This Christmas millions of people handed out presents and headed to church to celebrate the recognized date of Christ’s birth. This report will look at two other significant events and examine not only how they made two men more powerful, but also the role these events played in spreading the Christian message to an entire continent.
Clovis, Christmas Day 496
Born in Gaul around 466, Clovis was the first major king of the Franks, a collection of various warring tribes located mainly in modern day France. Ascending the throne at the age of 15, Clovis took control of a small northern section of the country. Soon he proved himself a brilliant military leader, defeating the last Roman official in France in 486. He followed this with a string of other military campaigns which greatly enlarged his territory. In 493, Clovis married Clothilde, daughter of a noble and devout Catholic. According to legend, shortly afterward, Clovis found himself struggling in one of his many battles and prayed to God for victory, then the battle turned in his favor.
On Christmas Day, 496 Clovis, Clothilde and leading Frankish officials appeared in Reims. There, in a formal ceremony inside the basilica, Clovis was baptized a Christian. However, it was more than mere religious fervor which had moved Clovis, a pagan himself, to take this step. Ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, the religion had been gaining traction in Western Europe, and by Clovis’s time, thousands of his subjects and those outside his empire had converted and the Church had gained a strong foothold in Gaul. Professor Bonnie Effros later said, “It was a very strategic move. By choosing Catholicism, Clovis in essence, united his people.” Further, by converting, he gained the support of many of the old Roman provinces, and especially the powerful Roman clergy. Finally, to assure the loyalty of those around him, Clovis had his family and his army of three thousand men baptized on the same day.
Newly converted, Clovis spun his ongoing conflicts into wars of religion, killing those who would not accept the faith and taking their goods for his own use. Clovis’s brutality was not confined to the battlefield. He also deeply distrusted his friends, extended family and Frankish nobles. He prevented any challenges to his reign by systemically ordering all contenders tortured and killed. Through these measures, by the time of his death in 511 Clovis had united the Franks and conquered Gaul. His conversion laid the foundations of Christianity in Europe and greatly strengthened the power of the Church.
After Clovis’s death, Gaul, now called France, was divided among his four sons, who were just as ruthless as their father. None of them, however, were able to hold together the kingdom Clovis had built, and the country disintegrated into a prolonged period of incompetent rulers, unrest and civil war. Finally, in 687, Pepin of Herstal emerged victorious. He would rule for 27 years. In 714, Pepin was succeeded by his son Charles. Like his father, Charles was a skilled military commander and in one of the most decisive battles in history defeated an invading Muslim army near the city of Tours in 732. Forever afterward, Charles was called “the hammer.” The victory also made him one of the most powerful men in Europe, though he never officially claimed the throne of France. Still, he had made his family the de facto power.
Under Charles, France remained stable and grew in power and prestige. Upon his death, his son Pepin the Short took his father’s place. In a rare instance of good royal nepotism, Pepin proved just as able a ruler. But, unlike Charles, Pepin had no qualms with declaring himself the outright king. First, he asked for the Pope’s blessing in taking the throne. The Vatican dealing with its own political problems in Italy was only too willing to do a powerful monarch a favor and Pepin was soon the ruler of France. With problems at home squared away, Pepin then marched on Italy to repay the Vatican and threw back an army threatening the Pope, and even gifted the pontiff with the conquered land. Church and state were now nearly inseparable.
Charlemagne, Christmas Day 800
By his death in 768, Pepin had greatly expanded the empire and drastically reformed the Frankish church by calling for better moral standards and higher education for the clergy. However, much work remained to be done and a steady ruling hand was needed to insure all gains that had been made would not simply be lost as before. Into this critical period stepped Pepin’s oldest son and heir to the Frankish throne, Charlemagne - “Charles the Great.”
Standing roughly 6 4’ with vivid blond hair and piercing eyes, Charlemagne looked every inch a king. Following Frankish custom, he at first shared power with his brother Carloman, though this lasted only until 771 when Carloman suddenly died; Charlemagne’s role in his brother’s death is still debated. Charlemagne’s first major decision was to march Frankish troops back into Italy to again rescue the Pope, who was again threatened by an invasion. Only this time, Charlemagne not only defeated the army, but continued the war until the rival ruler was deposed and Charlemagne had taken his throne. He then turned his army north and attacked Saxon held lands in what is today Germany and Denmark. However, this war proved more frustrating for the young king than his heretofore successful conflicts. For all the changes occurring in France, the Saxons had stubbornly held out against any form of centralized rule, or acceptance of a single god. Time and again, Charlemagne took his army into Saxon lands, defeated them and left, only to hear that his appointed officials had been killed and the area was again in full revolt. Finally, Charlemagne ordered anyone who did not accept Christianity to be executed, this led to the famous massacre in the German town of Verden, where Frankish troops killed an estimated 4,500 Saxons after they refused to give up paganism. These brutal tactics and several scorched earth campaigns in which Charlemagne ordered farms and homes burned led several leading Saxon chiefs to convert. By 804, the final Saxon revolt had been suppressed. In addition to this, Charlemagne led an expedition conquering a large part of Muslim Spain, known as the Spanish March.
While Charlemagne spent much of his time on military campaigns, he loved the day to day administration of his country. Europe at this time had gone into decline after the fall of Roman Empire, and no real effort had been made up to this point to rebuild the broken infrastructure. Charlemagne, during his reign, made rebuilding roads and schools a priority. He even set up a school at his palace at Aachen where he invited the best teachers and scholars in the realm. He also saw to it that schools were built across the empire, not only so that his people could gain a basic education, but so they could be infused with a strong sense of God. Charlemagne himself was not entirely pious by today’s standards; he had five wives and five mistresses which produced 20 known children. But according to surviving records, he was a loving husband and father and saw to it that all of his children received a proper education, including his daughters which was extraordinary for the time. Oddly, while he allowed his daughters carry on open affairs with nobles, he never allowed them to leave his palaces or officially marry. His love was such that when his eldest son revolted against him, Charlemagne, rather than have the boy killed as most rulers would have done, decided instead to send him to a quiet monastery, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Charlemagne’s influence fell upon the Church as well. Many of the new schools established were located in monasteries. Not only did they educate children of nobles, but the children of all his subjects, including the sons of serfs. He saw to it that bishops were appointed to his councils and often used them as advisors. He also was not afraid to give these same men orders on how to interpret the bible and he called for higher moral standards for priests and parishes. Finally, Charlemagne often sent the Pope himself directives on how to do things.
In December, 795, Leo III was elected Pope but was soon accused of corruption and four years later was thrown into a monastery. Leo escaped and headed for the one man who had always been a friend to the papacy. When Leo arrived at Charlemagne’s court, the powerful ruler took him under his protection. Soon the charges were dropped and Leo returned triumphantly to Rome. It was at this point that there began to be suggestions about making Charlemagne the Emperor, a title not held in three hundred years.
If the Frankish historians are to be believed, in December, 800, Charlemagne arrived in Rome with no idea about this growing campaign. On Christmas Day, he went in the basilica and knelt before Leo III to pray; the Pope suddenly pulled out a crown and proclaimed him the new emperor. Afterwards, Charlemagne told the Pope that had he known about the ceremony, he would never have come in. Though this makes for a good story, given the facts that Charlemagne made a point of knowing about everything in his kingdom, and the well-known close relationship his family had with the Church for three generations, this seems highly unlikely.
The Christmas coronation laid the foundation for later Popes such as Gregory VII and Innocent III to build a more powerful central church. This church would inevitably be linked with the power figures of Europe and their struggles for more control for the next eight hundred years, and would cement Europe as a Christian continent.
Charlemagne went on to rule for another fourteen years over lands stretching from the English Channel in the north to northern Italy in the south, and eastern Spain to western Germany. But, as the Charlemagne aged he found himself still fighting his enemies the Vikings. By 810, Charlemagne began slowly stepping away from the day to day affairs of his realm and looked increasing to his sons to manage the kingdom. That year he had his land split between three of his sons, but by 813 only one, Louis the Pious, remained alive and was declared king and co-emperor by his father. Four months later, Charlemagne died suddenly on January 28, 814.
Louis the Pious proved to be an extremely moral ruler, but he lacked his father’s political shrewdness and military brilliance. He also never earned the loyalty of the powerful nobles. Soon many of the policies established by Charlemagne fell by the wayside as these men began to ignore him. A civil war broke out among the descendants and the kingdom soon broke apart. It would be another three hundred years before Europe again became stable.
Despite all of the ebb and flow of royal politics during both Clovis’s and Charlemagne’s reigns, their respected Christmas events had signaled an important change in Europe. Clovis showed that barbarian rulers could be converted, albeit for political reasons. This greatly expanded the power of the Church and showed that Christianity could be more broadly accepted by rulers. By the time of Charlemagne’s Christmas, the creed and the power of the Church had become unbreakably intertwined. It would not be until the emergence of Martin Luther in 1517 that this alliance would be shaken, and it would not completely undone until the end of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. So at a time when millions commemorate Christ’s birth and the spirit of the season, it could also be remembered that major political shifts took place on this date which spread Christianity as well.
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