Charlemagne is crowned emperor
A Frankish king is made Roman emperor on Christmas Day, and Western Europe acquires a myth.
- When
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Charlemagne conquers most of western and central Europe and is crowned emperor by the pope in Rome on 25 December 800 — an act Byzantium regarded as usurpation. He standardises coinage, law and church practice, and gathers scholars at Aachen who reform Latin, invent Carolingian minuscule with its clear lowercase letters and word spacing, and copy classical texts. Most surviving Latin literature comes to us through those copies.