The European Middle Ages are an extraordinarily rich field of interdisciplinary study. It argues that this altered understanding of Romanness corresponds with what we know about the Carolingian concept of Romanum imperium, meaning that although the term itself had been borrowed from older tradition, the concept it conveyed was genuinely contemporary. The study exposes a significant semantic shift in the term Romanus from the late seventh century, from a mainly ethnic characterization towards a two-level notion which referred simultaneously to the (restricted) territory of the city of Rome and to the (supra-regional) Catholic Church and community. It then discusses whether the Carolingian notion of Romanness might help provide a better appreciation of how the meaning of the term Romanum imperium might have been understood from a contemporary perspective. To this aim, it establishes what messages the term Romanus conveyed by looking at contemporary concepts of “Roman” identity and Romanness as they emerge from the written sources. Did it delineate the entire Carolingian domain or only a smaller part of it? Was the denomination and concept of a Romanum imperium adopted from antique tradition, the Byzantine Empire or was the notion behind it a completely new invention? This paper approaches these questions by focussing on the meaning of the term Romanus at the time of Charlemagne’s imperial coronation. Many aspects of Charlemagne’s empire still raise central questions.
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