Synopsis
CHARLEMAGNE, b. April 2, 742; d. Jan.
28, 814; succeeded, together with his younger brother Carloman, his father,
Pepin the Short, as King of the Franks in 768; became sole ruler of the
Frankish Empire by Carloman’s death in 774; was crowned Roman emperor by
Leo III. in the Church of St. Peter in Rome, Christmas Day, 800, and stood, in
the latter part of his reign, as one of the three great rulers of the world,
the equal of the Emperor of Constantinople, and the Caliph of Bagdad.
No layman has exercised so great an
influence on the history of the Church as Charlemagne; though his influence
was, properly speaking, merely that of extension, organization. and
consolidation. Personally he probably did not reach far beyond a tolerably
accurate fulfilment of the precepts of the Church. His character has, no doubt,
been much embellished by the legendary poetry of the Church. His want of
chastity, and disregard of the marriage-vow, must be freely admitted.
Practically the Church was to him, not only the visible representative of
Christ on earth, but also an organ of civilization, an instrument of
government; and he was sometimes unscrupulous enough in the use of this
instrument, as, for instance, when he compelled the Saxons, by force and with
unexampled cruelty, to receive baptism. Nevertheless he contributed perhaps
more than any one else to make the Church a power in the history of the race,
and enabled it to form during the middle ages a much-needed and highly
beneficial counterpoise to the military despotism of feudalism.
His relation to the Church is strikingly
characterized by a total absence of any distinction between spiritual and
temporal power. Both were identical to him; and as he unquestionably was the
holder of the one he necessarily came to consider himself as holder of the
other too. Without paying the least regard to the Pope, whom, under other
circumstances, he was not unwilling to recognize as the representative of the
Church, he condemned at the synod of Francfort (794) the decrees of the
second council of Nicaea concerning image-worship,
and with as little ceremony he introduced the Filioque of the Spanish
churches into the Nicene Creed at the synod of Aix-la-Chapelle (809). He was
liberal to the Church. The exarchate of Ravenna was his splendid donation to
the papal see. Churches and monasteries received enormous endowments everywhere
in his. realm; and the first business he took in hand after conquering a new
territory was the formation of dioceses, the building of churches, the
foundation of missionary-stations, etc. But of this church, made great and rich
by his liberality, he demanded absolute obedience. The metropolitans received
the pallium from the Pope, but only with his consent; and the bishops he
chose and appointed himself alone. He would have been very much surprised if
any one had intimated to him - what, a century later on, was preached from the
roofs - that there was within the Church a spiritual power to which even the
emperor owed obedience. Church and State were one to him. His idea of
government was theocratic, with the distinction, though, that, in his case, it
was not the Church which had absorbed the State, but the State which
identified. itself with the Church.
Nothing shows more plainly than the circle
of great men which gathered around Charlemagne that the principal problem which
he expected the Church to solve had a general civilizing bearing. All the great
men of his age, such as Alcuin, Leidrade, Angilbert, Eginhard, Agobard,
Paschasins Radbertus, Rabanus Maurus, Scotus Erigena Hincmar, were connected,
either as teachers or as pupils, with that school which he had founded in his
palace, and which became the fertile germ of the medieval university. All these
men were theologians, but not exclusively: on the contrary, their greatness was
their many-sidedness. They had studied grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, classical
literature, canon law, etc. They were poets, philosophers, statesmen, practical
administrators, etc. They were exactly what Charlemagne wanted, - men whom he
could send out as legates to see how the counts were doing in the marches, or
could settle as bishops in a diocese to take care, not only of the Church
proper, but also of the school and the court; for, according to his ideas, the
Church was an institution with many worldly duties of education and
jurisdiction; and consequently it became, under his hands, an institution with
many worldly interests of property and ambition.
Clemens Petersen, "Charlemagne,"
Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical,
Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 1. Toronto,
New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp.436-437.
 |
Jacques
Boussard, The Civilization of Charlemagne. McGraw-Hill, 1968. Pbk. ISBN:
0070067104. {Amazon.com} |
 |
Donald A.
Bullough, "Europae Pater: Charlemagne and his Achievement in the Light of
Recent Scholarship," English Ecclesiastical History 85 (1970):
59-105. |
|
Donald
A. Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne, 2nd edn. London: Elek, 1973. Pbk.
ISBN: 023617696X. pp.212. {Amazon.com} |
|
Roger
Collins, Charlemagne. Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. Hbk. ISBN: 0333650549.
pp.256. |
|
François Louis Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under
Charlemagne. Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1968. pp.xvi +
191. |
|
A. Grabois,
"The Legendary Figure of Charlemagne in Medieval Hebrew Sources," Tarbiz
36 (1966): 22-58. |
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Thomas
Hodgkin, Charles the Great. Associated Faculty Press Inc., 1976. Hbk.
ISBN: 0804610754. {Amazon.com} |
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Harold
Lamb, Charlemagne: The Legend and the Man. New York: Doubleday, 1954.
Hbk. ISBN: 0385040660. {Amazon.com} |
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Rosamund
McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms 789-895.
The Lincoln Record Society, 1977. Hbk. ISBN: 0901050326. pp.122-33. {Amazon.com} |
|
 Rosamund McKitterick, The
Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians 751-987. Longman, 1983. Pbk. ISBN:
0582490057. pp.59-105. {Amazon.com} |
|
 Robert Morrissey,
Charlemagne and France, Catherine Tihanyi, translator. University of
Notre Dame Press, 2002. Hbk. ISBN: 0268022771. pp.456. {Amazon.com} |
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Peter
Munz, Life in the Age of Charlemagne. Putnam Pub Group (T), 1969. Hbk.
ISBN: 0399201246. {Amazon.com} |
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 David Nicolle, The Age of Charlemagne.
Osprey Publishing Compnay, 2000. Pbk. ISBN: 1841761257. pp.48. {CBD}
{Amazon.com} |
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Charlemagne
(Thomas J. Shahan & E. MacPherson) |
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Steven
Vanderputten, "Faith and Politics in Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and
the Frustrating Failure of an Ecclesiological Project," Revue d'Histoire
Ecclesiastique 96-3-4 (2001): 311-332. |
|
 J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The
Frankish Church. Oxford History of the Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983. Hbk. ISBN: 0198269064. pp.150-61. {Amazon.com} |
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Abbot of Seligenstadt Einhard & Balbulus
Notker, Two Lives of Charlemagne, Lewis Thorpe, ed, new edn.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969. Pbk. ISBN: 0140442138. pp.240.
