Carolus Magnus: Mapping an Empire in the Making

Pater Europae - Charlemagne

Progress Picture

This map presents the Carolingian realm during the final decades of Charlemagne’s reign, at a moment when Frankish power was extensive but uneven, expansive yet structurally fragile. The early ninth-century Carolingian world does not correspond easily to modern expectations of political space. It lacked fixed borders, uniform administration, and a consistently articulated internal geography. Authority operated instead through conquest, tribute, oaths, ecclesiastical patronage, and negotiated submission. Any cartographic representation of this polity must therefore confront a basic problem: how to depict a political order that did not yet understand itself primarily in territorial terms.

Rather than treating the Carolingian Empire as a bounded state, this map approaches it as a claim—asserted, maintained, and narrated through military success, legal reform, and textual production. The designation Universum Regnum reflects this logic. It signals not an achieved universality, but an imperial ambition grounded in Roman precedent, Christian kingship, and Frankish dominance. The map seeks to render this ambition visible without retroactively imposing the coherence of later medieval or modern political forms.

The geopolitical environment shown here underscores that instability. To the north, Scandinavian raiders probe the Frankish littoral, exploiting its river systems and exposed coastlines. To the south, Muslim polities control territory beyond the Pyrenees and exert maritime dominance across much of the western Mediterranean. Slavic peoples press from the east, resisting Frankish incorporation with varying degrees of success. In Italy, the Byzantine Empire retains control of the south, while Lombard authority has been displaced but not erased. Britain remains divided among competing Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and the Papal State—newly established through the Donation of Pepin—emerges as both beneficiary of Frankish protection and a crucial source of ideological legitimacy. This is not a settled Europe, but a contested one.

Progress Picture

Text, Conquest, and the Ordering of Space

A substantial passage from Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni runs along the lower margin of the map, written in Medieval Latin and executed in Carolingian minuscule. The inclusion of this text in full is deliberate. Einhard’s narrative offers a contemporary framework for understanding how Carolingian elites conceptualized space and authority. His account does not describe territory abstractly or geometrically. Instead, it enumerates regions through campaigns, rivers, peoples, and acts of submission. Expansion is articulated as a sequence of political and military achievements rather than as a process of boundary-making.

Haec sunt bella, quae rex potentissimus per 16 annos XLVII — tot enim annis regnaverat — in diversis terrarum partibus summa prudentia atque felicitate gessit. Quibus regnum Francorum, quod post patrem Pippinum magnum quidem et forte susceperat, ita nobiliter ampliavit, ut poene duplum illi adiecerit. Nam cum prius non amplius quam ea pars Galliae, quae inter Rhenum et Ligerem oceanumque ac mare Balearicum iacet, et pars Germaniae, quae inter Saxoniam et Danubium Rhenumque ac Salam fluvium, qui Thuringos et Sorabos dividit, posita a Francis qui Orientales dicuntur incolitur, et praeter haec Alamanni ataque Baioarii ad regni Francorum potestatem pertinerent : ipse per bella memorata primo Aquitaniam et Wasconiam totumque Pyrinei montis iugum et usque ad Hiberum amnem, qui apud Navarros ortus et fertilissimos Hispaniae agros secans sub Dertosae civitatis moenia Balearico mari miscetur; deinde Italiam totam, quae ab Augusta. Praetoria usque in Calabriam inferiorem, in qua Grecorum ac Beneventanorum constat esse confinia, decies centum et eo amplius passuum milibus longitudine porrigitur; tum Saxoniam, quae quidem Germaniae pars non modica est, et eius quae a Francis incolitur duplum in lato habere putatur, cum ei longitudine possit esse consimilis; post quam utramque Pannoniam

This mode of description informs the structure of the map itself. Aquitaine, Saxony, Lombardy, Pannonia, and the Slavic lands appear as outcomes of incorporation, not as equal administrative units. The empire’s extent is legible through movement—armies advancing, rivers crossed, peoples compelled into tributary relationships—rather than through symmetrical territorial divisions. The map follows Einhard’s logic closely, allowing his prose to function as a narrative cartography embedded directly into the image.

A historian might object that Einhard’s account is triumphalist, selective, and shaped by courtly agendas. That critique is well founded. The map does not treat Einhard as a neutral observer, but as a representative voice of Carolingian self-understanding. His omissions, emphases, and rhetorical choices are part of the historical record being visualized. The map therefore reflects not the totality of Carolingian political reality, but the version of that reality articulated by its ruling elite.

Adding the Excerpt from Einhard in Calligraphy

Language, Script, and Administrative Power

All place names appear in contemporary Medieval Latin forms, and the principal inscriptions are written in Carolingian minuscule. This choice reflects the centrality of language and script to Carolingian governance. The development and dissemination of minuscule formed part of a broader reform program aimed at standardizing law, liturgy, and education across the Frankish world. Script functioned as an administrative technology, facilitating communication, record-keeping, and ideological cohesion across a heterogeneous realm.

By writing the map in Carolingian minuscule, the image situates itself within the same cultural infrastructure that sustained Carolingian authority. The legibility and regularity of the script contrast with the unevenness of political control depicted elsewhere on the map. This tension reflects a central dynamic of the empire itself: a strong aspirational center projecting order across regions that remained variably integrated.

Geographic features likewise employ period terminology—Mare Frisicum, Mare Balticum, Occidentalis Oceanus. Tributary peoples and dependent polities, including the Sorabi and the Duchy of Benevento, are distinguished from core Frankish lands. The resulting political space is layered and conditional. Authority is graduated rather than absolute, and possession is often indirect.

Adding the Caroline Miniscule Script

Imperial Iconography and Memory

The title Carolus Magnus is framed by symbols drawn from the visual tradition that accumulated around Charlemagne’s rule and posthumous reputation. The Carolingian cross appears alongside the globus cruciger, the sword Joyeuse, and the green oriflamme associated with Charlemagne in later medieval sources, including the Chanson de Roland and the ninth-century mosaic depicting Charlemagne with Pope Leo in San Giovanni, Rome. These symbols are not treated as strict documentary evidence for Charlemagne’s own regalia, but as part of the evolving visual language through which Carolingian kingship was remembered and legitimized.

The decorative border at the top of the map draws on the Karlsschrein, reinforcing the fusion of sanctity, rulership, and commemoration that shaped Charlemagne’s legacy. Imperial authority appears here as a composite of martial success, Christian symbolism, and retrospective sacralization. A historian might note the chronological compression involved in juxtaposing ninth-century political realities with later visual traditions. The map embraces that compression as a feature rather than a flaw, reflecting how Charlemagne’s reign was continuously reinterpreted in the centuries that followed.

Fragility and Aftermath

The map resists presenting the Carolingian Empire as an inevitable precursor to later European political forms. Instead, it emphasizes contingency. The empire is shown encircled by unresolved frontiers and incomplete projects: Byzantine Italy, contested Iberia, recently subdued Saxony, and a Papacy whose position depends heavily on Frankish protection. Charlemagne’s reputation as the “father of Europe” emerges from later historical narratives rather than from the stability of his political achievement.

The future Holy Roman Empire is latent here, but far from guaranteed. The structures that sustained Carolingian authority—personal rule, military success, ecclesiastical cooperation—would prove difficult to maintain across generations. Fragmentation was not a deviation from the Carolingian project, but a structural possibility built into it.

This map should therefore be read as a visual argument rather than a definitive political document. It attempts to translate a ninth-century conception of power, space, and legitimacy into cartographic form without smoothing away its irregularities. What it presents is an empire in the process of being made: asserted through text, enforced by force, sanctified by faith, and already shadowed by the conditions that would undo it.

Selected Bibliography and Sources

(Incomplete)

The following bibliography represents a partial reconstruction of the textual, cartographic, paleographic, and visual sources consulted during the research and execution of this map. Much of the underlying research was conducted over a period of years, and not all references—particularly printed facsimiles, image archives, and informal paleographic exemplars—can now be fully recovered. Where possible, freely accessible digital sources are listed below; omissions are unintentional.

Primary Texts

• Einhard. Vita Karoli Magni. Latin text accessed via The Latin Library.
  https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ein.html

Paleography and Script

• Marcos, José J. Fonts for Latin Paleography. 2014.
  https://luc.devroye.org/JJMarcos-2014-FontsForLATIN_PALEOGRAPHY.pdf

• “How to Read an Ancient Manuscript: 11th-Century Virgil’s Aeneid.” Found in Antiquity, 2014.
  https://foundinantiquity.com/2014/06/01/how-to-read-an-ancient-manuscript-11th-century-vergils-aeneid-part-1/

• Comparative examples drawn from Carolingian and post-Carolingian Gospel books and administrative manuscripts, consulted via digital facsimiles and secondary paleographic studies.

Cartography, Geography, and Historical Reference

• Bavarian State Library (BSB). Medieval Latin geographic and cartographic materials, including Orbis Latinus–related holdings.
  https://www.bavarikon.de/object/bav:BSB-MDZ-00000BSB00050913

• Historical atlases and secondary works on Carolingian territorial expansion, Latin place-name conventions, and early medieval political geography (print and digital editions).

Visual and Iconographic Sources

• Carolingian and Ottonian-era metalwork, reliquaries, and architectural ornamentation, including comparative material related to the Karlsschrein in Aachen.

• Ninth- and later medieval visual traditions associated with Charlemagne, including manuscript illumination, mosaic programs (notably in Rome), and epic literature such as the Chanson de Roland, consulted for symbolic vocabulary rather than strict historical reconstruction.

• Institutional image archives and museum collections, including university libraries and European cultural heritage repositories.

Note on Methodology

This map should be understood as a work of historical translation rather than exhaustive reconstruction. Where sources diverged, were fragmentary, or could not be confidently reconciled, conservative or generic solutions were adopted. Any remaining errors or anachronisms are entirely my own.