Life in the Age of Charlemagne

From the chaos which followed the breakdown of Roman government and tribal customs, and before those two great pillars of the medieval state, the Church and feudalism, could fully establish themselves, Charlemagne welded together a kingdom. It stretched from the Ebro to the Elbe, an empire in name, but, in reality, a conglomeration of warring tribes and petty chieftains. Charlemagne’s ideal of a strong Christian king dispensing Roman justice was thwarted by the lords whose only interest was in consolidating their own power. The influence of Alcuin and the other cultivated ecclesiastics did not reach beyond the court at Aix-la-Chapelle, and never penetrated the lower clergy whose ignorance was as profound as the peasants whom they were supposed to instruct. The peasants, themselves, oppressed by poverty and violence, were inexorably drawn into dependence on their lords. Yet here was the growing point of the new feudal society, the very antithesis of Charlemagne’s imperial ideal. The age of Charlemagne, however, is still alive today in the splendid masterpieces of Carolingian art. Peter Munz, aided by over 100 illustrations, shows how, in one field at least, unity was achieved, how Roman form and Celtic abstraction were blended to create a new harmony.