Pepin the Short
However, Charles Martel, Pippin's son by his mistress, Alpaida (or Chalpaida), had gained favour among the Austrasians, primarily for his military prowess and ability to keep them well supplied with booty from his conquests. Despite the efforts of Plectrude to silence her rival's child by imprisoning him, he became the sole Mayor of the Palace and de facto ruler of Francia.
Pepin or Pippin (714 – 24 September 768), called the Short, and often known as Pepin the Younger or Pepin III, was the Mayor of the Palace and Duke of the Franks from 741 and King of the Franks from 751 to 768. He was born in 714 in Jupille, close to the city of Liège, in what is today Belgium, where the Carolingian dynasty originated. That territory was then a part of the kingdom of Austrasia.
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Pepin's father, Charles Martel, died in 741. He divided the rule of the Frankish kingdom between Pepin and his elder brother, Carloman, his surviving sons by his first wife: Carloman became Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, Pepin became Mayor of the Palace of Neustria. Grifo, Charles' son by his second wife, Swanahild, may also have been intended to receive an inheritance, but he was imprisoned in a monastery by his two half-brothers. Carloman, who by all evidence was a deeply pious man, retired to a monastery in 747. This left Francia in the hands of Pepin as sole mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum, a title originated by his grandfather and namesake Pepin of Heristal.
Under the reorganization of Francia by Charles Martel the dux et princeps Francorum were the commanders of the armies of the kingdom, in addition to their administrative duties as mayor of the palace, and specifically commander of the standing guard which Martel had begun maintaining year-round since Toulouse in 721. Upon their assumption, Pepin and Carloman, who had not proved themselves in battle in defense of the realm as their father had, installed the Merovingian Childeric III as king, even though Martel had left the throne vacant since the death of Theuderic IV. Childeric had the title of king, but he was considered weak. As time passed, and his brother bowed out of the picture, Pepin became discontent with the royal power being with Childeric.
At the time of Carloman's retirement, Grifo escaped his imprisonment and fled to Duke Odilo of Bavaria, who was married to Hiltrude, Pepin's sister. Odilo was forced by Pepin to acknowledge Frankish overlordship, but died soon after. Pepin invaded Bavaria and installed Tassilo III as duke under Frankish overlordship.
Since Pepin had control over the magnates and actually had the power of the king, he suggested the Pope make the Carolingian name royal in law as well as fact. Pepin asked Pope Zachary, "Is it right that the royal power sit with the person with the title of King, or the person who makes the decisions as King?" The Pope answered that the de facto power is more important than the de jure power. Thus, Pepin, having obtained the support of the papacy, discouraged opposition to his house. He was elected King of the Franks by an assembly of Frankish leading-men, with a large portion of his army on hand (in the event that the nobility inclined not to honor the Papal bull), and anointed at Soissons, by Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, who, along with his niece, Saint Leoba, was a court advisor. Meanwhile, Grifo continued his rebellion, but was eventually killed in the battle of Saint-Jean de Maurienne in 753. Childeric III was deposed, his hair shaved off and he was confined to a monastery. He was the last of the Merovingians.
Pepin added to his power after Pope Stephen II traveled all the way to Paris to anoint him in a lavish ceremony at Saint Denis Basilica, bestowing upon him the additional title of patricius Romanorum (Patrician of the Romans). As life expectancies were short in those days, and Pepin wanted family continuity, the Pope also anointed Pepin's sons, Charles (eventually known as Charlemagne) and Carloman.
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Pepin's first major act was to go to war against the Lombard king Aistulf, who had a policy of expansion into the ducatus Romanum, as a partial repayment for papal support in his quest for the crown. Victorious, he forced the Lombard king to return property seized from the Church and confirmed the papacy in possession of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. In 759, he drove the Saracens out of Gaul with the capture of Narbonne and then consolidated his power further by integrating Aquitaine into the kingdom. In taking Narbonne, and formally annexing Aquitaine (whose status was always dependent on the strength of her suzerains), he completed the work of his father save for one last task: fully subduing the Saxons. He was preparing for war against them when his health began to fail, and thus, this final task was left for his son, the great Charlemagne.
In 740, Pepin married Bertrada of Laon, his second cousin. Her father, Charibert, was the son of Pepin II's brother, Martin of Laon. They are known to have had four children: Charles, (Charles the Great), Carloman, Gisela and Pepin, who died in infancy.
Charlemagne ( or Charles the Great, in German: Karl der Große, in Latin: Carolus Magnus, and hence the adjective form 'Carolingian'), was king of the Franks from 771 to 814, nominally King of the Lombards, and Roman Emperor. Arguably the founder of a Frankish Empire in Western Europe, Charlemagne was the elder son of Pippin the Short (751-768), the first Carolingian king. On the death of Pippin the kingdom was divided between Charlemagne and his brother Carloman. Carloman died in 771, leaving Charlemagne with a reunified Frankish kingdom. In 800 at Mass on Christmas day in Rome, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, a title that had been out of use in the West since the abdication of Romulus Augustulus in 476.
Though no description from Charlemagne's lifetime exists, his personal appearance is known from a good description by Einhard, author of the biographical Vita Caroli Magni. He is well known to have been tall, stately, and fair-haired, with a disproportionately thick neck. His skeleton was measured during the 18th century and his height was determined 6 ft 4 in, and as Einhard tells it in his twenty-second chapter:
Charles was large and strong, and of lofty stature, though not disproportionately tall (his height is well known to have been seven times the length of his foot); the upper part of his head was round, his eyes very large and animated, nose a little long, hair fair, and face laughing and merry. Thus his appearance was always stately and dignified, whether he was standing or sitting; although his neck was thick and somewhat short, and his belly rather prominent; but the symmetry of the rest of his body concealed these defects. His gait was firm, his whole carriage manly, and his voice clear, but not so strong as his size led one to expect.
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Charlemagne's campaign in northern Italy, in the first years of his reign, is carried out in alliance with the pope. From his boyhood his family has maintained a strong link with Rome. Charlemagne is twelve when he is annointed by the pope (Stephen II), together with his father and brother, at St Denis in 754 - an event which prompts his father to undertake two Italian campaigns against the Lombards. In 772 another pope, Adrian I, asks for a repeat of the same favour. Charlemagne, like his father, invades the Lombards twice, in 773 and 774. The result is a major extension of his empire and a new title for himself - king of the Lombards.
North of the Alps Charlemagne extends his territory eastwards to include Bavaria, but his main efforts within Germany are directed against the Saxons. These restless Germanic tribesmen have long plagued the settled Frankish territories by raiding from their forest sanctuaries. Charlemagne the emperor is harmed by their depredations; Charlemagne the Christian is outraged by their pagan practices. From 772 he wages ferocious war against them, beginning with the destruction of one of their great shrines and its sacred central feature - the Irminsul or 'pillar of the world', a massive wooden column believed to support the universe.
It takes Charlemagne thirty years to subdue the Saxons; not until 804 are they finally transformed into settled Christians within his empire. It has been a brutal process. Charlemagne's method is military conquest followed by forced conversion and the planting of missionary outposts, usually in the form of bishoprics. In his book of rules, the official punishment for refusing to be baptized is death. The chronicles record that on one day some 4500 reluctant Saxons are executed for not worshipping the right god.
One of Charlemagne's few unsuccessful campaigns is his first attempt to liberate northern Spain from the Muslims. His intervention is invited by Muslim opponents of the caliph in Cordoba. And his imagination is no doubt fired by his grandfather's famous success near Tours in 732. Charlemagne marches south in 778, besieges and takes the town of Pamplona, is frustrated in his attempt to take Saragossa and then - with nothing achieved - retreats northwards. An incident of some kind takes place at a pass called Roncesvalles, where either Basques or Gascons attack the rearguard of his army.
In 799, for the third time in half a century, a pope is in need of help from the Frankish king. After being physically attacked by his enemies in the streets of Rome (their stated intention is to blind him and cut out his tongue, to make him incapable of office), Leo III makes his way through the Alps to visit Charlemagne at Paderborn.
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It is not known what is agreed, but Charlemagne travels to Rome in 800 to support the pope. In a ceremony in St Peter's, on Christmas Day, Leo is due to anoint Charlemagne's son as his heir. But unexpectedly (it is maintained), as Charlemagne rises from prayer, the pope places a crown on his head and acclaims him emperor. Charlemagne expresses displeasure but accepts the honour. The displeasure is probably diplomatic, for the legal emperor is undoubtedly the one in Constantinople. Nevertheless this public alliance between the pope and the ruler of a confederation of Germanic tribes now reflects the reality of political power in the west. And it launches the concept of the new Holy Roman Empire which will play an important role throughout the Middle Ages.
Five years after the coronation in Rome, Leo III is again with Charlemagne at a religious ceremony. But this time it is in Germany. He is consecrating Charlemagne's spectacular new church in Aachen, begun just nine years previously in 796. The French name of Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, specifically features this famous building - a small but richly decorated octagonal chapel which Charlemagne has consciously modelled on another famous imperial church, Justinian's San Vitale in Ravenna.
When Charlemagne died in 814, he was buried in his own Cathedral at Aachen. He was succeeded by his only son to survive him, Louis the Pious, after whose reign the empire was divided between his three surviving sons according to Frankish tradition. These three kingdoms would be the foundations of later France and the Holy Roman Empire.
It is difficult to understand Charlemagne's attitude toward his daughters. None of them contracted a sacramental marriage. This may have been an attempt to control the number of potential alliances. After his death the surviving daughters entered or were forced to enter monasteries. At least one of them, Bertha, had a recognized relationship, if not a marriage, with Angilbert, a member of Charlemagne's court circle.
Cultural significance: Charlemagne's reign is often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance because of the flowering of scholarship, literature, art and architecture. Most of the surviving works of classical Latin were copied and preserved by Carolingian scholars. The pan-European nature of Charlemagne's influence is indicated by the origins of many of the men who worked for him: Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon; Theodulf, a Visigoth; Paul the Deacon, a Lombard; and Angilbert and Einhard, Franks.
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