Charlemagne's Coronation

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On Christmas day, 800a.d, there was an emperor in the west for the first time since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But this emperor, Charlemagne, was different from all his predecessors. He was not a native Roman, nor Greek. In fact, he was what they would consider a barbarian. He was the king of the Franks, a Germanic tribe which gained dominance over much of the old western empire. Charlemagne’s coronation would lead to the birth of a new western European identity, one that was separate from the old Roman and Germanic ones that predated it. The coronation gave Charlemagne the legitimacy he needed to unite these two vastly different cultures under one nation.1 The coronation would also solidify his relation with the Catholic church,

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