The great emperor had now entered on the eighth decade of his life. His health was apparently failing and there were also signs and portents betokening the approaching end, which, with proper regard to classical precedent, are duly recorded by Einhard. For the last three years of his life there was an unusually large number of eclipses of the sun and moon. A big spot on the sun was observed for seven days. The colonnade between the church and palace at Aachen, constructed with great labor, fell in sudden ruin on Ascension-day. The great bridge over the Rhine at Mainz, which had been ten years in building, and for which Einhard himself had acted as clerk of the works, was burnt to the water’s edge in three hours. Then, in his last expedition against Danish Godofrid (but that was as far back as 810), a fiery torch had been seen to fall from heaven, in a clear sky, on the sinister side, and Charles’s horse at the same moment falling heavily had thrown his master to the ground with such violence that the clasp of his cloak was broken, his sword-belt burst, and the spear which he held in his hand was hurled forwards twenty feet or more. Moreover there were crackings of the palace-ceilings; the golden apple which was on the roof of the church was struck by lightning and thrown on to the roof of the archbishop’s palace hard by. In the inscription which ran round the interior of the dome, and which contained the words KAROLVS PRINCEPS, the letters of the second word, only a few months before Charles’s death, faded and became invisible. All these signs convinced thoughtful persons that an old man of more than seventy, who had led a hard and strenuous life, and who was bowed by many recent sorrows, had not long to live.

In the year 811, the emperor, feeling that the end was not far off, had given elaborate orders as to the disposal of his personal property, consisting of gold, silver, and precious stones. The details, though curious, need not be quoted here. It is sufficient to say that only one-twelfth of the whole was to be divided among his children and grand-children. About two-thirds were to be divided among the ecclesiastics of twenty-one chief cities in his dominions. The remainder was for his servants and the poor. It is interesting to observe that the division of the property was to be completed “after his death or voluntary renunciation of the things of this world.” There was therefore a possibility that the first Emperor Charles might have anticipated the fifth in retiring from a palace into a convent. Also we note with interest a square silver table containing a plan of the city of Constantinople, which was to be sent as a gift to St. Peter’s at Rome; a round one containing a similar plan of Rome, which was to be sent to the Archbishop of Ravenna; and a third, “far surpassing the others in weight of metal and beauty of workmanship, which consisted of three spheres linked together, and which embraced a plan of the whole world with delicate and minute delineation,” and which was to be sold for the benefit of the residuary legatees and the poor.

At last the time came for all these dispositions to take effect. After the great assembly in which the imperial diadem was placed on the head of Louis of Aquitaine (Sept. 813), Charles, though in feeble health, went on one of his usual hunting expeditions in the neighborhood of Aachen. The autumn was thus passed, and at the beginning of November he returned to the palace to winter there. In January (814) he was attacked by a severe fever and took to his bed. According to his usual custom he thought to subdue the fever by fasting, but pleurisy was added to the fever, and in his reduced state he had no power to grapple with the disease. After partaking of the Communion he departed this life at nine in the morning of the 28th of January, 814. He was then in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-seventh of his reign. On the day of his death he was buried in his own church of St. Mary’s amidst the lamentations of his people. On a gilded arch above his tomb was inscribed this epitaph: “Under this tombstone is laid the body of Charles, the great and orthodox Emperor, who gloriously enlarged the kingdom of the Franks and reigned prosperously for 47 years (sic). He died, a septuagenarian, in the year of our Lord 814, in the 7th Indiction on the 5th day before the Kalends of February.”[71]

Before many years had passed, the adjective Magnus was universally affixed by popular usage to the name Carolus: and 351 years after his death he received the honor of canonization from the Roman Church.

CHAPTER XIII.
RESULTS.

No ruler for many centuries so powerfully impressed the imagination of western Europe as the first Frankish Emperor of Rome. The vast cycle of romantic epic poetry which gathered round the name of Charlemagne, the stories of his wars with the Infidels, his expeditions to Constantinople and Jerusalem, his Twelve Peers of France, the friendship of Roland and Oliver and the treachery of Ganelon—all this is of matchless interest in the history of the development of mediæval literature, but of course adds nothing to our knowledge of the real Charles of history, since these romances were confessedly the work of wandering minstrels and took no definite shape till at least three centuries after the death of Charlemagne.

In this concluding chapter I propose very briefly to enumerate some of the chief traces of the great emperor’s forming hand on the western church, on Literature, on Laws, and on the State-system of Europe.

I. Theologically, Charles’s chief performances were the condemnation of the Adoptianist heresy[72] of Felix of Urgel by the Council of Frankfurt (794): the condemnation of the adoration of images by the same Council; and the addition to the Nicene Creed of the celebrated words “Filioque,” which asserted that the Holy Spirit “proceedeth from the Father and the Son.” In these two last performances Charles acted more or less in opposition to the advice and judgment of the pope, and the addition to the Creed was one of the causes which led to the schism between the eastern and western churches, and which have hitherto frustrated all schemes for their reunion.

In the government of the church Charles all through his reign took the keenest interest, and a large—as most modern readers would think a disproportionate—part of his Capitularies is dedicated to this subject. Speaking generally, it may be said that he strove, as his father before him had striven, to subdue the anarchy that had disgraced the churches of Gaul under the Merovingian kings. He insisted on the monks and the canonical priests living according to the rules which they professed: he discouraged the manufacture of new saints, the erection of new oratories, the worship of new archangels other than the well-known three, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. He earnestly exhorted the bishops to work in harmony with the counts for the maintenance of the public peace. While not slow to condemn the faults of the episcopacy he supported their authority against mutinous priests: and pre-eminently by the example which he set to Gaul in the powerful and well-compacted hierarchy which he established in Germany he strengthened the aristocratic constitution of the church under the rule of its bishops. At the same time there can be no doubt that by his close relations with the Roman Pontiff and by the temporal sovereignty which he bestowed upon him, he contributed, consciously or unconsciously, to the ultimate transformation of the western church into an absolute monarchy under the headship of the pope. That Charles, with all his zeal for the welfare of the church, was not blind to the faults of the churchmen of his day is shown by the remarkable series of questions—possibly drawn up from his dictation by Einhard—which are contained in a Capitulary of 811 written three years before his death: