Charlemagne and Rome is a wide-ranging exploration of cultural
politics in the age of Charlemagne. It focuses on a remarkable
inscription commemorating Pope Hadrian I who died in Rome at
Christmas 795. Commissioned by Charlemagne, composed by Alcuin of
York, and cut from black stone quarried close to the king's new
capital at Aachen in the heart of the Frankish kingdom, it was
carried to Rome and set over the tomb of the pope in the south
transept of St Peter's basilica not long before Charlemagne's
imperial coronation in the basilica on Christmas Day 800. A
masterpiece of Carolingian art, Hadrian's epitaph was also a
manifesto of empire demanding perpetual commemoration for the king
amid St Peter's cult. In script, stone, and verse, it proclaimed
Frankish mastery of the art and power of the written word, and
claimed the cultural inheritance of imperial and papal Rome, recast
for a contemporary, early medieval audience. Pope Hadrian's epitaph
was treasured through time and was one of only a few decorative
objects translated from the late antique basilica of St Peter's
into the new structure, the construction of which dominated and
defined the early modern Renaissance. Understood then as precious
evidence of the antiquity of imperial affection for the papacy,
Charlemagne's epitaph for Pope Hadrian I was preserved as the old
basilica was destroyed and carefully redisplayed in the portico of
the new church, where it can be seen today. Using a very wide range
of sources and methods, from art history, epigraphy, palaeography,
geology, archaeology, and architectural history, as well as close
reading of contemporary texts in prose and verse, this book
presents a detailed 'object biography', contextualising Hadrian's
epitaph in its historical and physical setting at St Peter's over
eight hundred years, from its creation in the late eighth century
during the Carolingian Renaissance through to the early modern
Renaissance of Bramante, Michelangelo, and Maderno.
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