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the program. Hello in 800 a day on Christmas day in Rome Pope Leo the third proclaimed

Charlemagne, Emperor.

According to the Frankish historian Einhart, Charlemagne would never have set foot in St. Peter's that day

if he'd known that the Pope intended to crown him.

Charlemagne accepted his coronation with magnanimity,

regarded as the first of the Holy Roman Empress Charlemagne became a touchstoneful legitimacy

until the institution was brought to an end by Napoleon in 1806.

A Frankish king who held more territory in Western Europe than any man since the Roman Empire,

Charlemagne's lands extended from the Atlantic to Vienna and from Northern Germany to Rome.

His reign marked a period of enormous cultural and literary achievement,

but at his foundation lay conquest, plunder, conversion at the point of a sword and a form of Christianity that was obsessed with sin, discipline and correction.

How did Charlemagne become the most powerful man in Western Europe and how did he finance his conquest? Why was he

to draw Europe's most impressive scholars to his court? How successful was he in his

quest to reform his church and educate the clergy and can the carolingian

...