April 20, 2009 • 15 mins
On Christmas Day in 800 AD, Charlemagne became the emperor of Rome in a coronation headed by none other than Pope Leo III. Learn more about the growth of the Holy Roman Empire in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keennor, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath
either Candice, Hey, Jane. I think it's so much fun
when we get to put on our Saturday Night Live
(00:22):
impressions and say underground Railroad. Neither underground nor railroad, Linda Richmond,
and we have another one for you guys today, the
Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy nor Roman nor
an empire. Thank you to Voltaire who came up with
the yes. And we actually are going to discuss that ourselves,
so you don't have to discuss it amongst yourselves. So
(00:45):
the Holy Roman Empire should not be confused with the
original Roman Empire, no way. Yeah, but there were a
lot of um parallels. So we're going to talk about
and we're gonna start with the original Roman Empire because
that's sort of says the stage to the Holy Roman
Empire and eventually the the crux of what we're going
to be talking about is how certain pope went crying
boo hoo to a certain very powerful landowner and asked
(01:08):
him to save him from the main people who were
trying to galuge his eyes out, and essentially this started
one of the most powerful civilizations in history. So we'll
eventually beginning to Charlemagne, but first we've got a lot
of background and for for you guys. So if you
know much about Roman history, Constantine took over I think
is the third century, if I'm wrong with that, made
his entire empire Christian. But eventually the whole empire broke up.
(01:31):
And when when that happened, Europe was rather fractured. It
ended up splitting into lots of Germanic tribes and just
tribes all over the place. They weren't like Germany and
France like we know it today, didn't exist at all. Right,
So we have a bunch of different tribes with lots
of different names. We got the Lombards and the Franks,
and the Saxons and all these other Germanic tribes, each
waging their own leadership among various different blocks of people.
(01:55):
But then over in the east we have a relatively
unified and organized Byzantine Empire. So we have the Byzantine
Empire over to the east, and meanwhile over and around
the Germanic tribes we have this guy named Pep in
the short and he was a powerful Frankish lord despite
his name. Yeah, he was very powerful and um with
(02:18):
his brother he owned he had a lot of land,
and when his brother died, he actually assumed his duties.
He took over the family business, so to say. And
he he had his sight set really high, and he
wanted to depose actually the head of the Franks, the
king of the Franks, and disposed that entire bloodline and
put himself in um Uh instead. And he got a
(02:38):
lot of blessings from people in high places. He was
blessed by bishops and when he did take over, and
so he held a lot of religious cloud at this time.
And not to mention that, eventually he conquered lands that
range from modern day France to Switzerland. So he had
a ton of domain under his thumb. And in the
winter of seven forty two, his son Charlemagne was born,
(03:01):
and back then he was just called Charles, that's right.
He wasn't great yet. He didn't get that Lemaine until later.
But when he was Charlemagne was still or Charles, i
should say, was the little boy. His father was really powerful,
and he's so powerful and had so many good friends
in the church that the Pope, Stephen the Second turned
to Peppin for help. And this was because the Lombards,
another tribe, was starting to threaten the Pope and his lands,
(03:24):
and so he went to Peppin and asked him to
protect him. And when he did, Peppin lived up to
his promise. In exchange, the Pope called him the protector
of the Romans and the land that Pepin took over
from the Lombards actually he turned over to the Pope.
This is called the donation of Peppin, and it became
the basis for the papal states, which are very important.
(03:45):
And this idea of a pope coming to um one
of Peppin's airs and seeking protection as a pattern we're
going to see later with his son, But just to
point out this is really significant. The pope, obviously an
earthly leader ordained by the highest powers in heaven, coming
to a very very secular leader and asking for assistance.
(04:05):
This is sort of unprecedented, the idea that a man
of God and then a man of the land would
work together like this. It sort of shows a reversal
of powers, or at least a willingness for church and
state to try to work things out together. It's a
very unusual. Yeah, And like you said, this is a
lot of stuff's going to be foreshadowing what Charlemagne does.
When Pepin dies, he leaves his land to his son
(04:26):
Charlemagne and Charlemagne's brother Carliaman. And we should print out
that Charlemagne never really got any formal education and he
was virtually illiterate. However, he did inherit from his father
a really great sense of of leadership. He saw his father,
you know, accomplishing all of these wonderful deeds in his life,
helping out with the pope of course naturally, and then
conquering all of these lands. So it set him up
(04:48):
for a lifetime I think of warmongering in a son,
but also an idea of diplomacy. Yeah. People historians say
about Charlemanne that he had sort of an innate intellectual curiosity,
even though he didn't have as much book learning as
uh as he probably would have wanted. And when he
inherited all this land with his brother sibling, rivalry on
(05:08):
set really fast. And he actually Charlemagne actually married a
Lombard princess the Wombards as we said, we're sort of
arrival of the Franks. But um, marrying the princess was
a sort of way to make an alliance with the
Lombards and get an upper hand with against his brother Carlamon,
when that didn't really matter because Carlaman died seven seventy exactly.
And after Carlamon died, he actually repudiated his marriage with
(05:31):
the princess. Poor girl. Um did she keep the ring?
I hope so. So at this point Charles got control
over the whole kingdom. He dismissed the claims of his
brother's heirs, and he just sort of took it all
on himself, and he organized an enormous military power, making
enlistment obligatory, organizing soldiers who somehow he made fiercely loyal
(05:54):
to him. And he was focusing a lot of his
efforts against the Saxons who were to the north, and
he made a lot of enemies very quickly. But he
also gained a lot of strength because he would take
his troops across the Pyrenees and through the East, and
with every maneuver he was getting more land and expanding
his empire and getting more people under his thumb. And
he was sort of known for this really harsh temper too,
(06:16):
I think. I think one day some Saxons took down
his soldiers and he got very angry. So all the Saccons,
thousands that he was keeping prisoner, cut off father heads
and one day, pretty impressive that Charlemagne. So you can
tell he's got a lot of power by this point,
and he's got, like his dad friends in high places.
He's good friends with the Pope Adrian at the time,
(06:37):
and the Pope was having a lot of problems with
the Lombards again, and uh, in seventeen seventy I'm sorry,
seven seventy two e d um, the Pope turns to
Charlemagne to help him again defend himself from the Lombards,
and the siege lasted about nine months. Charles finally did
conquer Lombards in its capital and became the King of
(06:58):
the Lombards. And in the doing decades, like came to said,
he had all these military campaigns trying to conquer the Saxons,
who were a pagan Germanic tribe, and it took him
I think thirty years to conquer them. But in addition
to them, he conquered the Arabs and the Avars. To
give you some frame of reference, this incorporated land as
(07:19):
well modern day France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, and pieces
of Germany, Italy, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, in Spain.
I mean, his empire was vast, it was here, it
really wise. So it was no surprise really when Pope
Leo the third came to him seeking help. And to
(07:39):
give you a little bit of background on Leo, he
had a lot of enemies and high places. He was
not very well liked. I don't know if he had
a loose mouth or what. But he had been condemned
of both perjury and adultery and actually imprisoned. But he
broke out and he thought, if I can just talk
to Charlemagne and to get him to believe me, the
(08:00):
certainly he will change everyone's minds. So he broke out
a prison and fled to Charlemagne and Charlemagne and Grain
to come to Rome and to talk to everyone and
see if he could absolve Leo's name. And he did,
and then he actually banished everyone who had accused leout
of these crimes. And again I'm notuch sure if he
was falsely accused or justly accused. But if you've got
(08:21):
a friend in that high position of power, does it
really matter. Yeah, And there were a lot of schisms
or things that were happening to distance the East and
the Eastern Byzantine Empire and though the um Lands to
the West and the Church because Um. Before Leo the
Third came about the Pope reform, Adrian was sort of
trying to balance the two huge powers against each other,
(08:42):
trying to say sort of out of the flight, not
showing a preference. And when Leo comes around, he shows
an obvious preference for Charlemagne and the Franks. And this
makes a lot of people angry. Uh. They say that
the people who attacked the pope were actually part of
a band that were Adrian supporters, and they meant business.
They tried to gouge out his eyes and cut out
his tongue, And that may sound harsh, but I think
(09:03):
that was pretty standard punishment back then for someone who
was speaking out against Yeah, I mean it was customary
so because it would have made him incapable of being
the pope anymore. So it would have taken him out
of power effectively without actually killing him Um. And we
should also mention some other things that were distance excuse me,
distancing the two empires, which were some heresies going on
(09:25):
at least in the as of the Church, and arguments
about about whether they should be considered or not. For instance, iconoclasm.
You've probably heard of this, It's called the worship of icons.
It was very common in the Byzantine Empire. Uh and
Charlemagne thought of this as heresy, and it was a
huge argument in the Church that eventually led to the schism,
But at this time it was still an argument. And
(09:47):
another matter called philioque seems kind of a minute theoretical
theological argument, but it had to do with whether the
Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the son
or just the father. This was a huge matter at
the time. It seems rather odd today, but this was
a huge matter at the time. That Charlemagne was was
for the idea of Philly o Quay, and so this
(10:07):
help distance um the two employers. So if we hearken
back to your statement that Jim made earlier about the
idea of Peppin being supported by the pope and the
idea of the pope coming to Peppin and asking for
his help. We see this now flash forward to Charlemagne
and Lea and the same thing happening. And Charlemagne and
Leo actually had perhaps been putting their heads together. And
(10:28):
if we look at Charlemagne's contemporary biographer Einhard, who lived
at court, he wrote very good things about Charlemagne. Obviously
he wanted to present him in a good light because
he had to answer to him, And according to his
biography of the Leader, Charlemagne had no idea this was coming.
But on Christmas Day in eight hundred, Leo actually coornated
(10:49):
Charlemagne and crowned him the leader of the empire. Surprise,
you are the leader of all of this. And according
to Einhard, Charlemagne was very who me and he was
kind of angry about it. But other historians have reasons
to suspect that Pope Leo and Charlemagne had struck a
deal where if um good old Charles helped out his
(11:10):
pal Leo, he could become Charlemagne. Yeah, some historians, uh
say that the Pope wouldn't have dared try to pull
this if without Charlemagne's knowledge of it and permission, which
kind of makes sense. Uh, You know, Charlemagne can strike
this deal and and when it's all done, he can say, oh,
I wasn't expecting that at all. I wouldn't have approved
(11:30):
of that. You know, he was done. The Emperor of
the Romans kind of harkens back to his dad, who
was called the Protector of the Romans. It sort of
takes it a huge notch up. It's also significant because
the pope was basically giving himself the power to confer
this title. So although he's giving a title to someone else,
it's uh sort of instilling in himself the authority to
(11:52):
do so, right. And that's part of a pattern that
continued throughout the existence of the Holy Roman Empire. And
it actually lasted for another thousand years and ended in
eighteen o six with Emperor Francis the Second. And it
was a tradition for the pope to actually crown the king,
and this didn't happen with all the different leaders, but
it was more the rule the end. It was the exception.
(12:15):
And Charlemagne actually did great things with his power, not
just in terms of conquering lands, but I guess in
the in the winter of his life, for a little
bit before the winter of his life. He began developing
his interest in scholarly pursuits and education, and we mentioned
before that he had been deprived of this when he
was a child. But in eight oh two he founded
(12:36):
what was known as the Palace School, and it was
an institute of higher learning run by the very best
minds in Europe. He got the greatest scholars altogether, and
he made this really prestigious school that virtually anyone could
come to and matriculate at. And he had all of
the Frankish oral traditions transcribed, so that was a pretty
(12:57):
significant contribution. And he even tried to his own grammar
and said that as the tone for the day, which
I really lack that idea, and I think I haven't
to try to do the same. But Charlemayne, it wasn't successful,
and I think that I would have even left Cloud. Yeah,
it's it's cool. I mean Charlemagne despite all his cruelty
on the battlefield, I mean, she's uh, you know, the
(13:18):
punishment for getting not getting baptized into Christianity at points
was death, and um, you could say what you want
about how cruel he was. He did a lot of
really cool things with the education, and one of My
favorite things that he did was he produced manuals to
teach Latin, to to lay people and just help people understand.
He standardized liturgy as well, sort of you can see
the cross between church and state here and how much
(13:39):
power he welded over the church. But to help he
help people understand the liturgy too, And that's that's one
of the common complaints against the traditional churches that uh,
it was said in the mass, etcetera, were said in Latin,
and the people lay people don't know what's going on.
And I think Charlemagne made a lot of strides into
helping everyone sort of understand their own faith. And I
wonder if that's because of his upbringing that he was
(14:01):
denied that sense of education, and I wonder how many
years he went along with that and just you know,
mouthed words and didn't understand what he was saying or
what he was committing himself too. But I think he
did look out for the lowest common denominator, And again,
you know, that's a wonderful, benevolent thing, but it's also
a good way to wield your power because there's usually
a lot more poor people than there are aristocracy, and
(14:24):
so if you get there was people on your side. Essentially,
you've you've built up your loyalty base. Even more so,
who knows how he was building his power. I think
he was pretty tricky. It's true, good old Charles. And
there's obviously more to say about Charlemagne than we could
ever cover in a podcast. But luckily for us, we
actually have a new forum in which we can say
(14:45):
clever and not so clever things about history every weekday.
That's for everyday, Chant Candace and I post on our
blog stuff you miss in history class we can, which
you can find on the site, and uh, it's really cool.
We get to talk about newsy stuff, things that are
coming around about UM news or that is relevant UM
to the to history and if you want to check
it out, and if you want to send us suggestions
(15:07):
about podcasts or blog suggestions, we actually handle those every
Friday as well. We do fan mail Friday. So if
you want to read the blog or read the background
story for this podcast, it is in an article very
cleverly titled by our colleague Christen Conger, how did an
attempt to blind a pope established the Holy Roman Empire?
You can find that and much more on how stuff
(15:28):
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
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at how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keennor, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath
either Candice, Hey, Jane. I think it's so much fun
when we get to put on our Saturday Night Live
(00:22):
impressions and say underground Railroad. Neither underground nor railroad, Linda Richmond,
and we have another one for you guys today, the
Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy nor Roman nor
an empire. Thank you to Voltaire who came up with
the yes. And we actually are going to discuss that ourselves,
so you don't have to discuss it amongst yourselves. So
(00:45):
the Holy Roman Empire should not be confused with the
original Roman Empire, no way. Yeah, but there were a
lot of um parallels. So we're going to talk about
and we're gonna start with the original Roman Empire because
that's sort of says the stage to the Holy Roman
Empire and eventually the the crux of what we're going
to be talking about is how certain pope went crying
boo hoo to a certain very powerful landowner and asked
(01:08):
him to save him from the main people who were
trying to galuge his eyes out, and essentially this started
one of the most powerful civilizations in history. So we'll
eventually beginning to Charlemagne, but first we've got a lot
of background and for for you guys. So if you
know much about Roman history, Constantine took over I think
is the third century, if I'm wrong with that, made
his entire empire Christian. But eventually the whole empire broke up.
(01:31):
And when when that happened, Europe was rather fractured. It
ended up splitting into lots of Germanic tribes and just
tribes all over the place. They weren't like Germany and
France like we know it today, didn't exist at all. Right,
So we have a bunch of different tribes with lots
of different names. We got the Lombards and the Franks,
and the Saxons and all these other Germanic tribes, each
waging their own leadership among various different blocks of people.
(01:55):
But then over in the east we have a relatively
unified and organized Byzantine Empire. So we have the Byzantine
Empire over to the east, and meanwhile over and around
the Germanic tribes we have this guy named Pep in
the short and he was a powerful Frankish lord despite
his name. Yeah, he was very powerful and um with
(02:18):
his brother he owned he had a lot of land,
and when his brother died, he actually assumed his duties.
He took over the family business, so to say. And
he he had his sight set really high, and he
wanted to depose actually the head of the Franks, the
king of the Franks, and disposed that entire bloodline and
put himself in um Uh instead. And he got a
(02:38):
lot of blessings from people in high places. He was
blessed by bishops and when he did take over, and
so he held a lot of religious cloud at this time.
And not to mention that, eventually he conquered lands that
range from modern day France to Switzerland. So he had
a ton of domain under his thumb. And in the
winter of seven forty two, his son Charlemagne was born,
(03:01):
and back then he was just called Charles, that's right.
He wasn't great yet. He didn't get that Lemaine until later.
But when he was Charlemagne was still or Charles, i
should say, was the little boy. His father was really powerful,
and he's so powerful and had so many good friends
in the church that the Pope, Stephen the Second turned
to Peppin for help. And this was because the Lombards,
another tribe, was starting to threaten the Pope and his lands,
(03:24):
and so he went to Peppin and asked him to
protect him. And when he did, Peppin lived up to
his promise. In exchange, the Pope called him the protector
of the Romans and the land that Pepin took over
from the Lombards actually he turned over to the Pope.
This is called the donation of Peppin, and it became
the basis for the papal states, which are very important.
(03:45):
And this idea of a pope coming to um one
of Peppin's airs and seeking protection as a pattern we're
going to see later with his son, But just to
point out this is really significant. The pope, obviously an
earthly leader ordained by the highest powers in heaven, coming
to a very very secular leader and asking for assistance.
(04:05):
This is sort of unprecedented, the idea that a man
of God and then a man of the land would
work together like this. It sort of shows a reversal
of powers, or at least a willingness for church and
state to try to work things out together. It's a
very unusual. Yeah, And like you said, this is a
lot of stuff's going to be foreshadowing what Charlemagne does.
When Pepin dies, he leaves his land to his son
(04:26):
Charlemagne and Charlemagne's brother Carliaman. And we should print out
that Charlemagne never really got any formal education and he
was virtually illiterate. However, he did inherit from his father
a really great sense of of leadership. He saw his father,
you know, accomplishing all of these wonderful deeds in his life,
helping out with the pope of course naturally, and then
conquering all of these lands. So it set him up
(04:48):
for a lifetime I think of warmongering in a son,
but also an idea of diplomacy. Yeah. People historians say
about Charlemanne that he had sort of an innate intellectual curiosity,
even though he didn't have as much book learning as
uh as he probably would have wanted. And when he
inherited all this land with his brother sibling, rivalry on
(05:08):
set really fast. And he actually Charlemagne actually married a
Lombard princess the Wombards as we said, we're sort of
arrival of the Franks. But um, marrying the princess was
a sort of way to make an alliance with the
Lombards and get an upper hand with against his brother Carlamon,
when that didn't really matter because Carlaman died seven seventy exactly.
And after Carlamon died, he actually repudiated his marriage with
(05:31):
the princess. Poor girl. Um did she keep the ring?
I hope so. So at this point Charles got control
over the whole kingdom. He dismissed the claims of his
brother's heirs, and he just sort of took it all
on himself, and he organized an enormous military power, making
enlistment obligatory, organizing soldiers who somehow he made fiercely loyal
(05:54):
to him. And he was focusing a lot of his
efforts against the Saxons who were to the north, and
he made a lot of enemies very quickly. But he
also gained a lot of strength because he would take
his troops across the Pyrenees and through the East, and
with every maneuver he was getting more land and expanding
his empire and getting more people under his thumb. And
he was sort of known for this really harsh temper too,
(06:16):
I think. I think one day some Saxons took down
his soldiers and he got very angry. So all the Saccons,
thousands that he was keeping prisoner, cut off father heads
and one day, pretty impressive that Charlemagne. So you can
tell he's got a lot of power by this point,
and he's got, like his dad friends in high places.
He's good friends with the Pope Adrian at the time,
(06:37):
and the Pope was having a lot of problems with
the Lombards again, and uh, in seventeen seventy I'm sorry,
seven seventy two e d um, the Pope turns to
Charlemagne to help him again defend himself from the Lombards,
and the siege lasted about nine months. Charles finally did
conquer Lombards in its capital and became the King of
(06:58):
the Lombards. And in the doing decades, like came to said,
he had all these military campaigns trying to conquer the Saxons,
who were a pagan Germanic tribe, and it took him
I think thirty years to conquer them. But in addition
to them, he conquered the Arabs and the Avars. To
give you some frame of reference, this incorporated land as
(07:19):
well modern day France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, and pieces
of Germany, Italy, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, in Spain.
I mean, his empire was vast, it was here, it
really wise. So it was no surprise really when Pope
Leo the third came to him seeking help. And to
(07:39):
give you a little bit of background on Leo, he
had a lot of enemies and high places. He was
not very well liked. I don't know if he had
a loose mouth or what. But he had been condemned
of both perjury and adultery and actually imprisoned. But he
broke out and he thought, if I can just talk
to Charlemagne and to get him to believe me, the
(08:00):
certainly he will change everyone's minds. So he broke out
a prison and fled to Charlemagne and Charlemagne and Grain
to come to Rome and to talk to everyone and
see if he could absolve Leo's name. And he did,
and then he actually banished everyone who had accused leout
of these crimes. And again I'm notuch sure if he
was falsely accused or justly accused. But if you've got
(08:21):
a friend in that high position of power, does it
really matter. Yeah, And there were a lot of schisms
or things that were happening to distance the East and
the Eastern Byzantine Empire and though the um Lands to
the West and the Church because Um. Before Leo the
Third came about the Pope reform, Adrian was sort of
trying to balance the two huge powers against each other,
(08:42):
trying to say sort of out of the flight, not
showing a preference. And when Leo comes around, he shows
an obvious preference for Charlemagne and the Franks. And this
makes a lot of people angry. Uh. They say that
the people who attacked the pope were actually part of
a band that were Adrian supporters, and they meant business.
They tried to gouge out his eyes and cut out
his tongue, And that may sound harsh, but I think
(09:03):
that was pretty standard punishment back then for someone who
was speaking out against Yeah, I mean it was customary
so because it would have made him incapable of being
the pope anymore. So it would have taken him out
of power effectively without actually killing him Um. And we
should also mention some other things that were distance excuse me,
distancing the two empires, which were some heresies going on
(09:25):
at least in the as of the Church, and arguments
about about whether they should be considered or not. For instance, iconoclasm.
You've probably heard of this, It's called the worship of icons.
It was very common in the Byzantine Empire. Uh and
Charlemagne thought of this as heresy, and it was a
huge argument in the Church that eventually led to the schism,
But at this time it was still an argument. And
(09:47):
another matter called philioque seems kind of a minute theoretical
theological argument, but it had to do with whether the
Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the son
or just the father. This was a huge matter at
the time. It seems rather odd today, but this was
a huge matter at the time. That Charlemagne was was
for the idea of Philly o Quay, and so this
(10:07):
help distance um the two employers. So if we hearken
back to your statement that Jim made earlier about the
idea of Peppin being supported by the pope and the
idea of the pope coming to Peppin and asking for
his help. We see this now flash forward to Charlemagne
and Lea and the same thing happening. And Charlemagne and
Leo actually had perhaps been putting their heads together. And
(10:28):
if we look at Charlemagne's contemporary biographer Einhard, who lived
at court, he wrote very good things about Charlemagne. Obviously
he wanted to present him in a good light because
he had to answer to him, And according to his
biography of the Leader, Charlemagne had no idea this was coming.
But on Christmas Day in eight hundred, Leo actually coornated
(10:49):
Charlemagne and crowned him the leader of the empire. Surprise,
you are the leader of all of this. And according
to Einhard, Charlemagne was very who me and he was
kind of angry about it. But other historians have reasons
to suspect that Pope Leo and Charlemagne had struck a
deal where if um good old Charles helped out his
(11:10):
pal Leo, he could become Charlemagne. Yeah, some historians, uh
say that the Pope wouldn't have dared try to pull
this if without Charlemagne's knowledge of it and permission, which
kind of makes sense. Uh, You know, Charlemagne can strike
this deal and and when it's all done, he can say, oh,
I wasn't expecting that at all. I wouldn't have approved
(11:30):
of that. You know, he was done. The Emperor of
the Romans kind of harkens back to his dad, who
was called the Protector of the Romans. It sort of
takes it a huge notch up. It's also significant because
the pope was basically giving himself the power to confer
this title. So although he's giving a title to someone else,
it's uh sort of instilling in himself the authority to
(11:52):
do so, right. And that's part of a pattern that
continued throughout the existence of the Holy Roman Empire. And
it actually lasted for another thousand years and ended in
eighteen o six with Emperor Francis the Second. And it
was a tradition for the pope to actually crown the king,
and this didn't happen with all the different leaders, but
it was more the rule the end. It was the exception.
(12:15):
And Charlemagne actually did great things with his power, not
just in terms of conquering lands, but I guess in
the in the winter of his life, for a little
bit before the winter of his life. He began developing
his interest in scholarly pursuits and education, and we mentioned
before that he had been deprived of this when he
was a child. But in eight oh two he founded
(12:36):
what was known as the Palace School, and it was
an institute of higher learning run by the very best
minds in Europe. He got the greatest scholars altogether, and
he made this really prestigious school that virtually anyone could
come to and matriculate at. And he had all of
the Frankish oral traditions transcribed, so that was a pretty
(12:57):
significant contribution. And he even tried to his own grammar
and said that as the tone for the day, which
I really lack that idea, and I think I haven't
to try to do the same. But Charlemayne, it wasn't successful,
and I think that I would have even left Cloud. Yeah,
it's it's cool. I mean Charlemagne despite all his cruelty
on the battlefield, I mean, she's uh, you know, the
(13:18):
punishment for getting not getting baptized into Christianity at points
was death, and um, you could say what you want
about how cruel he was. He did a lot of
really cool things with the education, and one of My
favorite things that he did was he produced manuals to
teach Latin, to to lay people and just help people understand.
He standardized liturgy as well, sort of you can see
the cross between church and state here and how much
(13:39):
power he welded over the church. But to help he
help people understand the liturgy too, And that's that's one
of the common complaints against the traditional churches that uh,
it was said in the mass, etcetera, were said in Latin,
and the people lay people don't know what's going on.
And I think Charlemagne made a lot of strides into
helping everyone sort of understand their own faith. And I
wonder if that's because of his upbringing that he was
(14:01):
denied that sense of education, and I wonder how many
years he went along with that and just you know,
mouthed words and didn't understand what he was saying or
what he was committing himself too. But I think he
did look out for the lowest common denominator, And again,
you know, that's a wonderful, benevolent thing, but it's also
a good way to wield your power because there's usually
a lot more poor people than there are aristocracy, and
(14:24):
so if you get there was people on your side. Essentially,
you've you've built up your loyalty base. Even more so,
who knows how he was building his power. I think
he was pretty tricky. It's true, good old Charles. And
there's obviously more to say about Charlemagne than we could
ever cover in a podcast. But luckily for us, we
actually have a new forum in which we can say
(14:45):
clever and not so clever things about history every weekday.
That's for everyday, Chant Candace and I post on our
blog stuff you miss in history class we can, which
you can find on the site, and uh, it's really cool.
We get to talk about newsy stuff, things that are
coming around about UM news or that is relevant UM
to the to history and if you want to check
it out, and if you want to send us suggestions
(15:07):
about podcasts or blog suggestions, we actually handle those every
Friday as well. We do fan mail Friday. So if
you want to read the blog or read the background
story for this podcast, it is in an article very
cleverly titled by our colleague Christen Conger, how did an
attempt to blind a pope established the Holy Roman Empire?
You can find that and much more on how stuff
(15:28):
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
at how stuff works dot com.
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