When Was Charlemagne Crowned Emperor?

Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, 25 December 800, in old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The ceremony was performed by Pope Leo III, and the imperial crown was placed on Charlemagne’s head before the assembled Roman people, who acclaimed him Imperator Romanorum — Emperor of the Romans. The coronation revived a title that had been dormant in the West since the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476, and it made the Frankish king, in law, the political heir of the ancient Roman emperors.

The date and place

The coronation took place at the high point of the Christmas Mass, in the basilica that the emperor Constantine had built over the tomb of St. Peter. The old St. Peter’s, demolished in the late sixteenth century to make way for the new basilica, was the most sacred church of Latin Christendom, and the setting was clearly intended. The Roman people, the clergy, the court, and the foreign embassies then in Rome were present. The mass had reached the response before the Gospel, and Charlemagne, who had been kneeling in prayer, was crowned by the pope and acclaimed by the congregation.

The date — 25 December — was not accidental. Christmas was the anniversary of the birth of Christ, the beginning of the new Christian era. To crown an emperor on this day was to identify the new empire with the Christian dispensation: this was a Christian Roman Empire, not a continuation of the pagan past. The symbolism was reinforced by the choice of venue. St. Peter’s was the burial place of the apostle whom Christ had called the rock of his Church, and the tomb of Peter was the symbolic seat of the bishop of Rome. To crown an emperor in the presence of that tomb was to assert the central role of the papacy in the new order.

What happened at the ceremony

The surviving accounts of the coronation are not detailed. The main source, Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni, was written some twenty-five years after the event and largely passes over the ceremony. The contemporary Liber Pontificalis records the bare fact that Leo III “crowned” Charles with a “most precious diadem.” Theodulf of Orléans and the poet who wrote the Versus de Roma composed laudatory poems for the occasion, but they do not give a step-by-step account.

What can be reconstructed is broadly this. Charlemagne entered the basilica in procession with the pope. The mass was celebrated, with the pope officiating and the king taking his place among the laity. At the moment before the Gospel, the pope approached the king, placed an imperial crown on his head, and the congregation acclaimed him “Charles, most serene Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans.” The mass continued, with Charlemagne now officiating in his new imperial role, with the kissing of the feet, the incensing, and the rest of the imperial ceremonial.

The exact form of the oath sworn by Charlemagne on this occasion is not preserved. It is likely that he took the customary oath of a Roman emperor, swearing to protect the Church, to defend the pope, and to govern the Romans in accordance with the imperial law.

The famous problem of Charlemagne’s surprise

Einhard reports a famous story that the king would not have entered the church that day had he known what was about to happen, and that he would never have agreed to the coronation had he not been taken by surprise. The story has been endlessly discussed by historians since the Renaissance. The scholarly consensus, developed over the past century, treats it as diplomatic fiction. The coronation had been prepared over a long period. Charlemagne had spent the autumn of 800 in Rome, presiding over a synod that had cleared Pope Leo III of the charges against him, and he was at the pope’s side at the moment of the ceremony. To suggest that the king was taken unawares was to soften the constitutional implications of the act.

The constitutional issue was real. Did the pope have the right to confer the imperial title? Or was the title the pope’s to receive, as the secular equivalent of the spiritual authority of the Church? The story of Charlemagne’s surprise served the purposes of both parties. The pope could claim that the initiative was his, and the emperor could claim that he had received the title from God and the Roman people, not from the pope. The question was never resolved, and the relationship between the empire and the papacy would be fought over for centuries.

The political background

The coronation did not come out of nowhere. Charlemagne had been the de facto ruler of the Latin West for a generation. The Byzantines, the only other claimants of the Roman imperial title, had been struggling to maintain their hold on Italy. In 797 the Byzantine empress Irene had deposed her son Constantine VI and ruled alone — a position with no precedent in Roman law, which forbade a woman from holding the imperial title. The imperial throne in Constantinople was, in effect, vacant. Pope Leo III and his advisers may have concluded that the moment was right to create a new Roman emperor in the West.

Charlemagne’s dealings with Rome had been close for years. He had been made patrician of the Romans in 774, had intervened in Roman politics repeatedly, and had escorted the pope back to Rome from his exile in November 800. The coronation was the formal consummation of a relationship that had been building since 754, when Pope Stephen II had crossed the Alps to anoint Pepin the Short and his sons.

The consequences of 800

The coronation had immediate political consequences. The Byzantine court was initially hostile: the imperial chancery referred to Charlemagne, mockingly, as basileus — king — for some years, and refused to recognize his title. Only in 812, after lengthy negotiations, did the emperor Michael I Rangabe recognize Charlemagne as basileus, while reserving the title imperator for himself. The agreement was that the two emperors would rule East and West as equals, with Charlemagne’s realm bounded by the Adriatic.

The more lasting consequence was the foundation of a new political tradition. Charlemagne ruled as emperor for the last fourteen years of his life, and his son Louis the Pious inherited the title as naturally as the crown. The title passed, through the partitions of the ninth century, to the Ottonian dynasty in 962 and from them to the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. The Holy Roman Empire, in some form, survived until 1806. The act of Christmas Day 800, in other words, was not a private event in a Roman basilica; it was the foundation of one of the most durable political institutions in European history.