OVERVIEW

Charlemagne’s name comes from the Latin Carolus Magnus, meaning “Charles the Great.” He was the king of the Franks from 768 and emperor of the Romans from 800 until he died in 814. The reason he is called “the Great” is because of what he did to the map of Europe, both in terms of land and in terms of culture. He expanded the small Frankish kingdom into an area larger than France is now, incorporating parts of northern Spain and Italy, western Germany, and a great amount of central Europe. Adding Italy to his lands earned him the gratitude of the pope, who crowned him “Imperator Augustus” on December 25, 800.

He didn’t start out that great, though. He was the eldest son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, and his parents were not technically married until after he was born—as a way of making sure Bertrada produced a son, otherwise, why get married? She did produce more children after the wedding—including Charles’s brother Carloman, with whom he never got along. After their father’s death in 768, following tradition and law, the kingdom of the Franks was divided between the brothers. They soon began to squabble, but Carloman died in 771 before the two could resort to warring. Charlemagne continued in his father’s footsteps, protecting the papacy, and settling power struggles in both Italy and Spain. One of his incursions into Spain has become very famous—as his army retreated from his attempts to offer military aid in Barcelona, he was attacked by the Basques at the battle of Roncesvalles in 778—and the battle was memorialized in fiction as the Song of Roland. Charlemagne’s commitment to Christianity encouraged him to campaign against the Saxons in the northeast, and after a long series of wars he subdued them, converted them, and added them to his realm.

His empire united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire, and today he is considered the founding father of both French and German monarchies. He is also the “Father of Europe” because his actions spurred the creation of a common European identity.