The Carolingian Renaissance
In Our Time30 Mar 2006

The Carolingian Renaissance

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. In 800 AD on Christmas Day in Rome, Pope Leo III proclaimed Charlemagne Emperor. According to the Frankish historian Einhard, Charlemagne would never have set foot in St Peter's that day if he had known that the Pope intended to crown him. But Charlemagne accepted his coronation with magnanimity. Regarded as the first of the Holy Roman Emperors, Charlemagne became a touchstone for legitimacy until the institution was brought to an end by Napoleon in 1806. A Frankish King who held more territory in Western Europe than any man since the Roman Emperor, Charlemagne's lands extended from the Atlantic to Vienna and from Northern Germany to Rome. His reign marked a period of enormous cultural and literary achievement. But at its foundation lay conquest, conversion at the point of a sword and a form of Christianity that was obsessed with sin, discipline and correction. How did Charlemagne become the most powerful man in Western Europe and how did he finance his conquests? Why was he able to draw Europe's most impressive scholars to his court? How successful was he in his quest to reform his church and educate the clergy? And can the Carolingian period really be called a Renaissance? With Matthew Innes, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London; Julia Smith, Edwards Professor of Medieval History at Glasgow University; Mary Garrison, Lecturer in History at the University of York

Episoder(1086)

Intelligence

Intelligence

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a question that has stalked the twentieth century: Intelligence. Since the first IQ tests were invented in 1905, the question of what makes Homo Sapiens stupid and what...

1 Jul 199928min

Capitalism

Capitalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss capitalism throughout the last two centuries. In 1848 Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto described the dynamic force of capitalism as it swept through the 19th centur...

24 Jun 199928min

The Great Disruption

The Great Disruption

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the shift that has gone on through the 20th century from our being an industrial society to what is often called ‘the information society’. Francis Fukuyama’s book, The...

17 Jun 199928min

The Monarchy

The Monarchy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British monarchy. In the last two hundred and fifty years, we’ve beheaded one king, exiled another, hired a distant German-speaking dynasty to fill the monarch’s ro...

10 Jun 199928min

Just War

Just War

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of a just war. There were theories about a justified or noble war before the birth of Christ, but it was his reported teachings and a powerful influence, parti...

3 Jun 199928min

Memory and Culture

Memory and Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss memory. At the start of the twentieth century Freud put memory at the centre of our psychology, and as the century has worn on what a nation remembers and what it shoul...

27 Mai 199928min

The Universe's Origins

The Universe's Origins

Melvyn Bragg examines the history of what we know about the origins of the universe. Some four hundred years ago in Rome, one Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his belief in other inhabited wo...

20 Mai 199928min

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss multiculturalism. The divisions between people provoked and exploited because of differences in religion, culture, nationality and race seem to beset the planet the mor...

13 Mai 199928min

Populært innen Historie

rss-dette-ma-aldri-skje-igjen
med-egne-oyne
historier-som-endret-norge
henrettelsespodden
rss-benadet
historier-som-endret-verden
rss-katastrofe
sektledere
rss-nadelose-nordmenn-gestapo
aftenposten-historie
rss-gamle-greier
rss-strid-de-norske-borgerkrigene
rss-frontkjemperne
rss-bisarr-historie
rss-historiske-romanser-svik-drap-og-kjarlighet
historiepodden-ww2
liberal-halvtime
historiepodden
rss-historiepodden-ww2
vare-historier