7. Charlemagne Slept With His Sister – And With His Wife’s Corpse
Charlemagne had an incestuous relationship with his sister, Gillen. Medieval accounts report that he eventually became consumed with guilt over the affair, and visited the tomb of Saint-Gilles, near Nimes, where he prayed for forgiveness. An angel reportedly appeared, and placed a parchment on the altar, declaring that Charlemagne was forgiven, so long as he did not repeat the sin. While the part about the angel showing up is just myth, many modern scholars give credence to the reports of incest. Charlemagne probably did sleep with Gillen, and he probably fathered upon her a son/ nephew, named Roland.
However, sleeping with his sister was not the worst of Charlemagne’s reported perversions. He was rumored to have also been into sleeping with corpses. A variety of texts from the ninth century refer to Charlemagne repeatedly engaging in, but refusing for a long time to confess to, some “unspeakable sin“. He eventually gets it off his chest and seeks absolution for what some modern scholars think was a predilection for necrophilia. The necrophilia reports eventually gave rise to legends in which Charlemagne’s partiality to corpses extended from sexually satisfying his lusts with random corpses, to sleeping with his wife’s corpse after her death.
