13th century panel from the Silver Shrine shows Charlemagne besieging a city. Charlemagne (742-814 AD) was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire. He conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in Rome. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France. Charlemagne had eighteen children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. In 1814 he fell ill with pleurisy. He died the seventh day (January 28th) from the time that he took to his bed, at nine o'clock in the morning, after partaking of the Holy Communion, in the 72nd year and the 47th of his reign.
