Charlemagne as Emperor As a way to acknowledge Charlemagne's power and reinforce his relationship with the church, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans on December 25, 800, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Emperor of the RomansPope Leo III crowned the Frankish king, Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day, 800 in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, making him the most powerful ruler of his time.
The Pope's motivation for crowning Charlemagne was to give the papacy and the church implicit authority over the empire, since with this act Leo set a precedent for crowning emperors, which subsequent popes would do throughout the reign of the Holy Roman Empire.
Peter's Basilica for the consecration of Charlemagne's son (Louis I the Pious) as king, Leo suddenly crowned Charlemagne as emperor. By this act, Leo obliterated his earlier humiliation and established the legal precedent that only the pope could confer the imperial crown.
The significance of Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne as emperor was the fact that it joined germanic power with the church and the heritage of Rome.
How did Charlemagne become emperor of the Holy Roman Empire? Charlemagne was crowned “emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III in 800 CE, thus restoring the Roman Empire in the West for the first time since its dissolution in the 5th century.
The Coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor was a ceremony in which the ruler of Western Europe's then-largest political entity received the Imperial Regalia at the hands of the Pope, symbolizing both the pope's right to crown Christian sovereigns and also the emperor's role as protector of the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Leo III is noted for: crowning Charlemagne Emperor and establishing the precedent that only the pope could confer the imperial crown. Leo was also physically attacked in the streets of Rome by supporters of his predeccessor.
Charlemagne succeeded in uniting the majority of western and central Europe and was the first recognized emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire around three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state that Charlemagne founded was known as the Carolingian Empire.