Charlemagne's Rise to Power: Collins's 1998 Biography Review
This paper reviews Roger Collins's 1998 biography of Charlemagne, exploring both its historical content and its commentary on the challenges of writing medieval history. The review examines Collins's argument that traditional biography is nearly impossible for a figure so distant in time, and that all history is inherently teleological and interpretive. Key themes include the political rather than personal nature of Charlemagne's rise to power, the internecine struggles among the Carolingians, Charlemagne's use of Christianity as justification for military expansion into Saxony, Spain, and Lombardy, and his eventual coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE.
- Introduction: Collins on History and Biography: Collins's dual purpose: history and historiographical critique
- The Teleological Nature of Historical Writing: All history shaped by the author's present moment
- Carolingian Politics and the Rise of Charlemagne: Frankish kingdoms, Carloman, and Carolingian power struggle
- Christianity as Justification for Military Expansion: Religion used to legitimize conquest of Saxony and Lombardy
- Christian–Muslim Conflict and Contemporary Parallels: Charlemagne's Spain campaigns echo modern religious conflict
- Cultural Revival and the Holy Roman Empire: Coronation of 800 and Frankish cultural renewal
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper successfully weaves together two distinct analytical threads — the historical narrative of Charlemagne's rise and Collins's broader argument about the limits of historical writing — showing how Collins uses the biography as a vehicle for historiographical reflection.
- The reviewer draws pointed contemporary parallels (e.g., the "war on terror" and Christian–Muslim conflict) that demonstrate critical engagement with the text rather than mere summary.
- The paper maintains intellectual honesty by noting what Collins does and does not claim, such as acknowledging that Collins stops short of asserting Charlemagne was entirely without religious conviction.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates evaluative book reviewing: it moves beyond plot summary to assess what the author is arguing, how convincingly the argument is made, and what broader significance the work holds. The reviewer identifies Collins's central thesis — that biography of a medieval figure is nearly impossible and that history is always shaped by its author's present moment — and uses that thesis as a lens through which to interpret every historical detail Collins presents.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by situating Collins's dual purpose (historical narrative and historiographical critique), then develops the theoretical argument about teleology and interpretation. It transitions to concrete historical content — the Carolingian succession, military campaigns, and religious politics — before closing with Charlemagne's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. Each section uses Collins's claims as a springboard for the reviewer's own analysis, creating a cohesive evaluative structure rather than a chapter-by-chapter summary.
Introduction: Collins on History and Biography
Roger Collins's 1998 biography of Charlemagne is highly informative in helping readers understand the historical and political context in which Charlemagne came to power. To a lesser extent — simply because Collins devotes less space to it — the book also functions as a treatise on the historiographical problems of medieval history. This examination of how history in general, and individual histories in particular, are written is at least as interesting and as important as the particulars of Charlemagne's life that readers come to learn about.
Collins asks us to think about history in a far more analytical and critical way than most readers are likely to have done before. Unless one has thought carefully about the matter, history tends to be regarded as either more or less truthful or more or less mendacious. Under the former category falls most of the history learned in school — history believed to be accurate, written from the best intentions of shedding light on the past. Whatever errors enter into such historical records, we tend to believe, exist because of human error or simple gaps in the historical record. Historians find out what there is to be found, interpret the facts according to the best of their abilities, and create hypothetical scenarios to bridge gaps in the record and to produce coherent narratives out of conflicting accounts.
The mendacious historical narratives we generally do not call history at all, but regard as propaganda. These are documents such as those claiming that the Holocaust did not occur. While purporting to be history, they are not attempts to create factually accurate descriptions of the past. They are persuasive documents intended to make people believe one version of events for some specific purpose — to believe, perhaps, that Jews fabricate victimhood, that enslaved people enjoyed their condition, or that the United States was founded by extraterrestrial beings. Such documents may be viewed as analogous to religious creation stories, having a basis not in fact but in theology or philosophy. The categories seem neat: history on the one hand, propaganda on the other.
But Collins reminds us that this division is simply not accurate, especially when writing about an era relatively far removed from us in time, as Charlemagne's era is. He argues, in fact, that it is not possible to write a biography of Charlemagne in the traditional sense at all. His objectives in writing this book are both to describe a particular conjunction of political forces that tended to favor one person over others — that is, a political rather than a personal biography — and to help readers understand the difficulties inherent in writing all history.
Collins argues that there are a number of different ways to write the history of a given time, and when two versions of history differ, this generally has far less to do with questions of authenticity than with the fact that history is no less subject to interpretation and renegotiation than the present. Most of the past, after all, is sufficiently distant from us in time and sufficiently poorly documented that we can never be entirely certain what life was like during a past century.
The Teleological Nature of Historical Writing
Moreover, it is perhaps necessarily true that all history is teleological. After all, one is always writing from what is, at that moment, the end-point of history. Thus historians, no matter how diligently they try to avoid it, are always in fact telling the same story — a story that begins at different points in the past but that still and necessarily ends with themselves, with us, with the here and now. Collins stresses that the internecine fighting among the Carolingians, even as they were on the ascendancy, meant that their final rise to power was anything but assured. That it seems inevitable they would become the ruling dynasty of the Franks is an impression apparent only from our own vantage point.
Carolingian Politics and the Rise of Charlemagne
Before the rise of the Carolingians, the Frankish Empire comprised two separate kingdoms, initially ruled by both Charlemagne and his brother Carloman. The two fought — perhaps as brothers always do — but also over their differing visions of governance and over the need to create a larger, stronger realm. Charlemagne would win this particular internecine struggle, and Carloman would retreat as much as possible from public life to live out his days as a monk.
Works Cited
Collins, Roger. Charlemagne. U of Toronto, 1998.
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