Charlemagne
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Welcome to the podcast, folks. Charlemagne. Charles le Magne. Charles the Great. The first Holy Roman Emperor. Had the rare distinction of being included on lists of kings on both sides of the Rhine. Charles I of France. Karl de Grosse in Germany. He forged a mighty empire.

from the North Sea to the Adriatic, from the Pyrenees to the Elbe. His court became a crucible of European culture. His empire has inspired would-be conquerors ever since. This is a podcast all about the great man, the warrior, the scholar, the religious zealot, the reformer. You've got Matt in this, tell us all about it. He's very brilliant, a professor of history and deputy vice-chancellor at Birkbeck University of London.

And of the many things he really highlighted for me in this conversation, I suppose firstly, he taught me how greatness is a generational project. He was born in the mid-700s, the great grandson of Pepin, grandson of the mighty Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer, son of another conquering Pepin.

And following on from their three successful reigns of conquest, he completed that job. He expanded the empire still further. And then over a very long rule, he consolidated that empire too, turned it into something quite different. Early in his year, he conquered Northern Italy and great swathes of Germany, and he deepened his family's control of France and the Low Countries. But then he went on to do something extraordinary. He forged the idea of a Christian empire.

His family's rule legitimized by their mission to advance Christ's kingdom on earth. Stability locked into oaths of loyalty sworn on the Bible. He standardized weights and measures. He encouraged scholars to come from across Europe to his court. He developed educational curricula. He lectured his elites, his nobility, his warrior elites on good conduct, on good government.

He had brought architects north to create marvels like his chapel and palace in Aachen, symbols of Roman ideas and methods carried throughout Europe. His control of a great chunk of Western Europe, which actually I think was the largest empire in Europe since the Caesars, meant that there was an age of relative peace, of stability, a golden age of trade. He reintroduced the idea, in fact, of an emperor to Europe.

when many thought that the time for emperors was past. He was a diplomat as well as a warrior. I was very struck by his close links with the Abbasid ruler, Harun al-Rashid, the man who controlled much of what we now call the Middle East and North Africa. They were close enough for Harun al-Rashid to send him an elephant, which he grew very fond of, apparently. On and off his elephant, Charlemagne is a towering figure of European history. And now, friends, he's on the podcast. Enjoy it.

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Matt, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Brilliant to be here, Dan. Just try and give us a sense of what Europe looked like in the 8th century, because I think it will not be very familiar to most people listening to this. Absolutely. And clearly, this is a critical moment as you move from a sort of

Roman Mediterranean geography towards something that's perhaps more familiar to us from the high Middle Ages, where the political units that eventually, via a very long process,

emerge into the modern nation states of Europe. Some of that, of course, is to do with the histories and constructions that people in the 19th and 20th century have put on this period. Looking back, a lot of the literature is about searches for origins. But in terms of the geography, Dan, after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, there have been a number of militarised aristocratic groupings that have taken on

ethnic identities in terms of being Frankish or Gothic that have established sort of successor states with varying degrees of Roman influence, but really by mobilizing military power and ethnic identity to forge out a new,

aristocratic, military power, land-based society that starts in important ways by the 7th century to differ from the ancient world. By 700, the critical and biggest unit in Western Europe is

is what's loosely called the Frankish Kingdom, and it's very loosely held together by the Merovingian dynasty, who are seen as a source of legitimacy and trace their origins back to a semi-legendary figure known as Clovis, who's operating at the end of the 5th century.

The Merovingian dynasty, its heartland is in modern northern France and the Paris Basin, which is in their parlance in 700 known as Neustria, the new eastern land.

There's also a powerful unit to the east of that in the Low Countries and modern West Germany, Austrasia, the Eastern Land, and those are known as the two Frankish heartlands, along with Burgundy to the south, which is sort of tied in with Neustria.

That is the core Frankish area and what's sometimes called the Three Kingdoms, Neustria, Austrasia and Burgundy. Because at various points, when there's more than one claimant in the dynasty or sons or they have separate kings, Neustria and Austrasia have separate political apparatus centred on separate palaces through which

power is negotiated. Around those three kingdoms, there's a ring of other units, which are in some sense part of the Frankish world,

but are in many cases semi-autonomous, and importantly, often have their own identities. So in southern France, we've got the Duchy of Aquitaine, which actually has quite a Roman identity and is quite Romanizing, but is tied in with the Merovingian court, not so much in terms of being directly administered, but in having a ducal dynasty that has some kind of political and social ties to the Merovingian court.

In the East, we've got a rather more exotic list of ethnonyms, names for ethnic groups that relate to particular territories. And the most important of those are the Alemanns in modern southwest Germany, Switzerland and some of the areas around there. Beyond that, there's Bavaria, which is effectively...

partly modern Bavaria in southwestern Germany, reaching into Austria. We have a very loose confederation in northern Germany called the Saxons, who have a very complicated relationship to the Franks.

We have a big kingdom in northern Italy that's been founded by the Lombards, which has a problematic relationship with both the papacy, which by this stage is sort of semi-independent, but has nominal links to Byzantium, and some of the smaller units in southern Italy and around the Adriatic, which are part of the Byzantine world, but again...

by the time we move into the 8th century are effectively operating semi-independently but in the name of the Byzantine Empire with some very loose links. In Spain...

As in Italy, there's one military group that's established a unitary kingdom in terms of the Visigoths. But as we all know, in 711, an expedition from Northern Africa of Islamic forces actually takes out the Visigothic kingdom. And we have quite a fluid situation in Spain right through the 8th century of local warlords coming.

Islamic groups in the south, Romanian Christian groups in the north, and quite fluid and shifting and complicated alliances between them. In terms of the core geography of Western Europe, I think the crucial point is you have what's effectively a court society of Frankish aristocrats in northern France and Europe.

Germany that are operating as a unit and they have a broad but quite loose hegemony that reaches right down into southern France and as far as the borders of northern Italy. That's the dominant group that's quite significant intermarriage and

There's tremendous variety within those kingdoms in terms of the type of societies you're looking at and the levels of political organisation. Through this period in the 6th and 7th centuries, there's quite a lot of archaeological and literary evidence that they're becoming more stratified societies as they're integrated into this bigger political unit. And you're getting the starts of quite powerful aristocracies,

That's a very different situation from what you see in the more post-Roman places in southern France and in northern Spain and northern Italy. The Merovingian court is acting as a sort of social and cultural and political magnet that's holding all those things together. You get really interesting...

cultural, social, economic exchanges, because this is effectively a court society. Importantly, on a local level, it's also becoming something that's quite like what you might want to think of classifying as a temple society, where the important local anchor institutions are local monasteries, cathedrals in the areas that are

parts of the former Roman Empire, so you have a sort of system of bishoprics that's loosely based on the Roman administrative system. Those are the people with real leverage and with real logistical and organisational power locally around which networks and exchanges forming, and the Merovingian court is what's tying them together.

Well, thank you for that. That was a very good scene set. Thank you very much indeed. Let's move on now to this strange transformation from the Merovingian to the Carolingian. We'll probably just briefly talk about that remarkable character of Charles Martel and his children. Tell me about him. As we said, the system in sort of the end of the 7th century is quite loose, and it's based on a sort of loose series of aristocratic coalitions around the court.

where you tend to have decades of relative stability and then big eruptions when the political factions realign and then there's some sort of marriage alliance. And that's sort of semi-cyclical. But although all the units I've described are sort of operating on a local level as separate units, they're coming together at the Merovingian court and negotiating. The really important moment actually comes slightly before Charles Martel that sets the scene for Charles Martel, which is in 687 as a result of one of those big civil wars,

The winning faction comes from the eastern area in modern West Germany called Austrasia, and is led by a character called Pippin, who establishes himself as mayor of the palace, i.e. the person who isn't the Merovingian king that's controlling the throne.

He establishes members of his family in the western area, in Neustria, and starts slowly to create what's effectively, bizarrely, a dynastic system around the mayor of the palace, who controls all the levers, in the name of the king. By the time of his death, that has gone so far that

that when he dies, there's a succession crisis, but the succession crisis is a quarrel within his family for who inherits the position of mayor of the palace, not around the kingship. And Charles Martel, whose power base is in the east...

actually wins an internal civil war where you have different factions and different areas within that broader Merovingian kingdom allying with different members of Pippin's family. Charles Martel is not necessarily the favoured candidate. He has important backing from womenfolk and particularly from his mother, and he's able to mobilise military power from the East to really pull together the whole figure.

Charles Martel, Martel is a surname meaning the hammer, and literally what he does is hammer the rather loose system I've described together into something that in some ways is more rudimentary, because a lot of this is done on the back of a horse wielding a sword, but wields it together into a different kind of system. He makes the decision when the Merovingian king dies, they're not replaced after 737, although he doesn't claim the kingship. And

And there is a significant amount of campaigning activity because in terms of the interlocking nature of all these groups around the core Frankish area, he's campaigning in those areas partly to secure his own position. And partly by doing this and by an annual round of campaigning, he's really building

a range of loyalties and bonds that are forged on the war trail, and actually a really powerful military machine. So it's annual campaigning, pulls together and binds an aristocratic coalition, gives the ability to reward your followers on that in material terms and to build social loyalty. The important thing that goes with that is,

which gives him quite a mixed campaign afterwards, is he also systematically gets involved in the distribution and redistribution of church land. Now, I think, as I said earlier,

At the outset, in each of these sort of local regional societies that makes up the Merovingian world, the church is the core anchor institution. Bishop bricks and abbacies often have links to particular local aristocratic families. And there's a lot of sort of gift exchange around land in particular going on, where a particular family might gift the land to a monastery that it sort of controls and uses that effectively as some kind of trust fund.

To firm up his position, he's getting involved in redistributing and recalibrating those networks. But that clearly does set up tensions locally at the time that then get written up in a particular way later on to do with later property claims. So when he dies, he's an enormously commanding figure. And his sons, just like him, are they now going for the throne themselves? Or is it still mayor of the palace that's the key position? It's interesting that the sons divide the kingdom. This is very tense.

There's no attempt by any of the factions within the Frankish world to look beyond the Carolingian dynasty. The various groups align themselves to different family members. It is very tense and it's really not very clear what's going on because at this point we don't have many sources. I think one of the things to come on to later is by the 9th century we have quite rich sources. At the beginning of the 7th century we don't have that much written at the time.

They're ruling without a king, but they're quarreling over who gets which share of the kingdom as effectively mayor of the palace. Or I think Charles Martel is briefly called things like prince, but they're not claiming the throne. In 743, I think partly as a result of the internal politicking and the weakness, they actually make the decision to bring back another Merovingian to sort of rubber stamp their authority.

It's not very clear what happens in terms of this internal quarrel, but one of the sons, Pippin, emerges in pole position. His brother, we're told, conveniently dies. There's clearly a lot of dynastic loose ends there. And I think it is interesting, the decision that actually, rather than just ditching the Merovingians, Pippin winning and becoming king, they actually conveniently find another Merovingian. It's amazing. I mean, it's not unprecedented. You can think of similar things in the shogunate in Japan, but it's a fascinating system.

And who effectively ends up winning the dispute between Charles Martel's kids? It's yet another Pippin, who is later to be known to history as Charlemagne's father, although he fathers more than one son. Pippin continues much of what Charles Martel has done, lots of campaigning, particularly in Aquitaine. I think there's a whole decade in the 750s where nearly every year there's a campaign in Aquitaine. And Aquitaine, as a result of this, really gets firmly integrated into the Frankish kingdom in a way that it hadn't.

before, and it is literally city by city, year by year, campaigning, taking an area, recalibrating local alliances and recalibrating the land as he does so. The other thing that you start to see on the PIP in is you do start to see the Frankish court having a sort of cultural glean. You seem to have some notable intellectuals and scholars coming there. He's also, because of his power, being dragged into Italian politics and contact with the

papacy as a result of that. The cultural initiative and cultural legitimacy is important. He does start to present his own position in slightly different ways as a Christian ruler, and there's some interesting things that go on in terms of there's a reissue of the traditional Frankish law code, which talks in sort of quite Christianising terms about Pippin

not just being a military leader but being someone who's strong on heresy strong on the causes of heresy to coin the phrase and bringing true christianity across the frankish world i think that's quite interesting in terms of you you've had all of these local traditions local churches local provinces some of them in the south of france quite sophisticated some of the christianities you're seeing i think east of the rhine much more rudimentary and you might question whether they're

Christian and in some cases they are labelled pagan. Pippin is really using Christianity as a way of justifying what he's doing.

Part and parcel of that, famously in 751, he deposes the last Merovingian and makes himself king. And in 754, the Pope travels to Francia and confirms that in the traditional historiography, 751 is always seen as the crucial date. All of the apologists for the Carolingian dynasty, most of them writing under Pippin's son Charlemagne a generation or so later, say that 751 is sort of authorised by the Pope.

That's not entirely clear. He makes a power move in 751, makes himself king. What is significant is that in 754, partly as a result of the Pope's own position, the Pope comes to Francia, meets Pippin at Soissons, and crowns him and his sons. And that is quite significant as a moment of dynastic change, given how powerful the cultural hold of the Merovingians has, as we were discussing. Yeah.

or echoes of Napoleon there in 1804. So the Pope comes to France, crowns Pepin, partly because the Pope wants Pepin's help back in Italy where he's got local problems. Classic papacy move. Yeah, yeah. Coming to France is significant, and I think it's significant that it's not just Pepin that's crowned, but why the family is involved. So I think it's difficult not to see that as looking for another source of legitimacy for a dynastic change.

I think in contrast to the historiography, I'd see 754 as the really important moment in that, not the initial exchange in 751. But later apologists claim that the Pope's already involved in 751. Well, now, finally, we've got a Carolingian dynasty here. You mentioned this conquest of southern France. I mean, is it a very different beast to what has gone before in terms of the coherence of this empire?

I think it is a different beast to what's gone before. I think in terms of coherence, it very much depends on how you define coherence. In terms of our expectations about 19th or 20th century state building,

There's still tremendous regional variation in political structures. In lots of areas, there's fairly rudimentary admin. It's ruled by the local aristocracy in the name of the distant king. And the church is still the main anchor institution. What has happened is there's been some kind of giant snowball effect where the campaigning that started under Charles Martel with a small group of people who stand by his side in 717 when he

defeats his rivals within the dynasty, has slowly snowballed up, been consolidated through conquest, grants of land, marriage alliances, and got bigger and bigger and bigger. And you start to see a sort of really powerful stratum of aristocratic families that are very closely socially and culturally aligned with the Carolingians.

that are political allies, that are gaining footholds in the region. And the backdrop of this is annual campaigning and the fruits of that annual campaigning. That's something that starts under Charles Martel, goes through Pippin, and continues under his son. So the point of coherence is the Frankish court, the annual campaign,

and the aristocratic networks that are being formed there, with the important addition that, as we've said, under Pippin, the Frankish court starts to become a cultural magnet as well, which probably isn't that surprising, lots of precedence for that. It becomes a place where ideas are expressed, and this rule is now being justified much more in terms of the relationship between the Carolingian dynasty, the church, and the promotion of Christianity. Merovingians had styled themselves as Christian rulers before,

But there's much more of a sort of dynastic sense there. This is the Carolingian dynasty as the strong right arm of God enforcing Christianity of a particular kind on peoples around them and using their alliance with the papacy, which, as you said, Dan, is based on the sort of weakness of the papacy in some ways as a means of legitimating that. That is culturally more coherent now.

In terms of political structure and local administration, it's still not very coherent. The coherence is social and cultural, not administrative. And there's a beautiful coherence at the heart of this project, which is the papacy is a wonderful legitimising tool, but has no military might. And the Carolingians are tough people.

but lack legitimacy. They've seized it. Exactly, yeah. It's a match made in heaven, and it will go on being that. We can learn a lot there about the nature of medieval kingship. Yeah, medieval power, yeah, yeah. Medieval power. But you mentioned sons there. So you've got Pepin, he's got two sons, hasn't he? Yeah. And it seems to me there's a bit of a problem in the Karolingis, a bit like the Mughals in India. They have a habit of sort of dividing up their patrimony. Yeah. Is that what Pepin intends to do, or is he hoping to leave it all to one person? Yeah.

It's not clear what Pepin's trying to do, but the tradition of allowing all your sons to inherit is really hardwired into the system. And in a way, I think one argument I'd make, and again, you can look at historical comparisons for this, is that's quite sensible in some ways. You've got very poor communications. You've got a much less sort of

sophisticated centralized administrative system than you had in Roman times. You're very dependent on working through the church and the allegiance of particular aristocratic families. So actually the notion that you create dynastic legitimacy but that might involve sending younger sons off to be sort of sub-kings as they're called at the time in particular regions and sometimes even splitting between adult members of the dynasty and letting them jockey for position.

is a way to ensure that there is an effective, local, accessible member of the dynasty for all areas of this quite sprawling kingdom. So I think traditionally people have seen this part of the inheritance thing, it's a bit of a problem because it means that you get recurrent succession of things and it inevitably causes political tension about who gets what. I think if you didn't have it, the danger is you wouldn't be able to create political legitimacy because you wouldn't be able to have accessible people

with local links in all areas. Yeah, so lusty, martial, younger royal sons are very, very useful. Exactly. Until they're a disaster. Until they get ideas of their own, until they get advisors or marry, and that fuels those ideas. And until the father dies in the succession crisis, at which point all hell breaks loose. I think one of the interesting things you can do is, if you look at succession crises within these countries,

that we're describing, they clearly happen every generation because it's hardwired into this system. You can argue that the partible inheritance is a way of ensuring that the strongest and most able person wins and there's a bit of survival of the fittest going on, which you don't necessarily have under primogeniture, which they don't have anyway. It does mean that if there are people who are discontent with the way that things are going locally...

They advanced their claims by aligning themselves to a member of the family rather than looking for support outside. And I think that's one thing that works in the favour of the dynasty through the 8th century and how they established dynastic power. But if you look at it, there have been recurrent succession crises going back at least to 687 when we started this talk. The one where Charles Martel comes to power involves open warfare.

The one where Pippin comes to power involves a lot of tension and people do disappear, but there's not a civil war. The one after Pippin, again, there's not a civil war. It looks at various times like it's very close. It ends when, after Pippin's death, the kingdom's split between his sons Calamon and Charlemagne. It's not quite clear who gets what, but basically France and Aquitaine seem to primarily be Calamon and Charlemagne's in the east.

There's clearly a lot of politicking because a lot of families have interests across that. Charlemagne gets involved in campaigning in Aquitaine where there's been a revolt. It all ends up where Calamon, in 771 after three years, retires to a monastery and disappears, which is very convenient. Very convenient. The sources are all quite sparse, mainly written with hindsight.

and don't tell us much about it. And it's very, anyone who's an avid watcher of Game of Thrones could create any range of scenarios about what goes on here. I think significantly, in terms of Karloman, the Pope is involved in this in some form, which is difficult to figure out. And it involves he and his sons and his family taking refuge in Italy. But Charlemagne, who looks like the aggressor and clearly doesn't,

is a figure who is hugely successful later on, emerges on top from this thing. You could argue that these two or three year periods of tension are how the political system kind of recalibrates itself. And it's like the Frankish equivalent of a big general election or something. I'm mindful of that Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun, who talks about sort of a dynasty's

becoming lethargic and soft and useless. It ensures that they're not lethargic and soft. Yeah, they have to be quite virile. It's not unlike what's going on in Wessex at the time, for example, I suppose. But I think it is significant that the sort of crisis after Pippin's death and the crisis after Charles Martel's death

don't involve civil war, although they do involve Game of Thrones-style skullduggery. Robust competition. Exactly, yeah. On the playing field of ideas. Okay, so Charlemagne, spoiler, ends up as sole ruler of this Carolingian Empire.

Let's quickly come back to Charlemagne. I mean, he has a royal upbringing. His father is king in all but name and then becomes king. A very martial upbringing, a very religious upbringing. Yeah, we don't actually know where he's brought up and educated. There is a tradition of royal tutors. Bizarrely, we know more about Pippin's upbringing than Charlemagne's. He's clearly in play in 754 when the Pope comes to Francia and blesses the family. So to that extent, from quite early on, he's part of a papaly...

legitimized royal dynasty who expects to be a king clearly a lot of the upbringing is kind of martial and military training charlemagne's biographer talks about that a lot of this tends to happen at the court or through fostering and you see this right through the middle ages major noble families take on the sons of their allies or clients and train and they spend the period at someone else's court the frankish royal court itself is becoming significantly

for this. So you'd imagine Charlemagne being there with the younger sons of a range of his father's aristocratic allies and doing military stuff. There is some cultural activity going on at Pippin's Court. It's mainly still in northern France where there's some historical churches and we get bits and bobs in saints' lives. So there clearly is a sort of educative

Christian religious element. And Bertrada, Pippin's wife, who survives Pippin, is clearly an influential figure as well. We know from his biographer that he can't write. That's not hugely surprising because writing is much more seen as a technical skill at this period and it's separate from reading. What we don't know is the extent to which he can read. It is a multilingual court because

at this time is multilingual. The modern Romance speaking areas, so primarily France, are speaking a vulgarised version of Latin that is most of the way to becoming prototypical French. So actually the ability to read is one thing, the ability to understand Latin, I think you could be relatively confident that he has, even though the dynasty itself comes from a Germanic speaking eastern area. So you have an odd cultural mix. Anyway,

Anyone operating at a top level in this polity needs to be able to operate in Germanic vernacular and in proto-romance as a spoken thing, and at some level to be able to access Latin as it is read aloud. And I think we can assume Charlemagne can do all of those things.

Okay, so we're calling him Charlemagne. His friends would call him Charles, I guess, growing up. He wasn't the great just yet. Tell me, how did he become the great? I mean, let's get into it. So, 771, he has seen off his brother. What's he do now?

So the first period of the reign is really a continuation of what we've been talking about with the father and grandfather, rebuilding this aristocratic coalition that's snowballing and snowballing and snowballing and getting bigger. Annual campaigns, finishing off what his father's done in Aquitaine significantly.

getting pulled into Italy, where his father's made commitments to the papacy, where the remnants of his brother's family are seeking refuge, and where there's a standoff between the Lombard king in the north and the pope. In 774, invades and takes out the Lombard kingdom in northern Italy and effectively styles himself king of the Lombards. That move across the Alps and the taking of Italy, swallowing up another kingdom, is less precedented, and I've described it elsewhere, as

pretty much unprecedented just to swallow up a whole other kingdom that's seen as belonging to a different people the lombards he does it he gets pulled in through through the papacy that clearly is on one hand a continuation of the pattern of what we've seen in aquitaine but it brings you significant cultural capital much closer contact with the pope papacy and the byzantines

significant inflow of material cultural capital in terms of Roman things. So Romanitas being injected into this end point. And historians get very excited because you can see books and ideas flowing north through this.

Actually, if you look at the excavations of Charlemagne's palace in Ingelheim, some of this is literally like Napoleon or Grand Tour type stuff. They're bringing back bling and it's influencing their own architecture. So it's visual Romanitas. If you imagine what the palace at Aachen that's constructed in the 790s looks like, or the one at Ingelheim where there's very good introductions, it is literally showing off

bling from all of the places they've conquered, but particularly from Italy, becomes important in the public presentation of the dynasty to people in Northern Europe, which I think is a really significant element. The other big aspect of conquest is consolidating the hold on the areas east of the Rhine. And I think the two big developments there are Saxony,

where there's an element of active paganism and there's a leader called Widukind who is very much anti-Carolingian. Saxony seems to be very, very decentralized and quite fluid even compared to the areas that are part of the Frankish world in Alemania. And that campaign takes 40 years.

precisely because Lombardy, you're going in 774, it's quite a sophisticated suburban political system. You take out the king and you effectively take over something that's functioning. In Saxony, you go in every year, they submit to you, you go away and some new ones pop up because it's a much less centralised political system.

the 40 years of annual campaigning in Saxony is significant because right at the beginning in 772 they cut down the big what's allegedly a pagan shrine called the Erminsol which is clearly some kind of

tree shrine. That's significant because there's said to be huge wealth there that's redistributed towards the people who participate. At that point, you're labelling this as something that, well, the word crusade doesn't exist at the time. You're labelling this as to do with the expansion of Christianity. As the 40 years go on, it becomes imposition of Christianity at the sword point, and there's some really interesting legislation and debate about

How you convert people, is conversion a matter of outward compliance versus internal belief? And what does conversion at the sword point need? So I think that's significant as well as politically and culturally in terms of giving Charlemagne standing. I think it's really pushing forward a sense of what's this polity for, what's its relationship to Christianity, and how does it define the kind of Christianity that it's trying to impose on?

I think the final thing that's worth mentioning is they also get pulled quite a long way to the east into Bavaria, which is the last sort of semi-autonomous kingdom ruled by one of Charlemagne's cousins who's been imposed by Pippin, who's a guy called Tassilo, who seems to be a very able ruler,

who's commissioning a lot of cultural Christian stuff, and his sort of German historians talk about there being a Tassilonian Renaissance in the Bavarian church. He's clearly a potential rival, and he gets taken out quite brutally and in quite a short series of campaigns at the end of the 780s. But by the end of the 9th century, Charlemagne succeeded in ruling everywhere, basically everywhere.

that's been part of the Merovingian world, plus the Lombard kingdoms in northern Italy, plus a little bit of involvement in the south of Italy, and he's a long way east of the Rhine, much further than the Romans had ever been, for example, in terms of integrating Saxony and Bavaria. Amazing. Okay, so he's also, though, famously heading south, isn't he, into Iberia? Yep.

This is one of the things that gets a lot of attention in the later historiography, because it becomes important for French identity. There's not much campaigning across the Pyrenees, but clearly in terms of what's going on with the Islamic conquest, there's quite a fluid borderland, there's quite strong links between people in southern France and northern Spain. Catalonia itself, of course, it crosses the modern borders and crosses

both sides of the Pyrenees. And there's quite a lot of cross-border raiding, which they get pulled into policing. And they do end up in the Spanish part of Catalonia and famously a campaign in the Pyrenees. That starts to pose important questions about if this is a polity that's divining itself in terms of Western Latin Christianity, this is its boundary with Islam.

They also encounter, in some of the places that they go to in northern Spain, a sort of different Spanish brand of Christianity, and they get involved in debates about what is labelled adoptionism and ultimately labelled a heresy, which is basically to do with the differences between the Christology and the liturgical practices of the local churches of northern Spain and what has become in

seen as orthodoxy in northern France. So I think that's an interesting moment where you're almost defining the frontiers in terms of religious orthodoxy and religious alignment, as well as political alignment. You see something quite similar going on in the East, and in a way it sort of parallels what's going on in Saxony, but there's an attempt to define this empire as a religious unit that's united by prayer.

as well as a political unit that's defined by oaths of loyalty. And you see that going on. Seven, eight, nine, all adult free men have to take the oath of loyalty to the emperor, which I think is formalizing what's presumably gone on in an informal social context, almost a sort of protest state building thing. But you have quite similar things going on around unification through prayer and standardization in the church, which really starts to be taken forward in this period.

Right, and that standardisation of the church, that relationship that you all suddenly, subjects get with their ruler through oath-taking, does that also imply that this diverse, heterodox, casual relationship that different regions have with power, is he creating a new idea of what state power is? A lot of historians have huge debates about whether you can use state to...

describe what's going on in this period and I suspect I'm one of them but I'm famously one of the people who is quite reticent about using the term state and

whatever it is, there is a notion of public power, and that's the terminology that they use at the time, but it's public power that's also embedded in the church and accountability to God, so it's not like our modern understanding of public power. There is clearly a shift in emphasis and scale from what we described at the beginning in terms of this very loose agglomeration and series of alliances you see in the Merovingian world, where there's quite a lot of latitude around localism towards...

a system where you swear direct allegiance to the Carolingian king, whether you're in Catalonia or Saxony, using the same form of words. And it's asked that lists are kept of this. Your local officer, your local ruler, who's often still a local aristocrat,

is operating according to a series of rules and instructions, which are often quite general, that are being promulgated through the 790s and onwards in a series of sort of annual royal edicts, which are known as capitularies because they're written in chapters. So there's a sort of standard set of expectations of political behaviour and judicial behaviour that's being pushed from the 790s onwards through royal edicts.

There's a direct relationship between all members of the free population and the king in theory, through the swearing on the oath of fidelity. Interestingly, by the end of the reign and into the 800s, you start to get local complaints coming to court about bad local officials. And I think, to me, that's the shift change, isn't it? It's in 700, you've got basically an aristocratic coalition that's held together by...

political and cultural ties. By 800, there's an attempt that there is a series of quite general moralizing things about political behavior around fidelity, fairness, anti-corruption, anti-bribery.

But that is starting to be embedded, mainly just through sort of preaching, literally through royal representatives going out and reading out these edicts in local assemblies. In parallel to that, you've got a series of what Peter Brown described as micro-Christian terms.

local Christian communities that have emerged in their own local traditions and attempt to pull it together and define something that is much more a Western Latin Christendom. And I think a really important point in there is 794, there's a big synod in Frankfurt. Frankfurt, first palace built east of the Rhine, which I think is easy to miss and is quite significant. So it's beyond the former Roman frontier. Frankfurt, the Ford of the Franks over the Main. Big palace there.

really interesting archaeology about it, at Frankfurt in 1794,

They really look at some theological disputes that have come up in Byzantium and sketch out a distinctive Western position that differentiates themselves from Byzantine Greek Christianity. There's rhetoric about Greeks v. Latins. There's evidence that Charlemagne himself is involved and engaged in some of the debates and some of the ideas that are written down in one of the tracts that comes from this, the so-called Caroline books, Libri Carolini, or Carolingian books.

So I think what you've got is a level not just of political assertiveness and political uniformity, but cultural assertiveness and cultural uniformity. What you don't have, though, is anything like a modern state apparatus and ability to enforce it. This is all coming from the centre.

couch demoralising terms of expectation and sermonising. It's setting expectations and hoping that that gives people locally the tools to call out when they think that leaders, whether they're ecclesiastical or politically locally, aren't living up to the expectations that are being set from the centre. You're listening to Darren Snow's History, talking about Charlemagne, all coming up. This episode is sponsored by Rosetta Stone.

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for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at www.rosettastone.com slash dansnow today. So speaking of being a source of political order, would you be able to travel to trade from Brittany

all the way through central, sort of Western Central Europe into Northern Italy and then into the Byzantine Empire. I mean, is this a period of big imperial units that are getting on with each other reasonably well and therefore allowing for transmission of trade and people? If you think about trade, economic connectivity, goods and people moving around the North Sea has kicked off in the 7th century where you have these emporia,

including places like London. Big ones in the continent are in Durresstadt in Holland and Quentovik in northern France. There's archaeology from both of them. Neither of them are the site of modern cities, but they give you access to the big river systems. You've had high-level luxury trade starting off in the 7th century, and you get, again, a sort of growth effect where what starts off with small volume, high value, swords and bling and jewellery type stuff,

stimulates more low-level exchange, a lot of wine going up the Rhine and being exported around the North Sea by the end of the 8th century. And that starts to have secondary knock-on effects in local economies because you can start producing and operating for the market rather than just producing what you need to get through the next year. So I think...

You see that in the North Sea. In the Mediterranean, again, and I think Michael McCormick's work has done a massive piece of almost sort of mapping every interaction you can see around the Mediterranean. Exchange there has decreased through the 7th century to some kind of nadir, probably at some point in the first half of the 8th century. But you see much more economic connection around the Mediterranean.

often involving all kinds of intermediaries, including the Venetians, who were slave trading with the Islamic world at this point. You start to see that in the second half of the 8th century in particular,

And again, it's the same effect. You start off with quite high-value, low-volume goods. B, it has knock-on effects in the hinterlands. So in a way, this political system, the level of stability that's been provided in the Cornish provides a framework in which you get economic growth. And I think the story of the 9th century is quite strong economic growth in terms of things like olives, chestnuts, grain, wine, that really start to change

the nature of local and regional societies and generate a level of local prosperity that you probably haven't seen in the 7th century.

And relative peace in terms of big inter-imperial battles. I mean, it seems that he's got a very interesting relationship with the Abbasid dynasty, the Islamic dynasty. And there's an interesting thing in terms of the Abbasids, in terms of being granted some kind of custodianship over the Christians in the Holy Land and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Interesting recent research that shows that that's taken seriously enough, that there are

coins sent out there and there are concrete attempts to help the Christians in the Holy Land. So in the context of that relatively stability, a sort of much broader political outlook, I think you can absolutely see that. In terms of peace, I guess, you know, part of the question is, what does peace mean and to whom? Because if you're a Frankish peasant who now

is sort of being pulled into trading for the market. Your local aristocrat, who's probably, you've always had to do what he says anyway, is now a count invested by the Carolingian king with a set of duties, but still rounding around on a horse with a sword. We've been a much more defined sort of system of extracting rent and services. That might be peace, but it might feel like a particular kind of peace to a Frankish peasant.

equally, there's a level of stability and systematization going on here that does produce some level of economic growth. So yes, peace, it's peace where there's a threat of implicit violence, and that leads to quite dramatic social stratification through the 9th century. And you really get a separating out of the peasantry from the aristocracy, particularly in the 9th century, in the context of really significant economic growth in the region's

Interesting. So more anarchic, more fragmented times might be better in terms of your social mobility outlook. In terms of social mobility and agency, absolutely. The big winners from this system in the long term are the European aristocracy who really are able to separate them out from the peasants. By the end of the 9th century, looking a long way forward, you start to get

basically proto-castles and that seems to me to be a really important moment in social differentiation that rather than having this broad continuum of free people that's quite integrated you start to get a separation of the of the knightly class from the peasantry some people would argue that takes until the 11th century to complete and it probably does but it's pretty clear that the roots of that are in the system that's set up by the carolingians

Wow. So you can have peace with civility or war with opportunity. That's a terrifying choice. Yeah, yeah. And in terms of that point about peace, I think one of the interesting things you get in the reign of Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious, is you get things in legislation about

as you're a lord, or indeed a bishop, riding around with your mounted entourage, you know, how tooled up are you allowed to be and are you allowed to show the naked blade of a sword? And there's some interesting legislation from the early 19th century that sort of defines peace in terms of, you know, whether you draw weapons in the homeland. It sort of presupposes that weapons are there, although there's some evidence that

by the 9th century when people are going into these big political assemblies at the palace in some cases they're expected to prayer and fast and that involves taking your weapons off

weapons and carrying a sword is a symbol of power. I mean, you get in the sources, you get particular people are talked about as acting hostilite, which literally means like an army. And that seems to mean turning up mob-handed with your weapons out. So, I mean, to use a modern analogy, there's still a level of gangsterism implicit in it, but there's also some kind of ethics about how directly that gangsterism is being exercised.

And the way in which you exercise power and the culture of power is being changed quite fundamentally. Hey, listen, in a world of tech bros, I think we're all comfortable with the idea of gangsterism implicit in our relationship. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Charlemagne. More coming up.

Let's have his crowning achievement. There's some title inflation because what happens on Christmas Day? 800. Again, some of these scenarios are quite familiar with what went before. The Pope has been deposed, said to be blinded by his opponents, although at some point later on, miraculously, he is able to see. So how you square those different accounts off, we don't know. But actually flees and seeks out Charlemagne to ask for help in terms of being reinstated.

There's an issue because an emperor can't judge a pope, and Charlemagne is quite careful not to cross the letter of that. He's reinstated on the grounds that he swears an oath that he's not guilty of any of the charges, and that's a way of sidestepping the issue about a layperson judging a pope. Effectively, he's reinstated by Charlemagne, because Charlemagne actually goes to Rome on Christmas Day 800, as all this is playing out. And as an outcome of this, he becomes emperor.

Why does he do that? Well, I think the argument that I've advanced with my friends Marius Costambes and Simon Maclean is, if you look at Italy in the early Middle Ages, the Roman tradition is really strong. There are large areas of Italy that own nominal allegiance to Byzantium, particularly everywhere south of Rome.

In terms of the papacy, there's quite a complex relationship with the emperor as a source of protection, even though in practical terms, since Pippin's time, they've been looking to the king of France.

So taking on the imperial title is potentially a really good way of legitimizing your title in the eyes of the inhabitants and the societies of the Italian peninsula, particularly the southern bits of Italy, where we know that Charlemagne is involved from the 780s, and where you do get individual Byzantine officials effectively swapping sides at various points towards the end of Charlemagne's reign.

It's also a way of explaining and legitimizing your relationship with the papacy, which we saw with Pippin in 751-754, and you see classically in 799, where it's actually the Pope who needs Charlemagne. So to that extent, it's not that surprising. People have described themselves in post-Roman Italy in imperial terms and look to a distant Byzantine emperor,

A powerful Frankish king is now on the scene. Describing him in imperial terms is sort of natural to people in that polity. I think what's interesting is what Charlemagne does when he goes back to Francia, having acquired the title,

The royal style is still King of the Franks and Lombards governing the Roman Empire. So he doesn't try to drop the inherited Frankish and Lombard royal titles and change it into an imperial title, although his successor maybe plays with that a little bit. It's much more about this is sort of title inflation. This is like, you know, oh, as well as being a king, I'm also an emperor.

There seems to be quite a lot of debate amongst the intellectuals of the course about what being emperor means, because clearly there's an element of Romanitas and bigging up going on. Clearly some of it is implicated in your particular relationship with the Pope and some of your diplomatic relationships with Byzantium, which become a significant issue in the decade after 800 and afterwards. And you...

The Latins versus Greeks stuff we'd already seen in 794, to me, taking on a Western imperial title is a way of prosecuting some of those arguments. They're more diplomatic than military, in my opinion. But you get some of the thinkers at the court thinking, as well as a title, is this something about a model of Christian imperial rule?

And a lot of this is cultural and intellectual fluff. It's cultural and intellectual fluff, however, that happens at the court and that people out in the court, not just intellectuals, are engaging with, and that significantly really reverberates down the next millennium of European history to Napoleon, as you said at the beginning, Dan. So...

My view on the imperial thing was it's the natural outcome of being pulled into Italy and being pulled into the papacy, and it makes sense in those terms. It's not a master plan, and there's not a sense to start with that being an emperor is different from being a king. But it does kick off and frame a series of intellectual debates about the nature of rulership, which do become significant.

Yes, indeed. And one goes on between Disraeli and Queen Victoria as well in the 19th century. Exactly, yeah, yeah. What does he bequeath his success? And is there any robust competition between his sons for the kingdom or for the empire? Perhaps being aware of his own dynastic history, he's very careful at managing quite complex relationships between his sons.

He's a serial monogamist in that he only ever has one wife at once, but actually he outlives them all. So he has sons by different women. The women are mainly to do with alliances at the time that he makes the marriage, so they're also allied into different regions and different power groups. Charlemagne very carefully manages them in terms of the robust younger son's things, but already in his reign, the tensions between his sons over who's going to get what...

sort of succession-like thing about the father's ability to change his mind or shuffle things around, becomes a primary source of political tension. And in the 790s, you see a big rebellion by one son, by a woman called Himmeltrude,

This guy's called Pippin. It's claimed after the event and after his revolt fails, A, that he's illegitimate and the rules about marriage are quite shady. There's no evidence from the time of his birth and Charlie Men's liaison with him or true that this guy Pippin is seen as being illegitimate then. But by the 790s, he's been excluded from the succession and branded as illegitimate. So I think that's quite interesting in terms of how permeable some of these things are.

What's interesting is, in terms of this big revolt by Pippin in the 790s, it's a shift in the pattern. This is a major revolt from people within the Frankish system who think basically that Charlemagne's overstepped the mark and he's been too interventionist in their backyards, going back to what we talked about, what's changing. What do they do? They find a discontented son who's been excluded from the succession and

and rebel around them. And the main source of that rebellion is actually taking out Charlemagne's current wife, who's another woman called Fostrada, whose family come from the Frankfurt region. And the reason they're taking out Fostrada is, effectively, they're blaming the more interventionist stuff on...

her, not on the ruler. I think that's a really interesting dynamic that by the time you're in the 790s, discontented groups find a disgruntled younger son and try to shift the regime in the family rather than overthrow the king or overthrow the dynasty. So I think that's one of the things that's going on. There are various attempts within Charlemagne's reign about managing the succession. As we've said,

Pippin, who seems to be the eldest, is excluded, labelled illegitimate, eventually labelled a hunchback and sent into monastic exile. There are a series of sons by probably the most important wife, who's a lady called Hildegard, who's there for most of the 770s.

Her first two sons, interestingly, take on Merovingian names. They're known as Louis and Lothar. Louis is the same in Frankish as Clovis, the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. So this taking on of Merovingian names, I think, again, going back to what's happened under Pippin, is a really interesting moment in terms of legitimizing the dynasty.

At age three, Louis is sent off to be king of Aquitaine. Lofar is given a southern king. Another son, Pippin, is sent off to be sub-king of Italy. This is the local Carolingians at age, and there's a detailed biography of Louis in Aquitaine, where he basically learns a lot about what it's like living in Aquitaine, probably a wonderful place to be a three-year-old king of. But really, this is how you're binding those regions into the system.

The thing is, Charlemagne lives so long that all of the various succession plans become moot because everyone dies other than Louis. And by 711, Louis in Aquitaine is the only one left. So by happenstance, he inherits a unified empire.

There's still issues around his brother, who's been son of Italy, have left sons who claim the kingdom of Italy, and that has to then get cleared up. But I think 814, when Charlemagne dies, is a really interesting moment. In all of these dynastic changes, that is the one moment where there is only one heir, so there can't be partition.

Interestingly, it's quite tense. Some of Charlemagne's advisors don't want Louis because he's been in Aquitaine, not at court. There's another son who's the favourite who dies, who they'd assumed would take over, and they're worried about their own position. There's issues about nieces and nephews, but Louis does inherit the lot. I wouldn't see this as being a shift in a more unitary view of empire.

It's like biological accident that Charlemagne lives so long. Only one son survives. And it's interesting what Louis does immediately is he sends his own kings out to be sub-kings. But again, in terms of this idea that you have part of an inheritance, but it's a way of negotiating and renegotiating power.

I think you can see that right through Charlemagne's reign and what happens in 814. You can still see the people who control Aachen, which by this stage is the main palace, has become central to power, actually are very wary about Louis. Louis takes a long time to get there. And there's clearly some quite tense negotiation, which we're told very nearly boils over into violence.

If you like, swords are drawn, but no moves are made. It's an interesting reflection on the nature of power and nature of succession.

And we're not going to go there, but Louis' kids end up, it ends up very familiar. And then all partition, violence, absolute chaos breaks out in the family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Louis' sons is interesting because it causes huge shock because the civil war that happens after Louis' death in 840 is the first time there's been a civil war for more than a century. They've had these recurrent crises, but really between Charles Martel and Louis, there's a century where

they get dealt with by political machination, not just fighting. 840, they've spent a generation talking about themselves as this wonderful Christian empire ruled by a Christian emperor that's imposing new norms of rule. The fact that they can't settle it politically and they end up fighting each other is a massive shock by then. And I think that tells you something about the extent to which some of these new ideas are becoming a culture and picked up locally. Yeah.

So what is Charlemagne's legacy and why do we think he's great? And it strikes me that one thing that really helps you in the medieval period is to live for a very long time. That's an essential precondition, I think, to being great in some ways, isn't it? I think absolutely. Longevity is a lot of it. And I think in terms of the discussion we've had, Dan, some of this is a process that takes place over four or five generations.

effectively a lot of what's happening at the start of charlemagne's reign is just the same as what charles martel and pippin have been done it's this snowball conquest dynamic i think because because there's longevity charlemagne is able to be ruler both for the sort of pinnacle of the war of conquest riding around europe on horseback taking submission from people period

Most of that is over by the 790s, but because he lives so long, he's also still ruler into the, what have we done? How do we describe this? What's it for? Let's reflect on the nature of rule and what being a Christian ruler over a much expanded kingdom means.

It's probably relatively unusual that you get the same person who gets to finish off the conquest phase and do the reflection phase. I think he does both, and I think that's an important point in his legacy. I think the other point I'd make in terms of legacy is, at the beginning of this period, we have very little in the way of contemporary written sources. As a result of the stability and cultural investment by the court,

Certainly by 800 and probably by the 790s, the court itself is investing in writing its own history and giving its own account of the past.

That can be really frustrating for a historian because it means that stuff like what on earth goes on between Charlemagne and his brother or Pippin and his brother is sort of written out and you get an official propaganda line. But in another way, it's really significant in legacy making because I think in later European history, right through to Napoleon and beyond.

Charlemagne becomes an embodiment of an ideal Christian ruler or a figure about who notions of Christian rule in Europe are negotiated. I mean, the EC still has a Charlemagne Prize.

controversy in World War II about Karl de Grasse or the Charlemagne and the Nazis get quite interested in him. He becomes a figure about who you negotiate the nature of Europe and the nature of rule. But partly that is because by, certainly by 790s, 800, he's investing intellectual effort and money in scholars who are actually interested

trying to making historical accounts of his own life and interestingly that production of history is a real feature that takes off if you look at the reign of louis the pious there are more contemporary sources there are people writing pamphlets to each other there's political pamphleting you can't really see that going on at scale in any period since the fifth

6th century. Something you do see in the Roman Empire, you perhaps see a little bit under Fyodorik the Ostrogoth in Italy. I can't think of any periods in Western Europe in between Ostrogothic Italy and Charlemagne where you get politics through pamphleting. It does start to happen in the 9th century. That fundamentally affects the way we look at this.

But it does mean that everything before about 790, we're looking at very carefully crafted or formalized backward-looking propagandist takes. Period. After 800, looks a lot more messy and more disputed because we actually know more about the disputes that are going on

What about finishing up on just the geographical nature of this empire, the largest since the Caesars? An odd empire that so many people have tried to recreate, was partially recreated, I suppose, by Louis XIV a while ago. Napoleon managed it, Hitler managed it, but it's acted as this strange...

I don't know, tempting sort of prize or something. The idea that because these territories have been so fractured through history, that Charlemagne was able to unite them, I don't know, has acted as some sort of pull on his successors, hasn't it? For a thousand years. Yeah, yeah. I think it's this notion of him being a significant figure around the idea of Europe. And people do talk about him as being the lighthouse of Europe at the time. And Europe is not a word that's often used in the Middle Ages.

but also about the nature of rulership and Christian rulership. And you see that, you know, we mentioned the campaigns in Spain. You see that in the chanson de Roland and on all the French chansons de Geste. Charlemagne is sort of one of the legendary figures you go back to to explore chivalry and good rule. He becomes sainted in the German empire and becomes an important point then. And he's a founding figure in a lot of Italian local city narratives and

and so on i mean i think one way to think about it is he becomes the figure who's good to argue with perhaps he's good to argue with because we know a lot about the narrative and the and the political scale but we don't know that much about the mess and the internal disputes some of some of the things we've been talking about like the pipping the hunchback thing we know there's an internal dispute and we know it looks quite murky we don't know much about it we

We know just enough that later generations can use him as a figure to hang all kinds of ideas on, but not so much that it's very easy to sort of debunk or disprove any of those ideas. And I think we know enough about humans and politics to know that whatever went on

was wild and that we can only just snatch tiny glimpses of it absolutely yeah thank you so much matt for coming on this podcast and giving us such a tour de force it was fascinating brilliant well i've really enjoyed it done thanks acas powers the world's best podcasts here's the show that we recommend

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