IV. Olav Haraldsson and Charlemagne
Olav sat at the table in the long winter nights in Normandy along with duke Richard and other Norman chiefs. Tongues were loosened by good food and drink. Stories were told of great events from the past, mighty warriors and sagas about half-forgotten happenings were recalled. One person especially was the focus of the attention. Charlemagne, the great ideal of all Christian kings and princes. Olav Haraldsson would have liked all the remarkable and great things he heard about this Frankish king. He came to like him a lot, and made him his model later on, when he himself reigned as a king. When Olav's son was baptized in an emergency many years later while the king slept, and Sigvat Skald gave him the name Magnus after Charlemagne, the king was very pleased. He called the long ship he used under the sea-battle when he came back to Norway «Karlshovde».7
If we are to understand Olav Haraldsson as a Christian statesman, we must know a little about his model, the emperor Charlemagne.8 The deep-reaching population movements in Europe from c. 350 to c. 600 had created a terrible chaos politically, and not least religiously. The German tribes invaded the broad borders of the Roman empire, plundering and leaving ruins behind. Europe became a patchwork quilt of small states in continual wars with one another. Some of these tribes were pagans, while others converted to Arianism (which denied that Christ was God). The Catholics were persecuted by both pagans and Arians.
There were other dangers too that threatened Christian Europe: the Mongolian hordes who invaded Europe from the east and the Muslim Saracens who were pressing on from the south. It was a question of life or death for the Christian Europe. The yearning for peace went like a sigh through the whole Church. The Pope in Rome looked around for a leader who could defend Christendom against its internal and external enemies. He looked westwards to the kingdom of the Franks, where king Chlodwig reigned. He was the first German prince to become a Catholic (496). The Franks followed the king's example. One of his successors, Pippin, was anointed as king by St Boniface the bishop. Such an anointing is a means of grace («a sacramental»), an ecclesiastical consecration that gives the king both the right and the obligation to defend the Church against external and internal foes. It was at this period that it became customary to speak of «a king by the grace of God» or «rex iustus» («the righteous king»).
The Frankish king Charlemagne was not only anointed, but also crowned as emperor by Pope Leo III. This happened on Christmas Eve in the year 800. It was the Pope's deep yearning for peace, a yearning shared with all of Christendom, that led him to crown Charles as emperor. The Frankish king was to defend the Catholics against all attacks. He was to provide for peace and order in his broad realm which now included most of Europe. The emperor Charles was very zealous in carrying out his task as the Church's defender. Accordingly, he saw it as his duty to unite the many little tribes into one kingdom and to keep this united under his own central leadership. Only thus would it be possible for law, order and peace to be re-established in Europe; and equally importantly, it was only through such a unity, with a Christian emperor as the central point, that Christianity could put down its roots and grow. In other words, Charlemagne saw it as one single task to unite Europe with the sword and thus to plant the Cross. Our generation can be wise after the event, and criticise this kind of religious politics; Christians at that time, both spiritual and secular authorities, saw no other way to put an end to Europe's blood-letting through political and religious chaos.
Charles built a network of churches, monasteries and schools in every area of his realm, and supported the Church's cultural activity as a weapon against heathen barbarism. With our presuppositions today, we can criticise both his coercive form of missionary work and his interference in ecclesiastical affairs. The Pope also rebuked him many times in sharp terms. But in view of the peace and stability he created in Europe, and of all he did to further the cause of the Church, he was certainly looked on as a prince by the grace of God while he lived.
It was certainly in this way that Olav Haraldsson understood him, when he set course home for Norway as a newly-baptised Catholic. We must mention also that everything Charlemagne had build up in terms of political peace and Christian unity was knocked down again when his descendants divided the empire among themselves. The ninth century is probably the darkest chapter in the Church's history. But then there came a splendid renewal in the tenth and eleventh centuries, beginning from the monastery of Cluny in France and spreading like a brush-fire over the whole of Christian Europe. Charlemagne's princely ideal regained its popularity. Olav's host in Normandy, Richard II, and the clergy in his principality were zealous supporters of reform. The same was true of the clergy that Olav took with him from England to Norway. I have written so much about Charlemagne - about the period before him and also the period after him - so that we can more easily understand Olav Haraldsson's work of restoration in Norway. Charlemagne was the decisive model for the whole of his later activity as king.9
