Month: June 2023

Is history real?

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Recently a thoughtful and provocative reader (thank you Mike!) raised a critical question: can we really know the past? How we do know if the sources are anything but pure speculation? Think about it. We read history books, but those are simply someone’s analysis, synthesis, and regurgitation of primary sources, of which the author has had no living experience. Yet, generally, we accept those history books as “truth”. What’s going on?

First things first, I am not an historian. I have no training in historiography or any related discipline. Dungeons and Dragons was my medieval history gateway drug, and the fascination grew from there. My particular interest in the eighth century stems from two roots: the Song of Roland, and the fact that, as a layperson, I could collect and read virtually all of the available primary source material in translation. Such are my qualifications.

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Charlemagne in the news

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While Charlemange’s influence in European history is outsize, his modern-day media presence is muted, shall we say. Perhaps one of his more notable appearances is a monthly column in The Economist weekly news magazine. The authors don’t have a byline, instead using pithy words and names that reference the subject of the column. “Banyan” looks at pan-Asian issues, while “Bartleby” is the business correspondent.

The European column is written by “Charlemagne”. A recent story looked at the relationship between Austria and Russia (too neutral, in Charlemagne’s eyes). The reason for the epithet lies in Charles’ long-held title as “the father of Europe”, and of course there is some truth to that. He was the first to see the European continent as a single entity that should be bound together by religion, trade, and law, at least to the extent he was able to conceive of these things. Certainly Rome never looked at the continent to the north of Italy as a distinct domain, with legitimate interests. For the emperors, there was Rome, and there was everything else.

But sometimes the real Charlemagne is worth a mention. The May 4 issue includes a piece in the Culture section that asks, “Might Charlemagne’s capital, long placed in Germany, have actually been in Italy?”

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