Charlemagne

Charlemagne was an 8th-century Frankish king who has attained a status of almost mythical proportions in the West. Among other things, he was responsible for uniting most of Europe under his rule by power of the sword, for helping to restore the Western Roman Empire and becoming its first emperor, and for facilitating a cultural and intellectual renaissance, the ramifications of which were felt in Europe for centuries afterward.

Charlemagne was crowned “emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III in 800 CE, thus restoring the Roman Empire in the West for the first time since its dissolution in the 5th century. Charlemagne was selected for a variety of reasons, not least of which was his long-standing protectorate over the papacy. His protector status became explicit in 799, when the pope was attacked in Rome and fled to Charlemagne for asylum. The ensuing negotiations ended with Leo’s reinstallation as pope and Charlemagne’s own coronation as Holy Roman emperor.

The first three decades of Charlemagne’s reign were characterized by extensive military campaigning. His campaign against the Saxons proved to be his most difficult and long-lasting one. After thirty years of on-again, off-again fighting, betrayed truces, and bloody reprisals enacted by the Franks, the Saxons finally submitted in 804. Charlemagne’s activities in Saxony were accompanied by simultaneous campaigns in Italy, Bavaria, and Spain—the last of which ended in a resounding defeat for the Franks and was later mythologized in the 11th-century French epic The Song of Roland. Nonetheless, Charlemagne’s reputation as a warrior king was well earned, and he had expanded his domain to cover much of western Europe by the end of his reign.

Charlemagne facilitated an intellectual and cultural golden age during his reign that historians call the Carolingian Renaissance—after the Carolingian dynasty, to which he belonged. Charlemagne peopled his court with renowned intellectuals and clerics, and together they fashioned a series of objectives designed to uplift what they perceived as the flagging Christian populace of Europe. Improving Latin literacy was primary among these objectives, seen as a means to improve administrative and ecclesiastical effectiveness in the kingdom. A completely new writing system called Carolingian minuscule was established; libraries and schools proliferated, as did books to fill and be used in them; and new forms of art, poetry, and biblical exegesis flourished. The effects of Charlemagne's cultural program were evident during his reign but even more so afterward, when the education infrastructure he had created served as the basis upon which later cultural and intellectual revivals were built.

Charlemagne’s father, Pippin III, was of nonroyal birth. Pippin III was actually the mayor of the palace belonging to the previous dynasty, the Merovingians, and seized the throne with papal sanction several years after Charlemagne’s birth. In accordance with Frankish custom, Pippin III divided his territories between Charlemagne and Charlemagne’s brother, Carloman. The split fostered mounting tensions between the brothers that would have ended in internecine warfare had Carloman not died an untimely death in 771, leaving Charlemagne to absorb his half of the empire. According to accounts from the period, Charlemagne went on to be a devoted father to his own 18 (or more) children, whose mothers were among his various wives and concubines. Although Charlemagne had intended to divide his kingdom among his sons, only one of them—Louis the Pious—lived long enough to inherit the throne.