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Posted: 22 Apr 2022

Taken: 22 Apr 2022

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Germany ~ A memories of a Nation •
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Neil MacGregor •

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Aachen Cathedral, with Charlemagne's Octagon in the centre

Aachen Cathedral, with Charlemagne's Octagon in the centre
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Around the year A.D. 400 the Roman Empire in the West began to disintegrate. The authorities of the Emperor dissolved. The legions withdrew from Britain, Germany and France, and over much of Western Europe ordered civil society collapsed. Four hundred later, around 800, one man Charles, King of Franks and ruler of most of what is now France and Germany, set about remaking that lost Roman Empire. He built his palace chapel at Aachen to the west of Cologne, using the model of Roman Imperial churches in Constantinople and Ravenna. He transported there sacred Christian relics from Jerusalem, and ancient porphry columns from Rome, remaking Pagan Rome on Christian German soil. It is a magnificent example of appropriating different histories to make one new narrative.

His chapel still stands, a noble and dome octagon, three storeys high. It was for centuries the tallest building north of the Alps. It is supported by ancient Roman columns, which hold the lofty rounded arches. This is properly, visibly the capital church of a new, a Holy Roman Empire. The king who built it, Charles is known to Germans as Karl de Grosse -- Charles the Great. To the French and to us, he is Charlemagne. ~ Page 196

The whole object is a mystical, dazzling -- literally dazzling -- fusion of the spiritual authority of biblical kingship and the sheer power and wealth of the early Middle Ages. But there is more: this is in fact not only a crown; it is echo of the building, of Charlemagne’s chapel in Aachen, and a reminiscence of the majestic Imperial churches in Constantinople and Ravena.. . . Page 198

Germany ~ Memories of a Nation
2 years ago. Edited 2 years ago.

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