Beall, Baltimore, , Line has b. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance , a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the Middle Ages. The latter got on badly with Charlemagne, but war was prevented by the sudden death of Carloman in Charlemagne continued the policy of his father towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in Italy, and waging war on the Saracens , who menaced his realm from Spain.
It was during one of these campaigns that Charlemagne experienced the worst defeat of his life, at Roncesvalles He also campaigned against the peoples to his east, especially the Saxons , and after a protracted war subjected them to his rule. By forcibly converting them to Christianity, he integrated them into his realm and thus paved the way for the later Ottonian dynasty.
Today he is not only regarded as the founding father of both French and German monarchies, but as the father of Europe : his empire united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Romans, and the Carolingian renaissance encouraged the formation of a common European identity. First, the year was calculated from his age given at death, rather than from attestation in primary sources. Another date is given in the Annales Petarienses , April 1 , In that year, April 1 was at Easter.
The birth of an emperor at eastertime is a coincidence likely to provoke comment, but there was no such comment documented in , leading some to suspect that the Easter birthday was a pious fiction concocted as a way of honoring the Emperor. Other commentators weighing the primary records have suggested that his birth was one year later, in At present, it is impossible to be certain of the date of the birth of Charlemagne.
He went to live in his father's villa in Jupille when he was around seven, which caused Jupille to be listed as a possible place of birth in almost every history book. Early life Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pippin the Short - 24 September , reigned from and his wife Bertrada of Laon - 12 July , daughter of Caribert of Laon and Bertrada of Cologne. Records name only Carloman , Gisela , and a short-lived child named Pippin as his younger siblings. The semi-mythical Redburga , wife of King Egbert of Wessex , is sometimes claimed to be his sister or sister-in-law or niece , and the legendary material makes him Roland 's maternal uncle through a lady Bertha.
