Leo crowns Charlemagne in Saint Peter's
The annals report that Pope Leo placed a crown on Charlemagne's head during Christmas Mass at Saint Peter's in Rome.
What this does and does not establish
The source places this Christmas event under DCCCI through nativity-year reckoning. The extracted clause reports the crowning; the ensuing acclamation is a separate clause.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- Europe
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- DCCCI, Christmas Day; Julian 25 December 800
- How we use it
- Year-level placement is limited to the dated source entry.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Read arf.wikitext lines 289–315. DCCC begins at line 291; line 297 dates the Roman arrival ceremonies to VIII Kalendas Decembris (24 November 800). Line 299 continues to Christmas in Rome and announces the numeral change; DCCCI at line 301 explicitly resumes on that same Christmas Day. Lines 305–307 then place the departure after the following Easter on VII Kalendas Maias (25 April 801). Thus the crowning is Julian 25 December 800, not Christmas 801. Edition identity checked in arf-edition.json and edition-response-la.json. Original quotation begins at line 301, character 62231.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Annales regni Francorum
Frankish court annalists
Quoted text (Latin)
Ipsa die sacratissima natalis Domini, cum rex ad missam ante confessionem beati Petri apostoli ab oratione surgeret, Leo papa coronam capiti eius imposuitAI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
On that very most sacred day of the Lord's Nativity, when the king rose from prayer at Mass before the confessio of the blessed apostle Peter, Pope Leo placed a crown on his head.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Annales regni Francorum https://la.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=264822 Public-domain historical original. Wikisource contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Attribute the fixed transcription and share adapted excerpts alike. Project working translation.
Exact source version
5d69b884530b6531999741de1384a2cab1369e6bd8fb8b41086fb597376bbf83Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s701_frank_795_800_800_6
Exact revision fingerprint
e3a10dc314b21fbb228f91c51f72f29bd8bd8c1383aaa9c6e4c2a51e303adaf7