Charlemagne 2 Essay, Research Paper

Charlemagne

I think that one of the most important people in the medieval time was Charlemagne. He was the son of a man named Pepin the Short, like his father before him became king of the Franks.

After his father died, Charlemagne took over ruling the Franks. Charlemagne did many important things for his people and his kingdom. One of his greatest accomplishments was nearly doubling the borders of his kingdom. His kingdom then included Germany, France, northern Spain, and most of Italy. This made the Franks even more powerful then they were before. His new kingdom became known as the Frankish Empire. Since the fall of Rome, this was the first time western Europe was ruled by only one government.

Another one of Charlemagne’s accomplishments was encouraging people to learn how to read and write, since most of western Europe didn’t know how to. He encouraged having schools in churches and monasteries. He also had a school in his palace that he had scholars come from all over to teach in. These scholars made accurate Latin copies of ancient religous manuscripts and Roman classics to make sure that people would be taught the way that the Romans were. when other areasof Europe started to build schools and other places of learning, western Europeans became more united after they understood a little more about the world.

One of those ideas that helped unite western Europe was the idea of making another Christian Roman Empire. Church officials thought that Charlemagne could make this idea of theirs become true. In A.D. 800, Charlemagne went to Rome to protect Pope Leo III against the Roman nobles. As a way of thanking him, the pope crowned Charlemagne the new Roman Emperor. There was only one thing that Charlemagne was concerned about. By accepting the crown from the pope, that was saying the church officials were higher the rulers. Charlemagne accepted the title of Emperor anyway. he worked hard at strengthening the empire, and because it was small, he has local officials called counts helping him out. Each count was carefully shown exactly what they had to do in office. Some of the counts responsibilities were to solve local problems, stop fights, protect the weak, and raise armies. Charlemagne often went out and checked out th work of his counts first hand.

The real thing that held Charlemagne’s Empire together was his forceful personality. After Charlemagne died in A.D. 814, his only son, Louis the Pious, couldn’t fill Charlemagne’s shoes. After Louis died, his three sons fought over the Empire, finally coming to an agreement to split the land, but still, no one was as good an emperor as Charlemagne.