Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800

250 Pages·2006·1.65 MB·English

by  Jeff Sypeck

BECOMING CHARLEMAGNE
Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800
JEFF SYPECK
FOR MY PARENTS
and their friends
Contents
Map
Introduction: Karolus Magnus
PART ONE: EMPIRES
1. A ROME YET TO BE
Aachen, A.D. 796
2. AN EMPRESS OF BYZANTIUM
Constantinople, A.D. 797
3. SOWING THE SEEDS OF EMPIRE
Tours, A.D. 796–798
4. DAYBREAK IN THE CITY OF PEACE
Baghdad, A.D. 797–799
5. THE MERCHANTS OF ASHKENAZ
Francia, A.D. 797–799
PART TWO: EMPEROR
6. BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS
Rome and Paderborn, A.D. 799
7. PRAYERS AND PLOTS
Francia, A.D. 799–800
8. KARL, CROWNED BY GOD
Rome, A.D. 800
9. AN ELEPHANT AT AACHEN
Ifriqiya to Aachen, A.D. 801–802
10. LITTLE MEN AT THE END OF ALL THINGS
Verdun, A.D. 843
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Searchable Terms
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Map

Introduction
KAROLUS MAGNUS
A
foreigner had come to their city, so the Romans were curious. He wasn’t one
of the usual befuddled pilgrims, so easily parted from their money, who fell to
their knees before the altars of Rome’s innumerable churches. He was a king,
and he was here on business.
On Christmas morning in the year 800, as the clergy chanted the praises of
saints and kings, the pious rabble gathered beneath the rafters of Saint Peter’s
basilica, along with nobles from throughout Christendom, envoys from
Jerusalem, countless bishops and monks, and thousands of merchants and
landlords and peasants, all straining to catch a glimpse of him. Before them all,
reluctantly draped in Roman garb, stood Karl.
A ferocious blur across the medieval map: that was Karl, moving over the face
of Europe like a storm and wresting new corners of his empire from the hands of
his enemies while still finding time to scold his sinful monks, contribute to
theological debates, and slog through muddy trenches to bark orders at canal
diggers and church builders. History remembers him not merely as Karl but as
Charles the Great, Karolus Magnus: Charlemagne. But on that day, he was still
just Karl, king of the Franks, and this Christmas mass with Pope Leo III is one of
the rare occasions when history finds him standing still.
Pope Leo was lucky to be alive. The previous year, his enemies had ambushed
him in the streets, attempting to gouge out his eyes and cut out his tongue and
leaving him in a bloody, naked heap. But now here he stood, able to see, able to
speak—a miracle, some said, unmistakable proof that Saint Peter had come to
his aid.
Few in the church that day could see what happened next, but the act was both
instant and decisive: the pope placed the imperial crown on Karl’s head,
fulfilling years of planning in a single swift gesture. With one voice, the entire
congregation acclaimed three times: “To Karl, pious Augustus crowned by God,
great and peaceful emperor, life and victory!” And then, in an act of ceremonial
self-abasement that would long haunt the pope, Leo knelt before Karl—the first
emperor in Rome in nearly 400 years.
Meanwhile, across Europe and throughout the world were the various people
who had made the coronation possible: a Saxon abbot, a Greek empress, an
Islamic caliph, and a Jew named Isaac, who was slowly making his way home to
western Europe from Baghdad, accompanied by an elephant named Abul Abaz.
F
ame came quickly for the Frankish king. Following Karl’s death in 814, the
singers of tales memorialized him in legend and romance, while poets counted
him one of the “nine worthies” among such rulers as David, Julius Caesar, and
King Arthur. By 1100, the anonymous epic The Song of Roland had turned Karl
into a bearded sage fighting alongside angels, a natural-born warrior of God; and
by 1165 his church had made him a saint. In the Balkans, kral, a variant of his
name, came to mean “king.” Medieval Icelanders crafted a saga about the
mighty “Karlamagnús,” and romances about Karl’s knights charmed the English
well into the 1500s. The long-dead king was becoming Charlemagne, a
superhuman emperor whose reputation for chivalry, piety, and power resounded
to the ends of the earth. The real Karl vanished; only myth remained.
Thumb through the 1864 edition of Thomas Bulfinch’s Legends of
Charlemagne, with its frontispiece engraving of knights attending to a gryphon,
and the esteemed emperor is there, more than 1,000 years after his death, still
embodying an age when every moment promised fresh adventure:
High sat Charlemagne at the head of his vassals and his paladins, rejoicing
in the thought of their number and their might, while all were sitting and
hearing music, and feasting, when suddenly there came into the hall four
enormous giants, having between them a lady of incomparable beauty,
attended by a single knight. There were many ladies present who had
seemed beautiful till she made her appearance, but after that they all
seemed nothing. Every Christian knight turned his eyes to her, and every
Pagan crowded round her.