4560 AM · 800 CE · world history
Charlemagne
On Christmas Day in Rome the king of the Franks is crowned emperor: the West has an empire again.
Charlemagne subdues nearly all of Christian Western Europe, from the Pyrenees to the Elbe. Pope Leo III crowns him emperor—at once a revival of the Roman idea and a challenge to Constantinople. His court at Aachen gathers scholars, restores Latin literacy and develops the clear Carolingian minuscule from which our lower-case letters descend.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the Frankish annals and Einhard's Life of Charlemagne — the coronation of 800 and Charles’s wars — in the annals of the Frankish kingdom; the living portrait is Einhard’s
Scholarship
- studies in European history — the Carolingian renaissance: the scriptoria, the minuscule, the court at Aachen
Basis: documents and evidence.