Charlemagne

Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, c. 748-814), king of the Franks from 768 and emperor of the Romans from his coronation by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800, was the dominant ruler of early medieval Western Europe. Through decades of campaigning he united much of the Latin West, conquering the Lombards, subjugating the Saxons, and forging an empire that stretched from the Pyrenees to the Elbe. He made his court at Aachen a center of learning, summoning scholars such as Alcuin of York to drive the cultural revival now known as the Carolingian Renaissance, which standardized script, revived classical learning, and reformed liturgy and education across his realm. In this corpus he appears as the recipient of letters from Alcuin, who served as his chief advisor and tutor, on matters of theology, education, and governance.