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Meet the Germanic Barbarians: A Frankish Christmas Story

By Martin Ederer intention of becoming Christians as tire kingdom or tribe is officially that all earthly power came from Classical civilizations, thanks to the
ermans are generally classified many of the other Germanic tribes converted. God through the papacy. Take monks that Charlemagne put to
Gas barbarians by Roman defi- had done, those groups generally Anyhow, the papacy took im- THAT, Byzantium! work copying ancient manuscripts.
nitions, which were quite broad. becoming heretical Arian Chris- mediate notice of the Franks’ con- The story from there is one of On the political front the Caro-
Some barbarians fit the classic im- tians. Anyhow, the other major version to Catholic Christianity. close collaboration between Charle- lingian world spun apart quite
age most of us conjure up: illiterate game-changer in the west was the They were a powerful, sophisticat- magne and the papacy. Together quickly after Charlemagne’s death,
people living out in nature with collapse of centralized Roman rule ed confederation, and they ap- both entities would restore the West but not before having given the
crude food, crude clothing and in AD 476, an event we call the peared on the scene as difficulties culturally and define its religious West its cultural characteristics and
crude customs who periodically “Fall of Rome.” Actually only the were beginning to emerge between and cultural sensibilities. The Car- its direction – not to mention a com-
climbed the walls of tidy towns and western half fell. The East contin- the papacy in the Church of Rome olingian Renaissance that Charle- mon cultural bedrock for much of
terrorized the civilized people living ued merrily on its way and eventu- and the Church of Constantinople magne guided on the cultural front Western Europe, including both
inside. To the Romans, however, ally came to be known as the in the East. In short, the growing did a remarkable job of preserving France (named for the Franks) and
any non-Roman fell into the catego- Byzantine Empire by the 700s. religious difficulties made popes some 90% of what we know about German Central Europe.
ry of barbarian. This included liter- One thing the Franks did have think twice before asking the Byz-
ate people who had created going for them was their political antine rulers of the East for any sort
advanced civilizations and even em- sophistication. The Franks were of assistance. By the 600s, the Byz-
pires such as the Persians and the actually a confederation of tribes antines were busy with their own
Phoenicians. To further complicate settled over a broad geographical problems anyway. For the pope,
the picture, German Central Europe area that stretched from the Pyre- the newly converted Franks were
is easily as much Celtic as it is nees mountains to the Eastern Euro- literally a Godsend.
Germanic. But that’s a story for pean Plain. In that respect they The one thing that tended to
another time. were much like the Haudenosaunee weaken Frankish rulers was the tra-
Among the western Germanic (Iroquois) Confederation in our part dition of dividing the kingdom
barbarians, the Franks loom large in of the world, and similarly capable among a king’s sons. This practice
European history. They first started of sustaining some sort of political eventually weakened Merovingian
appearing in Roman sources some- continuity over a vast geographical rule over the Franks. As it turned
time in the 400s when they estab- area. out, an ambitious family of butlers
lished an autonomous kingdom The Franks were slow to con- in the Kingdom of Austrasia man-
within the increasingly creaky vert to any sort of Christianity. The aged to gain power at the expense
northwestern boundaries of the Ro- Merovingian King Clovis finally of the multiple Merovingian rulers
man Empire. Unlike some of the did so in 511 on the urging of his who controlled Frankish territories.
other barbarian tribes who migrated wife Clothilde, who had converted They came to be known as the Car-
into the west later, the Franks had a first. More importantly, when the olingians for the preponderance of
longstanding relationship with the Franks finally converted, they family members named Charles
Romans. Many Franks were engag- chose Catholic Christianity rather who accomplished big things.
ing in trade and commerce with the than Arian Christianity, which had Long story short, these butlers soon
Romans. Some had adopted Roman been condemned at the Council of had more power than the kings they
customs. Nicea in 325 as a heresy. The served.
That did not mean, however, Franks followed the general pattern After Charles Martel defeated
that the Franks particularly liked the of conversion so common in the Muslims attempting to advance
Romans. Many had no intention of early Middle Ages: wife of ruler from Spain into Frankish Gaul in
Romanizing. They had even less converts – ruler converts – the en- 732, he became widely known as
the savior of Christian Europe and
the stuff of legend. His Merovin-
gian boss – let’s call him “King
Whatshisname” to emphasize the
point – had become invisible. Mar-
tel’s son, Pepin the Short, finally
approached Pope Zacharias I about
what he saw as a fundamental injus-
tice. He actually ruled Franks, but
his boss, Childeric III, still had the
title of King. The pope agreed with
Pepin and named him King of the
Franks and made him an honorary
Roman citizen. Pepin repaid the
pope’s favor by helping him to de-
feat the Lombards in Italy.
Pepin’s very tall son – who
came to be known as Charlemagne
(Charles the Great) – also faithfully
served the Pope. After a revolution
in Rome sent Pope Leo III fleeing
for his life in 799 Charlemagne,
who by this time had already begun
to stabilize the political situation in
so much of what had been the west-
ern half of the Roman Empire,
marched into Italy and ended the
uprising. The grateful pope invited
Charlemagne to Rome for Christ-
mas in 800. As he approached the
city, a delegation met Charle-
magne’s retinue to accompany
them into the city in what appeared
to be the old Roman victory cele-
bration reserved for emperors. On
Christmas Day of 800 Pope Leo III
crowned Charlemagne “Roman
Emperor” in the old Constantinian
Basilica of St. Peter. A purple disc
in the floor of the current basilica
still marks the spot where the coro-
nation had taken place.
That event – the coronation of a
Germanic king as “Roman Emper-
or” by a pope was western Europe’s
Christmas present. It marked the
birthday of Medieval Civilization,
and with it the birthday of Western
European Civilization. The west
was “back” – complete with a (very
un-Roman) Roman Emperor at a
time when the uncooperative and
very temperamental Byzantine Em-
pire was being ruled by a woman.
No pope had ever crowned Roman
emperors back in the day. This new
precedent informed the entire world
November - December 2025 • THE GERMAN CITIZEN • 7