‘Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the Imperial Coronation of 800’, English Historical Review, 111 (1996) Review

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Assignment 1: Review of a journal article HIS 1010 – The Medieval Outlook. John Dack In this Assignment, I am going to write a critical review of a journal article. The journal article which I have chosen is, Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the Imperial Coronation of 800’, English Historical Review, 111 (1996). Is this review, I am going to identify the major arguments that Henry Mayr-Harting presents, I will then evaluate those arguments. Finally, I will assess the value of this article to historians, in the present day. To aid me in reviewing this journal article, I have chosen other pieces of work from other historians, which gives me an insight into the life of Charlemagne from different viewpoints, thus providing me with the tools to evaluate and compare this piece of work accordingly. Firstly, Mayr-Harting makes it very straight forward to identify his main argument in this article. This is due to the fact that he clearly states his argument in the 1st paragraph. “It is that Charlemagne needed the imperial coronation of 800 because emperorship was the only conceptual framework within which he could validate and make acceptable his rule of the Saxon aristocracy after he had defeated them”[1]. Mayr-Harting goes into this article by painting us a picture of the difficulties that Charlemagne had, when dealing with the Saxons. He describes events, battles and demands from Charlemagne to the Saxons. Including the destruction of the Irminsul in 772, the massacre of Verden in 783 and the baptism of Widukind in 785. All the while emphasizing the point that Charlemagne’s wars and battles with the Saxons had stretched to almost 3 decades by the time of his coronation. Within this piece of work, Mayr-Harting goes on to provide many references and reasons, why the coronation would benefit Charlemagne’s relationship with the already conquered Saxon

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