THE POLITICAL FRAMEWORK

In the second half of the eighth and the first half of the ninth century the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, founded an empire that united the greater part of western Christendom in one state. The Carolingians, a leading and wealthy family from the non-Romanized eastern part of the kingdom known as Austrasia, had played an important political and military role long before the middle of the eighth century, but it was through a coup d'état, supported by the papacy, that in 751 they acceded to the royal dignity in the person of Pippin III. This date traditionally marks the start of the Carolingian era, whose climax came under Charlemagne (d. 814) and the earlier years of his son Louis the Pious (d. 840). At that time the Carolingian empire contained, in present-day terms, France, western Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, north-east Spain (called the Marca Hispanica) and northern Italy (the old kingdom of the Lombards), to which could be added the protectorate over the papal state in central Italy. Within Latin Christendom only the British Isles remained outside. The establishment of this vast complex was realized through the strengthening of royal authority inside the old Frankish lands – which was not always an easy process, as the events in Aquitaine showed – and through conquest and expansion: the Saxons (those that is who had stayed behind on the Continent) were subjected and forcibly converted, and the regnum Langobardorum was conquered by Charlemagne, though it continued as a separate kingdom, united with the Frankish monarchy by a personal union.