Charlemagne, Emperor of the West (1837), by Louis-Félix Amiel

Charlemagne (2 April 742/747/748 – 28 January 814) was king of the Franks from 768, and became the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Charlemagne’s conquests expanded his empire to cover much of western and central Europe, and his encouragement of learning helped to create the Carolingian Renaissance.

Quotes

• Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.
  • "De Litteris Colendis", in Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau De la philosophie scolastique (1850) p. 10; translation from T. H. Huxley Science and Education ([1893] 2007) p. 132; in Latin, Quamvis enim melius sit benefacere quam nosse, prius tamen est nosse quam facere.

• You nobles, you sons of my leading men, soft and dandified, trusting in your birth and your wealth, paying no attention to my command and your advancement, you neglected the pursuit of learning and indulged yourselves in the sport of pleasure and idleness and foolish pastimes. By the King of the heavens I think nothing of your nobility and your beauty. Others can admire you. Know this without any doubt; unless you rapidly make up for your idleness by eager effort, you will never receive any benefit from Charlemagne.
  • Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

• If only I could have a dozen churchmen as wise and as well taught in all human knowledge as were Jerome and Augustine!
  • Notker the Stammerer De Carolo Magno, Bk. 1, sect. 9; translation from Einhard and Notker the Stammerer (trans. Lewis Thorpe) Two Lives of Charlemagne (1969) p. 102.; O utinam haberem duodecim clericos ita doctos, omnique sapientia sic perfecte instructos, ut fuerunt Hieronimus et Augustinus. In conversation with his minister Alcuin, who replied, "Creator coeli et terrae similes illis plures non habuit, et tu vis habere duodecim (The Maker of heaven and earth Himself has very few scholars worth comparing with these men, and yet you expect to find a dozen!)".

• It is not lack of self-restraint but care for others which makes me dine in Lent before the hour of evening.
  • Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

• Fathers and guardians, bishops of our Church, you ought to minister to the poor, or rather to Christ in them, and not to seek after vanities. But now you act quite contrary to this; and are vainglorious and avaricious beyond all other men.
  • Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

• Bishops should despise this world and inspire others by their example to seek after heavenly things. But now you are corrupted by ambition beyond all the rest of mankind; and one of them not content with holding the first episcopal see in Germany has dared without my approval to claim my golden sceptre, which I carry to signify my royal will, in order that he might use it as his pastoral staff.
  • Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

• Take care that none of them escapes.
  • Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz). Referring to conspirators against Pope Leo III.

• Nothing of that which was gained by fraud can go to the liberation of his soul. Let his wealth be divided among the workmen of this our building, and the poorer servants of our palace.
  • Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

Quotes about Charlemagne

• Under this tomb lies the body of Charles, the great and orthodox emperor, who gloriously increased the Kingdom of the Franks and reigned with great success for forty-seven years. He died in his seventies in the year of our Lord 814, in the seventh Indiction, on the twenty-eighth day of January.
  • Epitaph, quoted in Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

• The most famous and greatest of men.
  • Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

• This great empire Charlemagne formed into a systematically organized State, and gave the Frank dominion settled institutions adapted to impart to it strength and consistency. This must however not be understood, as if he first introduced the Constitution of his empire in its whole extent, but as implying that institutions partly already in existence, were developed under his guidance, and attained a more decided and unobstructed efficiency. The King stood at the head of the officers of the empire, and the principle of hereditary monarchy was already recognized.
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, "Part IV: The German World", in Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Incorporated, 1952.

• Charles was the keenest of all kings to seek out and support wise men so that they might philosophize with all delight. Almost all of the kingdom entrusted to him by God was so foggy and almost blind, but he made it luminous with the new ray of knowledge, almost unknown to this barbarous land, with God lighting the way so it could see. But now studies are growing weak, and the light of wisdom because it is less loved grows rarer among most people.
  • Walahfrid, Walahfrid's Preface (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

External links

• Primary sources on Charlemagne and his age.