The Life of Charlemagne is not only considered the quintessential biography of the emperor. It has also been the most direct possible testimony about his death for twelve centuries. Written by a contemporary of his entourage, the courtly intellectual Eginhardo, this chronicle details, for example, the date of his death, time included. It would have happened at nine in the morning on January 28, 814. However, the Carolingian man of letters did not indicate the cause of his death with the same forensic accuracy.
He mentions “a strong fever” due to which Charlemagne had to stay in bed that winter in his palace in Aachen. The 72-year-old emperor aggravated his condition by self-prescribing an almost total fast. He soon suffered an intense “pain in the side, which the Greeks call pleurisy.” However, he insisted “on following the strict diet.” Thus, on the seventh day of being prostrate, he “died after receiving holy communion.”
Despite the medical appearance of the data that Eginhardo cites, these could be symptoms of a multitude of pathological conditions. The most precise example serves as an example, pleurisy. In the Middle Ages, any thoracic anomaly was designated in this way. Charlemagne could have suffered from a simple intercostal inflammation to serious disorders of pulmonary or cardiovascular origin. It could even have been an abdominal problem, if it had affected the diaphragmatic pleura.
In short, for more than a millennium it has not been known what one of the great protagonists of the Middle Ages died of.
Paradoxically, the enormous importance of the character weighed on this. His mortal remains were exhumed, moved and even dismembered several times in subsequent centuries for propaganda purposes. This was taken care of by his various successors at the head of the Carolingian Empire in the form of the Holy Roman Empire or the kingdom of France. And having a strong link with the Frankish sovereign was a kind of magic wand in the medieval political arena.
His prestige was so immense that even in the generation of his grandchildren he was celebrated in epic poems as the ideal monarch and practically a legend. Hence the manipulations that his relics suffered, which contributed, over the centuries, to even losing track of where the emperor "with the flowering beard" lay, as an example of his popularity calls him, the Song of Roland.
Until 2014. In that year, a bioarchaeological study certified that the remains preserved in the Aachen Cathedral correspond to the sovereign. To the resolution of this prolonged enigma was added, just a few months ago, that of a no less transcendent mystery. In January of this same year, an investigation determined with a high degree of certainty the reason why the so-called father of Europe died.
These historical mysteries were generated on the day of death itself. Without, as we said, there being a clear cause of death, his body was washed, prepared and buried with the appropriate pomp, but before the end of that same day. The haste was also noted in that he was buried in the palatine chapel – the core of the present Aachen cathedral – without leaving a record of the exact location.
In fact, the first successor to remove the remains, the Saxon emperor Otto III, had to chip away part of the church's pavement until he found the remains, according to a contemporary chronicle. The same and others from then, the year 1000, agree that the body of the Frankish king was found in an enviable state for having died almost two centuries earlier. He not only rose uncorrupted like that of a saint; Charlemagne, moreover, was royally seated on a golden throne, covered in his imperial finery and even wielding his scepter.
This Hollywood version of the disinterment was pure Ottonian propaganda, of course, but it contained hints of a reality confirmed in 2019: mummification.
The Saxon emperor ordered the body to be groomed and dressed in white, and perhaps he was the one who made it change its catafalque. Specifically, the sarcophagus of Proserpina, a Roman sarcophagus beautifully sculpted in the 3rd century and reused, if Charlemagne had not already been guarded in it since 814. Otto also inaugurated the dispersal of the Carolingian remains by having a tooth pulled out of the corpse. .
Frederick I Barbarossa carried out the next exhumation in 1165, or perhaps in 1170. The emperor sought to canonize Charlemagne, which is why he ordered his remains to be moved to an even more striking coffin, made of gold and silver. This task was completed in 1215 by his grandson and successor at the head of the Holy Empire, Frederick II Hohenstaufen. Frederick II also relocated the burial: he had it transported to the newly erected choir around the altar of the cathedral.
A century later, Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg also promoted, through the Golden Bull, the cult of Charlemagne, widely observed in the Early Middle Ages. Charles IV ordered part of the skull to be enclosed in a luxurious bust reliquary, and in another, a bone and three teeth of the lord of the Franks. The first container included a removable crown that, adorned with 71 gems, was used in the enthronement of at least four Roman kings (future emperors).
France revalidated its prestige by appealing to the father of Europe. King Charles V, nephew of Emperor Charles IV, gave his uncle a tooth from the deceased in 1366. In fact, for centuries, until the storming of the Bastille, the Gallic royal house sent the expensive shrouds of each monarch who died to Aachen. Louis
Their remains, however, had a respite during the Modern Age. With the exception of a new transfer in 1780, from the choir to the sacristy of the cathedral, they did not experience any notable incidents. However, all the previous ones, the centuries that have passed and the successive extensions of the cathedral contributed to the questioning of the authenticity of the remains. The first investigations of these for scientific purposes were carried out precisely to dispel suspicions.
A study attempted to locate the original burial site in 1837, but did not reach clear conclusions. Another, in 1843, undertaken under the auspices of Frederick IV of Prussia, examined the state of the remains attributed to the emperor. This last work, the pioneer among bioarchaeologists, was complemented by another in 1874, by the paleoanthropologist and anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen. It was the eminence that two decades earlier had described, not without controversy, to Neanderthal man.
The earliest physical report detailed what was preserved of Charlemagne, although without being able to confirm that it was really him. He recorded a complete skeleton, except for the missing skull, right humerus and left tibia. This coincided with some known disseminations, some of which were in reliquaries of the cathedral treasury.
As for Schaaffhausen, he believed that they were the remains of the Frankish king. However, he could not prove it, and he further complicated the picture by observing a clavicular fracture not recorded in the Carolingian chronicles and assigning a disproportionate height to the sovereign (he estimated it at more than two meters by the length of a femur, but today it is estimated at 1.84 m). The famous scientist, unfortunately, used chemicals that altered the biotic balance of the corpse.
There was no major progress throughout the 20th century. Attempts to pinpoint the burial site failed again and again, and no significant progress was made regarding the relics. Until studies that began discreetly in 1988. After 26 years of patient multidisciplinary research on a global scale and the publication of partial reports, in 2014 it was concluded that the bones in Aachen Cathedral belonged, without a doubt, to Charlemagne. On that occasion, previously only speculated anthropometric details were also specified.
The scientific report published in 2019 complemented these giant steps by clearing up other important unknowns. In addition to ratifying the emperor's physiognomy, now unquestionable, he tested his mummification, previously ventured, but not proven.
The most spectacular thing, however, has been the clinical history provided. It is the most complete of the famous, but until recently poorly known, Charlemagne. According to her, his death would have been due to pneumonia or another lung infection in an elderly man whose health was already impaired by rheumatism, gout and intense malarial-type fevers.
This text is part of an article published in number 614 of the magazine Historia y Vida. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
