II.

Background and Early Life

Charlemagne was born about 742, the elder son of the Frankish leader Pepin the Short. Pepin held the ancestral title of mayor of the palace under the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings. However, in the wake of a long line of increasingly weak Merovingian kings, Pepin abandoned this lesser title and in 751 assumed the kingship of the Franks. In order to legitimate his rule, Pepin sought the support of the pope. In exchange for a promise to protect the pope’s lands in Italy from an invasion, Pope Stephen II officially crowned Pepin in 754. Besides crowning Pepin, the pope anointed both Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman.

During his father’s reign, Charlemagne accompanied the Frankish army on campaigns to defend the pope against the Lombards, a Germanic people who controlled northern and central Italy, and on missions to conquer the region of Aquitaine in what is now southern France. As a result, Charlemagne learned at an early age the importance of both strong leadership on the battlefield and of close links between secular power and the Roman Catholic Church.