode was in its manifestation his brother's unkindly feeling in his regard, and against this danger he lost no <!--k54=14726a.htm-->time<!--k30--> in taking precautions, chiefly by winning over to himself the friends whom he <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->judged<!--k30--> likely to be most valuable; first and foremost of these was his mother, Bertha, who had striven both earnestly and prudently to make peace between her sons, but who, when it became necessary to take sides with one or the other could not hesitate in her <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->devotion<!--k30--> to the elder. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was an affectionate son; it also appears that, in general, he was helped to power by his extraordinary <!--k53=06553a.htm-->gift<!--k30--> of personal attractiveness.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--<div id="adleft"><script src="http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/store.affiliatekeywordsearch/D/7/keywords/catholic" type="text/javascript"></script></div>--></p><p>Carloman died soon after this (4 December, 771), and a <!--k54=03539b.htm-->certain<!--k30--> letter from "the Monk Cathwulph", quoted by <!--k53=02715a.htm-->Bouquet<!--k30--> (Recueil. hist., V, 634), in enumerating the special blessings for which the king was in duty bound to be grateful, says, </p><blockquote><!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--><p>Third . . . God has preserved you from the wiles of your brother . . . . Fifth, and not the least, that God has removed your brother from this earthly kingdom.</p></blockquote><!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--><p>Carloman may not have been quite so malignant as the enthusiastic partisans of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> made him out, but the division of Pepin's dominions was in itself an <!--k53=07695a.htm-->impediment<!--k30--> to the growth of a strong Frankish realm such as <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> needed for the unification of the Christian Continent. Although Carloman had left two sons by his wife, Gerberga, the Frankish <!--k54=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30--> of inheritance gave no preference to sons as against brother; left to their own choice, the Frankish lieges, whether from love of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> or for the <!--k53=06021a.htm-->fear<!--k30--> which his name already <!--k53=08045a.htm-->inspired<!--k30-->, gladly accepted him for their king. Gerberga and her children fled to the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> court of <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Pavia<!--k30-->. In the mean while complications had arisen in <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> foreign policy which made his newly established supremacy at home doubly opportune.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>From his father <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had inherited the title "Patricius <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Romanus<!--k30-->" which carried with it a special obligation to protect the temporal rights of the Holy See. The nearest and most menacing neighbour of St. Peter's Patrimony was Desidarius (Didier), King of the <!--k54=09336b.htm-->Lombards<!--k30-->, and it was with this potentate that the dowager Bertha had arranged a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->matrimonial<!--k30--> alliance for her elder son. The pope had solid temporal reasons for objecting to this arrangement. Moreover, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was already, <em>in foro <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->conscientiae</em><!--k30-->, if not in Frankish <!--k54=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30-->, wedded to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Himiltrude<!--k30-->. In defiance of the pope's protest (PL 98:250), <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->married<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Desiderata<!--k30-->, daughter of <!--k53=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> (770), three years later he repudiated her and <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->married<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Hildegarde<!--k30-->, the beautiful Swabian. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Naturally<!--k30-->, <!--k54=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> was furious at this insult, and the dominions of the Holy See bore the first brunt of his <!--k53=01489a.htm-->wrath<!--k30-->.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>But <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had to defend his own borders against the heathen as well as to protect Rome against the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30-->. To the north of Austrasia <!--k53=08748a.htm-->lay<!--k30--> Frisia, which seems to have been in some equivocal way a dependency, and to the east of Frisia, from the left bank of the <!--k53=05409a.htm-->Ems<!--k30--> (about the present Holland-<!--k53=15601b.htm-->Westphalia<!--k30--> frontier), across the valley of the Weser and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Aller<!--k30-->, and still eastward to the left bank of the Elbe, extended the country of the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30-->, who in no fashion whatever acknowledged any allegiance to the Frankish kings. In 772 these <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> were a horde of aggressive pagans <!--k53=11215d.htm-->offering<!--k30--> to Christian missionaries no <!--k53=07465b.htm-->hope<!--k30--> but that of martyrdom; bound together, normally, by no political organization, and constantly engaged in predatory incursions into the lands of the Franks. Their language seems to have been very like that spoken by the Egberts and Ethelreds of <!--k53=01505a.htm-->Britain<!--k30-->, but the work of their Christian cousin, St. Boniface, had not affected them as yet; they <!--k53=15710a.htm-->worshipped<!--k30--> the gods of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Walhalla<!--k30-->, united in <!--k54=14133a.htm-->solemn<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->sacrifice<!--k30--> -- sometimes <!--k53=09580c.htm-->human<!--k30--> -- to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Irminsul<!--k30--> (Igdrasail), the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->sacred<!--k30--> tree which stood at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Eresburg<!--k30-->, and were still <!--k53=07441a.htm-->slaying<!--k30--> Christian missionaries when their <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->kinsmen<!--k30--> in <!--k54=01505a.htm-->Britain<!--k30--> were holding <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->church<!--k30--> synods and building cathedrals. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> could brook neither their predatory <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->habits<!--k30--> nor their heathenish intolerance; it was impossible, moreover, to make permanent peace with them while they followed the old <!--k54=06517a.htm-->Teutonic<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> of free village communities. He made his first expedition into their country in July, 772, took <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Eresburg<!--k30--> by storm, and burned <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Irminsul<!--k30-->. It was in January of this same year that Pope Stephen III died, and Adrian I, an opponent of <!--k54=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30-->, was <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->elected<!--k30-->. The new pope was almost immediately assailed by the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> king, who seized three <!--k53=xxyyyk.htm-->minor<!--k30--> cities of the Patrimony of St. Peter, threatened Ravenna itself, and set about organizing a plot within the Curia. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Paul<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Afiarta<!--k30-->, the papal chamberlain, detected <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->acting<!--k30--> as the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard's<!--k30--> secret agent, was seized and put to death. The <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> army advanced against Rome, but <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->quailed<!--k30--> before the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> weapons of the Church, while <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Adrian<!--k30--> sent a legate into <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Gaul<!--k30--> to claim the aid of the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Patrician<!--k30-->.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>Thus it was that <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, resting at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Thionville<!--k30--> after his <!--k54=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> campaign, was urgently reminded of the rough work that awaited his hand south of the Alps. Desiderius' embassy reached him soon after <!--k53=01155b.htm-->Adrian's<!--k30-->. He did not take it for granted that the <!--k53=13055c.htm-->right<!--k30--> was all upon <!--k36=01155b.htm-->Adrian's<!--k30--> side; besides, he may have seen here an opportunity make some amends for his repudiation of the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> princess. Before taking up arms for the Holy See, therefore, he sent commissioners into Italy to make enquiries and when <!--k54=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> pretended that the seizure of the papal cities was in effect only the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->legal<!--k30--> foreclosure of a mortgage, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> promptly <!--k54=11215d.htm-->offered<!--k30--> to <!--k53=12677d.htm-->redeem<!--k30--> them by a money payment. But <!--k36=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> refused the money, and as <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> commissioners reported in favour of <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Adrian<!--k30-->, the only course left was war.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>In the spring of 773 <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> summoned the whole military strength of the Franks for a great invasion of Lombardy. He was slow to strike, but he meant to strike hard. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Data<!--k30--> for any approximate estimate of his numerical strength are lacking, but it is certain that the army, in order to make the descent more swiftly, crossed the Alps by two passes: Mont Cenis and the Great <!--k53=02498d.htm-->St. Bernard<!--k30-->. Einhard, who accompanied the king over Mont Cenis (the <!--k54=02498d.htm-->St. Bernard<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->column<!--k30--> was led by <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke<!--k30--> Bernhard), speaks <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->feelingly<!--k30--> of the marvels and perils of the passage. The invaders found <!--k54=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> waiting for them, entrenched at Susa; they turned his flank and put the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> army to utter rout. Leaving all the cities of the plains to their <!--k53=05793a.htm-->fate<!--k30-->, <!--k36=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> rallied part of his forces in Pavia, his walled capital, while his son <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Adalghis<!--k30-->, with the rest, occupied Verona. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, having been joined by <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke<!--k30--> Bernhard, took the forsaken cities on his way and then completely invested <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Pavia<!--k30--> (September, 773), whence <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Otger<!--k30-->, the <!--k53=05769a.htm-->faithful<!--k30--> attendant of Gerberga, could look with trembling upon the array of his countrymen. Soon after Christmas <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> withdrew from the siege a portion of the army which he employed in the capture of Verona. Here he found Gerberga and her children; as to what became of them, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->history<!--k30--> is <!--k53=13790a.htm-->silent<!--k30-->; they probably entered the cloister.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>What <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->history<!--k30--> does record with vivid eloquence is the first visit of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> to the Eternal City. There everything was done to give his entry as much as possible the air of a triumph in ancient Rome. The <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->judges<!--k30--> met him thirty miles from the city; the militia laid at the feet of their great patrician the banner of Rome and hailed him as their <em>imperator</em>. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> himself forgot pagan Rome and prostrated himself to kiss the threshold of the <!--k53=01626c.htm-->Apostles<!--k30-->, and then spent seven days in conference with the successor of Peter. It was then that he undoubtedly formed many great designs for the <!--k53=06585a.htm-->glory<!--k30--> of God and the exaltation of <!--k53=07386a.htm-->Holy<!--k30--> <!--k53=03744a.htm-->Church<!--k30-->, which, in spite of <!--k54=09580c.htm-->human<!--k30--> weaknesses and, still more, ignorance, he afterwards did his best to realize. His coronation as the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantine<!--k30--> did not take place until twenty-six years later, but his consecration as first champion of the Catholic Church took place at Easter, 774. Soon after this (June, 774) <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Pavia<!--k30--> fell, <!--k54=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30--> was banished, <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Adalghis<!--k30--> became a fugitive at the Byzantine court, and <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, assuming the crown of Lombardy, renewed to <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Adrian<!--k30--> the <!--k53=05117a.htm-->donation<!--k30--> of territory made by Pepin the Short after his defeat of Aistulph. (This <!--k54=05117a.htm-->donation<!--k30--> is now generally admitted, as well as the original <!--k54=06553a.htm-->gift<!--k30--> of Pepin at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Kiersy<!--k30--> in 752. The so-called "Privilegium <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Hadriani<!--k30--> pro <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Carolo<!--k30-->" granting him full <!--k54=13055c.htm-->right<!--k30--> to <!--k53=11093a.htm-->nominate<!--k30--> the pope and to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->invest<!--k30--> all bishops is a forgery.)<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p>To the baptism of Wittekind (774-785)<p>The next twenty years of <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> may be considered as one long warfare. They are filled with an astounding series of rapid marches from end to end of a continent intersected by mountains, morasses, and forests, and scantily provided with roads. It would seem that the <!--k53=08631b.htm-->key<!--k30--> to his long series of victories, won almost as much by <!--k53=10559a.htm-->moral<!--k30--> ascendancy as by physical or mental superiority, is to be found in the <!--k54=08045a.htm-->inspiration<!--k30--> communicated to his Frankish champion by Pope Adrian I. <!--k53=15577c.htm-->Weiss<!--k30--> (Weltgesch., 11, 549) enumerates fifty-three distinct campaigns of <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30-->; of these it is possible to point to only twelve or fourteen which were not undertaken principally or entirely in <!--k53=12565a.htm-->execution<!--k30--> of his mission as the soldier and protector of the Church. In his eighteen campaigns against the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was more or less actuated by the desire to extinguish what he and his people regarded as a <!--k53=06137b.htm-->form<!--k30--> of devil-worship, no less odious to them than the fetishism of Central <!--k53=01181a.htm-->Africa<!--k30--> is to us.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>While he was still in Italy the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30-->, irritated but not subdued by the <!--k54=05793a.htm-->fate<!--k30--> of <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Eresburg<!--k30--> and of <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Irminsul<!--k30--> had <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->risen<!--k30--> in arms, harried the country of the Hessian Franks, and burned many <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->churches<!--k30-->; that of St. Boniface at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Fritzlar<!--k30-->, being of <!--k54=14308a.htm-->stone<!--k30-->, had defeated their efforts. Returning to the north, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> sent a preliminary <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->column<!--k30--> of cavalry into the enemy's country while he held a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->council<!--k30--> of the realm at <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Kiersy<!--k30--> (Quercy) in September, 774, at which it was decided that the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> (Westfali, Ostfali, and Angrarii) must be presented with the alternative of baptism or death. The northeastern campaigns of the next seven years had for their object a conquest so decisive as to make the <!--k54=12565a.htm-->execution<!--k30--> of this policy feasible. The year 775 saw the first of a series of Frankish military colonies, on the ancient <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30--> plan established at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Sigeburg<!--k30--> among the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Westfali<!--k30-->. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> next subdued, temporarily at least, the Ostali, whose chieftain, Hessi, having accepted baptism, ended his life in the monastery of Fulda (<em>see</em> SAINT BONIFACE; FULDA). Then, a Frankish camp at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Lübbecke<!--k30--> on the Weser having been surprised by the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30-->, and its garrison <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->slaughtered<!--k30-->, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> turned again westward, once more routed the <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Westfali<!--k30-->, and received their oaths of submission.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>At this stage (776) the affairs of Lombardy interrupted the <!--k54=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> crusade. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Areghis<!--k30--> of <!--k53=02477b.htm-->Beneventum<!--k30-->, son-in-law of the vanquished <!--k54=15410a.htm-->Desiderius<!--k30-->, had formed a plan with his brother-in-law <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Adalghis<!--k30--> (Adelchis), then an exile at <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30-->, by which the latter was to make a descent upon Italy, backed by the <!--k53=05230a.htm-->Eastern<!--k30--> emperor; <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Adrian<!--k30--> was at the same time involved in a quarrel with the three <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> dukes, <!--k53=12201b.htm-->Reginald<!--k30--> of Clusium, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Rotgaud<!--k30--> of Friuli, and <!--k53=06791c.htm-->Hildebrand<!--k30--> of Spoleto. The Archbishop of Ravenna, who called himself "<!--k53=12423b.htm-->primate<!--k30-->" and "exarch of <!--k55=08208a.htm-->Italy<!--k30-->", was also attempting to found an independent principality at the expense of the papal state but was finally subdued in 776, and his <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> compelled to be content with the title of "Vicar" or representative of the pope. The junction of the aforesaid powers, all inimical to the pope and the Franks, while <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was occupied in Westphalia, was only prevented by the death of <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantine<!--k30--> Copronymus in September, 775 (see BYZANTINE EMPIRE). After winning over <!--k54=06791c.htm-->Hildebrand<!--k30--> and <!--k54=12201b.htm-->Reginald<!--k30--> by diplomacy, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> descended into Lombardy by the Brenner Pass (spring of 776), defeated <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Rotgaud<!--k30-->, and leaving garrisons and governors, or counts (<em>comites</em>), as they were termed, in the reconquered cities of the Duchy of Friuli, hastened back to <!--k32=13497b.htm-->Saxony<!--k30-->. There the Frankish garrison had been forced to evacuate <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Eresburg<!--k30-->, while the siege of <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Sigeburg<!--k30--> was so unexpectedly broken up as to give occasion later to a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->legend<!--k30--> of angelic intervention in favour of the Christians. As usual, the almost incredible suddenness of the king's reappearance and the <!--k54=10559a.htm-->moral<!--k30--> effect of his presence quieted the ragings of the heathen. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> then divided the <!--k37=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> territory into <!--k53=10378a.htm-->Missionary<!--k30--> districts. At the great spring hosting (<em>champ de Mai</em>) of Paderborn, in 777, many <!--k37=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> <!--k53=04347a.htm-->converts<!--k30--> were baptized; <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> (Widukind), however, already the leader and afterwards the popular hero of the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30-->, had fled to his brother-in-law, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Sigfrid<!--k30--> the <!--k53=04722c.htm-->Dane<!--k30-->.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>The episode of the invasion of Spain comes next in <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->chronological<!--k30--> order. The <!--k53=04211a.htm-->condition<!--k30--> of the venerable Iberian <!--k54=03744a.htm-->Church<!--k30-->, still suffering under Moslem domination, <!--k54=01652a.htm-->appealed<!--k30--> strongly to the king's sympathy. In 777 there came to Paderborn three Moorish emirs, enemies of the Ommeyad <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Abderrahman<!--k30-->, the Moorish King of <!--k53=04359b.htm-->Cordova<!--k30-->. These emirs did homage to <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> and proposed to him an invasion of Northern Spain; one of the, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Ibn-el-Arabi<!--k30-->, promised to bring to the invaders' assistance a force of Berber <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->auxiliaries<!--k30--> from <!--k54=01181a.htm-->Africa<!--k30-->; the other two promised to exert their powerful influence at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Barcelona<!--k30--> and elsewhere north of the Ebro. Accordingly, in the spring of 778, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, with a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->host<!--k30--> of crusaders, speaking many <!--k53=14776c.htm-->tongues<!--k30-->, and which numbered among its constituents even a quota of <!--k54=09336b.htm-->Lombards<!--k30-->, moved towards the Pyrenees. His trusted lieutenant, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke<!--k30--> Bernhard. with one division, entered Spain by the coast. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> himself marched through the mountain passes straight to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Pampelona<!--k30-->. But <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Ibn-el-Arabi<!--k30-->, who had prematurely brought on his army of Berbers, was <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->assassinated<!--k30--> by the emissary of <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Abderrahman<!--k30-->, and though <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Pampelona<!--k30--> was razed, and <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Barcelona<!--k30--> and other cities fell, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Saragossa<!--k30--> held out. Apart from the <!--k54=10559a.htm-->moral<!--k30--> effect of this campaign upon the Moslem rulers of Spain, its result was insignificant, though the famous ambuscade in which perished Roland, the great Paladin, at the Pass of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Roncesvalles<!--k30-->, furnished to the medieval world the material for its most <!--k54=06585a.htm-->glorious<!--k30--> and influential epic, the "Chanson de Roland".<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>Much more important to posterity were the next succeeding events which continued and decided the long struggle in Saxony. During the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Spanish<!--k30--> crusade <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> had returned from his exile, bringing with him Danish allies, and was now ravaging Hesse; the Rhine valley from Deutz to Andenach was a prey to the <!--k37=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> "devil-worshipers"; the Christian missionaries were scattered or in hiding. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> gathered his <!--k53=13286a.htm-->hosts<!--k30--> at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Düren<!--k30-->, in June, 779, and stormed <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind's<!--k30--> entrenched camp at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Bocholt<!--k30-->, after which campaign he seems to have considered <!--k32=13497b.htm-->Saxony<!--k30--> a fairly subdued country. At any rate, the "Saxon <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Capitulary<!--k30-->" (see <!--yyy=xxyyyk.htm-->CAPITULARIES<!--k30-->) of 781 obliged all <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> not only to accept baptism (and this on the pain of death) but also to pay tithes, as the Franks did for the support of the Church; moreover it confiscated a large amount of property for the benefit of the missions. This was <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind's<!--k30--> last opportunity to restore the national independence and paganism; his people, exasperated against the Franks and their God, eagerly rushed to arms. At Suntal on the Weser, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> being absent, they defeated a Frankish army <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->killing<!--k30--> two royal legates and five Counts. But <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> committed the error of enlisting as allies the non-Teutonic Sorbs from beyond the Saale; race-antagonism soon weakened his forces, and the <!--k37=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> <!--k54=13286a.htm-->hosts<!--k30--> melted away. Of the so-called "Massacre of Verdun" (783) it is fair to say that the 4500 <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> who perished were not prisoners of war; <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->legally<!--k30-->, they were ringleaders in a rebellion, selected as such from a number of their fellow rebels. <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> himself escaped beyond the Elbe. It was not until after another defeat of the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Detmold<!--k30-->, and again at Osnabrück, on the "Hill of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Slaughter<!--k30-->", that <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> acknowledged the God of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> the stronger than Odin. In 785 <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> received baptism at <!--k53=02061a.htm-->Attigny<!--k30-->, and <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> stood godfather.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p>Last steps to the imperial throne (785-800)<!--k93--><p>The summer of 783 began a new period in the <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, in which <!--k53=10338a.htm-->signs<!--k30--> begin to appear of his less amiable traits. It was in this year, signalized, according to the chroniclers, by unexampled heat and a pestilence, that the two queens died, Bertha, the king's mother, and <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Hildegarde<!--k30-->, his second (or his third) wife. Both of these women, the former in particular, had exercised over him a strong influence for <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->good<!--k30-->. Within a few months the king <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->married<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Fastrada<!--k30-->, daughter of an Austrasian count. The succeeding years were, comparatively speaking, years of harvest after the stupendous period of ploughing and sowing that had gone before; and <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> <!--k53=10715a.htm-->nature<!--k30--> was of a <!--k53=15107a.htm-->type<!--k30--> that appears to best advantage in storm and stress. What was to be the <!--k53=09022a.htm-->Western<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Empire<!--k30--> of the Middle Ages was already hewn out in the rough when <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Wittekind<!--k30--> received baptism. From that <!--k54=04636c.htm-->date<!--k30--> until the coronation of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> at Rome, in 800, his military work was chiefly in suppressing risings of the newly conquered or quelling the discontents of <!--k53=08326b.htm-->jealous<!--k30--> subject princes. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Thrice<!--k30--> in these fifteen years did the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->rise<!--k30-->, only to be defeated. Tassilo, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke<!--k30--> of Bavaria, had been a more or less rebellious vassal ever since the beginning of his reign, and <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> now made use of the pope's influence, exercised through the powerful bishops of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Freising<!--k30-->, Salzburg, and Regensburg (Ratisbon), to bring him to terms. In 786 a <!--k54=14712a.htm-->Thuringian<!--k30--> revolt was quelled by the timely death, blinding, and banishment of its leaders. Next year the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Lombard<!--k30--> prince, <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Areghis<!--k30-->, having fortified himself at Salerno, had actually been crowned King of the <!--k54=09336b.htm-->Lombards<!--k30--> when <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> descended upon him at <!--k54=02477b.htm-->Beneventum<!--k30-->, received his submission, and took his son <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Grimwald<!--k30--> as a hostage, after which, finding that Tassilo had been secretly associated with the conspiracy of the <!--k37=09336b.htm-->Lombards<!--k30-->, he invaded Bavaria from three sides with three armies drawn from at least five nationalities. Once more the influence of the Holy See settled the Bavarian question in <!--k36=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> favour; <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Adrian<!--k30--> threatened Tassilo with excommunication if he persisted in rebellion, and as the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke's<!--k30--> own subjects refused to follow him to the field, he personally made submission, did homage, and in return received from <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> a new lease of his duchy (October, 787).<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>During this period the national discontent with <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Fastrada<!--k30--> culminated in a plot in which <!--k53=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30--> the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Hunchback<!--k30-->, <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> son by <!--k34=xxyyyk.htm-->Himiltrude<!--k30-->, was implicated, and though his life was spared through his father's <!--k53=08070a.htm-->intercession<!--k30-->, <!--k37=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30--> spent what remained of his days in a monastery. Another son of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> (Carloman, afterwards called <!--k37=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30-->, and crowned King of Lombardy at Rome in 781, on the occasion of an Easter visit by the king, at which <!--k54=14726a.htm-->time<!--k30--> also his brother <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> was crowned King of Aquitaine) served his father in dealing with the Avars, a pagan danger on the frontier, compared with which the invasion of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Septimania<!--k30--> by the Saracens (793) was but an insignificant incident of border warfare. These Avars, probably of Turanian blood, occupied the territories north of the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Save<!--k30--> and west of the Theiss. Tassilo had invited their assistance against his overlord; and after the <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke's<!--k30--> final submission <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> invaded their country and conquered it as far as the Raab (791). By the capture of the famous "Ring" of the Avars, with its nine concentric circles, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> came into <!--k53=12315a.htm-->possession<!--k30--> of vast quantities of gold and silver, parts of the plunder which these barbarians had been accumulating for two centuries. In this campaign King <!--k37=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30--> of Lombardy cooperated with his father, with forces drawn from Italy; the later stages of this war (which may be considered the last of <!--k36=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> great wars) were left in the hands of the younger king.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>The last stages by which the story of <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> career is brought to its climax touch upon the exclusive <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> domain of the Church. He had never ceased to <!--k53=08075a.htm-->interest<!--k30--> himself in the deliberations of synods, and this <!--k54=08075a.htm-->interest<!--k30--> extended (an example that wrought fatal results in after ages) to the discussion of questions which would now be regarded as purely <!--k53=05089a.htm-->dogmatic<!--k30-->. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> interfered in the dispute about the Adoptionist heresy (see ADOPTIONISM; ALCUIN; COUNCIL OF FRANKFORT). His interference was less pleasing to <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Adrian<!--k30--> in the <!--k53=10053b.htm-->matter<!--k30--> of Iconoclasm, a heresy with which the Empress-mother <!--k53=08131a.htm-->Irene<!--k30--> and <!--k53=14451b.htm-->Tarasius<!--k30-->, Patriarch of <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30-->, had dealt in the second <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Council<!--k30--> of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Nicaea<!--k30-->. The Synod of Frankfort, wrongly informed, but <!--k54=08045a.htm-->inspired<!--k30--> by <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, took upon itself to condemn the aforesaid <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Council<!--k30-->, although the latter had the <!--k53=13428a.htm-->sanction<!--k30--> of the Holy See (see CAROLINE BOOKS). In the year 797 the <!--k54=05230a.htm-->Eastern<!--k30--> Emperor Constantine VI, with whom his mother <!--k54=08131a.htm-->Irene<!--k30--> had for some <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->time<!--k30--> been at variance, was by her dethroned, imprisoned, and blinded. It is significant of <!--k36=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> position as <em>de facto</em> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30--> of the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->West<!--k30--> that <!--k36=08131a.htm-->Irene<!--k30--> sent envoys to Aachen to lay before <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> her side of this horrible story. It is also to be noted that the popular impression that <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantine<!--k30--> had been put to death, and the aversion to committing the imperial sceptre to a woman's hand, also bore upon what followed. Lastly, it was to <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> alone that the Christians of the East were now crying out for succour against the threatening advance of the Moslem Caliph <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Haroun<!--k30--> al <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Raschid<!--k30-->. In 795 Adrian I died (25 Dec.), deeply regretted by <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, who held this pope in great esteem and <!--k53=03459a.htm-->caused<!--k30--> a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Latin<!--k30--> metrical epitaph to be prepared for the papal tomb. In 787 <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had visited Rome for the third time in the interest of the pope and his secure <!--k54=12315a.htm-->possession<!--k30--> of the Patrimony of Peter.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>Leo III, the immediate <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> of Adrian I, notified <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> of his <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->election<!--k30--> (26 December, 795) to the Holy See. The king sent in return <!--k53=15571a.htm-->rich<!--k30--> presents by Abbot Angilbert, whom he commissioned to deal with the pope in all manners pertaining to the royal office of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30--> <!--k36=xxyyyk.htm-->Patrician<!--k30-->. While this letter is respectful and even affectionate, it also exhibits <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> concept of the coordination of the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> and temporal powers, nor does he hesitate to remind the pope of his grave <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> obligations. The new pope, a <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30-->, had bitter enemies in the Eternal City, who spread the most damaging reports of his previous <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30-->. At length (25 April, 799) he was waylaid, and left unconscious. After escaping to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Peter's<!--k30--> he was rescued by two of the king's <em>missi</em>, who came with a considerable force. The <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Duke<!--k30--> of Spoleto sheltered the fugitive pope, who went later to Paderborn, where the king's camp then was. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> received the <!--k53=15403b.htm-->Vicar of Christ<!--k30--> with all due reverence. Leo was sent back to Rome escorted by royal <em>missi</em>; the insurgents, thoroughly frightened and unable to convince <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> of the pope's <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->iniquity<!--k30-->, surrendered, and the <em>missi</em> sent <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Paschalis<!--k30--> and Campulus, nephews of Adrian I and ringleaders against Pope Leo, to the king, to be dealt with at the royal pleasure.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>Charles was in no hurry to take final <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->action<!--k30--> in this matter. He settled various affairs connected with the frontier beyond the Elbe, with the protection of the <!--k53=02221c.htm-->Balearic Isles<!--k30--> against the Saracens, and of Northern <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Gaul<!--k30--> against Scandinavian sea-rovers, spent most of the winter at Aachen, and was at <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Riquier<!--k30--> for Easter. About this <!--k54=14726a.htm-->time<!--k30-->, too, he was occupied at the deathbed of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Liutgarde<!--k30-->, the queen whom he had <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->married<!--k30--> on the death of <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Fastrada<!--k30--> (794). At <!--k53=15002a.htm-->Tours<!--k30--> he conferred with Alcuin, then summoned the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->host<!--k30--> of the Franks to meet at Mainz and announced to them his <!--k53=08069b.htm-->intention<!--k30--> of again proceeding to Rome. Entering Italy by the Brenner Pass, he travelled by way of Ancona and Perugia to Nomentum, where Pope Leo met him and the two entered Rome together. A <!--k53=14388a.htm-->synod<!--k30--> was held and the charges against Leo pronounced false. On this occasion the Frankish bishops declared themselves unauthorized to pass <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->judgment<!--k30--> on the Apostolic See. Of his own free will Leo, under oath, declared publicly in <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Peter's<!--k30--> that he was innocent of the charges brought against him. Leo requested that his accusers, now themselves condemned to death, should be punished only with banishment.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p>After his coronation in Rome (800-814)<!--k90--><p>Two days later (Christmas Day, 800) took place the principal event in the <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->. During the <!--k53=12231b.htm-->pontifical<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Mass<!--k30--> celebrated by the pope, as the king knelt in prayer before the high altar beneath which <!--k54=08748a.htm-->lay<!--k30--> the bodies of Sts. Peter and Paul, the pope approached him, placed upon his head the imperial crown, did him formal <!--k55=06423a.htm-->reverence<!--k30--> after the ancient manner, saluted him as <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30--> and <!--k53=02107a.htm-->Augustus<!--k30--> and <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->anointed<!--k30--> him, while the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Romans<!--k30--> present burst out with the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->acclamation<!--k30-->, thrice repeated: "To Carolus <!--k54=02107a.htm-->Augustus<!--k30--> crowned by God, mighty and pacific emperor, be <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> and victory" (Carolo, piisimo Augusto a Deo coronato, magno et pacificio <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Imperatori<!--k30-->, vita et victoria). These details are gathered from contemporary accounts (Life of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Leo<!--k30--> III in "lib. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Pont.<!--k30-->"; "Annales Laurissense majores"; Einhard's <em>Vita Caroli</em>; Theophanes). Though not all are found in any one narrative, there is no good reason for <!--k53=05141a.htm-->doubting<!--k30--> their general accuracy. Einhard's statement (<em>Vita Caroli</em> 28) that <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had no suspicion of what was about to happen, and if pre-informed would not have accepted the imperial crown, is much discussed, some seeing in it an unwillingness to imperial authority on an ecclesiastical basis, others more <!--k53=08571c.htm-->justly<!--k30--> a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->natural<!--k30--> hesitation before a momentous step overcome by the positive <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->action<!--k30--> of friends and admirers, and culminating; in the scene just described. On the other hand, there seems no <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->reason<!--k30--> to doubt that for some <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->time<!--k30--> previous the elevation of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had been discussed, both at home and at Rome, especially in view of two facts: the scandalous <!--k54=04211a.htm-->condition<!--k30--> of the imperial government at <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30-->, and the acknowledged grandeur and solidity of the <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Carolingian<!--k30--> house. He owed his elevation not to the conquest of Rome, nor to any <!--k54=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30--> of the Roman Senate (then a mere municipal body), much less to the local citizenship of Rome, but to the pope, who exercised in a supreme juncture the <!--k54=10559a.htm-->moral<!--k30--> supremacy in Western Christendom which the age widely recognized in him, and to which, indeed, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> even then owed the title that the popes had transferred to his father Pepin. It is certain that <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> constantly attributed his imperial dignity to an <!--k38=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30--> of God, made <!--k53=08673a.htm-->known<!--k30--> of course through the agency of the <!--k54=15403b.htm-->Vicar of Christ<!--k30--> (<em>divino <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->nutu<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->coronatus<!--k30-->, a Deo coronatus</em>, in "Capitularia", ed. Baluze, I, 247, 341, 345); also that after the ceremony he made very <!--k54=15571a.htm-->rich<!--k30--> <!--k54=06553a.htm-->gifts<!--k30--> to the Basilica of St. Peter, and that on the same day the pope <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->anointed<!--k30--> (as King of the Franks) the younger <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, son of the emperor and at that time probably <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->destined<!--k30--> to succeed in the imperial dignity. The Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum), since 476 practically extinguished in the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->West<!--k30-->, <!--k53=13407a.htm-->save<!--k30--> for a <!--k53=03052b.htm-->brief<!--k30--> interval in the sixth century, was restored by this papal <!--k38=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30-->, which became the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->historical<!--k30--> basis of the future <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->relations<!--k30--> between the popes and the <!--k54=01641a.htm-->successors<!--k30--> of <!--k36=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30--> (throughout the Middle Ages no <!--k38=09022a.htm-->Western<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30--> was considered <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->legitimate<!--k30--> unless he had been crowned and <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->anointed<!--k30--> at Rome by the successor of St. Peter). Despite the earlier goodwill and help of the papacy, the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30--> of <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30-->, <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->legitimate<!--k30--> heir of the imperial title (he still called himself <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30-->, and his capital was officially New Rome) had long proved incapable of preserving his authority in the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Italian<!--k30--> peninsula. Palace revolutions and heresy, not to speak of fiscal oppression, <!--k53=12620b.htm-->racial<!--k30--> antipathy, and impotent but <!--k53=15403c.htm-->vicious<!--k30--> intrigues, made him odious to the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Romans<!--k30--> and Italians generally. In any case, since the <!--k54=05117a.htm-->Donation<!--k30--> of <!--k37=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30--> (752) the pope was formally sovereign of the duchy of Rome and the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Exarchate<!--k30-->; hence, apart from its effect on his shadowy claim to the sovereignty of all Italy, the Byzantine ruler had nothing to lose by the elevation of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->. However, the event of Christmas Day, 800, was long resented at <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30-->, where eventually the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was occasionally called "Emperor", or "Emperor of the <!--k55=06238a.htm-->Franks<!--k30-->", but never "Roman <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30-->". Suffice it to add here that while the imperial consecration made him in theory, what he was already in fact, the principal ruler of the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->West<!--k30-->, and impropriated, as it were, in the <!--k36=03610c.htm-->Carolingian<!--k30--> line the majesty of ancient Rome, it also lifted <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> at once to the dignity of supreme temporal protector of Western Christendom and in particular of its head, the Roman Church. Nor did this mean only the local welfare of the papacy, the <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->good<!--k30--> order and peace of the Patrimony of Peter. It meant also, in face of the yet vast pagan world (<em>barbarae nationes</em>) of the North and the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Southeast<!--k30-->, a <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->religious<!--k30--> responsibility, encouragement and protection of missions, advancement of Christian culture, organization of dioceses, enforcement of a Christian <!--k53=05030a.htm-->discipline<!--k30--> of <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30-->, improvement of the clergy, in a word, all the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->forms<!--k30--> of governmental cooperation with the Church that we meet with in the <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> and the legislation of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->. Long before this event Pope Adrian I had conferred (774) on <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> his father's dignity of <em>Patricius <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Romanus<!--k30--></em>, which implied primarily the protection of the Roman Church in all its rights and <!--k54=12436b.htm-->privileges<!--k30-->, above all in the temporal authority which it had gradually acquired (notably in the former Byzantine Duchy of Rome and the <!--k36=xxyyyk.htm-->Exarchate<!--k30--> of Ravenna) by <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->just<!--k30--> titles in the course of the two preceding centuries. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, it is true, after his imperial consecration exercised practically at Rome his authority as <em>Patricius</em>, or protector of the Roman Church. But he did this with all due recognition of the papal sovereignty and principally to prevent the quasi-anarchy which local intrigues and <!--k53=11534a.htm-->passions<!--k30-->, family <!--k54=08075a.htm-->interest.<!--k30--> and ambitions, and adverse Byzantine agencies were promoting. It would be unhistorical to maintain that as emperor he ignored at once the civil sovereignty of the pope in the Patrimony of Peter. This (the Duchy of Rome and the <!--k36=xxyyyk.htm-->Exarchate<!--k30-->) he significantly omitted from the partition of the Frankish State made at the Diet of <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Thionville<!--k30-->, in 806. It is to be noted that in this public division of his estate he made no provision for the imperial title, also that he committed to all three sons "the defence and protection of the Roman Church". In 817 <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Pious<!--k30-->, by a famous charter whose <!--k53=14322c.htm-->substantial<!--k30--> <!--k53=02137a.htm-->authenticity<!--k30--> there is no good reason to doubt, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->confirmed<!--k30--> to <!--k53=11514a.htm-->Pope Paschal<!--k30--> and his <!--k38=01641a.htm-->successors<!--k30--> forever, "the city of <!--k55=13164a.htm-->Rome<!--k30--> with its duchy and dependencies, as the same have been held to this day by your predecessors, under their authority and <!--k53=08567a.htm-->jurisdiction<!--k30-->", adding that he did not pretend to any jurisdiction in said territory, except when <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->solicited<!--k30--> thereto by the pope. It may be noted here that the chroniclers of the ninth century treat as "restitution" to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Peter<!--k30--> the various cessions and grants of cities and territory made at this period by the <!--k36=03610c.htm-->Carolingian<!--k30--> rulers within the limits of the Patrimony of Peter. The Charter of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Pious<!--k30--> was afterwards <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->confirmed<!--k30--> by Emperor Otto I in 962 and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Henry II<!--k30--> in 1020. These imperial documents make it clear that the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->acts<!--k30--> of authority exercised by the new emperor in the Patrimony of Peter were only such as were called for by his office of Defender of the Roman Church. Kleinclausz (l'Empire Carolingien, etc., Paris, 1902, 441 sqq.) denies the <!--k54=02137a.htm-->authenticity<!--k30--> of the famous letter (871) of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> II to the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Greek<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Emperor<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Basil<!--k30--> (in which the former recognizes fully the papal origin of his own imperial dignity), and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->attributes<!--k30--> it to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Anastasius<!--k30--> Bibliotheca in 879. His arguments are weak; the <!--k32=02137a.htm-->authenticity<!--k30--> is admitted by Gregorovius and O. Harnack. Anti-papal writers have undertaken to <!--k55=12454c.htm-->prove<!--k30--> that <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> dignity of <em>Patricius <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Romanorum<!--k30--></em> was equivalent to immediate and sole sovereign authority at Rome, and in <!--k54=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30--> and in fact excluded any papal sovereignty. In reality this <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30--> patriciate, both under Pepin and <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, was no more than a high protectorship of the civil sovereignty of the pope, whose local independence, both before and after the coronation of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, is <!--k53=07635a.htm-->historically<!--k30--> <!--k32=03539b.htm-->certain<!--k30-->, even apart from the aforesaid imperial charters.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>The personal <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->devotion<!--k30--> of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> to the Apostolic See is well known. While in the preface to his Capitularies he calls himself the "devoted defender and <!--k53=07543b.htm-->humble<!--k30--> helper of <!--k54=07386a.htm-->Holy<!--k30--> <!--k54=03744a.htm-->Church<!--k30-->", he was especially fond of the basilica of St. Peter at Rome. Einhard relates (Vita, c. xxvii) that he enriched it beyond all other <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->churches<!--k30--> and that he was particularly anxious that the City of Rome should in his reign obtain again its ancient authority. He promulgated a special law on the respect due this See of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Peter<!--k30--> (Capitulare de honoranda sede Apostolica, ed. Baluze I, 255). The letters of the popes to himself, his father, and grandfather, were collected by his order in the famous "Codex <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Carolinus<!--k30-->". Gregory VII tells us (Regest., VII, 23) that he placed a part of the conquered <!--k54=13497b.htm-->Saxon<!--k30--> territory under the protection of <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Peter<!--k30-->, and sent to Rome a tribute from the same. He received from <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Pope Adrian<!--k30--> the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30--> <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->canon law<!--k30--> in the shape of the "Collectio Dionysia-Hadriana", and also (784-91) the "Gregorian <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Sacramentary<!--k30-->" or liturgical use of Rome, for the guidance of the Frankish <!--k32=03744a.htm-->Church<!--k30-->. He furthered also in the Frankish <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->churches<!--k30--> the introduction of the Gregorian chant. It is of <!--k54=08075a.htm-->interest<!--k30--> to note that just before his coronation at Rome <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> received three messengers from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, bearing to the King of the Franks the <!--k54=08631b.htm-->keys<!--k30--> of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Jerusalem, "a recognition that the holiest place in Christendom was under the protection of the great monarch of the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->West<!--k30-->" (Hodgkin). Shortly after this event, the Caliph <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Haroun<!--k30--> al <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Raschid<!--k30--> sent an embassy to <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, who continued to take a deep <!--k32=08075a.htm-->interest<!--k30--> in the <!--k55=07425a.htm-->Holy Sepulchre<!--k30-->, and built <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Latin<!--k30--> monasteries at Jerusalem, also a hospital for pilgrims. To the same period belongs the foundation of the <em>Schola Francorum</em> near St. Peter's Basilica, a refuge and hospital (with <!--k53=03504a.htm-->cemetery<!--k30--> attached) for Frankish pilgrims to Rome, now represented by the Campo Santo de' Tedeschi near the <!--k53=15276b.htm-->Vatican<!--k30-->.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>The main work of <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30--> in the development of Western Christendom might have been considered accomplished had he now passed away. Of all that he added during the remaining thirteen years of his life nothing increased perceptibly the stability of the structure. His military power and his instinct for organization had been successfully applied to the formation of a material power pledged to the support of the papacy, and on the other hand at least one pope (Adrian) had lent all the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> strength of the Holy See to help build up the new <!--k38=09022a.htm-->Western<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Empire<!--k30-->, which his immediate <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> (Leo) was to <!--k54=14133a.htm-->solemnly<!--k30--> consecrate. Indeed, the remaining thirteen years of <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> earthly career seem to illustrate rather the drawbacks of an intimate connection between Church and State than its advantages.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>In those years nothing like the military activity of the emperor's earlier <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> appears; there were much fewer enemies to conquer. <!--k54=03625a.htm-->Charles'<!--k30--> sons led here and there an expedition, as when <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> captured <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Barcelona<!--k30--> (801) or the younger <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> invaded the territory of the Sorbs. But their father had somewhat larger business on his hands at this <!--k54=14726a.htm-->time<!--k30-->; above all, he had to either conciliate or neutralize the <!--k54=08326b.htm-->jealousy<!--k30--> of the Byzantine Empire which still had the prestige of old <!--k54=15006b.htm-->tradition<!--k30-->. At Rome <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had been hailed in due <!--k54=06137b.htm-->form<!--k30--> as "Augustus" by the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Roman<!--k30--> people, but he could not help realizing that many centuries before, the <!--k54=13055c.htm-->right<!--k30--> of conferring this title had virtually passed from Old to New Rome. New Rome, i.e. <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Constantinople<!--k30-->, affected to regard Leo's <!--k54=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30--> as one of schism. <!--k53=11050a.htm-->Nicephorus<!--k30-->, the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> of <!--k54=08131a.htm-->Irene<!--k30--> (803) entered into diplomatic <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->relations<!--k30--> with <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, it is true, but would not recognize his imperial <!--k53=xxyyyk.htm-->character<!--k30-->. According to one account (Theophanes) <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had sought <!--k36=08131a.htm-->Irene<!--k30--> in <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->marriage<!--k30-->, but his plan was defeated. The Frankish emperor then took up the cause of rebellious <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Venetia<!--k30--> and Dalmatia. The war was carried on by sea, under King <!--k54=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30-->, and in 812, after the death of <!--k54=11050a.htm-->Nicephorus<!--k30-->, a Byzantine embassy at Aachen actually addressed <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> as <em>Basileus</em>. About this <!--k32=14726a.htm-->time<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> again trenched upon the teaching prerogative of the Church, in the <!--k54=10053b.htm-->matter<!--k30--> of the <em>Filioque</em> although in this instance also the Holy See admitted the soundness of his doctrine, while condemning his usurpation of its functions.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>The other source of discord which appeared in the new <!--k54=09022a.htm-->Western<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Empire<!--k30-->, and from its very beginning, was that of the <!--k54=01641a.htm-->succession<!--k30-->. <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> made no pretence either of <!--k54=13055c.htm-->right<!--k30--> of primogeniture for his eldest son or to name a <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->successor<!--k30--> for himself. As <!--k54=11662b.htm-->Pepin the Short<!--k30--> had divided the Frankish realm, so did <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> divide the empire among his sons, naming none of them emperor. By the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->will<!--k30--> which he made in 806 the greater part of what was later called France went to <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Pious<!--k30-->; Frankland proper, Frisia, Saxony, Hesse, and Franconia were to be the heritage of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> the Young; <!--k37=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30--> received Lombardy and its <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Italian<!--k30--> dependencies, Bavaria, and Southern <!--k35=xxyyyk.htm-->Alemannia<!--k30-->. But <!--k37=11662b.htm-->Pepin<!--k30--> and <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> pre-deceased the emperor, and in 813 the magnates of the empire did homage at Aachen to <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Louis<!--k30--> the <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Pious<!--k30--> as King of the Franks, and future sole ruler of the great imperial state. Thus is was that the <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Carolingian<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Empire<!--k30-->, as a dynastic institution, ended with the death of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> the Fat (888), while the <!--k54=07386a.htm-->Holy<!--k30--> Roman Empire, continued by <!--k53=11353a.htm-->Otto<!--k30--> the Great (968-973), lacked all that is now France. But the idea of a Europe welded together out of various <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->races<!--k30--> under the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> influence of one Catholic Faith and one <!--k54=15403b.htm-->Vicar of Christ<!--k30--> had been exhibited in the concrete.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>It remains to say something of the achievements of <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30--> at home. His <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> was so full of movement, so made up of long journeys, that home in his case <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->signifies<!--k30--> little more than the personal environment of his court, wherever it might happen to be on any given day. There was, it is true, a general preference for Austrasia, or Frankland (after Aachen, Worms, <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Nymwegen<!--k30-->, and Ingleheim were favourite residences). He took a deep and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->intelligent<!--k30--> <!--k54=08075a.htm-->interest<!--k30--> in the agricultural development of the realm, and in the growth of trade, both domestic and foreign. The civil legislative work of <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> consisted principally in organizing and codifying the principles of Frankish <!--k54=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30--> handed down from antiquity; thus in 802 the laws of the Frisians, <!--k54=14712a.htm-->Thuringians<!--k30-->, and <!--k37=xxyyyk.htm-->Saxons<!--k30--> were reduced to writing. Among these principles, it is important to note, was one by which no free <!--k54=09580c.htm-->man<!--k30--> could be deprived of <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> or liberty without the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->judgment<!--k30--> of his equals in the state. The <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->spirit<!--k30--> of his legislation was above all <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->religious<!--k30-->; he recognized as a basis and norm the ecclesiastical canons, was wont to submit his projects of <!--k32=09053a.htm-->law<!--k30--> to the bishops, or to give civil authority to the <!--k53=04670a.htm-->decrees<!--k30--> of synods. More than once he made laws at the suggestion of popes or bishops. For administrative purposes the State was divided into counties and hundreds, for the government of which counts and hundred-men were responsible. Side by side with the counts in the great national parliament (<em>Reichstag</em>, Diet) which normally met in the spring, sat the bishops, and the <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->spiritual<!--k30--> constituency was so closely intertwined with the temporal that in reading of a "council" under <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30-->, it is not always easy to ascertain whether the particular proceedings are supposed to be those of a parliament or of a <!--k32=14388a.htm-->synod<!--k30-->. Nevertheless this parliament or diet was <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->essentially<!--k30--> bicameral (civil and ecclesiastical), and the foregoing descriptions applies to the mutual discussion of <em>res mixtae</em> or subjects pertaining to both <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->orders<!--k30-->.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p><p>The one Frankish administrative institution to which <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> gave an entirely new <!--k54=xxyyyk.htm-->character<!--k30--> was the <em>missi dominici</em>, representatives (civil and ecclesiastical) of the royal authority, who from being royal messengers <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->assumed<!--k30--> under him functions much like those of papal legates, i.e. they were partly royal commissioners, partly itinerant governors. There were usually two for each <!--k53=12514a.htm-->province<!--k30--> (an <!--k53=04049b.htm-->ecclesiastic<!--k30--> and a <!--k54=08748a.htm-->lay<!--k30--> lord), and they were bound to visit their territory (<em>missatica</em>) four times each year. Between these <em>missi</em> and the local governors or counts the power of the former great crown-vassals (dukes, <em>Herzöge</em>) was parcelled out. Local justice was administered by the aforesaid count (<em>comes, Graf</em>) in his court, held three times each year (<em>placitum generale</em>), with the aid of seven <!--k53=01799b.htm-->assessors<!--k30--> (<em>scabini, rachimburgi</em>), but there was a graduated <!--k54=01652a.htm-->appeal<!--k30--> ending in the person of the emperor.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k93--></p><p>While enough has been said above to show how ready he was to interfere in the Church's domain, it does not appear that this propensity arose from motives discreditable to his religious character. It would be absurd to pretend that <!--k54=03610c.htm-->Charlemagne<!--k30--> was a consistent lifelong hypocrite; if he was not, then his keen practical <!--k54=08075a.htm-->interest<!--k30--> in all that pertained to the services of the Church, his participation even in the <!--k53=09304a.htm-->chanting<!--k30--> of the <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->choir<!--k30--> (though, as his biographer says, "in a subdued voice") his fastidious attention to questions of <!--k53=13064b.htm-->rites<!--k30--> <!--note-->and <!--k53=03538b.htm-->ceremonies<!--k30--> (Monachus <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Sangallensis<!--k30-->), go to show, like many other traits related of him, that his strong rough <!--k54=10715a.htm-->nature<!--k30--> was really impregnated with zeal, however mistaken at times, for the earthly <!--k54=06585a.htm-->glory<!--k30--> of God. He sought to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->elevate<!--k30--> and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->perfect<!--k30--> the clergy, both <!--k54=10459a.htm-->monastic<!--k30--> and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->secular<!--k30-->, the latter through the enforcement of the <em>Vita <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Canonica<!--k30--></em> or common life. Tithes were strictly enforced for the support of the clergy and the dignity of public <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->worship<!--k30-->. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Ecclesiastical<!--k30--> immunities were recognized and protected, the bishops held to frequent <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->visitation<!--k30--> of their dioceses, a regular <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->religious<!--k30--> instruction of the people provided for, and in the vernacular tongue. Through Alcuin he <!--k54=03459a.htm-->caused<!--k30--> corrected copies of the <!--k53=13635b.htm-->Scripture<!--k30--> to be placed in the <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->churches<!--k30-->, and earned great credit for his improvement of the much depraved text of the Latin Vulgate. <!--k53=05295b.htm-->Education<!--k30-->, for aspirants to the priesthood at least, was furthered by the royal order of 787 to all bishops and abbots to keep open in their cathedrals and monasteries schools for the study of the <!--k53=01760a.htm-->seven liberal arts<!--k30--> and the interpretation of <!--k54=13635b.htm-->Scriptures<!--k30-->. He did much also to improve ecclesiastical music, and founded schools of church-song at Metz, Soissons, and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Gall<!--k30-->. For the contemporary development of Christian civilization through Alcuin, Einhard, and other scholars, <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->Italian<!--k30--> and Irish, and for the king's personal attainments in <!--k53=08245a.htm-->literature<!--k30-->, see CAROLINGIAN SCHOOLS; ALCUIN; EINHARD. He spoke <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Latin<!--k30--> well, and loved to listen to the reading of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->St. Augustine<!--k30-->, especially "The <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->City<!--k30--> of <!--nnn=06608a.htm-->God<!--k30-->". He understood <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Greek<!--k30-->, but was especially <!--k53=15459a.htm-->devoted<!--k30--> to his Frankish (Old-German) mother tongue; its terms for the months and the various winds are owing to him. He attempted also to produce a <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->German<!--k30--> grammar, and Einhard tells us that he <!--k32=03459a.htm-->caused<!--k30--> the ancient folksongs and <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->hero-tales<!--k30--> (<em>barbara atque <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->antiquissima<!--k30--> carmina</em>) to be collected; unfortunately this <!--k53=04104b.htm-->collection<!--k30--> ceased to be appreciated and was lost at a later date.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> <!--k94--></p><p>From boyhood <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> had evinced strong domestic affections. <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Judged<!--k30-->, perhaps, by the more perfectly developed Christian standards of a later day, his <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->matrimonial<!--k30--> <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->relations<!--k30--> were far from blameless; but it would be <!--k53=08010c.htm-->unfair<!--k30--> to <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->criticize<!--k30--> by any such ethical rules the obscurely transmitted accounts of his domestic <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30--> which have come down to us. What is <!--k54=03539b.htm-->certain<!--k30--> (and more pleasant to <!--k53=04324b.htm-->contemplate<!--k30-->) is the picture, which his contemporaries have left us, of the delight he found in being with his children, joining in their sports, particularly in his own favourite recreation of swimming, and finding his relaxation in the society of his sons and daughters; the latter he refused to give in <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->marriage<!--k30-->, unfortunately for their <!--k54=10559a.htm-->moral<!--k30--> <!--k54=xxyyyk.htm-->character<!--k30-->. He died in his seventy-second year, after forty-seven years of reign, and was <!--k53=03071a.htm-->buried<!--k30--> in the octagonal Byzantine-Romanesque <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->church<!--k30--> at Aachen, built by him and decorated with marble <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->columns<!--k30--> from Rome and Ravenna. In the year 1000 Otto III opened the imperial tomb and found (it is said) the great emperor as he had been <!--k54=03071a.htm-->buried<!--k30-->, sitting on a marble <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->throne<!--k30-->, robed and crowned as in <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->life<!--k30-->, the book of the <!--k53=06655b.htm-->Gospels<!--k30--> open on his knees. In some parts of the empire popular affection placed him among the saints. For political purposes and to please Frederick Barbarossa he was canonized (1165) by the antipope Paschal III, but this <!--k54=01115a.htm-->act<!--k30--> was never ratified by insertion of his <!--k53=06021b.htm-->feast<!--k30--> in the Roman Breviary or by the <!--k53=03449a.htm-->Universal<!--k30--> <!--k54=03744a.htm-->Church<!--k30-->; his <em>cultus</em>, however, was permitted at Aachen [<!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Acta<!--k30--> SS., 28 Jan., 3d ed., II, 490-93, 303-7, 769; his office is in <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Canisius<!--k30-->, "Antiq. Lect.", III (2)]. According to his friend and biographer, Einhard, <!--k38=xxyyyk.htm-->Charles<!--k30--> was of imposing stature, to which his bright eyes and long, flowing hair added more dignity. His neck was rather short, and his belly prominent, but the symmetry of his other members concealed these defects. His clear voice was not so sonorous as his gigantic frame would suggest. Except on his visits to Rome he wore the national dress of his Frankish people, linen shirt and drawers, a <!--k53=15087a.htm-->tunic<!--k30--> held by a silken cord, and leggings; his thighs were wound round with thongs of leather; his feet were covered with <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->laced<!--k30--> shoes. He had <!--k32=xxyyyk.htm-->good<!--k30--> health to his sixty-eighth year, when fevers set in, and he began to limp with one foot. He was his own physician, we are told, and much disliked his <!--k53=10122a.htm-->medical<!--k30--> advisers who wished him to eat boiled meat instead of <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->roast<!--k30-->. No contemporary portrait of him has been preserved. A statuette in the Musée <!--k55=xxyyyk.htm-->Carnavalet<!--k30--> at Paris is said to be very ancient.<!--k44=xxyyyk.htm--> </p>
<p>Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, CAROLINGIAN king of the FRANKS, came to rule over most of Europe and assumed (800) the title of Roman emperor. He is sometimes regarded as the founder of the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. In 768 he and his brother Carloman inherited the Frankish kingdom (most of present-day France and a part of western Germany) from their father PEPIN THE SHORT. The entire kingdom passed to Charlemagne when Carloman died in 771. He inherited great wealth and a strong military organization from his father and brother. He used these assets to double the territory under Carolingian control. In 772 he opened his offensive against the SAXONS, and for more than three decades he pursued a ruthless policy aimed at subjugating them and converting them to Christianity. Almost every year Charlemagne attacked one or another region of Saxon territory. --4,500 Saxons were executed on a single day in 782--and deportations were used to discourage the stubborn. The Saxons proved to be a far more difficult enemy than any of the other peoples subjugated by Charlemagne. For example, the LOMBARDS were conquered in a single extended campaign 773-74), after which Charlemagne assumed the title "king of the Lombards." In 788 he absorbed the duchy of Bavaria, and soon thereafter he launched an offensive against the AVAR empire. The Avars succumbed within a decade, yielding Charlemagne a vast hoard of gold and silver. After one disastrous campaign (778) against the Muslims in Spain, Charlemagne left the southwestern front to his son Louis, (later Emperor LOUIS I) who, with the help of local Christian rulers, conquered Barcelona in 801 and controlled much of Catalonia by 814. On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne accepted the title of emperor and was crowned by Pope LEO III. For several years after he regarded the imperial title of being of little value. Moreover, he intended to divide his lands and titles among his sons, as was the Frankish custom. At his death on Jan. 28, 814, however, only one son, Louis, survived; Louis therefore assumed control of the entire Frankish empire.</p><p> </p><p>Source: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mgholler/Caden/a40.htm#i547459207 </p>
<p><strong>Charlemagne</strong> (pronounced <span><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode">/ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/</font></span>; Latin: <span><em>Carolus Magnus</em> or <em>Karolus Magnus</em></span>, meaning <strong>Charles the Great</strong>) (2 April 742 – 28 January 814) was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned <span><em>Imperator Augustus</em></span> by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 which 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 <strong>Charles I</strong> in the regnal lists of France, Germany (where he is known as <em>Karl der Große</em>), and the Holy Roman Empire.</p><p>The son of King Pippin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, he succeeded his father 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 waging war on the Saracens, who menaced his realm from Spain. It was during one of these campaigns that Charlemagne experienced the worst defeat of his life, at the Battle of Roncesvalles (778) memorialised in the <em>Song of Roland</em>. 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.</p><p>Today he is regarded not only as the founding father of both French and German monarchies, but also as <em>the father of Europe</em>: 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.<sup><font size="3"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></font></sup></p><p>By the 6th century, the 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 (<em>rois fainéants</em>). Almost all government powers of any consequence were exercised by their chief officer, the mayor of the palace or <em>major domus</em>.</p><p>In 687, 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 Pippin 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.</p><p>After Carloman resigned his office, Pippin had Childeric III deposed with Pope Zachary's approval. In 751, Pippin 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 Pippin's father Charles Martel.</p><p>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;<sup><font size="3"><span>[</span>2<span>]</span></font></sup> and the religious, political, and artistic evolutions originating from a centrally-positioned Francia made a defining imprint on the whole of Western Europe.</p><p> His story is very long...</p><p>You can read the rest here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne</p>