HERE is a piece of news that may have escaped you in the Christmas rush.
First, recall that the German city of Aachen likes to think itself as the starting point of modern Europe as a political and cultural entity. It was the home city of Charles the Great or Charlemagne, who by the time of his death in 814 had forged a powerful empire in the heart of the continent. Apart from lending his name to a colleague's splendid column in The Economist, Charlemagne managed, so his admirers say, to invigorate the European spirit by infusing Christendom with a reviving dose of classical Roman culture. Every year since 1950 the burgers of Aachen have honoured an outstanding contributor to the modern cause of European unity. (Eastern Christians, by the way, don't quite follow that argument; they blame Charlemagne for corrupting the papacy by blackmailing the pope into crowning him emperor, and for setting in motion Christianity's east-west schism.)
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