Aachen Nordrhein-Westfalen Germany

Charlemagne inherits the Frankish crown in 768.

During his reign (768-814), he subdues Bavaria, conquers Lombardy and Saxony, and establishes his authority in central Italy.

By the end of the eighth century, his kingdom, later to become known as the First Reich (empire in German), includes present-day France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, as well as a narrow strip of northern Spain, much of Germany and Austria, and much of the northern half of Italy.

Charlemagne, founder of an empire that is Roman, Christian, and Germanic, is crowned emperor in Rome by the pope in 800.

The Carolingian Empire is based on an alliance between the emperor, who is a temporal ruler supported by a military retinue, and the pope of the Roman Catholic Church, who grants spiritual sanction to the imperial mission.

Charlemagne and his son Louis I (r. 814-40) establish centralized authority, appoint imperial counts as administrators, and develop a hierarchical feudal structure headed by the emperor.

Reliant on personal leadership rather than the Roman concept of legalistic government, Charlemagne's empire lasts less than a century.

A period of warfare will follow the death of Louis.

The young Alcuin had come to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Egbert and Northumbrian King Eadberht.

Egbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede, who had urged him to raise York to an archbishopric.

King Eadbert and his brother Egbert had overseen the reenergizing and reorganization of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun.

Egbert had been devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage.

The York school is renowned as a center of learning in the liberal arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious matters.

Alcuin had graduated during the 750s to become a teacher.

His ascendancy to the headship of the York school, the ancestor of St Peter's School, began in 767 after Aelbert became Archbishop of York.

Alcuin around the same time became a deacon in the church.

He was never ordained as a priest and there is no real evidence that he became an actual monk, but he lived his life as one.

King Elfwaldhad had sent Alcuin to Rome in 781 to petition the Pope for official confirmation of York's status as an archbishopric and to confirm the election of the new archbishop, Eanbald I.

At some point he either met or was summoned by Charles I, who seeks to inspire the revival of education in the hope of forming one great Christian empire of all the Germanic peoples.

Alcuin's love of the church and his intellectual curiosity allows him to be reluctantly persuaded to join Charles's court.

He joins an illustrious group of scholars that Charles has gathered around him, the mainsprings of the Carolingian Renaissance: Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, Rado, and Abbot Fulrad.

Alcuin will later write that "the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles."

Charles is determined to have his children educated, including his daughters, as he himself is not.

His children are taught all the arts, and his daughters are learned in the way of being a woman.

His sons take archery, horsemanship, and other outdoor activities.

Alcuin is welcomed by Charles to the Palace School in Aachen (Urbs Regale) in 782, founded by the king's ancestors as a place for the education of the royal children (mostly in manners and the ways of the court).

However, Charles wants to include the liberal arts and, most importantly, the study of the religion that he holds sacred.

Drawing inspiration from the York school, he revives the Palace School with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines, writing a codex on the trivium, while his student Hraban will write one on the quadrivium.

Charles begins construction on his palace chapel at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in 782, designed and supervised by the architect Odo of Metz.

The new chapel, modeled after a centralized Byzantine model, Justinian's octagonal Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, rejects the simple Merovingian church plan in favor of imperial echoes.

A devout Christian, Charles protects and helps develop Jewish culture and commerce in his kingdom.

Regarding the Jews as an economic asset, he prevents the Church from placing excessive restrictions on them.

Jews are permitted to employ Christians and can freely practice their religion.

As the Muslims control much of the Mediterranean, the Jews begin to take on the role of commercial mediators.

Charles the Great, the ruthless King of the Franks from 768 to 814, known to posterity as Charlemagne, is described by a contemporary, Einhard, as having the red hair and blue eyes of his tribe.

Einhard notes that the ambitious, powerfully built monarch is able to work longer and harder than his commanders or his secretaries.

The Admonitio generalis, an important piece of Carolingian legislation, promulgated by Charles in 789, contains a total of eighty two clauses pertaining mainly to ecclesiastical regulation.

The Admonitio is considered to be one of the most important cultural artifacts of the Carolingian period, and has been commonly cited as one of the primary pieces of evidence for the existence of the cultural revival generally known as the Carolingian Renaissance.

The text of the Generalis itself also attests to the responsibility of Charles as Frankish ruler for the salvation of his people.

Alcuin had returned in 790 from the court of Charles to England, to which he had remained attached.

He dwelled there for some time, but Charles then invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy that is at this time making great progress in Toledo, the old capital of the Visigoths and still a major city for the Christians under Islamic rule in Spain.

He is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism.

He was back at Charlemagne's court by at least mid-792, writing a series of letters to Æthelred, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and to Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, dealing with the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in July 793.

These letters and Alcuin's poem on the subject, De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii, provide the only significant contemporary account of these events.

Alcuin upholds the orthodox doctrine at the Council of Frankfurt in 794 and obtains the condemnation of the heresiarch Felix of Urgel.

Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin will never return home to England.

This is the oldest known mention of Frankfurt, as Frankonovurd (in old high German) or Vadum Francorum (in Latin).

Charles commissions eight bronze grille screens in 795 for the octagonal structure of his Palace Chapel at Aachen.

The tremendous booty from the Franks’ successful war against the Avars is sent to Charles in Aachen and redistributed to all his followers and even to foreign rulers, including King Offa of Mercia.

It will serve to fund the so-called Carolingian Renaissance and the Frankish recreation of the Western Roman Empire.