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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.
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Q 01Who was Charlemagne's father?
Pepin the Short
His mother was Bertrada of Laon, who later brokered a Lombard marriage for him.
Q 02Charlemagne was named after which grandfather, victor at Tours?
Charles Martel
The name Charles is unattested before Charles Martel and Charlemagne.
Q 03What does the name Charlemagne mean, from the French?
Charles the Great
In German he is Karl der Große and in Dutch Karel de Grote.
Q 04Charlemagne's Latin name became the word for 'king' in which language family?
Slavic
Russian korol', Polish król and Slovak kráľ all descend from Karolus.
Q 05Which birth year for Charlemagne has scholarship favoured since the late 20th century?
748
An older tradition said 742; the biographer Einhard claimed he was 72 at his death, echoing Psalm 90's threescore and ten.
Q 06Which last Merovingian king did Charlemagne's father depose in 751 or 752 to take the throne himself?
Childeric III
Pope Stephen II anointed Pepin as king when he visited Francia in 754.
Q 07With which brother did Charlemagne share the Frankish kingdom from 768 until 771?
Carloman
When the brother died suddenly, his widow fled with her children to the Lombard court.
Q 08Which Lombard king did Charlemagne depose in 774 after the siege of Pavia?
Desiderius
He had been Charlemagne's father-in-law until Charlemagne sent his daughter home.
Q 09What happened to Charlemagne's nephews, sons of his late brother, after he captured Verona in 774?
Their fate is unknown
Janet Nelson compares them to the Princes in the Tower.
Q 10What pagan Saxon monument did Charlemagne destroy at Eresburg in 772?
The Irminsul
It opened more than thirty years of near-continuous war with the Saxons.
Q 11Which Saxon leader fled to Denmark in 777 and resisted until his 785 baptism?
Widukind
His baptism ended the first phase of the Saxon Wars.
Q 12How many Saxon prisoners do the annals say Charlemagne had beheaded in the Massacre of Verden in 782?
4,500
Alessandro Barbero calls it perhaps the greatest stain on his reputation.
Q 13What did the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae prescribe for pagan practices?
The death penalty
It amounted to a programme for the forced conversion of the Saxons.
At which pass in the Pyrenees was Charlemagne's rearguard ambushed by Basques in 778?
Q 21According to his biographer, what did Charlemagne say about the coronation?
He would not have entered the church had he known the pope's plan
Historians disagree over whether that is truth or a literary device to show his humility.
Q 22Which Byzantine empress, who had blinded her own son, did Charlemagne reportedly propose to?
Irene
Theophanes says she was close to accepting before she was deposed by Nikephoros I.
Q 23Which Byzantine emperor finally recognised Charlemagne's imperial title, sending envoys to his court?
Michael I
Roncevaux
The defeat became the seed of the Song of Roland.
Q 15Which medieval epic poem grew out of the ambush of 778?
The Song of Roland
It belongs to the literary cycle known as the Matter of France, in which Charlemagne leads Christian knights against Muslims.
Q 16Which first cousin of Charlemagne, Duke of Bavaria, was deposed and sent to a monastery in 788?
Tassilo
He was accused of plotting with the Avars; Bavaria was absorbed into the kingdom.
Q 17Which sidelined son of Charlemagne plotted in 792 to assassinate his father and brothers?
Pepin the Hunchback
His mother Himiltrude's relationship with the king was by then treated as illegitimate; he was sent to a monastery.
Q 18On what day was Charlemagne crowned emperor in St Peter's Basilica?
Christmas Day 800
The pope prostrated himself before him after the coronation, in the manner of Roman ritual.
Q 19Which pope crowned Charlemagne emperor?
Leo III
A year earlier the pope's enemies had tried to cut out his eyes and tongue, and he had fled to Charlemagne for help.
Q 20Charlemagne was the first reigning emperor in the West since the deposition of whom in 476?
Romulus Augustulus
His coronation started the centuries-long problem of two emperors with Constantinople.
Charlemagne then issued the first Frankish coins bearing the imperial title.
Q 24Which Abbasid caliph exchanged envoys with Charlemagne in the 790s?
Harun al-Rashid
Their shared interest was Spain; the caliph also gave Charlemagne nominal rule of the Holy Sepulchre.
Q 25The caliph sent Charlemagne an animal named Abul-Abbas, which reached his court in 802. What was it?
An elephant
Charlemagne had asked for it himself as an early sign of friendship.
Q 26Which Jerusalem shrine did the caliph grant Charlemagne nominal rule over?
The Holy Sepulchre
His agents' work in Palestine is recorded in a document called the Basel roll.
Q 27Which Latin word for 'and the Son' did Charlemagne's council of 809 defend adding to the Creed?
Filioque
The pope let the Franks keep it but hung silver shields in St Peter's with the creed omitting it.
Q 28Which city did Charlemagne make his imperial capital and burial place?
Aachen
Its position gave easy access to the Saxon frontier; German kings were crowned there through the Middle Ages.
Q 29Which Northumbrian scholar dominated intellectual life at Charlemagne's court?
Alcuin of York
He described the realm as an Imperium Christianum before the imperial coronation.
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.