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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

The image

Two things -- is there any copyright on the picture, and shouldn't it say something like "statue of Charlemagne in ... dated .."? JHK

Partly done. I've added "19th century" but a more exact date would be welcome. --Wetman 09:14, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Numismatic issues (collected under this heading)

I'd like to see some citations on the money thing. It's nothing I'm that familiar with, although Anglo-Frankish ties aren't my specialty, I would think I'd heard of them?? JHK

The coins mentioned in the article are indeed relatively well known in historical context. I remember learning about them in high school. The word "realm" where the coinage is discussed, really should be placed in a better position. Alas, I am still not familiar with graphical features of Wikipedia. Anyone? Litsehimmel 21:02, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)
"After Charlemagne's death, continental coinage degraded and most of Europe resorted to using the continued high quality English coin until about 1100". Apparently, it's not true. The English coin weight has been decided by charlemagne. And at that time, I think the denomination "English" is not really accurate. Some precision about this sentence please ?
True. Offa of Mercia's coinage was a copy of Charlemagne's -- or, if I'm being vry historical, Offa's coins began to become broader, flatter and heavier slightly after an identical shift in Frankish coinage, at a time of extensive trading links between the two countries... Calling it Mercian would probably be best. (Mercia extended all the way across Southumbria at that point, including Kent, Wessex etc.)

Charlemagne's "autograph"

File:Monogram of Charlemagne.gif

Only a small part of the monogram displayed on the page is actually autograph: viz. the V-shaped mark in the central diamond (appearing in red in the picture below). The rest of the royal monogram used to subscribe solemn charters was previously drawn by a scribe of the imperial chancery. An Henskridonier Kuzh

The portrait of Charlemagne that is shown on a link from the article, isn't necesserily true. In Einhart's Vita caroli Magni, chapter 22, he is described from Einhart's point of view, meeting Charlemagne at his older days. Therefore Einhard says "canitie pulchra" when describing his hair, which meens "beautiful white hair (from age)" which has been translated to blond or fair in the translations, altough the latin word for blond is "flavus" (not subflavus as caesar Augustus' hair according to Suetonius, see the reconstruction of the pigmentation at Glyptoteket, Copenhagen, ClassiColor), and "rutilo", (red, golden, auburn) the word Tacitus uses for the Germans' hair (Charlemagne is often said to be of German decendance). Altough there aren't anything at all that says so, a lot of people think that Charlemagne was blond, and that his descendants should be so too. Claiming that these historical heroes were blond is a part of racistic propaganda. (Anon. user)

I've entered the neutral factual statements among those above into the entry. --

Wetman -i heard Charlemagne liked men Charlemagne was a very loving husband and he has may wifes. He was a very loving father especially with his daughters. At the begginng of the Charlemagene ruling the church was not involved in marriages as is today. Charlemagene himself was not from a "legal" marriage.CristianChirita

I changed back the references to Pippin, because we went over this a long time ago, and Pippin is the more often-used English spelling. It used to be that English-speaking historians used the French spellings, but that isn't so much the case any more JHK

Ah. I nearly changed that back to Pepin, but I guess I'll leave it now. -Mareth

IMO, Pepin is preferable to Pippin (calling him what he was really called is important, I think, though a reference to his real name on his own page *may* suffice, since we want the 'pedia to be accessible, too, where readers find what they're looking for when and where they look for it (the Occam's Razor/Ockham's Razor article comes to mind, with its extensive discussion on the topic). But much more important than the Pepin/Pippin difference is that he be called "the Younger" not "the Short." This is a common mistranslation, as is explained on the Pippin the Younger page (where Pippin the Short redirects). Happy editing! --216.20.219.65 22:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC) -- I hate it when Wikipedia logs you out without you noticing... This was me. --Cromwellt|Talk 22:16, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

the elephant

Removed from the account of Harun al-Rashid's gift:

Some of the details of this gift baffle modern day scholars. (See Charlemagne's Elephant.) However, modern day Revisionists speculate a theory to explain the ambiguities. (See Origins of chess and Great Pyramid of Giza: Labor for details.) From the evidence presented, if the modern day Revisionistic theories prove to be correct, Charlemagne may have been clandestinely involved in something more than previously historically speculated.

What details baffle modern scholars and how? What are the ambiguities? What do these revisionists (who are they, by the way?) postulate as explanation? How does this relate to the origins of chess and the Great Pyramid of Giza? What was Charlemagne supposedly involved in? This is all terribly vague. . . —Charles P. (Mirv) 12:42, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Suggested: revision of this article

You may want to have a look at the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia. Revised in its entirety recently, it'll give you a lot of additional information and stimulus as well as hints on how to improve the English article that is--sorry to state this quite frankly--rather poor and inadequate. (German user: Wolpertinger)

WTF? What happened to this? it used to be a decent article, and now it's totally full of pseudohistorical crap??? JHK 04:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Which revision would you recommend reverting to? Stbalbach 05:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Kaisar

Did Charlemagne use the titles Kaisar (Caesar) or Augustus? --Tokle 19:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Imperator Romanorum Semper Augustus was his main title after 800. Before that, he was just King of the Franks and Lombards. -Alex 12.220.157.93 07:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC).

What about the Arabs?

[Rich]- This article totally lacks information about how Charlemagne fought and defeated the Arabs and thus possibly "saved" Europe from Arabian and Muslim rule. It is of great historical and cultural importance yet the word "arab" does not even appear once in this article. I would strongly suggest that this is added. -Rich-

perhaps because you are thinking of his grandfather? JHK

There is no mention of where Charlegmagne was born. Also the claim that most Europeans are descended from him is a bit ludicrous given also that by the articles own ommission there is very little documentary proof. Europe was well peopled by Charlegmangnes time over a wide area. All his comteporaries genealogical lines simply did not die out at the same time. What were Charlemagne's three kids names?

Huh? Going back 40 generations, one has 240 ancestors. Plenty of room for everyone to be descended from both Charlemagne and everyone else living in Europe at that time. john k 07:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
but, of course, you don't have anywhere near that many, due to intermarriage. Arniep 12:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

This is academic in the extreme because the only way anyone knows if they are descended from Charlemagne is if they trace their family. Otherwise no claim is valid. 213.122.58.36 15:00, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Norwegian?

Why is the Norwegian form of his name listed? I understand the German, Dutch, and Latin. I understand why the French is not listed (it being the same as the English), but Italian would be more useful than Norwegian, since he actually ruled there. Srnec 04:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

New wife?

Who the heck in Coo Sheba? I have never ever heard of her before. Anybody who knows just say so right here.

its sneaky vandalism. Thanks Arniep 01:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Update to Charlemagne's wives and children

After spending the last year researching this subject for a book I'm involved with, along with several other medieval subjects (not just the internet, but library references in the US, UK and France as well), I can only say there seems to be a fair amount of confusion about Charlemagne's children, both legitimate and otherwise, as to just who their mothers were. So far my research has revealed the following "family" created by Charles The Great in his lifetime, and it must have been quite a life with a lotta free time, 'cause this guy definitely got around... and he did it all 12 centuries before Viagra.

Charlemagne(744-814), by the age of 70, had 4 sons & 5 daughters from 5 wives. He also had at least 3 sons & 2 daughters from at least 4 concubines, with conflicting historical sources claiming anywhere from 8 to 30 more illegitimate children, from 8 additional concubines!

    • Update #1 - Changed appearance of wives and concubines to correspond with the date of each child's birth, so that their involvement with Charlemagne, makes better sense.
       Wife #1 Himiltrude (married 766, was never "officially" annulled)
               Son(s): 1) Pepin the Hunchback (767-811)

       Wife #2 Desiderata (married 768, annulled by Pope 771)

       Concubine #1 Gersuinda
          Daughter(s):	1) Adaltrud (774-??)

       Concubine #2 Madelgard
          Daughter(s): 2) Ruodhaid, Abbess of Faremoutiers (775-810)

       Wife #3 Hildegard (758–784, age 26, married 771 for 13 years)
               Son(s): 2) Charles (778-811, age 33)
                       3) Pepin or Carloman (780–810, age 30)
                               Married:        Bertha De Toulouse (777-??)
                               (When Carloman dies in 810, Charlemagne adopts
                                each grandchild as one of his own children.)
                               Grandson:       Bernard (797-818)
                               Granddaughters: Adelaide
                                               Atula
                                               Guntrada
                                               Berthaid
                                               Theoderada
                       4) Louis (783–840, age 57)
          Daughter(s): 3) Hruodrud (777-777, died at birth)
                       4) Bertha (779-823, age 44)
                       5) Gisela (781-808, age 27, named after sister)

       Wife #4 Fastrada (??-794, married 784 for 10 years)
          Daughter(s): 6) Theoderada, Abbess of Argenteuil (784-??)
                       7) Hiltrud (787-??)

       Wife #5 Liutgard (??-800, married 794 for 7 years, died childless)

       Concubine #3 Regina
               Son(s): 5) Drogo, Bishop of Metz (801-??)
                       6) Hugh, Abott of St. Quentin (802-??)

       Concubine #4 Ethelind
               Son(s): 7) Theodoric (807-??)
Added this information. Srnec 20:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Restructuring and additional info

I am restructuring this article and increasing the information greatly. Currently, the sections of cultural significance and administration need work. A section should be added about his character. Srnec 04:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Very nice job, btw Jrenier 11:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

German name "Karl der Große"

I added the German name "Karl der Große" to the top of the article, because I think that the Franks should not be confused with the French, as could easily be done by only giving the French/English name. The mentioning of the German name should emphasise that both countries, France and Germany, see Charlemagne as one of their forefathers. MikeZ 09:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Only English and Latin names are given at the top of the page. Other important versions appear in the footnotes. In English, his common name (Charlemagne) just so happens to be his common name in French. Furthermore, far more countries than just France and Germany could consider Charlemagne a founder: Belgium, for one; Switzerland, for two. He was also king of Italy and he ruled over all of what is today Andorra and the Netherlands. He was a ruler in part of what is modern Spain and his conquest of Catalonia is really the "founding" of that region as independent culturally from the rest of Spain or France. Finally, his German name is no more special than his name in any of these lands, though it is important enough to be mentioned, hence the footnote. I hope this justifies to you my reversion of your edit and a subsequent one. Srnec 01:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Though belgium and other nations might see Charlemagne as a founder-ish person, France and Germany stand out, especially because it was the German kings that inherited the Imperial dignity. Thus, the German name should be shown, and I have edited it in. IIRC, Belgium speaks mainly French and German, and Switzerland speaks mostly German, so the languages of those countries are shown in "Karl der Große" and "Charelmagne". -Alex, 12.220.157.93 01:23, 23 January 2006 (UTC).

I'm afraid I still disagree. The footnote explains it all. You do not explain the specialness of Germany well. Why not Italian or Spanish or Catalan (which I think I explained owes as much to Charlemagne as any other language for its separate existence)? Furthermore, you removed the alternative spelling of his Latin name, which removal was unnecessary. I think the addition of the German name is more agenda-driven than anything. It appears in the footnote and no other language (not French Charles le Grand) but Latin is mentioned at the article's beginning. Finally, Charlemagne is his English name, it just so happens to be identical to his main French name. I will remove the German from the top of the page unless its existence there is more well justified. Srnec 04:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Charlemagne is also the french name. Charles le grand is almost never used. Even though Charlemagne was born in Belgium, it's pretty sure that he was a german speaker (Liège (Lüttich) was part of the holly german empire in that time), so I think it's nice to say its german name also. BUT, because most dont know how to prononce that ß, I suggest we put a "ss" instead. Jrenier 13:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Charlemagne should be considered his English name in an English article. It just so happens that the close relation between English and French means that the common name in both languages is identical. He did not speak modern German, however. Nor did he speak modern English or French or any other modern language. His name is recorded in charters and chronicles and in other writings as Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus: the Latin. This is why only the Latin (asides, obviously, the English) appeared at the top of the page. And again, why not present the Italian, Catalan, or Dutch form? The German name should appear both with ß and ss in the footnote, but not at the top of the article. I don't know what his name is in his language (Old Frankish), but it would be so obscure to any reader as to be unnecessary as well. Even if Charlemagne stands more specially at the head of the Holy Roman Empire than of Catalonia, the Holy Roman Empire was not, in any way, a specifically German-speaking nation. I still advocate the removal of the German name from the opening paragraph and the re-addition of Karolus, otherwise there is no logic for denying or reverting the addition of the Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, or Frisian translation (which is all the German name is, like the English "Charles the Great"). Srnec 22:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Srnec that we should not add all kinds of translations. This being an English encyclopedia, the English should be in there. In this case, the latin use of the name should also be in there since that is the name on the 9th centuries documents. Another good argument is that modern German did not exist in the 9th century, making the choice of modern German as arbitrary as any other Germanic version (Dutch, Frisian, Danish). Arnoutf 22:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, IMHO the amount of speakers of German vs the other Germanic languages/dialects you mentioned does make a difference, don't you think?

A second thought, just a little bit out of context: I once heard that the word for king in many Slavic languages derived from the German name "Karl" of Charlemagne (Czech: král, Slovenian: kralj, Polish: król et al.) - Does anybody know if that's true? MikeZ 17:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

See Carl (name) :) -- Jrenier 23:20, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

In regards to the above comments: the page Carl (name) says nothing of Slavic words for king, though I think MikeZ is correctly informed on that point (I've have heard it from many sources). As regards the inclusion of the German name (which I still intend to change back): the number of speakers of a given language should not decide whether or not that form (or translation, as the German name is) of the name should appear at the top of the page in preference to other translations or forms. I have tried to show that, culturally, the Catalan form is as important as the German. I say let's not open up a can of worms by subjectively added the German translation just because their are many German scholars (and Wikipedia contributors) who have studied Charlemagne, in contrast to the number of, say, Catalan scholars. Finally, the info about the Slavic words for king could be added in a footnote as well. Srnec 04:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, srnec, as I said, the Holy Roman Emperors who followed in Charlemagne's footsteps were mostly Germans. The majority of the population of the Empire consisted of Germans. The name should be thusly put in the first line, because the significance of the German people in the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne established. -Alex 12.220.157.93 05:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC).

I will just say this: why is his founding of an emprie (much later called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) more important than his position in the founding of Catalonia and in his effect, historically, on France? Neither the Catalan nor the French appear at the top of the page. Srnec 23:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't "Charlemagne" the French form of his name, anyway? -Alex 12.220.157.93

The divison that seperated the Empire into three seperate domains that can be seen as the "founding moment" of Germany, France and Italy didn t happen until after Karls death under the rule of his son ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:843-870_Europe.jpg). For that reason, i agree with Srnec here, even being german and considering his influence to be very important to both German and European history.

Date of Birth?

In the date of birth section, it gives the fact that his parents married in 749 and that there is no evidence he was born out of wedlock as evidence against his being born in 742. However, all the other dates mentioned are also before 749. Is this maybe a typo? Otherwise, this statement makes little sense. Grokmoo 20:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Good catch. That made no sense at all. I don't know how I missed it. Charlemagne's parents were married in 740 and nothing else in the paragraph suggests that Charlemagne's legitimacy has anything to do with the doubt cast upon the date of 742. Fixed. Srnec 22:08, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

His Lombard wife

Based on an article in a recent (1999) work (After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History edited by Archibald C. Murray and Walter A. Goffart; I can't remember the article title), Desiderius' daughter who married Charles was Gerperga (in Frankish, Gerberga). The article states what I have heard elsewhere: Desiderata or Desideria was not her real name and that her real name wasn't recorded. It is surmised, quite reasonably in my opinion, that the confusion many contemporary chroniclers seem to have between the w. of Charles, and Gerberga, w. of Carloman, was due to their having the same name. This is further buttressed by the fact that the other three daughters of Desiderius had names ending in "-perga" (or "-berga"). Thus I changed it. I have no clue where Ermengarda comes from, I've never seen it before. Srnec 01:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we can really take one book as a source for this change. Perhaps it would better to say that her name is unconfirmed but she is thought to be a daughter of Desiderius. Arniep 02:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I am not taking one source here. I explained how one source hypothesises a name (this can be delved out in detail in her article), but the hypothesis is supported by other sources and the other given names are definitely wrong. Gerberge is the French form of a name which was Gerberga to Frankish and Gerperga to Lombard chroniclers, so I changed it back to the form which is the title of the proper article (Gerberge is a disambig page which needs attention, in my opinion). I have explained all this in further detail in the Gerperga article. Srnec 04:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

you haven't given any other sources here or in the Gerperga article. Arniep 15:36, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
You misunderstand. I am not saying there is another source for the hypothesis, only that there exists multiple sources from which the hypothesis derives support. Certainly no other name has any support? Rather than title her article "Daughter of Desiderius" or some such hideous thing, I title it by the most plausible name and give a rather lengthy explanation of the controversy around her identity in the article. Srnec 00:01, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure that she should really have an article by herself so it wouldn't really be an issue in that case. Arniep 02:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


Ermengarda is the fictional name that author Alessandro Manzoni gave her in his book "Adelchi", in which he dramatizes the end of the Lombard kingdom. Her real name is considered unknown or uncertain. AdrianoFarina 01:23, 28 April 2006

Roman Emperor, East and West

I think the article needs to be moved away from its position that Charlemagne's coronation as Emperor was intended to revive the Western Roman Empire only, which would then coexist independently of the Empire in Constantinople (which a previous contributor seems to think was still thought of as the "Eastern" Roman Empire).

This isn't what the Pope intended by the coronation, and it isn't how either the Franks or Byzantines interpreted it. The Pope was crowning Charlemagne as Emperor of the whole Roman Empire—that is, as Byzantine Emperor. Since Charlemagne had reconquered much of the Empire's fallen Western provinces, making him emperor of the Empire as it survived in the East thereby effectively restored the Roman Empire to much of its former glory. As far as the Pope and Charlemagne were concerned, the Imperial throne in Constantinople was vacant in 800. Irene had assumed the throne as an empress-regnant, but both the peoples of the West practised Salic law and did not recognise the right of a woman to rule in her own name.

It's true that relatively soon after the coronation, after it became clear Charlemagne would not be able to take power in Constantinople, Charlemagne and the Byzantines adopted a modus vivendi that involved Charlemagne minimising his own Imperial title so as not to cause friction with the Byzantine Empire—but at the time of the coronation, there were no thoughts of a "Western" or "Eastern" Roman Empire, simply of the Roman Empire reunited.

I don't have the time right now to rework the article, but if anyone's interested, a pretty solid discussion of the Byzantine-Frankish political implications of the coronation that's nonetheless accessible to the general reader can be found in the last chapter of the first volume of Lord Norwich's history of the Byzantine Empire, Byzantium: The Early Centuries. Binabik80 03:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

When you say that the pope intended that Charles become emperor of the whole Roman Empire, you say "that is, as Byzantine Emperor". Is not that as silly a comparison (between Charlemagne's title and "Byzantine Emperor") as you claim referring to the Byzantine emperor as "Eastern Roman" (done in order to present the fact that the Byzantine emperor considered himself a Roman) is? Anyway, I also think its wrong to consider the pope as wanting to see the East go to Charles. Did anybody ever think Charlemagne ruling from Constantinople was feasible? Finally, can I ask why you thought it fit to change "it is constructive now to quote Einhard on the closing of such a grand conflict" to "according to Einhard"? Is not the former superior, less plain and used? Srnec 03:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
This is an encyclopedia, not a biography, "according to Einhard" is the proper terminology. The other is far too many words to say the same exact thing and it makes things grandiose that perhaps were not. Regarding the East-West conflict, Charles was crowned Roman Emperor (Augustus). That means he was meant to rule the entire empire (east and west). Obviously the eastern Byzantine emperors who traced their empire back to Rome and were under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople not the Pope would see Charles as a conflict of interest if he claimed both sides. While he may have been crowned Augustus, he was not in effect, emperor of the east. Likewise, he could not be Holy Roman Emperor because that title had not yet been created. Charles was a Roman Emperor, who ruled much of the west, but that is all that can really be said so perhaps Roman Emperor is the most fitting title for the Frankish king.
–Whaleyland 08:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I apologise for the length of my response, but I want to set out my position as clearly and cogently as possible.
No, it's not silly to say that the Pope saw himself as crowning Charlemagne Byzantine Emperor, because he did. Byzantine Emperor is a modern term we use to mean "a Roman Emperor who ruled from Constantinople between roughly the fifth century AD and 1453". If we want to indicate how the Byzantine Emperor saw himself, we should call him "Roman Emperor"—calling him "Eastern Roman Emperor" implies that either the Byzantines or the Franks saw the Roman Empire as something that had split into two halves, which isn't the case at all.
As far as Irene, the Pope and Charlemagne were concerned, the holder of the office that we call Byzantine Emperor was in fact the one true Roman Emperor, direct successor to Augustus, Constantine the Great—and even Romulus Augustulus. The holder of that office was the ruler of the Roman Empire; that the holdings of the Roman Empire had by this point been reduced only to the northeastern provinces of what it had once ruled did not make it any less the Roman Empire, or give any other kingdom the right to call itself the Roman Empire as well.
And as far as Charlemagne and the Pope were concerned, that office—the one we call Byzantine Emperor but was called at the time Roman Emperor—was vacant in AD 800, and had been since 797, when Irene set herself up as empress regnant. So the Pope—whose interpretation of Church hierarchy gave him jurisdiction over all Christendom, including the Byzantine Empire—leapt at an opportunity to restore the Roman Empire to much of its former glory, by installing as ruler of that Empire the man who now ruled the majority of the "lost" Western provinces.
Furthermore, Charlemagne responded to his coronation by attempting to take possession of Constantinople and make himself Byzantine Emperor in fact as well as in name, when he proposed marriage to Irene. It was only after Irene's failure to immediately rebuff the offer led directly to her being deposed—that is, after the people of Constantinople made it very clear they would never willingly accept a Frankish sovereign—that Charlemagne gave up on attempting to assume control of the Byzantine Empire. It is at that point that he began minimising his Imperial title—if being Emperor wasn't going to allow him to rule Constantinople, then the title was no good to him.
I have already, in my original post, cited a source stating that all parties involved saw Charlemagne's coronation as an attempt to make him, in effect, Byzantine Emperor; if anyone wishes to argue that there were people at the time who saw it as an attempt to resurrect a "Western" Roman Empire that could coexist with the Byzantine Empire, I'd ask that they cite a source that says so or, at the very least, provide a reason why Lord Norwich's history of the events isn't a valid source for me to cite.
As far as the "It is constructive . . ." statement, I have several problems with it and can go into detail with them if you really want me to, but Whaleyland summed up my objections pretty succinctly. Binabik80 13:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
As regards the "It is constructive..." statement, I will not change it back, but I cannot see how one is necessarily more "encyclopaedic" than the other, unless encyclopaedic means dull, bland, overused, etc. This is not merely a repository of information, it is an article meant to be read. But anyways...
It is silly to call Charlemagne's coronation Byzantine. Far sillier than referring the the Byzantine Empire as Eastern Roman or to Charlemagne as Emperor of the West (or some such). Byzantine specifically refers to Byzantium (Constantinople) and has decidedly Greek connotations which in no way apply to Charlemagne, or the Pope's intent. Of course, Byzantine is an anachronistic term, but all the more reason to use it for a specific entity, the Greek-speaking Constantinopolitan state which saw itself as the unbroken heritage of ancient Rome. I will not digress into a discussion of Dark Age legal theory, but to state unequivocally that the Empress Irene was the legitimate heir of Augustus is silly on many counts: the pope (far closer to the time and its laws than you or I) would not have recognised her as such, Augustus would not have recognised her as such for the state he goverened was a "republic" (in the eyes of its citizens, at least), and the mingling of Church and State calls all into question.
It is necessary, I think, to point out that nobody calls Charlemagne "Byzantine Emperor", they call him just "Roman Emperor", "Emperor of the West", or "Holy Roman Emperor". Yes, the pope intended to install Charles as the Roman Emperor, but not a "Byzantine" one. Furthermore, I doubt the pope harboured any illusions about Charles ever reigning from Constantinople, whether or not their was any such attempt to do so. The "true" capital of the theoretical (and that's all it was) empire was Rome, which Charles held and the Senate and people of Rome. Finally, the ancient empire had been divided many times and though the unity of the whole was never in doubt, the concept of Western and Eastern emperors, though perhaps foreign to the pope and the Italians, was not legally absurd.
In conclusion, the use of the title "Byzantine Emperor" for Charlemagne is nondescript and anachronistic, whatever the Lord Norwich says (does he call him such?). The aricle already states clearly that Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" (Imperator Romanorum), not Western or Byzantine or Holy or anything else. Charles was, in fact if not in name, the Western Roman Emperor and basically accepted such later in life and his empire morphed into the Holy Roman Empire over time. Nobody says the intent of the pope or the king was to create a coexisting empire, but they had no illusions about the nature of their new empire, which was in no way Byzantine. At the moment, I can't even tell what the argument's all about. Srnec 19:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Byzantine Emperor seems to me to be a term that's stirring up a lot of confusion in this discussion, so if no one objects, I'm going to eschew it entirely, and simply refer to the Byzantine Emperors by the term that was used to describe them by everyone, both in the East and the West, at the time—Roman Emperor. And no, Norwich doesn't call Charlemagne Byzantine Emperor—he doesn't call anyone Byzantine Emperor, because no one thought of themselves as such. That's part of the point.

According to Collins's biography of Charlemagne, the Pope crowned him with the title "Imperator Romanorum", or Emperor of the Romans. And as far as anyone alive was concerned at the time, the "Empire of the Romans" was the Empire centred upon Constantinople. It was the same Empire that had ruled the whole Mediterranean basin and Western Europe from the first century BC to the fifth century AD. When you say, "Yes, the pope intended to install Charles as the Roman Emperor, but not a 'Byzantine' one," you draw an artificial distinction that the people involved at the time would not—could not—have recognised. The Pope intended Charlemagne to be the Roman Empire—and the Roman Emperor was the individual who ruled in Constantinople.

No, the Pope didn't see Irene as the successor of Augustus, or (to cite my full example, since using only one of the three names I gave puts us perilously close to setting up a straw man) of Constantine the Great or Romulus Augustulus—because the Pope didn't recognise her right, as a woman, to occupy the Imperial office. As far as he and Charlemagne were concerned, that office was vacant, which was why it was available to be filled by Charlemagne.

How realistic the Pope (or Charlemagne, for that matter) thought it to be that Charlemagne would ever actually rule in Constantinople, neither you nor I can say, because (so far as I'm aware), there isn't a scrap of primary evidence dealing with their opinions on the matter. But the fact remains that Charlemagne's immediate reaction to his coronation as emperor was to take steps to make himself ruler of Constantinople's Empire, by proposing marriage to Irene.

We do not call Charlemagne Byzantine Emperor because he does not fit our definition of Byzantine Emperor—he did not still himself Roman Emperor and rule in Constantinople between the fourth-to-sixth centuries (depending on your preference) and 1453. That does not mean, however, that at the time of his coronation, either he or the Pope thought he was supposed to be emperor of a Roman Empire that would somehow exist independently of the Roman Empire that was already a major political player in their world.

I will conclude by asking again for any source that states that the Pope or Charlemagne did not think, in 800, that the Pope was installing Charlemagne in the same office held by the rulers of Constantinople, or that the Roman Empire (which we call the Byzantine Empire) was meant to be excluded from the Roman Empire of which Charlemagne was now Roman Emperor.

My problem with the article as it stands is that it takes the position that Charlemagne's coronation was an attempt to resurrect the Late Roman system of a Roman Empire divided into two halves with two Emperors. It took this position even more strongly until last night, when I removed the description of the Byzantine Emperor under such a system as "Eastern Roman Emperor"—an edit to which you objected. Specifically, in addition to the removal of the Eastern Roman reference, I'd like to see three changes made:

  1. The removal of the description of the Holy Roman Empire as "a reincarnation of the ancient Western Roman Empire", which I think is just silly. The Holy Roman Empire was an attempt to resurrect the Roman Empire of antiquity, not the Western Empire. For one thing, it was in the wrong place to be the Western Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries.
  2. Change the sentence in the "Imperator" section that currently reads, "Charlemagne thus became the renewer of the Western Roman Empire, which had expired in 476," to read something like, "Charlemagne thus re-established the idea of Roman government in Western and Central Europe for the first time since Justinian's campaigns in Italy and Spain almost two centuries earlier." Basically, I think that both sentences I've objected in 1 and 2 arise from a previous author confusing "Western Roman Empire", which is a distinct historical concept whose use carries with it a number of connotations that are inappropriate for Charlemagne's empire or the HRE, with "western provinces of the Roman Empire".
  3. A discussion of just what the title "Roman Emperor" meant to Franks, Romans and Constantinopolitans in 800, much like our discussion here.

I'll assume your remarks about the "It is constructive . . ." statement were a request for me to fulfill the offer I made in my previous post to detail all the objections I have to it. All right:

  1. Chiefly, it's clunkily written. It draws attention to itself, which good writing shouldn't. Awkward phrases like "It is constructive" and "the closing of such a grand conflict" jar the reader out of the article and force him to stop and figure out what the author its trying to say. They reek of an author trying to impress his audience by his proficiency with words—and achieving quite the opposite.
  2. It tells instead of showing. If it is constructive to quote Einhard here, the reader is quite capable of drawing that conclusion from himself: if it is constructive, then the quote will follow logically from what has preceded it and add to the point being made, and if it isn't, then the quote will seem jarring and out of place. The reader doesn't need to be told that the author finds the quote constructive without being given a chance to form his own opinion first (obviously the author finds the quote constructive), and the reader is quite capable of deciding how he feels about the quote without being told how to feel by the author.
  3. Describing the Saxon Wars as a "grand conflict" is, at best, POV. For one thing, war is no longer widely considered "grand" at all. And for another, even if it was, I see very little about the Saxon Wars to qualify them as one of the conflicts worthy of being called "grand". A larger imperial power invaded and occupied its weaker neighbour and proceeded to bloodily stamp out the neighbour's native culture. The process was protracted because the imperial power was consistently being diverted to other more important, more immediate conflicts on its southern borders; every time the neighbour thought the imperial power's back was turned, it rose up again and was promptly squashed when the imperial power returned. I don't see what's so impressive here.

So in summary, it's a poorly written sentence, both stylistically and scholastically. An article doesn't become "dull" or "bland" just because readers aren't distracted from its content by awkward and inappropriate interjections from the author. Binabik80 00:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Your comments keep getting longer and longer! But I believe we have finally hit on a point of contention. You say, "as far as anyone alive was concerned at the time, the 'Empire of the Romans' was the Empire centred upon Constantinople". Here I disagree immensely. The empire in the mind of the pope, Charles, and the Italian people was centred on Rome, not Constantinople. Only the Byzantines considered the legitimate empire to be centred on Constantinople. The ancient (and thus legitimate) capital was Rome. You say that "you draw an artificial distinction that the people involved at the time would not—could not—have recognised". Again, I think that's absolutely false. The Westerners (pope and Charles included) would have regarded the emperor at Constantinople of the time as a Greek, not a Roman (the emperor would have disagreed). The emperor didn't speak Latin, he spoke Greek. He was often out of communion with the papal church. Furthermore, no Westerner of the time regarded himself as a subject of Byzantium, he was Frank, a Saxon, a Scot, etc.
Then I would ask again for a source stating that Franks and the Romans did not view the Roman Empire that already existed in 800 as the Roman Empire.--Binabik80
When you say, "That does not mean, however, that at the time of his coronation, either he or the Pope thought he was supposed to be emperor of a Roman Empire that would somehow exist independently of the Roman Empire that was already a major political player in their world," I agree. I think I was misunderstood (perhaps my fault, perhaps yours, but it doesn't really matter). I concur that "the Pope was installing Charlemagne in the same office held by the rulers of Constantinople", but I would add "in theory", lest we confuse fact and law, de facto and de jure.
I objected to the removal of "Eastern Roman", because I was afraid that some readers would not understand that the Byzantine Empire was a Roman Empire. I think that throughout this discussion, you have taken the position that the legal theory behind the states is more important than what in fact they were.
You seem to think that the idea of empire was extinct when you say "Charlemagne thus re-established the idea of Roman government in Western and Central Europe", but haven't you consistently argued that the idea was alive and well (Charles Oman, as a source, makes the point that it was always alive and well in Italy, at least)? And does not "western provinces of the Roman Empire" carry as many inappropriate connotations as HRE or Western Roman Empire?
I'm afraid that I (who wrote the "It is constructive..." sentence) still do not find it jarring, though if that is how it is to others, fine. The "grand conflict" part is admittedly "grandiose" (read: poorly written; my bad). Though I do not think that grand is necessarily POV and it merely recognises the historical "bigness" (or importance, not its impressiveness or moral quality) of the event. I remove my standing objection to the removal of the sentence. Congratulations, well argued. I find repeated use of the same stock phrases jarring. Is there not any other way to say "according to"? Srnec 04:45, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
"Ascribed to", "notated by", "as per", "stated by", "from the ____ of" . . . yeah, there are other ways. Get inventive, but not overly so. Keep it brief but that doesn't mean you can't be unique. As a writer, you sometimes realize that the shortest phrase can say the most things. Charlemagne rocks my world, though his successors failed miserably to uphold that world. *shrugs* Leave the east their female-dominated empire, the west got their own Roman leige. Right, I need to get more sleep these days, at least I lightened the mood some. Keep it peaceful, keep it fair, keep it unbiased...those are the rules of this game.
–Whaleyland 10:53, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I've tried to shorten my response here, though of course it's then followed by a chunk of text I'd like to add to the article. Even that I would be willing to truncate, if only several points of contention in this discussion can be resolved, so that they don't need such extensive support in the text.
I wasn't saying that the Holy Roman Empire was an attempt to resurrect the "western provinces of the Roman Empire". I was saying that someone seems to have assumed that, because it was an attempt to resurrect the Roman Empire, and because some of its territory coincided geographically with the western provinces of the Roman Empire (even though much of its territory, and practically all the territory it claimed within a couple of generations of Charlemagne's death, was actually outside either half of the Roman Empire), that it was an attempt to resurrect the Western Roman Empire. What it actually was an attempt to resurrect the Roman Empire in Central and Western Europe, which is a very different thing. You'll note that I don't want to change "Western Roman Empire" to "western provinces of the Roman Empire", I want to remove references to the Western Empire entirely.
No, the Franks, Saxons & Scots didn't see themselves as subjects of Constantinople (I'm still refraining as much as possible from Byzantine & Byzantium because I think it's drawing an anachronistic distinction)—because, as Roger Collins points out in Charlemagne, they saw themselves as no longer subjects of the Roman Empire at all, and were rather proud of themselves for having "liberated" Western and Central Europe from the Roman yoke (and pushing the Romans to the East), because they saw the Romans as the people who had martyred a whole lot of saints. That's another reason Charlemagne's coronation wasn't an attempt to create a new Roman Empire in the West—because neither he, the Franks, nor any of the Franks' subject peoples were interested in some sort of romantic notion of a resurrected Roman Empire.
I'm not saying the idea of Empire was dead, I'm saying it never died—because the Roman Empire itself was alive and well, and significant presence in international relations, for the Franks and certainly for the Pope. Of course the idea of Empire was still strong in Italy—a significant portion of Italy was still a province of the Roman Empire.
Here's a rough draught of what I'd like inserted into the text:
Historians have debated for centuries whether Charlemagne was aware of the Pope's intent to crown him Emperor prior to the coronation itself, but that debate has often obscured the more significant question of why the Pope granted the title and why Charlemagne chose to accept it once he did.
Roger Collins points out (Charlemagne, pg. 147) "that the motivation behind the acceptance of the imperial title was a romantic and antiquarian interest in reviving the Roman empire is highly unlikely." For one thing, such romance would not have appealed either to Franks or Roman Catholics at the turn of the ninth century, both of whom viewed the Classical heritage of the Roman Empire with distrust. The Franks took pride in having "fought against and thrown from their shoulders the heavy yoke of the Romans" and "from the knowledge gained in baptism, clothed in gold and precious stones the bodies of the holy martyrs whom the Romans had killed by fire, by the sword and by wild animals", as Pippin III described it in a law of 763/764 (Collins 151). Furthermore, the new title—carrying with it the risk that the new emperor would "make drastic changes to the traditional styles and procedures of government" or "concentrate his attentions on Italy or on Mediterranean concerns more generally" (Collins 149)—risked alienating the Frankish leadership.
Furthermore, for both the Pope and Charlemagne, the Roman Empire remained a significant power in European politics at this time, and continued to hold a substantial portion of Italy, with borders not very far south of the city of Rome itself—the empire modern historians label the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, Charlemagne was usurping the prerogatives of the Roman Emperor in Constantinople simply by sitting in judgement over the Pope in the first place:
By whom, however, could he be tried? Who, in other words, was qualified to pass judgement on the Vicar of Christ? In normal circumstances the only conceivable answer to that question would have been the Emperor at Constantinople; but the imperial throne was at this moment occupied by Irene. That the Empress was notorious for having blinded and murdered her own son was, in the minds of both Leo and Charles, almost immaterial: it was enough that she was a woman. The female sex was known to be incapable of governing, and by the old Salic tradition was debarred from doing so. As far as Western Europe was concerned, the Throne of the Emperors was vacant: Irene's claim to it was merely an additional proof, if any were needed, of the degradation into which the so-called Roman Empire had fallen. (John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, pg. 378)
For the Pope, then, there was "no living Emperor at the that time." (Norwich 379) Therefore, the Pope took the extraordinary step of creating one. The papacy had for some years been in conflict with Irene's predecessors in Constantinople over a number of issues, chiefly the continued Byzantine adherence to the doctrine of iconoclasm, the destruction of Christian images. By bestowing the Imperial crown upon Charlemagne, the Pope abrogated to himself "the right to appoint ... the Emperor of the Romans, ... establishing the imperial crown as his own personal gift but simultaneously granting himself implicit superiority over the Emperor whom he had created." And "because the Byzantines had proved so unsatisfactory from every point of view—political, military and doctrinal—he would select a westerner: the one man who by his wisdom and statesmanship and the vastness of his dominions ... stood out head and shoulders above his contemporaries."
With Charlemagne's coronation, therefore, "the Roman Empire remained, so far as either of them [Charlemagne and Leo] were concerned, one and indivisible, with Charles as its Emperor", though there can have been "little doubt that the coronation, with all that it implied, would be furiously contested in Constantinople." (Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee, pg. 3) How realistic either Charlemagne or the Pope felt it to be that the people of Constantinople would ever accept the King of the Franks as their Emperor, we cannot know; Alcuin speaks hopefully in his letters of an Imperium Christianum ("Christian Empire"), wherein, "just as the inhabitants of the [Roman Empire] had been united by a common Roman citizenship", presumably this new empire would be united by a common Christian faith. (Collins 151).
What we do know, from the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes (Collins 153), is that Charlemagne's reaction to his coronation was to take the initial steps toward securing the Constantinopolitan throne by sending envoys of marriage to Irene, and that Irene reacted somewhat favorably to them. Only when the people of Constantinople reacted to Irene's failure to immediately rebuff the proposal by deposing her and replacing her with one of her ministers, Nicephorus I, thus demonstrating that they would never accept a Frankish king as Emperor, did Charlemagne drop any ambitions toward the Byzantine throne and begin minimising his new Imperial title, which was now largely useless to him, and instead return to describing himself primarily as rex Francorum et Langobardum.
I think the sources cited here make it very clear that the Pope did indeed see himself as crowning Charlemagne with the same crown worn by the Emperors in Constantinople, and that Charlemagne's initial reaction to this was to take the first steps toward securing the Byzantine throne, and I think those sources are good ones. If anyone wants to dispute what's in the text, I ask once again that they do so by citing sources that contradict them, or by providing reasons why my sources aren't valid. Binabik80 14:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
In response to your (third) request for a citation from a resepactable source, I though I'd answered that. There is no source I have because I do not disagree that the Franks recognised the Roman Empire of the time was the Roman Empire, but they did not regard its ruler as legitimate or its authority as binding over them, in short, they regarded it as a truncated power which considered itself heir to Rome, but was in fact not (in Western eyes). I think you have pretty much said the same, no?
I will take this moment to mention again the difference which must be elucidated for the reader with little prior knowledge of Charlemagne of de jure and de facto states and rulers. The pope crowned Charles with the same crown as the Constantinopolitan emperor de jure, but, de facto, it was a different state and a different crown.
I do not know where your text (or a version of it) should be placed in the article, but it is not narrative and should not be placed so as to disrupt the "Life" section's flow; perhaps within a subsection of "Administration". Or should the section "Cultural significance" be renamed "Legacy" and split into "Imperial legacy" and "Modern legacy"? If opting for the latter, here is your text (as minutely edited by me; my edits in bold) with a minor addition (at the end; also in bold) to make it appropriate for an "Imperial legacy" subsection:
Historians have debated for centuries whether Charlemagne was aware of the Pope's intent to crown him Emperor prior to the coronation itself (Charlemagne declared that he would not have entered Saint Peter's had he known), but that debate has often obscured the more significant question of why the Pope granted the title and why Charlemagne chose to accept it once he did.
Roger Collins points out (Charlemagne, pg. 147) "that the motivation behind the acceptance of the imperial title was a romantic and antiquarian interest in reviving the Roman empire is highly unlikely." For one thing, such romance would not have appealed either to Franks or Roman Catholics at the turn of the ninth century, both of whom viewed the Classical heritage of the Roman Empire with distrust. The Franks took pride in having "fought against and thrown from their shoulders the heavy yoke of the Romans" and "from the knowledge gained in baptism, clothed in gold and precious stones the bodies of the holy martyrs whom the Romans had killed by fire, by the sword and by wild animals", as Pippin III described it in a law of 763 or 764 (Collins 151). Furthermore, the new title — carrying with it the risk that the new emperor would "make drastic changes to the traditional styles and procedures of government" or "concentrate his attentions on Italy or on Mediterranean concerns more generally" (Collins 149) — risked alienating the Frankish leadership.
Furthermore, for both the Pope and Charlemagne, the Roman Empire remained a significant power in European politics at this time, and continued to hold a substantial portion of Italy, with borders not very far south of the city of Rome itself — this is the empire modern historians label the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, Charlemagne was usurping the prerogatives of the Roman Emperor in Constantinople simply by sitting in judgement over the Pope in the first place:
By whom, however, could he be tried? Who, in other words, was qualified to pass judgement on the Vicar of Christ? In normal circumstances the only conceivable answer to that question would have been the Emperor at Constantinople; but the imperial throne was at this moment occupied by Irene. That the Empress was notorious for having blinded and murdered her own son was, in the minds of both Leo and Charles, almost immaterial: it was enough that she was a woman. The female sex was known to be incapable of governing, and by the old Salic tradition was debarred from doing so. As far as Western Europe was concerned, the Throne of the Emperors was vacant: Irene's claim to it was merely an additional proof, if any were needed, of the degradation into which the so-called Roman Empire had fallen. (John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, pg. 378)
For the Pope, then, there was "no living Emperor at the that time." (Norwich 379) Therefore, the Pope took the extraordinary step of creating one. The papacy had for some years been in conflict with Irene's predecessors in Constantinople over a number of issues, chiefly the continued Byzantine adherence to the doctrine of iconoclasm, the destruction of Christian images. By bestowing the Imperial crown upon Charlemagne, the Pope abrogated to himself "the right to appoint ... the Emperor of the Romans, ... establishing the imperial crown as his own personal gift but simultaneously granting himself implicit superiority over the Emperor whom he had created." And "because the Byzantines had proved so unsatisfactory from every point of view—political, military and doctrinal—he would select a westerner: the one man who by his wisdom and statesmanship and the vastness of his dominions ... stood out head and shoulders above his contemporaries."
With Charlemagne's coronation, therefore, "the Roman Empire remained, so far as either of them [Charlemagne and Leo] were concerned, one and indivisible, with Charles as its Emperor", though there can have been "little doubt that the coronation, with all that it implied, would be furiously contested in Constantinople." (Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee, pg. 3) How realistic either Charlemagne or the Pope felt it to be that the people of Constantinople would ever accept the King of the Franks as their Emperor, we cannot know; Alcuin speaks hopefully in his letters of an Imperium Christianum ("Christian Empire"), wherein, "just as the inhabitants of the [Roman Empire] had been united by a common Roman citizenship", presumably this new empire would be united by a common Christian faith. (Collins 151).
What we do know, from the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes (Collins 153), is that Charlemagne's reaction to his coronation was to take the initial steps toward securing the Constantinopolitan throne by sending envoys of marriage to Irene, and that Irene reacted somewhat favorably to them. Only when the people of Constantinople reacted to Irene's failure to immediately rebuff the proposal by deposing her and replacing her with one of her ministers, Nicephorus I, [remove:thus demonstrating that they would never accept a Frankish king as Emperor,] did Charlemagne drop any ambitions toward the Byzantine throne and begin minimising his new Imperial title, [remove:which was now largely useless to him,]' and instead return to describing himself primarily as rex Francorum et Langobardum.
The title of emperor remained in his family for years to come, however, as brothers fought over who had the supremacy in the Frankish state. The papacy itself never forgot the title nor abandoned the right to bestow it. When the family of Charles ceased to produce worthy heirs, the pope gladly crowned whichever Italian magnate could best protect him from his local enemies. This devolution lead, as could have been expected, to the dormancy of the title for almost forty years (924-962). Finally, in 962, in a radically different Europe from Charlemagne's, a new Roman Emperor was crowned in Rome by a grateful pope. This emperor, Otto the Great, brought the title into the hands the kings of Germany for almost a millennium, for it was to become the not-so-holy, not-so-Roman Holy Roman Empire, a true imperial successor to Charles, if not Augustus.
I removed links for now. I do not know whether we should use Harvard references, or whether it should contain such extensive quoting in the first place. I did not add anything about Western and Eastern Roman, though it would be nice to clear that up. I think the difference between Byzantine and Roman should be brought out, but I added nothing (yet). It is also extremely long for an already long article, but perhaps Charlemagne deserves it. Srnec 16:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Your edits to the text look good to me. In my experience, biographies of Charlemagne pause for a chapter at his coronation to deal with its implications, but barring that, to me the most logical place for its inclusion is in the Administration section. Perhaps it needs to be split up. Or perhaps Charlemagne's coronation should have its own article; it's certainly one of the central events in European history and continues to generate controversy even today. On the other hand, at 48KB this article is still firmly shorter than the articles on several comparable figures—Alexander the Great (55KB), Napoleon I of France (59KB) and Julius Caesar (60KB).

The extensive quotation is, I think, only necessary if the points being made are being contested.

We've both been pretty emphatic in presenting our viewpoints during this discussion, but we haven't, I think, at any point been impolite or disrespectful, and we've kept focused on the arguments without resorting to personal attacks. That's all too rare on the Internet, and I'd like to thank and commend you for your courtesy. Binabik80 01:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Civil discourse is all too lacking in many academic and political situations, much less the internet, so you certainly have my gratitude for keeping the discussion respectful and polite. As to the section, perhaps "The division of the empire" and "Political organisation" can be put alongside it (as "Imperial coronation" or some such thing) within a subdivision of "Administration" entitled "Government" or "Governance" or something like that? What you say about his typical biographies is what I too have noticed in many a work. If other figures of comparable importance have longer articles, it is probably not yet necessary to add a "Coronation of Charlemagne" article and the info should just be added here.
I decided to see what Henri Pirenne had to say about the coronation in Mohammed and Charlemagne today. What I found was interesting in its pertenance to the discussion. I let you be the judge (each is a separate quotations):
  • But it is evident that what he [Leo III] had in mind was not merely to reconstitute the Empire in partibus Occidentis, and to create, so to speak, a successor to Romulus Augustulus.
  • ...his [Charles'] Imperial title had no secular significance.
  • The power that had been conferred upon him [Charles] mad him not an Emperor, but the Emperor. There could no more be two Emperors as there could be two Popes. Charles was the Emperor of the ecclesia as the Pope conceived it, of the Roman Church, regarded as the universal Church [ie Christendom].
  • But on January 13th, 812, the two Empires concluded peace.
  • In the 7th century the ancient Roman Empire had actually become an Empire of the East; the Empire of Charles was an Empire of the West.
  • The coronation of Charles was not in any sense explained by the fact that at this moment a woman was reigning in Constantinople.
So let's add the section (and maybe a few Pirenne quotes). Srnec 02:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I added the section with a few minor modifications and Pirenne quotations. The article is now 54KB long. Srnec 23:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Phantom time

Does the phantom time hypothesis and Heribert Illig really deserve mention in this article? I will remove it without an adequate defence. Srnec 18:19, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Removing it doesn't make it untrue. Only Wikipedia more annoying.217.238.155.72 (talk) 01:14, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Retitle?

Here's a question: All of the articles of the Holy Roman Emperors are called "(ruler's name) (regnal number), Holy Roman Emperor". Since Charlemagne is considered the first Holy Roman Emperor in all accepted lists of Emperors...should this article be retitles as "Charles I, Holy Roman Emperor"? -Alex, 12.220.157.93 00:05, 19 February 2006 (UTC).

I believe that would be unecessary for three reasons. Firstly, he was never in fact titled Holy Roman Emperor, so he is only such in hindsight. Secondly, he is so well known as Charlemagne that he is an exception to the rule (see Alexander the Great). Thirdly and finally, it wouldn't be possible to do so easily since "Charles I, Holy Roman Emperor" is already an article edited three times. Srnec 04:31, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Date of Birth...again

The intro claims April 2, 742 or 747, while the 'date and place of birth' section says:

'The best guesses include April 1, 747, after April 15, 747, or April 1, 748...'

Why has April 2, 742 or 747 been decided upon in the intro? Ben davison 16:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It used to just say "742 or 747". A while back, someone added Apr 2 on the basis of an online genealogy site. I removed the site from "Sources" and amended the first paragraph. Srnec 03:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

April 1 or 2? Does anybody know? Srnec 02:46, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

joint rule minor issue

"The brothers maintained not-so-friendly, not-so-hateful relations with the assistance of their mother Bertrada". The phrase "not-so-friendly, not-so-hateful" seems a little unacademic. I am all in favor of using accurate language, however sophisticated or unsophisticated, but would "lukewarm" convey the same meaning?

Sounds good. Srnec 23:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Spelling of Organisation

Since most of the text in this current version of the Charlemagne article is my own, I can verify that I used the Commonwealth spellings, including "organisation" and the like. According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, spellings need not be one form or the other if both are legitimate, but they should be consistent. Therefore, it is consistent only to spell the word with an "s" and not a "z." Srnec 03:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Recent tweaks to Saxon campaigns

The tweaks of the edits by Cosal were minor, but I wanted to explain them. Firstly, I delinked thing already linked previously or where the linke provided no help to a reader (i.e. "count"). Secondly, I reinserted some phrases. The campaign of 776 was notable for the rapidity with which Charlemagne arrived on scene. The assaults on the church are an integral part of the revolt following 782's campaign. I changed "support" to "presence" to emphasise that the support was the actual presence of contingents in the field. Finally, there was a minor spelling corrections and a rewording to remove redundancy. Srnec 18:56, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Yet another explanation

Since it worked with the spelling of "organisation," I will explain why I keeping changing it back from "fall of the Roman Empire" to "fall of Rome." Firstly, what the fall of Rome (or the Roman Empire) is is debated. To link to the article opens up that debate to the reader. Secondly, it is more accurate. The Roman Empire in no way fell by Charlemagne's time. Rome, however, had. That is, the Eternal City had gone to the barbarians and thence to the popes, but it was hardly imperial and certainly no capital of state or culture. Srnec 04:44, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Charlemagne/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

needs better referencing plange 05:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC) still needs better referencing GRBerry 14:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 14:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:18, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

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