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Charlemagne "Charles the Great" King of the Franks, Holy Roman Emperor

742-814
Born: La Chapelle, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France
Died: La Chapelle, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France

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  • Story: Charlemagne

    <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Charlemagne &amp; His Empire</font> &nbsp; <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Queen Goosefoot&#39;s Son</font> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Charlemagne was born around 742 in Aachen, a city in the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia, located in what is now Germany. His real name was Charles; he wasn&#39;t called Charlemagne (from the Latin &quot;Carolus Magnus,&quot; or Charles the Great) until long after his death.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><strong><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">His father, Pepin or Pippin III, was elected king of the </font></font></font><font color="#0000ff"><u><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Frankish Empire</font></font></u></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"> when Charlemagne was a child. The king was nicknamed Pepin the Short, while his wife, Charlemagne&#39;s mother Bertrada, was nicknamed Bertha of the Big Foot, or Queen Goosefoot. The inspiration for the name &quot;Mother Goose&quot; may have come from Bertha, although she had nothing to do with the English nursery rhymes now published under that name.</font></font></font></strong></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Charlemagne was probably an illegitimate child, but his parents eventually tied the knot and had two more surviving children, Carloman and Gisela. Pepin ruled the Frankish empire for 15 years or so before dying of dropsy in 768. His kingdom was then divided between Charlemagne and Carloman.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><strong><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Charlemagne was about 26 years old when he became king. Carloman was still in his teens. In his </font></font></font><font color="#0000ff"><u><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Life of Charlemagne</font></font></u></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">, Frankish historian Einhard, who knew Charlemagne personally and presented him in the best possible light, says Carloman treated Charlemagne with &quot;unfriendliness and jealousy,&quot; but Charlemagne endured this &quot;most patiently, and, to the wonder of all, could not be provoked to be angry with him.&quot;</font></font></font></strong></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>After just a few years, Carloman died of natural causes and Charlemagne became the ruler of the entire Frankish empire. He went on to conquer much of what remained of Western Europe, making the Carolingian empire one of the greatest empires in world history.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>An affectionate man, Charlemagne got along very well with his sister, Gisela, and their mother, Bertrada, treating both with great respect. Gisela was a nun, so she lived in a convent, but Bertrada lived with Charlemagne. It was Bertrada who arranged for Charlemagne to marry a daughter of King Desiderius of the Lombards (a Germanic tribe whose kingdom was in Italy). But it seems this wife was not to Charlemagne&#39;s liking, because he soon ended the marriage and took a new wife named Hildegarde, with whom he had six children, according to Einhard.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>In 783, Charlemagne was twice bereaved when both Hildegarde and Bertrada died. Before long he found a new wife, Fastrada.</strong></font></font></font></p> <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Charlemagne&#39;s Children</font> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Charlemagne was a devoted father, and he had a large family: three sons and three daughters by Hildegarde, two daughters by Fastrada, and at least seven other children by various women. &quot;The more the merrier&quot; seems to have been his motto toward children -- when one of his sons died young, leaving five daughters, Charlemagne took all five girls into his household and raised them as his own.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Despite the duties of kingship, he found time to personally supervise his children&#39;s upbringing. He ate all of his meals with his children, and took them with him wherever he traveled. In fact, he was so fond of his daughters that he didn&#39;t marry them off for political purposes, as most royal fathers did, but kept them at his court. It seems they didn&#39;t lack for boyfriends; at least two of the princesses gave birth to illegitimate children. Einhard says Charlemagne pretended not to know about his daughters&#39; love affairs.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Among the king&#39;s many children was a son called Pepin the Hunchback, whose mother, Himiltrude, was either Charlemagne&#39;s first wife or a concubine. In 792, while Charlemagne was away at war, Pepin conspired with a group of Frankish nobles to kill his father and take the throne. After learning about the plot, Charlemagne sent Pepin to live in a poor monastery.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>According to a 9th century writer known as the Monk of Saint Gall (also called Notker the Stammerer), Charlemagne later discovered another plot against his life. Reluctant to punish the conspirators, he sent messengers to ask Pepin the Hunchback for advice. The messengers found Pepin weeding the monastery garden. Grouchily he told them to go back to his father and tell him what he was doing: &quot;digging up useless weeds&quot; to make room for more valuable plants.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>The messengers weren&#39;t happy with this reply, but Charlemagne understood at once that Pepin had given him good advice. He decided to weed his enemies out of his lands -- by executing them. Then he rewarded Pepin by letting him &quot;choose the manner of life that most pleased him.&quot; Pepin chose to move to &quot;the most noble monastery then in existence.&quot;</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>This story probably isn&#39;t true, but it does demonstrate that, decades after his death, Charlemagne was remembered as a forgiving father and a wise king. But why did his nobles -- and even his own son -- plot against him? Einhard blames Charlemagne&#39;s wife Fastrada, saying her cruelty caused the Frankish nobles to turn against Charlemagne.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>After Fastrada died in 794, Charlemagne married his final wife, Luitgard. They had no children together. Luitgard died in 800, and Charlemagne did not remarry.</strong></font></font></font></p> <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Holy Roman Emperor</font> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><strong><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Charlemagne, reigning over his vast empire in West Europe, was in many ways a successor to the emperors of the Western </font></font></font><font color="#0000ff"><u><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Roman Empire</font></font></u></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">. When Pope Leo III was violently attacked in 799, he fled to Charlemagne for help. Charlemagne placed the pope under his protection and punished his enemies.</font></font></font></strong></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><strong><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Meanwhile, the former Eastern Roman empire, which we now call the </font></font></font><font color="#0000ff"><u><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Byzantine Empire</font></font></u></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">, was ruled by an empress named Irene, who had deposed her son, Constantine VI, and had his eyes put out. The emperors of the Byzantine empire had always considered themselves to be the rightful successors to the emperors of ancient Rome, but the pope believed that Irene could not legally rule under Roman law because she was a woman, so he decided to give Charlemagne the title of emperor.</font></font></font></strong></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><strong><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">At the end of 800, Charlemagne went to Rome, and on Christmas Day he was crowned emperor by the pope. The </font></font></font><font color="#0000ff"><u><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2">Holy Roman Empire</font></font></u></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"> was born.</font></font></font></strong></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>(Some experts consider 10th century German king Otto I to be the first true Holy Roman Emperor. Either way, Charlemagne&#39;s coronation set the precedent; he was first in a line of emperors that continued for the next one thousand years.)</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>It is possible that Charlemagne considered marrying Empress Irene to reunite the Eastern and Western empires, but nothing came of this plan. In 802 Irene was overthrown by her own subjects; she died in 803. A later Byzantine ruler, Emperor Michael I, officially recognized Charlemagne as Emperor of the West.</strong></font></font></font></p> <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">The Greatness of Charlemagne</font> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Charlemagne was a great -- and sometimes brutal -- military leader who expanded his empire by conquering the Lombards, the Saxons, and others. He was also a great reformer and administrator who governed his sprawling empire very effectively.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>One of his most important achievements was the establishment of a school system so that all boys throughout his empire could be educated. The emperor believed in educating himself, too; as an adult he studied grammar, mathematics, and other subjects. He was particularly interested in astronomy and foreign languages; he spoke Latin fluently and understood Greek. Like so many people at that time, he could not write, but he tried to learn, and even kept writing tablets under his pillow so he could practice when he had time.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>Charlemagne was a tall, strong, active man. He ate simply and preferred to dress in the garb of ordinary Frankish people. According to Einhard, the emperor was deeply religious and very generous to both the church and the poor.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>In later centuries, Charlemagne came to be viewed as the ideal Christian king. Legends arose in which Charlemagne and his paladins were portrayed as romantic figures, like King Arthur and his knights.</strong></font></font></font></p> <p style="margin-: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="2"><strong>The real Charlemagne ruled for more than 45 years. He died in 814 and was buried in Aachen Cathedral (located in modern Germany), where his tomb can still be seen. The cathedral, which Charlemagne founded, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.</strong></font></font></font></p>

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  • Story: Cultural Significance

    <p><font color="#000000">Charlemagne had an immediate afterlife. The author of the <font color="#000000">Visio Karoli Magni</font> written around 865 uses facts gathered apparently from Einhard and his own observations on the decline of Charlemagne&#39;s family after the dissensions of civil war (840&ndash;43) as the basis for a visionary tale of Charles&#39; meeting with a prophetic spectre in a dream.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">Charlemagne, being a model knight as one of the </font><font color="#000000">Nine Worthies</font><font color="#000000">, enjoyed an important afterlife in European culture. One of the great medieval </font><font color="#000000">literary cycles</font><font color="#000000">, the </font><font color="#000000">Charlemagne cycle</font><font color="#000000"> or the <font color="#000000">Matter of France</font>, centres on the deeds of Charlemagne&mdash;the King with the Grizzly Beard of <font color="#000000">Roland</font><font color="#000000"> fame</font>&mdash;and his historical commander of the border with </font><font color="#000000">Brittany</font><font color="#000000">, </font><font color="#000000">Roland</font><font color="#000000">, and the </font><font color="#000000">paladins</font><font color="#000000"> who are analogous to the knights of the </font><font color="#000000">Round Table</font><font color="#000000"> or </font><font color="#000000">King Arthur&#39;s</font><font color="#000000"> court. Their tales constitute the first<font color="#000000"> </font><font color="#000000">chansons de geste</font></font><font color="#000000">.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">Charlemagne himself was accorded </font><font color="#000000">sainthood</font><font color="#000000"> inside the Holy Roman Empire after the twelfth century. His </font><font color="#000000">canonisation</font><font color="#000000"> by </font><font color="#000000">Antipope Paschal III</font><font color="#000000">, to gain the favour of </font><font color="#000000">Frederick Barbarossa</font><font color="#000000"> in 1165, was never recognised by the </font><font color="#000000">Holy See</font><font color="#000000">, which annulled all of Paschal&#39;s ordinances at the </font><font color="#000000">Third Lateran Council</font><font color="#000000"> in 1179. However, he has been </font><font color="#000000">acknowledged</font><font color="#000000"> as <font color="#000000">cultus confirmed</font></font><font color="#000000">.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">Charlemagne is sometimes credited with supporting the insertion of the <font color="#000000">filioque</font> into the </font><font color="#000000">Nicene Creed</font><font color="#000000">. The Franks had inherited a Visigothic tradition of referring to the Holy Spirit as deriving from God the Father and Son (Filioque), and under Charlemagne, the Franks challenged the 381 Council of Constantinople proclamation that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. </font><font color="#000000">Pope Leo III</font><font color="#000000"> rejected this notion, and had the Nicene Creed carved into the doors of </font><font color="#000000">Old St. Peter&#39;s Basilica</font><font color="#000000"> without the offending phrase; the Frankish insistence lead to bad relations between Rome and Francia. Later, the </font><font color="#000000">Roman Catholic Church</font><font color="#000000"> would adopt the phrase, leading to dispute between Rome and Constantinople. Some see this as one of many pre-cursors to the </font><font color="#000000">East-West Schism</font><font color="#000000"> centuries later.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">In </font><font color="#000000">the Divine Comedy</font><font color="#000000"> the spirit of Charlemagne appears to Dante in the Heaven of Mars, among the other &quot;warriors of the faith&quot;.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">According to </font><font color="#000000">folk etymology</font><font color="#000000">, Charlemagne was commemorated in the old name Charles&#39;s Wain for the </font><font color="#000000">Big Dipper</font><font color="#000000"> in the constellation of </font><font color="#000000">Ursa Major</font><font color="#000000">.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">French volunteers in the Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS during the World War II were organised in a unit called <font color="#000000">33rd Waffen</font> <font color="#000000">Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)</font><font color="#000000">. A German Waffen-SS unit used &quot;Karl der Gro&szlig;e&quot; for some time in 1943, but then chose the name </font><font color="#000000">10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg</font> instead.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">The city of Aachen has, since 1949, awarded an international prize (called the <font color="#000000">Karlspreis</font><font color="#000000"> der</font> Stadt Aachen) in honour of Charlemagne. It is awarded annually to &quot;personages of merit who have promoted the idea of western unity by their political, economic and literary endeavours.&quot; Winners of the prize include </font><font color="#000000">Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi</font><font color="#000000">, the founder of the pan-European movement, </font><font color="#000000">Alcide De Gasperi</font><font color="#000000">, and </font><font color="#000000">Winston Churchill</font><font color="#000000">.</font></p><p><font color="#000000">Charlemagne is memorably quoted by Henry Jones (played by </font><font color="#000000">Sean Connery</font><font color="#000000">) in the film, <font color="#000000">Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade</font>. Immediately after using his </font><font color="#000000">umbrella</font><font color="#000000"> to induce a flock of </font><font color="#000000">seagulls</font><font color="#000000"> to smash through the glass cockpit of a pursuing German fighter plane, Henry Jones remarks &quot;I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne: &#39;Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky&#39;.&quot; Despite the quote&#39;s popularity since the movie, there is no evidence that Charlemagne actually said this. </font></p><p><font color="#000000">The Economist</font><font color="#000000">, the weekly news and international affairs newspaper, features a one page article every week entitled &quot;Charlemagne&quot;, focusing on European government.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Taken from the internet - Wikipedia&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

  • Story: End Of An Empire

    <p>Charlemagne was a creator and a Renassaince man. His coronation seemed to be a turning point for him. Although he still fought to expand his empire, more and more of his energies were spent on major construction projects and attempts to turn Aachen into an educational crossroad to the world. </p><p>In 811, Charlemagne began the march to Verden to meet Godefrid, the king of the Norsemen, whose attacks on Charlemagne where a continual pesterence. Before Charlemagne could meet with him he was brutally murdered. Charlemagne, now seventy years old, began the trip back home from what would be his last expedition. In 813, his health had declined greatly so he delegated power to his son Louis (the Pious). Less than a year later, Charlemagne was dead.</p>

  • Story: Chronology Of Charlemagne

    <p>772 - Charlemagne begins a series of long, blood-thirsty wars with the Saxons to the north of his kingdom. Only in 804, nearly thirty years later, was Saxonia conquered. These wars always kept Charlemagne very busy because there were other military conquests he was executing in other parts of modern-day Europe that demanded his time as well as his strategic abilities. </p><p>778 - Charlemagne launches offensive attack across the Pyrenees Mountains and into Spain, where he managed to penetrate as far as Saragossa. It is thought by most people that he was able to take Saragossa but this is not so. His focus on the destruction of Pamplona is the most probable reason for his failure to take the city. As he moved back, his rearguard, which employed several important generals, was completely destroyed. This is known as the Battle of Roncevaux. Around this time, Charlemagne also began his advance to the East due to unexepected turns in the on-going wars with Saxony. He fought hard against the Sorbs, Avars, Wends and most importantly, the Slavs, which he defeated easily and thus added the lands of Eastern Germany and Hungary to his growing empire. </p><p>782 - Saxons launch suprise attacks on Charlemagne&#39;s men with considerable success. Charlemagne responds by executing 4,500 Saxon prisoners in one day. </p><p>800 - After delegating much of his time and effort to help Pope Leo regain respect after a scandal, Charlemagne is coronated emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (he prefered the title &quot;King of the Franks&quot;) at St. Peter&#39;s Basilica. This day is the only time in Papal history that a pope bows to an earthly king. </p><p>802 - Charlemagne completes the establshment of his court at Aachen and attempts to gather the best scholars in Europe at his court in hopes of turning Aachen into an educational metropolis.&nbsp; Alcuin works with Charlemagne to develope the Palace School, a place where people from all walks of life could receive excellent education. A non-discriminate school of this caliber was revolutionary. Around this time, Charlemagne ordered that the old sagas of the Frankish people to be written out and he began a grammar of his own native tongue. He also attempted to purge plainchant of the various dialects so that it might become universal and be performed correctly. His kingdom was so large, however, that he was unable to acheive this. Also, attempts were made by his own men to sabotage the operation, which hindered him even more. This time of educational enlightenment is supplemented by Charlemagne&#39;s construction projects such as thermal baths, a cathedral in Revenna, and a massive 500 foot bridge over the Rhine River.</p>

  • Story: Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor

    Charlemagne was the Frankish king who conquered most of Europe and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800. Also known as Carolus Magnus and Karl der Grosse, Charlemagne&#39;s precise birthplace and date are unknown. Possible places of his birth include Aachen (Aix-La-Chapelle, the location of his court), Gauting in Bavaria (a local legend has it he was born there in a mill) and the outskirts of Li&egrave;ge in Belgium, perhaps Jupille or Herstal. The eldest son of Pepin the Short, Charlemagne and his brother, Carloman, divided the kingdom after Pepin&#39;s death in 768; a few years later Carloman died and Charlemagne annexed his portion. During his 43-year reign Charlemagne proved himself a brilliant military strategist and administrator, promoting art and education while waging war from Saxony to the Mediterranean. Among his many campaigns were: The Lombard War (773-775); the Spanish War (778-801); the conquest of Bavaria (787-788); the conquest of the Avars (791-801); the Byzantine War (802-812); and a thirty-year effort to subdue the Saxons and convert them to Christianity. Known for his piety as well as his brutality (he once beheaded more than 4,000 Saxons in one day), Charlemagne united most of Europe and created a period of relative order during the otherwise tumultuous Middle Ages. <p><strong>Extra credit</strong>: Older biographies often list his birthday as 2 April 742. There is no evidence for the actual day of his birth, and very little as to the year. Recent scholars are more inclined to say he was born in 747 or 748, and there is wide agreement that it was sometime in April.</p>

  • Story: Wikipedia

    Charlemagne <div> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia <div>Jump to: navigation, search</div> <!-- start content --> <div>For other uses, see Charlemagne (disambiguation).</div> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> A coin of Charlemagne with the inscription <em>KAROLVS IMP AVG</em></div> </div> </div> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> A portrait of Charlemagne by Albrecht D&uuml;rer that was painted several centuries after Charlemagne&#39;s death; the coat of arms above him show the German eagle and the French Fleur-de-lis.</div> </div> </div> <p><strong>Charlemagne</strong> (pronounced <span>/ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/</span>; Latin: <span><em>Carolus Magnus</em> or <em>Karolus Magnus</em></span>, meaning <strong>Charles the Great</strong>) (747 &ndash; 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 Roncesvalles (778). 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>[1]</sup> Pierre Rich&eacute; reflects:</p> &ldquo; . . . he enjoyed an exceptional destiny, and by the length of his reign, by his conquests, legislation and legendary stature, he also profoundly marked the history of western Europe.<sup>[2]</sup> &rdquo; <div> <div> Contents <span>[hide]</span></div> <ul><li><span>1</span> <span>Background</span></li><li><span>2</span> <span>Personal traits</span> <ul><li><span>2.1</span> <span>Date and place of birth</span></li><li><span>2.2</span> <span>Language</span></li><li><span>2.3</span> <span>Personal appearance</span></li><li><span>2.4</span> <span>Dress</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>3</span> <span>Rise to power</span> <ul><li><span>3.1</span> <span>Early life</span></li><li><span>3.2</span> <span>Joint rule</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>4</span> <span>Italian campaigns</span> <ul><li><span>4.1</span> <span>Conquest of Lombardy</span></li><li><span>4.2</span> <span>Southern Italy</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>5</span> <span>Charles and his children</span></li><li><span>6</span> <span>Spanish campaigns</span> <ul><li><span>6.1</span> <span>Roncesvalles campaign</span></li><li><span>6.2</span> <span>Wars with the Moors</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>7</span> <span>Eastern campaigns</span> <ul><li><span>7.1</span> <span>Saxon Wars</span></li><li><span>7.2</span> <span>Submission of Bavaria</span></li><li><span>7.3</span> <span>Avar campaigns</span></li><li><span>7.4</span> <span>Slav expeditions</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>8</span> <span>Imperium</span> <ul><li><span>8.1</span> <span>Imperial diplomacy</span></li><li><span>8.2</span> <span>Danish attacks</span></li><li><span>8.3</span> <span>Death</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>9</span> <span>Administration</span> <ul><li><span>9.1</span> <span>Economic and monetary reforms</span></li><li><span>9.2</span> <span>Education reforms</span></li><li><span>9.3</span> <span>Writing reforms</span></li><li><span>9.4</span> <span>Political reforms</span> <ul><li><span>9.4.1</span> <span>Organisation</span></li><li><span>9.4.2</span> <span>Imperial coronation</span></li><li><span>9.4.3</span> <span>Divisio regnorum</span></li></ul> </li></ul> </li><li><span>10</span> <span>Cultural significance</span></li><li><span>11</span> <span>Family</span> <ul><li><span>11.1</span> <span>Marriages and heirs</span></li><li><span>11.2</span> <span>Concubinages and illegitimate children</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>12</span> <span>References</span> <ul><li><span>12.1</span> <span>Notes</span></li><li><span>12.2</span> <span>Bibliography</span></li></ul> </li><li><span>13</span> <span>External links</span></li></ul> //<![CDATA[ if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } //]]> </div> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Background</span> <p>By the 6th century the Franks were Christianised, and the 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 fain&eacute;ants</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 &quot;king&quot;. 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&#39;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&#39;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>[3]</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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Personal traits</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Charlemagne (left) and Pippin the Hunchback. Tenth-century copy of a lost original from about 830.</div> </div> </div> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <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 Petarienses</em>, April 1, 747. In that year, April 1 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 city close to Li&egrave;ge in modern day Belgium), the region from where both the Merovingian and Carolingian families originate. He went to live in his father&#39;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, Pr&uuml;m, D&uuml;ren, Gauting and Aachen.</p> <p>Charlemagne&#39;s birth-name, &quot;<em>Charles</em>&quot; was derived from his grandfather, Charles Martel. The name derives from &quot;<em>karl</em>&quot;, a Germanic stem meaning &quot;<em>man</em>&quot; or &quot;<em>free man</em>&quot;,<sup>[4]</sup> related to the English &quot;churl&quot;. The earliest extant forms of Charlemagne&#39;s name are in the Latinate form, &quot;<em>Carolus</em>&quot; or &quot;<em>Karolus</em>&quot;.</p> <p>In many Slavic languages, the very word for &quot;king&quot; derives from Charles&#39; Slavicised name.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Language</span> <p>Charlemagne&#39;s native tongue is a matter of controversy. His mother speech was probably a Germanic dialect of the Franks of the time, but linguists differ on the identity and periodisation of the language, some going 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, also called Old Dutch, and from loanwords to Old French. Linguists know very little about Old Frankish, as it 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>[5]</sup></p> <p>The area of Charlemagne&#39;s birth does not make determination of his native language easier. Most historians agree he was born around Li&egrave;ge, like his father, but some say he was born in or around Aachen, some fifty kilometres away. At that time, this was an area of great linguistic diversity. If we take Li&egrave;ge (around 750) as the centre, we find Low Franconian in the north and northwest, Gallo-Romance (the ancestor of Old French) in the south and southwest and various Old High German dialects in the east. If Gallo-Romance is excluded, that means he either spoke Old Low Franconian or an Old High German dialect, probably with a strong Frankish influence.</p> <p>Apart from his native language he also spoke Latin &quot;as fluently as his own tongue&quot; and understood a bit of Greek: <em>Grecam vero melius intellegere quam pronuntiare poterat</em>, &quot;He understood Greek better than he could pronounce it.&quot;<sup>[6]</sup></p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Personal appearance</span> <p>Though no description from Charlemagne&#39;s lifetime exists, his personal appearance is known from a good description by Einhard, author of the biographical <em>Vita Caroli Magni</em>. Einhard tells in his twenty-second chapter:</p> <blockquote> <p>Charles was large and strong, and of lofty stature, though not disproportionately tall (his height is well known to have been seven times the length of his foot); the upper part of his head was round, his eyes very large and animated, nose a little long, hair fair, and face laughing and merry. Thus his appearance was always stately and dignified, whether he was standing or sitting; although his neck was thick and somewhat short, and his belly rather prominent; but the symmetry of the rest of his body concealed these defects. His gait was firm, his whole carriage manly, and his voice clear, but not so strong as his size led one to expect.</p> </blockquote> <p>Charles is well known to have been tall, stately, and fair-haired, 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&#39;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 D&uuml;rer portrait) is often portrayed with flowing blond hair, due to a misunderstanding of Einhard, who describes Charlemagne as having <em>canitie pulchra</em>, or &quot;beautiful white hair&quot;, which has been rendered as blonde or fair in many translations.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Dress</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Part of the treasure in Aachen</div> </div> </div> <p>Charlemagne wore the traditional, inconspicuous and distinctly non-aristocratic costume of the Frankish people, described by Einhard thus:</p> <blockquote> <p>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.</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>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&#39;s successor.</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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Rise to power</span> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Early life</span> <p>Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pippin the Short (714 &ndash; 24 September 768, reigned from 751) and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720 &ndash; 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&#39;s maternal uncle through a lady Bertha.</p> <p>Much of what is known of Charlemagne&#39;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>It would be folly, I think, to write a word concerning Charles&#39; 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 deed, and such other facts of his life as are worth telling and setting forth, and shall first give an account of his deed 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.</p> </blockquote> <p>On the death of Pippin, the kingdom of the Franks was divided&mdash;following tradition&mdash;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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Joint rule</span> <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&#39; 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 Angoul&ecirc;me. 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&#39;s court at Pavia. The Lombard&#39;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&#39;s wife Gerberga fled to Desiderius&#39; court with her sons for protection.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Italian campaigns</span> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Conquest of Lombardy</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> The Frankish king Charlemagne was a devout Catholic who maintained a close relationship with the papacy throughout his life. In 772, when Pope Hadrian I was threatened by invaders, the king rushed to Rome to provide assistance. Shown here, the pope asks Charlemagne for help at a meeting near Rome</div> </div> </div> <p>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&#39; 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&#39;s charges. The embassies both met at Thionville and Charlemagne upheld the pope&#39;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.</p> <p>The siege lasted until the spring of 774, when Charlemagne visited the pope in Rome. There he confirmed his father&#39;s grants of land, with some later chronicles claiming&mdash;falsely&mdash;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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Southern Italy</span> <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&#39; or his sons&#39; many times, but Charlemagne himself never returned to the Mezzogiorno and Grimoald never was forced to surrender to Frankish suzerainty.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Charles and his children</span> <p>During the first peace of any substantial length (780&ndash;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 &quot;Pippin&quot;. The younger of the two, Louis, became king of Aquitaine. He 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 Pr&uuml;m, 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 B&ouml;hmerwald (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&#39;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&#39;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 &ndash; 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 &ndash; 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&#39;s court circle.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Spanish campaigns</span> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Roncesvalles campaign</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne in an illustration taken from a manuscript of a <em>chanson de geste</em></div> </div> </div> <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 C&oacute;rdoba. These Moorish or &quot;Saracen&quot; 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 received the homage of Sulayman al-Arabi and Kasmin ibn Yusuf, the foreign rulers. Zaragoza did not fall soon enough for Charlemagne, however. Indeed, Charlemagne was facing the toughest battle of his career and, in fear of losing, he decided to retreat and head home. He could not trust the Moors, nor 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>Chanson de Roland</em>).</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Wars with the Moors</span> <p>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&#39;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 mechanical clock<sup><span style="white-space: nowrap">[<em>citation needed</em>]</span></sup>, out of which came a mechanical bird to announce the hours.</p> <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&#39;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 C&oacute;rdoban 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 C&oacute;rdoba 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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Eastern campaigns</span> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Saxon Wars</span> <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&mdash;the Saxon Wars&mdash;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. 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&#39;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&#39;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>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.</p> </blockquote> <p>The heathen resistance in Saxony was at an end.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Submission of Bavaria</span> <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 Jumi&egrave;ges. 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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Avar campaigns</span> <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&#39; 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 had swept the Avar state away. In the 10th century, the Magyars settled the Pannonian plain and presented a new threat to Charlemagne&#39;s descendants.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Slav expeditions</span> <p>In 789, in recognition of his new pagan neighbours, the Slavs, Charlemagne marched an Austrasian-Saxon army across the Elbe into Abotrite 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&#39; 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 Slovenes. These people were subdued by the Lombards and Bavarii and made tributaries, but never incorporated into the Frankish state.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Imperium</span> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Imperial diplomacy</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Charlemagne&#39;s chapel at Aachen Cathedral.</div> </div> </div> <p>Matters of Charlemagne&#39;s reign came to a head in late 800. 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 the altar to pray, the pope crowned him <em>Imperator Romanorum</em> (&quot;Emperor of the Romans&quot;) in Saint Peter&#39;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&#39;s intent and did not want any such coronation:</p> <blockquote> <p>[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.</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. However, Charles would after 806 style himself, not <em>Imperator Romanorum</em> (&quot;Emperor of the Romans&quot;, a title reserved for the Byzantine emperor), but rather <em>Imperator Romanum gubernans Imperium</em> (&quot;Emperor ruling the Roman Empire&quot;).</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&#39;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&#39;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 &mdash; 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&#39; 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 Emperor Michael I Rhangabes recognised his status as Emperor.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Danish attacks</span> <p>After the conquest of Nordalbingia, the Frankish frontier was brought into contact with Scandinavia. The pagan Danes, &quot;a race almost unknown to his ancestors, but destined to be only too well known to his sons&quot; 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 and he concluded the Treaty of Heiligen with Charlemagne in late 811.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Death</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Persephone sarcophagus of Charlemagne</div> </div> </div> <p>In 813, Charlemagne called Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, his only surviving legitimate son, to his court. There he crowned him 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 (Einhard 59). He took to his bed on 21 January and as Einhard tells it:</p> <blockquote> <p>He died January twenty-eighth, the seventh day from the time that he took to his bed, at nine o&#39;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.</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. 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&#39;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>[7]</sup> In 1215 Frederick II would re-inter him in a casket made of gold and silver.</p> <p>Charlemagne&#39;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> &ldquo; 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>[8]</sup> &rdquo; <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&#39;s own sons after their father&#39;s death laid the foundation for the modern states of France and Germany.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Administration</span> <p>As an administrator, Charlemagne stands out for his many reforms: monetary, governmental, military, cultural and ecclesiastical. He is the main protagonist of the &quot;Carolingian Renaissance&quot;.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Economic and monetary reforms</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Monogram of Charlemagne, from the subscription of a royal diploma: &quot;<span>Signum (monogr.: KAROLVS) Caroli gloriosissimi regis</span>&quot;</div> </div> </div> <p>Charlemagne had an important role in determining the immediate economic future of Europe. Pursuing his father&#39;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.</p> <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 &ndash; a unit of both money and weight &ndash; 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&#39;s standard was voluntarily adopted by much of England. After Charlemagne&#39;s death, continental coinage degraded and most of Europe resorted to using the continued high quality English coin until about 1100.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Education reforms</span> <p>A part of Charlemagne&#39;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&#39;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 under the tutelage of Paul the Deacon, from whom he learned grammar, Alcuin, with whom he studied rhetoric, dialect 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 &ndash; practicing the formation of letters in his bed during his free time on books and wax tablets he hid under his pillow &ndash; &quot;his effort came too late in life and achieved little success&quot;, and his ability to read &ndash; which Einhard is silent about, and which no contemporary source supports &ndash; has also been called into question.<sup>[9]</sup></p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Writing reforms</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Page from the Lorsch Gospels of Charlemagne&#39;s reign</div> </div> </div> <p>During Charles&#39; 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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Political reforms</span> <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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Organisation</span> <div><em>Main article: Government of the Carolingian Empire</em></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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Imperial coronation</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Throne of Charlemagne in Aachen Cathedral</div> </div> </div> <p>Historians have debated for centuries whether Charlemagne was aware of the Pope&#39;s intent to crown him Emperor prior to the coronation (Charlemagne declared that he would not have entered Saint Peter&#39;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.</p> <p>Roger Collins points out (<em>Charlemagne</em>, pg. 147) &quot;That the motivation behind the acceptance of the imperial title was a romantic and antiquarian interest in reviving the Roman empire is highly unlikely.&quot; 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 &quot;fought against and thrown from their shoulders the heavy yoke of the Romans&quot; and &quot;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&quot;, as Pippin III described it in a law of 763 or 764 (Collins 151). Furthermore, the new title &mdash; carrying with it the risk that the new emperor would &quot;make drastic changes to the traditional styles and procedures of government&quot; or &quot;concentrate his attentions on Italy or on Mediterranean concerns more generally&quot; (Collins 149) &mdash; 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 &mdash; 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>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&#39;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.</p> </div> <div>&mdash;John Julius Norwich,&nbsp;Byzantium: The Early Centuries, pg. 378</div> </blockquote> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> Coronation of an idealised king, depicted in the Sacramentary of Charles the Bald (about 870)</div> </div> </div> <p>For the Pope, then, there was &quot;no living Emperor at the that time&quot; (Norwich 379), though Henri Pirenne (<em>Mohammed and Charlemagne</em>, pg. 234n) disputes this saying that the coronation &quot;was not in any sense explained by the fact that at this moment a woman was reigning in Constantinople.&quot; Nonetheless, the Pope took the extraordinary step of creating one. The papacy had since 727 been in conflict with Irene&#39;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 &quot;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.&quot;. And &quot;because the Byzantines had proved so unsatisfactory from every point of view&mdash;political, military and doctrinal&mdash;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.&quot;.</p> <p>With Charlemagne&#39;s coronation, therefore, &quot;the Roman Empire remained, so far as either of them [Charlemagne and Leo] were concerned, one and indivisible, with Charles as its Emperor&quot;, though there can have been &quot;little doubt that the coronation, with all that it implied, would be furiously contested in Constantinople.&quot; (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> (&quot;Christian Empire&quot;), wherein, &quot;just as the inhabitants of the [Roman Empire] had been united by a common Roman citizenship&quot;, presumably this new empire would be united by a common Christian faith (Collins 151), certainly this is the view of Pirenne when he says &quot;Charles was the Emperor of the <em>ecclesia</em> as the Pope conceived it, of the Roman Church, regarded as the universal Church&quot; (Pirenne 233).</p> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> 19th century depiction of the imperial coronation of Charlemagne</div> </div> </div> <p>What we <em>do</em> know, from the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes (Collins 153), is that Charlemagne&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Divisio regnorum</span> <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&#39;s own death. The only part of the Empire which Louis was not promised was Italy, which Charlemagne specifically bestowed upon Pippin&#39;s illegitimate son Bernard.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Cultural significance</span> <div> <div style="width: 182px"> <div> <div></div> <em>The Coronation of Charlemagne</em>, by assistants of Raphael , circa 1516-1517</div> </div> </div> <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&#39;s family after the dissensions of civil war (840&ndash;43) as the basis for a visionary tale of Charles&#39; 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&mdash;the King with the Grizzly Beard of <em>Roland</em> fame&mdash;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&#39;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&#39;s ordinances at the Third Lateran Council in 1179. However, he has been acknowledged as <em>cultus confirmed</em>.</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&#39;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.<sup>[10]</sup></p> <p>In the Divine Comedy the spirit of Charlemagne appears to Dante in the Heaven of Mars, among the other &quot;warriors of the faith&quot;.</p> <p>According to folk etymology, Charlemagne was commemorated in the old name <em>Charles&#39;s Wain</em> for the Big Dipper in the constellation of Ursa Major.</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 &quot;Karl der Gro&szlig;e&quot; 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 &quot;personages of merit who have promoted the idea of western unity by their political, economic and literary endeavours.&quot;<sup>[11]</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 Henry Jones (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 &quot;I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne: &#39;Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky&#39;.&quot; Despite the quote&#39;s popularity since the movie, there is no evidence that Charlemagne actually said this.<sup>[12]</sup></p> <p>The Economist, the weekly news and international affairs newspaper, features a one page article every week entitled &quot;Charlemagne&quot;, focusing on European government.</p> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Family</span> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Marriages and heirs</span> <p>Charlemagne had twenty children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines.</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.<sup>[13]</sup> Charlemagne put her aside when he married Desiderata. The union produced two children: <ul><li>Amaudru, a daughter<sup>[14]</sup></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>[15]</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></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Concubinages and illegitimate children</span> <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> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>References</span> <div> <div align="left" style="float: "> <div style=": relative"></div> </div> <div style="margin-: 60px">Wikimedia Commons has media related to: <div style="margin-: 10px"><em><strong>Charlemagne</strong></em></div> </div> </div> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Notes</span> <div> <ol><li><strong>^</strong> Rich&eacute;, Preface xviii</li><li><strong>^</strong> Rich&eacute;, xviii.</li><li><strong>^</strong> Oman, Charles. <em>The Dark Ages 476&ndash;919</em> Rivingtons: London, 1914. Regards Charlemagne&#39;s grandsons as the first kings of France and Germany, which at the time comprised the whole of the Carolingian Empire save Italy.</li><li><strong>^</strong> Etymology of &quot;Charles/Karl/Karel&quot;</li><li><strong>^</strong> Original text of the Salic law.</li><li><strong>^</strong> Einhard, <em>Life</em>, 25.</li><li><strong>^</strong> Chamberlin, Russell, <em>The Emperor Charlemagne</em>, pp. 222&ndash;224</li><li><strong>^</strong> Dutton, PE, <em>Carolingian Civilization: A Reader</em></li><li><strong>^</strong> Dutton, Paul Edward, <em>Charlemagne&#39;s Mustache</em></li><li><strong>^</strong> Riche, Pierre, <em>The Carolingians</em>, p.124</li><li><strong>^</strong> Chamberlin, Russell, <em>The Emperor Charlemagne</em>, p.&nbsp;???</li><li><strong>^</strong> Quid plura? | &quot;Flying birds, excellent birds...&quot;</li><li><strong>^</strong> Charlemagne&#39;s biographer Einhard (Vita Karoli Magni, ch. 20) calls her a &quot;concubine&quot; and Paulus Diaconus speaks of Pippin&#39;s birth &quot;before legal marriage&quot;, whereas a letter by Pope Stephen III refers to Charlemagne and his brother Carloman as being already married (to Himiltrude and Gerberga), and advises them not to dismiss their wives. Historians have interpreted the information in different ways. Some, such as Pierre Rich&eacute; (<em>The Carolingians</em>, p.86.), follow Einhard in describing Himiltrude as a concubine. Others, for example Dieter H&auml;gemann (<em>Karl der Gro&szlig;e. Herrscher des Abendlands</em>, p. 82f.), consider Himiltrude a wife in the full sense. Still others subscribe to the idea that the relationship between the two was &quot;something more than concubinage, less than marriage&quot; and describe it as a Friedelehe, a form of marriage unrecognized by the Church and easily dissolvable. Russell Chamberlin (<em>The Emperor Charlemagne</em>, p. 61.), for instance, compared it with the English system of common-law marriage. This form of relationship is often seen in a conflict between Christian marriage and more flexible Germanic concepts.</li><li><strong>^</strong> Gerd Treffer, <em>Die franz&ouml;sischen K&ouml;niginnen. Von Bertrada bis Marie Antoinette (8.-18. Jahrhundert)</em> p. 30.</li><li><strong>^</strong> &quot;By [Hildigard] Charlemagne had four sons and four daughters, according to Paul the Deacon: one son, the twin of Lewis, called Lothar, died as a baby and is not mentioned by Einhard; two daughters, Hildigard and Adelhaid, died as babies, so that Einhard appears to err in one of his names, unless there were really five daughters.&quot; Thorpe, Lewis, <em>Two Lives of Charlemagne</em>, p.185</li></ol> </div> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>Bibliography</span> <ul><li>McKitterick, R. (2008). <em>Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity</em>. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Rich&eacute;, Pierre (1993). <em>The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe</em>. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1342-4</li><li>Einhard [1880] (1960). <em>The Life of Charlemagne</em>, trans. Samuel Epes Turner, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06035-X.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Oman, Charles (1914). <em>The Dark Ages, 476-918</em>, 6th ed., London: Rivingtons.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Painter, Sidney (1953). <em>A History of the Middle Ages, 284-1500</em>. New York: Knopf.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Santosuosso, Antonio (2004). <em>Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels: The Ways of Medieval Warfare</em>. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-9153-9.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Scholz, Bernhard Walter; with Barbara Rogers (1970). <em>Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard&#39;s Histories</em>. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-08790-8.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span> Comprises the <em>Annales regni Francorum</em> and <em>The History of the Sons of Louis the Pious</em></li><li>Charlemagne: Biographies and general studies, from <em>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</em>, full-article, latest edition.</li><li>Barbero, Alessandro (2004). <em>Charlemagne: Father of a Continent</em>, trans. Allan Cameron, Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23943-1.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Becher, Matthias (2003). <em>Charlemagne</em>, trans. David S. Bachrach, New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09796-4.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Ganshof, F. L. (1971). <em>The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy: Studies in Carolingian History</em>, trans. Janet Sondheimer, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-0635-8.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Langston, Aileen Lewers; and J. Orton Buck, Jr (eds.) (1974). <em>Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne&#39;s Descendants</em>. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co..<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Pirenne, Henri (1939). <em>Mohammed and Charlemagne</em>, trans. Bernard Miall, New York: Norton.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Sypeck, Jeff (2006). <em>Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and The Empires of A.D. 800</em>. New York: Ecco/HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-079706-1.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li><li>Wilson, Derek (2005). <em>Charlemagne: The Great Adventure</em>. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179461-7.<span><span style="display: none">&nbsp;</span></span></li></ul> <p></p> <span>[edit]</span> <span>External links</span> <div> <div align="left" style="float: "> <div style=": relative"></div> </div> <div style="margin-: 60px">Wikimedia Commons has media related to: <div style="margin-: 10px"><em><strong>Carolus Magnus</strong></em></div> </div> </div> <div> <div><span></span></div> <div style="margin-: 60px">Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: <div style="margin-: 10px"><em><strong>Charlemagne</strong></em></div> </div> </div> <ul><li><em>The Life of Charlemagne</em> by Einhard. At Medieval Sourcebook</li><li><em>Vita Karoli Magni</em> by Einhard. Latin text at The Latin Library</li><li>A reconstructed portrait of Charlemagne, based on historical sources, in a contemporary style.</li><li>The Sword of Charlemagne (myArmoury.com article)</li><li>Charlemagne Picture Gallery</li><li>Works by or about Charlemagne in libraries (WorldCat catalog)</li></ul> <div>Emperor Charles I the Great</div> <div><strong>Carolingian dynasty</strong></div> <span style="margin: 2em; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 90%"><strong>Died:</strong> 28 January 814</span> Regnal titles Preceded&nbsp;by<br> <strong>Pippin the Short</strong> <strong>King of the Franks</strong><br> 768 &ndash; 814<br> <em>with Carloman I</em> <em>(768 &ndash; 771)</em><br> <em>Charles the Younger</em> <em>(800 &ndash; 811)</em> Succeeded&nbsp;by<br> <strong>Louis the Pious</strong> <strong>New title</strong><br> <div style="font-size: 90%">Title granted by<br> Pope Leo III</div> <strong>(Holy) Roman Emperor</strong><br> 800 &ndash; 814<br> <em>with Louis the Pious</em> <em>(813 &ndash; 814)</em> Preceded&nbsp;by<br> <strong>Desiderius</strong> <strong>King of the Lombards</strong><br> 774 &ndash; 814<br> <em>with Pippin of Italy<br> as <strong>King of Italy</strong></em> <em>(781 &ndash; 810)</em> Succeeded&nbsp;by<br> <strong>Bernard of Italy</strong><br> <em><strong>as King of Italy</strong></em> <span style="float: right; font-weight: normal; text-align: right; width: 6em">[show]</span> <div style="float: ; width: 6em; text-align: "> <div style="border: medium none ; padding: 0pt; background-color: transparent; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: normal; font-size: xx-small"><span style="border: medium none ">v</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; color: #002bb8">d</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; color: #002bb8">e</span></div> </div> <span style="font-size: 110%">List of rulers who were termed the Great</span> &nbsp; The Greats in Asia<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Ramkhamhaeng&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Naresuan&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Narai&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Taksin&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Chulalongkorn&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Bhumibol Adulyadej&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Sejong the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Ashoka the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Kanishka&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Mengrai&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Akbar the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Abbas the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Yu the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Parākramabāhu I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Raja Raja Chola I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Gwanggaeto the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Anawrahta&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Bayinnaung</span></div> <br> &nbsp; The Greats in Europe<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Alfred the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Peter I of Russia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Catherine II of Russia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Frederick William the Great Elector&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Frederick II of Prussia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Alfonso III of Le&oacute;n&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry IV of France&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Herod the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Casimir III of Poland&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap"><strong>Charlemagne</strong>&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Tigranes the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Stephen III of Moldavia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Peter III of Aragon&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Ivan III of Russia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">John I of Portugal&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Pompey&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Justinian I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Canute the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Ferdinand I of Le&oacute;n&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Hugh the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Antiochus III the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Llywelyn the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Louis I of Hungary&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Louis XIV of France&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Theodosius I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">William V of Aquitaine&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Boleslaw I of Poland&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Sancho III of Navarre&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Theodoric the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Vytautas the Great</span></div> <br> &nbsp; The Greats in the Middle East and Africa<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Ramesses II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Alexander the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Cyrus the Great&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Darius I of Persia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Xerxes I of Persia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Karim Khan&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Reza Shah&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Mubarak Al-Sabah&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Askia Mohammad I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Mithridates II of Parthia&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Shapur II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Timur&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Umar</span></div> <br> &nbsp; The Greats in America<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Kamehameha I</div> <br> <span style="float: right; font-weight: normal; text-align: right; width: 6em">[show]</span> <div style="float: ; width: 6em; text-align: "> <div style="border: medium none ; padding: 0pt; background-color: transparent; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: normal; font-size: xx-small"><span style="border: medium none ">v</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; color: #002bb8">d</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; color: #002bb8">e</span></div> </div> <span style="font-size: 110%">Carolingian Kings of the Franks</span> &nbsp; <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em"><strong>Carolingians:</strong> P&eacute;pin <em>(751-768)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Carloman I <em>(768-771)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> <strong>Charles I</strong> <em>(768-814)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Louis I <em>(814-840)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Interregnum <em>(840-843)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Charles II <em>(843-877)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Louis II <em>(877-879)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Louis III <em>(879-882)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Carloman II <em>(879-884)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Charles the Fat <em>(884-888)</em> <strong>Robertian:</strong> Eudes <em>(887-898)</em> <strong>Carolingian:</strong> Charles III <em>(898-922)</em> <strong>Robertian:</strong> Robert I <em>(922-923)</em> <strong>Burgundy</strong>: Raoul <em>(923-936)</em> <strong>Carolingians:</strong> Louis IV <em>(936-954)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Lothaire <em>(954-986)</em> <span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Louis V <em>(986-987)</em> <strong>Capetian (Robertian):</strong> Hughes <em>(986-987)</em></div> <br> <div><span></span></div> <br> <span style="float: right; font-weight: normal; text-align: right; width: 6em">[show]</span> <div style="float: ; width: 6em; text-align: "> <div style="border: medium none ; padding: 0pt; background-color: transparent; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: normal; font-size: xx-small"><span style="border: medium none ">v</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; color: #002bb8">d</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; color: #002bb8">e</span></div> </div> <span style="font-size: 110%">Kings of Italy between 476 and 963</span> &nbsp; Non-dynastic<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Odoacer <em>(476&ndash;493)</em></div> <br> <div><span></span></div> <br> &nbsp; Ostrogoths<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Theodoric <em>(493&ndash;526)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Athalaric <em>(526&ndash;534)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Theodahad <em>(534&ndash;536)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Witiges <em>(536&ndash;540)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Ildibad <em>(540&ndash;541)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Eraric <em>(541)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Totila <em>(541&ndash;552)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Teia <em>(552&ndash;553)</em></div> <br> &nbsp; Byzantines<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Justinian I (as Emperor) <em>(553&ndash;565)</em></div> <br> &nbsp; Lombards<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Alboin <em>(565&ndash;572)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Cleph <em>(572&ndash;574)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> <em>Interregnum</em> <em>(574&ndash;584)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Authari <em>(584&ndash;590)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Agilulf <em>(590&ndash;616)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Adaloald <em>(616&ndash;626)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Arioald <em>(626&ndash;636)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Rothari <em>(636-652)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Rodoald <em>(652&ndash;653)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Aripert I <em>(653&ndash;661)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Godepert <em>(661&ndash;662)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Perctarit <em>(661&ndash;662)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Grimoald <em>(662&ndash;671)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Garibald <em>(671)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Perctarit <em>(671&ndash;688)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Cunipert <em>(688&ndash;689)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Alahis <em>(689)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Cunipert <em>(689&ndash;700)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Liutpert <em>(700&ndash;702)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Raginpert <em>(702)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Aripert II <em>(702&ndash;712)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Ansprand <em>(712)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Liutprand <em>(712&ndash;744)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Hildeprand <em>(744)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Ratchis <em>(744&ndash;749)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Aistulf <em>(749&ndash;756)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Desiderius <em>(756&ndash;774)</em></div> <br> &nbsp; Carolingians<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em"><strong>Charles I</strong> <em>(774&ndash;814)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Pepin <em>(781&ndash;810)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Bernard <em>(810&ndash;818)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Lothair I <em>(818&ndash;855)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Louis I <em>(855&ndash;875)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Charles II <em>(875&ndash;877)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Carloman <em>(877&ndash;879)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Charles III <em>(879&ndash;887)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Arnulf <em>(896&ndash;899)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Ratold <em>(896)</em></div> <br> &nbsp; Non-dynastic<br> (title disputed 887&ndash;933)<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em"><strong>Unruochings</strong>: Berengar I <em>(887&ndash;924)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> <strong>Guideschi</strong>: Guy <em>(889&ndash;894)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Lambert <em>(891&ndash;897)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> <strong>Welfs</strong>: Rudolph <em>(922&ndash;933)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> <strong>Bosonids</strong>: Louis II <em>(900&ndash;905)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Hugh <em>(926&ndash;947)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Lothair II <em>(945&ndash;950)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> <strong>Anscarids</strong>: Berengar II <em>(950&ndash;963)</em><span style="font-weight: bold">&nbsp;&middot;</span> Adalbert <em>(950&ndash;963)</em></div> <br> <span style="float: right; font-weight: normal; text-align: right; width: 6em">[show]</span> <div style="float: ; width: 6em; text-align: "> <div style="border: medium none ; padding: 0pt; background: #ffd700 none repeat scroll 0% 50%; white-space: nowrap; font-weight: normal; font-size: xx-small; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial"><span style="border: medium none ; background: #ffd700 none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial">v</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; background: #ffd700 none repeat scroll 0% 50%; color: #002bb8; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial">d</span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%">&bull;</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: medium none ; background: #ffd700 none repeat scroll 0% 50%; color: #002bb8; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial">e</span></div> </div> <span style="font-size: 110%">Holy Roman Emperors</span> &nbsp; Carolingian Empire<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em"><span style="white-space: nowrap"><strong>Charles I (Charlemagne)</strong>&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Louis I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Lothair I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Louis II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Charles II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Charles III&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Guy&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Lambert&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Arnulf&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Louis III&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Berengar</span></div> <br> <br> &nbsp; Holy Roman Empire<br> <div style="padding: 0em 0.25em">Otto I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Otto II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Otto III&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Conrad II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry III&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry IV&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry V&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Lothair II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Frederick I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry VI&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Otto IV&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Frederick II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Henry VII&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Louis IV&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Charles IV&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Sigismund&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Frederick III&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Maximilian I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Charles V&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Ferdinand I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Maximilian II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Rudolph II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Matthias&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Ferdinand II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Ferdinand III&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Leopold I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Joseph I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Charles VI&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Charles VII&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Francis I&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Joseph II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Leopold II&nbsp;<strong>&middot;</strong></span> <span style="white-space: nowrap">Francis II</span></div> <br> <p>&nbsp;</p> Persondata NAME Charlemagne ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carolus Magnus SHORT DESCRIPTION King of the Franks DATE OF BIRTH April, 742/747 PLACE OF BIRTH Li&egrave;ge, Belgium DATE OF DEATH January 28, 814 PLACE OF DEATH Aachen, Germany <!-- NewPP limit report Preprocessor node count: 5905/1000000 Post-expand include size: 104359/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 72271/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 1/500 --> <!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:5314-0!1!0!default!!en!2 and timestamp 20080907093320 --> <div> Retrieved from &quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne&quot;</div> <div><div>Categories: <span>740s births</span> | <span>814 deaths</span> | <span>Carolingian dynasty</span> | <span>Frankish kings</span> | <span>Holy Roman Emperors</span> | <span>Kings of Burgundy</span> | <span>Matter of France</span> | <span>Roman Catholic monarchs</span> | <span>Frankish people</span> | <span>Franks</span> | <span>Christianity of the Middle Ages</span> | <span>Medieval Roman consuls</span></div><div>Hidden categories: <span>All articles with unsourced statements</span> | <span>Articles with unsourced statements since March 2008</span></div></div> <!-- end content --> </div> <div> <div> Views <div> <ul><li>Article</li><li>Discussion</li><li>Edit this page</li><li>History</li></ul> </div> </div> <div> Personal tools <div> <ul><li>Log in / create account</li></ul> </div> </div> <div> </div> if (window.isMSIE55) fixalpha(); 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