Charlemagne the Pragmatist
Hywel Williams revisits an article by Peter Munz, first published in History Today in 1959, and asks who needed whose approval most, the great ruler of the Franks or Pope Leo III?
By the late 1950s western Europe’s political elites were claiming to be the heirs to Charlemagne (d.814); all the signatories to the original Treaty of Rome (1957) represented countries whose lands had formed part of the Carolingian empire. These were important continuities, but Peter Munz, fine historian that he was, takes us back to the particular context of the year 800; his analysis of Charlemagne’s imperial coronation in Rome suggests that the leader of the Franks was more a political fixer than an imperial visionary.
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