taly; while even beyond these bounds he exercised
an acknowledged but shadowy authority. In 806 Charles arranged a
division of his territories among his three legitimate sons, but this
arrangement came to nothing owing to the death of Pippin in 810, and of
the younger Charles in the following year. Charles then named his
remaining son Louis as his successor; and at his father's command Louis
took the crown from the altar and placed it upon his own head. This
ceremony took place at Aix on the 11th of September 813. In 808 the
Frankish authority over the Obotrites was interfered with by Gudrod
(Godfrey), king of the Danes, who ravaged the Frisian coasts and spoke
boastfully of leading his troops to Aix. To ward off these attacks
Charles took a warm interest in the building of a fleet, which he
reviewed in 811; but by this time Gudrod had been killed, and his
successor Hemming made peace with the emperor.

In 811 Charles made his will, which shows that he contemplated the
possibility of abdication. The bulk of his possessions were left to the
twenty-one metropolitan churches of his dominions, and the remainder to
his children, his servants and the poor. In his last years he passed
most of his days at Aix, though he had sufficient energy to take the
field for a short time during the Danish War. Early in 814 he was
attacked by a fever which he sought to subdue by fasting; but pleurisy
supervened, and after partaking of the communion, he died on the 28th of
January 814, and on the same day his body was buried in the church of St
Mary at Aix. In the year 1000 his tomb was opened by the emperor Otto
III., but the account that Otto found the body upright upon a throne
with a golden crown on the head and holding a golden sceptre in the
hands, is generally regarded as legendary. The tomb was again opened by
the emperor Frederick I. in 1165, when the remains were removed from a
marble sarcophagus and placed in a wooden coffin. Fifty years later they
were transferred by order of the emperor Frederick II. to a splendid
shrine, in which the relics are still exhibited once in every six years.
The sarcophagus in which the body originally lay may still be seen at
Aix, and other relics of the great emperor are in the imperial treasury
at Vienna. In 1165 Charles was canonized by the antipope Paschal III. at
the instance of the emperor Frederick I., and Louis XI. of France gave
strict orders that the feast of the saint should be observed.