This Week in History

December 25, 800:
A Reluctant Emperor Crowned 

Reliquary of Charlemagne

Charles faced other enemies besides the Saxons and the Muslims in Spain. When a duke in Bavaria rebelled, Charles had to force him to submit fully to his rule. The Lombards, too, briefly revolted, only to be subdued by the king. Then, in 791, he had to deal with a pagan tribe, the Avars, whom he also defeated.

In the last years of his reign, Charles had once again to defend the pope. Leo III, who had become pope in 795, faced powerful enemies in Rome. Four years later, Leo fled Rome, seeking protection from Charles. The king was determined to seat the pope once more in his own city; so, in late 800, Charles and his troops crossed the Alps and headed swiftly to Rome. There he held a synod, reestablished Leo on the papal throne, and executed or imprisoned the pope's enemies.

A few days after proclaiming the pope's innocence, Charles -- with the royal and papal courtiers -- thronged St. Peter's for the festival of Christmas. When Mass was ended, Charles remained kneeling at the altar. Leo advanced with a crown.

He placed it on the bowed head of the king and cried, "God grant life and victory to Charles, Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans." All present joined in the cry, Vivat! Then all there -- Frankish nobles, Lombards, Roman senators and citizens, Italian clergy, even the pope himself -- knelt before Charles and saluted him with the reverence paid to the ancient emperors.

The Coronation of Charlemagne

Charles later said that the pope crowned him emperor without his prior consent and that he would never have entered St. Peter's on that day if he had known what the pope had planned to do. But Charles did not refuse the crown. In return for the ceremony of coronation, Charles confirmed papal control of central Italy.

Charles made all his subjects swear allegiance to him a second time, not as king of the Franks and Lombards, but as emperor of the Romans. The clergy warned the people that they were not merely promising obedience to Charles, but to God and his law. The new empire thus was to be a close union of Church and state. From then on, this empire was to be the embodiment of "Christendom," a Christian society.

This text is taken from our volume, Light to the Nations I : The History of Christian Civilization. 

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To get the sound of the Carolingian age, the age of Charlemagne, listen to this scholarly recreation of music from the time of Charlemagne, recorded by the Ensemble Ligeriana.

                  Carmina Carolingiana - Chants epiques au temps de Charlemagne