A Brill Calendar: December 4

Charlemagne's Early Destiny

Few historians ‘worth their salt’ – in the English idiom ‘salt’ is akin, etymologically, to ‘salary’ – appreciate a ‘hypothetical study’ of the past.

To most of them the question is irrelevant what would have happened if Napoleon would have been victor on the bloody fields of Waterloo; or if British planning for the battle of the Somme had not been torn apart by infighting and confusion. The classic contrast between contingency and necessity generates philosophical regions hard to explore. In this perspective ‘I rejoice that things are as they are’, a line of T. S. Eliot, has a counterpart: ‘I regret that things aren’t different’; admittedly lesser poetry.

Yet, it is seldom in the tradition of this ‘what-if’ mode of reflection on the past is more enticing than the consideration of what would have happened if Carloman, Charlemagne’s younger brother - both sons of Pepin III - the Short - wouldn’t have died quite unexpectedly and suddenly in Samoussy, aged 20, on December 4, 771 Anno Domini. His older brother was 29 then. In 754 all three, parent & offspring, had been recognized by Christ’s caretaker on earth, Pope Stephen; acting from his See in Rome as ‘Patricius Romanorum’ and ‘King of the Franks’. Pepin was 40, Charles 12, Carloman 3. Pepin died September 768, leaving his vast domains and regal rights to both his legitimate sons. A legacy to be equally divided and legally split, following Frankish custom & tradition.

But for Carloman’s premature and sudden death, Europe would still have had to wait for its first incontestable father, a ‘Pater Europae’ (as Charles, a generation later transformed into a Holy Roman Emperor, was already referred to during his life). In historical time the second mortal statesman, universally acknowledged as worthy of that proud title and its underlying idea became another Charles, of Habsburg stock, seven centuries later.