Who was Charlemagne?

[Music] it is 800 ad and we are standing in the Basilica of St Peters and for any of you who have been to the Vatican and seen modern St Peters you might have realized that that building was actually built significantly later in fact it was not begun until essentially the time of the Reformation we are right now in Old St Peter's Basilica an old St Peter's Basilica was built on top of an old Christian graveyard this part of old Rome during the Pagan Empire had housed the circus Maximus off to the left of what is the modern day Vatican and in that circus Maximus a number of Christians have been crucified or executed and over time the bodies of these Christians were taken down into a low valley and they were buried and with the coming of Conant this Hallowed Ground this first and 2 Century graveyard was laid over with dirt and a basilica was placed on top of it to honor those who had died as Martyrs of the faith and as a symbol of the Christian victory over the Pagan world at this point of 800 ad however it might have seemed to some that the pagans of the world were again gaining the upper hand the Lombards in and around the Italian Peninsula were wreaking havoc and causing trouble for the papacy the Romans themselves particularly those in the city of Rome often were quite hostile to the papacy the local ruling families were something a bit like the mafia and they would fight and they would cono and they wanted the papacy often to either do its own bidding or on a few occasions they even put their own men on the throne and so by the end of the 8th Century as the Frankish empires have come out of the maravin and as they have developed their martial ethos and their rule of Northern Europe the partnership between the papacy and the Franks was beginning to deepen and on this Christmas day during the mass as Charlamagne was kneeling down the story we are told is that the pope reaching for a crown placed it on charlamagne's head and declared that he was now the new emperor of Rome many at the time and even down until today have been shocked by this they see in this some sort of spiritual takeover of politics or they say that this is the first time that the church and state have become fused together now of course as we've seen this simply is not the case Constantine managed to do that back in the 4th Century we did not need Charlamagne or Pope Le III to do this others who were contemporary of charlan however were equally offended because as we've seen in our lectures about the Byzantine World there already was a Roman Emperor out east in New Rome or Constantinople there still existed a Roman Emperor who at least by some accounts was head of all the old regions that Charlemagne had owned which means that the emperor in Constantinople had at least some authority over Europe only now the papacy has declared that there is a new emperor and that this emperor in particular would be one over the West alone for centuries the fact that the papacy decided to coronate its own emperor in the west became one of the serious bones of contention between the papacy and the Byzantine world for those in the west however this was a sign of God's providential love now the West would return to Glory now the West would be unified and for them and for the rest of Western history all the way down until the modern world the papacy's decision to coronate Charlamagne on Christmas 800 ad Mark the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire and in this lecture we're going to take a look at Charlemagne what was his Reign like how did they conquer so much land in such a short period of time and then what was man's effect on European culture as we'll see Charlamagne enacted one of the most important cultural renaissan in all of European history often today called the carolingian Renaissance and lastly we'll look at how Charlamagne shaped and changed the church as it developed from an early ancient Church into a medieval western European church one of the most important things about charlamagne's Reign is how much land he conquered ConEd during his tenure Charles Martell and Pepin before him his father and grandfather had conquered an enormous amount of land already they already had under their Authority the region of aquatan burgundy in most of what we would today call France Germany and the Netherlands this already was a significant piece of land however there were regions that Charles mortell and pepen were unable to really put to rest and to bring under their orbit entirely and these regions are the ones that Charlamagne manages to conquer and so charlamagne's military conquests were not so much the result of him taking over more land than his predecessors but rather Charlamagne was able to conquer lands that were challenging to his predecessors and make them finally and officially part of the Frankish or the carolingian dynasty and these regions were the area of Lombardy which is essentially the northern part of Italy all the way down into the middle part of Italy around the region of Rome charlan also conquered Bavaria and more importantly he finally put Saxony under his boot Saxony had been one of the more annoying neighbors to the Northeast that had always plagued the Frankish empires in addition to these regions Charlamagne managed to create certain regions that we would later call the marches and the marches regions were regions that were on the Forefront of serious battle or against Syria enemies so Charlamagne establishes the marches down in the south of aquatan to keep an eye on Muslim Spain he also keeps a March's area out on the East when it was all said and done Charlamagne had a region that from east to west spans something between 800 and 850 miles significant portions of Europe really the vast majority of arable farmable cultivatable land on the continent of Europe was now under the Frankish dominion and a lot of this has to do with the prowess of Charlamagne now we've already seen in the last lecture how Charles Martel was a supreme Warrior how he drilled his armies how he deployed Superior Tactics particularly against the Muslim armies at the Battle of T and Charlamagne is the inheritor of this military Tradition now there is a myth about this it's often said that one of the great reasons why Charlamagne is able to conquer is because the Stirrup to the saddle is finally invented just as Charlemagne comes to the throne and therefore the Cavalry that was widely used by the Frankish armies was somehow Superior now of course if you've ever been horseback riding you may not have noticed the importance of the sturup but take the sturup away and you're really precariously perched to top of a saddle and a top of horse particularly if it's going to ever run however the invention of the STP it will not happen for some time it's a myth that some invention of technology is the real cause as to why charlemaine and the Frankish Empires are able to conquer so much land they did employ heavy Cavalry tactics but the vast majority the reason why Charlamagne and the Frankish Empires are able to expand so far is due to the fact that they are Relentless and they are disciplined in fact the only major time that Charlamagne loses is when he embarks on a conquest to try to go into Spain himself he sends an army down in the hopes of achieving some of the great prowess of Charles Martell his grandfather and the army goes and it is pretty soundly defeated and that defeat of the armies that are going down into Spain is captured in a very famous poem called the song of Roland one of the pieces that students throughout history have always had to study as a good piece of medieval literature well that poem is written as a result of Char's armies losing in their attempt to retake certain portions of Spain and so Charlamagne ruled over the most important areas of Europe but he wasn't just a military Thug Charlamagne also managed to establish the good rule in administration of his Empire at his Palace at aen which we'll talk about in more detail in just a minute Charlamagne arranged all kinds of ambassadors and legal experts and Scholars and scribes in the effort to ensure that all of his decisions all of his rulings were to go out into his Empire so that those who were under his authority would get the verdict in clear and concise language from the central Imperial government surag imposed all kinds of regulations related to taxes the acral of wealth the registration of wealth so that they could keep track of who owned what and who was responsible for what but this was predominantly a period of time in which reason in intellectual prowess was applied to the legal profession for the first times in a realm that was not Roman significant attention to detail was applied to laws to precedents and all of these things were codified and written down now alongside these military conquests and the changes in legal and administrative practices that Charlamagne accomplished during his Reign there was also during charlamagne's time what historians call the carolingian Renaissance and the carolan Renaissance is a period of time in which some of the most significant intellectual minds of Europe were brought together by Charlamagne into his Entourage so that intellectual activity and letters and arts and manuscripts and all of these things might flourish now in today's world we're used to seeing the Arts as something that's more cosmetic or something that is not vital we send our kids to school too often I'm afraid for the utility of getting them to college so that they can get out of our houses and so that they can get jobs but you have to remember that at a time in which intellectual engagement and thinking and process and the Arts were not prescribed in society for charlam man to take a noted interest in these things was as much to do with preservation of knowledge in Roman culture as it was with the advancement of it and the fact that there is a Carolin in Renaissance should really undermine in your minds the fact that this period of time is called the Dark Ages it might be the Dark Ages in terms of its relationship to say the Renaissance in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries or it might be the Dark Ages simply by the fact that some of the manuscripts and artifacts and some of the data that we would like as historians doesn't really exist in this period of time that literacy rates are low and that there's just simply not much to draw on from a literary standpoint but what we see in charlamagne's reign is that there is actually a concerted effort in an attempt to ensure that the Roman culture the romanitas the ways in which the old world had engage in the life of the Mind was going to continue and there are all kinds of ways in which Charlamagne engaged in this Renaissance in terms of architecture there were significant building campaigns during the Frankish Reign from 768 until 855 there were at least 30 Cathedrals and 4177 monasteries built all around the Frankish Empires and that is not even to count the Royal palaces and the Palaces for the Dukes and the comes that were in these regions as well this is a period of significant building in fact today if you were to go throughout Europe and you were to see all kinds of these medieval castles not a few of them at least in the areas of the Frankish Empires date back at least portions of them date all the way back to this period of time Charlamagne also liked to draw around him the leading intellectuals of Europe now prior to Charlamagne coming to the throne perhaps the single most important intellectual climate in culture was that of Britain the British Isles had a significant intellectual tradition amongst its monks they were literate they wrote a great deal we can think for example of the venerable bead and others but what charlam man decides is that from all around Europe from Lombardy from from certain regions of of Britany and from other regions throughout Europe he was going to attract these Scholars to his Central palaces at aen and the single most important scholar that he brings to aen is Alin of York now York of course is a British region it's up in North Umbria the northern part of Britany and Alin actually was very comfortable and quite happy up there but he was a leading intellectual at one point the king of Anglo saxs and he sends Alin down to Rome in an effort to plead with the Pope that the pope would allow there to be an arch bishopi in the region of York there was already one in the South that of Canterbury and the King wanted one in the north that of York which by the way still exists the Archbishop Rick of York is still part of the Anglican church and Alin concedes and he travels to Rome and there prevails upon the pope to see his way and therefore there is an Archbishop it created in York on the way back though Alin stops off at the aan court and makes an appearance with Charlemagne and Charlamagne somehow manages to convince alwin to come be a part of the palace at aan so that the intellectual world might flourish there now by far the most important thing that Alin and his scribes and his priests managed to cultivate at the palace at Aken is a new form of handwriting and manuscript development that had not been seen in Europe before a number of historians when they begin to study the past particularly in the Middle Ages or in Antiquity often have to take something called paleography and I can tell you when you're taking paleography classes it can be borderline torturous at some point one of the things that happens particularly when you're looking at Old Roman cursive or old Roman half unseal some of these scripts that were being used to write out manuscripts before the Early Middle Ages sometimes they are nigh impossible to make out unless you have a great deal of training or unless you are simply used to the way these things work when you're a novice these things are backbreaking they are annoying they're very challenging to try to read and as many students of paleography can tell you as soon as you get to Carol Len's script suddenly the sky is part the sky is blue the sun is shining upon your manuscript and it becomes significantly easier and this is because of the way in which the Caroling and Renaissance affects the dissemination of knowledge now we take this for granted we're used to printing we're used to simple uniform fonts maybe slightly different here and there but by and large all of our fonts are relatively straightforward they have uppercase they have lowercase they have uniform punctuation at least for those of us who take time to learn all the punctuations that were supposed to use and but there was a time in the ancient world where much of this didn't exist if you look at some of the more ancient manuscripts often one of the things you see is that all the words kind of smoosh together and not only that but they are all uppercase so good luck figuring out the difference between some of these words particularly if you're doing it in Latin and it's not necessarily your best language what you get when you get to the carolan Renaissance though is you get something called carolan minuscule and carolan minuscule is going to have a dramatic effect on learning and education in the west again handwriting matters how the font reads matters if you're trying to learn the language from the first time these things matter and one of the things that Carolin manuscripts give us is they give us a uniform formity and they give us a Clarity of learning Caroline minuscule for example has a set font pattern it has uppercase for titles it has a combination of upper and lower case for subtitles it also tends to space the words out and it tends to use a little bit more punctuation than previous manuscripts now you might think this is a bit of archaic knowledge but actually it has affected our world as well even down till today what happens is as the Carol Engine World sort of Fades and as we get into the higher Middle Ages what happens is is a new form of script takes over called Gothic and Gothic is again we're back into the harder times of trying to discern the letters it's certainly at least by my estimation easier than cursive Roman or half unseal Roman but the gothic manuscript is sort of unwieldy and complex in kind of chunky lettering and what happens is as we move after the gothic period and into the time of the Renaissance what we will see happen is that the Renaissance will find these manuscrip scripts that were created during Charlemagne's Reign and they will mistake them for traditional ancient Roman handwriting and so what happens is is the Renaissance writers will think that this is classic writing that this Caroline script is just the best way this is how the GRE Romans must have written their letters even though we don't have the manuscripts here we see that this is how it was and so actually Carol engan script becomes the model becomes the basis for the Renaissance typography which at the time of the Gutenberg Press means that the attention to detail and legibility that we see in carolen script suddenly explodes and it becomes the basis frankly at least the kernel of the idea behind much of the fonts that we use in modern vernacular Printing and that really is a symbol of what the carolan Renaissance wanted they wanted education to flourish they also knew that education if it was going to flourish needed to have some reform education was no longer for the rich and the wealthy they wanted it to for those who could at least achieve and had the had the gray matter to attempt to learn these things there are all kinds of stories actually of Charlamagne who himself was poorly educated who was really just a warrior of him attempting throughout his life to learn things like arithmetic he even tried his hand at learning writing and as one account says he gave up very frustrated and said in a nutshell that he is too old to learn how to write despite all the practice that he has attempted at it and so Charlamagne is a lover of learning he funds as we've already said monasteries far and wide and not just that but charlam ensures that the Latin Vulgate the language that was still being spoken in the majority of these regions that a copy of the Latin Vulgate be provided for every Church in his realm now the center of all this learning was in the city of aen aen was the place that charlan decided was going to be his new Imperial Palace location in the Palace of aen is really the epicenter of the carolingian Renaissance Charlamagne decided that a new Imperial Palace to rival even those that are in Byzantium would be erected during his lifetime and the aen palace is largely lost to us today you can still go and see pieces of it in particular the old Palatine Chapel unfortunately though even this has been largely renovated and so the original is largely lost to us work on this Palace began as 794 and we can reconstruct part of what it looked like but the aen palace was a Marvel it had on one end the council Hall which is built in a basilica style which is to say it has a a main entrance in a long Corridor structure and at the far end there is a rounded piece or rounded curve this was the Basilica style which was first invented and worked out in Rome and it had spread throughout Europe as a whole and in the council Hall Charlemagne engaged in a number of State functions it was here in the council Hall where Charlemagne would entertain ambassadors where he would issue certain legal rulings Etc and just off this Council Hall was a very tall tower and that Tower was the treasury and the archives for the frankis Empire from the treasury Charlamagne decreed a number of reforms to the currency as gold was becoming less plentiful charlem manne turned to a more silver based currency which significantly helped with the development of currency exchange and economics and all these kinds of things as Charlamagne funded all kinds of new things in his Empire it was also the repository for all of the decisions and the artifacts in the manuscripts that would be developed at the palace and one of the things to note about the preservation of knowledge in the Middle Ages is that if it were not for this repository for this Tower significant numbers of the manuscripts from the ancient world that we still have today would have been lost something in the neighborhood of 7,000 manuscripts survived today because of the pal school at aan there are significant numbers of texts that we don't have the originals for texts that were written in Latin or in some cases in Greek but in particular the Latin text would have been lost but what happens is the Charlamagne pays for these manuscripts to be recovered from wherever they might be they are brought to aen and then they are copied and it is because of this that throughout the Middle Ages whenever people needed manuscripts you could almost always bet that at aen the manuscripts would be there and it was in the tower where many of these texts were kept on the other side of the Palace of oen was the grandest building of them allall and it is this building which we can still see pieces of today and that is the palentine chapel the palentine is in the shape of an octagon and within it on the ground floor you have three chapels you have the Chapel of Our Savior you have the Chapel of the Virgin Mary and you have the chapel of St Peter the design of it architectural historians have noted actually mimics Heavenly Jerusalem there are all kinds of Parallels for example in a mosaic that is now behind a reconstructed Mosaic from a later period you see Jesus seated with the 24 Elders hearkening to the Heavenly Jerusalem image we see in the Book of Revelation and there are other parallels as well and in this Chapel charlam would sit on the second floor up above for all to see and he would sit on a marble panel throne in the image here is that Charlemagne himself in a way occupies an elevated almost Divine seat of power you see in this that Charlemagne elevates himself that he sits on this Throne the evolution and the development of what would become in the Middle Ages the exaltation of Kings from Human rulers up the chain of being until they become quasi sacred and other things at the palace of aen are are the stuff of Legend there was a managerie there in which Charan kept an elephant that had been a gift from someone down in the Middle East there was also a gymnasium and Barracks there were thermal Springs in aen which is why the Roman armies had originally founded the city in Charlamagne had reconstructed these baths now without Pagan statues but instead with Christian statues and it was said that Charlamagne like to swim while the works of Augustine were read aloud to him and the last thing we want to say when we look at the carolingian Renaissance is the way in which Charlemagne reformed the church Charlemagne was of course intimately tied as was his father and grandfather to the papacy and charag continues the policies of enforcing and regulating the Catholic faith in his Realms and this can't be underestimated as we've noted on a few occasions if there's any faith that is in ascendency in northern Europe it is aryanism at this point there is Catholicism in other areas certain missionaries have made inroads in northern Europe but with the coming of Charlamagne what you see as a catholici Zing movement in northern Europe in which Charlamagne attempts to establish once and for all the NY faith for all of Europe and so Charlemagne does a number of things to ensure the regulation of the churches in his regions it is Charlemagne who is the first to require the tithe be enforced in all the churches that is to say 10% of all goods are to go to the church charlan also takes an interest in liturgy he requires his churches to follow the lurgical pattern that have been established in Rome he also makes efforts to ensure that the clergy are well educated or at least sufficiently educated at one point he is concerned about the poor quality of sermons in his regions and so he has drawn up a list of model sermons that he believes ought to at least be read aloud if the person who is giving the sermon is unable to come up with the sermon on his own and so Charlemagne is the first major step towards developing a cohesive Catholic identity in Western Europe the dominance of the papal Catholic religion in Western Europe in northern Europe might have been delayed if not attenuated entirely but with a strong figure stress ing the Catholic faith and stressing papal obedience we see Europe develop increasingly in the Middle Ages towards a unified Catholic Church in the end Charlamagne is one of the most important figures in European history but despite the fact that he was so successful at unifying the Empire Charlemagne's children and grandchildren nevertheless repeated some of the same problems that we saw in the maravan Dynasty in our last lecture within two generations of Constantine's death in fact we see that the Frankish Kingdom has descended into a Civil War Three Brothers loar Louis the German and Charles the bald all receive divided portions of the Frankish Kingdom and for a number of reasons they go to war with one another and loor initially has the upper hand but his other brothers Louie and Charles managed to defeat him and so in 843 we have the Treaty of Verdun and this treaty establishes the pattern of the development of European countries that actually will exist all the way down until the modern world loar is given the major portions of the former Lombard regions he is given in other words Northern Italy all the way down into the central Italian area Louis the German as the name seems to suggest gets the eastern part of the Frankish kingdoms Charles the bald on the other hand gets the western part of the Frankish kingdoms and in aquatan now this is significant because loal very quickly dies and the states that he is in charge of end up breaking up into a number of different regions the Italian states in other words all the way down to the modern world with the formation of modern Italy remain broken up and segmented for centuries the eastern and western portions of frankia however remain unified the Western portion will end up developing into modern day France and the Eastern portion over the course of several centuries will develop into modern Germany more important is the question of who gets the title of Holy Roman Emperor now there was some consideration that charlam did not believe initially that this was a hereditary title when he first appoints his heirs he actually does not appoint them to be Holy Roman Emperor he points them to his lands but not to that same title at a later date however Charlemagne does bequeath the title of Holy Roman Emperor in the end that is the Eastern portion of frania the portion that will become Germany that comes to dominate and take over the title of Holy Roman Emperor and that occurs with the coming of Otto King Otto is really the first Germanic Prince on the scene in the Middle Ages and he establishes the Holy Roman Empire as his own Dynasty that is going to be bequeathed to his sons on and on and so it is the dynasty of Eastern frania or what would become Germany that establishes itself as The Heirs to the Empire and so therefore the German peoples for nearly a millennia all the way down until very very recently in fact it is the Germans who have the Holy Roman Empire as part of their identity

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 1,550,912

Keywords: Charlemagne (Saint), Frankish Kingdom, Church History, Holy Roman Empire (Country), Charlemagne (Monarch), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, Theology (Field Of Study)

Id: 8yfhG547two

Length: 29min 9sec (1749 seconds)

Published: Wed May 28 2014