Early Lives of Charlemagne

Charlemagnes impact on Europe -- on the world -- cannot be underestimated. He brought together diverse cultures in his empire supported scholarship and established the power of the Christian church. In Early Lives of Charlemagne we receive two views of the emperor within a century of his death. According to translator and editor A.J. Grant the differences are instructive. In the treatment by Eginhard who was Charlemagnes personal secretary we read a restrained positive well-arranged narrative that distorts the facts of history wonderfully little. In contrast the Monk of Saint Galls version was written about seventy years after the emperors death when the mist of legend and myth steamed up rapidly from the grave of a well-known figure. Taken together these essays provide information not only about Charles the Great but also about the task of writing history and biography.