I 56. CHARLES THE GREAT. A. D. 768-814. 245
The name of "the Blessed Charles" is enrolled in the Roman Calendar for his services to the church and gifts to the pope. Heathen Koine deified Julius Caesar, Christian Rome canonized, or at least beatified Charlemagne. Suffrages for the repose of his soul were continued in the church of Aix-la-Chapelle until Paschal, aschismatical pope, at the desire of Frederic Barbarossa, enshrined his remains in that city and published a decree for his canonization (1166). The act was neither approved nor revoked by a regular pope, but acquiesced in, and such tacit canonization is considered equivalent to beatification.
Noies.
I. JUDGMENTS ON THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF CHARLEMAGNE.
EGINHARD (whose wife Emma figures in the legend as a daughter of Charlemagne) gives the following frank account of the private and do mestic relations of his master and friend (chs. 18 and 19, in Migne, Tom. XCVII. 42sqq.):
" Thus did Charles defend and increase as well as beautify his king dom ; and here let me express my admiration of his great qualities and his extraordinary constancy alike in good and evil fortune. I will now proceed to give the details of his private life. After his father's death, while sharing the kingdom with his brother, he bore his unfriendliness and jealousy most patiently, and, to the wonder of all, could not be pro voked to be angry with him. Later" [after repudiating his first wife, an obscure person] "he married a daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards, at the instance of his mother'' [notwithstanding the protest of the pope] ; " but he repudiated her at the end of a year for some reason unknown, and married Ilildegard, a woman of high birth, of Swabian origin [d. 783]. He had three sons by her, — Charles, Pepin, and Lewis — and as many daughters, — Hruoclrud, Bertha, and Gisela." [Eginhard omits Adelaide and Ilildegard.] "He had three other daughters besides these — Theoderada, Hiltrud, and Ruodhaid — two by his third wife, Fastrada, a woman of East Prankish (that is to say of German) origin, and the third by a concubine, whose name for the moment escapes me. At the death of Fastrada, he married Liutgard, an Alemannic woman, who bore him no children. After her death he had three [according to another reading four] concubines — Gerswinda, a Saxon, by whom he had Adaltrud ; Regina, who was the mother of Drogo and Hugh ; and Ethelind, by whom he had Theodoric. Charles's mother, Berthrada, passed her old age with him in great honor ; he entertained the greatest venera tion for her ; and there was never any disagreement between them except when he divorced the daughter of King Desiderius, whom he had married
246 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
to please her. She died soon after Hildegard, after living to see three grandsons and as many grand-daughters in her son's house, and he buried her with great pomp in the Basilica of St. Denis, where his father lay. He had an only [surviving] sister, Gisela, who had consecrated herself to a religious life from girlhood, and he cherished as much aifection for her as for his mother. She also died a few years before him in the nunnery where she had passed her life. The plan which he adopted for his chil dren's education was, first of all, to have both boys and girls instructed in the liberal arts, to which he also turned his own attention. As soon as their years admitted, in accordance with the custom of the Franks, the boys had to learn horsemanship, and to practise war and the chase, and the girls to familiarize themselves with cloth-making, and to handle distaif and spindle, that they might not grow indolent through idleness, and he fostered in them every virtuous sentiment. He only lost three of all his children before his death, two sons and one daughter. . . . When his sons and his daughters died, he was not so calm as might have been expected from his remarkably strong mind, for his affections were no less strong, and moved him to tears. Again when he was told of the death of Hadrian, the Koman Pontiff, whom he had loved most of all his friends, he wept as much as if he had lost a brother, or a very dear son. He was by nature most ready to contract friendships, and not only made friends easily, but clung to them persistently, and cherished most fondly those with whom he had formed such ties. He was so careful of the training of his sons and daughters that he never took his meals without them when he was at home, and never made a journey without them ; his sons would ride at his side, and his daughters follow him, while a number of his body-guard, detailed for their protection, brought up the rear. Strange to say, although they were very handsome women, and he loved them very dearly, he was never willing to marry either of them to a man of their own nation or to a foreigner, but kept them all at home until his death, saying that he could not dispense with their society. Hence though otherwise happy, he experienced the malignity of fortune as far as they were concerned ; yet he concealed his knowledge of the rumors cur rent in regard to them, and of the suspicions entertained of their honor." GIBBON is no admirer of Charlemagne, and gives an exaggerated view of his worst vice : " Of his moral virtues chastity is not the most con spicuous ; but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion." But this charge of incest, as Hallam and Milman observe, seems to have ori ginated in a misinterpreted passage of Eginhard quoted above, and is utterly unfounded.