Beginning shortly after Charlemagne's death in 814, the inhabitants of
his historical empire looked back upon his reign and saw in it an
exemplar of Christian universality - Christendom. They mapped
contemporary Christendom onto the past and so, during the ninth, tenth,
and eleventh centuries, the borders of his empire grew with each
retelling, almost always including the Christian East. Although the pull
of Jerusalem on the West seems to have been strong during the eleventh
century, it had a more limited effect on the Charlemagne legend.
Instead, the legend grew during this period because of a peculiar fusion
of ideas,
carried forward from the ninth century but filtered through the social,
cultural, and intellectual developments of the intervening years.
Paradoxically,
Charlemagne became less important to the Charlemagne legend. The legend
became a story about the Frankish people, who believed they had held
God's favour under Charlemagne and held out hope that they could one day
reclaim their special place in sacred history. Indeed, popular versions
of the Last Emperor legend, which spoke of a great ruler who would
reunite Christendom in preparation for the last battle between good and
evil, promised just this to the Franks. Ideas of empire, identity, and
Christian religious violence were potent reagents. The mixture of these
ideas could remind men of their Frankishness and move
them, for example, to take up arms, march to the East, and reclaim their
place as defenders of the faith during the First Crusade.
Matthew Gabriele is an associate professor and Coordinator of Medieval & Early Modern Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech.
