Carloman's Journey To The Revival Of The Church

However, in 745, Carloman, the leading brother, after everything he had done to help with the revival of the Church, retired to a monastery to live out his days as a monk in Italy. This move by Carloman still puzzles historians. Carloman held the larger portion of the kingdom as Mayor of the Palace in Austrasia and also had helped to start the revival of the Frankish Church. Nonetheless, he left all of it behind and helped to found a monastery in Monte Soratte and later Monte Cassino. Moore offers up the supposition that Carloman removed himself from a “dangerous struggle for power, a frequent solution to power struggles in Anglo-Saxon royal families.” In addition, much speculation about this move by Carloman has taken place, including an idea that Carloman undertook this because of pressure from Pippin and that Carloman received his tonsure from the pope himself. Norman F. Cantor claims Carloman was "the first of a new type of saintly king, who was more interested in religious devotion than royal power, who frequently appeared in the following three centuries and who was an indication of the growing impact of Christian piety on German society."
Before leaving political power, Carloman helped foster Boniface’s reform project and …show more content…
He sent a commission to Rome in 746, seeking guidance on topics ranging from clerical discipline to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. His court administration also changed drastically with clerics beginning to take a leading role. Episcopal cooperation also became a genuine asset for the assertion of royal power with Bishops serving as guarantors of a religious and social order. It appears at this point that the religious reforms set down by Boniface were working to great effect. By 747, Boniface finally garnered his archbishopric in Mainz and became the primate of Germany as well as the apostolic legate for both Germany and