INTRODUCTION

Charlemagne, king of the Franks from 768 to 814, is one of the few major rulers in European history for whom there is an agreed stereotype. According to this he was a great warrior, and with his conquests he expanded his realm from a region smaller than France to include most of what we now know as western Europe. He promoted Christianity, education and learning. He was crowned emperor by the pope on Christmas Day 800, and provided thereby both the essential ideological potential for subsequent imperial ambitions among the medieval and early modern rulers of western Europe and a link between the ‘germanic’ and Roman political worlds. He was already hailed as the ‘father of Europe’ by a poet of his own day. Modern scholars in search of Europe's linguistic core have proposed a ‘Charlemagne Sprachbund’, for the area where French, German, Italian and Dutch are spoken. With the modern International Karlspreis / Prix International de Charlemagne for services to European peace and unity, first awarded in 1950, this Frankish ruler has also attained status as a symbol of European unity and integration. The prize itself was even awarded to the Euro in 2002.

Throughout the history of France and Germany and even in the new kingdom of the Belgians in the nineteenth century, this stereotype of Christian emperor, mighty conqueror and patron of learning also served as a focus of national identity. A liturgical feast in honour of St Charlemagne was actually instituted in 1165 when Pope Alexander III canonized him and a cult of Charlemagne spread across western Europe. It was at a later stage that Charlemagne's bones were translated into the gaudy gold reliquary commissioned for the purpose by the Emperor Frederick II. In literature, too, Charlemagne enjoyed every variant of valiant Christian warrior in any number of medieval Latin and vernacular epics, such as the Old French Chanson de Roland, the Irish Gabáltais searluis móir and the German Kaiserchronik. The Carolingian emperors, most particularly Charlemagne but increasingly because he was seen as a sort of composite super-emperor, moreover, provided political ideologues with a powerful model.