{ "id": "charlemagne", "title": "Charlemagne", "lang": "en", "source_lang": "en", "summary": "Frankish king and emperor whose conquests and reforms reshaped early medieval western Europe.", "category": "history", "subcategory": "", "type": "person", "aliases": [ "Charles the Great", "Charles I", "Carolus Magnus", "Karolus Magnus", "Karl der Große" ], "generated_at": "2026-10-22", "model": "pro/gpt-6.1-sol", "url": "https://aiwiki.page/en/charlemagne/", "translations": { "zh-Hans": { "url": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/charlemagne/", "json": "https://aiwiki.page/zh/charlemagne.json" } }, "sections": [ { "heading": "", "text": "Charlemagne (born probably in 747 or 748; died January 28, 814) was king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774, and emperor from 800. A ruler of the Carolingian dynasty, he brought extensive territories in western and central Europe under Frankish authority. His imperial coronation by Pope Leo III in Rome on December 25, 800, established a new western imperial office alongside the continuing Byzantine Empire. (unvis.it)\n\nHis reign combined military expansion with efforts to organize government, strengthen ecclesiastical institutions, and promote Christian learning. These initiatives helped shape the Carolingian Renaissance, a renewal of education, manuscript production, Latin scholarship, and religious art. Charlemagne’s empire did not remain united under his descendants, but his institutions and imperial example influenced the later Middle Ages. His historical importance also rests on the distinction between his documented reign and the many legends and political traditions subsequently attached to his name. (metmuseum.org)" }, { "heading": "Frankish Origins and Accession", "text": "The Carolingians rose to power through the office of mayor of the palace, which enabled an aristocratic family to control royal administration, resources, and military followings while Merovingian kings retained the throne. Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, consolidated this position before his death in 741 but never became king. His son Pippin III, known as Pippin the Short, initially exercised authority through the same office. In 751 Pippin assumed the royal title with papal approval and displaced Childeric III, the last Merovingian king. The distinction was fundamental: Charles Martel had governed under the existing dynasty, whereas Pippin established his own family as the royal house. (unvis.it)\n\nCharlemagne was the son of Pippin and Bertrada of Laon, but neither his birthplace nor his birth year is securely established. April 2 is recorded as his birthday in a calendar associated with Lorsch. The traditional year, 742, rests largely on statements about his age at death in 814; another annalistic tradition places his birth in 747. The alternative date of 748 reflects, in part, the possibility that an annalist counted the year from Easter rather than January 1, so that April 2, 748, could appear under 747. These conflicting chronological indications do not justify treating any one year as certain. His biographer Einhard explicitly declined to describe his birth and childhood because adequate information was lacking. (fasg.org)\n\nPapal recognition strengthened the new dynasty’s legitimacy while creating obligations toward Rome. In 754 Pope Stephen II anointed Pippin and his sons Charles and Carloman, giving religious sanction not merely to Pippin personally but also to the succession of his family. The accompanying Frankish commitment was to defend the Roman Church against Lombard pressure in Italy. Pippin’s subsequent military interventions and his territorial donation in 756 supplied a material foundation for papal government in central Italy. The alliance therefore joined dynastic recognition to military protection and territorial power; it also established a relationship that Charlemagne inherited rather than originated. (sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu)\n\nPippin died on September 24, 768, leaving the kingdom to his two surviving sons according to the Frankish practice of dividing royal inheritance. Charles and Carloman received royal consecration on October 9, at Noyon and Soissons respectively. Neither was subordinate to the other. Charles’s territories formed a broad northern and western arc, while Carloman held a more compact grouping that included Burgundy, Provence, and Alemannia; Aquitaine was divided between them. Cooperation soon failed. In 769 Carloman refused to assist Charles against a revolt in Aquitaine, exposing the political and military difficulties of their joint inheritance. (fasg.org)\n\nThe rivalry also shaped diplomacy. Around 770, with Bertrada’s involvement, Charles married a daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius, strengthening his position through an Italian alliance despite the dynasty’s established papal commitments. Carloman’s death on December 4, 771, abruptly removed the competing king. Charles took over his brother’s territories rather than preserving them for Carloman’s young sons. Their mother, Gerberga, fled with them and leading supporters to Desiderius’s court. Einhard presented Charles’s assumption of sole kingship as an election supported by the Franks, but the transfer also excluded a surviving branch of the royal family from its inheritance. (fasg.org)" }, { "heading": "Conquest and the Expansion of Frankish Rule", "text": "In 769 Charlemagne suppressed a renewed revolt in Aquitaine, continuing the conquest begun by his father, Pippin III. The rebel leader Hunald fled across the Garonne into Gascony; Charlemagne compelled Duke Lupus to surrender him and acknowledge Frankish supremacy. Expansion into Italy brought a different outcome: the acquisition of another crown. Responding to Pope Hadrian I’s appeal against King Desiderius, Charlemagne crossed the Alps in 773 and besieged Pavia, which capitulated in June 774. He deposed Desiderius and assumed the title “king of the Lombards,” rather than abolishing the Lombard kingdom. Its laws and institutional identity survived under Carolingian control; his son Pippin became its subordinate king in 781. This did not amount to conquest of the entire peninsula: Benevento retained its own rulers, despite acknowledging Frankish supremacy intermittently. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)\n\nThe Saxon wars, conventionally dated 772–804, involved repeated campaigns, negotiated submissions, hostage-taking, and renewed resistance across what is now northwestern Germany. Charlemagne’s destruction of the Saxon sanctuary known as the Irminsul in 772 connected territorial conquest with an attack on indigenous religious authority. Widukind emerged as a leading opponent, obtaining refuge in Denmark and returning to organize resistance. His submission and baptism in 785, with Charlemagne as godfather, ended one major phase of fighting but not the wars themselves. Later campaigns included forced population transfers; Einhard reports the removal of 10,000 Saxon men, together with their wives and children, from the Elbe region, conventionally associated with the concluding operations of 804. That total is a contemporary author’s figure, not a modern population count. (en.wikipedia.org)\n\nCoercion extended beyond military defeat. The Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, generally associated with the conquest period of the late eighth century, prescribed death for refusing baptism, performing pagan cremation, and certain offences against churches and clergy. Such provisions made adherence to Christianity an enforceable condition of submission, although legislation alone cannot establish how frequently individual penalties were applied. At Verden in 782, following a Saxon rebellion and a Frankish defeat at the Süntel, Charlemagne ordered mass executions. The Royal Frankish Annals give 4,500 victims; their revised version repeats that number but is not independent testimony. Other annalistic notices corroborate killings without independently verifying the total, which should therefore be distinguished from the securely attested event. (sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu)\n\nThe expedition into Spain in 778 produced no comparable conquest. Encouraged by Muslim opponents of Córdoba’s ruler, Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees but failed to secure Zaragoza. During the retreat, Basque forces ambushed his rearguard at Roncesvalles, killing several leading officers, including Roland, prefect of the Breton frontier. The attackers were Basques, not the Muslim army portrayed in later epic poetry. Subsequent expansion proceeded more gradually: campaigns conducted under Charlemagne’s son Louis, king of Aquitaine, culminated in Barcelona’s capture in 801. Frankish-held counties south of the Pyrenees formed a frontier zone commonly called the Spanish March, rather than a conquest of the Iberian interior. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)\n\nIn Bavaria, Duke Tassilo III’s deposition in 788 removed a subordinate dynasty and brought the duchy under closer royal control. Charlemagne then campaigned against the Avar khaganate in 791; further offensives during the 790s, including Pippin’s campaign in 796, broke its principal centres of power and seized substantial treasure. Frankish expansion nevertheless produced different degrees of authority. Bavaria and Saxony were incorporated into royal government, whereas surviving Avar communities could remain under dependent leaders. Beyond the Elbe, the Obodrites served as allies, while other Slavic peoples faced campaigns and demands for submission or tribute rather than uniform annexation. Denmark remained outside Frankish rule: conflict with King Gudfred was followed, under his successor Hemming, by a negotiated peace in 811. (larousse.fr)" }, { "heading": "Armies, Resources, and Frontier Organization", "text": "Charlemagne mobilized armies through royal summons transmitted to counts, bishops, abbots, and aristocratic lords, who assembled and supervised their own contingents. These forces were raised for particular expeditions, not maintained as a permanent standing army. Landholding helped determine the burden of service. A capitulary traditionally dated to 808 required a free man possessing four mansi, whether as his own property or as a benefice, to equip himself and serve with his lord or count. Smaller holders were to pool resources: two men possessing two mansi each supported one combatant, while four one-mansus holders did likewise. Such provisions distributed the expense of campaigning rather than requiring every eligible cultivator to leave his holding. An Italian capitulary of 801 prescribed a fine of sixty solidi for refusing the summons and threatened deserters with death and confiscation; these were legal prescriptions, not proof of uniform enforcement. (deremilitari.org)\n\nMounted soldiers operated alongside infantry, whose equipment could include shields, spears, and bows. A summons to Abbot Fulrad, dated approximately 804–811, required each horseman to bring a shield, lance, sword, dagger, bow, and arrows. This combination cautions against imagining an army composed exclusively of later-style charging knights. Equipment requirements also indicate expectations rather than an inventory of what every soldier actually possessed. Siege warfare demanded sustained organization as well as weapons: Einhard describes the prolonged blockade that compelled Desiderius to surrender Pavia in 774. Frankish military effectiveness therefore cannot be reduced to a single innovation such as the stirrup; it depended on combining mounted mobility, foot soldiers, engineering work, and the capacity to maintain forces around fortified places. (deremilitari.org)\n\nThe Fulrad summons makes the demands of military logistics unusually concrete. It ordered an assembly at Stassfurt on June 17 and required carts carrying three months’ food, calculated from the muster, together with arms and clothing for half a year. Axes, planes, augers, boards, spades, and iron shovels accompanied the troops. These supplies supported movement, construction, and prolonged operations, not simply battlefield fighting. The June rendezvous illustrates how a campaign could be organized around a summer muster, although it does not establish an invariable campaigning season. On the march through royal territory, Fulrad’s men were permitted to take only fodder, wood, and water; their leaders were to remain with them to restrain depredations. Provisioning thus required both advance preparation and control over soldiers’ access to local resources. (sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu)\n\nConquest also supplied movable wealth that could sustain royal generosity. Einhard emphasizes the exceptional quantities of gold, silver, and other treasure captured from the Avars during the wars of the 790s. The distribution of plunder connected military success with rewards for supporters, ecclesiastical patronage, and diplomacy, reinforcing the relationships on which further mobilization depended. It was nevertheless an irregular resource, unlike the recurring agricultural contributions needed to feed men and animals. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)\n\nFrontier security combined fortified posts, delegated commands, and relationships with neighboring rulers rather than a continuous defended boundary. In 809 Count Egbert and Saxon counts began fortifying Esesfeld, beyond the Elbe, for a Frankish garrison. Such posts remained vulnerable: the Royal Frankish Annals report that the Wiltzes captured Hohbeck in 810, where eastern Saxons and the imperial representative Odo were stationed. Negotiation could offer another means of extending authority without immediate occupation. In 809–810 Amrus, the Muslim governor of Zaragoza and Huesca, proposed submitting himself and his possessions to Charlemagne, but the projected conference did not take place. His proposal therefore represented a diplomatic possibility, not established Frankish control of those cities. (deremilitari.org)" }, { "heading": "Imperial Coronation and Foreign Relations", "text": "On April 25, 799, opponents of Pope Leo III attacked him during a procession in Rome, attempting to blind him and cut out his tongue. Leo escaped and sought Charlemagne’s protection at Paderborn. His enemies also accused him of serious misconduct, making the restoration of papal government inseparable from the question of who could judge a pope. Charlemagne sent Leo back to Rome with Frankish support and travelled there himself in November 800. At an assembly on December 23, Leo swore an oath denying the accusations; the assembled bishops declined to judge the apostolic see. This procedure restored his public standing without subjecting him to an ordinary judicial verdict. (en.wikipedia.org)\n\nOn December 25, 800, during Christmas Mass in St. Peter’s, Leo placed a crown on Charlemagne’s head, and the assembled Romans acclaimed him emperor and Augustus. Ceremonial praises followed, and the pope prostrated himself before the new emperor. The ritual combined papal action, Roman acclamation, and Christian worship: imperial authority was presented as both Roman in dignity and divinely sanctioned. For Leo, an emperor provided a powerful protector against Roman opponents; for Charlemagne, the title expressed a standing above ordinary kings and a responsibility for Christian society. Early in 801, Charlemagne condemned Leo’s attackers for treason, commuting their death sentences to exile at the pope’s request. (encyclopedia.com)\n\nEinhard, writing after Charlemagne’s death, reported that the ruler would not have entered the church had he known the pope’s intention. This retrospective statement is evidence for how the coronation was subsequently represented, not proof that the entire event was unexpected. The ceremonies indicate preparation, but whether Charlemagne objected to the title, the manner of its bestowal, or its diplomatic consequences remains disputed. Nor did the ceremony establish an agreed constitutional rule that popes could create or depose emperors: later claims of papal supremacy went beyond what the participants demonstrably settled in 800. Charlemagne continued to exercise leadership in ecclesiastical affairs rather than treating coronation as submission to papal government. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)\n\nThe principal external difficulty was the continuing Roman imperial claim of the Byzantine Empire. Some Western contemporaries treated Empress Irene’s rule as grounds for regarding the imperial office as vacant, but this argument did not extinguish the authority exercised from Constantinople. Recognition required prolonged negotiation. In 812, envoys of Emperor Michael I—including Arsaphios, Michael, and Theognostos—received the ratified peace agreement at Aachen and acclaimed Charlemagne as imperator and basileus. This acknowledged his imperial rank without conceding that he alone possessed Roman imperial sovereignty or that the eastern empire had been transferred to him. The settlement accommodated two imperial rulers rather than restoring a single government over the former Roman world. (encyclopedia.com)\n\nRelations with the Abbasid court operated through embassies and prestigious gifts. Harun al-Rashid sent the elephant Abul-Abbas, which the envoy Isaac brought to Aachen on July 20, 802, according to the Royal Frankish Annals. Einhard also associated these exchanges with Charlemagne’s interest in Jerusalem’s holy places; his account of Harun granting the Holy Sepulchre should not be read as evidence of Frankish territorial government in Jerusalem. Anglo-Saxon diplomacy had a more explicitly documented commercial dimension. In a letter of 796, Charlemagne addressed Offa of Mercia as his brother, guaranteed peaceful passage for genuine pilgrims travelling to Rome, and promised merchants protection and judicial redress. Traders travelling among pilgrims nevertheless remained liable for customary tolls. Gifts to Offa included a belt, a sword, and two silk cloaks. (saraceni.uni-koeln.de)" }, { "heading": "Kingship, Administration, and Law", "text": "Charlemagne governed through an interconnected royal household, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical hierarchy rather than a bureaucracy separated from his personal service. The palatium, or palace establishment, comprised lay and clerical companions who advised the ruler, prepared documents, managed resources, undertook embassies, and heard important lawsuits. General assemblies brought counts, bishops, abbots, and other leading men into the ruler’s presence to offer counsel, present complaints, hear decisions, and renew political relationships. These gatherings helped secure cooperation: royal commands depended on the participation of the same regional elites expected to execute them. (encyclopedia.com)\n\nCounts represented the ruler within particular districts, administering justice, maintaining peace, raising troops, and collecting royal revenues. Their rewards included income associated with office, shares of fines, and royal gifts, rather than a standardized salary. Legally knowledgeable assessors, the scabini, assisted comital courts in reaching judgments. Bishops also exercised judicial and protective responsibilities; ecclesiastical officeholding was therefore integral to government, not an external religious supplement. Royal appointments and patronage connected these institutions, while recruitment from powerful families made kinship and local influence practical resources of administration. (encyclopedia.com)\n\nThe missi dominici, or royal envoys, provided supervision beyond the ordinary authority of counts. Especially in the arrangements of 802, leading ecclesiastics and lay aristocrats served together in designated circuits, communicating commands, investigating complaints, correcting abuses, and referring unresolved matters to the emperor. The General Capitulary for the Missi of that year explicitly required reports on cases that envoys and provincial counts could not settle. It also renewed fidelity previously promised to Charlemagne as king, now owed to him as emperor, extending the requirement to males from the age of twelve. The oath encompassed more than abstention from treason: obedience to commands, respect for royal property, and proper conduct in judicial proceedings became obligations of fidelity. (en.wikipedia.org)\n\nRoyal capitularies—texts divided into chapters, or capitula—included legal supplements, administrative instructions, and ecclesiastical prescriptions. They did not replace inherited Frankish, Lombard, and other bodies of law with a single imperial code. Some added provisions to particular legal traditions; others addressed matters across the realm. Einhard, writing after Charlemagne’s death, described an intention to reconcile defects in the Franks’ two legal traditions but acknowledged that the resulting additions were limited. Such statements distinguish aspirations toward legal correction from comprehensive codification. (en.wikisource.org) Written prescriptions likewise cannot automatically establish enforcement. A comparatively clear connection survives in a Bavarian lawsuit heard by Archbishop Arn of Salzburg and fellow officials later in 802: witnesses were instructed to testify truthfully by reference to the fidelity oath sworn that year. This demonstrates local application of a royal initiative, not uniform implementation throughout the empire. (assets.cambridge.org)\n\nJustice was presented as a royal responsibility toward people vulnerable to coercion. The capitulary of 802 designated churches, widows, orphans, and strangers as objects of imperial protection, prohibited interference through gifts or family connections, and provided assistance for litigants unable to plead through infirmity or ignorance. These protections coexisted with pronounced inequalities: the same text defended imperial ownership of enslaved dependants and prohibited their fraudulent concealment as free people. (avalon.law.yale.edu) Personal lordship and grants of beneficial tenure strengthened political loyalty, but should not simply be equated with fully developed later medieval feudalism. The general fidelity oath was broader than an individual vassal’s relationship with a lord, and royal authority continued to operate through public offices, courts, and commands alongside personal bonds. The later association of hereditary fiefs with standardized vassalic obligations was not yet a uniform system. (encyclopedia.com)" }, { "heading": "Land, Society, and Economic Measures", "text": "Agriculture supplied the food, labour, and material surpluses on which royal, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical power rested. Royal estates supported the court through deliveries of produce, while grants of land helped secure service and loyalty. Large estates frequently combined a lord’s directly managed demesne with peasant holdings, or mansi, whose occupants owed specified payments and work. Independent free cultivators nevertheless remained alongside these estates; surviving documentation disproportionately records large institutional landholdings rather than small farms. Free tenants could owe rents and labour without being enslaved, while dependent peasants occupied several intermediate legal positions. Enslaved people worked both in households and on agricultural holdings, sometimes maintaining families and farms of their own. These arrangements cannot be reduced to a uniform progression from ancient slavery to medieval feudalism. (larousse.fr)\n\nThe *Capitulare de villis* provides unusually detailed instructions for managing royal property. Its precise date, authorship, and intended geographical coverage remain disputed: interpretations associate it either with Charlemagne’s estates more generally or with the administration of Aquitaine under his son Louis. It is therefore evidence of prescribed management, not a description of conditions throughout the empire. Its stewards were to maintain vineyards, livestock, fishponds, mills, workshops, and stores, and to supply the court throughout the year. Chapter 19 prescribed at least 100 chickens and 30 geese at principal estates; chapter 43 required materials for women’s textile workshops. Accountability was explicit: chapter 55 required separate records of deliveries and expenditure, while chapter 62 demanded an annual statement, sent at Christmas, itemizing income from crops, rents, livestock, crafts, markets, and other sources. Officials were also forbidden to divert estate workers to their private service. (rm.unina.it)\n\nCharlemagne’s monetary measures strengthened a silver-based currency whose principal coin was the denier, Latin denarius. The accounting relationship was \\(12\\) deniers to one solidus, and \\(20\\) solidi—or \\(240\\) deniers—to one pound, libra. The pound and solidus were accounting units, not corresponding silver coins routinely struck alongside the denier. Thus a sum expressed in solidi need not imply payment in solidus coins. The Frankfurt capitulary of 794 required the new deniers bearing Charlemagne’s name to be accepted in towns and markets, provided they were of proper weight and silver quality. This linked royal authority to the acceptability of money, although the decree itself does not establish how consistently its requirements were enforced. (moneymuseum.com)\n\nEstate production coexisted with local markets and longer-distance exchange. The estate instructions themselves envisaged purchases, including special wine and seed, rather than complete self-sufficiency. At Dorestad, on the Rhine, archaeological evidence documents an international trading settlement flourishing around 800, with merchants, boatmen, and specialized craftspeople. Such centres were important connections between regional production and wider commercial networks, but their existence does not demonstrate equal commercialization across the empire. Charlemagne’s toll regulations likewise distinguished legitimate revenue from obstructive exactions. At Thionville in 805, he authorized established, just tolls on merchants at bridges, on ships, and in markets, while rejecting new or unjust charges where no service was supplied—for example, merely passing beneath a bridge. (my.tlu.edu)\n\nRoyal intervention also addressed food prices and measurement. In 794, the Frankfurt capitulary set maximum prices per modius of grain at one denier for oats, two for barley, three for rye, and four for wheat, with lower prices for grain sold from royal estates. These were prescribed ceilings, not a surviving series of observed market prices. Measures mattered equally to estate accounting: the inventory of Asnapium, conventionally dated around 800, specifically reported that its dry and liquid measures matched those of the palace. Such records show attempts to make production, dues, and exchange comparable through shared standards, without demonstrating that local measures had everywhere disappeared. (scielo.br)" }, { "heading": "Ecclesiastical Reform and Christian Rulership", "text": "Charlemagne understood royal authority as carrying responsibility for the religious conduct and salvation of his subjects. Reform therefore joined the correction of worship and doctrine to the maintenance of justice and public order. Bishops and abbots participated as royal counsellors, administrators, and members of assemblies, while supervising the institutions through which Christian teaching reached local communities. The Admonitio generalis of 789 articulated this shared undertaking: the ruler and his advisers instructed bishops, bishops supervised priests, and priests taught the laity. This programme of correctio, or correction, sought to make the kingdom conform more closely to Christian norms; it was not simply a division between secular government and an independently administered church. (encyclopedia.com)\n\nEpiscopal supervision was intended to reach the practical details of parish ministry. The Admonitio required bishops to examine priests’ beliefs, their administration of baptism, their celebration of Mass, and their understanding of its prayers. Priests were to explain the Lord’s Prayer intelligibly, chant the psalms correctly, and teach through exemplary conduct; priests and deacons were also forbidden to bear arms. Episcopal statutes translated such requirements into instructions for local clergy. These were institutional measures for shaping established Christian communities, distinct from the compulsory conversion associated with conquest. Their repetition and the difficulties documented between bishops and priests caution against treating royal prescriptions as evidence of uniform observance. (austriaca.at)\n\nMonastic reform likewise combined spiritual discipline with supervision of people and property. A capitulary of 802 required monks to live strictly according to their rule and abbots to reside with their communities; abbesses were placed under comparable obligations. It also demanded legally knowledgeable, just officials for ecclesiastical estates and rejected the employment of greedy or oppressive agents. Tithes supported the institutional framework of religious life: the capitulary issued at Herstal in 779 required their payment and placed their distribution under episcopal authority. Such provisions made the material support of churches and the conduct of their administrators matters of royal concern. (avalon.law.yale.edu)\n\nCorrect worship depended on reliable books as well as disciplined ministers. The Admonitio warned that defective texts could cause people to pray incorrectly and required experienced copyists to prepare Gospel books, psalters, and missals. Roman practice supplied an authoritative model, but its adoption involved adaptation rather than simple replacement. Between 784 and 791 Charlemagne requested a sacramentary from Pope Hadrian I to guide Eucharistic worship. The papal book did not contain everything required in Frankish settings, and supplementary material was added. The resulting manuscript tradition combined Roman and Frankish elements, with further development under Charlemagne’s successors. The correction of books thus served liturgical reform as well as the broader revival of literate learning. (rm.unina.it)\n\nRoyal responsibility also extended to doctrinal disputes. The Council of Frankfurt in 794 condemned the Adoptionism associated with Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgell. They distinguished Christ’s natural divine sonship from an adoptive sonship according to his humanity; opponents rejected this formulation as incompatible with the unity of Christ’s person. Charlemagne mobilized councils, correspondence, and theological argument against it, with Alcuin among the principal controversialists. The dispute connected the Frankish court with Christian communities in Spain and made the defence of accepted doctrine a conspicuous royal undertaking. (biblicaltraining.org)\n\nFrankfurt also rejected what Frankish theologians understood as the demand to adore religious images made by the Byzantine Second Council of Nicaea in 787. The court-sponsored *Libri Carolini*, composed principally by Theodulf of Orléans in the early 790s, opposed both image destruction and the religious adoration of images, while permitting their use for remembrance and church decoration. Faulty Latin translations contributed to the disagreement, but did not account for every theological difference. Nicaea distinguished honour shown to images from worship owed to God alone, and Hadrian defended its position against Frankish objections. The controversy therefore exposed differences between the Frankish court, the papacy, and the Byzantine church, rather than a unified western position against the East. (cambridge.org)" }, { "heading": "Learning, Manuscripts, and the Carolingian Renaissance", "text": "Charlemagne’s court brought together scholars trained in several of western Europe’s surviving centres of learning. Alcuin of York, recruited in 781, contributed Northumbrian traditions of biblical study and teaching; Peter of Pisa, an Italian grammarian, instructed the king in Latin. Paul the Deacon, a Lombard monk associated with Monte Cassino, contributed historical writing, poetry, and religious scholarship. Theodulf, a scholar of Visigothic background who became bishop of Orléans, combined poetry with biblical and theological work. These connections made the court a meeting place for existing intellectual traditions rather than the starting point of learning after an undifferentiated period of decline. Scholars subsequently appointed to monasteries and bishoprics extended these networks beyond the royal household. (en.wikipedia.org)\n\nThe Admonitio generalis of 789 connected education with the correction of Christian practice. Its educational provisions called for schools teaching boys to read in monasteries and episcopal centres, and specified psalms, notation, chant, computus—the calculation of the ecclesiastical calendar—and grammar. It also required carefully corrected books and entrusted the copying of Gospels, psalters, and missals to mature, competent scribes rather than inexperienced pupils. These measures sought reliable worship, understanding of Scripture, and trained ecclesiastical personnel; competence in writing also served royal and episcopal administration. They were institutional prescriptions, not evidence of universal schooling or uniform implementation throughout the kingdom. (rm.unina.it)\n\nCorrecting texts required more than producing additional copies. Scholars compared manuscripts, repaired spelling and punctuation, and distinguished alternative readings. At Tours, where Alcuin became abbot of Saint-Martin in 796, his revision of the Bible concentrated particularly on correct Latin usage and punctuation. A completed volume was presented to Charlemagne at Christmas 801, but this did not make Alcuin’s version an officially imposed imperial text. Theodulf pursued a different editorial method, recording readings from different manuscript traditions in the margins. Their parallel projects show that royal encouragement supported several approaches to textual correction rather than a single, centrally controlled edition. (academic.oup.com)\n\nThe spread of Carolingian minuscule made books more legible and their production more consistent. Developed through experiments at several monasteries in the later eighth century, it was not the invention of one court scholar. Its relatively stable letter forms, reduced ambiguity, and clearer separation of words helped readers identify the text; scribes combined it with older capital and uncial scripts to distinguish headings from the main body. Copying and collecting embraced patristic writings and classical Latin literature as well as Scripture. Classical authors supplied models of grammar, expression, and composition, while Carolingian copies became important witnesses through which numerous ancient works survived. (hmmlschool.org)\n\nThe term Carolingian Renaissance therefore denotes a renewal of teaching, textual scholarship, book production, and learned Latin, principally within courts and ecclesiastical institutions; it does not imply a general transformation of popular literacy or the same cultural programme as the later Renaissance. Its chronology extends beyond Charlemagne’s death in 814 into the reigns of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald. Tours illustrates this continuation particularly clearly: forty-six complete Bibles and eighteen Gospel books survive from its production during the first half of the ninth century. Copyists there could work simultaneously on separate gatherings of parchment, followed by comparison against exemplars—an organized process that helped sustain manuscript production under Alcuin’s successors. (oyc.yale.edu)" }, { "heading": "Aachen, Architecture, and Court Culture", "text": "Aachen became Charlemagne’s principal residence during the 790s, rather than replacing an itinerant court at a single moment. Campaigns, assemblies, and visits to royal estates continued to take the ruler elsewhere; Einhard also records substantial palaces at Ingelheim and Nijmegen. Aachen nevertheless offered an increasingly stable setting for the royal court. Its hot springs were a particular attraction: Einhard describes Charlemagne bathing with his sons, friends, nobles, and attendants, sometimes in gatherings of a hundred or more. Such occasions combined recreation with the personal access on which court relationships depended. (en.wikipedia.org)\n\nThe palace complex joined monumental spaces for royal business and worship. At its northern end stood the King’s Hall, approximately 47 metres long and 21 metres wide; a connecting wing extended south towards the church of the Virgin Mary, now the Carolingian core of Aachen Cathedral. These buildings accommodated distinct but closely associated aspects of rulership: audiences and assemblies in the hall, religious observance in the chapel. The exact location of the residential quarters remains unidentified, warning against treating reconstructions of the entire palace as equally certain. Surviving structures and excavated remains establish its monumental framework more securely than the arrangement of the ruler’s private household. (rathaus-aachen.de)\n\nBuilt around 800, the Palatine Chapel organized its interior around a tall central octagon enclosed by a sixteen-sided ambulatory and an upper gallery. Massive piers and arches supported the central vault, while columns screened the gallery openings. Its centralized design recalled late antique and Byzantine churches, notably San Vitale at Ravenna, without simply reproducing that building. The connection with Mediterranean imperial culture was material as well as formal: Einhard explicitly records the transport of columns and marble from Rome and Ravenna. Reused ancient stone, bronze doors, and bronze railings gave the chapel a richness unusual in northern European monumental architecture. These choices associated a Frankish royal foundation with the prestigious building traditions of Christian antiquity. (rathaus-aachen.de)\n\nCourt-sponsored objects made comparable adaptations on a smaller scale. The Godescalc Evangelistary, produced in 781–783 for Charlemagne and Hildegard, supplies an unusually firm chronological anchor: its dedicatory verses identify the scribe and commission, while its calendar commemorates the baptism of Charlemagne’s son Carloman at Rome in 781. Its images of Christ and the evangelists and its Fountain of Life transformed the liturgical book into a lavish visual expression of Christian kingship. More generally, Carolingian manuscript illumination and ivory carving combined antique figure types and author portraits with ornamental traditions inherited from northern European art. An early ninth-century ivory of Saint John, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and catalogued as made at Aachen, exemplifies this sculptural treatment of an evangelist. Its original function remains debated: formerly interpreted as a book-cover plaque, it has also been reconstructed as part of a triptych. (omci.inha.fr)\n\nReligious ceremony activated these architectural and artistic settings. Einhard describes Charlemagne attending the chapel regularly and ensuring that its vessels, vestments, and services were properly maintained; gifts of precious liturgical objects and illustrated books also extended royal patronage to monasteries beyond Aachen. Such practices presented royal resources as serving Christian worship, while references to antiquity gave that patronage an imperial visual language. Particular objects, however, require separate dating. The marble throne in the chapel’s western gallery is conventionally associated with Charlemagne, but its use by him is not securely established: its first written attestation concerns Otto I’s coronation in 936. Its later ceremonial importance therefore cannot by itself establish the precise arrangement of Charlemagne’s court worship. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)" }, { "heading": "Household, Succession, and Death", "text": "Charlemagne’s household included successive wives, unmarried partners, children, and grandchildren, but the classification of his earliest unions is uncertain. Himiltrude, mother of Pippin the Hunchback, is described as a concubine by Einhard, although other evidence has supported interpretations of their relationship as a marriage. In 770 Charlemagne married a daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius, whose personal name is not securely established; he repudiated her in 771. His subsequent marriage to Hildegard, conventionally dated to 771, produced nine children, including Charles the Younger, Pippin of Italy, and Louis. After Hildegard’s death in 783, he married Fastrada, mother of Theodrada and Hiltrude. Fastrada died in 794; his marriage to Liutgard followed between 794 and 796 and lasted until her death in 800. No children are recorded from that union. Later partners included Regina, mother of Drogo and Hugh, and Ethelind, mother of Theodoric. (fasg.org)\n\nChildren received instruction appropriate to both court life and dynastic responsibilities. Einhard states that sons and daughters studied the liberal arts; boys additionally learned riding, warfare, and hunting, while girls learned spinning and weaving. Daughters remained important members of the court, rather than simply becoming instruments of marriage diplomacy. Rotrude was betrothed in 781 to the future Byzantine emperor Constantine VI, but the arrangement was subsequently abandoned. None of Charlemagne’s daughters is securely known to have married, although several had children: Bertha’s sons by the courtier Angilbert included the historian Nithard. Einhard attributes their unmarried status to their father’s reluctance to part with them, an explanation that should be distinguished from independently documented policy. The wider family also included Charlemagne’s sister Gisela, abbess of Chelles, and Pippin of Italy’s daughters, whom he brought into his household after their father’s death. (sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu)\n\nSons could exercise delegated kingship during their father’s lifetime. In 781 Pope Hadrian I anointed Pippin king of Italy and Louis king of Aquitaine; both developed regional courts but remained subordinate to Charlemagne’s overriding authority. Charles the Younger stayed more closely associated with his father and undertook military commands. Pippin the Hunchback, Charlemagne’s son by Himiltrude, followed a different course. In 792 he participated in a conspiracy against his father while the court was at Regensburg. After its discovery, he was tonsured and confined to the monastery of Prüm, removing him from secular dynastic competition. Einhard connects the conspirators’ grievances with Fastrada’s alleged harshness, but this is his explanation of the revolt rather than an established account of its causes. (en.wikipedia.org)\n\nThe Divisio regnorum, issued at Thionville in 806, envisaged a division of rule after Charlemagne’s death among Charles, Pippin, and Louis. Charles would receive the Frankish heartlands and extensive northern and eastern territories; Pippin would retain Italy with additional transalpine lands; Louis would retain Aquitaine and receive territories including Provence and parts of Burgundy. The settlement urged cooperation between the brothers but did not explicitly allocate the imperial title. It never took effect: Pippin died in 810 and Charles in 811. Pippin’s son Bernard was established as ruler in Italy, while Louis became the principal heir. At an assembly in Aachen in September 813, Charlemagne elevated Louis the Pious to co-emperor with the assent of the assembled magnates; no papal participation was involved. (persee.fr)\n\nCharlemagne died at Aachen on January 28, 814, leaving Louis to succeed as emperor. Einhard reports that the body was washed, prepared, and buried that same day in the church of St Mary, the palace chapel. He also describes a gilded arch bearing an inscription over the grave. These early details must be separated from stories associated with Otto III’s opening of the tomb in 1000: accounts of Charlemagne sitting upright on a throne, crowned and holding royal insignia, belong to later narrative traditions, not contemporary evidence for the burial of 814. (sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu)" }, { "heading": "Historical Evidence, Afterlives, and Legacy", "text": "Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni, written after Charlemagne’s death in 814, combines privileged knowledge with deliberate commemoration. A former courtier, Einhard explicitly acknowledged his debt to the ruler who had supported him. His organization of military achievements, personal habits, household, and appearance followed the imperial biographies of Suetonius: apparently intimate details therefore belong to a crafted literary portrait, not an unmediated eyewitness record. The Royal Frankish Annals, covering 741–829, supply a fuller chronology but likewise reflect court priorities. Their original account omitted the Frankish reverse in the Pyrenees in 778; a revised version acknowledged it. Comparing versions exposes changes in the dynasty’s presentation of its past. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)\n\nAdministrative and material evidence can qualify these narratives without eliminating their own interpretive difficulties. Capitularies record commands and reform programmes, not proof that every instruction was enforced. Their survival in locally assembled manuscript collections also makes transmission part of the evidence. Preservation is strikingly uneven: a single surviving manuscript contains both Leo III’s letters to Charlemagne and the Capitulare de villis. Coins provide independently datable evidence of titulature and political imagery; portrait deniers depicting Charlemagne in antique dress express imperial claims rather than guaranteeing a realistic likeness. Manuscripts reveal copying, correction, and circulation, while archaeology at Aachen and other royal properties allows written descriptions of estates and provisioning to be tested against physical remains. (compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)\n\nThe empire’s division was a succession process, not the execution of a national blueprint. Following Louis the Pious’s death in 840 and warfare among his sons, the Treaty of Verdun of 843 assigned West Francia to Charles the Bald, East Francia to Louis the German, and a middle kingdom extending from the North Sea to Italy to Lothair I, who retained the imperial title. These were dynastic shares of a common inheritance. Their relationship to later France and Germany should not obscure the middle kingdom, subsequent repartitions, or the absence of modern national boundaries and sovereignty in the settlement itself. (metmuseum.org)\n\nLiterary remembrance transformed a defeated rearguard into the centre of a Christian imperial epic. The Song of Roland, composed around 1100, reworked the Basque ambush of 778 into a struggle against Muslim enemies, compounded by Ganelon’s betrayal. Einhard identifies Roland among the fallen commanders; the poem makes him Charlemagne’s nephew and exemplary warrior, whose death demands vengeance. Its aged emperor, miraculous interventions, and immense opposing armies belong to epic poetry, not to a recoverable campaign report. Other chansons de geste extended the transformation: Aspremont supplied legendary Italian adventures, while poems about rebellious barons made Charlemagne’s court a setting for conflicts between royal authority and aristocratic loyalty. (sourcebooks.fordham.edu)\n\nRulers and religious institutions also appropriated his authority. In 1165 Frederick Barbarossa sponsored Charlemagne’s canonization through the antipope Paschal III, giving imperial remembrance a cultic focus at Aachen. The later Holy Roman Empire claimed continuity with his imperial office, but its designation was not Charlemagne’s own: “Holy Empire” appears in 1157, and the fuller “Holy Roman Empire” in the thirteenth century. French imperial claims could draw on the same predecessor. Napoleon’s decree annexing the Papal States in 1809 invoked Charlemagne as an illustrious ancestor in office and treated his supposed donations as grounds for intervention. Such uses selected precedents suited to later political circumstances rather than preserving an unchanged Carolingian constitution. (aachenerdom.de)\n\nThe description “father of Europe” is an interpretive label, not a constitutional achievement measurable against modern European institutions. It emphasizes the geographical reach and shared inheritance of his rule while risking anachronism if conquest and Christian kingship are equated with voluntary integration. Aachen’s International Charlemagne Prize, first awarded in 1950 for services to European unity, institutionalized this post-war reading of his memory. Its symbolism concerns reconciliation and cooperation among later European societies, rather than the restoration of his empire’s frontiers or political order. (en.wikipedia.org)" } ], "links": [ "europe", "rome", "byzantine-empire", "education", "latin", "middle-ages", "italy", "germany", "christianity", "spain", "epic-poetry", "logistics", "constantinople", "sovereignty", "abbasid-caliphate", "household", "government", "kinship", "law", "feudalism", "market", "money", "trade", "literacy", "translation", "grammar", "bible", "literature", "renaissance", "court", "architecture", "archaeology", "france" ], "sources": [ { "title": "Internet History Sourcebooks: Einhard: The Life of Charlemagne", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/einhard.asp" }, { "title": "Charlemagne — The Henry Project", "url": "https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/charl000.htm" }, { "title": "Internet History Sourcebooks: Annals of Lorsch", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/lorsch1.asp" }, { "title": "Archive Larousse: Grande Encyclopédie Larousse — Charlemagne ou Charles Ier le Grand", "url": "https://www.larousse.fr/archives/grande-encyclopedie/page/2847" }, { "title": "Einhard: The Life of Charlemagne", "url": "https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/einhard.asp" }, { "title": "Charlemagne", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne" }, { "title": "Charlemagne: Capitulary for Saxony 775–790", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/carol-saxony.asp" }, { "title": "Massacre of Verden", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Verden" }, { "title": "Charlemagne — Charles Ier le Grand, en latin Carolus Magnus", "url": "https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/personnage/Charlemagne/112805" }, { "title": "Charlemagne’s way of raising troops", "url": "https://deremilitari.org/2013/06/charlemagnes-way-of-raising-troops/" }, { "title": "Carolingian Arms and Armor in the Ninth Century", "url": "https://deremilitari.org/2014/02/carolingian-arms-and-armor-in-the-ninth-century/" }, { "title": "Medieval Sourcebook: Charlemagne: Summons to Army c.804-11", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/carol-sum1.asp" }, { "title": "The years 808 to 810 from the Annals of the Kingdom of the Franks", "url": "https://deremilitari.org/RESOURCES/SOURCES/charlemagne3.htm" }, { "title": "Pope Leo III", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_III" }, { "title": "Charlemagne", "url": "https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/french-history-biographies/charlemagne" }, { "title": "Leo III, Pope, St.", "url": "https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/leo-iii-pope-st" }, { "title": "I PBE: Arsaphios 3", "url": "https://pbe.kcl.ac.uk/data/D15/F13.htm" }, { "title": "Imperial titles and Byzantine recognition", "url": "https://cdn.administrace.tv/2021/11/16/77465061909d926bc25d5c3c56bfa02f.pdf" }, { "title": "Annales regni Francorum 0010 – Repertorium Saracenorum", "url": "https://saraceni.uni-koeln.de/wiki/Annales_regni_Francorum_0010" }, { "title": "Charlemagne and Offa, King of Mercia", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/796CharlemagentoOffa.asp" }, { "title": "The Avalon Project: Capitulary of Charlemagne Issued in the Year 802", "url": "https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/capitula.asp" }, { "title": "Charlemagne’s Practice of Empire — Excerpt", "url": "https://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/76990/excerpt/9781107076990_excerpt.pdf" }, { "title": "1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Capitulary", "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Capitulary" }, { "title": "1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Feudalism", "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Feudalism" }, { "title": "Carolingiens — LAROUSSE", "url": "https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/groupe-personnage/Carolingiens/111832" }, { "title": "Agricultural production — The Carolingian Economy", "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/carolingian-economy/agricultural-production/D71E661A54E750D07CB11DD936E80689" }, { "title": "Slavery in the Carolingian empire", "url": "https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A3512a463-67a9-49b9-bbeb-f722721f1dcd" }, { "title": "Capitulary De Villis, c. 800", "url": "https://my.tlu.edu/ICS/icsfs/ManorialismSources6pg.pdf?target=c408d49b-1345-4dc7-bf29-6de0b9aec9c0" }, { "title": "The History of Money", "url": "https://www.moneymuseum.com/pdf/yesterday/02_Accross_the_Times/28%20The%20History%20of%20Money.pdf" }, { "title": "Système monétaire du royaume de France", "url": "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syst%C3%A8me_mon%C3%A9taire_du_royaume_de_France" }, { "title": "Capitulary of Frankfort on the Legality of Coinage, 794", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/750caroling-money.asp" }, { "title": "Restrictions on Tolls, 805", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/805Chartoll.asp" }, { "title": "Valor e cálculo econômico na Alta Idade Média", "url": "https://www.scielo.br/j/tem/a/SRj5tqCGWspPPyQ5rvQw7hL/?lang=pt" }, { "title": "Priests and the Carolingian reforms: the bottlenecks of local correctio", "url": "https://austriaca.at/0xc1aa5576_0x0013712d.pdf" }, { "title": "Charlemagne: General Capitulary of the Missi, 802", "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/802Charlemagne-capitulary.asp" }, { "title": "Capitulary of Herstal", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulary_of_Herstal" }, { "title": "'Sacramentary' (fragment) - Special Collections - Utrecht University", "url": "https://www.uu.nl/en/special-collections/collections/manuscripts/other-medieval/sacramentary-fragment" }, { "title": "Adoptionism", "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01150a.htm" }, { "title": "Empire, Ethnic Election and Exegesis in the Opus Caroli (Libri Carolini)", "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-church-history/article/abs/empire-ethnic-election-and-exegesis-in-the-opus-caroli-libri-carolini/4CF0C3448FAE428A5728A09E11A589C6" }, { "title": "The Carolingian Answer to the Iconoclastic War and the Birth of Western Art", "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/carolingian-answer-to-the-iconoclastic-war-and-the-birth-of-western-art/520A7CA282F55CBAA92D8D7F05AF7CA7" }, { "title": "Caroline Books (Libri Carolini)", "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03371b.htm" }, { "title": "Alcuin", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcuin" }, { "title": "HIST 210 - Lecture 20 - Intellectuals and the Court of Charlemagne", "url": "https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-210/lecture-20" }, { "title": "Latin Scripts - Carolingian Manuscripts", "url": "https://hmmlschool.org/latin-caroline/" }, { "title": "Further Subject | Oxford Centre for Global History", "url": "https://global.history.ox.ac.uk/further-subject" }, { "title": "Palace of Aachen", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Aachen" }, { "title": "The Palace of Charlemagne", "url": "https://rathaus-aachen.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/The-Town-Hall_E_web.pdf" }, { "title": "5/681—Godescalc Evangelistary", "url": "https://elmss.nuigalway.ie/catalogue/1067" }, { "title": "Godescalc, Evangéliaire de Charlemagne, Christ en Majesté", "url": "https://agorha.inha.fr/ark%3A/54721/056af157-89f6-4a38-ac10-fcd9d39f6803" }, { "title": "Fountain of life (Evangeliaire de Charlemagne ou de Godescalc, F3v)", "url": "https://utpictura18.univ-amu.fr/en/notice/17819-fountain-of-life-evangeliaire-charlemagne-godescalc-f3v" }, { "title": "Imperial throne", "url": "https://www.aachenerdom.de/en/a-place-of-history/imperial-throne/" }, { "title": "A peek into the personal life of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor", "url": "https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/charlemagne-ancient-roman-empire" }, { "title": "Bemerkungen zur « Divisio regnorum » des Jahres 806", "url": "https://www.persee.fr/doc/alma_0994-8090_1954_num_24_2_2355" }, { "title": "Charlemagne - Aachener Dom", "url": "https://www.aachenerdom.de/en/a-place-of-history/charlemagne/" }, { "title": "From Tintagel to Aachen", "url": "https://www.reading.ac.uk/gcms/-/media/project/functions/research/graduate-centre-for-medieval-studies/documents/rms201201-d-rollason-from-tintagel-to-aachen.pdf?hash=FF10B534730B109C83A59CE6118FD8C3&la=en" }, { "title": "King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne — Introduction", "url": "https://content.ucpress.edu/title/9780520314207/9780520314207_intro.pdf" }, { "title": "Royal Frankish Annals", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Frankish_Annals" }, { "title": "Nouvelle découverte : un denier carolingien extrèmement rare peut être admiré au Centre Charlemagne", "url": "https://centre-charlemagne.eu/ausstellungen/nouvelle-decouverte-un-denier-carolingien-extremement-rare-peut-etre-admire-au-centre-charlemagne/?lang=fr" }, { "title": "Le Traité de Verdun", "url": "https://www.verdun.fr/connaitre-ma-ville-et-mon-agglo/ville/les-archives-municipales/terre-dhistoire/le-traite-de-verdun/" }, { "title": "Song of Roland", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Roland" }, { "title": "1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Charlemagne", "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Charlemagne" } ], "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" }