Charlemagne

Germany Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Kölner Dom, Germany’s largest cathedral, dominate the city’s skyline (Click here) Aachen Some 30 German kings were crowned in the Aachen Dom; where Charlemagne lies buried in an elaborate gilded shrine (Click here) Lutherstadt-Wittenberg Protestant reformer Martin Luther is buried in the Schlosskirche, the church to whose door

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pick!) and indulge in a hearty supper and local Kölsch beer in a Rhenish tavern. Head to Aachen next to walk in the footsteps of Charlemagne and munch on a crunchy Printen cookie, then travel back in time another few centuries in storied Trier. More than 2000 years old, it’s

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famous for its starring role in history. To appreciate its impact, visit Xanten and Cologne, both hubs of the Roman Empire; Aachen, the capital of Charlemagne’s Frankish Reich; and Münster and Osnabrück where treaties ending the epic Thirty Years’ War were signed. RHENISH STYLE Breaking for a glass of Kölsch

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. The church owns two relics of enormous importance: branches that are thought to come from Christ’s crown of thorns, and a victory cross of Charlemagne, whose army overran much of Western Europe in the 9th century. In the Holy Chapel, the votive candles, some of them over 1m tall, are

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in the area had a go at ruling Worms, including the Huns, the Alemans and finally the Franks, and it was under the Frankish leader, Charlemagne, that the city flourished in the 9th century. The most impressive reminder of the city’s medieval heyday is its majestic, late-Romanesque Dom. A

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, which has retained its air of Cold War mystery. Away from the river, Aachen still echoes with the beat of the Holy Roman Empire and Charlemagne. Much of Germany’s 20th-century economic power stemmed from the Northern Rhineland industrial region known as the Ruhrgebiet. Now cities such as Essen are

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. Resources »Ruhr Tourismus (www.ruhr-tourismus.de) »Industrial Heritage Trail (www.route-industriekultur.de) »100 Schlösser Route (www.100-schloesser-route.de) »Route Charlemagne Information Centre (www. route-charlemagne.eu) »Hotel Drei Könige (Click here) Cologne & Northern Rhineland Highlights Feel your spirits soar as you climb the the majestic loftiness of Cologne

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the industrial age at the Zollverein coal mine (Click here) in Essen Step back to the Middle Ages in Aachen (Click here), with memories of Charlemagne around every corner Enjoy the vibrant life of Münster (Click here), where great history combines with youthful pleasures Taste the unique beers of the region

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the map for millennia. The Romans nursed their war wounds and stiff joints in the steaming waters of Aachen’s mineral springs, but it was Charlemagne who put the city firmly on the European map. The emperor too enjoyed a dip now and then, but it was more for strategic reasons

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still very much an international city, and has a unique appeal thanks to its location in the border triangle with the Netherlands and Belgium. And Charlemagne’s legacy lives on in the stunning Dom, which in 1978 became Germany’s first Unesco World Heritage Site. REDECORATING THE DOM Like the stereotypical

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of the Dom in Aachen have been on a centuries-long remodelling binge. The result is that very little of what you see dates to Charlemagne’s time. For instance, the interior of the main part of the church was redone for the the umpteenth time in the 19th century. At

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Sophia in Istanbul. The inside of the dome overhead dates from the 17th century and on it goes. Other than possibly the hidden relics and Charlemagne’s bones, the oldest authenticated item in the Dom is the 12th-century chandelier that was a gift from Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa. Sights Appreciating the

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.de; 10am-7pm Apr-Dec, to 6pm Jan-Mar) It’s impossible to overestimate the significance of Aachen’s magnificent cathedral. The burial place of Charlemagne, it’s where more than 30 German kings were crowned and where pilgrims have flocked since the 12th century. Aachen Sights 1 Couven Museum B3

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B3 15Leo van den DaeleB2 16 Noblis B3 Drinking 17 Magellan A2 Entertainment 18 Apollo Kino & Bar A1 The oldest and most impressive section is Charlemagne’s palace chapel, the Pfalzkapelle, an outstanding example of Carolingian architecture. Completed in 800, the year of the emperor’s coronation, it’s an octagonal

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encircled by a 16-sided ambulatory supported by antique Italian pillars. The colossal brass chandelier was a gift from Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa during whose reign Charlemagne was canonised in 1165. Pilgrims have poured into town ever since that time, drawn in as much by the cult surrounding

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Charlemagne as by his prized relics : Christ’s loincloth when he was crucified, Mary’s cloak, the clothes used for John the Baptist when he was

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Christ’s Passion, and the jewel-encrusted gilded copper pulpit, both fashioned in the 11th century. At the far end is the gilded shrine of Charlemagne that has held the emperor’s remains since 1215. In front, the equally fanciful shrine of St Mary shelters the cathedral’s four prized relics

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tour (adult/child €5/4; 11am-4.30pm Mon-Fri, 1-4pm Sat & Sun, tours in English 2pm), you’ll barely catch a glimpse of Charlemagne’s white marble imperial throne in the upstairs gallery. Reached via six steps – just like King Solomon’s throne – it served as the coronation throne

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veritable mother lode of gold, silver and jewels. Focus your attention on the Lotharkreuz, a 10th-century processional cross, and the marble sarcophagus that held Charlemagne’s bones until his canonisation; the relief shows the rape of Persephone. Rathaus HISTORIC BUILDING Offline map Google map (Markt; adult/concession €5/3; 10am

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50 life-size statues of German rulers, including the 30 kings crowned in town. It was built in the 14th century atop the foundations of Charlemagne’s palace, of which only the eastern tower, the Granusturm, survives. Inside, the undisputed highlights are the Kaisersaal with its epic 19th-century frescos by

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. To the west is a mishmash of old buildings that have parts dating back to when this was part of Charlemagne’s palace. This is the future site of the Route Charlemagne information centre. Couven Museum MUSEUM Offline map Google map (www.couven-museum.de; Hühnermarkt 17; adult/child €5/3; 10am

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Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst trains the spotlight on contemporary art (Warhol, Immendorf, Holzer, Penck, Haring etc) and also stages progressive changing exhibits. ROUTE CHARLEMAGNE The Route Charlemagne is designed to showcase Aachen’s 1200-year tradition as a European city of culture and science. The city’s sites are linked together

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the old building on the west side of the Katschhof. It is hoped it will open by 2014. In the meantime, the Route Charlemagne Information Centre (www.route-charlemagne.eu; Haus Löwenstein, Markt; 10am-6pm) is in one of Aachen’s few surviving medieval townhouses. Activities In fine weather, get off the

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, the carriage containing his coffin rolled all the way to Dortmund, stopping on the spot of the church. There’s a statue of him, opposite Charlemagne, at the entrance to the choir. Of outstanding artistic merit is the late-Gothic high altar. There are good views from the bell tower. Marienkirche

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of Soest, Paderborn is the largest city in eastern Westphalia. It derives its name from the Pader which, at 4km, is Germany’s shortest river. Charlemagne used Paderborn as a power base to defeat the Saxons and convert them to Christianity, giving him the momentum needed to rise to greater things

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. A visit by Pope Leo III in 799 led to the establishment of the Western Roman Empire, a precursor to the Holy Roman Empire, and Charlemagne’s coronation as its emperor in Rome the following year. Paderborn remains a pious place to this day – churches abound, and religious sculpture and motifs

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and flat wooden ceiling. Carolingian Kaiserpfalz HISTORIC SITE East along Am Abdinghof to the north of the Dom are the remnants of the Carolingian Kaiserpfalz, Charlemagne’s palace where that historic meeting with Pope Leo took place. It was destroyed by fire and replaced in the 11th century by the Ottonian

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; www.kaiserpfalz-paderborn.de; Am Ikenberg 2; adult/child €3.50/1.50; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun), which presents excavated items from the days of Charlemagne, including drinking vessels and fresco remnants. The only original palace building is the twee Bartholomäuskapelle next door. Consecrated in 1017, it’s considered the oldest

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a round trip. WITCHES & WARLOCKS The Bodetal was first inhabited by Celts, whose fortresses were conquered by Germanic tribes and used for pagan rituals before Charlemagne embarked upon campaigns to subjugate and Christianise the local population during the 8th-century Saxon Wars. Today Harz mythology blends these pagan and Christian elements

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secret gatherings to carry out their rituals. They are said to have darkened their faces one night and, armed with broomsticks and pitchforks, scared off Charlemagne’s guards, who mistook them for witches and devils. In fact the name ‘Walpurgisnacht’ itself probably derives from St Walpurga, but the festival tradition may

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developed near today’s centre from about 100 AD, and one settlement in particular that in 787 was given its own bishop’s seat by Charlemagne. In its earliest days, it was known as the ‘Rome of the North’ and developed as a base for Christianising Scandinavia. Despite this, it gradually

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pedestrianised, the square’s centrepiece is its fountain. Completed in 1878, it shows important figures in Hamburg’s past including Emperor Constantine the Great and Charlemagne and is surmounted by a figure showing the might of the Hanseatic League. Segelschule Pieper BOAT HIRE Offline map Google map (247 578; www.segelschule

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developed their own identity and, for the first time, it became possible to talk about ‘German’ rulers, the most illustrious of which was, without doubt, Charlemagne. But the fortunes of Germany long remained in the hands of feudal rulers, who pursued their own petty interests at the expense of a unified

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introduced hierarchical Church structures. Kloster Lorsch (Lorsch Abbey) in present-day Hesse is a fine relic of this era. From his grandiose residence in Aachen, Charlemagne (r 768–814), the Reich’s most important king, conquered Lombardy, won territory in Bavaria, waged a 30-year war against the Saxons in the

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800. The cards were reshuffled in the 9th century, when attacks by Danes, Saracens and nomad tribes from the east threw the eastern portion of Charlemagne’s empire into turmoil and four dominant duchies emerged – Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and Saxony. The graves of Heinrich and other Salian monarchs can today be

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found in the spectacular cathedral in Speyer. Charlemagne’s burial in Aachen Dom (Aachen Cathedral) turned a court chapel into a major pilgrimage site (and it remains so today). The Treaty of Verdun

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(843) saw a gradual carve-up of the Reich and, when Louis the Child (r 900–11) – a grandson of Charlemagne’s brother – died heirless, the East Frankish (ie German) dukes elected a king from their own ranks. Thus, the first German monarch was created. WHAT

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very good one. It grew out of the Frankish Reich, which was seen as the successor to the defunct Roman Empire. When Charlemagne’s father, Pippin, helped a beleaguered pope (Charlemagne would later do the same), he received the title Patricius Romanorum (Protector of Rome), virtually making him Caesar’s successor. Having

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retaken the papal territories from the Lombards, he presented them to the Church (the last of these territories is the modern Vatican state). Charlemagne’s reconstituted ‘Roman Empire’ then passed into German hands. The empire was known by various names throughout its lifetime. It formally began (for historians, at

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, which hosted the coronation and burial of dozens of German kings from 936. Otto I was first up in the cathedral. In 962 he renewed Charlemagne’s pledge to protect the papacy, and the pope reciprocated with a pledge of loyalty to the Kaiser. This made the Kaiser and pope strange

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a treaty signed in the Rhineland-Palatinate town of Worms in 1122. Two Lives of Charlemagne (2008; Penguin Classics) is a striking biography of Charlemagne, beautifully composed by a monk and a courtier who spent 23 years in Charlemagne’s court. Under Friedrich I Barbarossa (r 1152–90), Aachen assumed the role of

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Reich capital and was granted its rights of liberty in 1165, the year Charlemagne was canonised. Meanwhile, Heinrich der Löwe (Henry the Lion), a member of the House of Welf with an eye for Saxony and Bavaria, extended influence

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of Tours and stops the progress of Muslims into Western Europe from the Iberian Peninsula, preserving Christianity in the Frankish Reich. 773–800 The Carolingian Charlemagne, grandson of Charles Martel, answers a call for help from the pope. In return he is crowned Kaiser by the pope. 919–1125 Saxon and

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Roman Empire in 962 when Otto I is crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope, reaffirming the precedent established by Charlemagne. 1165 Friedrich I Barbarossa is crowned in Aachen. He canonises Charlemagne and later drowns while bathing in a river in present-day Turkey while co-leading the Third Crusade. 1241 Hamburg

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former GDR brand that’s been a big hit in the new Germany. Top of section Literature, Theatre & Film Literature Early Writing Oral literature during Charlemagne’s reign (c 800) and secular epics performed by 12th-century knights are the earliest surviving literary forms, but the man who shook up the

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southern Bavaria to the coal mines of Essen. Romanesque & Gothic Among the grand buildings of the Carolingian period, Aachen’s Byzantine-inspired cathedral – built for Charlemagne from 786 to about 800 – and Fulda’s Michaelskirche are surviving masterpieces. A century on, Carolingian, Christian (Roman) and Byzantine influences flowed together in a

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’s finest collection of Roman heritage. »Aachen Cathedral (Click here) – Begun in the 8th century, this blockbuster building is the final resting place of Emperor Charlemagne. »Speyer’s Kaiserdom cathedral (Click here) – This magnificent 11th-century cathedral holds the tombs of eight German rulers. »Regensburg (Click here) – An Altstadt crammed with

Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country

by Simon Winder  · 22 Apr 2019

find. The theme of this book is defined by one of the most important if accidental moments in European history. Charles I ‘the Great’ (Charlemagne) spent a long and enjoyable career carving out a huge empire across much of north-west mainland Europe. It was very much a personal achievement

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, whose only asset was ownership of a pair of sandals once owned – and rather scuffed up – by Jesus and given to the monks by Charlemagne’s father Pippin, kept its semi-independence and attracted an endless stream of pilgrims with surprising success for many centuries, only totally losing its status

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number of acts of eradicatory chauvinism and counter-chauvinism. A further complication for France is that the Duchy of Flanders in the original division of Charlemagne’s Empire was made part of ‘West Francia’, i.e. France, but its counts were often able to maintain a sort of semi-independence.

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crowning of the King of the French in Rheims (he only officially became Emperor when crowned by the Pope). As the equally legitimate successor to Charlemagne, the Emperor/King had his own historical explanation for Lotharingia, seeing it all as uncontestably part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor had

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of St Brice in the 1650s of the tomb of Childeric I. This accidental find catapulted everything back some two hundred and fifty years before Charlemagne, to the century after the Western Roman Empire had collapsed, a world which must have still been densely Roman in its appearance, probably with

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towns and more limited trade. Childeric’s son, Clovis I, was baptized, united the Frankish tribes and founded the Merovingian dynasty which lasted until Charlemagne’s dad put the last of them into a monastery. The management of Childeric’s rediscovered tomb has not exactly been a curatorial model. It

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to pray here (and was an important patron, giving thanks here after he defeated an Ummayad army at Narbonne in 737 on Servatius’s birthday); Charlemagne, Charles V, Philip II, most recently John Paul II. The church above it has been swept aside repeatedly by invaders and accidents, but somehow

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nothing would have survived – we would be wholly ignorant of Tacitus and his friends. One curiosity was the role of Irish monks, particularly at Charlemagne’s court. When the Irish had been converted to Christianity they had no written language of their own, so took the shaping and purity of

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ancient lichen and facial repairs. Eaten at by centuries of smoke and guano, nearly killed off by a huge fire in the eighteenth century, this Charlemagne is a figure who demands respect. It seems a shame not to have ritual bowls filled with floating flowers, guttering oil lamps, temple guards in

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smart outfits, worshippers pressing their foreheads to the cold stone floor – plus a few bits of bunting and perhaps something dreadful involving animals. Charlemagne, who persuaded the Pope to crown him the new Roman Emperor in a great ceremony on Christmas Day in the propitious year of 800, had

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, had made himself King of the Franks, the Frankish kingdom being an ancient, sprawling and complex entity, directly if stormily linked to Roman Gaul. Charlemagne’s birthright included most of modern France, all of the Netherlands and much of what is now western Germany. But by his anti-pagan campaigns

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to make Europe Christian, and aligned with Rome rather than Constantinople. It is hair-raising how thin the thread is by which we know about Charlemagne’s actions – a handful of chronicles, letters and a couple of biographies (one by the enjoyably named Notker the Stammerer), which are fascinating, but

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frustratingly without any means by which they can be double-checked. Einhard, who worked closely with Charlemagne for many years, wrote his life so that the events of the present would not be ‘condemned to silence and oblivion’ – and it is

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blank reigns of these centuries appear desolate and poorly managed simply because historians have no vivid sources. Even with what we do have about Charlemagne it is often impossible to know if some tall tale, monk’s failure of memory or ancient lie has become for ever enshrined in

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oddly intimate link between ourselves and the people who stood in the same place, it feels, really quite recently. Like most of his family, Charlemagne came from the modern German–Dutch–Belgian border area. He both inherited a huge swath of land and extended it through campaigning into the east

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Avar Empire, which had controlled Central Europe for some two centuries, bringing back to Aachen ‘fifteen oxcarts’ of Avar treasure. However, to think of Charlemagne as the acknowledged ruler of everywhere between the Pyrenees and Denmark, the mountains of Bohemia and central Italy, would be a mistake. Many of these

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imposing his will – sometimes only temporarily – from Spain to the Baltic. Just as his grandfather Charles Martel had ended serious Arab incursions into France, so Charlemagne carved out new Christian areas in Central Europe and fought back the ‘Northmen’. With these last, it gets a bit awkward as an accidental side

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had time on their hands and could lean back on their rough-hewn stools, wondering whether their berserkers might enjoy going abroad for a bit. Charlemagne had not been buried long before his children and grandchildren learned a lot more about these seafaring tourists. CHAPTER TWO The split inheritance » Margraves,

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As mentioned at the beginning of the comparatively cheap book you are currently reading, Lotharingia (initially known as Middle Francia) emerged from the manoeuvres of Charlemagne’s grandsons. We probably have more grounds for regretting the fall of the old empire than its inhabitants did. Historians love large political units because

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Duke of Württemberg later on. Sticking to the post-Treaty of Ribemont world of 880, this was the last partition of what was still recognizably Charlemagne’s inheritance. It enshrined Lotharingia – Middle Francia – as a huge zone which both the French king and German king could equally lay dynastic claim

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The treaty was signed by Louis III for West Francia and Louis III for East Francia, respectively great-great-grandson and great-grandson of Charlemagne, each named after Charlemagne’s first successor Louis I ‘the Pious’. Each twist and turn over the coming centuries, as the digits piled up after each further

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choose to know nothing at all about, say, the Battles of Formigny and Castillon, which threw the English out of France. As discussed earlier, Charlemagne’s inheritors had in West Francia and East Francia created two opposing blocs and in Lotharingia an intermediate bloc linked to East Francia. But Lotharingia

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, and where Otto is buried – a vast jump forward, some three hundred miles east from the old stamping ground at Aachen. In parallel with Charlemagne’s wars with the Saxons and Avars and Otto’s further march east in the following century, although with very tangled and widely variegated roots

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and of a seemingly limitless supply of mean, disloyal vassals. By 882, in a thoughtful piece of symbolic redecoration, a Viking army had converted Charlemagne’s chapel at Aachen into stables. The Emperor and the Pope and their fates were so entangled that their tumbling prestige dragged everyone down into

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Here was Philip associating himself with expiatory chivalry (despite backing out of his single combat with Duke Humphrey), and with the power and glamour of Charlemagne. It is hard not to wonder whether the Dukes (and indeed other rulers of the period) and their guests got a bit bored with being

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compared to the same people over and over – there is always a tapestry of Godefroy of Bouillon or Charlemagne. But perhaps the static nature of the iconography was the point: that greatness and legitimacy created a permanent present, where both dynastic heroes and

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like to think that Bosch and his anonymous sculptor vied with one other for rival compelling mutant effects in their different media. As with the Charlemagne sculpture in Zürich, there can be few more atmospheric objects than statues designed for high places but now brought down after centuries of erosion

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Constantinople made noises suggesting that Rome was merely its Johnny-come-lately low-comedy offshoot. Much of the elaborate ceremony around the Pope crowning Charlemagne and his successors as Roman Emperor and the elaborate iconography around the Theban Legion martyrs and ancient sites associated with Constantine was to counter the

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violent anti-Protestant edict, wrote to the Pope that ‘no Roman pontiff has received such a harvest of joys from Germany since the time of Charlemagne’ – in other words directly comparing Protestants to pagan Saxons and Avars. As Ferdinand’s advisers flapped their arms about with excitement, not knowing whether

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Emperor of Austria as, confusingly, Francis I. Both Napoleon and Franz could draw on the Treaty of Verdun as the French and German inheritors of Charlemagne, although Napoleon had pole position in now owning Aachen and the Rhineland imperial sites. The Holy Roman Empire, with its ancient, confused roots, was

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Wellington were in attendance, with other figures such as Goethe and some senior Rothschilds. There was a fun visit to see the sacred relics of Charlemagne, effectively, in the wake of Napoleon’s visit there, decontaminating the place with a strong spray of hysterical reactionary mysticism. There were discussions about

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Nietzsche and Wagner were both knitting together different cultures in much the same way Philipp Franz von Siebold had linked things Dutch and Japanese. Charlemagne’s regular invasions of the Ruhr to kill Saxons had unfortunately deprived Germany of paganism and had indeed been so thorough that no trace of

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and a horned helmet just to buy a stamp from it, and one of the world’s very few medieval-style water-towers. With its Charlemagne Hall, mythological, faux-runic carvings and hunkered down Romanesque clock-tower, the station is almost lovable, even if originally designed just as a backdrop

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to compete with the real Monkey Island of the Schloß. Wilhelm would hang out here with his friends, surrounded by pictures of his great predecessors Charlemagne, Godefroy of Bouillon, King Arthur and King David, with stuffed capercaillies and hundreds of old weapons. Guests would come in through the carved gateway

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and lies of the mongrel Allied coalition. CHAPTER FOURTEEN Dreams of Corfu » Walls and bridges » The Kingdom of Mattresses » The road to Strasbourg » Armageddon » Charlemagne comes home Dreams of Corfu A few miles outside Utrecht is a grand house which must have a fair claim to be one of the

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themselves in places they no longer recognized, sometimes with wives who had long settled down with someone else. One final collaborationist flourish was the SS Charlemagne Division of French Fascist volunteers. The number of men actively fighting with the Germans was never huge – the ‘Rexist’ Belgian leader Léon Degrelle’s

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Walloon Legion was only a few thousand men, mostly killed on the Eastern Front.5 The Charlemagne Division was almost self-consciously set up to perform a last stand in 1944, filled with brutalized scrapings from the collapsing Vichy regime, while the

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senior political leaders escaped to the Swabian castle of Sigmaringen to await their fates. Members of the Charlemagne Division found a sort of martyrdom as the very last defenders of Hitler’s bunker. I mention it here because of its curious badge.

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Avar gold than with this engineering marvel, but in other ways, of course, it is an inspired name. This refreshed and overhauled symbolism around Charlemagne came together in the early 1950s. It turned out that the future did not lie in France trying to pinch places like the Saarland, but

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enmity by joining together. They would go on to make three core Lotharingian cities into their capitals: Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. In addition the Charlemagne Prize was set up by the City of Aachen to be awarded to whoever its judges viewed as contributing most to the promotion of unity

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Prussia (London, 2006) Richard Cobb, French and Germans, Germans and French (Hanover, NH, 1983) Alexander Cockburn, Corruptions of Empire (New York, 1988) Roger Collins, Charlemagne (Basingstoke, 1998) Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI, 1461–83, trans. Michael Jones (Harmondsworth, 1972) Philip Conisbee (ed.), Georges de la Tour

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, Diary of His Journey to the Netherlands, introduced by J.-A. Goris and G. Marlier (London, 1971) Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. David Ganz (London, 2008) Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650 (New Haven, 2016) Amos Elon, The Pity of

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1300–1914 (Cambridge, 2000) Stefan Fischer, Hieronymus Bosch (Köln, 2016) John B. Freed, Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth (New Haven, 2016) Johannes Fried, Charlemagne (Cambridge, MA, 2016) Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London, 2016) Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution

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to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below. Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) and Charlemagne Charlemagne Prize Congress of (1818) coronations in and famine and Napoleon Treasury and the Vikings Aare, River Aargau abbeys Acre, fall of (1291) Adam Adelaide

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on the Rhine fossils Fouquet, Jean France Arab incursions into and the Austrian Netherlands and the Black Death and Britain and Burgundy Capetian dynasty and Charlemagne Concordat of Worms (1122) and England and the First World War and Flanders and the ‘Fronde’ rebellion geography and Germany and the Holy Roman

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King Neerwinden, Battle of (1793) Nether Rhine River Netherlands, Kingdom of the and Albrecht Dürer and Amsterdam and Baarle-Hertog and Belgium and Britain and Charlemagne and England and the First World War and flooding and France and Margaret of Austria and Neutral Moresnet northern partitioning (1640s) and religion St Elizabeth

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Spanish Road Spanish Succession, War of the (1701–14) Spanish Truce see Twelve Years Truce spas Speyer Cathedral Spinola, Ambrogio Splinter Sands, Dunkirk SS Charlemagne Division Stanley, Henry Morton Statue of Liberty Stavelot Stavelot Abbey Stavelot-Malmédy Stellingabund Sterne, Laurence A Sentimental Journey Tristram Shandy Stevinus, Simon Stiftskirche, Baden-Baden

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Red, yellow and blue » Shame on the Rhine Chapter Fourteen Dreams of Corfu » Walls and bridges » The Kingdom of Mattresses » The road to Strasbourg » Armageddon » Charlemagne comes home Postscript Notes Acknowledgements Bibliography Index Illustration Credits Also by Simon Winder A Note About the Author Copyright Farrar, Straus and Giroux 175 Varick

This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee  · 19 Jan 2012  · 796pp  · 242,660 words

done the new king of the Mercians was Offa (750?–96), one of the most famous names of this period and a contemporary of Charlemagne (741–814). Charlemagne was the most celebrated of the Frankish rulers. The Franks were the post-Roman barbarians of what we now know as Belgium, France, Germany

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, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It was Charlemagne who inspired the rethinking of kingship, whereby in return for allegiance the leader protects those who follow him or her. His extension of this thought

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Church that would continue long after his empire’s passing. Although barbaric and indeed largely illiterate, Charlemagne inspired learning and such a close relationship with Rome that, on Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of what would become the Holy Roman Empire. Given that Leo III had called for

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Charlemagne’s help the previous year when he was in danger of being usurped, the coronation was the

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least gift of the Holy Father. Given the power and the uncompromising ambition of Charlemagne, the relationship with the king of the English (not

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of England) tells us much about the importance of Offa. Charlemagne had wanted one of his sons to marry one of the daughters of Offa. Offa’s reaction was that the process of diplomatic relations had

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to be two-way. If he was to take Charlemagne’s son as an in-law, then one his Offa’s sons should marry one of Charlemagne’s daughters. If this seems petty diplomacy, it was not. The marriage of sons and daughters among

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the King of the English – not of England as a land or State, but of the people. Also, Offa negotiated treaties on equal terms with Charlemagne who would become emperor. Therefore Offa’s reputation must go far beyond the creation of a dyke. By AD 796 Offa was dead and the

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. It had few friends in Continental Europe, whereas Louis of France was confident enough to believe that he was successor to the power of the Charlemagne empire. He fell to war with the Popes and flayed the Huguenots, the French Calvinists, of whom so many fled to England and Ireland that

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ref 1, ref 2 Chadwick, Edwin ref 1 Chamberlain, Joseph ref 1, ref 2, ref 3 Chamberlain, Neville ref 1 Champlain, Samuel de ref 1 Charlemagne ref 1, ref 2 Charles Albert of Bavaria ref 1 Charles I ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4 execution of ref 1, ref

The Eternal City: A History of Rome

by Ferdinand Addis  · 6 Nov 2018

dream that had been born in Rome a century earlier: the imperial dream of Charles the Great, king of the Franks, known to history as Charlemagne. Of all the Germanic states that had emerged from the ruin of the Roman empire in the west, it was the kingdom of the Franks

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new religion, Islam. At the Battle of Tours, in AD 732, it was Franks who finally halted the Muslim advance into Europe – Franks led by Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles ‘the Hammer’ Martel. Rome, up until those years, had remained under the precarious authority of the eastern emperors in Constantinople – ‘Roman emperors

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king. His son, Charles, was determined to be even greater. And so indeed he proved. By the time of his death in AD 814, Charles – Charlemagne – had established the largest dominion western Europe had seen since the fall of the Roman empire, a territory that encompassed most of modern France, Germany

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and Italy, stretching from the Elbe to the Pyrenees. With vast territory came vast ambition: Charlemagne had a vision, a dream of power that was not just the power of the mailed fist and the lance. He was not content merely

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to be a warlord. Frankia, in Charlemagne’s dream, was a new Israel. Charlemagne himself was David or Josiah, a holy monarch, set on high by the Lord to lead his people to a new state

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stations as the choirs of angels and saints in paradise took their places before God. A perfect kingdom should practise a perfect Christianity. ‘Exert yourselves,’ Charlemagne commanded his clerics in AD 789, ‘to bear the erring sheep back within the walls of the ecclesiastical fortress… lest the wolf who lies in

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fragmentation. Christianity in Ireland, for example, isolated even before the empire fell, developed in a quite different way to Christianity in Frankia or Visigothic Spain.† Charlemagne, conqueror of many nations, found many incompatible Christianities practised by his subjects. To bring these into order – to build his perfect kingdom, in other words

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from Germany to Spain, some religious authority had to be found that would transcend the merely national. There was only one answer. Charlemagne turned to Rome. In AD 774, Charlemagne’s armies wrapped up the conquest of the Lombard kingdom of Italy. It was surprisingly straightforward; no army could stand against the

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into border regions or marches, each with its own margrave, appointed by the king. With the Lombards pacified, an intense two-way traffic began between Charlemagne’s court at Aachen and the city of Rome. Heading north were clerics and scholars, even choirmasters to teach the Franks the latest Roman modes

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from the Lombards were now put firmly into papal possession. The pope could now count himself among the wealthiest magnates in Charlemagne’s kingdom. These gifts did not mean, however, that Charlemagne in any way acknowledged the pope as his superior, or even as an equal. Popes had been trying to establish

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this world is ruled: ‘the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty.’ But Charlemagne was no believer in the separation of church and state, and far less would he have accepted the idea that the pope might be in

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still at best, as one historian has put it, no more than Charlemagne’s ‘senior vice president for prayer’. Supreme authority, both temporal and spiritual, would always rest with Charlemagne himself. This was not a novel conception. On the contrary, Charlemagne had only to look east across the Adriatic Sea to find a

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model: the Byzantine emperor. And indeed, if you thought about it – as Charlemagne doubtless did – there was something absurd about the contrast between that emperor, with his tiny rump state on the Bosphorus, and the king of the

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lands extended beyond the dreams of the ancient Caesars. This was easily put right. On Christmas Day, AD 800, in the Basilica of St Peter, Charlemagne announced to the world, as if there were any possibility of confusion, what sort of place he really regarded himself as having in God’s

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holy scheme. There, before the assembled magnates of Frankia, Lombardy and Rome, the deacons and subdeacons, the bishops of suburbicarian sees arranged by rank, Charlemagne was crowned with gold and precious gems and the pope bowed down and prostrated himself before him, and all the grandees and the people together

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pope in the Lateran ninety-seven years later. Nonetheless, the currents of history flowed towards that grim spring day like water to a plughole, as Charlemagne’s dream of empire rushed to its own undoing. The problem was that in those days of the Early Middle Ages, it was hard, if

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the Carolingians had enjoyed smooth successions from a strong king to a dominant son who was able quickly and effectively to eliminate any rivals. After Charlemagne, the pattern held for one generation more. Louis the Pious was crowned by his father as co-emperor at Aachen in AD 813, and succeeded

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Charlemagne as sole ruler of the Frankish empire the year after. By the 830s AD, however, the empire was being pulled apart by Louis’s sons.

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When Louis died in AD 840, Charlemagne’s great empire was divided between them, in shares corresponding very roughly to Germany, Italy and France. The grandsons and great-grandsons of

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Charlemagne were soon locked in an endless struggle for supremacy. To win the support of important magnates in their bids for power, they traded away the

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popes in Rome were once again abandoned. Worse than abandoned. In a pool of post-imperial sharks, the papacy, fattened with estates and revenues by Charlemagne’s generosity, now found itself the plumpest fish. By the end of the ninth century, half the great magnates in Italy, descendants of

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Charlemagne’s Frankish lords, were queuing up to bite off chunks of papal territory for themselves. Pope Formosus, before he became a horror story, had been

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corpse was carried to its final resting place, the images of the saints on the walls are said to have bowed their heads in sorrow. Charlemagne’s empire was a shattered ruin. The papacy, which was meant to raise that empire up to God, had been debased by the ambitions of

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, Marozia could have her son, Pope John XI, crown Hugh emperor. Hugh was, on his mother’s side, a very distant descendant of Charlemagne; perhaps Marozia hoped that Charlemagne’s imperial dream could be resurrected, with Marozia herself triumphant at the new emperor’s side. Things turned out quite otherwise: ‘At the

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the little lights of people sheltering under the arches. All in all, the city could make a bleak impression. The English scholar Alcuin, visiting with Charlemagne, had been moved to verse: ‘Roma caput mundi, mundi decus, aurea Roma / nunc remanet tantum saeva ruina tibi’ – ‘Rome, the world’s capital, world’s

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the north, after generations of political disorder, the lords of East Frankia and Germany had finally produced a leader fit to inherit the ambitions of Charlemagne. In AD 962 King Otto I ‘the Great’ of Germany arrived in Rome to be anointed emperor. At his side was his formidable wife Adelheid

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, in his ecclesiastical guise as Pope John XII, had to bite down his pride and place the imperial crown on the German’s head. Like Charlemagne, Otto was building a holy empire, and he needed a co-operative bishop in Rome to help him do it. Octavian – a mere boy, and

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and grandson, three ruling emperors. Their heartland was the duchy of Saxony, the flat land where the Weser and the Elbe meet the North Sea. Charlemagne long ago had brought Christianity to the Saxons with spear and sword, and over the centuries that followed the dukes of Saxony transmitted the Good

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the other half-dozen great families of medieval Rome were never far behind. The empire, as Otto III inherited it, was a fragile creation. Under Charlemagne, the great territorial ranks – duke, count, margrave and so on – were positions handed out by the monarch himself to his loyal followers; by the time

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at the Lateran was believed to be not the pagan Marcus Aurelius but the Christian Constantine. ¶ Octavian may also have been a distant descendant of Charlemagne through his mother Alda, daughter of Alberic’s old enemy, Hugh of Provence. # Otto III of Rome, Saxony and Italy, servant of the Apostles, by

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by German manners, by the richness of the land, the splendour of the churches. They walked in the footsteps of Christian emperors, the successors to Charlemagne. In the forest south of Paderborn, they passed the place where Sigurd killed the dragon Fafnir with his magic sword, Gram. They remember the hardships

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given it the backing it needed to flourish there. In doing so, they had thought to emulate the founder of the renewed empire, the great Charlemagne. They, as much as anyone, wanted a church that was powerful, dignified and respectable. Such a church would reflect its glory on to the emperors

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position that it could start re-asserting control over the lands of the old papal principality – the central Italian territories granted to the pope by Charlemagne. City families, the Frangipani especially, started chipping away at the once impregnable holdings of the counts of Tusculum. Meanwhile, the pope led a Roman militia

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Italian peninsula, an imperial scribe at the court at Ravenna copied the old scroll, adding his signature. Three hundred years after that, the Frankish emperor Charlemagne set his cathedral schools to work preserving ancient documents. At the monastery of St Germanus, in Burgundy, a Benedictine scholar, Heiric of Auxerre, added his

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Celentano, Adriano 582 Cellini, Benvenuto 421–2, 423 Celsius 230 Celts see Gauls/Celts Cenci, Vicolo 533 Ceres, goddess 48 Ceri, Renzo da 419–20 Charlemagne 251, 254–9, 260, 266, 268, 271, 273, 304, 309 Charles (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) 460 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 338 Charles ‘the Hammer’ Martel

She Has Her Mother's Laugh

by Carl Zimmer  · 29 May 2018

. Every April, a few dozen people gather in a Washington, DC, club for the annual dinner and meeting of the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne in the United States of America. To be invited to dinner, people must prove that they are direct descendants of the eighth-century ruler of

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the Holy Roman Empire. To make the task easier for Charlemagne’s descendants, the order will be satisfied if you can just link your genealogy to someone on their list of “Gateway Ancestors,” such as James

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Claypoole of Philadelphia and Agatha Wormeley of Virginia. On its website, charlemagne.org, the order declares that its objective is “to maintain and promote the traditions of chivalry and knighthood.” By the mid-1800s, the search for

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eight great-grandparents, and so on. But such a tree eventually explodes into impossibility. By the time you get back to the time of, say, Charlemagne, you have to draw over a trillion forks. In other words, your ancestors from that generation alone far outnumber all the humans who ever lived

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who have any descendants among living people are ancestors of all living people. To appreciate how weird this is, think again about Charlemagne. We know for a fact that Charlemagne has some living descendants, thanks to the genealogies proudly drawn by the Order of the Crown. But that fact, according to Chang

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’s model, means that every European alive today is a descendant of Charlemagne. The order is hardly an exclusive club. When Chang developed his model in 1999, geneticists couldn’t compare it to reality. They didn’t know

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Jones: Morgan 2010a. John Randolph, an early US senator: Weil 2013, p. 82. “. . . the traditions of chivalry and knighthood”: See Order of the Crown of Charlemagne. “When I talk to a genealogist”: Quoted in Weil 2013, p. 47. “some cotton and tobacco, and negroes, etc.”: Quoted in Warren 2016, p. 7

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Gene Editing: A Global Discussion.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. doi:10.17226/21913. Order of the Crown of Charlemagne in the United States of America website. http://www.charlemagne.org/ (accessed August 12, 2017). Orel, Vítězslav. 1973. “The Scientific Milieu in Brno During the Era of Mendel’s Research

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, 423 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 479 Centerwall, Willard, 129, 131–32 CFTR gene, 496 Chang, Joseph, 189–90 Chaplin, Charlie, 171–75, 383 Charlemagne, 165, 189 Charles II, 26–28 Charles V, 11–12, 14, 16, 19–21 Charpentier, Emmanuelle, 489 cherubism, 181, 185 Chetty, Raj, 568 chickens, 41

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flashlight fish, 405–7, 411, 417 O’Neill, Oona, 171–72 ooplasm transfers, 513–20 Opitz, James, 341 orchids, 45 Order of the Crown of Charlemagne, 165, 189–90 Orgel, Leslie, 517 The Origin of Species (Darwin), 43–44, 46, 53 Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 235–37 Osler, William, 211 Ott, Maureen

Escape From Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity

by Walter Scheidel  · 14 Oct 2019  · 1,014pp  · 237,531 words

century CE, Roman preeminence ceased only after an abortive attempt at restoration in the sixth century. Subsequent efforts to rebuild a “Roman” empire proved unsuccessful: Charlemagne managed a modest resurgence around 800 while Ottonian rule produced merely a minute uptick two centuries later. Ottoman expansion in the early modern period likewise

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the empire in the fifth century CE, the corresponding share of the eastern Roman empire plummeted to 20 percent or 30 percent. Ephemeral consolidation under Charlemagne was followed by an entire millennium of persistent polycentrism as the most populous power did not normally rule even a fifth of all Europeans. Neither

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Roman empire in the mid-sixth century; the conquests of the Umayyad caliphate in the early eighth century; the ascent of the Frankish empire under Charlemagne; repeated efforts by rulers of the German empire from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries; the Mongol irruption into Central Europe in the mid-thirteenth

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of the 750s, when the Franks completed their takeover. In the 760s, the latter fully subdued Aquitaine, and at the end of the eighth century Charlemagne’s forces crossed the Pyrenees to establish strongholds on the other side. I relate these events in some detail to clarify the central trend, which

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time. Because of this, the Iberian peninsula was completely unsuitable as a staging area for further advances into Europe, even as Frankish power declined after Charlemagne: the Western European powers fractured but the westernmost Arab regimes were weaker still. Moreover, the mid-eighth-century secession of Spain was part of a

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entered into an alliance with the papacy and intervened on its behalf against the Lombards in Italy), and most strikingly from 772 to 814, under Charlemagne. This fourth and longest phase of unity produced the most ambitious advances: Frankish forces subjugated the Saxons between the lower Rhine and the Elbe, annexed

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accept tributary obligations, campaigned south of the Pyrenees, and, most important, overcame Lombard resistance in northern and central Italy. The last of these accomplishments enabled Charlemagne to share control over the Duchy of Rome and parts of the northern Italian peninsula with the papacy and offer it protection. In return, in

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what had been the western half of the Roman empire to bear this title after a 320-year hiatus (figure 5.4). At that point, Charlemagne claimed suzerainty over up to one-third of the people who then lived in the territories that had once been held by Rome, and perhaps

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ninth century, the pace of its expansion during the preceding decades, and the serious shortcomings of its main competitors in Europe, we might reasonably expect Charlemagne’s immediate successors (the emperor himself passed away in 814 at the ripe old age of seventy-two) to have been in a strong position

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more durable unity along the lines of the Roman model. What happened was exactly the opposite. In keeping with Frankish custom reaching back three centuries, Charlemagne had made arrangements for dividing his kingdom among three sons (for the Franks, Lombards, and Aquitaine). After two of them predeceased him, the remaining one

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-in—almost homeostatic—constraint on durable state formation.40 As noted, only periods of unity sustained expansion and consolidation. In this respect, one might consider Charlemagne’s efflorescence the rare product of unusually good luck. His brother and rival king Carloman died after only three years of corule, opening up the

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path to an exceptionally long spell of one-man rule—Charlemagne’s longevity was almost twice the average life span of the other eight Carolingian monarchs (all of whom appear to have died of natural causes

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), seventy-two compared to thirty-eight and a half years. The Frankish apogee under Charlemagne was the exception that proved the rule. But even more powerful processes were steadily eroding state capabilities: the loss of centralized fiscal extraction and redistribution

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booty were the most reliable means of attracting aristocratic support.45 This opportunistic approach helps explain the successes of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne, who were able to marshal dedicated armies in exchange for material benefits: conquests produced “unmatched patronage opportunities for the Carolingian family, with a host of

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. However, as service became contingent on profit, war abated as soon as the Franks ran out of lucrative targets. This slowdown was already visible in Charlemagne’s final years, when his campaigns against the Danes proved both unprofitable and unpopular. Falling income from plunder rapidly depleted the royal treasury.46 Meanwhile

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that it allowed for “internal redistribution of wealth as an alternative to external expansion”: war-making turned inward, as it were, undermining the state. Moreover, Charlemagne’s reign witnessed efforts to demarcate Franks from other (often arbitrarily defined) ethnic groups within the empire, which were placed in a subordinate position. This

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resurgent regionalization.47 Taken together, these dynamics go a long way in accounting for the persistent divisions and conflicts that rocked the Frankish empire after Charlemagne’s demise. Negotiation with powerbrokers replaced royal command, and by the end of the ninth century, top magnates had assumed quasi-regal status.48 Although

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the Frankish emperors did not go down without a fight, the system proved too resistant to change. In his later years, Charlemagne showed growing concern over the service obligations of his vassals, seeking to impel them by specifying their duties and imposing fines. He may even have

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succumb to determined external challengers. Government was fairly minimal and interpersonal relationships ruled supreme, which allowed for quick shifts in loyalty and territorial configuration. Even Charlemagne’s reach remained rather limited: good intentions, however widely advertised, were hard to put into practice, and his royal agents (missi), who were supposed to

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resembling the Roman empire in Europe. Other constraints of arguably lesser significance further reinforced this outcome. For instance, environmental conditions may have contributed both to Charlemagne’s successes and the misfortunes of his successors. Exceptionally harsh winters that were frequently linked to volcanic activity became more common after

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Charlemagne’s reign, and associated famines appear to have been more severe.53 In the ideological sphere, the vision of “Roma renascens,” of a putative rebirth

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being driven by a desire to rebuild Roman power, Carolingian expansion sought to recover (and where possible augment) the Merovingian domain.54 In any case, Charlemagne’s realm, with its poor infrastructure, primitive communications network, feeble urbanism, part-time military, ethnic divisions, and highly personalized rule bore little resemblance to the

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Middle Ages.63 Power relations were further complicated by the influence of the church. The new “Roman” empire itself had arisen from an agreement between Charlemagne and the pope in which the latter initially had the weaker hand: the papacy relied on imperial protection, and renegade popes could be deposed. At

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population of Western and central Europe.33 Yet notwithstanding the pronouncements of eulogists who cast the Habsburgs as descendants of Aeneas via Augustus, Constantine, and Charlemagne, Charles’s position was dramatically different from that of a Roman emperor. His domain was characterized, and effectively riven, by intense particularism, resembling, in Anthony

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diversity of Charles’s dominions, which lacked both a capital and a unified administration: as a result, he was always on the move, much as Charlemagne, the first of many post-Roman “Roman” emperors, had been 750 years earlier. Another was the soaring cost of war, driven by mercenaries, gunpowder, and

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Western one between the 620s and 650s CE, or prevailed in Korea in the 660s, or dominated Vietnam. With the brief and partial exception of Charlemagne’s reign, no such hegemon ever existed in post-Roman (and pre-Napoleonic) Europe.15 Similar qualifications apply to a fashionable modern academic scenario that

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touched on the dynamics that enfeebled and splintered the Carolingian domain. The power of nobles, enhanced by a phase of lucrative expansion that culminated under Charlemagne, turned against the center once gains from conquest dried up. Dynastic feuding—fueled by the lack of primogeniture in the royal succession—not only weakened

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medieval European state could hope to muster. The first post-Roman polities in Europe to encompass 10 million people—leaving aside a brief blip under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious—were Germany and France in the High Middle Ages. But European rulers would have been ignorant of this fact and could

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once again highly centralized.63 These capacities dwarfed anything that could have been achieved in Europe at that time, even in the headiest days of Charlemagne. Rulers could only guess at the number of their subjects, found it increasingly hard to draft them, and no longer had any hope of taxing

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, Rome’s fall did little to change the scope of this process: the successor states barely extended beyond the old Rhine–Danube frontier, and only Charlemagne regained what Augustus might once have projected as Rome’s Elbe frontier.21 What Peter Heather calls “the ancient world order in western Eurasia: a

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–101. 50. Fouracre 1995: 108–9. 51. Successor states: Halsall 2007: 508–12; S. F. Johnson 2012: 50. Government: S. F. Johnson 2012: 48, 550. Charlemagne: Fouracre 1995: 107. 52. Halsall 2003: 119–33; Barbero 2004: 249–71, esp. 252, 256–59, 265–68. 53. McCormick, Dutton, and Mayewski 2007, esp

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. 875–89; Newfield 2013: 169. “Charlemagne was more than vigorous and smart: he was, with respect to volcanic aerosols and rapid climate change, a very lucky ruler” (McCormick, Dutton, and Mayewski

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Drusus reached the Elbe, and the short-lived trans-Rhenanian Roman province of Germania appears to have reached as far as the lower Elbe. For Charlemagne’s expansion, see chapter 5 in this volume. 22. Heather 2009: xv (quotes); 386–451 (spread of Slavs), 520–76 (later state formation and development

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–1950. Copenhagen: NIAS. Banniard, Michel. 2013. “The transition from Latin to the Romance languages.” In Maiden, Smith, and Ledgeway 2013, 57–106. Barbero, Alessandro. 2004. Charlemagne: Father of a continent. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barcelo, Pedro A. 1988. Karthago und die iberische Halbinsel vor den Barkiden: Studien zur karthagischen Präsenz

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of, 240; elites as warriors in, 159–60, 162; expansion of, 160, 163; factional conflict in, 160–61; income from land grants in, 159; post-Charlemagne, 158, 161; taxes in, 159 Carthage: in counterfactual to Roman empire, 113, 116–19, 521, 524; maritime exploration by, 430; population of, 549n6; as rival

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, 279–80 Celtic language, 311, 312 Celtic society, 522–23, 526 Central America, 10, 46, 466. See also New World Chagatai khanate, 175, 183, 185 Charlemagne (Frankish king), 35, 36, 154–56, 160–63, 171, 231, 240, 244, 267 Charles the Bald (Frankish king), 161 Charles the Fat (Frankish king), 157

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Charles Martel, 154, 160 Charles V (Habsburg ruler and Holy Roman emperor), 193–98; abdication by, 198; army size and, 199; compared to Charlemagne, 199–200; counterfactual scenario for, 200–201, 203; credit to finance wars of, 199; fighting against France, 195, 196, 198; fiscal constraints in waging war

Europe: A History

by Norman Davies  · 1 Jan 1996

covers the period from Constantine to Thomas More in eight volumes.4 The German Handbuch der europâischen Geschichte (1968–79) covers the twelve centuries from Charlemagne to the Greek colonels in seven similarly weighty tomes.5 It is common practice to give greater coverage to the contemporary than to the ancient

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overseas empires, on the material prosperity of the EEC, and on the desire to limit the influence of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’. It looked back to Charlemagne, and forward to a federal Europe united under the leadership of its founding members. So long as the community confined its principal activities to the

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was the emblem of the Ascension. Throughout European history, the imperial eagle has been co-opted by rulers who claimed superiority over their fellow princes. Charlemagne wore an eagle-embossed cloak; and Canute the Great was buried in one.2 Both Napoleon I and Napoleon III used eagle symbolism with relish

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other had even begun. Constantine himself was no European. One must not forget the sequence of events. The span of time which separated Constantine from Charlemagne was greater than that which separated Constantine from Caesar and Augustus. It was equal to the span which encompasses the whole of modern history, from

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forced to turn to the Franks, and to embark on the enterprise of the ‘Papacy’. The Franks saw their chance to back the Pope. Indirectly, Charlemagne was the product of Muhammad (see below, pp. 284–90). According to Henri Pirenne, whose thesis shattered earlier conceptions as surely as Islam shattered the

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ancient world, ‘The Frankish Empire would probably never have existed without Islam, and Charlemagne without Mahomet would be inconceivable.’17 The arguments of Pirenne have been diminished on detailed points, especially regarding the alleged break in commercial relations. But

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they revolutionized the study of the transition from the ancient to the medieval worlds. To talk of Muhammad and Charlemagne, however, is not enough. Islam affected Eastern Europe even more directly than it affected Western Europe. Its appearance set the bounds of a new, compact

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prospect of choosing between the two dominant religions. Above all, it created the cultural bulwark against which European identity could be defined. Europe, let alone Charlemagne, is inconceivable without Muhammad. Christianity’s rivalry with Islam raised moral and psychological problems no less profound than those already existing between Christianity and Judaism

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onwards, faltering thoughts about a new political order were stimulated by continuing depredations from beyond the fringe of Christendom. The foundation of the Empire of Charlemagne in 800, of the Holy Roman Empire from 962, and eventually of the Tsardom of Moscow can only be understood in conjunction with the activities

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with the Ottoman Turks in the thirteenth (see p. 386). The story of their epic wanderings encompasses the whole span which in the West separated Charlemagne from the end of the Crusades. DING THE custom among Germanic tribes of holding popular assemblies was described by Tacitus: and there is little doubt

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of absolute monarchy, the tradition of local democracy may help to explain the strength of constitutionalism and representative government in modern times. The empire of Charlemagne consummated the alliance between the Roman Papacy and the growing kingdom of the Franks. It was an ephemeral affair, barely surviving its founder’s death

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and disappearing completely within a century. None the less, its impact was profound. Charlemagne, or Charles the Great (r. 768–814), great-grandson of Charles Martel, united the two halves of his forebears’ realm, Neustria and Austrasia, in

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, it was protected by the Christian buffer states which took root in Aragon and in the County of Barcelona. Relative security in the west gave Charlemagne and his successors the chance to turn their attention to problems elsewhere, notably in the east and in Italy, [MADONNA] The Franco-papal alliance

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, the Pope slipped an imperial crown on his head. The congregation acclaimed him ‘Caesar’ and ‘Augustus’, and the Pope knelt in homage before him. Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, claims that the coronation occurred spontaneously; in all probability it was carefully rehearsed. In terms of tradition it was entirely irregular: Pope Leo

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had no recognized right to confer the imperial title, and Charlemagne had no right to receive it. But it happened. Henceforth, there was a Catholic Emperor in the West independent of the Byzantine Empire. The barbaric

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insisted that he eat it whole, without removing the crust. Delighted, he promptly ordered two batches of Brie to be sent to Aachen every year. Charlemagne’s secretary, Einhard, recorded a similar incident four years later during the Saracen wars. Stopping in the district of Rouergue in the Midi, the King

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‘enclosures’ in the Burgundian vineyard at Aloxe-Corton, whose choicest Grand Cru white, ‘smelling of cinnamon and tasting of gunflint’, is still marketed as CORTON-CHARLEMAGNE.2 Brie de Meaux, one of France’s 500 listed cheeses, dates from the era of early monastic farming. After renneting and airing, the curd

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inherently credible in the fable for it to have persisted so long. Joan herself may not have been historical. But the fable certainly was.1 Charlemagne, however, was an energetic builder. He built palaces at Nijmegen, Engelheim, and Aachen. He bridged the Rhine at Mainz, and linked the tributaries of

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the Rhine and Danube with a canal, the Kaisergrab. He was the pioneer of romanesque architecture north of the Alps. By reputation, Charlemagne was also a great patron of learning. He himself, though a forceful orator, was illiterate. But he employed scholars of repute—Alcuin of York, Peter

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, and ballads. His lifestory, the Vita Karoli by Abbot Einhard, has been called ‘the first secular biography’. Not everyone is impressed: one historian has blamed Charlemagne for ‘saddling us with a literary tradition of derivative book-learning which hangs today like a millstone round the neck of our educational system’.3

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rewarded by canonization, though the process was obstructed for 351 years by reports that his sexual conquests were no less extensive than his territorial ones. Charlemagne died on 28 January 814. On his tomb in Aachen, since lost, a portrait was placed, and an inscription: Beneath this tomb lies the

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was the first European centralist. PFALZ AACHEN takes its name from the Roman spa of Aquisgranium, ‘Waters of Apollo-Granus’. Its warm, healing waters explain Charlemagne’s choice for the site of his favourite residence, the Kaiserpfalz. The French name, Aix-la-Chapelle, marks the famous chapel, now part of Aachen

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Cathedral, which Charlemagne added to his palace. Charlemagne’s chapel was completed in 805. It is a three-tiered octagon, built in the Byzantine style of San Vitale in Ravenna, which

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CONDIDIT, ESSE VELIT. Which Charles the Prince has founded on a solid base. The decoration of the chapel is heavy with the imperial symbolism which Charlemagne and his successors had revived in a new and naïve Christian setting. A mosaic inside the dome represents the Adoration of the Lamb. The ambo

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a casket of solid gold. It was surrounded by a collection of suitable relics—the loincloth of Christ, the Virgin’s girdle, a splinter of Charlemagne’s skull—all placed in precious reliquaries. Barbarossa himself donated a huge, wheel-shaped, iron chandelier, the ‘Crown of Lights’, which is suspended in

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Western Europe’s greatest memorial to a time when romanesque was a novelty, and when the centre of civilization still lay in the East.1 Charlemagne’s lifeblood had been the cement of the realm. His inheritance was immediately disputed by his son and grandsons. Repeated partitions ensured its early disintegration

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Verdun created the core of both the future Germany and the future France. The ‘Middle Kingdom’ was left a bone of eternal contention between them. Charlemagne’s ultimate legacy was not just the example of fragile unity but, equally, the prospect of unending strife, [KRAL] The feuding of the Carolingians or

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in Polish, korol’ in Russian. The Franks gave the Slavs their first model of Christian kingship. (Kral even means ‘king’ in Turkish.) In the West, Charlemagne was adopted as the presiding monarch of numerous medieval legends, the supreme hero of the chansons de geste.’1 Already in the ninth century, a

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monk of St Gall composed a largely fabulous chronicle, De Gestis Karoli Magni. Soon Charlemagne was to be portrayed by the troubadours as the ubiquitous champion of Christendom, swinging his sacred sword ‘Joyeuse’, smiting the infidel, riding at the head

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—Roland, Ganelon, Naimes of Bavaria, Ogier the Dane, Guillaume of Toulouse, Turpin the battling Archbishop of Reims. In the French tradition the ‘twelve peers’ of Charlemagne consisted of the three Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, the three Counts of Champagne, Toulouse, and Flanders, and the six spiritual peers, the Bishops

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of Reims, Laon, Châlons, Beauvais, Langres, and Noyon. In the German legends Charlemagne was often said to be sleeping, waiting for the call to wake and save his beloved subjects from their ills. In the Bavarian tale he

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paid off the Vikings with 700 lb of silver and packed them off into Burgundy. In the British Isles, which had escaped the attentions of Charlemagne, the impact of the Vikings was particularly severe. The Danish invasions created divisions which persisted for 200 years. Egbert, King of Wessex, had been

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have a continuous existence. The leadership of the house of Capet inevitably turned the centre of gravity to the West. Of course, the memory of Charlemagne, and the claims to Lotharingia remained; but the kingdom had lost its essentially Frankish character. Contrary to later assertions, it was not involved in ceaseless

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in Asia Minor, and the Pechenegs before the walls of Constantinople combined to provoke the onset of irreversible decline, [BOGUMIL] In the three centuries after Charlemagne the frontiers of Christendom were greatly extended. The countries converted were (in the order of their conversion) Moravia, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and Kievan Rus

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the early eleventh century. Henceforth, Rus’ was to be an unshakeable member of Christendom. [NOVGOROD] Volodymyr or Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, is frequendy likened to Charlemagne, creator of another vast but ephemeral realm.20 The parallel is apt enough, not least because both men became heroes of later national legends. Of

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Kievan heritage; and modern Russian propaganda has done everything in its power to suppress rival claims and traditions, notably among the Ukrainians. Meanwhile, just as Charlemagne was turned into the national hero of the chansons de geste, so the saintly ‘Prince Vladimir’ was turned into the central figure of medieval Russian

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had run for centuries until the Peace of Brussels in 1253. Her subjugation of the fierce inhabitants of Frisia or Friesland, who remained pagan until Charlemagne’s time, had been concluded more by the inundations of the sea than by successful conquest. Together with the excess population of the crowded Flemish

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lapsed. Moscow was free. By that time Ivan had started to refer to himself as ‘Tsar’ and ‘Samodyerzhets’—Russian equivalents of Caesar and Autokrator. Like Charlemagne almost 700 years before, a semi-barbarian prince was building his image not as the founder of a modern state, but rather as the reincarnator

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Valtellina rooted in the medieval wrangles between the Visconti dukes of Milan and the bishops of Chur. Not to be outdone, the French reckoned that Charlemagne had granted the Valtellina in perpetuity to the Abbey of St Denis. After 1620, the valley became the focus of Richelieu’s diplomacy with Venice

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village in the Eure-et-Loir, now suitably renamed in Proust’s honour ‘llliers-Combray’. Franco-German rivalry could be traced to the division of Charlemagne’s Empire; but its modern emanations were rooted in the Revolutionary Wars. Frenchmen remembered the two German powers, Prussia and Austria, as the invaders of

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. Roy Owen (London, 1972), 76. 17. Henri Pirenne, Mediaeval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, NJ, 1925), 27; also his Mahomet and Charlemagne (London, 1939). 18. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 23. 19. Historiae Ecclesiasticae Francorum, ii. 27, trans. J. H. Robinson in Readings in European History, i

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15th-century Provence. Louvre. Photo: © RMN. 16. ST AUGUSTINE. StAugustin etles patrons de Marchiennes (iith-cent.) miniature. Bibliothèque Municipale, Douai. Photo: Photo Giraudon. 17. ST CHARLEMAGNE. A. Dürer, Karl der Grosse (1512). Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. 18. ST MATTHEW. A full-page illumination on folio 25h of the Lindisfarne Gospels (late 7th

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(after an inscription in Athens, 4th century AD), (b) Late Byzantine Eagle, from the throne of Sophia Palaeologos, Grand Duchess of Moscow, c.1470. (c) Charlemagne’s Eagle, embroidered in silk on his cloak (9th century, after Frutiger). Centre: (d) The ‘Small Coat-of-Arms’ of the Russian Empire, 1914: crowned

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1944 Bohemia and Moravia XXXII SS-FPgD* 30 Januar 1945 Courland XXXIII WKD der SS*† (Ungarische No. 3) (disbanded) 1944 Hungarians XXXIII WGD der SS* Charlemagne (Französische No. 1) 1944 Lègion Volontaire Française XXXIV SS-FGD*† Landstorm Nederlands 1944 Dutch volunteers XXXV SS-GD† Polizei(No.2) 1944 (As SS-IV

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Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 817 Chamberlain, Neville 976, 987, 990, 995, 997 Channel Islands 1089 Chanson de Roland 255 Chaplin, Charles 958 Charity 778–9, 1029 Charlemagne, St 258, 298, 302–4, 305–6, 307, 326, 1207, 1239 Empire 298, 302, 1239 Charles I, Emperor of Austria 910, 921, 934 Charles

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Carolingians 298–309, 317, 1239, 1246 Christianity and 275–6 Merovingians 232, 234, 1246 Papacy and 284–90 under Clovis 232, 234, 276 (see also Charlemagne) Frazer, James 161–2 Frederick I, Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor 351 Frederick I, King of Denmark and Norway 553 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor 351

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Rome, AD 452 11. Eastern Orthodoxy 12. Western Monasticism 13. Constantine’s Donation 14. The Slavonic Liturgy 15. Catholic Pietism 16. St Augustine 17. St Charlemagne 18. St Matthew 19. St John the Baptist and Jerome 20. MatkaBoska 21. St John the Theologian 22. St Luke—Icon Painter 23. Bogorodica 24

Germany

by Andrea Schulte-Peevers  · 17 Oct 2010

to Ulm’s Münster, while the Berliner Dom in Berlin claims to be Germany’s largest Protestant cathedral. Older than all by several centuries is Charlemagne’s octagonal palace chapel, now part of Aachen’s Dom. Fans of Romanesque architecture will hit the trifecta along the Rhine with the awe-inspiring

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War division, peaceful reunification and the country that we know today. * * * Two Lives of Charlemagne edited by Betty Radice is a striking biography of Charlemagne, beautifully composed by a monk and a courtier who spent 23 years in Charlemagne’s court. * * * Return to beginning of chapter TRIBES & THE ROMANS The early inhabitants of

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Carolingians, who introduced hierarchical Church structures. Kloster Lorsch in present-day Hesse is one fine relic of this era. From his grandiose residence in Aachen, Charlemagne (r 768–814), the Reich’s most important king, conquered Lombardy, won territory in Bavaria, waged a 30-year war against the Saxons in the

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were reshuffled in the 9th century, when attacks by Danes, Saracens and Magyars threw the eastern portion of Charlemagne’s empire into turmoil and four dominant duchies emerged – Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and Saxony. Charlemagne’s burial in Aachen Dom (Aachen Cathedral; ) turned a court chapel into a major pilgrimage site (and it

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today). The Treaty of Verdun (843) saw a gradual carve-up of the Reich and, when Louis the Child (r 900–11) – a grandson of Charlemagne’s brother – died heirless, the East Frankish (ie German) dukes elected a king from their own ranks. Thus, the first German monarch was created. * * * The

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first rulers to promote a strong German identity were Charlemagne’s grandson, Louis the German (r 843–76), and Konrad I (r 911–18). * * * Return to beginning of chapter EARLY MIDDLE AGES Strong regionalism in

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, which hosted the coronation and burial of dozens of German kings from 936. Otto I was first up in the cathedral. In 962 he renewed Charlemagne’s pledge to protect the papacy and the pope reciprocated with a pledge of loyalty to the Kaiser. This made the Kaiser and pope strange

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’). * * * Under Friedrich I Barbarossa (r 1152–90), Aachen assumed the role of Reich capital and was granted its rights of liberty in 1165, the year Charlemagne was canonised. Meanwhile, Heinrich der Löwe (Henry the Lion), a Welf with an eye for Saxony and Bavaria, extended influence eastwards in campaigns to Germanise

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very good one. It grew out of the Frankish Reich, which was seen as the successor to the defunct Roman Empire. When Charlemagne’s father, Pippin, helped a beleaguered pope (Charlemagne would later do the same), he received the title Patricius Romanorum (Protector of Rome), virtually making him Caesar’s successor. Having

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retaken the papal territories from the Lombards, he presented them to the Church (the last of these territories is the modern Vatican state). Charlemagne’s reconstituted ‘Roman Empire’ then passed into German hands. The empire was known by various names throughout its lifetime. It formally began (for historians, at

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of Tours and stops the progress of Muslims into Western Europe from the Iberian Peninsula, preserving Christianity in the Frankish Reich. 773–800 The Carolingian Charlemagne, grandson of Charles Martel, answers a call for help from the pope. In return he is crowned Kaiser by the pope and under him the

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Roman Empire in 962 when Otto I is crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope, reaffirming the precedent established by Charlemagne. 1165 Friedrich I Barbarossa is crowned in Aachen; he canonises Charlemagne and later drowns while bathing in a river in present-day Turkey while co-leading the Third Crusade. 1241 Hamburg

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Central Council of Jews at www.zentralratdjuden.de (in German). * * * Return to beginning of chapter ARTS Literature EARLY LITERATURE Oral literature during the reign of Charlemagne (c 800) and secular epics performed by 12th-century knights are the earliest surviving literary forms, but the man who shook up the literary language

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beginning of chapter Architecture CAROLINGIAN TO ART NOUVEAU Among the grand buildings of the Carolingian period, Aachen’s Byzantine-inspired cathedral Click here – built for Charlemagne from 786 to about 800 – and Fulda’s Michaelskirche are surviving masterpieces. A century on, Carolingian, Christian (Roman) and Byzantine influences flowed together in a

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twin-bed rooms. * * * * * * WITCHES & WARLOCKS The Bodetal was first inhabited by Celts, whose fortresses were conquered by Germanic tribes and used for pagan rituals before Charlemagne embarked upon campaigns to subjugate and Christianise the local population during the 8th-century Saxon Wars. Harz mythology blends these pagan and Christian elements. One

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secret gatherings to carry out their rituals. They are said to have darkened their faces one night and, armed with broomsticks and pitchforks, scared off Charlemagne’s guards, who mistook them for witches and devils. In fact the name ‘Walpurgisnacht’ itself probably derives from St Walpurga, but the festival tradition may

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built to house the Wittelsbachs’ huge antique collection. Other highlights include the Ancestral Gallery, with portraits of the rulers of Bavaria including the great conqueror Charlemagne; the Schlachtensäle (Battle Halls); the Porcelain Chambers, containing 19th-century porcelain from Berlin, Meissen and Nymphenburg; and the Asian Collections, with precious Chinese and Japanese

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. The church owns two relics of enormous importance: branches that are thought to come from Christ’s crown of thorns, and a victory cross of Charlemagne, whose army overran much of Western Europe in the 9th century. In the Holy Chapel the votive candles, some of them over 1m tall, are

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billing. The works on display give an insight into the artist’s enormous prestige at the Holy Roman court; his commissions included portraits for emperors Charlemagne and Sigrimund, whose faces appeared on the doors of the imperial chambers. The artist’s celebrated Hercules Slaying the Stymphalian Birds confirms his superb grasp

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and a flash of mischief (Dürer put his own facial features on the Greek hero). The many other gems include Albrecht Altdorfer’s Victory of Charlemagne over the Avars near Regensburg, whose impossible detail tests the human eye. The museum’s main entrance is on Kartäusergasse, which is dominated by the

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in the area had a go at ruling Worms, including the Huns, the Alemans and finally the Franks, and it was under the Frankish leader, Charlemagne, that the city flourished in the 9th century. The most impressive reminder of Worms’ medieval heyday is its majestic, late-Romanesque Dom. A Jewish community

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. Must-sees include Cologne with its lofty Dom (cathedral), Bonn with its Beethoven legacy and fabulous museums, the Unesco-listed baroque palaces in Brühl, and Charlemagne’s imperial capital of Aachen. The lively Ruhrgebiet and placid Lower Rhine are best for off-beat experiences. There are historical cities such as Münster

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0241 / pop 246,000 The Romans nursed their war wounds and stiff joints in the steaming waters of Aachen’s mineral springs, but it was Charlemagne who put the city firmly on the European map. The emperor too enjoyed a dip now and then, but it was more for strategic reasons

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. Today, Aachen is still a quintessentially international city, not in the least because of its location in the border triangle with the Netherlands and Belgium. Charlemagne’s legacy lives on in the stunning Dom which, in 1978, became Germany’s first Unesco World Heritage Site. Aachen is also the birthplace of

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of Aachen’s magnificent cathedral ( 4770 9144; www.aachendom.de, in German; Münsterplatz; 7am-6pm Nov-Mar, 7am-7pm Apr-Oct). The burial place of Charlemagne, it’s where more than 30 German kings were crowned and where pilgrims have flocked since the 12th century. The oldest and most impressive section

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is Charlemagne’s palace chapel, the Pfalzkapelle, an outstanding example of Carolingian architecture. Completed in 800, the year of the emperor’s coronation, it’s an octagonal

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encircled by a 16-sided ambulatory supported by antique Italian pillars. The colossal brass chandelier was a gift from Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa during whose reign Charlemagne was canonised in 1165. Pilgrims have poured into town ever since that time, drawn in as much by the cult surrounding

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Charlemagne as by the prized relics – said to include Christ’s loincloth – that he had brought to Aachen. These are still displayed every seven years (next

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Christ’s Passion, and the jewel-encrusted gilded copper pulpit, both fashioned in the 11th century. At the far end is the gilded shrine of Charlemagne that has held the emperor’s remains since 1215. In front, the equally fanciful shrine of St Mary shelters the cathedral’s four premium relics

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. Unless you join a guided tour (adult/concession €3/2.50, 45 minutes), you’ll only catch a glimpse of Charlemagne’s white marble imperial throne in the upstairs gallery. Reached via six steps – just like King Solomon’s throne – it served as the coronation throne

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veritable mother lode of gold, silver and jewels. Focus your attention on the Lotharkreuz, a 10th-century processional cross, and the marble sarcophagus that held Charlemagne’s bones until his canonisation; the relief shows the rape of Persephone. RATHAUS The Dom gazes serenely over Aachen’s Rathaus ( 432 7310; Markt; adult

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50 life-size statues of German rulers, including the 30 kings crowned in town. It was built in the 14th century atop the foundations of Charlemagne’s palace of which only the eastern tower, the Granusturm, survives. Inside, the undisputed highlights are the Kaisersaal with its epic 19th-century frescoes by

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the rotating Drehturmcafe ( 10am-6pm). Get there by cutting north on Kupferstrasse from Ludwigsallee, then left on Belvedereallee. * * * * * * ROUTE CHARLEMAGNE In 2008 Aachen embarked on a multi-year project called Route Charlemagne to showcase its 1200-year tradition as a European city of culture and science. By 2012 a variety of themed

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, the carriage containing his coffin rolled all the way to Dortmund, stopping on the spot of the church. There’s a statue of him, opposite Charlemagne, at the entrance to the choir. Of outstanding artistic merit is the late-Gothic high altar (ask nicely in the sacristy for a close-up

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’s shortest river. About 200 springs surfacing in the Paderquellgebiet, a landscaped park in the city centre, spurt out an average of 5000L per second. Charlemagne used the royal seat and bishop-ric he had established here to control the Christianisation of the Saxon tribes. A visit by Pope Leo III

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in 799 led to the establishment of the Western Roman Empire, a precursor to the Holy Roman Empire, and Charlemagne’s coronation as its emperor in Rome the following year. Paderborn remains a pious place to this day – churches abound, and religious sculpture and motifs

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northwest, which hosts frequent cultural events in summer. East along Am Abdinghof to the north of the Dom are the remnants of the Carolingian Kaiserpfalz, Charlemagne’s palace where that historic meeting with Pope Leo took place. It was destroyed by fire and replaced in the 11th century by the Ottonian

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der Kaiserpfalz ( 105 110; Am Ikenberg 2; adult/concession €2.50/1.50; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun), which presents excavated items from the days of Charlemagne, including drinking vessels and fresco remnants. The only original palace building is the twee Bartholomäuskapelle ( 10am-6pm) next door. Consecrated in 1017, it’s considered

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developed near today’s centre from about 100 AD, and one settlement in particular that in 787 was given its own bishop’s seat by Charlemagne. In its earliest days, it was known as the ‘Rome of the North’ and developed as a base for Christianising Scandinavia. Despite this, it gradually

A History of Western Philosophy

by Aaron Finkel  · 21 Mar 1945  · 1,402pp  · 369,528 words

. Even pure men of action are sometimes of great importance in this respect; very few philosophers have influenced philosophy as much as Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, or Napoleon. Lycurgus, if only he had existed, would have been a still more notable example. In attempting to cover such a vast stretch of

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Church from the later Stoics; it owes its appeal to the apparent universality of the Roman Empire. Throughout the Middle Ages, after the time of Charlemagne, the Church and the Holy Roman Empire were world-wide in idea, although everybody knew that they were not so in fact. The conception of

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many who are at home with both ancient and modern history. Few technical philosophers have had as much influence on philosophic thought as Saint Ambrose, Charlemagne, and Hildebrand. To relate what is essential concerning these men and their times is therefore indispensable in any adequate treatment of our subject. Part I

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new and very fierce German tribe, the Lombards. Wars between them and the Byzantines continued intermittently for two hundred years, until nearly the time of Charlemagne. The Byzantines held gradually less and less of Italy; in the South, they had also to face the Saracens. Rome remained nominally subject to them

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accepted as such. He wrote it in the first instance for the bishop of Ravenna, and sent it also to the bishop of Seville. Under Charlemagne, it was given to bishops at consecration. Alfred the Great translated it into Anglo-Saxon. In the East it was circulated in Greek. It gives

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had reason to fear that they also would be conquered by these vigorous barbarians. They saved themselves by an alliance with the Franks, who, under Charlemagne, conquered Italy and Germany. This alliance produced the Holy Roman Empire, which had a constitution that assumed harmony between Pope and Emperor. The power of

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not tamely submit to Pepin and the Pope, but in repeated wars with the Franks they were worsted. At last, in 774, Pepin’s son Charlemagne marched into Italy, completely defeated the Lombards, had himself recognized as their king, and then occupied Rome, where he confirmed Pepin’s donation. The Popes

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of the former Roman Empire were still subject, de jure, to the Emperor in Constantinople, who was regarded as the sole source of legal authority. Charlemagne, an adept in legal fictions, maintained that the throne of the Empire was vacant, because the reigning Eastern sovereign Irene (who called herself emperor, not

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, also had two sons by the pious Abbot Angilbert of St. Riquier. In fact the court of Charles was a centre of very loose life. Charlemagne was a vigorous barbarian, politically in alliance with the Church, but not unduly burdened with personal piety. He could not read or write, but he

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. Alcuin is an important figure in the culture of the time. He went to Rome in 780, and in the course of his journey met Charlemagne at Parma. The Emperor employed him to teach Latin to the Franks and to educate the royal family. He spent a considerable part of his

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life at the court of Charlemagne, engaged in teaching and in founding schools. At the end of his life he was abbot of St. Martin’s at Tours. He wrote a

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the astonishing figure of Johannes Scotus, as to whom I shall have more to say presently. The decay of Carolingian power after the death of Charlemagne and the division of his empire redounded, at first, to the advantage of the papacy. Pope Nicholas I (858-867) raised papal power to a

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the early Abbasids the caliphate attained its greatest splendour. The best known of them is Harun-al-Rashid (d. 809), who was a contemporary of Charlemagne and the Empress Irene, and is known to every one in legendary form through the Arabian Nights. His court was a brilliant centre of luxury

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knowing it. All parties justified their policies by antiquarian and archaistic arguments. The Emperor appealed, in Germany, to the feudal principles of the time of Charlemagne; in Italy, to Roman law and the power of ancient Emperors. The Lombard cities went still further back, to the institutions of republican Rome. The

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of their respective types. There were also great achievements not so definitely associated with great names: the Gothic cathedrals of France, the romantic literature of Charlemagne, Arthur, and the Niebelungen, the beginnings of constitutional government in Magna Carta and the House of Commons. The matter that concerns us most directly is

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utterly defeated in the battle of Jena. The resurrection of Prussia under Bismarck appeared as a revival of the heroic past of Alaric, Charlemagne, and Barbarossa. (To Germans, Charlemagne is a German, not a Frenchman.) Bismarck showed his sense of history when he said, “We will not go to Canossa.” Prussia, however

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majority only embodies the will of all. A very convenient doctrine. German history is divided by Hegel into three periods: the first, up to Charlemagne; the second, from Charlemagne to the Reformation; the third, from the Reformation onwards. These three periods are distinguished as the Kingdoms of the Father, the Son, and

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conflict of Empire and Papacy in the Middle Ages, they took a Ghibelline view: to this day, German schoolboys are taught a boundless admiration of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. In the times after the Reformation, the political weakness and disunity of Germany was deplored, and the gradual rise of Prussia was welcomed

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under Protestant leadership, not under the Catholic and somewhat feeble leadership of Austria. Hegel, in philosophizing about history, has in mind such men as Theodoric, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Luther, and Frederick the Great. He is to be interpreted in the light of their exploits, and in the light of the then recent

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monk(fl. 12th cent.), 411, 432, 437, 438–440 quoted, 432, 430–440 Berosus, Chaldean priest (fl. 3rd cent. B.C.), 227 Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne, 393 Bessarion, Johannes or Basilius, patriarch of Constantinople (1395?–1472), 501 Bethlehem, 341, 342 Bevan, Edwyn, cited, 40*, 226*, 234*, 256*, 313 quoted, 222, 234

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, 806 and Parrnenides, 48, 51, 52, 105 and Plato, 105, 143, 158–159. See also flux Chanut, French ambassador at Stockholm (contemporary of Descartes), 560 Charlemagne (Charles the Great), King of the Franks and Emperor in the West (742–814), 282, 375, 382, 389, 392–394, 421, 429, 441, 720, 738

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France (1470–1408), 496, 499 Charles Augustus (Karl August), Duke of Saxe-Weimar, patron of Goethe (1758–1815), 720 Charles Martel, Frankish ruler, grandfather of Charlemagne (690?–741), 390, 394 Charles, R. H., cited, 316*, 317* quoted, 319–320 Charlotte, Queen of Prussia (contemporary of Leibniz), 583, 590 Charmides (Plato), 91

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), 464 Church, 120, 378, 600, 701–702, 728 and Aristotle, 101, 159, 453 and St. Augustine, 301, 355, 361–363, 365, 495, 523, 740 and Charlemagne, 393–394 and conflict of emperor and pope, 469 before dark ages. 275, 369, 374, 380 in dark ages, 366, 375, 388, 398 doctors of

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, 402 German invasions, 274, 275, 284, 335, 367, 374, 402 Germanic kingdoms, 366 Germany, 116, 229, 502, 581, 621, 748, 782 Anabaptists in, 324 and Charlemagne, 389, 392, 393 and Church, 302, 523 conflicts with papacy, 443, 469 converted, 394 culture of, 492 dictatorship in, 701 feudal principles in, 429 and

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Monammedans Ispahan, 424 Israel, 309, 361 Istria, 383 Italy, 30, 338, 361, 412, 452, 547, 559, 582 Arians in, 334–335 and Attila, 367 and Charlemagne, 389, 392 cities of, 185, 433, 482, 509 civilization of, 375, 443 Cluniac Reform in, 411 commercial class in, 304 and Donation of Constantine, 392

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, 398 Latin America, 190 Latin Emperor, 442 Latin language, 318, 346, 391, 427, 486, 546, 548, 604, 719 and Barbarossa, 431 and Bible, 335 and Charlemagne, 395 in Eastern Empire, 277 and Erasmus, 513, 516, 517 and Greeks, 276 and hymns, 439 and Ireland, 401 and philosophy, 283, 348 and Renaissance

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of Brescia, 431–432 and Attila, 369 attacked by Barbarossa, 433 bishop of, 382 and Byzantines, 375, 389–390 Carneades in, 236, 237, 238 and Charlemagne, 392, 393 and Christianity, 275, 297 civilization of, 262 under Cola di Rienzi, 481–482 and culture, 194, 387 and Donation of Constantine, 391–392

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. J., cited, 14* quoted, 12 Rosen, Edward, 526* Rostovtseff, Michael, 332 cited, 10‡, 24*, 275*, 281* quoted, 262–263, 273 Rothschild, 683 Rotrud, daughter of Charlemagne, 393 Rotterdam, 513 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, French philosopher and author (1712–1778), 232, 515, 641, 675, 684–701, 722, 737, 752, 791, 814 and St

Jerusalem: The Biography

by Simon Sebag-Montefiore  · 27 Jan 2011  · 1,364pp  · 272,257 words

in the Islamic world, * a western emperor revived the Christian fascination with Jerusalem.7 THE EMPEROR AND THE CALIPH: CHARLEMAGNE AND HAROUN AL-RASHID On Christmas Day 800, Charles the Great, known as Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, who ruled most of modern France, Germany and Italy, was crowned emperor of

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confidence of the popes and their western Latin-based Christianity that would become Catholicism - and their growing differences with the Greek-speaking Orthodox of Constantinople. Charlemagne was a merciless warrior-king hacking his way to ever-greater power, yet he was also fascinated with history, and as devout as he was

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blessing of Jerusalem's ruler, Caliph Haroun al-Rashid whose reign, recounted in the Thousand and One Nights, was the apogee of the Abbasid empire. Charlemagne and the caliph had been exchanging envoys for three years: Haroun was probably keen to play off the Franks against his enemies in Constantinople and

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Jerusalem's Christians needed Charlemagne's help. The caliph sent Charlemagne an elephant and an astrolabe water clock, a sophisticated device that showed off Islamic superiority - and alarmed some of the primitive Christians

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as a contraption of diabolical sorcery. The two emperors did not sign a formal treaty, but Christian property in Jerusalem was listed and protected, while Charlemagne paid the entire poll tax for the city's Christians - 850 dinars. In return Haroun allowed him to create a Christian quarter around the Holy

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150 monks and seventeen nuns. 'The Christians and pagans', noted one pilgrim, 'have this kind of peace between them.' This generosity generated the story that Charlemagne had covertly visited Jerusalem, making him the heir of Heraclius, and playing into the mystical legend of the Last Emperor whose reign would herald the

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End Days. This was widely believed, particularly in the age of the Crusades, but Charlemagne never did visit Jerusalem.8 When Haroun died, the civil war between his sons was won by Maamun. The new caliph was an enthusiastic student

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mystical murmurings that the Emperor of Constantinople was in Jerusalem incognito. But there were also many western pilgrims - the Muslims called them all 'Franks' after Charlemagne's people, though they were actually from all over Europe - that Amalfitan merchants built hostels and monasteries to house them. It was widely believed that

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emperor he should be a universal holy monarch on the Byzantine model and that as the descendant of generations of Crusaders and the heir to Charlemagne, he must liberate Jerusalem. He had already taken the Cross twice but kept delaying his departure. Now that he was king of Jerusalem, he planned

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Napoleon's invasion, the alliance with Suleiman the Magnificent, the French Crusader kings of Jerusalem, and to Charlemagne. When Napoleon III threatened the Ottomans, it was no coincidence that he sent a gunboat called the Charlemagne. In November, the sultan buckled and granted the paramountcy to the Catholics. Nicholas was outraged. He

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further Western advances: Napoleon III sent troops to save the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon, refreshing French claims to the area that had survived from Charlemagne, the Crusades and King Francis in the sixteenth century. In 1869, Egypt, backed by French capital, opened the Suez Canal at a ceremony attended by

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41-2. Duri in Asali, Jerusalem 112-13. Decline in Jerusalem/quote of Thaur ibn Yazid: Neuwirth, OJ 77-93. 8 Haroun al-Rashid and Charlemagne. Goitein, 'Jerusalem' 181-2. Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty 51-84. Peters, Jerusalem 217-23

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Memorandum on the Houses of God and Monasteries in the Holy City, listing staff and taxes; and Bernard, Itinerary. Hywel Williams, Emperor of the West: Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, 230-3. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea (henceforth William of Tyre) 1.64-5. Gift to

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Charlemagne: Lyons, House of Wisdom 45. On legend see: Anon., Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem et a Constantinople. Charlemagne as David: Wickham 381. 9 Maamun. Climax of Arab culture - marriage of al-Maamun and Buran

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, ed. and trans. M. Salzman, New York 1924 Albert of Achen, Historia Iherosolimitana, ed. And trans. S. B. Edgington, London 2007 Anon., Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem et a Constantinople, trans. G. S. Burgess and A. E. Cobbs, New York 1988 Antonius, Soroya, Where the Jinn Consult, London 1987 Arculf

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, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilization from 3000 BC to Cleopatra, London 2010 Williams, Hywel, Emperor of the West: Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, London 2010 Wilson, A. N., Jesus, London 1993 Wilson, A. N., Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, London 1998 Wrba, Marion

…

Chancellor, Sir John, 437-8, 443 Chapel of the Apparition, 520-3 Chapel of the Hill of Calvary, 236 Chapman, Thomas, 404 chariots, 26, 28 Charlemagne, Emperor, 65n, 189, 229n, 267, 343, 355, 379n Charles V, Emperor, 294n, 295 Charles I, King, 300-1 Charles of Anjou, King of Jerusalem, 278n

…

, King, xix, xxiv, 7, 10, 13, 19-25, 32n, 40, 46, 67n, 86, 133, 140, 304-5, 374, 491 and Bathsheba, 23, 25, 363 and Charlemagne, 189 and Islam, 170, 175, 182, 185 his palace, 23n, 501n relics of, 152 David el-Rey, 240n David's Tomb, see Mount Zion, Cenacle

…

, but for simplicity they are identified in this book as the Maccabeans. The Maccabee became the medieval prototype for Christian chivalry alongside King Arthur and Charlemagne. Charles 'Martel' - the Hammer - who defeated the Arabs at the Battle of Tours in 732; Richard the Lionheart in the twelfth century and Edward I

…

, Fleming was unable to check because the Muslim authorities swiftly cemented it over. * The Holy Prepuce was just one of a panoply of medieval relics. Charlemagne presented a section to Pope Leo before his coronation in 800, but there were soon between 8 and 18 such relics in the Christian world

…

visible from the Jordan, dominated the Mount of Olives, and his Catholic Dormition Church, on Mount Zion, modelled outside on Worms Cathedral and inside on Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen, had 'massive towers more suited to the Rhine Valley'. * It was around this time that one of the tsar's top

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