How Is Charlemagne Successful

The reign of Charlemagne was full of wars and invasions (Bauer). He was half king of the Frankish empire while his brother Carloman was in control of the other half. Charlemagne who was also known as, “Charles the Great”, king of the Franks reigned from approximately (742-814). He was a strong leader who unified Western Europe through military power and the blessing of the church(Boussard). With his strong belief in the need for education among the Frankish people, his ambition was to bring about religious, political and educational reforms(Williams). His emphasis on learning helped him create the Carolingian Renaissance, which helped to form cultural identity in Western Europe and helped lay the groundwork on which the Middle Ages flourished.

After doing so, he restored education and culture while taking his place in political rights. Churches became Charlemagne’s “driving force” after he devoted himself to them. He eventually became sole king of the Franks after his brother Carloman died in 771. With his determination to strengthen his kingdom and bring back order to Europe, he started his 30-year campaign that Christianized the Saxons in the north. In his campaign, he sent out over 50 military expeditions, meanwhile riding as commander in at least half of

Although Charlemagne was illiterate for most of his life he hired learned men to read to him. He also studied grammar, rhetoric and mathematics. Charlemagne’s efforts to earn how to write were not as successful. Though he never really learned how to read and write he managed to be an enthusiastic promoter of literacy in others. He gathered a group of Anglo Saxon and Irish clergy who had kept literacy alive in Europe after the fall of Rome (Hollingsworth). This resulted in him reforming the palace school at Aachen and found monastery schools throughout the empire with the intention of creating a literate clergy. Having that done, he sponsored the creation of a new uniform script, which was for the use of copying texts, the development of textbooks for teaching Latin to non-Latin speakers and the collection of Latin manuscripts