Wladyslaw Polakowski

When Charles the Great really died and where his life chronicle had wroten.

This work is attempt to calculate the most precise date of the Charle's the Great death according to information from the main source about hid life, Einhard's chronicl, according dating of astronomical events mentioned in it.

Traditionally is believed that he died in year 815.

There is in Einhard's chronicle (1) in chapter 32 information last three year of his life were seen solar eclipses.

If we shall consider this information seriously we shall obtain problem: in years N, N+1, N+2 was held good visible solar eclipses.

At the search of this three eclipses author proceed from following:

- Years of Charles the Great life we considered at very beginning as unknown and the range of his life we considered that he lived later then in 6-th centuries hence down bottom the frontier of search is 6-th century and the up frontier of search was for concreties 1550-th year

- Eclipses must be held with phase not less 10 (i.e. moon must cover not less 80% of solar diameter, otherwise will it will be necessary to suppose, what eclipse was observationally through semitransparent material, what evidently could not be observationally each and could not be by popular mass-scale sight ancientnesses)

- Eclipses must be seen with the spots of earthly surface, enough known to ancient geographers, acommodate opinions author blazingly have not considerred all eclipses, observational with Indies, Middle Asia, Siberia, Central Africa, in polar north regions of Europe and etc., because about similar gender eclipses author life description Charles the great has not know)

At first time there was looked through Oppolzer's canon printed in 4-th tom works by N. A. Morozov "Christus" (2) and soon after appearance of more precise Krasilnikov's canon this problem was decided with help of Krasilnikov's canon. More comprehensive about it clicking here.

The results obtained wa wrote in table 1.

Principle of composing: three of eclipses are mentioned in table if two of three had phase no less 0.8 and third with arbitrary phase.

Empty cells mean absence of passing eclipses
 

		Aachen		Alexandria		Constantinopol		Hannover		Roma
Number	Year/month/day	UT	Phase	UT	Phase	UT	Phase	UT	Phase	UT	Phase
1.	0539/07/01	.....	.....	.....	.....	17:14	0.437	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	0540/06/20	.....	.....	.....	.....	08:19	0.940	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	0541/12/03	.....	.....	.....	.....	13:30	0.858	.....	.....	.....	.....
2.	0601/03/10	.....	.....	08:00	0.984	08:11	0.769	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	0603/08/12	.....	.....	16:25	0.997	16:12	0.828	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	0604/12/26	.....	.....	11:51	0.878	11:38	0.694	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	0606/06/11	.....	.....	07:47	0.827	08:01	0.855	.....	.....	.....	.....
3.	0810/11/30	10:42	0.939	11:36	0.807	11:20	0.947	10:46	0.933	10:51	0.865
..	0812/05/14	12:52	0.539	13:29	0.789	13:21	0.931	12:56	0.643	12:58	0.870
..	0813/05/04	03:53	0.925	03:15	0.819	03:30	0.975	03:48	0.950	03:59	0.564
4.	0967/07/10	.....	.....	05:29	0.870	05:36	0.831	.....	.....	05:32	0.684
..	0968/12/22	.....	.....	09:22	0.841	09:22	1.031	.....	.....	08:55	1.029
..	0970/05/08	.....	.....	04:17	0.809	04:32	0.967	.....	.....	04:36	0.844
5.	1084/10/02	.....	.....	14:41	0.934	14:22	0.867	.....	.....	14:05	0.889
..	1086/02/16	.....	.....	14:30	0.696	14:24	1.044	.....	.....	14:11	0.861
..	1087/08/01	.....	.....	07:31	0.953	07:32	0.646	.....	.....	07:15	0.572
6.	1173/06/12	.....	.....	03:22	0.866	03:35	0.643	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	1174/11/26	.....	.....	05:22	0.697	05:29	0.898	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	1176/04/11	.....	.....	04:30	0.982	04:45	0.866	.....	.....	.....	.....
7.	1239/06/03	.....	.....	.....	.....	12:49	0.964	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	1240/05/23	.....	.....	.....	.....	02:43	0.542	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	1241/10/06	.....	.....	.....	.....	12:23	0.947	.....	.....	.....	.....
8.	1267/05/25	.....	.....	.....	.....	09:22	0.990	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	1268/11/06	.....	.....	.....	.....	05:01	0.612	.....	.....	.....	.....
..	1270/03/23	.....	.....	.....	.....	05:36	0.890	.....	.....	.....	.....

From this table we can conclude that most passing threes of aclipses are the third and the fourth. In certain stage the fifth three passes too but by the condition that those eclipses was observed from different points of Europe.

It's very interesting: by solving of this problem on the base of the Oppolzer's canon only the third solution what means the third three of eclipses was not obtained as the solution.
It's characteristically that this difficult eclipse 4 May 813 was visible in 5 minut after dawn from Constantinopol.

On the base of upper wrought we can conclude that Einhard's chronicle most eventually had wroted in Constantinopol

January 1999 The last updating August 1999

Back to main author's page
Back to main page about chronology
clicking here you send any message to author