best biography of charlemagne

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Nonfiction Books » History Books » Medieval History (500-1400)

The best books on charlemagne, recommended by carine van rhijn.

Neighbours and Strangers: Local Societies in Early Medieval Europe by Bernhard Zeller, Carine van Rhijn, Charles West, Francesca Tinti, Marco Stoffella, Miriam Czock, Nicolas Schroeder, Steffen Patzold, Thomas Kohl & Wendy Davies

We call him Charlemagne, but it was not a name that was used in his own lifetime. His conquests stretched across vast swathes of Europe, but he probably didn't set out to become an emperor. Much has been written about him, but very little is known. Dutch historian Carine van Rhijn , a lecturer at the University of Utrecht, recommends the best books on Charles, King of the Franks.

Interview by Benedict King

King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne by Janet Nelson

Charlemagne: Empire and Society by Joanna Story (editor)

Ich und Karl der Große: Das Leben des Höflings Einhard by Steffen Patzold

Charlemagne's Practice of Empire by Jennifer Davis

Conquest and Christianization: Saxony and the Carolingian World, 772–888 by Ingrid Rembold

Saxon Identities, AD 150-900 by Robert Flierman

1 King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne by Janet Nelson

2 charlemagne: empire and society by joanna story (editor), 3 ich und karl der große: das leben des höflings einhard by steffen patzold, 4 charlemagne's practice of empire by jennifer davis, 5 conquest and christianization: saxony and the carolingian world, 772–888 by ingrid rembold, 6 saxon identities, ad 150-900 by robert flierman.

B efore we get to the books, could you just tell us, very briefly, when Charlemagne was around and also when Charles became Charles the Great—Charlemagne.

His son, Charles, was just ‘Charles’. He became ‘Charlemagne’ after his death. He succeeded his father and, like many sons who succeed a royal father, he tried to outdo his father in every possible way. And that worked for all kinds of reasons. We know him as the first emperor in the West after the Roman period and the man who conquered most of what is now Western Europe, more or less.

After the Second World War he became ‘the Father of Europe’. You can approve of that or not. I feel a bit uncomfortable with it.

There’s also a ‘ Prix Charlemagne .’ What’s that awarded for?

It is awarded by the City of Aachen, which was home to Charlemagne’s palace. It’s given to people who have helped Europe ‘become one’. There is a nice Wikipedia page about it, with a list of all the people who have won the ‘Prix Charlemagne’ or the ‘Karlspreis’. That’s another thing about him: are we talking about ‘Karl der Grosse’ or ‘Charlemagne’? He’s a different person to different people. That is what makes him so interesting.

When was the appellation ‘the Great’ bestowed on him?

Once he was safely in his grave and the Carolingian Empire that he had built began to be divided into sub-kingdoms, some writers of history started to call him ‘the Great’. It took off in the 12th century. All of a sudden, he’s the hero of crusader romances. He becomes a very appealing figure of fiction from the high Middle Ages onwards, and that never stops.

He’s a saint in the Christian church as well, isn’t he?

Unfortunately he was canonised by an anti-Pope; it was a political thing. There are some churches in parts of France where you can still find statues to Saint Charlemagne, but I don’t think he’s made the official calendar. There was an attempt to get him on and some people and some areas of Europe still stick to that. That’s another strange chapter in the history of this man. He pushed so many buttons, mostly after he was dead, that he became many different things—many unrelated to what he actually was.

We just know very little about this guy. Johannes Fried, a prominent German medievalist, published an 800-page biography of Charlemagne on the basis of what we know about him, which is virtually nothing. Of course, as a historian, there are all kinds of tricks that you can pull out of your box to flesh out the little bits and pieces that you do have.

Let’s move on to the books. The first one is by Janet Nelson, King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne . Of all the books you could have chosen, why is this the best biography of Charlemagne?

If you ever want to read one book on Charlemagne, then this would be the one. It’s wonderful. A whole raft of biographies came out around 2014 to commemorate 1200 years since his death. Nelson’s book came out a little bit later. She has worked on Charlemagne for half a century. Still, she manages to reread all the primary sources. She knows her stuff: every little scrap of information—be it archaeology, art history, history, or some strange manuscript in an obscure German monastery. She has it all and she manages to use these bits and pieces as part of a big puzzle, most of which is missing. She doesn’t try to tell us a coherent, working story that starts with birth and ends at death and mechanically goes through the points in between. She tells us what we don’t know as well, and she tries to make the most of the bits and pieces we have. She also shows how difficult it is to interpret them sometimes.

“We know him as the first emperor in the West after the Roman period and the man who conquered most of what is now Western Europe, more or less”

In the introduction, she says she wants to make the sources speak. And that is what I find so wonderful about this book. She interprets them, but the main characters in her book are all these bits and pieces of evidence through which we can get an idea about who Charlemagne was and why he is interesting. It is wonderful to have the primary sources at the heart of the book and she makes space for them. She points out things that are strange, or contradictions between sources and asks, ‘What can we make of that?’ which I love.

Many biographies of Charlemagne have been written, but this reads as a really fresh and interesting new take on the whole story.

Although she’s obviously more tentative because, in a way, she’s more thorough than lots of her predecessors, does she come up with a particular view or understanding of Charlemagne’s place in history, of his role, or what he achieved? Or does she deliberately shy away from those sorts of conclusions?

One thing she deliberately does not do is fall into the trap of writing with hindsight. She calls him Charles because ‘Charlemagne’ was a later development in the story. And she tries to stick as much as she can to contemporary material, to really zoom in on what was happening, not what people later said had been happening. That’s a big difference.

Her Charlemagne is not the lone genius, trying to rebuild the Roman Empire. Her Charlemagne is somebody who sometimes messed up monumentally but was very good at improvising. He is someone who had to learn how to rule this enormous empire just by doing it and trying things out, and by trusting people. Sometimes that was not a very good idea, as it turned out. He’s somebody who was very good at thinking on his feet and who was a very energetic person and interested in a lot of things.

He’s not the big emperor with a crown on his head and a big flowing beard, sitting on the throne and ‘ruling’. No, he’s running up and down his empire all the time because there were people attacking it and people being unfaithful. He was a very busy emperor.

He may not have resurrected the Roman Empire in the West, but he did get himself crowned Emperor of the Romans in 800, so there was something going on there. What allowed him to build this empire? Was it weakness in the surrounding polities, or was he driven by anxieties about the illegitimacy of his dynasty, and felt he had to be more energetic in keeping his aristocracy on board by invading other countries? What was behind the strength of his state, in as far as it existed?

That’s a very good question. And, of course, you can have a long discussion about whether or not this was a ‘state’ in any modern sense of the word. I think there are several parts to the secret of his success. One is simply that he was a very good military leader, with a bigger and stronger army than the neighbours. He certainly profited from weaknesses in neighbouring areas.

But I think you can also say that he wasn’t building an empire. It wasn’t a conscious process, where he woke up one morning, wondered what he should do that weekend, and decided to build an empire. Even the imperial coronation has some issues of interpretation. What he needed to do, given the kind of rule he was exercising, was to make sure that the people who were faithful to him—his military leaders, his commanders, his counts—stayed faithful. Since this is not a state as we know it, with a separate army, you need to make sure that these people stay happy. And one way of keeping them happy is to win wars and to divide the plunder with them. This stage of early medieval history has been labelled a ‘plunder economy’—because you need to expand in order to keep this internal balance. A count who gets a nice chunk of treasure to take home to his wife and children will come back and fight for you again.

“We just know very little about this guy”

That is something that starts to get harder under Charlemagne’s grandsons when the Empire gets divided. Then, you have three kings to choose from, and sometimes even four. So, if one doesn’t pay you enough, you simply go to the neighbours.

But Charlemagne was good at this and, by winning some wars that produced really spectacular amounts of treasure, he had a nice base to work with.

The other thing is that he embraced Christianity as a way of life. Christianity, at the time, was more than what we would call a religion. By collaborating with the Pope he was certain that he ruled by the grace of God on Earth. That’s not only nice because then you get extra support from Heaven in your wars, if you need it, but it also comes with obligations, because it’s then your responsibility to save people who, like the Saxons for instance, are pagans. Saxony was conquered and converted at the same time. So, there is also this ideal of spreading Christianity, early medieval style. That is a building block as well, this idea of a Christian empire.

I don’t think that he was trying to revive the Roman Empire. This coronation in 800 is still a bit of a mystery. We have very conflicting stories about it. Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, says that Charlemagne had no idea that it was coming. According to Einhard, Charlemagne was there in Rome, in church on Christmas Day, happily praying at the grave of Saint Peter when the Pope sort of sneaked up behind him and put this crown on his head and said, ‘Hooray, we have an empire and an emperor!’

That’s not very likely, right?

It sounds slightly implausible.

But why does Einhard write this down? Others, later on, thought that this train of events was impossible and that Charlemagne must have planned it years and years ahead. But these contradictory stories are already a reason to think that something was going on here. Maybe the plan was not so much to revive the Roman Empire, but for the Pope to get a stronger ally, or to say thank you for some favours that Charlemagne had done him. Or something else.

Let’s go on to the next book Charlemagne: Empire and Society, edited by Joanna Story.

This is a nice book for people who want a taster menu of Charlemagne. It consists of relatively short chapters on interesting aspects of Charlemagne and his world. It is a book aimed at beginners. I think it is the most recent and most accessible book of its kind on the market today.

Do its chapters address issues around Charlemagne where the academic debate is particularly lively at the moment?

This book is from 2005 and was intended to showcase the state of debate and of knowledge at the time. The ninth chapter in the book, written by Rosamond McKitterick, is on the Carolingian renaissance of culture and learning. That is a big debate at the moment because this idea of a ‘renaissance’ is hard to maintain. There is a question about whether we should be talking about ‘reform’ or ‘ correctio ’ instead.

“We have a few hundred Merovingian manuscripts left, written over a period of 250 years. Then, in the 150 years of the Carolingian period, you get 8,000 or 9,000 books remaining”

There is a question about whether this cultural flowering in Charlemagne’s day was about people at the court becoming very clever and sophisticated, without the rest of the empire noticing—this old idea that it is a small, elite phenomenon. More recent work has shown that this was not at all about elite culture, but part of a much broader idea of wanting to lead a whole population to salvation, for which they needed books. And these books needed to be everywhere, even in small churches and small villages.

Wasn’t the Carolingian Renaissance—or however we should be referring to it—partly about renewing or developing legal systems?

Yes, legal systems, educational systems. Books are a symptom of the bigger story. We have a few hundred Merovingian manuscripts left, written over a period of 250 years. Then, in the 150 years of the Carolingian period, you get 8,000 or 9,000 books remaining. And of course that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There was an explosion in book production, which is the result of a new and intensified interest in knowledge. I think that is one of the most important things to remember. These Carolingian people were addicted to interesting texts about more or less anything and everything, and especially things that could be used to teach because, if you want to lead a whole population to salvation, you need to be able to explain exactly what Christianity is about.

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It can be about very simple things, like whether you can wash your hair on Sundays. A farmer might ask his priest, who needs to know what to answer. The answer is, ‘no, unless it’s an emergency’ —and it’s the same for washing your feet. The question behind it all is, ‘what does Sunday rest mean? Is washing your feet work?’ A lot of thinking had to go into questions like that and, as a result, a lot of Roman jurisprudence was brought into the Carolingian Empire and copied and studied and thought about. You need educated people to make decisions and to teach people how to be good Christians, Franks and subjects.

You see a bit of how the Franks tried to pick up the great ideas that the Romans had. Written law is a good thing because then you can look stuff up. That led to the creation of books of written law. Those are very handy for counts and other people who do the judging locally. It was decided quite early on in Charlemagne’s reign that every distinct group was allowed to have their own law. So the Lombards, Saxons, Franks and Frisians all had their own law. And the copying of these laws and the making available of all these books is certainly part of the story of this ‘renaissance’.

And did this huge intellectual and administrative effort spill over into the production of a culture of secular art? Are there great poems or other works of literature, that kind of thing?

Yes, but you can’t really talk about ‘the secular’ in this period because Christianity is like a big umbrella that stands over every aspect of your life. It’s a code of behaviour that covers all aspects of daily life. Also, most people who wrote were clerical people. There were some non-clerical people who wrote poetry, jokes, letters and things like that. Maybe the best example in this context is Einhard himself, Charlemagne’s biographer. He went to a monastic school but he stayed secular, married and became one of the most important advisors to Charlemagne.

Are there great works of art that are not in-your-face religious? Yes. For instance, there are fantastic manuscripts about astronomy, the stars and the constellations, beautifully illustrated, probably copied from later Roman examples. The first bits of old high German poetry appear. But this is, I think, more an expression of a greater interest in literacy and in knowledge, than being part of a ‘renaissance’.

What you’re saying is that there certainly wasn’t a self-conscious revival of pagan literature and culture of the kind that appeared in the 15th century?

People were very interested in Roman literature, pre-Christian or Christian. But the reasons for that were very different and it wasn’t a question of reviving Roman paganism. They admired people who wrote beautiful Latin and wonderful stories and thought they could learn a lot from that. If it got too dodgy, they probably wouldn’t let their young students read it. They’d be careful about who they showed the Ars Amatoria to. There was no hesitancy about pre-Christian authors, but there was a sort of ‘handle with care’ awareness, not wanting to put the wrong ideas into overheated young minds.

What does the book say about society and the economy in Charlemagne’s empire? You mentioned that it was a society based on plunder, to some extent. Did social or economic relations change much as a result of Charlemagne’s empire building?

For 99.9% of the people life was very hard—subsistence. The plunder was not shared equally between everybody, just a very small elite. Most people were unfree or semi-free and lived in small rural communities. In that sense, I don’t think very much changed at all. There’s no systemic change, but we do see Charlemagne trying to take care of these people in times of hunger. That is something that we don’t come across with earlier rulers. Famine happened every so often and Charlemagne developed a policy to deal with it. By fixing the price of bread and preventing the stockpiling of grain, he prevented people from making huge profits on it when famine occurred.

Let’s move on to the next book, which is Steffen Patzold’s Ich und Karl der Grosse: Das Leben des Höflings Einhard . Tell us about this one.

Patzold is a professor of medieval history at the University of Tübingen. This is a very brave book. Instead of adding yet another book to the thousands that already exist about Charlemagne, he has tried to write a book on Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard. And we know even less about Einhard than about Charlemagne. What he does to solve that problem is to rely on historical imagination. That’s why it is brave. There are many people, especially in Germany , who don’t like this approach at all. They want facts and sources. But he really knows his stuff. He talks about primary sources and he asks interesting questions about them. He’s trying to flesh out Charlemagne through the eyes of the man who was with him for 30 years. And he uses Einhard to give us a sense of the world in which these people moved.

I think it’s wonderful. It’s a type of historical writing that you don’t see very much. It’s also intended for a slightly wider audience. He’s a good storyteller. I’m surprised it hasn’t been translated into any other language yet.

Is it like a novel ?

It’s not a novel, nor is it only hardcore scholarship. It’s in between. He will present us with a manuscript and ask what we should make of it. He also shows the kinds of puzzles that historians have to try and solve every day, like what to make of little marginal notes in a manuscript, or something that is not a hard fact and open to interpretation. Then he leads you through the steps that inform his interpretation, making clear that we can never be sure. He’s very conscientious in the gaps he fills. He doesn’t say, ‘It was a sunny morning and Einhard was walking in the garden…’ or anything like that. It revolves around primary sources, the material from the time, and he tries to reconstruct this world around the King-Emperor, who builds this court at Aachen, and all the people around him—who are a really nasty, backstabbing bunch, because the competition is so harsh.

Einhard was very small. He was not big and manly enough to become a real warrior. That’s probably why his parents shipped him off to a monastery at Fulda to have a good education. Because of his size, the nasty men at the court accused him of being an ant, or suggested that he could be used as a table leg. But they also knew he was one of the brightest minds of the time.

There are bits and pieces you can use to get an image of Einhard, but mostly Patzold uses Einhard to look through his eyes into this inner circle around the emperor.

Einhard was Charlemagne’s chief advisor, a sort of prime minister. Is that right?

He’s one of the prime ministers. There were many people competing for that position. Einhard spent a long time at the court and, after Charlemagne died, his son, Louis, took him on. That shows that Einhard was greatly appreciated for his advice. It was perhaps an advantage for him that he was not a high nobleman. He was not part of a faction, which meant he was able to survive the chaos that broke out after Charlemagne died and work with Louis for a while. It was at Louis’s court that he wrote his biography of Charlemagne, perhaps to show Louis how it is done and, through the life of his father, provide him with an example.

“Einhard tells you that Charlemagne was tall and that he had a bit of a squeaky voice and a bit of a potbelly and reddish hair”

Historians do not agree exactly on the purpose of Einhard’s book. Patzold offers a very different interpretation to Nelson’s. For Nelson, it was intended as a mirror for the new king. Here was the story of his great father, as long as he was going to do as his father had done, he’d be fine. The book is also a product of the intellectual culture of the time. There is a bit of Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars in there, and Cicero, too. It’s a way of showing off how great your Latin is. People would recognise that; it was the intellectual in-game. But, according to Nelson, the book is also a literary experiment, because, apart from saints’ lives, biographies had not been written since the Roman period.

Patzold accepts that it is, to some extent, a mirror but he points out that Einhard doesn’t talk at all about the difficult things at the time. He seems to steer around all the controversies and backbiting. He says the reason for this is that Einhard wanted to keep out of all these debates and keep his hands clean and show that he was a good adviser. He wanted to keep his job, or maybe even get a better job, and this was his application letter.

How long is it?

It’s not very long at all. It’s about 50 pages.

Do you get any sense from it of what Charlemagne was like, of a man underneath the crown?

You do and you don’t, because Einhard tells you that Charlemagne was tall and that he had a bit of a squeaky voice and a bit of a potbelly and reddish hair. But in these descriptions Einhard is borrowing from Suetonius. When Charlemagne’s nose is described, it’s a direct quote from the Lives of the Caesars . Then you can ask yourself what he was doing. Did Charlemagne have the same nose as one of these emperors, or did he think this just sounded about right for a text like this? That is the big enigma.

We don’t get a direct sense of what this man would have been like to have a pint with. You can see him being nice to children and the series of wives he had. You can see him being very energetic and running up and down his Empire with an army to intervene. You can see him rewarding his faithful followers when he has just avoided being murdered. That kind of thing. But a portrait of a person as we would like to see it now, in a biography ? No.

Do we learn a lot about Einhard from it?

Let’s move on to Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire by Jennifer Davis.

Davis is a woman with a mission. What she wants to explain to us is how Charlemagne managed to rule the empire he built. She tries to fight the idea of the lone genius who was ‘reviving the Empire’. But that still leaves open the question of how exactly he did it. She asks whether he had a plan—and suggests he didn’t. She paints a really practical Charlemagne, who had no big overarching plan, but who was a very good improviser except when he wasn’t—and things went horribly wrong. He sometimes lost battles. Sometimes people were unfaithful at unfortunate moments.

She really thinks about how you run a really big kingdom or empire without modern structures of governance. If you really only have a bunch of faithful people to work with, but these people are only as faithful as they want to be and feel safe to be, you need to reward them enough and keep them happy. How does this work in practice? And then what do you do if one of your key people decides not to be faithful? And how do you manage things as your empire gets bigger and bigger? Can you still rule a place of that size, or are there limits?

Like Janet Nelson, she has taken every shred of evidence. She confines herself mainly to contemporary sources, to be as close to the events as possible, to reconstruct how he did it. It’s a wonderful book because she is a very rigorous scholar and she is not afraid to say that, although we used to think Charlemagne was a man with a plan and a vision, it turns out that he was just improvising as we all do in parts of our lives. The term she comes up with for this form of governance is ‘an empire of practice’. There’s a lot of experimentation and some experiments go wrong. Then he comes up with a new way of dealing with problems. And that sounds like a very refreshingly realistic Charlemagne to me.

Over hundreds of years, Charlemagne has been painted as larger than life, but here we see somebody you can relate to. You see it through the rules and regulations, in a very practical way. If the king has decided that people cannot work on Sundays because that is what God wants—then what? You’ve decided in Aachen, along with your faithful men, that it’s a good idea that nobody should work on Sunday. But there are ten million little settlements in that empire. How are you going to organize that? That’s the type of thing Davis thinks about. And the answer is delegated responsibility. There are people in every region with whom you work directly and they have their own people and so on down the ladder. But there’s always a weak link. The way to deal with that is always to have more than one person doing the same job. So, if one link in the chain breaks, you have alternatives.

And was it a kind of feudal arrangement, in the sense that he used his close baronial companions in war to be the first link in the provinces?

I wouldn’t call this society fully feudal yet—and, in any case, that’s not a concept that is really current anymore. But delegated responsibility works with face-to-face contacts. You would appoint people you trusted and those people would, in turn, do the same thing. In that sense, it resembles the model that we used to think of as feudal, but it isn’t as strictly organised.

One thing he did very cleverly, and it is something that the Carolingians continued to do after him, was try to prevent families from digging themselves in to a specific region. If you have a talented military leader who has his home base in, say, northern Italy, you might send him to eastern France. Then, after a while, when he’s done his stuff there, maybe he’ll get a new job in southern Germany. Charlemagne tried to prevent ‘territorialisation’.

This is before every knight builds his own castle. This highest layer of faithful men is very mobile. They get rewarded in a super-clever way. If you are a successful count, you get part of the booty of war, but if there’s land to be divided, you get a little bit in Belgium and a little bit in southern France and a few vineyards in Bavaria and maybe the rights to a toll on a river, so you can’t lump things together. And you have to keep travelling around and managing your very dispersed goods and property. That was a good way to keep people both happy and on their toes.

I just want to get a quick sense of what Charlemagne started off with and what he added to that, in terms of territory. His initial domain is northern France and quite a lot of the Rhineland, right?

Yes. It’s bits of Belgium , bits of the southern Netherlands , bits of France . It expands to the east, more or less to the Hungarian border. He expands into the Italian peninsula, down to Rome, but he clashes with the Dukes of Benevento, so southern Italy is one step too far.

That was the natural maximum size, apparently, that you could manage at the time, with the road system that there was and the people that there were.

And did it stretch from the Hungarian border right up to the Baltic?

Yes. Frisia was contested. I think most Frisians at the time would have denied that they were part of the Carolingian Empire, but Utrecht, where I am now, was solidly Carolingian. You shouldn’t imagine a border like a line on a piece of paper. It’s like a grey zone where influence slowly peters out.

Did it stretch at all into the Iberian Peninsula, over the Pyrenees?

He tried, but he failed. That’s the famous battle that ended up as the Chanson de Roland—Roncesvalles. That went horribly wrong. There was Islamic rule in Spain and resistance was too strong. Like southern Italy, it was a step too far.

Southern Italy still had a very strong Byzantine influence and two of the local dukes—of Benevento and Spoleto—did not like the Carolingians at all. There is a wonderful story in a border monastery on the edge of the area of Charlemagne’s influence, where it encountered the Beneventians. Charlemagne sent an abbot. The story, from a bit later in the 9th century, goes that there was a man in this monastery who had said officially that he would rather pray for a dog than for Charlemagne. So his popularity in that area was not uncontested.

Let’s move on to the last book. We’re going to cheat here slightly by having two: Ingrid Rembold’s Conquest and Christianisation: Saxony and the Carolingian World and Robert Flierman’s Saxon Identities, AD 150-900. Why have you chosen these?

I thought it would be good to have this dual nomination covering Charlemagne in action. One of the blackest pages in his history is the conquest of Saxony. It has been called ‘Charlemagne’s jihad’ and the first case of ‘Western genocide’. There are all kinds of problems with that because it was a very long war. For more than 30 years he was fighting the Saxons—although, as these books show, ‘the Saxons’ did not exist. There were lots of different groups.

You get the sense that, at some point, Charlemagne and his leading men started to get a bit fed up with this war. What you see happening all the time is the Franks winning battles, after which the Saxons submit themselves. Then, five years later, there’s a new group of Saxons up in arms. And this goes on and on and on. The reason for this is that there were all these different little groups of Saxons, who didn’t think they had a common identity.

These two books came out more or less at the same moment and shed light on the question of Saxony from two different directions.

Flierman comes from another direction altogether, because he’s interested in how Saxons became ‘the Saxons’. This is a book about collective identity in those parts. Ironically, this conquest and Christianisation story that Rembold describes led to a speeding up of the development of that collective identity. That is why I thought I had to have them both. I’m not going to choose because they should be read together.

Is Flierman arguing that that collective identity was developed in the face of this aggression from Charlemagne, or that it was their conversion to Christianity that allowed the Saxons to develop a collective identity?

Both. The conquest worked as a kind of pressure cooker, in the sense that things that might have happened anyway much more slowly, all of a sudden started to develop rapidly. Groups of Saxons who sometimes collaborated and sometimes didn’t became ‘the Saxons’ as a result of being conquered and resisting conquest for so long.

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In the Frankish sources that Rembold works with, the Franks object to the pagans resisting their own submission—they should be keeping to their vows. But Flierman has two sides to the story. In the bit of his book about Charlemagne, he shows that Christianity was a fantastic new label of identity in the course of the 10th and 11th centuries. One of the great ironies of history, here, is that it was the Saxons—who had resisted incorporation into the Frankish Empire and who, to an extent, resisted Christianity—who became the most fanatically enthusiastic missionaries in Scandinavia. The new wave of missionaries in post-Carolingian Europe came from Saxony. So, you could say that Charlemagne’s conquest and Christianisation was a success—in the end.

And when we’re talking about Saxony here, we’re talking about more than modern Saxony, are we? Is it a vast area of central Europe?

It’s bigger than modern Saxony-Anhalt, it goes further to the north, south and east. Again, borders were very different. Where these people lived tended to expand and shrink over time. The big difference from the rest of the empire is that it had never been under Roman rule, so there were no roads. It was just rather impenetrable forest, bits of swamp, really unpleasant territory. It was a lot less accessible than, for instance, Brittany, Normandy or southern France, which still had a Roman road system. It was a jungle where these scary pagans lived—that was the image. That wasn’t the reality, but that is how people thought about those areas.

You talked about Charlemagne not having a plan, but did he have a purpose, which is a slightly different thing? With the war against the Saxons, was he worried about them infringing on his existing territory, or can you only really understand it as, effectively, an evangelical crusade?

It wasn’t a crusade because there was no Jerusalem to conquer, but I would say it was both. Problems in the border area had existed for centuries. There were always these struggles for expansion. Part of the story was certainly to put an end to that, because it’s annoying, if you’re busy conquering northern Italy and have to rush home because the Saxons are misbehaving yet again.

There were already some islands of Christianity in Saxony. This idea of creating a Christian empire was definitely part of the story, as well. The conquest worked with missionaries and an army being sent in together. The way to build footholds was not by building fortresses, but by founding monasteries—and from these monasteries this new ideology was spread. This was really an early medieval way of doing things, because supply and communication lines were so long and armies hard to organise, particularly if short-term interventions were needed.

You can really see both elements: expansion for the sake of military successes, resources, and keeping people loyal; and the will to bring these people into the Christian empire.

November 16, 2020

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Carine van Rhijn

Carine van Rhijn is a medieval historian who works at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She works on the earlier middle ages, in particular on cultural and religious history, as well as on the history of knowledge.

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Early years

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Why is Charlemagne famous?

How did charlemagne become emperor of the holy roman empire, what lands did charlemagne conquer, what was the carolingian renaissance, what was charlemagne’s family life like.

Charlemagne

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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.

Charlemagne (born April 2, 747?—died January 28, 814, Aachen , Austrasia [now in Germany]) was the king of the Franks (768–814), king of the Lombards (774–814), and first emperor (800–814) of the Romans and of what was later called the Holy Roman Empire .

Around the time of the birth of Charlemagne—conventionally held to be 742 but likely to be 747 or 748—his father, Pippin III (the Short) , was mayor of the palace , an official serving the Merovingian king but actually wielding effective power over the extensive Frankish kingdom. What little is known about Charlemagne’s youth suggests that he received practical training for leadership by participating in the political, social, and military activities associated with his father’s court. His early years were marked by a succession of events that had immense implications for the Frankish position in the contemporary world. In 751, with papal approval, Pippin seized the Frankish throne from the last Merovingian king, Childeric III . After meeting with Pope Stephen II at the royal palace of Ponthion in 753–754, Pippin forged an alliance with the pope by committing himself to protect Rome in return for papal sanction of the right of Pippin’s dynasty to the Frankish throne. Pippin also intervened militarily in Italy in 755 and 756 to restrain Lombard threats to Rome, and in the so-called Donation of Pippin in 756 he bestowed on the papacy a block of territory stretching across central Italy which formed the basis of a new political entity, the Papal States , over which the pope ruled.

When Pippin died in 768, his realm was divided according to Frankish custom between Charlemagne and his brother, Carloman . Almost immediately the rivalry between the two brothers threatened the unity of the Frankish kingdom. Seeking advantage over his brother, Charlemagne formed an alliance with Desiderius, king of the Lombards, accepting as his wife the daughter of the king to seal an agreement that threatened the delicate equilibrium that had been established in Italy by Pippin’s alliance with the papacy. The death of Carloman in 771 ended the mounting crisis, and Charlemagne, disregarding the rights of Carloman’s heirs, took control of the entire Frankish realm.

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Charlemagne

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 22, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009

Charlemagne was a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe from 768 to 814. In 771, Charlemagne became king of the Franks, a Germanic tribe in present-day Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and western Germany. A skilled military strategist, he spent much of his reign engaged in warfare in order to accomplish his goals. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor. In this role, he encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance, a cultural and intellectual revival in Europe. When he died in 814, Charlemagne’s empire encompassed much of Western Europe. Today, Charlemagne is referred to by some as the father of Europe.

Charlemagne's Early Years

Charlemagne—sometimes referred to as Charles the Great—was born around 742, the son of Bertrada of Laon (d.783) and Pepin the Short (d.768), who became king of the Franks in 751.

Charlemagne’s exact birthplace is unknown, although historians have suggested Liege in present-day Belgium and Aachen in modern-day Germany as possible locations. Similarly, little is known about the future ruler’s childhood and education, although as an adult, he displayed a talent for languages and could speak Latin and understand Greek, among other languages.

Did you know? Charlemagne served as a source of inspiration for such leaders as Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who had visions of ruling a unified Europe.

After Pepin’s death in 768, the Frankish kingdom was divided between Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman. The brothers had a strained relationship; however, with Carloman’s death in 771, a 24-year-old Charlemagne became the sole ruler of the Franks.

Charlemagne Expands his Christian Empire

Once in power, Charlemagne sought to unite all the Germanic peoples into one kingdom, and convert his subjects to Christianity . In order to carry out this mission, he spent the majority of his reign engaged in military campaigns. Soon after becoming king, he conquered the Lombards (in present-day northern Italy), the Avars (in modern-day Austria and Hungary) and Bavaria, among others.

Charlemagne waged a bloody, three decades-long series of battles against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe of pagans, and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. In 782 at the Massacre of Verden, Charlemagne reportedly ordered the slaughter of some 4,500 Saxons. He eventually forced the Saxons to convert to Christianity, and declared that anyone who didn’t get baptized or follow other Christian traditions be put to death.

Charlemagne’s Family

In his personal life, Charlemagne had multiple wives and mistresses and perhaps as many as 18 children. He was reportedly a devoted father, who encouraged his children’s education. He allegedly loved his daughters so much that he prohibited them from marrying while he was alive.

Einhard, a Frankish scholar and contemporary of Charlemagne, wrote a biography of the emperor after his death. In the work, titled “Vita Karoli Magni (Life of Charles the Great),” he described Charlemagne as “broad and strong in the form of his body and exceptionally tall without, however, exceeding an appropriate measure…His appearance was impressive whether he was sitting or standing despite having a neck that was fat and too short, and a large belly.”

Holy Roman Emperor

In his role as a zealous defender of Christianity, Charlemagne gave money and land to the Christian church and protected the popes. As a way to acknowledge Charlemagne’s power and reinforce his relationship with the church, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans and first ruler of the vast Holy Roman Empire on December 25, 800, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

As Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne proved to be a talented diplomat and able administrator of the vast area he controlled. He promoted education and encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of renewed emphasis on scholarship and culture.

Charlemagne also instituted economic and religious reforms, and was a driving force behind the Carolingian minuscule, a standardized form of writing that later became a basis for modern European printed alphabets.

Carolingian Empire

Charlemagne ruled from a number of cities and palaces throughout the Carolingian Empire, but spent significant time in Aachen. His palace there included a school, for which he recruited the best teachers in the land.

In addition to learning, Charlemagne was interested in athletic pursuits. Known to be highly energetic, he enjoyed hunting, horseback riding and swimming. Aachen held particular appeal for him due to its therapeutic warm springs.

He was also no stranger to elegant indulgence: According to Einhard, “On great feast-days Charles made use of embroidered clothes, and shoes bedecked with precious stones. His cloak was fastened by a golden buckle, and he appeared crowned with a diadem of gold and gems.”

Charlemagne’s Death and Succession

Einhard wrote that Charlemagne was in good health until the final four years of his life, when he often suffered from fevers and acquired a limp. However, as the biographer notes, “Even at this time…he followed his own counsel rather than the advice of the doctors, whom he very nearly hated, because they advised him to give up roasted meat, which he loved, and to restrict himself to boiled meat instead.”

In 813, Charlemagne crowned his son Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, as co-emperor. Louis became sole emperor when Charlemagne died in January 814 at the age of 72, ending his reign of more than four decades. At the time of his death, his empire encompassed much of Western Europe.

Charlemagne was buried at the cathedral in Aachen. In the ensuing decades, his empire was divided up among his heirs, and by the late 800s, it had dissolved.

Nevertheless, Charlemagne became a legendary figure endowed with mythical qualities. In 1165, under Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Charlemagne was canonized for political reasons; however, the Catholic Church today does not recognize his sainthood.

Charlemagne’s Skull

Years after his burial in Aachen, authorities believe that pieces of Charlemagne’s skull and some of his bones were exhumed for placement in church reliquaries throughout Europe. Most of his skeleton, however, is believed to have stayed at his cathedral in Aachen.

In 2014, researchers determined that Charlemagne’s skull and other bones in Aachen were indeed the remains of a singularly tall, large man who died in his 70s and had bony deposits in the knee and heel bones, giving credence to the story of Charlemagne's limp. The top of the skull remains visible in an ornate golden bust securely housed in the cathedral.

Sword of Charlemagne

Another remnant from Charlemagne’s reign has achieved near-mythic status: La Joyeuse, or “the Joyous,” a medieval sword, is believed by some authorities to be the sword Charlemagne carried into battle.

Armory experts debate whether the sword — a 38-inch weapon with a gold hilt — is actually the sword of Charlemagne, or a later creation that was used primarily for ceremonies. Currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, the sword had been used for the coronations of French kings since Philip the Bold was crowned in 1270.

Charlemagne lived on. Route Charlemagne Aachen . Charlemagne in Aachen 2014. Medieval Histories . Charlemagne's Bones Are Likely Authentic, Scientists Say. LiveScience.com . The Sword of Charlemagne. MyArmoury.com .

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19 Books About Charlemagne (5 Reviews & 14 Recommendations)

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Books about Charlemagne! Here are THE 5 best books about Charlemagne that you cannot do without, plus 14 more recommendations! As someone who reads extensively, these are my recommendations with annotations.

Want to know everything about King Charlemagne? Well here you go!

Charlemagne, aka Charles The Great , aka Karl der Grosse [Große], aka Karolus Magnus , (742 – 814 AD), is considered the ‘Father of Europe’ in that his reign marked not only the consolidation of the Frankish tribes of western Europe, but also his preeminent role as the first Holy Roman Emperor.

He also had a cool sword named Joyeuse!

Charlemagne founded the Carolinian Dynasty in the late 8th century AD. He was king for 46 years and emperor for 14. He dispelled the Saxons (although they would later return), ousted the Lombards from northern Italy (although Benevento rebelled), and solidified the pagan tribes that previously overthrew the crumbling Papacy.

That’s the short history lesson, let’s get to the 5 Best books about Charlemagne!

1. “Two Lives of Charlemagne” by Einhard (2008)

There is no better source on Charlemagne than “The Two Lives of Charlemagne” by Einhard. Written as a first-hand account “between 829 and 836” (editor’s notes), Einhard was a personal friend and advisor to King Charlemagne during his lifetime.

Most other books about Charlemagne are based on Einhard’s incredible insights. Note that there are literally hundreds of versions and editions out on the internet for sale. Being in print for nearly 1200 years there’s no denying its importance or ubiquity! My version is the most popular version, which is the Penguin Classics printing.

Lewis Thorpe, who wrote the introduction, spends 41 pages outlining this historic text – and for good reason. One needs to understand medieval times before reading “The Two Lives of Charlemagne” which is, in many ways, is written as a play-by-play analysis of the deeds of the King of the Franks.

As a ‘book nerd’ (#booknerd) I couldn’t help purchasing a 1970 Folio Society version that I found perched on a book store shelf just waiting for me. This edition comes beautifully illustrated, enshrined within a hard case and is adorned with Charlemagne’s very own signature on its hard bound cover.

2. “Charlemagne” by Derek Wilson (2007)

Of all the books about Charlemagne that I’ve read, Wilson’s seems to be the most well-rounded and complete. His treatment of Charlemagne is as a historian and this helps with understanding the wider political motivations that informed the great King’s decisions.

It’s the difference between a die-hard fan of a sports team explaining a game and a professional sports analyst. With the fan you get a myopic, one-sided view of a two-team game; whereas with the analyst you get to understand the broader context of teams, a league, schedules, etc.

Derek Wilson is the Charlemagne analyst! He writes eloquently about the deeds and historical impact of ‘the father of Europe.’ At first I thought it quite cheeky to just title your book “Charlemagne;” however, after reading it, it is indeed worthy of not needing a subtitle – although the paperback was released as “Charlemagne: A Biography.” If you are looking for the perfect introductory text on Charlemagne, this is the one for you!

3. “Charlemagne” by Johannes Fried (2016)

This book is absolutely fascinating! While it really should be classified a “historical fiction,” it is much more than that. Johannes Fried took a huge chance in publishing this book because what he did was take all the known hard facts about the life of Charlemagne and then filled in the rest with his imagination.

Imagine that we know what point A and D are. Fried fills in points B and C with supposition to join the four in a continuous story line. That’s what makes it a historical fiction. The author’s preface states:

“THIS FOLLOWING BOOK IS NOT A NOVEL, but it is a work of fiction all the same – a fiction based on this author’s visualization of Charlemagne.” Fried 2016: vii

Those are the very first words of the book! Sound crazy? Well, it kind of is, but it works. Originally published in German, this book about Charlemagne was translated by renown academic Peter Lewis. While visionary in its nature, the foundation of this book is very much based on rigorous academic scholarship.

What sets Fried’s work apart from other publications is its use of non-English primary sources from German archives, Italian archives, French archives, Irish archives, British archives, and from Charlemagne’s own library stocked by the famed Alcuin. I think what Johannes Fried accomplished here is a landmark masterpiece, it is both scholastic as well as pragmatic.

4. “Becoming Charlemagne” by Jeff Sypeck (2007)

“Becoming Charlemagne” by Jeff Sypeck is more like a meta-analysis of the age and political stratosphere in which our great King lived. It examines his political rivals and their points of view in contradistinction to his own, providing an analytical base from which to reference Charlemagne’s decision making prowess.

The interesting, unique, and ironic part about this book about Charlemagne is that it only directly talks about Charlemagne about 10% of the time !

For example, in the 2nd chapter “An Empress of Byzantium” Sypeck writes about one of Charlemagne’s political rivals Irene of Constantinople. The whole chapter is dedicated to her story! It outlines her family, rise to power, and eventual mistreatment of her rivals; scarcely a mention of Charlemagne in the whole chapter!

Likewise with the rest of the chapters. However, this book is still a valuable research tool in that while every other Charlemagne biography focuses on the man exclusively (which is the point after all, isn’t it?), the histories of his rivals and medieval cities are left as mere bylines.

Well, “Becoming Charlemagne” reverses and fixes all that. It was cool learning about (i.e. contextualizing) Irene, Constantinople, Baghdad, Rome, Alcuin, and other people and places that were central to our venerable lord’s adventures.

5. “The Coronation of Charlemagne” by Richard Sullivan (ed.) (1959)

Of all the books I’ve featured in this article, “The Coronation of Charlemagne” is the most ‘academic.’ I say that because this book is more like an academic journal or review than your average book. It’s also super rare!

Richard Sullivan is the editor of this book which is a part of a larger series called “Problems in European Civilization.” There are 12 chapters total, each written by a different scholar, touching upon a different question, or aspect, of Charlemagne’s reign.

As in standard academic reviews, each chapter is a mini paper on a specific subject. In fact, the titles themselves, as well as their compact length, belie the fact that the origins of these were most likely graduate papers. The chapters include the following titles:

• “What Happened on Christmas Day, 800” – Richard Sullivan
• “Eighth Century Concepts about the Roman Empire” – Robert Folz
• “The Play Emperor” – C. Delisle Burns
• “The Coronation as the Expression of the Ideals of the Frankish Court” – Louis Halphen
• “Immediate Preliminaries to the Coronation: Affairs in Rome in December, 800” – Francois Louis Ganshof
• “The Coronation as a Revival of the Roman Empire in the West” – James Bryce
• “The Coronation as Evidence of the Birth of a New Civilization” – Christopher Dawson
• “Certain Reservations to be Made in Interpreting the Coronation” – Ferdinand Lot and Geoffrey Barraclough
• “The Coronation and Local Politics in Rome” – Karl Heldmann
• “The Coronation and Papal Concepts of Emperorship” – Walter Ullmann
• “The Coronation and Byzantium” – Werner Ohnsorge
• “The Coronation and the Moslems” – Henri Pirenne

+ 14 More Recommended Books About Charlemagne (pictographic list included)*

“Charlemagne: Father of a Continent.” Alessandro Barbero (2018) [also published by the Folio Society]

“Song of Roland.” Anonymous and Glyn S. Burgess (1990)

“King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne.” Janet Nelson (2019)

“Charlemagne.” Richard Winston (2016)

“Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity.” Rosamond McKittrick (2008)

“Charlemagne and the Paladins.” Julia Cresswell (2014)

“Charlemagne: Empire and Society.” Joanna Story (2010)

“Charlemagne’s Early Campaigns (768 – 777): A Diplomatic and Military Analysis.” Bernard S. Bachrach (2013)

“Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800-1229.” Anne A. Latowsky (2013)

“Charlemagne.” Mattias Becher (2005)

“Charlemagne.” Roger Collins (1998)

“The Emperor Charlemagne.” Russell Chamberlin (2004)

• “Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne.” Pierre Riché (1978)
• “Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories (Ann Arbor Paperbacks).” Barbara Rogers, Bernhard Walter Scholtz (1972)

*PICTOGRAPHIC LIST. Each of the 14 books above are re-listed below with pictures of their covers to help you find them should you want to acquire a copy. (Image Source: Amazon).

“Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne.” Pierre Riché. (1978)

“Carolingian Chronicles.” Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers (translators). (1972)

What are your favourite books about Charlemagne? What makes you a fan of medieval history? Want to add a book title to this list? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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Charlemagne

Charlemagne, also known as Charles I and Charles the Great, was born around 742 A.D., likely in what is now Belgium. Crowned King of the Franks in 768, Charlemagne expanded the Frankish kingdom, eventually establishing the Carolingian Empire. He was crowned Emperor in 800. Charlemagne's empire united Western Europe for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, and sparked the Carolingian Renaissance.

Early Years

Charlemagne was born around 742, the son of Bertrada of Laon (d.783) and Pepin the Short (d.768), who became king of the Franks in 751. Charlemagne’s exact birthplace is unknown, although historians have suggested Liege in present-day Belgium and Aachen in modern-day Germany as possible locations.

Similarly, little is known about the future ruler’s childhood and education, although as an adult, he displayed a talent for languages and could speak Latin and understand Greek, among other languages.

After Pepin’s death in 768, the Frankish kingdom was divided between Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman (751-771). The brothers had a strained relationship; however, with Carloman’s death in 771, Charlemagne became the sole ruler of the Franconians.

An Empire Expands

Once in power, Charlemagne sought to unite all the Germanic peoples into one kingdom, and convert his subjects to Christianity. In order to carry out this mission, he spent the majority of his reign engaged in military campaigns. Soon after becoming king, he conquered the Lombards (in present-day northern Italy), the Avars (in modern-day Austria and Hungary) and Bavaria, among others.

Charlemagne waged a bloody, three-decades-long series of battles against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe of pagan worshippers, and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. In 782 at the Massacre of Verden, Charlemagne reportedly ordered the slaughter of some 4,500 Saxons. He eventually forced the Saxons to convert to Christianity, and declared that anyone who didn’t get baptized or follow other Christian traditions be put to death.

Family Life

In his personal life, Charlemagne had multiple wives and mistresses and perhaps as many as 18 children. He was reportedly a devoted father, who encouraged his children’s education. He allegedly loved his daughters so much that he prohibited them from marrying while he was alive.

Einhard (c. 775-840), a Frankish scholar and contemporary of Charlemagne, wrote a biography of the emperor after his death. In the work, titled “Vita Karoli Magni (Life of Charles the Great),” he described Charlemagne as “broad and strong in the form of his body and exceptionally tall without, however, exceeding an appropriate measure…His appearance was impressive whether he was sitting or standing despite having a neck that was fat and too short, and a large belly.”

Charlemagne as Emperor

In his role as a zealous defender of Christianity, Charlemagne gave money and land to the Christian church and protected the popes. As a way to acknowledge Charlemagne’s power and reinforce his relationship with the church, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans on December 25, 800, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

As emperor, Charlemagne proved to be a talented diplomat and able administrator of the vast area he controlled. He promoted education and encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of renewed emphasis on scholarship and culture. He instituted economic and religious reforms, and was a driving force behind the Carolingian miniscule, a standardized form of writing that later became a basis for modern European printed alphabets. Charlemagne ruled from a number of cities and palaces, but spent significant time in Aachen. His palace there included a school, for which he recruited the best teachers in the land.

In addition to learning, Charlemagne was interested in athletic pursuits. Known to be highly energetic, he enjoyed hunting, horseback riding and swimming. Aachen held particular appeal for him due to its therapeutic warm springs.

Death and Succession

According to Einhard, Charlemagne was in good health until the final four years of his life, when he often suffered from fevers and acquired a limp. However, as the biographer notes, “Even at this time…he followed his own counsel rather than the advice of the doctors, whom he very nearly hated, because they advised him to give up roasted meat, which he loved, and to restrict himself to boiled meat instead.”

In 813, Charlemagne crowned his son Louis the Pious (778-840), king of Aquitaine, as co-emperor. Louis became sole emperor when Charlemagne died, in January 814, ending his reign of more than four decades. At the time of his death, his empire encompassed much of Western Europe.

Charlemagne was buried at the cathedral in Aachen. In the ensuing decades, his empire was divided up among his heirs, and by the late 800s, it had dissolved. Nevertheless, Charlemagne became a legendary figure endowed with mythical qualities. In 1165, under Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122-1190), Charlemagne was canonized for political reasons; however, the church today does not recognize his sainthood.

Biography courtesy of History.com

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Charlemagne
• Birth Year: 742
• Birth Country: Belgium
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great, was the founder of the Carolingian Empire, best known for uniting Western Europe for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire.
• Business and Industry
• Politics and Government
• War and Militaries
• Christianity
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• Death Year: 814
• Death date: January 28, 814
• Death City: Aachen
• Death Country: Germany

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• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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Charlemagne (Charles the Great, also known as Charles I, l. 742-814) was King of the Franks (r. 768-814), King of the Franks and Lombards (r. 774-814), and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 800-814). He is among the best-known and most influential figures of the Early Middle Ages for his military successes which united most of Western Europe , his educational and ecclesiastical reforms, and his policies which laid the foundation for the development of later European nations.

He was the son of Pepin the Short, King of the Franks (r. 751-768, first king of the Carolingian Dynasty ). Charlemagne ascended to the throne at his father's death , co-ruling with his brother Carloman I (r. 768-771) until the latter's death. As sole ruler afterwards, Charlemagne rapidly expanded his kingdom, styled himself the head of the Western Church – superseding the popes of the time in power – and personally led military campaigns to Christianize Europe and subdue unrest almost continuously for the 46 years of his reign.

His death in 814 of natural causes was considered a tragedy by his contemporaries, and he was mourned throughout Europe; more so after the Viking raids began shortly after he died. He is often referred to as the Father of Modern Europe.

Early Life & Rise to Power

Charlemagne was born, probably at Aachen (in modern-day Germany) during the final years of the Merovingian Dynasty , which had ruled the region since c. 450. The Merovingian king had been steadily losing power and influence for years while the supposedly subordinate royal position of Mayor of the Palace (equivalent to a Prime Minister) had grown more powerful. By the time of King Childeric III (r. 743-751), the monarch had virtually no power and all administrative policies were being decided by Pepin the Short, Mayor of the Palace.

Pepin understood that he could not simply usurp the throne and expect to be recognized as a legitimate king and so he appealed to the papacy, asking, “Is it right that a powerless ruler should continue to bear the title of King?” (Hollister, 108). The papacy at this time was dealing with a number of problems ranging from the hostile Lombards in Northern Italy to the iconoclasm controversy with the Byzantine Empire .

The Byzantine Emperor had recently condemned any representation of Christ in churches as idolatry and ordered them removed. Further, he had tried to dictate this same policy to the pope and have it followed in Western Europe. As the scholar C. Warren Hollister phrases it, "the papacy had never been in such desperate need of a champion" when Pope Zachary (served 741-752) received Pepin's letter. He more or less instantly agreed with Pepin.

Pepin was crowned King of the Franks in 751 and, in keeping with royal precedent, named his two sons as his successors. Among his earliest acts as king, Pepin defeated the Lombards and donated a significant amount of their land to the papacy (a grant known as the "Donation of Pepin"). The papacy, for their part, hoped to control Pepin and his successors and claimed authority over the Frankish crown by virtue of a document known as the Donation of Constantine , allegedly drawn up by the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine I himself, stating that a Christian monarch gave his rule up voluntarily to the papacy and the pope then graciously handed it back.

According to the document, the Church was actually the power behind every throne and could take that power as easily as it had been given. The document was a forgery – and there is no evidence that Constantine ever made any such statement in any way – but there was no way Pepin could have known that and, being illiterate, he had little choice but to believe whatever the clergy told him was on the paper they waved in front of his face. Pepin accepted the stipulation of the Donation of Constantine; his son would not.

King Pepin died in 768 and his sons ascended to the throne. Co-rule with Carloman was far from harmonious as Charlemagne favored direct action in dealing with difficulties while his brother seems to have been less decisive. The first test of their rule was the rebellion of the province of Aquitaine, which Pepin had subdued, in 769. Charlemagne favored a military campaign, which Carloman did not support.

Charlemagne marched on Aquitaine and defeated the rebels, also subduing neighboring Gascony, while Carloman refused to participate in any of it. In 770, Charlemagne married and then repudiated a Lombard princess, daughter of the king Desiderius (r. 756-774) to marry the teenage Hildegard (future mother of Louis the Pious, r. 814-840). Following overtures by Desiderius to Carloman to topple Charlemagne and avenge his daughter's honor, the two brothers were on a direct course to civil war when Carloman died in 771.

Military Campaigns & Expansion

As sole ruler of the Franks, Charlemagne ruled from the start by force of his personality which embodied the warrior-king ethos combined with Christian vision. Hollister describes the king:

Charlemagne towered over his contemporaries both figuratively and literally. He was 6 ft. 3 ½ in. tall, thick-necked, and pot bellied yet imposing in appearance for all that. He could be warm and talkative, but he could also be hard, cruel, and violent, and his subjects came to regard him with both admiration and fear…Above all else, Charlemagne was a warrior-king. He led his armies on yearly campaigns as a matter of course. Only gradually did he develop a notion of Christian mission and a program of unifying and systematically expanding the Christian West. (109)

After building up his army, he launched his first campaign into Saxony in 772, beginning a long and bloody conflict known as the Saxon Wars (772-804) in an effort to root out Norse paganism in the region and establish his authority there. Leaving troops in Saxony, he turned to Italy where the Lombards were asserting themselves again. He conquered the Lombards in 774 and brought their lands into his kingdom, thereafter calling himself "King of the Franks and Lombards", and then turned back to Saxony.

Basque unrest in the Pyrenes drew Charlemagne and his army in that direction for a number of engagements including the famous Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 (the inspiration for the later epic poem The Song of Roland ) in which Charlemagne's rearguard was ambushed and massacred, including the count Roland of the Breton March. This defeat did nothing but further Charlemagne's resolve to bring the region completely under his control.

Between 778 and 796, Charlemagne campaigned every year in the Pyrenes, Spain, and Germania winning repeated victories. In 795, he accepted the surrender of the Avars of Hungary but, refusing to trust them, attacked their stronghold (known as The Ring) and defeated them completely in 796, effectively ending them as a people. He had also defeated the Saracens of northern Spain, establishing a buffer zone called the Spanish March, and taken the island of Corsica. His kingdom now extended through the region of modern-day France, northern Spain, northern Italy, and modern-day Germany except for Saxony in the north.

Each time Charlemagne thought he had subdued the Saxons and put their struggle to rest, they rebelled again. Prior to the Saxon Wars, the region of Saxony had been on good terms with Francia and regularly interacted with them, serving as a trade conduit to Scandinavian countries. In 772, a Saxon party was said to have raided and burned a church in Deventer (in the modern-day Netherlands, then part of Charlemagne's kingdom) and this gave Charlemagne his excuse to invade the region. Why the Saxons would have burned the Deventer church, and even whether they really did, is unknown. Knowing Charlemagne's intolerance for pagan beliefs and practices, it is likely the Christian king was behind the church's destruction to justify an invasion of the Germanic tribe he would have undertaken anyway.

In retribution for the burned church, Charlemagne marched on Westphalia and destroyed the Irminsul, the sacred tree representing Yggdrasil (the Tree of Life in Norse mythology ), and slaughtered a number of Saxons on his first campaign. His second, third, and the rest (totaling 18) followed the same model of destruction and massacre. In 777 a Saxon warrior-chief named Widukind led the resistance and, although an able leader, he was as helpless to seriously challenge Charlemagne's war machine as anyone else in Europe had been. He did, however, negotiate with King Sigfried of Denmark to allow Saxon refugees into his kingdom.

In 782, Charlemagne ordered the execution of 4,500 Saxons in an atrocity known as the Massacre of Verden to break the Saxon's will to fight, but they still would not surrender their autonomy or repudiate their religion . Widukind offered himself for baptism soon after (either in 784 or 785) in a gesture of peace and it is recorded that he was baptized but then disappears from the historical record soon after.

Charlemagne put an end to the refugee train to Denmark in 798, and the Saxon rebellions continued after Widukind's disappearance. Charlemagne responded as he had for the past 30 years, with the same results. Finally, in 804, Charlemagne deported over 10,000 Saxons to Neustria in his kingdom and replaced them in Saxony with his own people, effectively winning the conflict but earning the enmity of the Scandinavian kings, particularly Sigfried who attacked the Frankish region of Frisia shortly afterwards. This conflict could have become another prolonged event but Sigfried died and his successor sued for peace.

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Holy Roman Emperor

Throughout the Saxon Wars and his other campaigns, Charlemagne was acting entirely on his own initiative and paying very little attention to the papacy. None of the popes were complaining, however, because Charlemagne's various enterprises coincided with their own interests or benefited them directly. It was clear by 800, however, that Charlemagne's power exceeded that of the papacy and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

On December 23, at a trial at which Charlemagne presided, Leo finally purged himself of the accusations against him. This course of events had signified a dreadful humiliation for the pope and his abnegation before the Carolingian ruler and he determined to try to regain the prestige and authority of his office by carrying out the imperial coronation of Charlemagne. On Christmas day, 800, as Charlemagne rose from prayer before the tomb of St. Peter, Pope Leo suddenly placed the crown on the king's head and the well-rehearsed Roman clergy and people shouted, “Charles Augustus , crowned great and peace-giving emperor of the Romans, life and victory!” (181)

Charlemagne allegedly did not want to be crowned by Leo and reportedly said he would never have entered the church if he had known it would happen. However that may be, it is well-established that the crown was clearly visible in the church when Charlemagne entered and the man was certainly intelligent enough to realize it had not been left there accidentally. Most likely, Charlemagne welcomed the prestige of the title but was not about to allow the papacy an upper hand to wield their Donation of Constantine pseudo-leverage over him.

Ecclesiastical & Educational Reforms

There seems little doubt that the coronation was an attempt by the papacy at establishing some measure of control over Charlemagne. Hollister notes how "the popes believed that the emperors ought to be papal stewards – wielding their secular political authority in the interests of the Roman Church" (112). Even so, there was no practical need to do this as Charlemagne had been consistently combining his own interests with those of the Church since he came to power.

Aside from his regular military victories, Charlemagne had also engaged in ecclesiastical and educational reform, improving the function of churches, monasteries, and educational institutions throughout his kingdom – now his empire . Technological advances during the Merovingian Dynasty and the reign of Pepin the Short had already provided a foundation for greater prosperity. Agricultural advances – such as crop rotation between three fields, the invention and use of the compound plow which replaced the earlier scratch plow, and encouraging peasants to pool their resources and labor in farming – all led to increased food production and better care of the land. Charlemagne improved on the improvements by encouraging further development of mechanization such as the water mill for grinding grain instead of the previous method of grinding by human labor.

Pepin the Short had initiated a reform of the Frankish Church spearheaded by St. Boniface (l. 672-754) who established order in religious houses and developed monastic schools. He also divided regions into parishes for easier administration. Charlemagne capitalized on these advances by furthering their development and surrounding himself with the brightest minds of his era, such as the scholar Alcuin of York who emphasized literacy as an important aspect of piety. This policy was advanced in the monastic schools throughout Charlemagne's empire, improving literacy rates and producing better students. The earlier reforms of Boniface were continued as Charlemagne sent out commissioners from his capital at Aachen to the various districts and parishes to make sure his decrees were being implemented properly and that all aspects of his administration were functioning toward a single goal. However, it seems there was no real reason for these commissioners as those whom Charlemagne trusted with positions of authority performed their duties out of personal loyalty to him, not to the state.

Charlemagne ruled his empire for 14 years until his death from natural causes in 814. Loyn notes how his "force and dynamic personality were needed to create the empire and, without him, disintegrating elements quickly gained the ascendancy" (79). He had already crowned Louis the Pious as successor in 813 but he could do nothing to ensure his legacy would endure after he died. Cantor comments:

The death of only a few enlightened leaders, or even the sudden loss of one great personality, can cause the whole system to collapse and open the way for an equally rapid reversion to chaos and barbarism. Surrounding the enlightened group of leaders in such a preindustrial society are a mass of wild warriors and bovine peasants who lack any comprehension of what the leaders are trying to do. Consequently, as the central direction falters, there is an immediate backsliding into barbarism. (172)

The initial troubles for the empire, however, were due not to any backsliding or disintegrating elements but to Charlemagne's own choices regarding Saxony decades earlier. The Saxon Wars destroyed the region, killed thousands of people, and did little else except enrage the Scandinavian kings who bided their time until Charlemagne's death and then unleashed the Viking raids on Francia. During Louis' reign, between 820 and 840, the Vikings struck repeatedly at Francia. Louis did his best to fend off these attacks but found it easier to appease the Norse through land grants and negotiations.

When Louis died in 840, the empire was divided among his three sons who fought each other for supremacy. Their conflict was concluded by the Treaty of Verdun of 843 which divided the empire between Louis I's sons. Louis the German (r. 843-876) received East Francia, Lothair (r. 843-855) took Middle Francia, and Charles the Bald (r. 843-877) would rule West Francia. None of these Frankish kings were interested in helping the others, and the empire's infrastructure, as well as most of the reforms advanced by Charlemagne, deteriorated. The Viking raids continued from 843 to c. 911 when they were finally ended by Charles the Simple (r. 893-923) through a treaty with the Viking chieftain Rollo (later Rollo of Normandy , r. 911-927).

Although Charlemagne himself was never affected by the church's absurd Donation of Constantine fraud, his descendants were not as strong, and the later Carolingian Dynasty would suffer accordingly as the popes asserted their supposed political authority. The separate kingdoms of Charlemagne's empire would eventually form the modern nations of Europe and, for all his faults, could not have done so if not for his vision of purpose and natural abilities to lead in such a way that others were eager to serve him.

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Bibliography

• Cantor, N. F. The Civilization of the Middle Ages. Harper Perennial, 1994.
• Collins, R. Early Medieval Europe: 300-1000. Palgrave, 2010.
• Hollister, C. W. Medieval Europe: A Short History. John Wiley and Sons, 1964.
• Loyn, H. R. The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopedia. Thames & Hudson, 1991.
• McKitterick, R. Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Sayers, D. L. The Song of Roland. Penguin Classics, 1957.
• Singman, J. L. The Middle Ages: Everyday Life in Medieval Europe. Sterling, 2013.
• Somerville, A. A. & McDonald, R. A. The Viking Age: A Reader. University of Toronto Press, Higher Education Division, 2014.

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Who was Charlemagne, the Carolingian Emperor of Europe?

Charlemagne was a Middle Ages king who founded an empire and became the Father of Europe

Before Charlemagne

Who was charlemagne, expanding the frankish kingdom.

• Emperor of the Romans
• The Carolingian Renaissance
• Charlemagne's legacy

Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, ruled over the vast Carolingian empire that spanned Europe during the Dark Ages. He became king of the Franks in A.D. 768 and conquered much of Europe during his 46-year reign.

During his life, he laid the foundations for the Holy Roman Empire, which would last nearly a millennium. He also established a new kind of royal leadership that would inspire generations of European kings. 

"Charlemagne was a model for kings for centuries after his death, and his empire also provided the highest ideal of government into the nineteenth century," Michael Frassetto , an adjunct instructor of history at the University of Delaware, wrote in " Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation " (ABC-CLIO, 2003).

Charlemagne championed religious reform and maintained a close relationship with the popes in Rome. Charlemagne also facilitated the Carolingian Renaissance, investing in the establishment of monasteries and cathedrals and fueling a renaissance of learning. As a result, scholarship and religion flourished both in his capital city, Aachen (in what is now Germany), and beyond. Nowadays, Charlemagne is remembered as the "Father of Europe" for uniting much of the continent under his rule.

In the late fourth and early fifth century, the Roman Empire 's influence in Western Europe collapsed as Germanic tribes swept through Rome, ultimately culminating in the fall of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476. From this power vacuum arose a series of Frankish tribes that had settled in Gaul (modern-day France), who consolidated their rule under a series of kings. 

From these Frankish tribes emerged the Merovingian dynasty (mid 5th century - A.D. 751). But by the seventh century, the Merovingian kings held little power. The Frankish territories were very rarely united under one ruler and internal fighting was rampant. 

Instead, mayors of the palace fulfilled a prime minister-type role and held the real power. Charles Martel, Charlemagne's grandfather, held this office and began to politically dominate both the Eastern and Western sides of the kingdom, beginning the slow takeover of the Merovingians by the nascent Carolingian dynasty, said early medieval historian Jennifer R. Davis , an associate professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C..

"It was Charlemagne's father who finally deposed the Merovingian dynasty and made himself king in 751, and Carolingian historiography in particular devoted a fair amount of energy to denigrating the Merovingians and justifying what basically was a coup," Davis told Live Science.

Pepin the Short, Charlemagne's father, claimed to have gained papal approval for deposing the Merovingians, although only Frankish sources attest to this, Davis said. In A.D. 753, however, both Frankish and papal sources noted that Pope Stephen II traveled to the Frankish states for the first time and formed an alliance. The pope declared that Frankish kings should be chosen only from the Carolingian line, and in return, the Franks would support the papacy’s territorial interests against pressure from the Lombards in Italy.

Charlemagne was born to Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon around A.D. 742. 

After Charlemagne's death in A.D. 814, the Frankish scholar Einhard, who was a contemporary of Charlemagne and had served in his court, wrote that little was known about Charlemagne's infancy or boyhood, in " Vita Karoli Magni ," his biography of the king. 

"Whatever his early education, it didn't include much reading or writing. "He never learned to write, so he could barely sign his documents — just with clumsy handwriting, but that was not his forte," Albrecht Classen , a professor of German studies at the University of Arizona, told Live Science.

Charlemagne inherited half of his father's kingdom upon Pepin the Short's death in A.D. 768, Einhard wrote. Charlemagne's brother Carloman inherited the Eastern half. The two Frankish kings had a fractious relationship. 

"Many of Carloman's party kept trying to disturb their good understanding, and there were some even who plotted to involve them in a war with each other," Einhard wrote.

But in A.D. 771, Carloman's premature death saved the kingdom from civil war and gave Charlemagne dominion over all the Frankish territories, François L. Ganshof, a Belgian medieval historian, wrote in " Charlemagne " (Speculum, University of Chicago Press, 1949).

Almost immediately after his accession as king of the Franks, Charlemagne launched a campaign to secure his lands against neighboring forces that had been making continual attempts to infiltrate Frankish territory, according to Ganshof.

Charlemagne started a long and bloody war against the Saxons, another Germanic tribe that had harried Charlemagne's father. In A.D. 772, Charlemagne's forces marched into Saxony (modern northern Germany) and eventually established a permanent military presence in a fortified borderland.

Charlemagne used this expansion as an opportunity to spread Christianity to a traditionally pagan area of Europe, Ganshof wrote. Charlemagne's Christianization of the Saxons was a personal success for the emperor. During the decades-long war in Saxony, Charlemagne's military expansion continued across other areas of Europe. In 774, his conquest of the Lombards in northern Italy resulted in his coronation there. In 788, he conquered Bavaria, also absorbing it into his kingdom, according to Britannica . 

To maintain order over such a huge territory, Charlemagne created a sophisticated administrative organization. Charlemagne also used the structures within the church to maintain control. 

"The bishops or priests or deacons were not necessarily interested in secular power," Classen told Live Science. "But they were educated, and they were supported then by Charlemagne, who then had first-rate administrators all over his country." 

But Charlemagne didn't hesitate to use violence against rebellious subjects. In his war with Saxony, he committed atrocities against those he was trying to conquer, most notably in 782 at the Massacre of Verden, where he is said to have ordered the killing of approximately 4,500 Saxons.

On the other hand, Charlemagne largely allowed the populations he conquered to function as they had done previously. 

"He, on the whole, does not go through and try to take land away from the entirety of the existing aristocracy," Davis told Live Science. "If you revolt, yes; but otherwise, he kind of lets people be." 

Becoming emperor of the Romans

Charlemagne's relationship with the church blossomed over his lifetime. Charlemagne established monasteries and cathedrals throughout his territories and, like his father before him, offered protection to the pope in return for the pope's continued patronage.

This symbiotic relationship led to Charlemagne being proclaimed emperor of the Romans, making him the first person to hold this title since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The coronation was said to be a result of Charlemagnes' intervention to save Pope Leo III. In 799, the pope fled to Charlemagne's court after being blinded in the street. Charlemagne arranged for the pope's safe return to Rome. In 800, Charlemagne traveled to Rome and organized for Pope Leo III to publicly swear an oath to eradicate the charges of misconduct levied against him by his opponents.

On Christmas Day A.D. 800, Pope Leo III thanked Charlemagne by anointing him emperor — an honor Charlemagne had probably been angling for, Marios Costambeys , a medieval historian at the University of Liverpool in England, told Live Science. "Almost nobody believes what his biographer says, which is that when he goes to Rome and is crowned, this is a complete surprise to him and that he didn't expect it," he said. "There are lots of signs that, in fact, this was all being set up for a couple of years beforehand." 

Charlemagne was crowned emperor, but in the intervening centuries, that title would evolve into Leader of the Holy Roman Empire, which did not exist during Charlemagne's time. Once crowned, Charlemagne became the first non-Roman emperor in Europe, appointed by the pope and thus God, which helped to consolidate Charlemagne's authority throughout his empire.

Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance

Charlemagne's reign ushered in the Carolingian Renaissance. Charlemagne set up religious schools across Europe.

"He called in the first major school master, Alcuin of York," Classen said. "Once that school had graduated some students, they became abbots. They set up their own monasteries, and each monastery had its own school. Out of those schools came new abbots for other churches. So it spread all over the country." 

Art, architecture and literature inspired by fourth-century Roman culture flourished throughout the Carolingian Empire, even though the emperor was illiterate, Classen said. 

The Renaissance, or "correctio" as the Carolingians referred to it, also helped Charlemagne promote Christian scholarship and culture. His investment in monastic schools and the production of manuscripts and documents allowed for wider access to biblical and liturgical knowledge, Costambeys said.

What is Charlemagne's legacy?

Charlemagne died in A.D. 814 at age 72 and left his throne to his son, Louis the Pious, who had been acting as co-emperor when his father's health had declined in the later years of his life. After his death, Charlemagne was elevated to a legendary status and mythologized as the perfect example of kingship, much like the mythical King Arthur in England.

The Frankish king also inspired future leaders, such as Napoleon Bonaparte , who saw Charlemagne's reign as an ideal example of imperialism. Charlemagne "very quickly becomes a model," Costambeys said. "He's the reference point for rulership in Europe, certainly Latin Christian Europe, for over a thousand years after," said Costambeys.

The Holy Roman Empire, which evolved from Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, continued to exist under a series of emperors until 1806, almost a millennium after Charlemagne's death.

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Emily is the Staff Writer at All About History magazine, writing and researching for the magazine's content. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of York and a Master of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Sheffield . Her historical interests include Early Modern and Renaissance Europe, and the history of popular culture.

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