Who Was Charlemagne?

Who was Charlemagne?

Charlemagne was one of Europe's most successful monarchs. He was king of the Franks in 768 CE.His father, Pepin the Short, ruled before him, and his grandfather - Charles Martel - ruled before that. These two men were good rulers, but Charlemagne was a far more impressive king.

For one thing, he was very tall. He was over 6 feet tall, perhaps even as tall as 6'4". He had blonde hair that seemed to glow in the sun. He was always laughing. People thought he was really impressive.

The Franks were legendary fighters. Using the strength and loyalty of his army, combined with his own leadership abilities, Charlemagne soon defeated most of the other barbarian tribes in Western Europe. He expanded the Frankish Empire to include Germany, all of France, most of Italy, and even sections of northern Spain.

When the Frankish Empire went to war, Charlemagne was in the thick of things. He was easy to spot. Besides being so tall, he often wore a blue cape over his fur coat, which made him appear even larger. He had to have been a most visible target. Yet, somehow, he managed to survive battle after battle. He died of old age in his seventies, which for the times was a really old age.

Charlemagne was a Christian. His conquests helped to spread Christianity in many ways. There were Christian priests with Charlemagne's armies. When Charlemagne conquered a town or country, the priests converted the people to Christianity. However, Charlemagne was rather cruel to the Saxons in Germany. When his soldiers captured the Saxons, they told the Saxons that they would be killed if they did not become Christians. As a result, many Saxons were converted to Christianity by force.

After the fall of Rome in 476 CE, the ability to read and write began to disappear. Soon, the only people left with these skills were religious—priests and monks—and not even all of them had these abilities. To effectively rule his kingdom, and to successfully convert people to Christianity, Charlemagne wanted his officials to be able to read and write. If he sent them a note, giving them some instruction, he wanted to make sure they could read it.

To accomplish this, he turned his own palace into a center for learning. Scholars came from all over Europe to teach in the palace school. Charlemagne gave many of his scholars the job of copying all the old manuscripts into Latin by hand. This preserved thousands of writings and enormous amounts of knowledge. All books in the middle ages were written by hand.All books were written to glorify religion. Each page was beautifully designed. Some pages were "illuminated" with a cover of gold.

Charlemagne was a powerful leader who ruled through religious faith and military force. His great personality and leadership built the Middle Ages’ biggest empire, one that would last for hundreds of years—the Holy Roman Empire. His goal was to bring back the glory of Rome. He successfully brought back this glory and restored Roman values of art, literature, architecture, and military prowess by creating the Holy Roman Empire, which was based on Catholic faith.