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Charlemagne

Charlemagne

Nickname/Alias: Charles the Great; Latin: Carolus Magnus

Achievements: Founder (800) of the medieval “Roman” Empire.

Born: April 2, 747; Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, or Liege, France

Died: January 28, 814; Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, France (Aged 66)

Field & Discipline: Royalty; Emperor

Language: Old High German; Old French; Latin

Father: Pepin III (or Pepin the Short, d. 768)

Mother: Bertrada Carloman

Siblings: Carloman (751-71)

Spouse: 1) Desiderata (m. 770); 2) Hildegarde (m. 773, d. 783); 3) Fastrada (m. 783)

Children: Pepin (by Desiderata);  Charles (by Hildegarde); Louis (Louis of Aquitaine;

Louis the Pious, by Hildegarde)

Education: Unknown

Life & Times:

At the beginning of his reign, Charlemagne turned his attention to the pagan Saxons to the north, who had so far resisted the efforts of missionaries to convert them to Christianity. His first assault was launched in 772, followed by a series of extensive campaigns which culminated in declarations of allegiance by the Saxon nobility and a series of mass baptisms (performed 775-77).

In 773 Charles invaded and conquered Lombardy, in northern Italy. At Easter 774, he travelled to Rome for the first time, and with Pope Hadrian I in St. Peter's Basilica personally renewed the Donation of Pepin (his father), which promised to transfer to papal rule large sections of Italy.  Eager to extend his domains southwards, in the summer of 778 Charles advanced into Spain with a vast army and laid siege to Saragossa (Zaragoza).

However, this campaign proved to be one of his few military disasters, as his troops failed to take the city, and his rear guard was attacked and defeated at Roncevalles.

At his capital, Aachen, Charles fostered secular culture, summoning prominent scholars, architects, musicians and astronomers from all parts of his kingdom and from Ireland and England. Among the most important was the great Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin. These men helped Charles establish a court library containing the works of the Church Fathers and classical authors, and became informally organized into a "Palace Academy" for the education of young Frankish knights, developing a revival of learning often referred to as the "Carolingian Renaissance.”

Charles himself took an active part in this intellectual court life, receiving lessons in grammar and Greek from Alcuin, a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, and composing Latin verses and a grammar of the German language. He also ordered copied and preserved many texts of the classics, pagan and Christian.  Under the guidance of Alcuin, scriptoria were revived or established in monasteries and copying, in the beautiful script now known as Carolingian miniscule, became so widespread that 90 per cent of the classical heritage has come down to modern times in Carolingian manuscripts. The impetus given to learning under Charles lasted for at least a century after his death.

Charles also transformed his kingdom by a variety of measures to improve both its physical and institutional infrastructure. In 787 he ordered all monasteries, cathedrals and bishops' houses across the kingdom to open schools to teach the children of the poor. He ordered the repair and building of roads and bridges, the resettlement of deserted lands and the clearing of new land, the building of palaces and churches and the introduction of more productive agricultural practices.

He constructed a bridge across the Rhine at Mainz, and tried unsuccessfully to dig a canal to connect the Danube and the Rhine.  He also standardized the system of weights and measures and reformed the monetary system, dividing the silver coinage into pounds, shillings and pence in a ratio which was still in use in most of the most of the British Commonwealth in the 20th century.

 Centralizing his government, he introduced travelling administrators who examined judgements and financial records, investigated complaints against local officials, and punished corruption and dishonesty in local government.  He also established a centralized court, over which he ruled and administered justice throughout his empire. He also fostered good relations with the East, and was sent in 798 by Harun al-Raschid, the caliph of Baghdad, ambassadors and the gift of an elephant. The Carolingian frontier now extended from the North Sea, to Lombardy, and eastward to the Atlantic, and in addition he ruled most of Italy and collected tribute from border provinces as far south as the Pyrenees.

The revival of the Roman Empire of the West was regarded by many as the natural outcome of the vast power he had acquired, and on Christmas Day 800 he reached the culmination of his career when the people of Rome acclaimed him Emperor of the Romans, and Pope Leo III crowned him in St. Peter's basilica as “Carolus Augustus.”  This coronation was one result of the close alliance between church and state that had been cultivated by Charles throughout his reign; in particular he forged close ties of friendship with Pope Hadrian I, who tried to develop Italian automony Italy in opposition to the influence of Constantinople. 

 This desire for papal independence was greatly aided by the “Donation of Constantine,” a forgery dating probably from the first few years of Hadrian's reign and said to legitimize these papal aims in the name of the first Christian Emperor, [involved in forgery regarding] Constantine *.

Charles spent the remaining years of his reign in consolidating this vast empire reaching from the Ebro in nothern Spain to the Elbe, founding bishoprics in the Saxon countries and subjugating many of the Slavs east of the Elbe. His last years, however, were marked by difficulties, not least the failure to win recognition from the Byzantine Emperor, the renewed attacks by the Danes on the northern outposts of his empire, and the deaths (all within a short time) of his wife, his sister, a his sons Pepin and Charles.  The succession devolved on the weakest of his sons, Louis of Aquitaine, who was crowned Charlemagne’s co-emperor and sole successor at Aachen in 813. A few months later, in January 814, Charles developed pleurisy and died.

Assessment: Although this empire survived its founder by only one generation, the medieval kingdoms of France and Germany derived all their constitutional traditions from Charles's monarchy.

Oneliner: Charlemagne, first medieval “Roman” Emperor

Bibliography:

Wikipedia