Charlemagne Can’t Code

Charlemagne conquered half of Europe, but he couldn’t master his ABCs.

Despite his struggles with writing, Charlemagne sparked one of the greatest revivals of learning of the medieval world: the Carolingian Renaissance. This cultural revolution rescued ancient knowledge, set language on a new course, and educated a generation of clergy and scholars.

It all started with the Latin language. As Charlemagne conquered Europe, he kept finding bad Latin everywhere. Latin was the official language of The Church and universal language of learning in the medieval period. And everybody was getting it wrong.

By the late 700s, the Franks ruled over millions of people in what would become France, Italy, and Spain. Those guys all thought they were speaking the same Latin that Julius Caesar had spoken when he was conquering them way back when.

But hundreds of years after the Roman legions melted away, the languages were on their way to becoming French, Italian, and Spanish. These vernacular dialects had diverged from both Latin and one another, so errors slipped into the Latin in prayers and books.

This bad Latin wasn’t just an annoyance; it was a crisis of biblical proportions. Religion was very important to Charlemagne. As a man who spent his life on the battlefield, he knew how critical divine favor was. He needed all the people in his empire praying for his success against his many foes. And he needed them praying the right words, in Latin, the right way, so God would understand them.

To make it happen, Charlemagne recruited a Dream Team of scholars to his court in Aachen. Led by Alcuin of York, Europe’s top nerds were on a mission to revive classical knowledge. They gathered all the important texts they could find, translating and copying them into pristine Latin.

There were no copy machines or printing presses, and all of these were copied out by hand in the scriptorium. For hours and hours on end. Can you imagine what epic hand cramps the scribes must have had?

This project wasn’t just about fixing Latin in books and prayers; it was about reviving learning itself. With clearer language, people could finally preserve ancient ideas, teach new generations, and make knowledge a unifying force across Europe.

The scholars faced a problem: writing was a mess back then. The texts were from everywhere, and there were huge variations in the way letters were made from region to region. Different scribes from different places wrote differently. There were no punctuation marks, nor were there spacesbetweenwords. You had to be an expert to read, which limited the spread of knowledge and learning.

Alcuin of York popularized Carolingian miniscule as a way to make both reading and copying texts easier. Because it was clearer to read and easier to write, this writing style caught on and became the standard across Europe for the next 400 years. It even survives until today; the Times Roman font on your laptop has its roots in Carolingian minuscule.

Here’s the thing: Charlemagne couldn’t write. He could read, but he couldn’t make the letters with his own hands. His biographer said he kept a wax tablet and stylus by his throne and would try to practice scratching out letters in his free time, but he never got the hang of it.

Charlemagne didn’t just unite Europe with his conquests; he connected it through learning. And isn't it ironic, don't you think, a little too ironic, that the guy who revolutionized writing couldn’t write?

So the next time someone criticizes your handwriting, maybe you can take some comfort in knowing that no matter how bad you scribble, your chicken scratch is better than that of Emperor Charlemagne.

You can write, even if no one but you can read it. You can type, even if you hunt and peck. But can you write code? The modern world runs on ones and zeros. Can you nudge the ones and zeros around to do your bidding? A few business leaders can, but most can’t.

You could learn to code. You could take that free online Python class. But you’re probably not gonna. And here’s the good news: if you’ve made it this far, you might not need to learn to code.

Tech For Non Techies breaks it down in the Harvard Business Review: “The good news is that most leaders don’t need to learn to code. Instead, they need to learn how to work with people who code.”

If you want to work in tech, it’s essential to understand broad technical concepts like the difference between data and software and algorithms and how those things interrelate, but unless you want to build them, you don’t have to get into the weeds.

Software eats the world, but you don’t have to be a developer to chow down. But if you want to lead a company today, you do need to learn to work with technical teams, just as Charlemagne could work with his top scholars.

Charlemagne couldn’t write, but he could tear up a battlefield with his armies. That got him pretty far. What are your strongest business skills? If those have served you well up to now, then maybe double down on them, sharpen your sword and head off into battle.

You can’t do it all. So have respect for the nerds. You need them. They need you. And maybe drop off a flagon of wine or a jar of ale by their desks the next time you see them as a way to say thanks. It might even help them with their hand cramps too.