In 799, for the third time in half a century, a Catholic Pope is in need of help from a Frankish king.
The Franks began as a number of Germanic tribes that migrated from northern Europe into Gaul, present day France.
The Pope, this time is Leo III, and four years prior he had received the Papacy.
The Frankish king is Charlemagne.
The Papacy was a coveted position, most notoriously by Paschal the Primicerius, a nephew of Pope Adrian I , who Pope Leo III replaced.
As Leo walked in the procession of the Greater Litanies (a form of chanted prayer and responses on St. Mark’s Day), armed men attacked him.
Co conspirators of Paschal the Primicerius, scattered the procession and set upon Leo, stabbing his eyes and attempting to cut out his tongue.
Leo fell bleeding in the street.
The ruffians then dragged him to the chapel of St. Sylvester and jabbed at his eyes again. Finally they left him in the monastery of Erasmus.
After being physically attacked by his enemies in the streets of Rome (their stated intention is to blind him and cut out his tongue, to make him incapable of office), friends helped Leo escape from the monastery and makes his way through the Alps to visit Charlemagne.
The King of the Franks received Leo sympathetically and returned him to Rome under the protection of his own officials.
Leo established cordial relations with Charlemagne early by informing the king of his unanimous election as pope.
Charlemagne’s responded with congratulations and part of the treasure captured by the him from the Avars, who were Eurasian nomadic descendants of tribes controlled by Attila the Hun.
They called themselves Avars.
Several theories propose a partially Mongolic, Turkic or Tungusic origin as well.
Small in numbers at first, they grew by enveloping other tribes until they became a terror, and threatened to become the masters of Europe.
Hungary, was the center of Attila’s great circle of power, as was theirs.
These nomadic hordes were celebrated alike for their cunning and their arrogance,—cunning when they had an object to gain, arrogance when they had gained it.
In their dealings with Charlemagne, they displayed the same mixture , but now they were dealing with different man than the weak emperors of Constantinople.
Charlemagne continued his negotiations for peace , but prepared for hostilities, and in the spring of 791 put himself at the head of a powerful army, prepared to repay the barbarian hordes with some of the same havoc they caused.
All the defenses of the Avars went down before him,
His victorious troops penetrated to their inner fortress, called the Ring, and within whose confines were gathered the vast treasures the conquering hordes had accumulated during centuries of plunder, with the great wealth in gold and silver which they had by way of tribute from the weak rulers of the Eastern Empire.
This wealth enabled Pope Leo to be a benefactor to the churches and charitable institutions of Rome.
Miraculously, Leo recovered sight and the use of his tongue.
In a ceremony at St Peter’s, on Christmas Day, Leo is due to anoint Charlemagne’s son as his heir.
But unexpectedly (it is maintained), as Charlemagne rises from prayer, the pope places a crown on his head and proclaims him emperor.
Charlemagne expresses displeasure but accepts the honor.
The displeasure is probably diplomatic, for the legal emperor is undoubtedly the one in Constantinople a place that it would be beneficial not to rile up.
Nevertheless this public alliance between the pope and the ruler of a confederation of Germanic tribes now reflects the reality of political power in the west.
Charlemagne is nicknamed the “Father of Europe” (Pater Europae) as the founding father of both the French and the German Monarchies and it launches the concept of the new Holy Roman Empire which will play an important role throughout the Middle Ages.
It is implicit in the title adopted by Charlemagne in 800: ‘Charles, most serene Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific emperor, governing the Roman empire.” he was a strong leader and good administrator.
His rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church.
As he took over territories he would allow Frankish nobles to rule them., but allowed the local cultures and laws to remain.
He had laws written recorded and enforced along number of reforms.
He instituted many economic reforms including establishing a new monetary standard called livre carolinienne, accounting principles, money lending laws , and governmental control of prices.
Though Charlemagne was illiterate, he believed strongly in education and enabled his people to be able to read and write by setting up schools in monasteries throughout Europe and personally patroned many scholars.
Charlemagne had an impact in many other areas as well including church music, cultivation and the planting of fruit trees, and civil works.
One example of a civil work was the building of the Fossa Carolina, a canal built to connect the Rhine and Danube rivers.
He united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the ancient Roman Empire and united parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish rule.
The next century would be the formalizing of the Holy Roman Empire.
I didn’t know very much either, until i researched it, but i am always interested in France because i am a descendant of the Huguenots, though his period is much earlier
I don’t know much about Charlemagne or his empire, but I am quite familiar with the opera Fierrabras, by Franz Schubert, which features Charlemagne as one of the main characters.