Warnings, omens and the end of days: the surreal times of the Emperor Charlemagne
From our UK edition
I don’t know if it is still the case, but there was a time in London when the ring of a doorbell on Saturday morning could only mean the Jehovah’s Witnesses and another copy of Watchtower. They all made for some pretty dotty reading in those days, but there was one article that has stuck in the memory – a piece that asked, and predictably answered, the question: ‘How Great was Charlemagne?’ The article concluded: ‘Though then known as Charles the Great, he was great neither in God’s eyes nor in the eyes of those whose standards are set by God’s Word.’ If it is not an attractive judgment, it is one that needs thinking about, because if anyone is equipped to enter into the mind of 8th- and 9th-century Man it is very possibly the Jehovah’s Witness.
