Phantom time conspiracy theory

It hypothesizes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII,[further explanation needed] to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retroactively, in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history[1] to legitimize Otto's claim to the Holy Roman Empire.

He was active in an association dedicated to Immanuel Velikovsky, catastrophism and historical revisionism, the Gesellschaft zur Rekonstruktion der Menschheits- und Naturgeschichte (English: Society for the Reconstruction of Human and Natural History).

Before focusing on the early medieval period, Illig published various proposals for revised chronologies of prehistory and of Ancient Egypt.

His 1996 Das erfundene Mittelalter (English: The Invented Middle Ages) also received scholarly recensions, but was universally rejected as fundamentally flawed by historians.

[7] In 1997, the journal Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften (English: Ethics and Social Sciences) offered a platform for critical discussion to Illig's proposal, with a number of historians commenting on its various aspects.

The phantom time hypothesis claims Charlemagne did not exist.
Lessay Abbey , an example of Romanesque architecture