OK, but what does advancing society on purpose look like, in the 800s? This is before the invention of the concept of progress. People could only aspire to be good in a way that equated loosely to "holy", which for Charlemagne seems to have included "scholastic", and I think that's as reasonably close to intentionally advancing society as you're going to get, at that time. You may prefer to venerate some Frankish monk instead, who valued scholarship without also killing thousands of Saxons, but such a person would be less influential and would probably also approve of mass slaughter of pagans anyway.
Beccaria is interesting, it's true. Nothing wrong with digging up the underrated and overlooked, if you can find them.
I suggest reading the blog article about Beccaria. This is a great example.
> You may prefer to venerate some Frankish monk instead, who valued scholarship without also killing thousands of Saxons, but such a person would be less influential and would probably also approve of mass slaughter of pagans anyway.
You're not making a good argument about why we should venerate mass murderers. It basically boils down to "sometimes it results in good things".
Beccaria is interesting, it's true. Nothing wrong with digging up the underrated and overlooked, if you can find them.