Charlemagne Part 4 - Rise of an Empire.

today we're going to continue our series on history Charlemagne by covering the founding of the Carolingian Empire and how the Empire's governmental structure developed and changed during Solomon's reign I'm calling history and in this video we will start at a turn of the ninth century stay tuned during the end of the eighth century charlemagne had successfully expanded the Frankish Kingdom to encompass most of Western and Central Europe as well as establishing treaties with nearby powers and secured Martius against his enemies in the southeast and southwest the decades award as a characterized Solomon's reign was starting to die down at the same time as this was happening Charlemagne was visited by Pope Leo deferred who appeared before him asking for help now in Rome the state of the church had become disrupted by infighting between different groups in the papacy several church men had accused the Pope for corruption and morally the test of all behavior and a situation had become so heated that the year 799 Roman partisans loyal to the late Pope Adrian the first attacked Leo who was forced to flee the city Salomon agreed to aid the Pope and in November of year 800 he marched south with an entourage of soldiers and restored Leo to the office of Pope he then stayed in Rome during the winter which was a decision that would have important consequences not only for chala main but food history of Europe as well on Christmas Day the 25th 800 while attending Mass in the Church of st. Peter show me kneel before the church altar and prayed while doing this the recently reinstated Pope Leo put a crown upon his head declaring him Imperator ramanan emperor of the Romans by doing this the Pope defied the Byzantine emperors claim to the lands in former Empire in Western Europe as well as arrogate the right appoint emperor of the Romans Solomon accepted the title but whether he did so willingly or unwillingly is disputed among scholars some appointed to early sources like Chalmers bog refer in Hart who claimed that Charlemagne was not aware of the Pope's plan to crown him emperor and it being bestowed the title of Emperor was something he disliked a lot I in heart also claimed that had shall Amin known of the Pope's plans he would never have set foot in the Church of st. Peter on that Christmas morning other scholars however have argued that Charlemagne was indeed aware of the coronation and point to the fact that Shaw main certainly could not amidst the be jeweled crown waiting on the altar when he came to pray what our chala me photo this the title of Emperor would remain during the rest of colonies raining and be passed down to his successor who drooled the Empire intact despite Charlemagne likely having initially planned to divide his realm into small kingdoms among his sons only one of his heirs remained alive when he lay on his deathbed at the time of his death Charlemagne had appointed he's free sons Lewis carlomon later in a in Pepin of Italy and shows a Junger as regions of their own respective domains however before the Empire could be divided both Pepin and Charles had died leaving King Louis as the only legitimate heir to the Carolinian Empire in 814 Charlemagne called Louis to his court were a crown demco Emperor Louis then quickly returned to Aquitaine as chala mean spent the autumn hunting and a winter in his palace in Aachen where a fell ill then in early January of 814 the king or the Franks an emperor of Rome passed away leaving his realm to King Louis when Louis got word of his father's death he hurried to Aachen and proclaim the self Emperor with an anima support of the Frankish aristocracy upon his death Charlemagne had for several decades built and expanded upon shaymin's of his father's and his Merovingian predecessors not only had a Frankish Kingdom considerably expanded on several fronts that Charlemagne had also made several innovations to the kingdom and later Empire's administrations during his reign Charlemagne started to make new use of the traditional Frankish annual assemblies by expanding his function by turning it into a tool to cement the King's personal ties with his subjects in addition to this he also required always free subjects as we're loyalty to him and established personal ties with powerful figures by accepting them as royal vessels in return for benefits in form of offices and land grants to be exploited for the personal benefits as long as they remained loyal to the king to better be able to enforce this rule on the local levels Charlemagne integrated the central and local administrations by regulating and expanding the use of royal agents charged with making regular circuits through assigned territories to announce the Kings will get her information of the performance of local officials and to correct abuses this greatly expanded the use of written documents and thus the need for literacy luckily literacy was on the rise in Francia as a result of the educational program which Charlemagne had created to improve clerical literacy in an intellectual and cultural blossoming called the Carolingian Renaissance which I have covered in more detail in my video on the history of science and philosophy in the early Middle Ages one of the last innovations that was gradually introduced during the reign of Charlemagne was a grafting of a religious component onto the traditional and somewhat narrow conception of the basis of royal of 40 in early medieval Europe drawing on the old testament and the writings of st. Augustine the Frankish kingship progressively started to see the Kings position as bestowed for the purpose of realizing a divine plan for Humanity and the universe this new role entailed a vast expansion of traditional royal 40 and a redefinition of the priorities royal government should serve today hope you learned something new about Charlemagne and history of Francia don't forget that if you liked this video and want to see more videos like it it'll like share and subscribe buttons