Who Is Charlemagne The Father Of Western Europe

Occasionally referred to as Father of Europe, or Charles the Great, Charlemagne had successfully united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. Although he was not French, his fortitudes laid the foundation for what is to become France later on. Charlemagne was of Frankish decent, which ancient romans would consider barbarian. Franks migrated from Western Europe to the East and settled around Germany/Northern France. Charlemagne was a king, famously crowned emperor by the pope in Rome in 800. He conquered Lombardy and pushed into Spain and Brittany. Most importantly he Christianized the Saxons, a non-Christian tribe in the north-east. He notoriously added to the territories which his father and grandfather had conquered, therefore even before Charlemagne, consolidation of his empire was already in motion. He had to govern through very unsteady times in Europe, stability which was previously guaranteed by Roman Empire was gone, and the only remnants of the ancient Roman society, which was Christianity and law, remained the civilizing

He had to govern a vast kingdom with many different languages and dialects spoken, he needed to organize, and more importantly craft a Christian Empire. Because of lack of central government, many tribes were practicing religion differently, had their own set of laws, and too many diverse practices existed. Consequently, Christianity became the binding agent for all of these diverse peoples and lands. Charlemagne had to come up with a system that was capable of holding his empire together, he had to reinvent the structure of a complex society. His struggle for maintaining power and control over his lands, patently constructed the system of Feudalism. As a result the origins of Feudalism can be traced back to Charlemagne and the Carolingian