Well, Mary Christmas to you all. On this episode of five minutes in church history, let's talk about Christmas Day, but not Christmas Day 2020. Let's talk about Christmas Day 800. On Christmas Day 800 in St. Peter's wasn't quite what it is today, St. Peter's Cathedral but it was still St. Peter's. Pope Leo the third placed a crown upon the head of Charlemagne and pronounced

to these words. Carolo Augusto, Odeo Coronato, Magno Et patifico Imperatory Vita-S Victoria.

To Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and peace-giving emperor, be life and victory.

Charles Augustus is known of course to us in history as Charlemagne. And this was the crowning of Charlemagne as the

Holy Roman Emperor and it happened to be on Christmas Day. Charlemagne was the son of Pepin the Short and he was the grandson of the

great Charles Martel.

When Pepin the Short died in 768, Charlemagne became King of the Franks. That a King of the Franks became Emperor

shows that there had been a power shift. A power shift from the East in Byzantium and from that Mediterranean base, to Europe

and to the north.

This was due to the ever widening split between Rome and Roman Catholicism on the one hand and

Byzantine and Constantinople and the Eastern Orthodox Church on the other.

A few centuries after this, that divide would

eventually become a full and final split between those two churches.

This shift of power to Europe and to the north was also due to the rise and the rapid spread of Islam,

which had been occurring from the 630s on.

So the Pope needed to find a new source of power and he found it in Charlemagne and

Charlemagne had his own enemies. Pretty much every year after he was crown king

he was deployed on a military campaign

to shore up the borders of the Franks.

To the north there were the Saxons

and to the west it was the Spanish.

And so he too benefited from an alliance.

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