During the Early Middle Ages, Christianity acquired a new, incisive, and decisive dimension, which would lead its political emanation, the church, to exercise immense power. If already in the late Roman era, with figures such as Constantine and Theodosius, the political potential of Christianity had been explored and it had progressively established itself until becoming the official religion of the empire, in the Early Middle Ages the role of the Christian religion became essential for the realities of central-western Europe, which were politically, socially, and culturally taking shape and defining themselves.

From the 8th to the 10th century, the kingdoms of central-western Europe suffered raids from a sort of new "barbarian invasions," carried out by various polytheistic populations from northern Europe and the steppes of central Asia. Under these pressures, both the entities that had benefited in their genesis from a direct contribution of Roman culture, such as the Romano-barbarian kingdoms of the continent, and those that had assimilated it mainly through the church, such as the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, continued to cultivate the Classical ideal of a civilized world, with which they obviously identified, as opposed to an uncultured north-eastern barbaricum."
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The Christian kingdoms of Early Medieval Europe found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being, if not from an ideal point of view, at least from a factual standpoint, largely a product of that same barbaricum which was now perceived as backward, hostile, and above all, different from themselves.
It was precisely the ancestral belonging to the same cultural milieu that now produced new hordes of plunderers, against which it was imperative to oppose oneself to protect one's stability, that led the European kingdoms to seek a criterion that would draw a clear line of demarcation, an unequivocal "us" and "them". If the difference in customs and habits between a subject of the Carolingian Empire and a Saxon from Westphalia, between an inhabitant of one of the Heptarchy kingdoms and a Dane, could be decidedly subtle, the clearly divergent elements could be recognized mainly, if not exclusively, in the sacred sphere. Belonging or not to the Christian universe became the new criterion that separated the civilized man from the uncultured barbarian. Just as in its expansion process the Roman world had required the realities that ended up being part of it to conform, adopting those social values that sanctioned entry into the assembly of civilized peoples, so too did the Christian kingdoms of Early Medieval Europe require this on a confessional basis, both from their own subjects and from those realities with which they wanted to build a prolonged and productive dialogue.
The representative collegial structure of Christianity, namely the Church, thus progressively acquired immense power, because as the medium and interpreter of the divine message, it was also the one who decided who, both individually and collectively, could be part of the Christian universe. One of the most iconic moments indicating how much the power of the church had established itself in the Early Middle Ages is the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD, during the Christmas Mass on December 25th. Taking advantage of a moment of weakness of the Byzantine Empire (effectively the Eastern Roman Empire, what remained of the previous Roman Empire), at the time ruled by a woman, Empress Irene, Charlemagne had himself crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III.

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