Monks both in Francia itself and in the British Isles, looking to calibrate the mysterious complexities of time, had found themselves arriving at a framework that was as practical as it was profound.įrom whose accession date, if not that of some earthly emperor or king, were years to be numbered?
The years preceding Charlemagne’s accession to the Frankish throne had witnessed a momentous intellectual revolution. How fortunate it was then that the perfect solution had lain conveniently ready at hand. A universal Christian order such as Charlemagne was laboring to raise required a universal chronology. “Such confusion, however, to scholars sponsored by the Frankish king, was intolerable. So other churchmen had derived dates from a bewildering array of starting points: the accession of their local ruler perhaps, or an ancient persecution, or most extravagantly the creation of the world. Traditionally, just as popes had employed the regnal year of the emperor in Constantinople on their documents.
Over the preceding decades, the great program of correction had begun to embrace even the dimensions of time itself. Eight hundred years had passed to the day since the birth of the Son of Man: an anniversary of which Charlemagne and his advisers would have been perfectly aware. Had Charlemagne truly been as ignorant of Leo’s plans as he subsequently claimed to be, then it was all the more eerie a coincidence that he should have been in Rome and in St. Although it was the very greatest of the festivals of the Church, if he had known in advance what the Pope was planning to do.’ … “Yet still an aura of mystery lingered around the ceremony. Indeed, ‘he made it clear that he would not have entered the cathedral that day at all. … The whole coronation, Charlemagne would later declare, had come as a surprise to him, a bolt from the blue. Where Pope Leo suddenly and dramatically crowned him emperor: “So it was that Charlemagne came to rule as a second Constantine. With that achievement firmly in hand, he came to Rome and knelt during Christmas Mass at the shrine of St. Limited Time Offer! Find out more now! > “You think keeping track of time zones is bad? Imagine if crossing a border meant you had a completely different calendar. Learn facts that you can’t learn just from reading the BibleĪttractive design ideal for your home, office, church … Unique Circular Format – see more in less space. Quickly See 6000 Years of Bible and World History Together These Articles are Written by the Publishers of The Amazing Bible Timeline At the beginning of the ninth century A.D., with Rome long since crumbled and Constantine‘s capital still dominant in the East, Charlemagne had built a new Western empire extending across much of modern-day Europe to eclipse it. Charlemagne began a new system of dating pegged to the birth of Christ and had himself crowned on Christmas Day to form a dramatic link between his reign and Christ.
Prior to Charlemagne, dating systems had been pegged to a prominent date such as the beginning of a recent or contemporary monarch’s rule. Here’s the story as told in the book The Forge of Christendom by Tim Holland describing the events. Charlemagne came up with the solution to make life easier for everyone else and put a bit of power in his own pocket at the same time. You couldn’t even agree on the date! That was the case when no BC and AD timeline existed. You think keeping track of time zones is bad? Imagine, if crossing a border meant you had a completely different calendar.
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