# Charlemagne Charlemagne (c. 742–814), King of the Franks and Lombards and the first Holy Roman Emperor, is the figure most frequently invoked — and most frequently distorted — when the modern right appeals to the idea of a unified Christian European civilization. Understanding who he actually was and what he actually built is essential to understanding the mythology built on top of him. ## The historical Charlemagne Born to Pepin the Short, the first Carolingian king of the Franks, Charlemagne became sole ruler of the Frankish kingdom in 771 after the death of his brother Carloman. Over the next three decades he waged nearly continuous military campaigns that expanded Frankish control across most of Western and Central Europe — modern France, Germany, the Low Countries, northern Italy, Austria, and parts of Spain. His conquest of Saxony (772–804) was particularly brutal, involving forced mass conversions to [[Christianity]], deportations, and the massacre at Verden (782) in which thousands of Saxon captives were reportedly executed for refusing baptism. On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans — a deliberate echo of the old Roman imperial title that carried enormous symbolic weight. The coronation established the template for the medieval relationship between Church and state: the pope conferred divine legitimacy on temporal power; the emperor provided military protection for the papacy. This exchange — sacred authority blessing secular force, secular force defending sacred authority — is the structural ancestor of every [[Christian Nationalism]] project that followed. ## The Carolingian Renaissance Charlemagne's cultural achievement was as consequential as his military expansion. He gathered scholars from across Europe — Alcuin of York, Einhard, Paul the Deacon — and commissioned a program of educational and administrative reform that historians call the Carolingian Renaissance. He standardized the script used across his realm (Carolingian minuscule, the ancestor of modern lowercase letters), reformed coinage to create a common silver currency, established schools attached to monasteries and cathedrals, and ordered the copying and preservation of classical Latin texts. Much of what survived of Roman literature into the modern era was preserved in Carolingian scriptoria. The Carolingian Renaissance was not secular humanism — it was an explicitly Christian project, designed to train clergy and administrators in proper Latin so they could read Scripture and apply canon law. But by preserving classical texts alongside Christian ones, it inadvertently created the conditions for the later intellectual traditions — Scholasticism, the twelfth-century Renaissance, and ultimately the Enlightenment — that would challenge the very fusion of Church and state Charlemagne embodied. ## The empire after Charlemagne Charlemagne's empire did not survive his dynasty intact. The Treaty of Verdun (843) divided it among his grandsons into three kingdoms that roughly prefigured France, Germany, and the contested territories between them. The Holy Roman Empire that persisted — the entity Voltaire later quipped was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" — was a loose confederation of German-speaking territories that bore little resemblance to Charlemagne's centralized realm. But the *idea* of Charlemagne's unified Christian empire proved far more durable than the thing itself. ## Why Charlemagne matters for this knowledge base Charlemagne is load-bearing for the right-wing mythological structure in several ways. **The "Christian Europe" origin story.** [[Christian Nationalism]] in both its American and European variants appeals to the idea that Western civilization is essentially Christian, and that this identity was forged in the Carolingian moment — when a warrior-king united Europe under the cross. The historical reality is more complicated: Charlemagne's Christianity was inseparable from military conquest and forced conversion, and the "unity" was held together by violence, not voluntary faith. But the myth of a golden age of Christian European coherence, before the fractures of the Reformation and the secularization of the Enlightenment, is foundational to the [[Crusader Complex]] — the idea that Christendom is perpetually under siege and must be defended by force. **Church-state fusion as template.** The Carolingian model — a ruler who derives legitimacy from religious authority and in turn enforces religious conformity — is the structural template for every subsequent project that seeks to collapse the distinction between ecclesiastical and political power. From the medieval investiture controversies through the early modern divine right of kings to contemporary Christian Nationalist proposals to subordinate civil law to biblical law, the Charlemagne precedent is the reference point. **"Western Civilization" as political weapon.** When figures on the contemporary right invoke "Western Civilization" or "Judeo-Christian values" as categories that must be defended against Islam, secularism, or multiculturalism, they are drawing on a narrative tradition that begins with Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons (pagan) and the Moors (Muslim). The framing of European history as a clash between Christendom and its enemies — rather than as a story of internal pluralism, contestation, and change — depends on the Carolingian origin myth. ## See also [[Christianity]] | [[Catholicism]] | [[Christian Nationalism]] | [[Crusader Complex]] [[Monarchy]] | [[Great Awakenings]] | [[Christian Right Timeline]] [[Niccolò Machiavelli]]