Charlemagne
At a glance:
- Series: Dictionary of World Biography: Middle Ages
- Categories: Government and Politics, Royalty, Rulers, Nobility, Military History
- Subcategories: Kings, Queens, Kingdoms, Monarchy, Invasions, Raids, Conquests, Sieges, Emperors, Caesars, Khans
- Curriculum: Medieval History/Middle Ages, French History
Article abstract: By 800, when he was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III, Charlemagne had revived the Roman idea of universal empire, preserved through the Carolingian Renaissance much of the written legacy of the ancient world, and established the foundation for a European civilization distinct from that of ancient Rome and from the contemporary Byzantine and Islamic empires.
Early Life
Charlemagne was born about 742 in the kingdom of the Merovingian Franks, founded on the ruins of Roman Gaul by Clovis I, whose people’s nominal conversion to Roman...
[The entire page is 3220 words long]