The Carolingians and the Church

Charlemagne, before the coronation of the year 800, had not the Roman empire for its aim. At the oppposite, a whole field of reference was that of the Jewish theocracy, with Charlemagne considering himself like a new King Solomon, king and priest at the same time, builder and defensor of the Kingdom of God against the supremacy of the heathen empire. For this later part, such ideas came from St. Augustine. The reference to the Jewish tradition was made clear in the way Charlemagne, with his closest intimates, were dubbing themselves with names taken in the Bible, as their meetings were a kind of "Round Table" of the Old Testament's times. Alcuin himself was praising Charlemagne like the new David. Such views were, by essence, opposed to the Roman Caesarism and it's possible that this was a way to legitimate, in the ideological field, the sense that the Franks from Austrasia had of their closer appartenance to the German world than to the Roman one, hence to this idea that the German chiefs of tribes were, at the same time, the religious leaders of their people. This is certainly the reason why some texts are describing how Charlemagne objected at the coronation of the year 800, or sought the recognition by the Eastern emperor

The Carolingian empire, thus, was an orderly, and a Christian empire. The Palatine Chapel in Aachen was a good icon of this Carolingian "Weltanschauung". It was a two-level church: ground level featured Mary's altar (as church was dedicated to the Holy Virgin), with the celebrants and the common people. First floor, with its galleries, featured the king's throne, facing a Savior's altar, and places from where aristocracy attended the office. At last, above this first image of Carolingian orderly world -Savior above his Mother, king at Savior's level- the cupola, gold-mosaic covered and illustrating Christ of Apocalypse Chapter IV, was figuring the heavenly preeminence. From the ground floor with its simple stone columns, through the first floor with its ornaments, all the way up to the cupola, it was the plain Carolingian and cosmic order which was symbolized

It's certain however that the day when Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome, was a clear sign that the German ideas were now bowing to the Roman conceptions. This might have been under the control of Alcuin and Charlemagne anyway, as, even after 800, the emperor kept regarding himself like the real leader of the Church, continuing to interfere in dogmatic questions. This definitely was heralding however the change into the relations between the Empire and the Church. As soon as during the struggles between the sons of Louis the Pious, the pope Gregory IV obliged the emperor to an humiliating penance, clearly manifesting that the Church was the higher authority in the West, spiritually and politically. The further struggles and correlated decline of the Carolingian empire raised the Church accordingly. This was clearly shown at the time of the divorce of Lothair II, who had divorced from his lawful wife so he be able to marry his concubine. The Church just judged the king. The Kingdom of God was now personified by the Church, as pope Nicholas I eventually asserted that the head of the Church could not be subordinate to any secular power, that princes had to obey the pope in spiritual things, and that the Carolingians had received their right to rule from the papacy

King Charles had a pecular devotion to the Virgin Mary as he honored her sanctuaries along the Frankish empire -at Chartres, Rocamadour, Le Puy- and he built churches and abbeys in her honor, and endowing the main of those with important relics. The image of the Virgin was too printed on the standards of the Frankish army. In 778, as he besieged a Sarracene castle in France's southwest, Charlemagne desesperating to take the castle, was eventually ready to abandon. The bishop of Le Puy then prayed Mary of the Puy-en-Velay and a miracle occurred with a large eagle deposing a large fish before the door of the castle. The Sarracene prince, named Mirat, amazed, accepted then to surrender and to convert to the Christian faith, albeit not to Charlemagne but to the Virgin Mary, directly, instead. He was baptized under the name of Lorda, which name was at the origin of Lourdes, that famed Marial sanctuary which appeared in the 19th century in that vicinity. Charlemagne too was always bearing to his neck a picture of the Virgin Mary and it is that obvious devotion which eventually led Charles to building the Palatine Chapel in Aachen. 300 bishops and archbishops, and Grands of the Frankish empire were present at the consecration of the church by Pope Leon VII. That devotion to Mary was to keep under the successors of Charlemagne and, in 911, in Chartres that even made that the Nordmen invasions ceased: Rollon, with his troops, was besieging the city and it's the intervention of the Virgin which brought to that the siege was broken and that Rollon eventually asked in Rouen for baptism and accepted to settle in Normandy with his people. The battle of Poitiers, at last, in 732, had taken place on a Saturday, which is the traditional day of the Virgin Mary

It's Charlemagne who, invited by St. James himself, established the 'chemin de Compostelle' ('the Compostelle Way') this route of pilgrimage leading to the tumb of the Apostle in Galicia, Spain. That way is amazingly oriented according to the Milky Way in the night sky. St. James, along with his brother St. John, as with their mother, they had asked to Crist to be seated, the one at its right, the other at its left, thus became the patrons, the first for the West, the second for the East. Peter, the third of those three brothers, as far as he is concerned, became the head of Rome, and of the Church for cause of the primacy given to him by Christ

The Franks' Prayer, at last, is finely showing how, as soon as the 7th century, the Franks were aware of their pecular relationship to the deity. The Franks' Prayer is found in a Carolingian missal as it's still one of the official prayers of the French scouts today:

Ô everlasting and almighty God,
Thou who established the Frankish empire to be, in this world,
The tool for Your divine will
And the sword and the shield of Your holy Church,
We pray You that You, ever and in every place, through Your heavenly light,
You shall warn those beseeching sons of the Franks
So they to be able to distinguish what is to be done to enforce Your reign in this world
And that, having seen what is to be done, they might be filled with mercy, might, and perseverance.
In the name of Jesus-Christ our Lord,
Amen