NameUnknown ![](../img/i_tree.png)
Spouses
Birth2 Apr 742, Aix La Chapelle, Austrasia
Death28 Jan 814, Aix La Chapelle, Austrasia
Notes for Charlemagne (Spouse 1)
Charlemagne
b. April 2, c. 742
d. Jan. 28, 814, Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, Austrasia also called CHARLES I, by name CHARLES THE GREAT, French CHARLES LE GRAND, Latin CAROLUS MAGNUS, German KARL DER GROSSE king of the Franks (768-814), king of the Lombards (774-814), and emperor (800-814).
As king of the Franks, Charlemagne conquered the Lombard kingdom in Italy, subdued the Saxons, annexed Bavaria to his kingdom, fought campaigns in Spain and Hungary, and, with the exception of the Kingdom of Asturias in Spain, southern Italy, and the British Isles, united in one superstate practically all the Christian lands of western Europe. In 800 he assumed the title of emperor. (He is reckoned as Charles I of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as Charles I of France.) Besides expanding its political power, he also brought about a cultural renaissance in his empire. Although this imperium survived its founder by only one generation, the medieval kingdoms of France and Germany derived all their constitutional traditions from Charles's monarchy. Throughout medieval Europe, the person of Charles was considered the prototype of a Christian king and emperor.
. . .
The strength of Charlemagne's personality was evidently rooted in the unbroken conviction of being at one with the divine will. Without inward contradiction, he was able to combine personal piety with enjoyment of life, a religious sense of mission with a strong will to power, rough manners with a striving for intellectual growth, and intransigence against his enemies with rectitude. In his politically conditioned religiosity, the empire and the church grew into an institutional and spiritual unit. Although his empire survived him by only one generation, it contributed decisively to the eventual reconstitution, in the mind of a western Europe fragmented since the end of the Roman Empire, of a common intellectual, religious, and political inheritance on which later centuries could draw. Charlemagne did not create this inheritance single-handedly, but one would be hard put to imagine it without him. One of the poets at his court called him rex pater Europae--"King father of Europe." In truth, there is no other man who similarly left his mark on European history during the centuries of the Middle Ages.
birth 2 Apr. 748?? in Aachen, Germany??