Charlemagne Trivia
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60 free Charlemagne trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Charlemagne trivia quiz covers the King of the Franks who swallowed the Lombard kingdom, fought the Saxons for thirty years, was crowned emperor in Rome on Christmas Day 800 and left behind a capital at Aachen, a court full of scholars and a script that shaped every typeface since. The easy questions cover the outline: his father, his grandfather, the pope who crowned him, his capital, the ambush that inspired the Song of Roland and the elephant from Baghdad. The harder half is for readers of Einhard: the brother he shared the throne with, the Lombard bride he sent home, the pagan pillar he destroyed, the assembly at Paderborn, the 4,500 executions at Verden, the cousin in Bavaria, the hunchbacked son who plotted his murder, the caliph's gift of the Holy Sepulchre, the empress he may have proposed to, the filioque council, the Danish king killed by his own men, the biographer's measure of seven of his own feet, and the antipope who tried to make him a saint. Every answer was checked against Charlemagne's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our medieval history, Vikings and Holy Roman Empire quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was Charlemagne's father?
Pepin the Short
Pepin the Short. Already the real ruler of the Franks, he had the last Merovingian king deposed in 751 and became the first Frankish king to be anointed.
Q 02Which grandfather of Charlemagne won the Battle of Tours in 732?
Charles Martel
Charles Martel. He was never king, yet he ruled the whole Frankish realm while its kings reigned in name only, and his byname Martel means 'the hammer'.
Q 03What does the name Charlemagne mean, from the French?
Charles the Great
Charles the Great. The name is the French form of the Latin Carolus Magnus, and Charles itself goes back to a Germanic word, Karl, that meant simply 'man'.
Q 04Charlemagne's name became the word for 'king' in which language family?
Slavic
Slavic. Russian korol', Polish król and Slovak kráľ all go back to Karl, just as Caesar's name gave German its Kaiser and Russian its tsar.
Q 05Before taking the crown, Charlemagne's father ruled as what?
Mayor of the palace
Mayor of the palace. The office had eclipsed the figurehead Merovingian kings, and in 751 Charlemagne's father dropped the pretence, had the last of them deposed and took the crown himself.
Q 06Which last Merovingian king did Charlemagne's father depose in 751 or 752 to take the throne himself?
Childeric III
Childeric III was shut away in the monastery of Saint-Bertin, and the pope later crossed the Alps to anoint the new king in person.
Q 07With which brother did Charlemagne share the Frankish kingdom from 768 until 771?
Carloman
Carloman died suddenly in December 771; his widow fled with their sons to the Lombard court, and Charlemagne took the whole kingdom.
Q 08Which Lombard king did Charlemagne depose in 774 after the siege of Pavia?
Desiderius
Desiderius had been Charlemagne's father-in-law until the Frank sent his daughter home; after Pavia fell he lived out his days in a monastery.
Q 09What became of Charlemagne's nephews, his late brother's sons, after he captured Verona in 774?
Their fate is unknown
Their fate is unknown: the boys and their mother vanish from the record once Verona fell, and historians suspect a monastery, a common end for unwanted heirs.
Q 10What pagan Saxon monument did Charlemagne destroy at Eresburg in 772?
The Irminsul
The Irminsul, a sacred pillar or tree trunk, fell in the raid that opened more than thirty years of near-continuous war with the Saxons.
Q 11Which Saxon leader fled to Denmark in 777 and resisted Charlemagne until his baptism in 785?
Widukind
Widukind was baptised with Charlemagne himself standing as godfather, which ended that phase of the Saxon Wars.
Q 12The annals say Charlemagne had 4,500 Saxon rebels beheaded in 782 at which town?
Verden
Verden. A Saxon revolt had just beaten a Frankish army; when Charlemagne marched in, the Saxons submitted and handed over the men blamed for it themselves.
Q 13What did Charlemagne's Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae prescribe for Saxons who refused baptism?
The death penalty
The death penalty covered even eating meat in Lent, though anyone who confessed to a priest and did penance could be spared.
Q 21According to his biographer, Charlemagne said he would never have done what had he known the pope planned to crown him?
Entered the church
Entered the church. Historians still argue over whether the remark is true or a biographer's device to show the new emperor's humility.
Q 22Which Byzantine empress, who had blinded her own son, did Charlemagne reportedly propose to?
Irene
Irene's match with Charlemagne, reported by the chronicler Theophanes, came to nothing: her own officials deposed her in 802 and exiled her to Lesbos.
Q 23To win Byzantine recognition as emperor, Charlemagne gave up his claim to which Adriatic city?
Venice
Venice. His son, the king of Italy, had brought it under Frankish rule; once the claim was dropped, Byzantine envoys hailed Charlemagne as emperor at his own court in 812.
Q 14At which pass in the Pyrenees was Charlemagne's rearguard ambushed by Basques in 778?
Roncevaux
Roncevaux. The Basques wiped out the rearguard to the last man, plundered the baggage train and slipped away under cover of night.
Q 15Which medieval epic poem grew out of the ambush of Charlemagne's rearguard in 778?
The Song of Roland
The Song of Roland, written some three centuries later, turns the Basque ambushers into a Saracen army and a border skirmish into a heroic last stand.
Q 16Which first cousin of Charlemagne, Duke of Bavaria, was deposed and sent to a monastery in 788?
Tassilo
Tassilo was accused of plotting with the Avars, stripped of his duchy and shut in a monastery, and Bavaria was absorbed into the Frankish kingdom.
Q 17Which sidelined son of Charlemagne plotted in 792 to assassinate his father and brothers?
Pepin the Hunchback
Pepin the Hunchback was betrayed before he could strike; his fellow plotters were punished, and he was tonsured and sent to the monastery of Prüm.
Q 18On what day was Charlemagne crowned emperor in St Peter's Basilica?
Christmas Day 800
Christmas Day 800. Two days earlier the pope had sworn an oath clearing himself of the charges his Roman enemies had brought against him.
Q 19Which pope crowned Charlemagne emperor?
Leo III
Leo III had been attacked in Rome in 799 by enemies who tried to cut out his eyes and tongue, and had fled north to Charlemagne for protection.
Q 20Charlemagne was the first reigning emperor in the West since the deposition of whom in 476?
Romulus Augustulus
Romulus Augustulus was a boy-emperor whom the general Odoacer deposed and sent into retirement; Charlemagne's crowning left two rival emperors, in the West and at Constantinople.
Q 24Which Abbasid caliph exchanged envoys with Charlemagne in the 790s?
Harun al-Rashid
Harun al-Rashid and Charlemagne had rivals in common: the Umayyad emirate in Spain and the Byzantine Empire, with which the caliph was at war.
Q 25Which animal, named Abul-Abbas, reached Charlemagne's court in 802 as a gift from the Abbasid caliph?
An elephant
An elephant. Charlemagne had asked the caliph for one himself; Abul-Abbas wintered in Italy, crossed the Alps and lived until 810.
Q 26Which Jerusalem shrine did the Abbasid caliph place under Charlemagne's nominal rule?
The Holy Sepulchre
The Holy Sepulchre. His biographer says the caliph made the site over to him, and Charlemagne's agents later surveyed the Holy Land's churches to work out the funds they needed.
Q 27Which single Latin word did Charlemagne's council of 809 defend adding to the Creed?
Filioque
Filioque, meaning 'and the Son'. The pope accepted the teaching but refused to alter the Creed, and displayed it in Rome on two silver shields without the word.
Q 28Charlemagne's palace chapel was modelled on San Vitale, a church in which Italian city?
Ravenna
Ravenna. Charlemagne's builders copied the eight-sided church and hauled marble columns north from Ravenna and Rome because none good enough could be found nearer.
Q 29Which scholar did Charlemagne recruit in 781 to direct learning at his court?
Alcuin of York
Alcuin of York headed the most renowned centre of learning in England when the king met him in Italy and talked him into coming; his pupils at court included Charlemagne himself.
Q 30Which script, developed under Charlemagne, went on to influence Renaissance and modern typefaces?
Carolingian minuscule
Monastic scriptoria produced an estimated 90,000 manuscripts in the 9th century.