Charles never recognised the validity of the papal theory of the right of the Pope to crown and depose kings by virtue of his own coronation in 800. When he associated his son Louis with him in rule (813), Louis entered the Church with the king's crown already upon his head. Charles then ordered him to take the royal crown off and put on an imperial crown which lay on the Church altar. Neither the Pope's presence nor his sanction was asked. After Charles's death, however, the Pope carried the crown of Constantine to Germany and coronated Louis with it (816), and,
before that time, his biographer does not call him Emperor.[317:1]
3. Educational. The reign of Charles the Great stands out as the sun between the intellectual night that preceded and the daylight that followed his rule.[317:2] He employed the Church as the best means for furthering the education of his Empire. The clergy and monks became the teachers and writers; the monasteries and churches were used as the seats of learning—the schoolrooms and schoolhouses. He issued important educational laws which practically created a very crude public school system and required all boys to have a general elementary education. His purpose was to make good Christians and good subjects.[317:3] The centre of his whole educational system was his famous "Court School," the very heart of Christian culture in Europe. In it, called from every section, were the leading scholars, divines, poets and historians of Europe. In addition to helping to educate the young princes of the country, they engaged in important literary activities. They compiled a German grammar, collected old German songs and minstrels, corrected the Latin Bible, wrote the Caroline books, collected manuscripts, revived the classics, and studied the Church Fathers.[317:4]
A careful analysis of the character of Charles the Great shows that he was a sincere Christian and faithful churchgoer, a great almsgiver and very kind to the poor, and a man who devoted his life to the upbuilding
of a Christian civilisation.[318:1] Yet he was guilty of deeds which a higher conception of Christian morals condemns as un-Christian. He sacrificed thousands of lives to his passions and ambitions; for thirty years he waged a war of extermination against the Saxons and murdered more than 4000 prisoners in cold blood. Like Mohammed, he made his motto, submission to Christianity or death. Christians of that day, for the most part, pronounced his policy right, although some of the greatest, like Alcuin, denounced it. He had nine wives and concubines, and, like Henry VIII. of England, had little conscience in disposing of them. He was not highly cultured, yet he spoke Latin with ease and knew some Greek. When an old man, he learned to write and deserves great credit for the manner in which he encouraged education. He cultivated the society of the most cultured men in Europe and from them imbibed much. At meals he had read the heroic deeds of his ancestors, or some work of the Church Fathers like Augustine's City of God. As a warrior and statesman, only Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, and Constantine before his day can be compared with him. He was the first and greatest of all the German Emperors. Since his time, only Otto the Great, Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon the Great, have any claim to rank as his peers. The Moses of the Middle Ages, he left an indelible stamp of his genius on Germany and France, continues to be the only common hero of both of these great nations, and through them modified the whole western world.[318:2]
Eight years before his death, Charles the Great made his three sons kings.[319:1] This act would have proved fatal to the Empire. Charles must have known from the writings of Gregory of Tours, the dangers of such an arrangement. The division made among his sons was unnatural, because it lacked unity in race and territory, but the death of Charles and Pepin, the eldest and second sons, prevented imperial suicide. Charles the Great then solemnly crowned the surviving son, Louis, as Emperor in 813. Louis the Pious (814-840) sought to preserve both the Carolingian practice of division and the integrity of the Empire. At Aachen, in 817, to prevent the Empire's being "broken by man lest thereby a scandal, to the Holy Church might arise," Louis made his eldest son, Lothair, co-Emperor, and, with the consent of the people, crowned him.[319:2] The younger sons were made kings but sub seniore fratre. Their territorial districts were clearly defined and elaborate instructions were given about their various relations.[319:3] In 819, Louis married again and soon a fourth son, Charles the Bald, appeared to complicate matters (823). Louis then made a new division of the Empire in order to provide for the new claimant.[319:4] A long list of territorial changes, and disgraceful, ruinous, internecine wars resulted.
Louis the Pious died in 840, and was succeeded by
Lothair as sole Emperor. His brothers, Louis and Charles (Pepin was now dead), rebelled against him and forced him to restrict his possessions to Italy and a narrow strip running from Italy to the North Sea (843). But Lothair, tired of the cares of this life retired to a monastery in 855 after dividing his imperial territory among his three sons.
As a result of the Carolingian policy of division, the Empire so skilfully constructed by Charles the Great, was almost destroyed. Division of rule meant division of resources. The successors of Charles the Great were men of inferior ability. His son, Louis the Pious, was a weak, easily influenced ruler and completely under the thumbs of the clergy. He made some noble efforts to reform the court, but only aroused the enmity of the aristocracy. Lothair, Louis II., and Charles the Bald were Emperors of as short-sighted a policy and of as little ability. Civil wars were almost incessant; nobles held in subjection by the great Charles reasserted their independence; the Northmen,[320:1] Slavs, Hungarians[320:2] and Saracens began to make disastrous inroads; imperial laws were disregarded; and by the end of the ninth century, the Empire of Charles the Great was little more than an empty title hardly worth fighting for.[320:3]
Another significant result of the decline of the Carolingian Empire was the rise of modern states. By the treaty of Verdun in 843,[320:4] Louis the German (d. 876) was given Germany east of the Rhine; Charles