Charlemagne the King:
An biography from Will Durant's
STORY OF CIVILIZATION
1950
Beyond the legends of
Charlemagne lies a biography worthy of the tales. To
the medieval mind, only King Arthur vied with Charlemagne as the finest
example of what a Christian king could be. Kind, yet fiercely defensive of
his family and Empire, there is much to admire. His exploits spawned both
histories and romances, like all good legends it stood firmly rooted in
history. The biography offered here was published in Will Durant's History
of Civilization, but a small part of an encyclopedic historical survey. I
include it here in the KCT resources because it might prove useful and
inspiration to those seeking a basic introduction to this most famous of
medieval kings.
King Charlemagne
The greatest of medieval kings was born in 742, at a place unknown. He was
of German blood and speech, and shared some characteristics of his people-
strength of body, courage of spirit, pride of race, and a crude simplicity
many centuries apart from the urbane polish of the modern French. He had
little book learning; read only a few books- but good ones; tried in his old
age to learn writing, but never quite succeeded; yet he could speak old
Teutonic and literary Latin, and understood Greek.
In 771 Carloman II died, and Charles at twenty-nine became sole king. Two
years later he received from Pope Hadrian II an urgent appeal for aid
against the Lombard Desiderius, who was invading the papal states.
Charlemagne besieged and took Pavia, assumed the crown of Lombardy,
confirmed the Donation of
Pepin, and accepted the role of protector of the
Church in all her temporal powers.
Returning to his capital at Aachen, he began a series of fifty-three
campaigns- nearly all led in person- designed to round out his empire by
conquering and Christianizing Bavaria and Saxony, destroying the troublesome
Avars, shielding Italy from the raiding Saracens, and strengthening the
defenses of Francia against the expanding Moors of Spain. The Saxons on his
eastern frontier were pagans; they had burned down a Christian church, and
made occasional incursions into Gaul; these reasons sufficed Charlemagne for
eighteen campaigns (772-804), waged with untiring ferocity on both sides.
Charles gave the conquered Saxons a choice between baptism and death, and
had 4500 Saxon rebels beheaded in one day; after which he proceeded to
Thionville to celebrate the nativity of Christ.
At Paderborn in 777 Ibn al-Arabi, the Moslem governor of Barcelona, had
asked the aid of the Christian king against the caliph of Cordova. Charles
led an army across the Pyrenees, besieged and captured the Christian city of
Pamplona, treated the Christian but incalculable Basques of northern Spain
as enemies, and advanced even to Saragossa. But the Moslem uprisings that
al-Arabi had promised as part of the strategy against the caliph failed to
appear; Charlemagne saw that his unaided forces could not challenge Cordova;
news came that the conquered Saxons were in wild revolt and were marching in
fury upon Cologne; and with the better part of valor he led his army back,
in long and narrow file, through the passes of the Pyrenees.
In one such pass, at Roncesvalles in Navarre, a force of Basques pounced
down upon the rear guard of the Franks, and slaughtered nearly every man in
it (778); there the noble Hruodland died, who would become three centuries
later the hero of France’s most famous poem, the Chanson de Roland.
In 795 Charlemagne sent another army across the Pyrenees; the Spanish March-
a strip of northeast Spain- became part of Francia, Barcelona capitulated,
and Navarre and Asturias acknowledged the Frankish sovereignty (806).
Meanwhile Charlemagne had subdued the Saxons (785), had driven back the
advancing Slavs (789), had defeated and dispersed the Avars (790-805), and
had, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign and the sixty-third of his age,
resigned himself to peace.
In truth he had always loved administration more than war, and had taken to
the field to force some unity of government and faith upon a Western Europe
torn for centuries past by conflicts of tribe and creed. He had now brought
under his rule all the peoples between the Vistula and the Atlantic, between
the Baltic and the Pyrenees, with nearly all of Italy and much of the
Balkans. How could one man competently govern so vast and varied a realm? He
was strong enough in body and nerves to bear a thousand responsibilities,
perils, and crises, even to his sons’ plotting to kill him. He had in him
the blood or teaching of the wise and cautious Pepin III, and of the
ruthless Charles Martel, and was something of a hammer himself. He extended
their power, guarded it with firm military organization, propped it with
religious sanction and ritual. He could vision large purposes, and could
will the means as well as wish the ends. He could lead an army, persuade an
assembly, humor the nobility, dominate the clergy, rule a harem.
He made military service a condition of owning more than a pittance of
property, and thereby founded martial morale on the defense and extension of
one’s land. Every freeman, at the call to arms, had to report in full
equipment to the local count, and every noble was responsible for the
military fitness of his constituents. The structure of the state rested on
this organized force, supported by every available psychological factor in
the sanctity of anointed majesty, the ceremonial splendor of the imperial
presence, and the tradition of obedience to established rule. Around the
king gathered a court of administrative nobles and clergymen- the seneschal
or head of the palace, the “count palatine”or chief justice, the
“palsgraves”or judges of the palace court, and a hundred scholars, servants,
and clerks.
The sense of public participation in the government was furthered by
semiannual assemblies of armed property owners, gathered, as military or
other convenience might dictate, at Worms, Valenciennes, Aachen, Geneva,
Paderborn... usually in the open air. At such assemblies the king submitted
to smaller groups of nobles or bishops his proposals for legislation; they
considered them, and returned them to him with suggestions; he formulated
the capitula, or chapters of legislation, and presented these to the
multitude for their shouted approval; rarely the assembly voiced disapproval
with a collective grunt or moan. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, has
transmitted an intimate picture of Charles at one of these gatherings,
“saluting the men of most note, conversing with those whom he seldom saw,
showing a tender interest toward the elders, and disporting himself with the
young.”
At these meetings each provincial bishop and administrator was required to
report to the King any significant event in his locality since the previous
convocation. “The King wished to know,”says Hincmar, “whether in any part or
corner of the Kingdom the people were restless, and the cause thereof.”
Sometimes (continuing the old Roman institution of inquisitio) the
representatives of the King would summon leading citizens to inquire and
give under oath a “true statement”(veredictum) as to the taxable wealth, the
state of public order, the existence of crimes or criminals, in the district
visited. In the ninth century, in Frank lands, this verdict of a jurata, or
sworn group of inquirers, was used to decide many local issues of land
ownership or criminal guilt. Out of the jurata, through Norman and English
developments, would come the jury system of modern times.
The empire was divided into counties, each governed in spiritual matters by
a bishop or archbishop, and in secular affairs by a comes (companion- of the
king) or count. A local assembly of landholders convened twice or thrice a
year in each provincial capital to pass upon the government of the region,
and serve as a provincial court of appeals. The dangerous frontier counties,
or marches, had special governors- graf, margrave, or markherzog; Roland of
Roncesvalles, for example, was governor of the Breton march. All local
administration was subject to missi dominici- “emissaries of the master”-
sent by Charlemagne to convey his wishes to local officials, to review their
actions, judgments, and accounts; to check bribery, extortion, nepotism, and
exploitation, to receive complaints and remedy wrongs, to protect “the
Church, the poor, and wards and widows, and the whole people”from
malfeasance or tyranny, and to report to the King the condition of the
realm; the Capitulare missorum establishing these emissaries was a Magna
Carta for the people, four centuries before England’s Magna Carta for the
aristocracy. That this capitulary meant what it said appears from the case
of the duke of Istria, who, being accused by the missi of divers injustices
and extortions, was forced by the King to restore his thievings, compensate
every wronged man, publicly confess his crimes, and give security against
their repetition.
Barring his wars, Charlemagne’s was the most just and enlightened government
that Europe had known since Theodoric the Goth. The sixty-five capitularies
that remain of Charlemagne’s legislation are among the most interesting
bodies of medieval law. They were not an organized system, but rather the
extension and application of previous “barbarian”codes to new occasion or
need.
In some particulars they were less enlightened than the laws of King
Liutprand of Lombardy: they kept the old wergild, ordeals, trial by combat,
and punishment by mutilation; and decreed death for relapse into paganism,
or for eating meat in Lent- though here the priest was allowed to soften the
penalty. Nor were all these capitularies laws; some were answers to
inquiries, some were questions addressed by Charlemagne to officials, some
were moral counsels. “It is necessary,” said one article, “that every man
should seek to the best of his strength and ability to serve God and walk in
the way of His precepts; for the Lord Emperor cannot watch over every man in
personal discipline.” Several articles struggled to bring more order into
the sexual and marital relations of the people. Not all these counsels were
obeyed; but there runs through the capitularies a conscientious effort to
transform barbarism into civilization.
Charlemagne legislated for agriculture, industry, finance, education, and
religion as well as for government and morals. His reign fell into a period
when the economy of southern France and Italy was at low ebb through the
control of the Mediterranean by the Saracens. “The Christians,”said Ibn
Khaldun, “could no longer float a plank upon the sea.” The whole structure
of commercial relations between Western Europe and Africa and the Levant was
disturbed; only the Jews- whom Charlemagne sedulously protected for this
reason- connected the now hostile halves of what under Rome had been a
united economic world. Commerce survived in Slavic and Byzantine Europe, and
in the Teutonic north. The English Channel and the North Sea were alive with
trade; but this too would be disordered, even before Charlemagne’s death, by
Norse piracy and raids. Vikings on the north and Moslems on the south almost
closed the ports of France, and made her an inland and agricultural state.
The mercantile middle class declined, leaving no group to compete with the
rural aristocracy; French feudalism was promoted by Charlemagne’s land
grants and by the triumphs of Islam.
Charlemagne struggled to protect a free peasantry against spreading serfdom,
but the power of the nobles, and the force of circumstance, frustrated him.
Even slavery grew for a time, as a result of the Carolingian wars against
pagan tribes. The King’s own estates, periodically extended by
confiscations, gifts, intestate reversions, and reclamation, were the chief
source of the royal revenue. For the care of these lands he issued a
Capitulare de villis astonishingly detailed, and revealing his careful
scrutiny of all state income and expense. Forests, wastelands, highways,
ports, and all mineral subsoil resources were the property of the state.
Every encouragement was given to such commerce as survived; the fairs were
protected, weights and measures and prices were regulated, tolls were
moderated, speculation in futures was checked, roads and bridges were built
or repaired, a great span was thrown across the Rhine at Mainz, waterways
were kept open, and a canal was planned to connect the Rhine and the Danube,
and thereby the North with the Black Sea. A stable currency was maintained;
but the scarcity of gold in France and the decline of trade led to the
replacement of Constantine’s gold solidus with the silver pound. The energy
and solicitude of the King reached into every sphere of life. He gave to the
four winds the names they bear today. He established a system of poor
relief, taxed the nobles and the clergy to pay its costs, and then made
mendicancy a crime.
Appalled by the illiteracy of his time, when hardly any but ecclesiastics
could read, and by the lack of education among the lower clergy, he called
in foreign scholars to restore the schools of France. Paul the Deacon was
lured from Monte Cassino, and Alcuin from York (782), to teach the school
that Charlemagne organized in the royal palace at Aachen. Alcuin (735-804)
was a Saxon, born near York, and educated in the cathedral school that
Bishop Egbert had founded there; in the eighth century Britain and Ireland
were culturally ahead of France. When King Offa of Mercia sent Alcuin on a
mission to Charlemagne, the latter begged the scholar to remain; Alcuin,
glad to be out of England when the Danes were “laying it desolate, and
dishonoring the monasteries with adultery,”consented to stay. He sent to
England and elsewhere for books and teachers, and soon the palace school was
an active center of study, of the revision and copying of manuscripts, and
of an educational reform that spread throughout the realm.
Among the pupils were Charlemagne, his wife Liutgard, his sons, his daughter
Gisela, his secretary Eginhard, a nun, and many more. Charlemagne was the
most eager of all; he seized upon learning as he had absorbed states; he
studied rhetoric, dialectic, astronomy; he made heroic efforts to write,
says Eginhard, “and used to keep tablets under his pillow in order that at
leisure hours he might accustom his hand to form the letters; but as he
began these efforts so late in life, they met with ill success.” He studied
Latin furiously, but continued to speak German at his court; he compiled a
German grammar, and collected specimens of early German poetry. When Alcuin,
after eight years in the palace school, pled for a less exciting
environment, Charlemagne reluctantly made him Abbot of Tours (796). There
Alcuin spurred the monks to make fairer and more accurate copies of the
Vulgate of Jerome, the Latin Fathers, and the Latin classics; and other
monasteries imitated the example. Many of our best classical texts have come
down to us from these monastic scriptoria of the ninth century; practically
all extant Latin poetry except Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, and
nearly all extant Latin prose except Varro, Tacitus, and Apuleius, were
preserved for us by the monks of the Carolingian age. Many of the Caroline
manuscripts were handsomely illuminated by the patient art of the monks; to
this “Palace School”of illumination belonged the “Vienna”Gospels on which
the later German emperors took their coronation oath.
In 787 Charlemagne issued to all the bishops and abbots of Francia an
historic Capitulare de litteris colendis, or directive on the study of
letters. It reproached ecclesiastics for “uncouth language”and “unlettered
tongues,”and exhorted every cathedral and monastery to establish schools
where clergy and laity alike might learn to read and write. A further
capitulary of 789 urged the directors of these schools to “take care to make
no difference between the sons of serfs and of freemen, so that they might
come and sit on the same benches to study grammar, music, and arithmetic.”A
capitulary of 805 provided for medical education, and another condemned
medical superstitions. That his appeals were not fruitless appears from the
many cathedral or monastic schools that now sprang up in France and western
Germany. Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, organized schools in every parish of
his diocese, welcomed all children to them, and forbade the priest
instructors to take any fees; this is the first instance in history of free
and general education. Important schools, nearly all attached to
monasteries, rose in the ninth century at Tours, Auxerre, Pavia, St. Gall,
Fulda, Ghent, and elsewhere.
To meet the demand for teachers Charlemagne imported scholars from Ireland,
Britain, and Italy. Out of these schools were to come the universities of
Europe. We must not overestimate the intellectual quality of the age; this
scholastic resurrection was the awakening of children rather than the
maturity of such cultures as then existed in Constantinople, Baghdad, and
Cordova. It did not produce any great writers. The formal compositions of
Alcuin are stiflingly dull; only his letters and occasional verses show him
as no pompous pedant but a kindly soul who could reconcile happiness with
piety. Many men wrote poetry in this short-lived renaissance, and the poems
of Theodulf are pleasant enough in their minor way. But the only lasting
composition of that Gallic age was the brief and simple biography of
Charlemagne by Eginhard. It follows the plan of Suetonius’ Lives of the
Caesars, and even snatches passages therefrom to apply to Charlemagne; but
all is forgiven to an author who modestly describes himself as “a barbarian,
very little versed in the Roman tongue.”
He must have been a man of talent nevertheless, for Charlemagne made him
royal steward and treasurer and intimate friend, and chose him to supervise,
perhaps to design, much of the architecture of this creative reign. Palaces
were built for the Emperor at Ingelheim and Nijmegen; and at Aachen, his
favorite capital, he raised the famous palace and chapel that survived a
thousand dangers to crumble under the shells and bombs of the Second World
War. The unknown architects modeled its plan on the church of San Vitale at
Ravenna, which owed its form to Byzantine and Syrian exemplars; the result
was an Oriental cathedral stranded in the West. The octagonal structure was
surmounted by a circular dome; the interior was divided by a circular
two-storied colonnade, and was “adorned with gold and silver and lamps,
railings and doors of solid bronze, columns and crucibles brought from Rome
and Ravenna,” and a famous mosaic in the dome.
Charlemagne was profusely generous to the Church; at the same time he made
himself her master, and used her doctrines and personnel as instruments of
education and government. Much of his correspondence was about religion; he
hurled scriptural quotations at corrupt officials or worldly clerics; and
the intensity of his utterance forbids suspicion that his piety was a
political pose. He sent money to distressed Christians in foreign lands, and
in his negotiations with Moslem rulers he insisted on fair treatment of
their Christian population.
Bishops played a leading part in his councils, assemblies, and
administration; but he looked upon them, however reverently, as his agents
under God; and he did not hesitate to command them, even in matters of
doctrine or morals. He denounced image worship while the popes were
defending it; required from every priest a written description of how
baptism was administered in his parish, sent the popes directives as
numerous as his gifts, suppressed insubordination in monasteries, and
ordered a strict watch on convents to prevent “whoring, drunkenness, and
covetousness” among the nuns.
In a capitulary of 811 he asked the clergy what they meant by professing to
renounce the world, when “we see some of them laboring day by day, by all
sorts of means, to augment their possessions; now making use, for this
purpose, of menaces of eternal flames, now of promises of eternal beatitude;
despoiling simple-minded people of their property in the name of God or some
saint, to the infinite prejudice of their lawful heirs.” Nevertheless he
allowed the clergy their own courts, decreed that a tithe or tenth of all
produce of the land should be turned over to the Church, gave the clergy
control of marriages and wills, and himself bequeathed two thirds of his
estates to the bishoprics of his realm. But he required the bishops now and
then to make substantial “gifts”to help meet the expenses of the government.
Out of this intimate co-operation of Church and state came one of the most
brilliant ideas in the history of statesmanship: the transformation of
Charlemagne’s realm into a Holy Roman Empire that should have behind it all
the prestige, sanctity, and stability of both Imperial and papal Rome. The
popes had long resented their territorial subordination to a Byzantium that
gave them no protection and no security; they saw the increasing subjection
of the patriarch to the emperor at Constantinople, and feared for their own
freedom. We do not know who conceived or arranged the plan of a papal
coronation of Charlemagne as Roman emperor; Alcuin, Theodulf, and others
close to him had discussed its possibility; perhaps the initiative lay with
them, perhaps with the councilors of the popes.
There were great difficulties in the way: the Greek monarch already had the
title of Roman emperor, and full historic right to that title; the Church
had no recognized authority to convey or transfer the title; to give it to a
rival of Byzantium might precipitate a gigantic war of Christian East
against Christian West, leaving a ruined Europe to a conquering Islam. It
was of some help that Irene had seized the Greek throne (797); now, some
said, there was no Greek emperor, and the field was open to any claimant. If
the bold scheme could be carried through there would again be a Roman
emperor in the West, Latin Christianity would stand strong and unified
against schismatic Byzantium and threatening Saracens, and, by the awe and
magic of the imperial name, barbarized Europe might reach back across
centuries of darkness, and inherit and Christianize the civilization and
culture of the ancient world. On December 26, 795, Leo III was chosen Pope.
The Roman populace did not like him; it accused him of various misdeeds; and
on April 25, 799, it attacked him, maltreated him, and imprisoned him in a
monastery. He escaped, and fled for protection to Charlemagne at Paderborn.
The King received him kindly, and sent him back to Rome under armed escort,
and ordered the Pope and his accusers to appear before him there in the
following year. On November 24, 800, Charlemagne entered the ancient capital
in state; on December 1 an assembly of Franks and Romans agreed to drop the
charges against Leo if he would deny them on solemn oath; he did; and the
way was cleared for a magnificent celebration of the Nativity. On Christmas
Day, as Charlemagne, in the chlamys and sandals of a patricius Romanus,
knelt before St. Peter’s altar in prayer, Leo suddenly produced a jeweled
crown, and set it upon the King’s head.
The congregation, perhaps instructed beforehand to act according to ancient
ritual as the senatus populusque Romanus confirming a coronation, thrice
cried out: “Hail to Charles the Augustus, crowned by God the great and
peace-bringing Emperor of the Romans!” The royal head was anointed with holy
oil, the Pope saluted Charlemagne as Emperor and Augustus, and offered him
the act of homage reserved since 476 for the Eastern emperor. If we may
believe Eginhard, Charlemagne told him that had he known Leo’s intention to
crown him he would not have entered the church. Perhaps he had learned of
the general plan, but regretted the haste and circumstances of its
execution; it may not have pleased him to receive the crown from a pope,
opening the door to centuries of dispute as to the relative dignity and
power of donor and recipient; and presumably he anticipated difficulties
with Byzantium.
He now sent frequent embassies and letters to Constantinople, seeking to
heal the breach; and for a long time he made no use of his new title. In 802
he offered marriage to Irene as a means of mutually legitimizing their
dubious titles; but Irene’s fall from power shattered this elegant plan. To
discourage any martial attack by Byzantium he arranged an entente with Harun
al-Rashid, who sealed their understanding by sending him some elephants and
the keys to the Christian holy places in Jerusalem. The Eastern emperor, in
retaliation, encouraged the emirof Cordova to renounce allegiance to
Baghdad. Finally, in 812, the Greek basileus recognized Charlemagne as
coemperor, in return for Charlemagne’s acknowledgment of Venice and southern
Italy as belonging to Byzantium. The coronation had results for a thousand
years. It strengthened the papacy and the bishops by making civil authority
derive from ecclesiastical conferment; Gregory VII and Innocent III would
build a mightier Church on the events of 800 in Rome. It strengthened
Charlemagne against baronial and other disaffection by making him a very
vicar of God; it vastly advanced the theory of the divine right of kings. It
contributed to the schism of Greek from Latin Christianity; the Greek Church
did not relish subordination to a Roman Church allied with an empire rival
to Byzantium. The fact that Charlemagne (as the Pope desired) continued to
make Aachen, not Rome, his capital, underlined the passage of political
power from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, from the Latin peoples to
the Teutons. Above all, the coronation established the Holy Roman Empire in
fact, though not in theory.
Charlemagne and his advisers conceived of his new authority as a revival of
the old imperial power; only with Otto I was the distinctively new character
of the regime recognized; and it became “holy”only when Frederick Barbarossa
introduced the word sacrum into his title in 1155. All in all, despite its
threat to the liberty of the mind and the citizen, the Holy Roman Empire was
a noble conception, a dream of security and peace, order and civilization
restored in a world heroically won from barbarism, violence, and ignorance.
Imperial formalities now hedged in the Emperor on occasions of state.
Then he had to wear embroidered robes, a golden buckle, jeweled shoes, and a
crown of gold and gems, and visitors prostrated themselves to kiss his foot
or knee; so much had Charlemagne learned from Byzantium, and Byzantium from
Ctesiphon. But in other days, Eginhard assures us, his dress varied little
from the common garb of the Franks- linen shirt and breeches next to the
skin, and over these a woolen tunic perhaps fringed with silk; hose fastened
by bands covered his legs, leather shoes his feet; in winter he added a
close-fitting coat of otter or marten skins; and always a sword at his side.
He was six feet four inches tall, and built to scale. He had blond hair,
animated eyes, a powerful nose, a mustache but no beard, a presence “always
stately and dignified.” He was temperate in eating and drinking, abominated
drunkenness, and kept in good health despite every exposure and hardship. He
often hunted, or took vigorous exercise on horseback. He was a good swimmer,
and liked to bathe in the warm springs of Aachen. He rarely entertained,
preferring to hear music or the reading of a book while he ate.
Like every great man he valued time; he gave audiences and heard cases in
the morning while dressing and putting on his shoes. Behind his poise and
majesty were passion and energy, but harnessed to his aims by a clairvoyant
intelligence. His vital force was not consumed by half a hundred campaigns;
he gave himself also, with never aging enthusiasm, to science, law,
literature, and theology; he fretted at leaving any part of the earth, or
any section of knowledge, unmastered or unexplored. In some ways he was
mentally ingenuous; he scorned superstition and proscribed diviners and
soothsayers, but he accepted many mythical marvels, and exaggerated the
power of legislation to induce goodness or intelligence. This simplicity of
soul had its fair side: there was in his thought and speech a directness and
honesty seldom permitted to statesmanship. He could be ruthless when policy
required, and was especially cruel in his efforts to spread Christianity.
Yet he was a man of great kindness, many charities, warm friendships, and
varied loves. He wept at the death of his sons, his daughter, and Pope
Hadrian. In a poem Ad Carolum regem Theodulf draws a pleasant picture of the
Emperor at home. On his arrival from labors his children gather about him;
son Charles takes off the father’s cloak, son Louis his sword; his six
daughters embrace him, bring him bread, wine, apples, flowers; the bishop
comes in to bless the King’s food; Alcuin is near to discuss letters with
him; the diminutive Eginhard runs to and fro like an ant, bringing in
enormous books.
He was so fond of his daughters that he dissuaded them from marriage, saying
that he could not bear to be without them. They consoled themselves with
unlicensed amours, and bore several illegitimate children. Charlemagne
accepted these accidents with good humor, since he himself, following the
custom of his predecessors, had four successive wives and five mistresses or
concubines. His abounding vitality made him extremely sensitive to feminine
charms; and his women preferred a share in him to the monopoly of any other
man. His harem bore him some eighteen children, of whom eight were
legitimate.
The ecclesiastics of the court and of Rome winked leniently at the Moslem
morals of so Christian a king. He was now head of an empire far greater than
the Byzantine, surpassed, in the white man’s world, only by the realm of the
Abbasid caliphate. But every extended frontier of empire or knowledge opens
up new problems. Western Europe had tried to protect itself from the Germans
by taking them into its civilization; but now Germany had to be protected
against the Norse and the Slavs. The Vikings had by 800 established a
kingdom in Jutland, and were raiding the Frisian coast. Charles hastened up
from Rome, built fleets and forts on shores and rivers, and stationed
garrisons at danger points. In 810 the king of Jutland invaded Frisia and
was repulsed; but shortly thereafter, if we may follow the chronicle of the
Monk of St. Gall, Charlemagne, from his palace at Narbonne, was shocked to
see Danish pirate vessels in the Gulf of Lyons. Perhaps because he foresaw,
like Diocletian, that his overreaching empire needed quick defense at many
points at once, he divided it in 806 among his three sons- Pepin,
Louis, and
Charles. But Pepin died in 810, Charles in 811; only Louis remained, so
absorbed in piety as to seem unfit to govern a rough and treacherous world.
Nevertheless, in 813, at a solemn ceremony, Louis was elevated from the rank
of king to that of emperor, and the old monarch uttered his nunc dimittis:
“Blessed be Thou, O Lord God, Who hast granted me the grace to see with my
own eyes my son seated on my throne!”
Four months later, wintering at Aachen, he was seized with a high fever, and
developed pleurisy. He tried to cure himself by taking only liquids; but
after an illness of seven days he died, in the forty-seventh year of his
reign and the seventy-second year of his life (814). He was buried under the
dome of the cathedral at Aachen, dressed in his imperial robes. Soon all the
world called him Carolus Magnus, Karl der Grosse, Charlemagne; and in 1165,
when time had washed away all memory of his mistresses, the Church which he
had served so well enrolled him among the blessed.
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