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An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade
Matthew Gabriele
Abstract
Beginning shortly after his death in 814, the inhabitants of Charlemagne's historical empire looked back upon his reign and saw in it an exemplar of Christian universality—Christendom. They mapped contemporary Christendom onto the past and so, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the borders of his empire grew with each retelling, almost always including the Christian East. Although the pull of Jerusalem on the West seems to have been strong during the eleventh century, it had a more limited effect on the Charlemagne legend. Instead, the legend grew during this period because of a ... More
Keywords: Charlemagne, legend, First Crusade, memory, empire, Carolingians, monasticism, Christianity, religious violence, Jerusalem
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 | Print ISBN-13: 9780199591442 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2011 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591442.001.0001 |
