his grandfather and father. Pope Leo III (r. 795–816) was facing a rebellion in Rome by a political faction that was opposed to his reign. Leo called upon Charlemagne for aid. Upon his arrival in Rome, Charlemagne heard the charges brought against Leo III by his enemies. Leo swore that he was innocent. Charlemagne declared Leo innocent and banished his enemies.
On Christmas Day, Charlemagne attended mass in St. Peter's Basilica. As he knelt before the tomb of the apostle to pray, Leo placed a crown upon his head. Then those present in the church shouted three times in unison: “To Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and peace‐giving emperor, life and victory.” For the first time since 476, there was once again a Roman Emperor in the West. Charlemagne's new title, Emperor of the Romans, was not recognized by the Byzantine emperor until 812.
Charlemagne's empire had a semblance of centralized government and administration. There were 350 counties, each under an administrator with the title of Count, who was charged with administering justice, keeping the peace, providing soldiers for Charlemagne's campaigns, collecting taxes, and seeing that crops were planted and harvested. Royal inspectors, called missi dominici, visited the counties to ensure that the counts were carrying out their duties honestly and to report back to Charlemagne on the state of the kingdom. Charlemagne issued laws that were a blend of German customs and Christian principles.
Charlemagne's interest in educational reform led him to found a palace school at his capital in Aachen, also known as Aix‐la‐Chapelle. He sent to York in Northumbria, the cultural center of Western Christendom at the time, for the Anglo‐Saxon scholar, Alcuin (735–804) to oversee his school. Under Alcuin's tutelage, the palace school became the nucleus of an intellectual and cultural revival known as the Carolingian Renaissance. Monks were put to work copying (and thus preserving) the Latin classics. Nearly all of the earliest known manuscripts of classical literature are copies made by the medieval monks, many of them Carolingian copies. Monks were sent out from the palace school to revive the monastic and cathedral schools.
Charlemagne's empire was not a true rebirth of the old Roman Empire in the West. There were no urban centers, and no rebirth of trade, commerce, or banking. The old Roman cities continued to decay into ruins. The old Roman aqueducts and roads were used as stone quarries to build castles. At the beginning of the ninth century, there were less than 20 000 people living in Rome, a city that during the second century had a population of over one million.
Charlemagne's empire was a Germanic kingdom supersized, a vast area temporarily held together by the force of Charlemagne's personality. Those within the empire gave personal loyalty to Charlemagne. There was no revival of the Roman concept of a state, as summed up in the motto, “The Senate and People of Rome.” Such concepts were totally foreign to the German mind in the ninth century. Hence, the empire did not survive his death, but it did serve an important function. It kept alive the idea of a universal Christian empire.
Anglo‐Saxons
According to tradition, the Rhine River froze over in December 406, an unusual occurrence. Large numbers of Germans fleeing before the advancing Huns poured across the river into Gaul. The Visigoth invasion of northern Italy was halted, but only temporarily. Desperate for soldiers loyal to Rome, Honorius (384–423), emperor in the West, recalled the legions from Britain. With the legions gone, the Anglo‐Saxon invaders met little resistance from the defenseless inhabitants of Britain. In 410, the year that the Visigoths sacked Rome, Honorius informed the people of Britain that they must see to their own defense. The legions were not going to return.
The inhabitants of Britain resisted the invaders, but by the middle of the fifth century much of what is modern England was overrun. There is very little in the historical record of this period in Britain's history. As the Romanized population vanished or migrated westward into Wales, Cornwall, and Cumberland, literacy vanished with them. Something of the resistance to the Anglo‐Saxons can be gleaned from “On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain” by St. Gildas (c. 500–570), a sixth‐century monk.
In the first part of “On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain,” Gildas relates the history of Britain from the Roman conquest to his own time. Of particular interest is Gildas's account of a Christian Romanized Britain, Ambrosius Aurelianus, who rallied the Britons to resist the Anglo‐Saxon invaders. He won 12 battles, most famously, the Battle of Mons Badonicus, or Battle of Badon, in c. 500. Ambrosius Aurelianus is a shadowy figure. From the ninth century on, his identity became absorbed into the legend of King Arthur of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table.
By 650, the Anglo‐Saxon invaders settled down in seven separate kingdoms referred to historically as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex. War among the seven kingdoms was constant. From time to time, the kingdoms recognized one king as the Bretwalda, or “High King” of Britain. By the middle of the ninth century, the seven kingdoms were consolidated into three: Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex.
Viking raids (mostly Danes) were common during the ninth century. In 865, a large Viking army originating in Denmark began a 12‐year campaign in Britain. The “Great Heathen Army,” as the invaders were called by the Britons, came to conquer and settle, not merely raid and plunder. Only the Kingdom of Wessex, where Alfred the Great (849–899) was king, remained unconquered. A decisive battle (Battle of Edington) was fought in 878, from which Alfred emerged victorious over the Danish king Guthrum (d. 890).
With the Treaty of Wedmore (878) that followed Alfred's victory, the Vikings agreed to settle in an area that comprised northern and eastern England, where the laws of the Danes ruled. It became known as the Danelaw. Guthrum accepted baptism, took the Christian name Athelstan, and became Alfred's godson. In 937, Alfred's grandson, Athelstan, King of the Anglo‐Saxons (924–927) and King of the English (927–939), defeated an invasion by a combined force of Irish, Norse, Scots, and Northumbrians, thus preserving the independence of both the Danelaw and the Kingdom of Wessex.
England was once again invaded in 1003 by Sweyn Forkbeard (960–1014) of Denmark. He was proclaimed king on Christmas Day, 1013, but died less than six weeks later on February 3, 1014, uncrowned. Sweyn's son, Cnut (995–1035), also known as Canute (Cnut the Great) the Dane, in 1016 became the first ruler of all England since the Roman era. He was crowned King of Denmark in 1018 and King of Norway in 1028. Together, the kingdoms are referred to as the North Sea Empire or the Anglo‐Scandinavian Empire.
The period of Cnut's reign was a pleasant respite from the turmoil that preceded and followed him. He brought more than two decades of peace and prosperity to England. He reformed the laws, promoted trade, and strengthened the coinage. Cnut was a generous patron of the Church. He rebuilt the churches and monasteries that were looted by the Vikings and built new ones. He gave gifts of money and relics to the English Church and promoted monastic reforms. In 1027, he made a pilgrimage to Rome to attend the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II and obtain favors for English Christians directly from the pope.
Cnut's Anglo‐Scandinavian Empire did not survive him. Like Charlemagne's empire, Cnut's empire fragmented as his heirs intrigued and battled for the pieces. The English crown returned to the House of Wessex with Edward the Confessor (1003–1066) in 1042. Edward proved a saintly, but ineffective ruler, who left the affairs of state largely to Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and his son Harold. When Edward died childless, the Witan (royal council of nobles and church leaders) elected Harold Godwinson King of England.
Harold, known as Harold II, was immediately faced with two challenges to his rule – the first from his brother Tostig (c. 1026–1066), supported by King Harald III Hardrada of Norway, who invaded England, and the second from Duke William II of Normandy (1028–1087), a cousin of Edward the Confessor. Harold surprised Tostig and Hardrada at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on September 25, 1066. Both Tostig and Hardrada were killed in the battle, and their army virtually annihilated.
Immediately
