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Charlemagne’s influence in both political and social spheres was so great that historians have nicknamed him the “father of Europe.” His use of military force and ability to improvise new systems expanded a struggling Western Europe into a strong empire. Additionally, his emphasis on learning created a Carolingian Renaissance that helped form cultural identity in Western Europe and laid the groundwork on which the Middle Ages flourished.
Charlemagne, whose name means Charles the Great, reshaped early medieval Europe by uniting most of Latin Christendom and contributing to the preservation of classical Latin learning, thereby laying the foundations for political and cultural developments in Europe for centuries to come. He ranks among the most important individuals—along with Heraclius of Byzantium, Muhammad, and Sui Wendi (founder of China’s Sui dynasty)—who contributed to shaping the post-classical Eurasian world. The Latin form of his name, Carolus, gives us the adjective Carolingian, which describes his empire and the historical period.
Charles was the elder son of Pepin the Short and the grandson of Charles Martel, both rulers of the Franks, a West Germanic people occupying Gaul and some other lands west of the Rhine River. After a brief succession struggle following his father’s death, Charles assumed control of the Frankish realm in 771 CE. He then embarked on the career of conquest and consolidation that earned him the cognomen “the Great.” Nearly forty years of Charles’s campaigning brought large new areas under Frankish rule. Charlemagne’s efforts were crowned, literally, on Christmas Day of 800 CE, when Pope Leo III bestowed the title of “Emperor of the Romans” on him. Even the Byzantines, to whom that title had previously been reserved, had to acknowledge Charlemagne’s position as emperor in the West, for by this time he ruled virtually all of Western Europe except Iberia and the British Isles. He died in January 814 CE, leaving his empire to his only son, Louis.
Charlemagne came of age at a time when Western Europe was only a shadow of what it had been at the height of the Roman Empire: the economy was underdeveloped and currency was in short supply; communications were slow and difficult; literacy was at a low ebb; and political power had become both fragmented and privatized. Despite these unfavorable circumstances, Charlemagne’s dominating physical presence, tirelessness, personal and political persuasiveness, and his ability to improvise systems of administration from limited resources allowed him to create a large empire through the use of military force. But the edifice proved fragile. The empire began to suffer from Viking invasions even before the king died, and factionalism increased during his son Louis’s reign. When Louis died, in 840 CE, he divided the empire among his three sons, who fell to warring among themselves. The three kingdoms disintegrated rapidly thereafter, under combined internal and external stress.
Clearly, the fate of Charlemagne’s empire is further evidence of the central role the king’s person and personality had played in creating and maintaining it. Some of Charlemagne’s administrative techniques, especially the granting of land (“fiefs”) instead of a salary to his officials in return for their service and the use of itinerant royal inspectors to supervise those landed local officials, survived in fragmented form as building blocks for the rulers of later ages. Above all, the emotional legacy of a powerful, just ruler and a unified Christendom survived as a political ideal for most of the Middle Ages in Europe. This emotional legacy was reinforced by Charlemagne’s even more lasting achievements as a cultural leader.
Unlike the great majority of his contemporaries, Charlemagne believed he had a duty to rule for the benefit of his subjects, and he earnestly pursued the intellectual and spiritual improvement of his realm. He attracted scholars from across Europe to his court, the most prominent being his biographer Einhard and the British monk Alcuin; he promoted church reform and supported missionary activity in conquered lands; he instituted educational reforms, especially at the level of monastic schools, whose transcriptions were responsible for the preservation of many classical texts; and his court instituted an important reform in handwriting, as the script of the time was nearly illegible. The Carolingian miniscule script that resulted was such a model of clarity that it became, through its revival by Renaissance scholars, the basis for modern print typefaces.
Charlemagne’s impact on cultural affairs was perhaps even more striking than his political and military achievements, because he was trained in the latter but not the former. He learned to read only as an adult, and he never learned to write; yet he took a keen interest in literature, learning, and even Church doctrine. In addition to his native Germanic tongue, he knew Latin and a bit of Greek. Through his personal example and by providing a hospitable environment for scholars, he fostered what historians have come to call the Carolingian Renaissance, a crucial stage in the formation of the western European cultural identity. This achievement, made possible by the extent and influence of his empire, justifies Charlemagne’s reputation as the “father of Europe.”
Bibliography:
- Bullough, D. A. (1970). Europae pater: Charlemagne and his achievement in the light of recent scholarship. English Historical Review, 85, 58–105.
- Bullough, D. (1974). The age of Charlemagne. London: G. P. Putnam and Sons.
- Einhard & Notker the Stammerer. (1969). Two lives of Charlemagne. L. Thorpe, (Trans.). Baltimore: Penguin Classics.
- King, P. D. (Trans.). (1987). Charlemagne: Translated sources. London: Kendal.
- Fichtenau, H. (1959). The Carolingian empire. P. Munz, (Trans.). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
- France, J. (2002). The composition and raising of the armies of Charlemagne. The Journal of Medieval Military History, 1, 61–82.
- McKitterick, R. (1983). The Frankish kingdoms under the Carolingians 751–987. London.
- McKitterick, R. (Ed.). (1995). The new Cambridge medieval history, c. 700–c. 900 (Vol. 2). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
- Nelson, J. L. (1988). Kingship and empire. In J. H. Burns (Ed.), The Cambridge history of medieval political thought, c. 350– c. 1450 (pp. 211–251). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
- Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (1983). The Frankish church. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
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