152,412 views
by Alessandro Barbero Do you want to learn more about the topics covered by Prof. Barbero in his lessons and conferences? Purchase his numerous written texts: https://www.amazon.it/s?k=alessandro+... All Alessandro Barbero: • All Alessandro Barbero Medieval History: • Medieval History It is Christmas morning in the year 800: Charlemagne advances to St. Peter's and bows his head before Pope Leo III to receive the imperial crown from his hands. It is an unprecedented event: it is the birth certificate of a Western geopolitical space that, beyond the vicissitudes of the imperial crown, continues to constitute the predominant horizon of European history today. The coronation of Charlemagne does not aim to resurrect the Roman Empire, but celebrates a new power under an ancient name, whose scope of action is a Europe completely redesigned compared to that of the Romans. The new sovereign reigns over an empire that has lost the Mediterranean and in return has opened up towards the North; an empire that stretches from Barcelona to Budapest, from Hamburg to Benevento, a continental and Atlantic empire that resembles the modern West much more than the empire of the Caesars. Not only that. That day in the year 800 is a memorable date in the history of Rome. Leo III's choice to call Charlemagne and to unite the Roman Church forever to the new Western empire definitively establishes the European vocation of the metropolis: the fate of the Eternal City is now tied to that of the West.