Within a year, however, Charles suddenly repudiated his wife, alleging that she was sickly and barren. Whether this was his real motive, or whether political causes also influenced his action, we cannot tell; but as Charles wedded immediately after his divorce a fair Suabian lady, named Hildegarde, we may suspect that his motives were possibly those which guided Henry VIII. of England in a similar circumstance. Be this as it may, he won by this divorce the unrelenting and not unjustifiable hatred of Desiderata’s father, the king of the Lombards. Trouble was soon in the air. There was again a rumour that war was about to break out between Charles and Carloman, in which Desiderius would have taken part. |Death of Carloman.| Just in time to prevent such an outbreak, king Carloman died (December 771). He left an infant son, but the nobles and bishops of Burgundy and Alamannia made no attempt to set the child on his father’s throne. Wisely suppressing any particularist yearnings, they betook themselves to Charles at Corbeny-sur-Aisne, and there did homage to him as king of all the Frankish realms. Gerberga, the widow of Carloman, fled with her child and a handful of followers to Lombardy, where Desiderius was now in a state of mind which made him glad to receive any enemy of Charles’s, and more especially one who had such a plausible claim to a share in the Frankish kingdom.
Once more, then, all the lands between the mouth of the Rhine and the mouth of the Rhone, and from the Main to the Bay of Biscay, were united under a single king. |Character of Charles.| And this was a king such as none of those realms had ever seen before—a heroic figure, whose like we have not met in all the three centuries with which we have had to deal. Theodoric the Ostrogoth alone deserves a mention by his side, and Theodoric had a smaller task and less success than the great Charles. For the first time since we began to tell the tale of the Dark Ages we have come upon a man whose form and mind, whose plans and method of life, have been so well recorded that we can build up for ourselves a clear and tangible image of him. Charles the Hammer, king Pippin, Leo the Isaurian, and even the good Theodoric himself, are but shadowy figures, whose outlines we can but dimly seize, but Charles stands before us firm and masterful, a living man, whom we can understand and admire.
|Charles’s person and habits.| ‘He was tall and stoutly built,’ writes his chronicler, Einhard; ‘his height just seven times the length of his own foot. His head was round, his eyes large and lively, his nose somewhat above the common size, his expression bright and cheerful. Whether he stood or sat his form was full of dignity; for the good proportion and grace of his body prevented the observer from noticing that his neck was rather short and his person rather too fleshy. His tread was firm, his aspect manly; his voice was clear, but rather high-pitched for so splendid a body. His health was excellent; only for the last four years of his life he suffered from intermittent fever. To the very last he consulted his own goodwill rather than the orders of his doctors, whom he detested, because they bade him give up the roast meats that his soul loved.’
Charles was always of an active habit of body. He delighted in riding and hunting, and was skilled in swimming above other men. One of the chief reasons that induced him to make Aachen his capital was that he loved to take his sport in the great swimming-bath that was supplied by its hot springs.
He always used the Frankish costume, and loved not foreign apparel. Next his skin he wore a linen shirt and drawers, over these a woollen tunic, with a silk border, and breeches. He wrapped his calves and feet with the linen bandages that were worn ere stockings were invented, and drew high boots over them. In winter he wore a coat of the fur of otter or ermine, and over that a bright blue cloak. A sword with a golden hilt was always at his side. On great days of state he assumed a tunic and cloak embroidered with gold and clasped with gold buckles, girt his head with a jewelled crown, and carried a sword with a jewelled hilt. But for every-day wear his clothes were not more splendid than those of his courtiers.
He was temperate in food and drink, more, however, in drink than in food. No one ever saw him drink more than three cups at his dinner, and he hated drunkenness, and chastised it among his suite. But eating he loved in moderation, and would often say that church fasts were bad for his health. There were never more than four dishes on his table, besides a roast, which was brought him hot from the kitchen on its spit, and this was his favourite food.
At dinner he used to listen to a reciter or a reader. He loved histories and tales of the ancients, and also the works of St. Augustine, whose De Civitate Dei delighted him especially. He caused to be written out and committed to memory the ancient Frankish epics about the deeds and wars of the kings of old. He himself was well skilled in reading aloud and singing to the harp, and took much pains in instructing others in those accomplishments. All the liberal arts were dear to him, and he loved learned men, and summoned them from all quarters of the world. To study grammar he sent for the deacon Peter of Pisa. In most other arts he had as his preceptor Alcuin, the Englishman, the most learned of all men, with whom he studied rhetoric and dialectic, and spent much time in acquiring a knowledge of astronomy; for he was curious about the times and motions of the stars. He invented German names for the twelve months of the year, and the twelve winds. He tried, too, to learn the art of the scribe,[[48]] and used to keep paper and notebooks under his pillow in bed, to practise his fingers at odd moments in forming the characters; but he began too late in life to get very forward in this undertaking. Moreover, he loved building, and designed the splendid cathedral of Aachen, glorious with lamps and candlesticks of gold and silver, and doors and railings of solid bronze. When he was erecting it, and could not get marble columns near at hand, he had them brought all the way from Ravenna and Rome. He was a great churchgoer, and always took care that the service in his presence should be conducted with decorum. He used to pray both in Frankish and in Latin, being equally skilled in both tongues. For he had a great power of acquiring languages, and spoke Latin excellently. Greek he learnt, but understood it better than he spoke it. He had a free and fluent power of speech, and always expressed his meaning in the clearest way.
[48]. We know that he could at least sign his name.
He slept lightly, and would often rise three or four times in the night. When he was dressing for the work of the morning he would have not only his friends in his chamber, but would bid the count of the palace bring in litigants before him, and give a decision from his chair just as if he was in a court of law.
Charles had one lamentable failing—he was too careless of the teachings of Christianity about the relation of the sexes. He divorced his first wife over-lightly, and when his third wife died he took to himself three concubines at once, who bore him many bastard children. There were scandals at his court, and two of his own daughters were known to be living in open sin with two of his courtiers. Charles treated their offence lightly, and never visited them with any rebuke. Not so his son, Lewis the Pious, who regarded his sisters’ shame as so heinous that he banished them when he came to the throne. It was the shortcomings of the great king in respect of sexual morality which prevented the Church from decreeing the beatification of its protector after his death. The spirit of the times was well shown by the strange vision of the monk Wettin of Reichenau, who, falling into a trance and wandering through the other world, saw Charles in Purgatory, kept in purifying flames for a space, till this sin should be purged from his soul.