Charlemagne's Legacy: Charles The Great

Charlemagne’s legacy is one that has well exceeded his life. He gained enormous respect with his military victories and eventually deemed the Emperor of the Romans. Although he is known as “Charles the Great” for his military successes, there is evidence of the type of person and character he was well. Charlemagne also known as Karl was very interested in learning and education. He wanted to spread education throughout his empire. In addition to his love for education and learning, he also had a love for marriages and women. Charlemagne was married multiple times and had many children. Much of his rule involved ongoing warfare. Rising to power at an early age fostered no complications when it came to his success as an Emperor. Early in his …show more content…
It is said that he was barely able to read, however wanted to make reading more available. Therefore, throughout his empire, he set up schools. In addition, he invited scholars from all over Europe to a palace in Aachen that would become a school. This ended up being the German city that he made the capital. In this time manuscripts had very little standards, such as punctuation, and was a very long process as well. This makes reading and writing very difficult because the writing would change dramatically from writer to writer. Therefore, Charlemagne “encouraged a calligraphic standard called Carolingian miniscule to be used throughout his kingdom” (mrdowling). With this standard, scribes’ letters were clearly unique because they had spaces in between their words, wrote their titles in capitals, and used more punctuation than the other scribes. As for today, there are more than “7000 manuscripts written by Charlemagne’s standard that are available to scholars to study” (mrdowling). Although Charlemagne is well known for his effective military tactics and conquering, it should be noted that he was also very interested in education and learning to read and write, which he spread throughout his empire. As for his appearance, his brother Einhard best described him as, “He was heavily built, sturdy, and of considerable stature, although not exceptionally so, since his height was seven times the length of his own …show more content…
The Saxons were restless Germanic tribesman and fought long and hard against the rule of Charlemagne. Although the raid seemed promising at first, as soon as Charlemagne looked the other way the Saxons attempted to return the favor and this war later ended in a peace offering accepted by Charlemagne. The war between the Saxon and the Frankish was back and forth as Charlemagne was able to only convert so many Saxony to Christianity despite having so many resist. “Charlemagne the Christian is outraged by their pagan practices. From 772 he wages ferocious war against them, beginning with the destruction of one of their great shrines and its sacred central feature - the Irminsul or 'pillar of the world', a massive wooden column believed to support the universe” (historyworld). This is to be noted as a very strategic plan. Not only did this dismantle their beliefs but it also made them susceptible to vulnerability. His tactics and book of rules that the Saxons were to follow, included death being the punishment for the refusal of baptism (historyworld). This war between the Frankish and the Saxon lasted for about thirty years ending with Saxons learning how to protect their land and Charlemagne successfully converting the Saxon to