To directly control their kingdom and to collect taxes, the Frankish kings did not reside in a fixed location, but frequently moved from one region to another, staying in their palaces or with the most powerful lords and abbeys. The sovereigns were accompanied by the armed retinue, the trustis, which could also include 300-400 people.
Among these the most important exponents were the CONTI and the PALADINS.
Within the directorate the most prominent official was the palace master.
Thanks also to the conversion to Catholicism , the Franks they ruled in agreement with the great Gallo-Roman landowners and with the collaboration of the bishops.
The Frankish sovereigns considered the kingdom as the personal patrimony of the king, therefore upon his death it was divided among the heirs.
However, the unity of the kingdom was lost in this way, painstakingly achieved after victorious military campaigns.
In the seventh century, frequent dynastic conflicts between the heirs and the thirst for power of the aristocracy weakened the Merovingian monarchy. The Pepinides, high officials who held the office of palace masters and who became the real rulers of the military and political life of the kingdom, took advantage of this.
Carlo Martello belonged to this family (689-741), which in 732 AD defeated, in Poitiers a Muslim army from the Iberian Peninsula; for this reason he is remembered as the one who blocked Islamic penetration in Europe . In 751 A.D. he dismissed the last Merovingian ruler and proclaimed himself the new king of the Franks , opening a new phase of European history.
Meanwhile in Italy the Lombards , taking advantage of the weakness of the Byzantines , waged war against them and, in 751 AD , conquered Ravenna and a part of the lands north of Rome .
Pope Stephen II did not believe that the Byzantine emperor was able to protect Rome from the Lombard threat, so he asked the Franks for protection against the Lombards.
In the 754 AD Pope Stephen II went to France and crowned king Pippin in a solemn ceremony:the new sovereign received sacred anointing from the pope and, in return, undertook to defend Rome from the Lombards . The Franco army then came down to Italy and defeated the Lombard troops several times.
After the death of Pepin it was Charles, one of his sons, who conquered Pavia in 774 AD, putting an end to the Lombard domination of Italy.
The Franks they recognized the pope’s authority over the territories around Rome .
The Roman Church thus enlarged its possessions.
With the wars of conquest Charles extends the boundaries of his kingdom. In 774 AD , following the death of his brother Carlomanno , became the sole ruler of the Franks .
He reigned for more than 40 years , from 768 AD to 814 AD , the year of his death, a very long period for those times, when it was easy to die prematurely.
The Frankish ruler was already called by his contemporaries Magno , that is «the Great For the fame achieved by his exploits. In fact, he was engaged for almost the entire duration of his reign in wars of conquest and was able, in this way, to considerably extend the boundaries:
- In the south, he conquered northern Italy
- In the north-east, in the vast forests of present-day Germany, he subdued the Saxons and the Frisians and conquered Bavaria
- In the east, he fought against Avars and Slavs and against the Byzantine Empire itself
- In the north of the Iberian Peninsula, he also conquered Catalonia, taking it away from the Arabs .
Thanks to the wars of conquest, Charles obtained loot and lands to distribute to the most important fighters of the kingdom; thus he tied the members of the Frankish aristocracy to himself, consolidating his command and preventing them from threatening his power.
On the day of Christmas of the 19th century in the Roman basilica of San Pietro , Pope Leo III crowned Charles emperor of the Holy Roman Empire :"Sacred" because willed by God; "Roman" because heir to the ancient one.
For Carlo the imperial coronation meant the attribution of political supremacy over all of Western Europe, but he also presented himself as the defender of the Roman Church. For the first time after 476 AD an empire was reconstituted in the West based on the tradition of Rome.
The Pope, for his part, by crowning the emperor, placed himself above any other religious authority, even that of Constantinople , and proclaimed himself absolute head of the Christian Church.
In order to better control the territory of his immense empire, Charles divided it into numerous provinces, counties , entrusted to ACCOUNTS .
he Organized the frontier lands in MARCHE , entrusted to officers called MARCHESI , which also dealt with military defense.
The frontier territories, in fact, were subjected to the pressure of the populations that were beyond the borders, such as the Muslims in Spain, the Avars and the Slavs in the territories of today's Austria .
The sovereign supervised the behavior of counts and marquesses through inspectors called Missi Dominici , who often moved in pairs: a layman (chosen from among the exponents of the Frankish aristocracy) and a clergyman (usually a bishop).
Periodically important meetings called « placiti were held among the great of the kingdom »:The decisions were collected in written texts called« capitolari ».
To govern his vast empire, he used a system of relationships of personal fidelity, already widespread among the Franks: These relations linked the sovereign and the other important lords of the kingdom - the great landowners - to other free men, who became their VASSALS (from the Latin vassus, "young man, servant"), that is their trusted servants.
The sovereign and the lords undertook to protect the vassals and to guarantee their maintenance through an asset, called BENEFIT , which generally consisted of land to be administered.
In return, the vassals undertook, in case of war, to perform military service for their lords. Sometimes even vassals they tied to themselves trusted men, who were called VALVASSORI . This personal relationship system is called VASSALAGE .
Charlemagne died in 814 AD.
He was succeeded by his only son left alive, Louis the Pious .
On the death of the latter, which occurred in 840 AD , the empire was divided up, as was customary with the Franks , among his sons.
Soon they came into conflict with each other for power, until, in 843 AD , with the Treaty of Verdun , the empire was divided into 3 kingdoms :
• the Western Kingdom , roughly corresponding to France today, it was entrusted to Charles the Bald ;
• the Eastern Kingdom , east of the Rhine, in the territories of Germany current, it was assigned to Ludovico the Germanic;
• the Central Kingdom , which went from the North Sea to the Italian territories, belonged to Lotario I , who was also awarded the title of emperor.