Charlemagne

Charlemagne (c. 742 or 747 – January 28, 814) was king of the Franks from 771 to 814, nominally King of the Lombards, and Holy Roman Emperor — Imperator and Augustus.

Date of birth

Charlemagne's birthday was believed to be April 1, 742, but several factors led to reconsideration of this traditional date. First, the year 742 was calculated from his age given at death, rather than attested with primary sources. Second, 742 precedes the marriage of his parents (in 744), yet there is no indication that Charlemagne was born out of wedlock, and he inherited from his parents. Another date is given in the Annales Petarienses, the April 2, 747. In that year, April 1 is Easter. The birth of an Emperor on Easter is a coincidence likely to provoke comment, but there is no such comment documented in 747, leading some to suspect the Easter birthday was a pious fiction concocted as a way of honoring the Emperor. Other commentators weighing the primary records have suggested that the birth was one year later, 748. So at present, it is impossible to be certain of the date of the birth of Charlemagne. The best guesses include April 1, 747, after April 15, 747, or April 1, 748.

Life

Arguably the founder of the Frankish Empire in Western Europe, Charlemagne was the elder son of Pepin the Short (714 – September 24, 768, reigned 751 – 768) and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720 – July 12, 783); he was the brother of the Lady Bertha mother of Roland.

On the death of Pepin the kingdom was divided between Charlemagne and his brother Carloman (Carloman ruled Austrasia). Carloman died on the 5th of December, 771, leaving Charlemagne the leader of a reunified Frankish kingdom. Charlemagne was engaged in almost constant battle throughout his reign. He conquered Saxony in the 8th century, a goal that had been the unattainable dream of Augustus. It took Charlemagne more than 18 battles to win this victory. He proceeded to force Catholicism on the conquered, slaughtering those who refused to convert. He dreamed of the reconquest of Spain, but never fully succeeded in this goal.

In 797 (801?) the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid, gave Emperor Charlemagne the first historically recorded elephant in northern Europe, named Abul-Abbas, an Asian elephant. (See History of elephants in Europe.)

In 800, at Mass on Christmas day in Rome, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum (Emperor of the Romans), a title that had been out of use in the West since the abdication of Romulus Augustulus in 476. While this title helped to make western Europe independent of Constantinople, Charlemagne did not use the title until much later, as he feared it would create dependence on the Pope. Even then, he never referred to himself as Imperator Romanorum but rather as Imperator Romanum gubernans Imperium (Emperor ruling the Roman Empire).

Pursuing his father's reforms, Charlemagne did away with the monetary system based on the gold sou. Both he and King Offa of Mercia took up the system set in place by Pepin. He set up a new standard, the livre (i.e. pound)— both monetary and unit of weight— which was worth 20 sous (like the solidus, and later the shilling) or 240 deniers (like the denari, and eventually the penny). During this period, the livre and the sou were counting units, only the denier was a coin of the realm.

Charlemagne applied the system to much of the European Continent, and Offa's standard was voluntarily adopted by much of England.

Autograph of Charlemagne

Charlemagne organized his empire into 350 counties, each led by an appointed count. Counts served as judges, administrators, and enforced capitularies. To enforce loyalty, he set up the system of Missi Dominici, meaning 'Envoys of the Lord.' In this system, one representative of the church and one representative of the emperor would head to the different counties and every year report back to Charlemagne on their status.

When Charlemagne died in 814, he was buried in his own Cathedral at Aachen. He was succeeded by his only son to survive him, Louis the Pious, after whose reign the empire was divided between his three surviving sons according to Frankish tradition. These three kingdoms would be the foundations of later France and the Holy Roman Empire.

After Charlemagne's death, continental coinage degraded and most of Europe resorted to using the continued high quality English coin until about 1100.

It is difficult to understand Charlemagne's attitude toward his daughters. None of them contracted a sacramental marriage. This may have been an attempt to control the number of potential alliances. After his death the surviving daughters entered or were forced to enter monasteries. At least one of them, Bertha, had a recognized relationship, if not a marriage, with Angilbert, a member of Charlemagne's court circle.

Charlemagne's mother tongue was the Old High German dialect called Frankish. He also spoke Latin and understood some Greek.

Cultural significance

Statue of Charlemagne in Frankfurt, a Romantic interpretation of his appearance from the 19th century

Charlemagne's reign is often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance because of the flowering of scholarship, literature, art and architecture. Most of the surviving works of classical Latin were copied and preserved by Carolingian scholars. The pan-European nature of Charlemagne's influence is indicated by the origins of many of the men who worked for him: Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon; Theodulf, a Visigoth; Paul the Deacon, a Lombard; and Angilbert and Einhard, Franks. Charlemagne enjoyed an important afterlife in European culture. One of the great medieval literature cycles, the Charlemagne cycle or Matter of France, centres around the deeds of Charlemagne's historical commander of the Breton border, Roland, and the paladins who served as a counterpart to the knights of the Round Table; their tales were first told in the chansons de geste. Charlemagne himself was accorded sainthood inside the Holy Roman Empire after the 12th Century. His canonization by Antipope Paschal III was never recognized by the Holy See. He was a model knight as one of the Nine Worthies.

It is frequently claimed by genealogists that all people with European ancestry alive today are probably descended from Charlemagne. However, only a small percentage can actually prove descent from him. Charlemagne's marriage and relationship politics and ethics did, however, result in a fairly large number of descendants, all of whom had far better life expectancies than is usually the case for children in that time period. They were married into houses of nobility and as a result of intermarriages many people of noble descent can indeed trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne.

Another interesting note about Charlemagne was that he took a serious effort in his and others' scholarship and had learned to read in his adulthood, although he never quite learned how to write. This was quite an achievement for kings at this time, of whom most were illiterate.

Charlemagne's portraits

[[Image:D?arl der grosse.jpg|left|thumb|Charlemagne, portrait by Albrecht D? The Roman tradition of realistic personal portraiture was in complete eclipse at the time of Charlemagne, where individual traits were submerged in iconic typecastings. Charlemagne, as an ideal ruler, ought to be portrayed in the corresponding fashion, any contemporary would have assumed. The images of enthroned Charlemagne, God's representative on Earth, bear more connections to the icons of Christ in Majesty than to modern (or Antique) conceptions of portraiture. Even the verbal portrait by Einhard suppresses details that would have been indecorous in this context. Charlemagne in later imagery (illustration above) is often portrayed with flowing blond hair, due to a misunderstanding of Einhart's Vita caroli Magni (chapter 22) where Charlemagne in his age had canitie pulchra "beautiful white hair" which has been rendered as blond or fair in many translations. The Latin word for blond is "flavus", and "rutilo", meaning 'golden-red' or 'auburn', is the word Tacitus uses for the Germans' hair. [[Image:Portrait of Charlemagne whom the Song of Roland names the King with the Grizzly Beard.png|right|thumb|Portrait of Charlemagne, whom the Song of Roland names the King with the Grizzly Beard.--Fac-simile of an Engraving of the End of the 16th Century.]]

Wives

1. Himiltrude
2. Ermengarda or Desiderata
3. Hildegard of Savoy (married Abt 771) (758–783)
4. Fastrada (married 784) (d. 794)
5. Luitgard (married 794) (d. 800)

Children

1. Pippin the Hunchback (d. 813)
2. Charles, King of Neustria (d. 811)
3. Pippin, King of Italy (ruled 781–810)
4. Louis I The Pious, King of Aquitaine, Emperor (ruled 814–840)
5. Lothar (d. 780)
6. Six Daughters (Hildegarde?, Gisele?, Adelheid?, Bertha?, Lothaire?, Rotrud?)
7. Aupais ?

Further reading

• Alessandro Barbero: Charlemagne, father of a continent. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004 ISBN 0-520-23943-1

Related articles

• Franks (main history of Frankish kingdoms)
• List of Frankish Kings
• Carolingians
• Heribert Illig
• Nine Worthies

External links

• A reconstructed portrait of Charlemagne by Marco Bakker: Reportret: Charlemagne (http://www.reportret.info/gallery/charlemagne1.html).
• House of Pepin / Dynasty of Charlemagne by Ed Stephan: Genealogy of Charlemagne (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Rulers/charlemagne.html).