Who was Charlemagne and why is he important?

Answer 1

Charlemagne is believed to have been born about the year 742. He became King of the Franks in 768, and Emperor of the Carolingian Empire in 800. He died in 814.

He was the son of King Pepin the Short. When he became King of the Franks, his country already occupied nearly all of modern France, all of Belgium and the Netherlands, most of Switzerland, and large areas of Germany. To this he added Saxony, Bavaria, large parts of Austria, the Kingdom of Lombardy, which was all of northern Italy, and an area of Spain called the Spanish March, which was the area of Spain in the Pyrenees along the French border. His country was the largest in the history of Western Europe after the fall of the West Roman Empire.

On December 25, 800, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by pope Leo III. Charlemagne claimed to have been surprised by this, and in some respects the event is a mystery. We know it happened, but we do not really know why or what exactly was intended. The Empire of the Romans still existed as what we call the Byzantine Empire. Pope Leo may have intended to revive the West Roman Empire, but there are many suggestions as to his real purpose. Today, Charlemagne's empire is called the Carolingian Empire, to distinguish it from the ancient Roman Empire, the medieval Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), and the Holy Roman Empire (Germany). Charlemagne's empire is ancestral to the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.

Charlemagne revived learning in Western Europe by inviting scholars to his court, seeing that his nobles and children were educated, including both his sons and his daughters. He opened schools and had a stated intention of having all freemen of his empire become literate, a practice which was already in place in the Byzantine Empire. His scholars were all to write in a unified dialect of medieval Latin, which was important because prior to this the Latin dialects had diverged to the point of mutual incomprehensibility.

Charlemagne codified laws, and fostered scholarship by theologians. He protected the Church, and especially the popes. He made large numbers of his conquered enemies convert from paganism to Christianity. He fostered the arts and architecture. He stabilized currency, and established an old Roman system based on the denarius, a silver coin about the size of a US dime or a UK five pence; in this system, twelve denarii (pence) made a solidus (shilling), and twenty solidi made a pound. The system was widely used in Europe, and remained in the UK until recently.

Charlemagne was a member of what is called the Carolingian dynasty of Frankish kings and emperors. His reign was a defining time in what is called the Carolingian Renaissance. He has been considered by many people an ideal ruler, and a model for other rulers.