Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard

The reader of this book is, however, forewarned that its title is misleading, since Einhard was not only Charlemagne's courtier, but also Louis the Pious's. Nor is Einhard complete here, for how could one ever hope to squeeze into one small book all the scattered pieces produced and materials touched by someone as busy as Einhard once was. Still it would not be unfair to characterize Einhard's contact with Charles the Great as the defining experience of his life, and I have tried to include here all the works that have been assigned to him with confidence by scholars; and that has over the last century been a shrinking repository, since scholars no longer assign annals or passion poems to his authorship. This book was prepared with students in mind and should not be thought of as a critical contribution to the study of Einhard's writings, one that would surely demand and deserve critical Latin texts with facing translations, variants, notes, and extended commentaries. Someday Einhard's collected writings will be so treated, but the readers of this book will find instead a rather rough and ready translation of his collected works that seeks to be nothing more than helpful.