Charlemagne's Empire: The Limits of Standardization

After spending the first half of his reign conquering much of western Europe, Charlemagne (reigned 768-814) and his advisers needed to figure out how to rule the vast and diverse territory he now controlled.  Scholars studying Charlemagne’s empire usually argue that Charlemagne and his advisers wanted to standardize and centralize the empire to the greatest extent possible.  The cases where standardization and centralization were clearly lacking are thus interpreted as failures by the king and court to impose their will on the conquered areas.  While the Carolingians did indeed seek to standardize and centralize in some situations in their newly conquered regions, the idea that standardization and centralization were the only approaches taken to the new lands is in need of revision.           

This paper will argue that rather than seeking solely to impose standardization on the conquered lands, Charlemagne and his court built on the diversity they could never in any case have entirely overcome.  The challenge of ruling lands inhabited by people with different religions, ethnic backgrounds, and legal practices prompted a creative response from the king and court.  In some cases, Charlemagne and his men used the conquered areas as a sort of ‘experimental laboratory’, in which they could try out ideas and plans later implemented in Frankish lands.  In other cases, the Franks adopted practices they were introduced to in conquered areas and imported these into Francia.  Drawing in particular on examples from the kingdom of Italy and the duchy of Bavaria, this paper will demonstrate some of the ways in which Charlemagne and his advisers used new regions as a testing ground for new ideas about rulership.  Rather than inevitably seeking to eliminate diversity, the Carolingians turned it into a tool of rulership and learned from the new areas they conquered.