Charlemagne
Charlemagne's name is really Charles le Magne, or Charles
the Great. In German they call
him Karl der Grosse, which also means Charles the Great. His father,
Pippin, left Charlemagne his Frankish
empire when he died in
768 AD. The Franks were already very powerful
when Pippin died, but Charlemagne made them more powerful still.
To begin with, Charlemagne organized a centralized system of governors
(counts) throughout his kingdom, sending out men he knew to keep order
all over his kingdom, and then sending out other men to check up on
the counts.
At the same time, Charlemagne also greatly expanded the size of
his kingdom. He conquered France down to the Pyrenees mountains, and
even into northern Spain. He crossed the Rhine river and conquered Germany,
Switzerland and Austria, even into modern Hungary.
To the north, he conquered Belgium. And in 774 AD
Charlemagne also conquered the Lombards in
northern Italy.
From his position in northern Italy, Charlemagne was able to help out
the Popes,
who could no longer count on getting help from the Roman
Empire. In exchange, Charlemagne got Pope Leo III in Rome to name
him Holy Roman Emperor. Right at that moment (in 800 AD) the Roman Emperor
in Constantinople was a woman named Irene,
and the Franks refused to recognize Irene as Emperor because she was
a woman. Charlemagne had offered to marry Irene, to put a man
back on the throne. But Irene refused, thinking that Charlemagne was some
barbarian nobody from northern Europe. So it may have seemed sensible for Charlemagne to become the
Emperor.
Along with his new identity as Emperor, Charlemagne built up a real
court at his palace in Aachen, with a palace school, and new buildings
being built everywhere, and books being written, including a biography
of Charlemagne by Einhard which is modelled on the Roman biographer
Suetonius. Charlemagne
sent ambassadors back and forth to the Abbasid
caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who sent him an Indian
elephant as a present.
The Carolingians
Main medieval history page
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