The dynasty reached its peak with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first emperor in the west in over three centuries. In , Charlemagne called Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine and his only surviving legitimate son, to his court.
There Charlemagne crowned his son with his own hands as co-emperor and sent him back to Aquitaine. He then spent the autumn hunting before returning to Aachen on November 1. In January, he fell ill with pleurisy. He took to his bed on January 21 and as Einhard tells it:. He had a testament of , not updated prior to his death, that allocated his assets. His empire, ostensibly a continuation of the Roman Empire, is referred to historiographically as the Carolingian Empire.
The traditional Frankish and Merovingian practice of dividing inheritances among heirs was not given up by the Carolingian emperors, though the concept of the indivisibility of the Empire was also accepted. The Carolingians had the practice of making their sons minor kings in the various regions regna of the Empire, which they would inherit on the death of their father.
He soon ceded Italy to his eldest son, Louis, and remained in his new kingdom, engaging in alternate quarrels and reconciliations with his brothers and in futile efforts to defend his lands from the attacks of the Northmen as Vikings were known in Frankish writings and the Saracens.
The Carolingians differed markedly from the Merovingians in that they disallowed inheritance to illegitimate offspring, possibly in an effort to prevent infighting among heirs and assure a limit to the division of the realm. In the late 9th century, however, the lack of suitable adults among the Carolingians necessitated the rise of Arnulf of Carinthia, an illegitimate child of a legitimate Carolingian king.
The Carolingians were displaced in most of the regna of the Empire in They ruled on in East Francia until and held the throne of West Francia intermittently until Carolingian cadet branches continued to rule in Vermandois and Lower Lorraine after the last king died in , but they never sought thrones of principalities, and they made peace with the new ruling families.
Today, Charlemagne is referred to by some as the father of Europe. Charlemagne was born around , the son of Bertrada of Laon d. Once in power, Charlemagne sought to unite all the Germanic peoples into one kingdom, and convert his subjects to Christianity. In order to carry out this mission, he spent the majority of his reign engaged in military campaigns. Soon after becoming king, he conquered the Lombards in present-day northern Italy , the Avars in modern-day Austria and Hungary and Bavaria, among others.
Charlemagne waged a bloody, three-decades-long series of battles against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe of pagan worshippers, and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. In at the Massacre of Verden, Charlemagne reportedly ordered the slaughter of some 4, Saxons. In his personal life, Charlemagne had multiple wives and mistresses and perhaps as many as 18 children.
He allegedly loved his daughters so much that he prohibited them from marrying while he was alive. Einhard c. In his role as a zealous defender of Christianity, Charlemagne gave money and land to the Christian church and protected the popes.
As emperor, Charlemagne proved to be a talented diplomat and able administrator of the vast area he controlled. He promoted education and encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of renewed emphasis on scholarship and culture. He instituted economic and religious reforms, and was a driving force behind the Carolingian miniscule, a standardized form of writing that later became a basis for modern European printed alphabets. Charlemagne ruled from a number of cities and palaces, but spent significant time in Aachen.
His palace there included a school, for which he recruited the best teachers in the land. In addition to learning, Charlemagne was interested in athletic pursuits.
Known to be highly energetic, he enjoyed hunting, horseback riding and swimming. Aachen held particular appeal for him due to its therapeutic warm springs. According to Einhard, Charlemagne was in good health until the final four years of his life, when he often suffered from fevers and acquired a limp. In , Charlemagne crowned his son Louis the Pious , king of Aquitaine, as co-emperor. Louis became sole emperor when Charlemagne died in January , ending his reign of more than four decades.
At the time of his death, his empire encompassed much of Western Europe. Charlemagne was buried at the cathedral in Aachen. In the ensuing decades, his empire was divided up among his heirs, and by the late s, it had dissolved. Nevertheless, Charlemagne became a legendary figure endowed with mythical qualities. In , under Emperor Frederick Barbarossa , Charlemagne was canonized for political reasons; however, the church today does not recognize his sainthood.
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The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups.
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