Charlemagne Might Not Have Been a Good Fit for Tinder
Charlemagne (742 – 814) was one of medieval Europe’s greatest figures. A Frankish king, he led a series of campaigns that unified much of western and central Europe. In 800, he was crowned by Pope Leo III as “Emperor of the Romans” – the first in a line of Holy Roman Emperors that lasted until Napoleon abolished the position in 1806. While inarguably a great man, Charlemagne was also a weirdo, who was into incest and necrophilia. Charlemagne had a thing for his sister, Gillen, and had an incestuous relationship with her. Medieval accounts report that he became consumed with guilt over his conduct, and visited the tomb of Saint-Gilles, near Nimes, where he prayed for forgiveness. An angel then showed up and placed a parchment on the altar. It declared that the saint’s intercession worked, and that God forgave Charlemagne so long as he did not repeat the sin.
While the part about the angel is a myth, many modern scholars give credence to the reports of incest. Charlemagne probably did sleep with Gillen, and he fathered upon her a son/ nephew, named Roland. Incest with his sister was not the worst of Charlemagne’s deviant practices that might’ve gotten him kicked off dating apps like Tinder: he reportedly had a thing for sleeping with corpses. A variety of texts from the ninth century refer to Charlemagne repeated engagement in, but refusal for a long time to confess to, some “unspeakable sin”. He eventually gets it off his chest and seeks absolution for what some scholars think was a predilection for necrophilia. The necrophilia reports eventually gave rise to legends in which Charlemagne’s partiality to corpses extended from satisfying his lusts with random corpses, to sleeping with his wife’s corpse after she died.
