Old kings. Sharp swords. Epic songs. Take the throne.

Definition/Summary:

Aachen

• City and home to many kings that contains the burial site of Charlemagne aka Karl or Charles the Great
• Was the epicenter of the Carolingian Renaissance – a cultural & intellectual revival
• The tower housed a repository containing the most significant artifacts & manuscripts in history
• Aachen was a marvel of construction where a tower was located containing the treasury and archive of the empire. This repository was full of important knowledge that helped propel humanity forward held artifacts and manuscripts.
• Had it not been for this repository, significant numbers of the manuscripts from the ancient world we still have today would have been lost forever
• Over 7000 manuscripts survived because of the Aachen Tower
• Also located here was the Chapel of Palatine still visible today. In this chapel King Charlemagne elevated himself upon a throne of marble in an exalted position given the first symbol of a kings ascension

 

Expanded info:

Charlemagne

• He Inherited his grandfather Charles “The Hammer” Martel’s military tradition. Martel was a statesman and military leader who originally responsible for the land division Charlemagne was to ultimately rule and transform becoming the Father of Europe
• Stories of Charlemagne stated he was poorly educated and a warrior attempting arithmetic and writing ultimately giving up saying he is too old dispute all his practice. So this makes him a lover of learning, and so he decided to make Aachen his imperial palace of learning
• He was the first king to enforce education amongst the people, require tithing and helped to create the image of the Catholic Church and became one of the most important figures in history
• Charlemagne waged a bloody, three-decades-long series of battles against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe of pagan worshippers, and earned a reputation for ruthlessness
• In 782 at the Massacre of Verden, Charlemagne reportedly ordered the slaughter of some 4,500 Saxons
• He eventually forced the Saxons to convert to Christianity, and declared that anyone who didn’t get baptized or follow other Christian traditions be put to death
• In his final four years of his life, he often suffered from fevers and acquired a limp.
• He was buried under Aachen

Add/Misc:

Later: Charlemagne served as a source of inspiration for such leaders as Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who had visions of ruling a unified Europe