The Carolingian Legend
IT is not surprising that each generation seeks its own interpreta- tion of the figure of Charlemagne. Delisle Burns described the shout that greeted Charles's coronation in 800 as 'the infant cry at the birth of the First Europe'; and Christopher Dawson wrote that his empire was 'the foundation and starting-point of the whole development of Western civilisation.' Others, more scep- tical, have dismissed it as 'a disastrous archaism'; like the French historian, Joseph Calmette, they have treated its collapse as the precondition for the rise of the richly diversified Europe from which modern civilisation derives.
In this debate, so closely bound up with our whole conception of what Europe stands for, Mr. Richard Winston has little that is novel to say. For him Charles's 'historic mission' was `to fuse the disparate traditions of Rothan and Teuton into a Euro- pean culture,' to create ,`oneness out of diversity.' Whether the sort of unity Charles imposed was worth having or capable of lasting, he scarcely stops to ask—which is surprising, since, fol- lowing the lead of postwar Continental scholars, such as Fichtenau, Mr. Winston emphasises the shadows no less than the achievements of the Carolingian regime. Charles's harshness and brutality, the discontent bred by an 'oppressive State,' the sufferings inflicted on the poor, loom large in his pages; and the all-too-human story of Charles's private life precludes any danger of idolatry.
But Mr. Winston's purpose is less to assign Charles his plaoe in the framework of European history than to pierce through the legends which have 'encrusted' the picture of the 'true Charlemagne.' On the whole he succeeds. His account of the stages in Charles's career and in the development of his personality is apt to be overloaded with surmise; but it strikes a fair balance. And in spite of a rather laborious American idiom, the story is readable enough. It is only when we come to his broader judgements that doubts creep in. Is it really true, for example, that the heathen Saxons 'possessed one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world'? And did Charles himself have an 'essentially modern turn of mind,' seven hundred years in advance of his times'? It is in reconstructing the narrative of events, particularly of the complicated diplomatic manoeuvres between Charles and the Lombards and the Papacy, that Mr. Winston is at his best. Perhaps he suspects the type of history which strains to interpret their significance, then and today; and, if so, is he necessarily wrong?
GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGH
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