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Charlemagne (c. 742 or 747 – January 28,
814) (or Charles the Great, in German
language|German Karl der Große, in Latin Carolus
Magnus, giving rise to the adjective form
"Carolingian"), was king of the Franks from 771 to
814, King of the Lombards since 774, and the
renewer of the Holy Roman Empire|Western Empire.
His dual role as Emperor - Imperator Augustus -
and List_of_Frankish_Kings|King of the Franks
provides the historical link between the Holy
Roman Emperor|Imperial dignity and the Frankish
kingdoms and later List of German Kings and
Emperors|Germany. Today both France and Germany
look unto him as a founding figure of their
respective countries.

== Date of birth ==
Charlemagne's birthday was believed to be April 1,
742, but several factors led to reconsideration of
this traditional date. First, the year 742 was
calculated from his age given at death, rather
than attested with primary sources. Second, 742
precedes the marriage of his parents (in 744), yet
there is no indication that Charlemagne was born
out of wedlock, and he inherited from his parents.
Another date is given in the Annales Petarienses,
April 1, 747. In that year, April 1 is Easter. The
birth of an Emperor on Easter is a coincidence
likely to provoke comment, but there is no such
comment documented in 747, leading some to suspect
the Easter birthday was a pious fiction concocted
as a way of honoring the Emperor. Other
commentators weighing the primary records have
suggested that the birth was one year later, 748.
So at present, it is impossible to be certain of
the date of the birth of Charlemagne. The best
guesses include April 1, 747, after April 15, 747,
or April 1, 748.

== Life == 

Charlemagne was the elder son of Pippin the
Younger (714 – 24 September 768, reigned 751
– 768) and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720
– 12 July 783); he was the brother of the
Lady Bertha mother of Roland.

On the death of Pippin the kingdom was divided
between Charlemagne and his brother Carloman, son
of Pippin III|Carloman. Charles took the outer
parts of the kingdom, bordering on the sea, namely
Neustria, Aquitania and the northern parts of
Austrasia, while Carloman attained the inner
parts, bordering on Italy.

Carloman died on 5 December 771, leaving
Charlemagne the leader of a reunified Frankish
kingdom.

Shortly after that, he marched against the
Lombards in Italy. In 774 he deposed their king
Desiderius and was himself crowned king of the
Lombards, permanently unifying the King of
Italy|kingdom of Italy to the Frankish crown.

Charlemagne was engaged in almost constant battle
throughout his reign. After thirty years of war
and 18 battles, he conquered Saxony, a goal that
had been the unattainable dream of Caesar
Augustus|Augustus, and proceeded to convert the
conquered to Catholicism|Catholic Christianity,
using force where necessary. He dreamed of the
reconquest of Spain, but never fully succeeded in
this goal.

In 797 (801|801?) the caliph of Baghdad, Harun
al-Rashid, presented Emperor Charlemagne with an
Asian elephant named Abul-Abbas (See History of
elephants in Europe.)

In 800, at Mass on Christmas day in Rome, Pope Leo
III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum
(Emperor of the Romans). Though this, according to
the sources, occurred against his intentions,
Charles thus became the renewer of the Western
Empire, that had expired in the 5th century. To
avoid frictions with the Byzantine Empire|Eastern
Emperor, Charles later called himself not
Imperator Romanorum (a title reserved for the
Eastern Emperor), but rather as Imperator Romanum
gubernans Imperium (Emperor ruling the Roman
Empire).

Pursuing his father's reforms, Charlemagne did
away with the monetary system based on the gold
sou. Both he and King Offa of Mercia took up the
system set in place by Pippin. He set up a new
standard, the livre (i.e. pound)— both
monetary and unit of weight— which was worth
20 sous (like the solidus, and later the shilling)
or 240 deniers (like the denari, and eventually
the penny). During this period, the livre and the
sou were counting units, only the denier was a
coin of the realm.

Charlemagne applied the system to much of the
European Continent, and Offa's standard was
voluntarily adopted by much of England.



Charlemagne organized his empire into 350
counties, each led by an appointed count. Counts
served as judges, administrators, and enforced
capitularies. To enforce loyalty, he set up the
system of missi dominici, meaning 'Envoys of the
Lord.' In this system, one representative of the
church and one representative of the emperor would
head to the different counties and every year
report back to Charlemagne on their status.



When Charlemagne died in 814, he was buried in his
own Aachen Cathedral|Cathedral at Aachen. He was
succeeded by his only son to survive him, Louis
the Pious, after whose reign the empire was
divided between his three surviving sons according
to Franks|Frankish tradition. These three kingdoms
would be the foundations of later France and the
Holy Roman Empire.

After Charlemagne's death, continental coinage
degraded and most of Europe resorted to using the
continued high quality English coin until about
1100.

It is difficult to understand Charlemagne's
attitude toward his daughters. None of them
contracted a sacramental marriage. This may have
been an attempt to control the number of potential
alliances. After his death the surviving daughters
entered or were forced to enter monasteries. At
least one of them, Bertha, had a recognized
relationship, if not a marriage, with Angilbert, a
member of Charlemagne's court circle.

Charlemagne's mother tongue was the Old High
German dialect called Frankish language|Frankish.
He also spoke Latin and understood some Greek.

==Cultural significance==


Charlemagne's reign is often referred to as the
Carolingian renaissance|Carolingian Renaissance
because of the flowering of scholarship,
literature, art and architecture. Most of the
surviving works of classical Latin were copied and
preserved by Carolingian scholars. The
pan-European nature of Charlemagne's influence is
indicated by the origins of many of the men who
worked for him: Alcuin, an
Anglo-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon; Theodulf, a
Visigoths|Visigoth; Paul the Deacon, a
Lombards|Lombard; and Angilbert and Einhard,
Franks. Charlemagne enjoyed an important afterlife
in European culture. One of the great medieval
literature cycles, the Charlemagne cycle or Matter
of France, centres around the deeds of
Charlemagne's historical commander of the Breton
border, Roland, and the paladins who served as a
counterpart to the knights of the Round Table
(Camelot)|Round Table; their tales were first told
in the chanson de geste|chansons de geste.
Charlemagne himself was accorded sainthood inside
the Holy Roman Empire after the 12th Century. His
canonization by Antipope Paschal III was never
recognized by the Holy See. He was a model knight
as one of the Nine Worthies.

It is frequently claimed by genealogy|genealogists
that all people with European ancestry alive today
are probably descended from Charlemagne. However,
only a small percentage can actually prove descent
from him. Charlemagne's marriage and relationship
politics and ethics did, however, result in a
fairly large number of descendants, all of whom
had far better life expectancies than is usually
the case for children in that time period. They
were married into houses of nobility and as a
result of intermarriages many people of noble
descent can indeed trace their ancestry back to
Charlemagne.

Another interesting note about Charlemagne was
that he took a serious effort in his and others'
scholarship and had learned to read in his
adulthood, although he never quite learned how to
write. This was quite an achievement for kings at
this time, of whom most were illiterate.

Charlemagne's genealogical tree was quite
extensive, and can be traced almost completely up
to modern times; among the well known direct
descendants of Charlemagne are William Howard
Taft, 27th President of the United States and
British actor Christopher Lee.



==Charlemagne's portraits==

The Roman tradition of realistic personal
portraiture was in complete eclipse at the time of
Charlemagne, where individual traits were
submerged in iconic typecastings. Charlemagne, as
an ideal ruler, ought to be portrayed in the
corresponding fashion, any contemporary would have
assumed. The images of enthroned Charlemagne,
God's representative on Earth, bear more
connections to the icons of Christ in Majesty than
to modern (or Antique) conceptions of portraiture.
Even the verbal portrait by Einhard suppresses
details that would have been indecorous in this
context. Charlemagne in later imagery (see Dürer
portrait right) is often portrayed with flowing
blond hair, due to a misunderstanding of Einhart's
Vita caroli Magni (chapter 22) where Charlemagne
in his age had canitie pulchra "beautiful white
hair" which has been rendered as blond or fair in
many translations. The Latin word for blond is
"flavus", and "rutilo", meaning 'golden-red' or
'auburn', is the word Tacitus uses for the
Germans' hair.


==Family==
===Marriages===
* Himiltrude
* Ermengarda or Desiderata
* Hildegard of Savoy (married Abt 771)
(758–783)
* Fastrada (married 784) (d. 794)
* Luitgard (married 794) (d. 800)

===Children===
* Pepin the Hunchback (d. 813)
* Charles, King of Neustria (d. 811)
* Pepin, King of Italy (ruled 781–810)
* Louis the Pious|Louis I The Pious, King of
Aquitaine, Emperor (ruled 814–840)
* Lothair I|Lothar (d. 779 or 780)

Six Daughters:
* Adelheid (b. 774)		
* Rhotrud (775-810)		
* Hildegarde (777-777)		
* Bertha (779-823)		
* Gisele (781-808)      
* Aupais? 


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succession box two to one|before1=Pippin the
Younger|after=Louis the Pious|Louis I|title1=List
of Frankish Kings|Frankish
King|years1=771–814|before2=_|title2=List of
Holy Roman Emperors|Holy Roman
Emperor|years2=800-814
end box

==Further reading==
*Alessandro Barbero: Charlemagne, father of a
continent. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 2004 ISBN 0-520-23943-1

==Related articles==
* Franks (main history of Frankish kingdoms)
* List of Frankish Kings
* Carolingians
* Nine Worthies

==External links==
* A reconstructed portrait of Charlemagne by Marco
Bakker:
http://www.reportret.info/gallery/charlemagne1.htm
l Reportret: Charlemagne.
* House of Pippin / Dynasty of Charlemagne by Ed
Stephan:
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Rulers/charlemagne.
html Genealogy of Charlemagne.