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This paper uses the examples of Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, and Notre-Dame de Paris to argue that Napoleon revised the image of medieval French figures to create a sense of French nationalism that combined French history and the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution. Napoleon invoked the image of Charlemagne to frame himself as the representation of France itself who combined the glory of the French past and the rationalism of the revolutionary present. Artists throughout Europe revised Joan of Arc’s image in the last decades of the eighteenth century from an emblem of the crown and church to an incarnation of the Enlightenment. Napoleon gave Joan’s new depiction official backing by supporting her cult in Orléans. Finally, Napoleon transformed Notre-Dame from an icon of the bond between the crown and church to a representation of French history and the acceptance of Christianity’s place in it with his coronation ceremony.