The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  Charlemagne’s political model was inspired by Rome. Like Clovis in the late fifth century, Charlemagne fashioned himself as heir to the ancient civilization, invoking Roman images and classical forms. The reverse side of Charlemagne’s official seal bore an image of the gates of Rome with the inscription Renovatio Romani Imperii, Renewal of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne added “auguste” to his title and like the Julians, claimed descent to the Trojan hero Aeneas, Rome’s legendary founder. As Charlemagne’s courtier Moduin of Autun observed: “Our times are transformed into the civilization of Antiquity. Golden Rome is reborn and restored anew to the world!”3

  In Aachen, notes Neil MacGregor, Charlemagne “remade Rome on German soil.”4 Even the location of Charlemagne’s estate was an ancient Roman site. Situated on the slope of a hill, the royal estate incorporated part of the ancient Roman thermae along with its own thermal baths. A one-hundred-meter-long gallery linked the large aula regalis, or coronation hall, to the most important building, a three-story domed octagonal chapel, for centuries the tallest building north of the Alps.

  Charlemagne may have been inspired by a 787 visit to Ravenna where he saw Justinian I’s sixth-century imperial Church of San Vitale. He recruited Frankish architect Odo of Metz and workers from Northern Italy familiar with Roman structural engineering, dome building, and stone laying.5 The austere exterior with its sixteen corners stood in dramatic contrast to the dazzling interior. Light from eight windows illuminated the dome’s colorful mosaic, a popular art form in late antiquity, with Christ Enthroned with the Elders of the Apocalypse. The two upper stories were each embellished with sixteen columns, possibly after the clerestory of Rome’s Lateran Basilica.6 An atrium and a portico led to the imperial apartments.

  The chapel was filled with references to ancient Rome and Constantine, Rome’s first Christian emperor. As Maria Fabricius Hansen suggests, Charlemagne endowed his court with Rome’s authority by literally and figuratively taking possession of the ancient civilization.7 Dependent on Charlemagne for his independence, Pope Hadrian approved his request for marble from Rome and Ravenna, including precious red and green porphyry. Charlemagne reused the ancient marble to embellish his chapel, a practice now called spolia. The massive marble columns traveled by oxcarts and perhaps by barge, either across the Alps or along the coasts to Aachen.8 There, Charlemagne installed the ancient pillars in double tiers under the eight tall arches; marble slabs covered the piers and walls.9

  In appropriating ancient objects, Charlemagne was following a tradition started five centuries earlier by Constantine. Despite spending little time in Rome, Constantine went on a citywide building spree using material from existing monuments. For his eponymous arch marking his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine removed parts of the triumphal monuments of Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. He also used spolia to build the Lateran Basilica and the original St. Peter’s.

  Yet according to the Christian historian Eusebius, Constantine, who legalized Christianity in 313, ordered the temple of Aphrodite in Jerusalem removed before erecting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the site, considering the pagan building materials impure.10 For the first few centuries of Christianity, ancient Roman temples were generally considered idolatrous. Constantine’s son Constantius II closed temples and banned sacrifices; pagan tombs and monuments were vandalized.

  After Rome’s demise, the city experienced more losses during a series of sacks, from the Visigoths and Vandals in the fifth century to the Normans in the eleventh. In the wake of the fifth- and sixth-century invasions, possibly for economic reasons, a series of ancient Roman temples were converted into churches. The most famous is the Pantheon, rebuilt by Hadrian, featuring massive gray granite columns quarried in ancient Egypt. Originally dedicated to the Roman pantheon of gods, the temple was transformed into Santa Maria ad Martyres in 609, reconsecrated to Christian martyrs.

  Building with ancient columns, marble panels, and bricks became a common, accepted practice for many of Rome’s medieval churches. During the ensuing centuries, a number of Roman churches were also built atop the ruins of ancient temples whose materials had been used as spolia. In the twelfth century, Pope Innocent II had himself buried in what was thought to be the porphyry sarcophagus of Hadrian.

  Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths from 475 to 526, spent a fortune moving ancient marble slabs and columns for his palace in Ravenna, capital of the Western Roman Empire. Ruling with the consent of the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, Theodoric did not need Roman symbols for legitimacy, writes Beat Brenk. Rather, by transferring material from Roman ruins, he sought to preserve ancient art and architecture. “Nothing but the newness of the buildings must distinguish them from the constructions of the ancients,” wrote Theodoric. “Let us renew the works of the ancients faultlessly and unmask the new glory of their venerable antiquity.”11

  What distinguishes Charlemagne’s use of spolia from that of Constantine and Theodoric is his deliberate borrowing from the great civilization of Rome to bolster his ambitions and legitimize the Carolingian Empire. Charlemagne, argues Brenk, transported materials from Rome and Ravenna to his court at Aachen and palace at Ingelheim to perpetuate his place in the Christian Roman imperial tradition.12

  In addition to importing mosaics and marble columns and capitals from Ravenna, Charlemagne removed bronzes—including a life-size bronze equestrian statue of Theodoric—that he installed in the courtyard in front of the palace between the chapel and audience hall. It’s not known whether Charlemagne acquired the She-Wolf, a tour de force of second-century bronze casting. The hole in the animal’s chest suggests that it was originally a fountain, like the wolf in Rome’s Lateran.13

  Charlemagne added to the spolia by reviving the ancient art of bronze casting. A local foundry produced five pairs of solid-cast bronze doors adorned with classical lion head knockers for the chapel. The main entrance, the west door, featured a massive pair of doors, each measuring nearly 13 feet high, 4.5 feet wide, and weighing 2.75 tons.14 The upper floor was decorated with a Roman-style bronze trellis behind which stood the ancient marble pilasters.15

  A bronze pine cone fountain in the chapel vestibule, likely a copy of the Vatican’s famed fountain, is thought to have been created at Aachen in the tenth century. Made of 129 bronze scales arranged in nine overlapping rows, the pine cone was embedded into a capital and crowned a column that stood in the center of the fountain’s basin. The Latin inscription along the base read: “The waters are bestowed upon the world, that always cause it to flourish; the fruitful Euphrates, as swift as an arrow of the Tigris.”16

  A devout Christian, Charlemagne strengthened the papacy, enacting the legal principle that the pope was beyond the reach of temporal justice. On his second trip to Rome in 781, Charlemagne brought his four-year-old son to be baptized as Pepin by Pope Hadrian. In 800, soon after the Palatine Chapel was completed, Charlemagne assumed the title of Roman Emperor and traveled to Rome to be crowned by Pope Leo III. Having survived revolt and an assassination attempt, the pope badly needed an alliance with Charlemagne.

  After an entry into Rome worthy of Caesar, Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 C.E. during Mass at the Old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome begun by Constantine. The choice of the Vatican basilica over the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore started a new tradition for the coronation of emperors that continued through the Middle Ages.

  At the pope’s request, Charlemagne wore a Roman outfit for the ceremony—a long tunic and Roman cloak and shoes. After placing the crown on Charlemagne’s head, Leo pronounced a blessing. Then, with Charlemagne kneeling before the Confession of St. Peter, the congregation repeated an acclamation three times: “Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and peaceful Emperor of the Romans.”17 As the first Holy Roman emperor, Western Europe’s first since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Charlemagne was equal in power to the emperor in the East. As Robert Folz writes, “. . . the k
ing of the Franks was raised to a title that had been extinct for more than three centuries, and thus seemed to inherit the position of the Caesars of old.”18

  The idea of Rome reborn can be seen in a cycle of pictures or tapestries thought to have been hung before the coronation at Charlemagne’s Palace of Ingelheim, a few miles from Mainz. One wall of the hall featured the greats of antiquity—from Romulus and Remus to Hannibal and Alexander the Great and possibly Augustus. On the opposite wall were depictions of Christian rulers starting with Constantine, Theodosius, Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and finally Charlemagne.19

  Charlemagne had reformed the Franconian coinage system after the Roman model, adopting Rome’s denarius as his empire’s currency. Toward the end of his reign, he ordered the minting of a series of portrait coinage—the only definitive image from his lifetime. The right-facing portrait bust shows Charlemagne wearing a Roman military cloak and laurel wreath with the title “imperator augustus.”

  When Charlemagne died on January 28, 814, around age sixty-five, he was buried in his chapel at Aachen, possibly in an ancient Carrara marble sarcophagus that he had brought from Rome. Carved in the first quarter of the third century C.E., the sarcophagus depicted the mythological story of Proserpina’s abduction by Pluto, god of the underworld. With its themes of eternal life and resurrection, the legend was popular during early Christianity.

  For the first time since the Roman Empire, most of Western Europe was united. Charlemagne left an empire ranging from the Pyrenees in the west to the Elbe and Danube in the east. But hopes for peace across ended in 843 when Charlemagne’s three grandsons divvied up the empire. Rulers of the western and eastern realms, roughly today’s France and Germany, continued to fight for supremacy. Charlemagne’s Carolingian dynasty survived for over 170 years until Hugh Capet, ancestor of a long line of French kings, took the throne and established the Capetian dynasty.

  Like Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia for the Byzantine emperors, Aachen’s Palatine chapel became the favored location for the coronations of Charlemagne’s successors.20 With its ancient marble columns and bronze doors, the chapel hosted the coronations of Germanic kings from Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious in 813 to Ferdinand I in 1531. Only after being anointed at Aachen could a ruler be crowned Holy Roman emperor in Rome.

  Over the centuries, stories about the emperor with the flowing white beard took on mythic proportions. Around the turn of the first millennium, the Carolingian ruler became known as Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great. The honorific became part of his name in France which claimed him as their hero, Charlemagne. In the struggle for Charlemagne’s inheritance, his chapel and remains became symbolic prizes.

  In 1165, Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of Swabia persuaded Pope Paschal III to canonize Charlemagne. Frederick and his wife Beatrice donated a magnificent octagonal-shaped gilt chandelier for the chapel. Hung from the cupola by an ironwork chain, measuring over thirteen feet in diameter, the chandelier symbolized the heavenly city of Jerusalem. Its eight arches represented Jerusalem’s eight city gates. The base plates of the sixteen towers featured engraved scenes from the life of Jesus and the eight beatitudes. Forty-eight candles symbolized the litany of the twelve apostles, twelve martyrs, twelve confessors, and twelve virgins.21

  Like Charlemagne, Barbarossa’s grandson Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was interested in Italy, and chose to live in Sicily and southern Italy. In 1215, he moved Charlemagne’s remains to a golden casket, known as the Karlsschrein, or Shrine of Charlemagne. Lavishly adorned with gilt silver, gilt copper, filigree, precious stones, and enamel, the church-shaped casket was placed in the center of the chapel below the spectacular chandelier donated by Frederick II’s grandparents.

  At the front end, Charlemagne is shown sitting enthroned below Christ and flanked by Leo III and the Archbishop of Rheims. On the opposite end, Saint Mary and the Christ Child are enthroned between archangels Michael and Gabriel. Four reliefs on the shrine’s roof narrate scenes from Charlemagne’s life from the twelfth-century manuscript, the Pseudo-Turpin. A crest of gilded copper with five towers decorates the roof’s ridge and gable. Eight kings of the Holy Roman Empire—from Louis the Pious to Frederick II—decorate each of the casket’s long sides.22

  In the mid-fourteenth century, Charlemagne’s remains were disturbed again when a relic revival inspired Holy Roman emperor Charles IV to create reliquaries for some of his illustrious predecessor’s bones. A gold reliquary contained a thigh bone; the Bust of Charlemagne housed his skullcap. During coronations, the Bust of Charlemagne was carried toward the king as he entered the cathedral, creating the impression that the illustrious emperor was greeting his successor.23 Every seven years, the four “great relics” thought to have been brought to Aachen by Charlemagne were shown to the faithful: Christ’s swaddling clothes and loincloth, St. Mary’s cloak, and a raiment of John the Baptist.

  In 1481, France’s Louis XI decided to honor Charlemagne as the forefather of France’s kings by commissioning a golden Arm Reliquary with a naturalistic hand for parts of Charlemagne’s right forearm. He also decreed Charlemagne’s birthday a public holiday to be observed upon pain of death.24 Tradition has it that Charlemagne himself brought some of the most precious relics in Christendom from Jerusalem to Aachen. Their rediscovery in the mid-fourteenth century elevated Aachen to the rank of Rome and Spain’s Santiago de Compostela as a sacred pilgrimage destination. Pilgrimages and coronations became key to the town’s economic and cultural life.

  During the Middle Ages, Charlemagne’s original chapel was expanded into a cathedral with a Gothic choir and a circle of surrounding chapels. The largest, a spectacular vaulted chancel with a glass exterior façade, was inaugurated in 1414, the six hundredth anniversary of Charlemagne’s death. The inspiration for the soaring 108-foot-tall Gothic choir came from St. Chapelle in Paris.

  Royal gifts to the Aachen Cathedral treasury helped make it one of Northern Europe’s most illustrious ecclesiastical collections. “Since I have seen every royal marvel, [I know that] no-one living has seen a more marvellous thing,” raved artist Albrecht Dürer after attending Charles V’s coronation at Aachen in 1520. Eight years earlier, Dürer painted an iconic portrait of a white-bearded Charlemagne in the robes of a Holy Roman emperor.

  In August 1804, Joséphine made her own pilgrimage to Aachen with a fifty-plus-person entourage that included four ladies-in-waiting, two women of the bedchamber, two chamberlains, a comptroller, a master of the horse, two ushers, ten footmen, coachmen, and cooks. Though the original Roman baths were no longer visible, Aachen was a popular spa destination for European royalty, aristocrats, artists, and writers.

  Under considerable pressure from her husband to get pregnant, Joséphine took the waters in the mineral rich hot springs. In between treatments, Joséphine visited Aachen’s palace and cathedral. On August 12 and 15, she presided over festivals honoring Charlemagne and marking her husband’s thirty-fifth birthday.

  For centuries, France and Germany had competed for Charlemagne. Aachen had been in the path of the French revolutionary army as it marched across the Rhineland in mid-1794. That August, with French troops approaching, the contents of Aachen’s Cathedral Treasury were whisked off to the Capuchin cloister at Paderborn for safekeeping. Among the objects were the Great Relics—the relics of the Lord, the Virgin Mary, and Saint John the Baptist. The Pala d’Oro, a shimmering eleventh-century altarpiece with over eighty-five figures in deep gold relief, possibly made with Charlemagne’s own coins, was dismantled and removed. As Annika Elisabeth Fisher observes, “The altar’s position in Charlemagne’s chapel, proximity to Charlemagne’s throne, and the possible material link to Charlemagne’s gold, powerfully aligned Henry [Henry II, king of Germany and Italy] with the Frankish emperor.”25

  On September 23, 1794, French troops under General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan invaded Aachen. The lead roof of Aachen chapel was removed to make ammunition, leaving the wooden structure exposed to the elements. Objects from t
he chapel were confiscated including the Proserpina sarcophagus, and the bronze she-wolf and pine cone.26

  A month later, French soldiers began hacking out the ancient marble columns from the upper arcade. Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer was among the pillars’ admirers: “In Aachen, I have seen the well-proportioned pillars with their beautiful capitals from porphyry green and red and granite, which Carolus [Charlemagne] ordered to be taken from Rome and placed in this building,” he wrote in 1520.27 Back in Paris, the marble columns were installed in the Louvre’s Musée des Antiquities alongside plundered sculptures. For several weeks, a 1620 bronze statue of Charlemagne from Namur was installed in the Tuileries courtyard, after which it was neglected in the basement of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

  The 1801 Peace of Lunéville formally transferred ownership of Aachen and the Rhine’s entire “left bank” from Germany to France. The Concordat gave Napoleon authority to name bishops and archbishops in France. In April 1802, without Pius VII’s consent, Napoleon elevated the Aachen cathedral to a bishop’s seat and nominated Alsatian Marc-Antoine Berdolet as its first bishop. Berdolet and Joséphine had known each other for years. During the French Revolution, Berdolet was imprisoned with her first husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, an officer in the royal army. After Berdolet’s release, he delivered the executed viscount’s personal belongings and final letters to Joséphine.

  Now, Berdolet presented Joséphine with the Talisman of Charlemagne featuring an emerald and a sapphire surrounded by some four dozen gems and pearls. The hair relic of the Virgin Mary behind the jewels had been transferred to the Agnus Dei reliquary and replaced with a cross relic. But Joséphine politely declined a grimy bone said to be from the emperor’s right arm, telling Berdolet that she already had “the support of an arm just as strong as Charlemagne’s.”28 (The Staufen arm-reliquary is now in the Louvre; the Talisman of Charlemagne is at Reims Cathedral treasury.)