Emperor Charles I Charlemagne, Emperor Of The Holy Roman Empire^[1]

742 - 814  (71 years)

• Name	Charles I Charlemagne
  Title	Emperor
  Suffix	Emperor Of The Holy Roman Empire
  Birth	2 Apr 742	Aachen, Rheinland, Germany
  Christening	Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France
  Gender	Male
  Death	28 Jan 814	Aachen, Rheinland, Germany
  Burial	Cathedrale D'aachen, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany
  Person ID	I36657	Master
  Last Modified	23 Jun 2019

  
  

  Family	Hildegard Empress Of The Holy Roman Empire,   b. Abt 757, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany d. 30 Apr 783, Thionville, Moselle, Lorraine, France (Age 26 years)
  Marriage	Abt 772	Aachen, Rheinland, Germany
  Children	1. Charles Emperor Of The Holy Roman Empire,   b. 772, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany d. 4 Dec 811 (Age 39 years) + 2. Pbepin (Carloman) King of Italy,   b. Apr 773, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany d. 8 Jul 810, Milano, Lombardy, Italy (Age 37 years)   3. Adbelahide (Adelheid) Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire,   b. 774, Pavie, Lombardy, Italy d. Aug 774 (Age 0 years)   4. Rotrude Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire,   b. Aug 774, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany d. 6 Jun 810 (Age 35 years)   5. Bertha Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire,   b. 775, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany d. 11 Mar 826 (Age 51 years) + 6. Louis I "The Pious" Emperor Of The Holy Roman Empire,   b. Aug 778, Casseneuil, Lot-Et-Garonne, France d. 20 Jun 840, Ingelheim, Rhinehessen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany (Age 61 years)   7. Lothaire Prince Of Holy Roman Empire,   b. Aug 778, Casseneuil, Lot-Et-Garonne, France d. Aug 778 (Age 0 years)   8. Gisaele Princess Of Holy Roman Empire,   b. 781, Milano, Lombardy, Italy   9. Hildegarde Princess Of Holy Roman Empire,   b. 782, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany d. 9 Jun 783 (Age 1 year)
  Family ID	F8768	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	17 May 2019

  
  

• Event Map

  Birth - 2 Apr 742 - Aachen, Rheinland, Germany Christening - - Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France Marriage - Abt 772 - Aachen, Rheinland, Germany Death - 28 Jan 814 - Aachen, Rheinland, Germany Burial - - Cathedrale D'aachen, Aachen, Rheinland, Germany  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Notes

  Charlemagne, meaning Charles the Great (numbered Charles I of France and the Holy Roman Empire) (742/747 28 January 814) was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, in an attempted revival of the Roman Empire in the West. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the Middle Ages. The son of King Pippin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, he succeeded his father and co-ruled with his brother Carloman I. The latter got on badly with Charlemagne, but war was prevented by the sudden death of Carloman in 771. Charlemagne continued the policy of his father towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in Italy, and waging war on the Saracens, who menaced his realm from Spain. It was during one of these campaigns that Charlemagne experienced the worst defeat of his life, at Roncesvalles (778). He also campaigned against the peoples to his east, especially the Saxons, and after a protracted war subjected them to his rule. By forcibly converting them to Christianity, he integrated them into his realm and thus paved the way for the later Ottonian dynasty. Early Life Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pippin the Short (714 – 24 September 768, reigned from 751) and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720 – 12 July 783), daughter of Caribert of Laon andBertrada of Cologne. Records name only Carloman, Gisela, and a short-lived child named Pippin as his younger siblings. The semi-mythical Redburga, wife of King Egbert of Wessex, is sometimes claimed to be his sister (or sister-in-law or niece), and the legendary material makes him Roland's maternal uncle through a lady Bertha. Much of what is known of Charlemagne's life comes from his biographer, Einhard, who wrote a Vita Caroli Magni (or Vita Karoli Magni), the Life of Charlemagne. Einhard says of the early life of Charles: It would be folly, I think, to write a word concerning Charles' birth and infancy, or even his boyhood, for nothing has ever been written on the subject, and there is no one alive now who can give information on it. Accordingly, I determined to pass that by as unknown, and to proceed at once to treat of his character, his deed, and such other facts of his life as are worth telling and setting forth, and shall first give an account of his deed at home and abroad, then of his character and pursuits, and lastly of his administration and death, omitting nothing worth knowing or necessary to know. On the death of Pippin, the kingdom of the Franks was divided—following tradition—between Charlemagne and Carloman. Charles took the outer parts of the kingdom, bordering on the sea, namely Neustria, western Aquitaine, and the northern parts of Austrasia, while Carloman retained the inner parts: southern Austrasia, Septimania, eastern Aquitaine, Burgundy,Provence, and Swabia, lands bordering on Italy. [edit] On 9 October, immediately after the funeral of their father, both the kings withdrew from Saint Denis to be proclaimed by their nobles and consecrated by the bishops, Charlemagne inNoyon and Carloman in Soissons. The first event of the brothers' reign was the rising of the Aquitainians and Gascons, in 769, in that territory split between the two kings. Years before Pippin had suppressed the revolt ofWaifer, Duke of Aquitaine. Now, one Hunald (seemingly other than Hunald the duke) led the Aquitainians as far north as Angoulême. Charlemagne met Carloman, but Carloman refused to participate and returned to Burgundy. Charlemagne went to war, leading an army to Bordeaux, where he set up a camp at Fronsac. Hunold was forced to flee to the court of Duke Lupus II of Gascony. Lupus, fearing Charlemagne, turned Hunold over in exchange for peace. He was put in a monastery. Aquitaine was finally fully subdued by the Franks. The brothers maintained lukewarm relations with the assistance of their mother Bertrada, but in 770 Charlemagne signed a treaty with Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria and married a Lombard Princess (commonly known today as Desiderata), the daughter of King Desiderius, in order to surround Carloman with his own allies. Though Pope Stephen III first opposed the marriage with the Lombard princess, he would soon have little to fear from a Frankish-Lombard alliance. Less than a year after his marriage, Charlemagne repudiated Desiderata, and quickly remarried to a 13-year-old Swabian named Hildegard. The repudiated Desiderata returned to her father's court at Pavia. The Lombard's wrath was now aroused and he would gladly have allied with Carloman to defeat Charles. But before war could break out, Carloman died on 5 December 771. Carloman's wife Gerberga fled to Desiderius' court with her sons for protection. Children During the first peace of any substantial length (780–782), Charles began to appoint his sons to positions of authority within the realm, in the tradition of the kings and mayors of the past. In 781 he made his two younger sons kings, having them crowned by the Pope. The elder of these two, Carloman, was made king of Italy, taking the Iron Crown which his father had first worn in 774, and in the same ceremony was renamed "Pippin." The younger of the two, Louis, became king of Aquitaine. Charlemagne ordered Pippin and Louis to be raised in the customs of their kingdoms, and he gave their regents some control of their subkingdoms, but real power was always in his hands, though he intended each to inherit their realm some day. Nor did he tolerate insubordination in his sons: in 792, he banished his eldest, though illegitimate, son, Pippin the Hunchback, to the monastery of Prüm, because the young man had joined a rebellion against him. The sons fought many wars on behalf of their father when they came of age. Charles was mostly preoccupied with the Bretons, whose border he shared and who insurrected on at least two occasions and were easily put down, but he was also sent against the Saxons on multiple occasions. In 805 and 806, he was sent into the Böhmerwald (modern Bohemia) to deal with the Slavs living there (Czechs). He subjected them to Frankish authority and devastated the valley of the Elbe, forcing a tribute on them. Pippin had to hold the Avar and Beneventan borders, but also fought the Slavs to his north. He was uniquely poised to fight the Byzantine Empire when finally that conflict arose after Charlemagne's imperial coronation and a Venetianrebellion. Finally, Louis was in charge of the Spanish March and also went to southern Italy to fight the duke of Benevento on at least one occasion. He took Barcelona in a great siege in the year 797 (see below). Charlemagne's attitude toward his daughters has been the subject of much discussion. He kept them at home with him, and refused to allow them to contract sacramental marriages – possibly to prevent the creation of cadet branches of the family to challenge the main line, as had been the case with Tassilo of Bavaria – yet he tolerated their extramarital relationships, even rewarding their common-law husbands, and treasured the bastard grandchildren they produced for him. He also, apparently, refused to believe stories of their wild behaviour. After his death the surviving daughters were banished from the court by their brother, the pious Louis, to take up residence in the convents they had been bequeathed by their father. At least one of them, Bertha, had a recognised relationship, if not a marriage, with Angilbert, a member of Charlemagne's court circle. Death In 813, Charlemagne called Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, his only surviving legitimate son, to his court. There he crowned him with his own hands as co-emperor and sent him back to Aquitaine. He then spent the autumn hunting before returning to Aachen on 1 November. In January, he fell ill with pleurisy. He took to his bed on 21 January and as Einhard tells it: He died January twenty-eighth, the seventh day from the time that he took to his bed, at nine o'clock in the morning, after partaking of the Holy Communion, in the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign. Frederick II's gold and silver casket for Charlemagne He was buried on the day of his death, in Aachen Cathedral, although the cold weather and the nature of his illness made such a hurried burial unnecessary. The earliest surviving planctus, the Planctus de obitu Karoli, was composed by a monk of Bobbio, which he had patronised. A later story, told by Otho of Lomello, Count of the Palace at Aachen in the time of Otto III, would claim that he and Emperor Otto had discovered Charlemagne's tomb: the emperor, they claimed, was seated upon a throne, wearing a crown and holding a sceptre, his flesh almost entirely incorrupt. In 1165, Frederick I re-opened the tomb again, and placed the emperor in a sarcophagus beneath the floor of the cathedral. In 1215 Frederick II would re-inter him in a casket made of gold and silver. Charlemagne's death greatly affected many of his subjects, particularly those of the literary clique who had surrounded him at Aachen. An anonymous monk of Bobbio lamented: “From the lands where the sun rises to western shores, People are crying and wailing...the Franks, the Romans, all Christians, are stung with mourning and great worry...the young and old, glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their Caesar...the world laments the death of Charles...O Christ, you who govern the heavenly host, grant a peaceful place to Charles in your kingdom. Alas for miserable me.” He was succeeded by his surviving son, Louis, who had been crowned the previous year. His empire lasted only another generation in its entirety; its division, according to custom, between Louis's own sons after their father's death laid the foundation for the modern states of France and Germany.

  
  

• Sources

  [S23] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ancestral File (R), (Copyright (c) 1987, June 1998, data as of 5 January 1998).