Charlemagne

Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, was king of the Franks from 768 CE and, from 800 CE, the first person to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, ruling over a realm that covered most of western and central Europe. Through decades of nearly continuous military campaigns he united the Frankish kingdoms, conquered the Saxons and the Lombard kingdom of Italy, and pushed his frontier into northern Spain, building the largest western European empire since Rome. His reign is associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a deliberate revival of learning, literacy and the arts centered on his court, which standardized a clear new form of handwriting, expanded monastic schools and preserved many classical texts that would otherwise have been lost. Although his empire fragmented among his grandsons within a few decades of his death in 814 CE, Charlemagne was remembered throughout the Middle Ages as a model Christian ruler, and later Holy Roman Emperors and French and German monarchs alike claimed his legacy.