CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE

Carolingian empire has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the IMPERIUM category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the entire history of european integration and the future of Europe.

The Carolingian Empire was a supranational political entity of the history of European integration that recovered the Western Roman Empire, when the Frankish king Charles I "the great" was anointed as new augustus by the Pope in the Saint Peter's basilica in Rome, seat of the Catholic Church, in 800 A.D. Christmas'n night rite. The new emperor adopted the militar and political organization defined by the roman emperor Constantine I, joined to the typical Germans uses&laws and the religious rites of Cristianity, of which he became defensor fidei against paganism and islamism by accepting to promote the missio evangelica spreaded over Western Europe and Scandinavian peninsula (long after it was called the "Holy Roman Empire").

Afterthat, Charles I established a jurisdictional and political organization for the Carolingian Empire fractioning it in hundreds of fiefs assinged to loyal relatives or friends that, later, gave birth to the oldest European genealogies: that political system became famous as "Feudalism" and perdured until the modern era within Europe. At the same time, Charles established a new public organization for the "ecclesiae christiana" within the Carolingian Empire space: a wide network of Bishoprics and monasteries leaded by the clergy class members, commissioned to empower the Christian faith and the economic system in the ancient or the newer cities (called "Counties") or in the rural areas.

Expanded from the Pyrenees mountains to the Oder-Danube-Sava rivers line and from Northern Sea to Central Italy, the Carolingian Empire reinforced the sense of United Europe under the same law and religion created by the Christian Empire, event though the recurring acts of division and peace treaty that defined the firsts national reigns of France, Germany, Italy and Lotharingia (from the Treaty of Verdun in 843 A.D. to the Treaty of Ribemont in 880 A.D.). It was Charles I to restore the ancient Greek-Roman cultural tradition and try to give the burocratic system a common language (it was called the "Carolingian renassaince"), thanks to the example and education coming from the Byzantine Empire and its capital Constantinople.

What was the Carolingian Empire? Charles I could define the capital seat of the Carolingian empire in Aachen/Aquisgrana, a new town founded by the Carolingian family and adorned with the imperial palace (called "Palatium" to remember the seat of the roman emperors on the Palatine hill in Rome), where he built the Palatine Chapel into the Cathedral and seat of the Carolingian Empire throne (made at the Salomon's style) and of the crowning rite for all the future emperors. There he founded the Schola Palatina to prepare the burocrats and the major feudal lords to administer the Empire's autonomies: it became the example for the future public schools founded to prepare the major civil class in the main European civitas and called Universitas (one of the most important aeternitas enlisted in the Codex Justiniani).

The Carolingian empire ended with the extinction of the Carolingian dinasty at the end of X century A.D., but it has been fundamental for the history of european integration because restored in Western Europe the ancient concept of Imperium, continued by the following Reich and its experience was repeated in XX century A.D. with the insititution of the European Union, whose initial space and states members was exactly the same of the ancient Carolingian Empire! What countries are in the Carolingian Empire? Nowadays it includes the european states of France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and most of Italy, that had been the European Union "founder members", plus Switzerland, Liechenstein, Austria, Slovenia and parts of Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Spain (as you see by watching the Carolingian Empire map above).

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