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Historical Charlemagne by Matthias Becker $23.00 / Yale Univ. Press / 2003 On Christmas morning, 800 AD, in Rome's St. Peter's Basilica, Charlemagne assumed the title of Emperor of a vast area that comprised what is now most of western Europe. The great empire that he founded persisted until the 19th century as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Although author Matthias Becker acknowledges in this short work that insufficient information exists to meet the requirements of a modern biography, the author succeeds in providing an uncluttered presentation of the context of the life of a man whose name is synonymous with greatness. Certainly one of Charlemagne's most farsighted accomplishments was to record the laws of the peoples of his empire, including the Saxons, a Germanic folk with whom he intermittently waged war and whose Teutonic religion he ultimately devastated. Charlemagne's final triumph over them was achieved with such great slaughter, however, that Hitler specifically banned references to Charlemagne as "the butcher of the Saxons" in order to preserve his image as a great German leader. When Charlemagne died in 814 at the age of 66, he was buried at the church of St. Mary in Aachen. He had ruled for 47 years, and although he had pursued great goals, he failed to "secure the inner unity of his empire." Where some historians falter, Becker succeeds in synthesizing complex material and presenting it succinctly, so that the reader is enlightened rather than overwhelmed. —Ron Hunka

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