56. CHARLES THE GREAT. A. D. 768-814.
monarch had won so universal and brilliant a renown ; and for nearly a thousand years after him, or until the days of Charles V. of Germany, no monarch attained any thing like an equal dominion. A link between the old and new, he revived the Empire of the West, with a degree of glory that it had only enjoyed in its prime; while, at the same time, the modern history of every Continental nation was made to begin with him. Germany claims him as one of her most illustrious sons; France, as her noblest king; Italy, as her chosen emperor; and the Church as her most prodigal benefactor and worthy saint. All the institutions of the Middle Ages — political, literary, scientific, and ecclesiastical— delighted to trace their traditionary origins to his hand : he was considered the source of the peerage, the inspirer of chivalry, the founder of universities, and the endower of the churches ; and the genius of romance, kindling its fantastic torches at the flame of his deeds, lighted up a new and marvellous world about him, filled with wonderful adventures and heroic forms. Thus by a double immortality, the one the deliberate award of history, and the other the prodigal gift of fiction, he claims the study of mankind."
II. THE CANONIZATION OF CHARLEMAGNE is perpetuated in the Qfficinm infesto Sancti Car oil May td imperatnris et confessor is t as celebrated in churches of Germany, France, and Spain. Baronius (AnnaL ad ami. 814) says that the canonization was not accepted by the Roman church, because Paschalis was no legitimate pope, but neither was it forbidden. Alban Butler, in his Lives of Saints, gives a eulogistic biography of the "Blessed Charlemagne," and covers his besetting sin with the following unhistorical assertion : u The incontinence, into which he fell in his youth, he expiated by sincere repentance, so that several churches in Ger many and France honor him among the saints."
On the poetic and legendary history of Charlemagne, see Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi, written about 1100 under the name of Turpin, archbishop of Rheims ; the work of Gaston, above quoted; an essay of Leon Gautier (La leyende de Charlemagne) in Vetault, pp. 461-485 ; and E. Koschwitz : Karls des Grossen Reise nach Jerusalem und Constantinopel, Heilbronn u. London, 1880.
CAROL! GLORIOSISSIMI REGIS.
R
SIGNUM K-fS
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The monogram of Charles with the additions of a scribe in a document signed by Charles at Kufstein, Aug. 31, 790. Copied from Stacke, /. c.
250 FOUETH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
§ 57. Founding of the Holy Roman Umpire, A. D. 800. Charlemagne and Leo III.
G. SUGENHEIM : Gcschichte der Entstehung und Ausbildung des Kirchenstaates. Leipz. 1854.
F. SCHARPFF: Die Entstehung des Kirchenstaats. Freib. i. B. 1860. TH. D. MOCK : De Donatione a Carolo Mag. sedi apostolicce anno 774 oblata. Munich 1861.
JAMES BRYCE : The Holy Roman Empire. Loud. & N. York (Macmillan & Co.) 6th ed. 1876, 8th ed. 1880. German translation by Arthur WincUer.
HEIKRICH VON SYBEL : Die Schenkungen der Karolinger an die Papste. In Sybel's "Hist. Zeitschrift," Miinchen & Leipz. 1880, pp. 46-85.
Comp. BAXMANN : I. 307 sqq. ; VETAULT : Ch. III. pp. 113 sqq. ( Charle magne, patrice des Eomctins — Formation des etais de Veglise}.
Charlemagne inherited the protectorate of the temporal do minions of the pope which had been wrested from the Lombards by Pepin, as the Lombards had wrested them from the Eastern emperor. When the Lombards again rebelled and the pope (Hadrian) again appealed to the transalpine monarch for help, Charles in the third year of his sole reign (774) came to the rescue, crossed the Alps with an arrny — a formidable undertaking in those days — subdued Italy with the exception of a small part of the South still belonging to the Greek empire, held a triumphal entry in Home, and renewed and probably enlarged his father's gift to the pope. The original documents have perished, and no contemporary authority vouches for the details ; but the fact is undoubted. The gift rested only on the right of conquest. Henceforward he always styled himself "Rex Francorum et Longobardorum, et Patricius Romanorum." His authority over the immediate territory of the Lombards in Northern Italy was as complete as that in France, but the precise nature of his