An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (2024)

Online ISBN:

9780191725128

Print ISBN:

9780199591442

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Oxford University Press

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Matthew Gabriele

Matthew Gabriele

Assistant Professor, Department of Religion and Culture, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Published:

24 February 2011

Online ISBN:

9780191725128

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

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Gabriele, Matthew, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (Oxford, 2011; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 May 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591442.001.0001, accessed 11 June 2024.

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Abstract

Beginning shortly after his death in 814, the inhabitants of Charlemagne's historical empire looked back upon his reign and saw in it an exemplar of Christian universality—Christendom. They mapped contemporary Christendom onto the past and so, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the borders of his empire grew with each retelling, almost always including the Christian East. Although the pull of Jerusalem on the West seems to have been strong during the eleventh century, it had a more limited effect on the Charlemagne legend. Instead, the legend grew during this period because of a peculiar fusion of ideas, carried forward from the ninth century but filtered through the social, cultural, and intellectual developments of the intervening years. Paradoxically, what happened was that Charlemagne became less important to the Charlemagne legend. The legend became a story about the Frankish people, who believed they had held God's favor under Charlemagne and held out hope that they could one day reclaim their special place in sacred history. Indeed, popular versions of the Last Emperor legend, which spoke of a great ruler who would reunite Christendom in preparation for the last battle between good and evil, promised just this to the Franks. Ideas of empire, identity, and Christian religious violence were potent reagents. The mixture of these ideas could remind men of their Frankishness and move them, for example, to take up arms, march to the East, and reclaim their place as defenders of the faith during the First Crusade.

Keywords: Charlemagne, legend, First Crusade, memory, empire, Carolingians, monasticism, Christianity, religious violence, Jerusalem

Subject

European History History of Religion Medieval and Renaissance History (500 to 1500) Social and Cultural History

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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