The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the West made even more difficult what was already an estranged relationship between the Franks and Constantinople. At one point an effort had been made to unite the two empires, and Charlemagne had betrothed his daughter, Rotrude, to the heir apparent, Constantinople IV. However, the prince’s mother, Irene, had called off the engagement as a prelude to blinding and imprisoning her son and assuming the throne herself.
A military revolt in 802 succeeded in removing Irene from power. The new ruler, Nicephorus, was not inclined to look more favorably on the Frankish kingdom than Irene had done. He refused to accept Charlemagne’s coronation and spurned all emissaries from the Carolingian court.
In 806, the Doge of Venice, the ruler of a principality formally under Byzantine dominion but long independent-minded, offered his territory to Charlemagne’s protection. When Nicephorus continued to ignore Charlemagne, the king ordered his son Pepin to occupy Venice, as a show of strength.
These measures did no good, and it was not until Nicephorus’ successor, Michael, assumed power that a fraternal agreement between the two empires was finally drawn up and ratified in 812. The same year, the emir of Cordova, the Moslem ruler in Spain, finally recognized Charlemagne after many years of enmity.
The Christian nature of the Carolingian court would explain the sympathy Charlemagne held for the monasteries, but there was more than just religious respect behind his support. In the dark period which followed the collapse of Roman civilization in Gaul, lay education had all but ceased. Even the majority of the upper classes were illiterate and totally untrained in intellectual pursuits. The monks, however, had perpetuated classical cultural standards. So to Charlemagne the monks of the realm were sages as well as men of the cloth.
The monastic movement received a much-needed reform in the sixth century from Saint Benedict, who based his famous monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy on a new set of rules. In addition to prayer and devotion, Benedict stressed intellectual training and hand labor. Furthermore, he imposed the rule of stability on his order, meaning that a person who chose to enter the monastery did so for life. The rule of stability helped establish the monastic movement on a firm footing, and by the eighth century, Benedictine monasteries flourished throughout Charlemagne’s kingdom.
Charlemagne actively promoted the monasteries. He furnished existing institutions, such as those at Corbie, Laon, Saint Martin de Tours, and Fleury-sur-Loire, with additional income from donations of land and tithe payments, and he promoted the establishment of new ones as well. In return, the monasteries provided Charlemagne with many of his finest ministers, who undertook the task of general education within the realm helped convert conquered tribes on the frontiers. In fact, the Carolingian government owed an incalculable debt to Benedict, for without the men committed to his monastic order, Charlemagne’s court could not have functioned as successfully as it did.