Charlemagne's Dream: James T. Palmer on the Carolingians and the Dark Side of Empire

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The story of the Emperor Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, and his wider family is often told as one of glorious triumph followed by unfortunate decline. Emerging in more or less the 750s in what is now France, the Carolingians were part of a religious, political, social, and cultural order that was still haunted by the passing of the Western Roman Empire three centuries before. While many Roman practices endured, as did trade in the Mediterranean basin, institutional life had deteriorated in nearly every respect.

Into this disorder came Charles, and following him an ever-growing host of clerics, bureaucrats, and soldiers, who reordered alphabets, liturgies, and borders, leaving behind a legacy that lasts until this very moment. But what if, my guest James Palmer suggests, there was always a dark side to this success that haunted all its protagonists? What if that process of ordering and tidying could often look—on not very close inspection—very disordered and messy itself? And how might we then think differently about the early Middle Ages?

James T. Palmer is Professor of History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The author of four previous books on the early Middle Ages, his latest is Charlemagne’s Dream: The Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Empire, and it is the subject of our conversation today.