Despite Charlemagne’s protests, it was hardly surprising that Charles king of the Franks was to become Charles emperor of the West. Even uncrowned as emperor, he would still have been known as the greatest of the Carolingian kings, who believed himself to be a divine weapon used to bring order and Christianity to the West. History and the pope had other plans for him, including the protection of the Byzantine Empire from the spread of Islam and paganism and from the Iconoclastic Controversy.
The Controversy was a fight that reflected two sides of a very serious and divisive issue in Christianity. On one side, many devout Christians had a deep emotional attachment to their icons of the saints, Virgin Mary, and bible stories, and monasteries worked hard at preserving ancient artifacts, bones, and personal items of the saints that would attract pilgrims (and their money). Other Christians, however, felt that these icons distracted from the true faith and were too gaudy and showy for a truly ascetic view of Christianity.
On one side, then, were Christians who felt (along with Muslims and Jews) that it was blasphemous to represent the divine in art and who followed the Law of Moses to not make or worship “graven images” because it led to idolatry. On the other side, there were those who felt that the images helped pagan believers convert, and ordinary Christians keep focus, because the visuals directed the thoughts and prayers to heaven. Christianity was a religion that asked its followers to take many doctrines on faith alone, and the images helped followers see that which was invisible and mysterious as concrete and believable.
The Iconoclastic Controversy began during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Leo III (d. 741) when a series (726-29) of edicts was issued against images; in most churches they were removed and destroyed, and the frescoes were whitewashed over. Almost immediately there was a backlash, with riots and revolts that were settled with violence. The Roman popes consistently supported the image-worshippers; not only did they refuse to obey the imperial edicts, but they declared any iconoclast to be a heretic.
Charlemagne and the Frankish clergy regarded image-worshipping as idolatrous and superstitious, as set forth in four tracts composed in 789-91 and issued in his name. Nevertheless, despite such opposition, in 800 Charlemagne allowed himself to be crowned as emperor at Rome by Pope Leo III (elected 795; not to be confused with the earlier Byzantine emperor of the same name and number).
In April 799, Pope Leo III had been attacked by assailants who tried to put out his eyes and tear out his tongue, thus disqualifying him from the papal office. It is not certain what his crime was: some say he was guilty of fornication and perjury, others of the time pointed out that he was simply not the son of one of the city’s elite families, and that was crime enough. Leo escaped and fled to Charlemagne at Paderborn, asking him to intervene in Rome and restore him. Charlemagne, advised by Alcuin of York that the church was in a deep crisis, agreed to travel to Rome, doing so in November 800 and holding a council on December 1. On December 23, Leo swore an oath of innocence, and Charlemagne took the pope’s side, although it seems he did so mostly in the interest of political stability, not necessarily because he believed the pope was innocent. It seems clear that negotiations had taken place between king and pope at Paderborn, and historians have speculated for centuries on just what might have been reached, as there is no record of their discussions.
On Christmas Day of the year 800, Charlemagne attended the nativity Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica, where he prostrated himself for prayers. When he rose, the pope stepped forward and crowned him as emperor (Imperator Romanorum, or “Emperor of the Romans”), and the crowd acclaimed him and knelt along with the pope to pay him homage.
The earliest surviving evidence of what contemporaries thought of that event comes to us from 803. The scribe of the Lorsch Annals set down the basic facts: that the pope was transferring the office of emperor from Constantinople to Charlemagne and thus returning it to Rome. This suggests that the event was well planned out and agreed on by Charlemagne and Pope Leo III at Paderborn, but Einhard argues that Charlemagne was ignorant of the pope’s intent and did not want any such coronation:
At first he disliked this so much that he said that he would not have entered the church that day, even though it was a great feast day, if he had known in advance of the pope’s plan. But he bore the animosity that the assumption of this title caused with great patience. (38)
Is it possible that Charlemagne was indeed aware of the planned coronation? The huge, jeweled crown that was waiting for him on the altar must have been quite obvious. Einhard may have wanted to give his hero a sense of Christian humility and modesty and to show that it was not personal ambition, but a desire to give stability to Western Christendom, that led Charlemagne to this crown.
In his official charters, Charlemagne preferred to be called “Karolus se-renissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperium” (“Charles, most serene Augustus crowned by God, the great, peaceful emperor ruling the Roman Empire”) instead of the more direct “Imperator Romanorum” (“Emperor of the Romans”), but the latter title became the norm.
Roger Collins suggests that any chance that “the motivation behind the acceptance of the imperial title was a romantic and antiquarian interest in reviving the Roman Empire is highly unlikely.” Neither the Franks nor the Church of Rome would have wanted the Roman Empire to be revived, because they viewed it with distrust—it was old, decadent, and pagan. Pepin II, father of Charles Martel and great-grandfather of Charlemagne, described the old Roman Empire as something the Franks took pride in overthrowing, having “fought against and thrown from their shoulders the heavy yoke of the Romans [and] from the knowledge gained in baptism, clothed in gold and precious stones the bodies of the holy martyrs whom the Romans had killed by fire, by the sword and by wild animals” (Collins 151).
Charlemagne’s assumption of the imperial title was not usurpation in the eyes of the Franks or Italians, who found it to be completely to their benefit. The risk of Charlemagne being overcome by his new power and making drastic changes was not considered a potential problem—the new emperor had never behaved this way and had always included the needs and protection of the Frankish peoples as his priority in his administration. In Byzantium, however, it was protested by Empress Irene and her successor Nicephorus I, but neither of them had any great effect in having their protests heard.
The title of emperor stayed in Charlemagne’s family for years, but it caused his descendants to fight over who had the supremacy in the Frankish state. The papacy continued to reserve the right to bestow the honor of emperor on whomever the pope wished, and so when the family of Charlemagne no longer had a worthy heir to offer for the throne, the pope was happy to crown whichever Italian warlord was agreeable and could protect him from his local enemies. In 962, however, the title passed out of French and Italian control to the person of Otto the Great—bringing the title into Germany for almost a thousand years, helping it become the Holy Roman Empire.
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