Walafridus Strabo was abbot of a Frankish monastery from 842 to 849.

The Emperor Lewis I. (Lewis the Pious, 814–840) was the son and successor of Charles the Great. His weakness and pietism did much to wreck the imperial structure of Charles.

Neither the headings nor the decorations (incisiones) are given in the present translation. The decorations necessarily disappear, and the various headings to the paragraphs, not being the work of Eginhard, are not usually printed with the text. But Walafridus Strabo was personally known to Eginhard, and his Preface seems, therefore, to deserve reproduction.

That is, though there are many who would be ready to write Charles’s life, Eginhard thinks that he has peculiar qualifications for the task which make it obligatory on him to do so.

The Latin of Eginhard’s Life is much superior to the general monkish Latin of his period. See Introduction.

This is King Childeric III., who was deposed in 751 by a National Council, with the approval of the Pope. Pippin the Short was then elected king, and crowned by Boniface. With Childeric the Merovingian dynasty ends, and gives place to the curiously-named Carolingian, of which Charlemagne was the greatest representative.

Eginhard here makes a mistake. The Pope was not [pg 162] Stephen, who held the Papal See from 752 to 757, but Zacharias, who was Pope from 741 to 752. Eginhard’s mistake is, perhaps, due to the fact that the decision of Zacharias was confirmed by his successor.

Mr Carless Davis remarks on this passage: “Eginhard errs in representing this as an indignity. Religious usage demanded that the king of the race should make his progresses in this primitive vehicle. The Merovingians were a national priesthood. Here also we have the explanation of their flowing locks and beard. The touch of steel—a metal unknown to the Frankish nation in its infancy—would have profaned their persons. Similarly the priesthood of ancient Rome were forbidden to remove the hair from their faces except with bronze tweezers.” (“Life of Charlemagne,” p. 28.)

This is Charles Martel—Charles the Hammer—who “reigned” as Mayor of the Palace from 715 to 741. His great victory (variously known as the Battle of Poitiers, or the Battle of Tours, though the former is the more accurate title) was fought in 732, and is regarded as the “Salamis of Western Europe.” It was the first serious blow that the Mohammedan advance had received, and its effects were decisive. The second battle, fought near Narbonne, completed the work of the first.

Pippin, father of Charles Martel, and grandfather of Pippin the Short, was Mayor of the Palace from 687 to 714.

Pippin’s reign really lasted for rather more than sixteen years—from 751 to 768.

This statement, as is clear from other sources, does not correspond with the facts. Charles took Austrasia, and the greater part of Neustria, with the lands lying between the Loire and the Garonne. Burgundy, Provence, Alsace, Alemannia, and the south-eastern part of Aquitaine fell to Carloman.

Carloman died in December 771. His death removed from the path of Charles one of the most serious obstacles. The custom of the Frankish monarchy was equal inheritance of all the sons. It was this which contributed so [pg 163] much to the disruption of the Frankish power on the death of Charles; but for the death of Carloman the “Empire” would never have been founded, or founded only after bitter civil war. Eginhard again makes a mistake in dates. The two brothers had administered the realm in common for more than three years.

This reticence of Eginhard’s about his hero’s early life, about which it would have been quite easy to procure information, has seemed to many to lend colour to a report that Charles was born before the Church had sanctioned the marriage of his parents.

Hunold was the father of Waifar, and had for twenty years lived as a monk in the Island of RhÉ, but upon the death of his son he left his monastic retreat in the hope of re-establishing the fortunes of his family in Aquitaine.

The Saxon war—the greatest task of Charles’s whole reign—lasted with some intermissions for more than thirty years (from 772 to 804). By his conquest and conversion of the fierce and heathen Saxons—who occupied the lands in the valleys of the Ems and the Weser and reached as far as the Elbe—he laid the foundations of mediÆval and modern Germany.

For an account of the religious beliefs and practices of the Saxons, see Davis’s “Charlemagne,” p. 95.

The “conversion” of Saxony by Charles was of the most forcible kind. No Mohammedan ever offered the choice between the Koran and the edge of the sword more clearly than Charles put death or baptism before the Saxons. The “Saxon Poet,” who in the next century wrote in honour of the King who had destroyed the independence of his land, tells how Charles used the whole force of his army to drag the Saxons from the devil’s power; and remarks, as a matter of course, that persuasion and argument are not sufficient to turn the heathen from their faith.

The river Hasa is near OsnabrÜck.

This is the famous defeat of Roncesvalles, where later legends affirmed that “Charlemagne with all his peerage [pg 164] fell at Fontarabia,” and where Roland wound his horn, whose sound is still heard in the verse of Milton. By a strange chance this incident becomes one of the most famous in the cycle of mediÆval Charlemagne legends; and Roland, evermore transfigured from the historical warden of the Breton march, becomes, after long wanderings, the Orlando of the “Orlando Furioso” of Ariosto. But the historical Roland seems mentioned here, and here only.

The Duchy of Beneventum embraced a large part of the Italian peninsula south of Rome. It had been for a long time connected, in loose feudal dependence, with the Lombard monarchy of North Italy, and, since that had been overwhelmed and annexed by Charles, was now regarded as a dependency of the Carolingian monarchy.

Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, had offended Charles by claiming independent sovereignty and refusing to recognise Charles in any way as his overlord. From the beginning of Charles’s reign there had been friction between them, but for some time a hollow truce had existed. War came in 787, in spite of the efforts of the Papacy at mediation, and ended swiftly, as described in the text, owing to the overwhelming strength of the armies brought against Tassilo by Charles. But the past of Bavaria was too great to allow its Duke to accept the position of inferiority, and in the next year Tassilo was deposed, tonsured, and imprisoned in a monastery.

It was part of Charles’s general policy to displace the dukes of his realm, with their undefined and dangerous powers, and to administer his dominions by a large number of counts, who were to begin with quite dependent officials executing the orders of the King over a limited area. “Count” was not yet the great title of nobility which it became later.

The Wiltzes lived on the shores of the Baltic between the Elbe and the Oder.

This “gulf” of Eginhard’s presents geographical difficulties. The direction indicated and the approximate measurements suggested make it impossible to apply his [pg 165] words to the whole of the Baltic Gulf. The south-eastern part of the Baltic will correspond fairly well to the description.

The war against the Avars was due to the alliance which had existed between them and Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria. The Avars, though allied in race to the ancient Huns and the modern Magyars, were, nevertheless, a distinct people. Charles’s war entirely broke their power, and removed a great danger from western Europe.

“The Monk of St Gall” (II. i.) gives an interesting description of the vast concentric earthworks by which the power of the Kagan was defended, and his account rests on better authority than much of his strange chronicle. See also Dr Hodgkin’s “Life of Charles the Great,” p. 155.

The vast treasure of the Avars had an important influence on the course of Charles’s career. This great influx of the precious metals into Germany depreciated the value of the coinage and raised the price of commodities.

This is Tersatz, a town of Istria.

These Northmen (or Danes, as they are usually called when they appear in English history) proved themselves the most terrible enemies of civilisation during the next century. “The Monk of St Gall” makes Charles prophesy the ruin that would come eventually on his Empire from these northern sea-rovers. The attacks of the Northmen were among the most direct causes of the subsequent disruption of the Empire of Charles.

This is an exaggeration of Eginhard’s. Charles did, indeed, greatly extend the Frankish dominions; but he strengthened them still more decisively by the improvements which he introduced into the internal order and administration.

The Balearic Sea is the western Mediterranean.

“Non aliter quam proprium suum.” Feudalism in any strict sense of the word was not yet established; but Alfonso was, in effect, “commending” himself to a feudal superior.

The spelling of the original is retained; but the “Aaron” of Eginhard is the great Caliph Harun-al-Raschid, the Abassid Caliph of Bagdad, whose actions play so large a part in fiction as well as in history.

It is strange, in view of the friendly relations of Charles with the Mohammedan ruler of the East, that later legend so persistently represented Charles as a Crusader, driving the Paynim from the Holy City. The height of unreality is reached when, as in Ariosto, we find Charlemagne relieving the city of Paris, which is being besieged by the Mohammedans.

This elephant caused a great sensation in Europe. His arrival, life, and death are carefully noted by the chroniclers.

The exact meaning of the original is far from clear (ne qua hostis exire potuisset). The ingress rather than the egress is what Charles must have wished to prevent, but there seems no doubt about the reading.

“The Monk of St Gall” says that the cause of this repudiation was the constant illness of his wife, and her incapacity to bear him children.

This Hildigard was only thirteen years of age at the time of her marriage with Charles. Besides the children mentioned by Eginhard she bore to Charles three others—Lothaire, Adelais, and Hildigard.

Fastrada is regarded by Eginhard elsewhere as the evil influence on Charles’s life, urging him against the natural bent of his character to acts of cruelty and violence. Dr Hodgkin, however, points out that the most cruel act of his reign—the massacre of 4500 Saxons—took place before his marriage with Fastrada.

The betrothal of Hruotrud to the Eastern Emperor, and the rupture of the marriage contract, is a somewhat obscure thread in the diplomacy of the reign of Charles. Note that the betrothal took place in 781, during the residence of Charles at Rome, but nineteen years before he had assumed the imperial title. Religious difference and political jealousies probably both played their part in the rupture. [pg 167] Both Frankish and Greek chroniclers are anxious to maintain that the repudiation came from their side.

If scandal is to be believed, the Court of Charles, in spite of his devotion to the Church and his anxiety to maintain a high standard of morals, was the scene of much licence and disorder.

This conspiracy of Pippin took place in the years 785 and 786.

We have here the natural and simple beginnings of the ceremony that afterwards reached such great proportions in the lever and coucher of the French kings.

This reference to Greek at the Court of Charlemagne is interesting in view of the exaggerated views sometimes held on the disappearance of Greek in the Middle Ages.

This is Alcuin of York, one of the greatest of Englishmen; undoubtedly, as Eginhard says, the most learned man of his time. His letters form a valuable source of information for the inner life of Charlemagne and his Court.

This passage has been closely scrutinised and commented on. Do Eginhard’s words imply that Charlemagne could not write at all? This seems a very improbable interpretation of them. Parum successit would rather mean that “he made but little headway.” It may well be that the King was able to write roughly and in an ordinary way but failed to acquire the elegant and delicate calligraphy that was aimed at by the scribes of the time.

Eginhard passes very lightly over these epoch-making events of Christmas Day in the year 800, when the imperial title was again assumed by a ruler of the West, and the MediÆval Empire was launched with all its vast consequences, both for the theory and practice of the Middle Ages.

Charlemagne’s expressed regret for what occurred (of which we hear from other sources) has been variously interpreted. It can hardly refer to the imperial title altogether; for this certainly was not unexpected, nor was it due merely to the decision of the Pope. Charles had [pg 168] himself decided to adopt it: it was the coping-stone to all his policy and his whole career, for in power Charles was Emperor before the consecration of that famous Christmas Day. The regret expressed by Charles more probably refers to the method in which the title was bestowed: it came to him too much as a grant from the Papacy, too little as the result of his own power and will. His heart may well have foreboded something of the long struggle between Empire and Papacy, which agitated the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, which caused so much bloodshed on both sides of the Alps, and which in the end ruined the power of both Emperor and Pope: for this struggle had its roots in the indefinite basis of the imperial title. The regrets of Charlemagne are probably in close relation to the wars of Henry IV., of Frederick Barbarossa, and of Frederick II. Had the Papacy the right to give or to withhold the imperial title? That was the great underlying problem of the imperial position.

The Roman Emperors are the Emperors at Constantinople.

That is to say, the legal systems of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks.

Nothing in all the policy of Charles gives such an impression of enlightenment as the actions alluded to here. A collection of German sagas, and a grammar of the German language as it was in the year 800—what would not posterity give for these? The disappearance of the former is due to the policy of his son and successor Lewis the Pious, whose piety had little in common with the robust and broad views of his father. The biographer of Lewis tells us that Lewis “rejected the national poems, which he had learnt in his youth, and would not have them read or recited or taught.”

Their names (in the original) are as follows:—Wintarmanoth, Hornung, Lentzinmanoth, Ostarmanoth, Winnemanoth, Brachmanoth, Hewimanoth, Aranmanoth, Witumanoth, Windumemanoth, Herbistmanoth, Heiligmanoth.

This curt and definite statement of Eginhard disposes at once of the well-known story of Otto III.’s visit to Charlemagne’s grave in the year 1000, and his remarkable discovery there. But the story is so famous that it may be given in the words of the chronicler of Novalese, who is our chief authority for it.

“After the passage of many years the Emperor Otto III. came into the district where the body of Charles was lying duly buried. He descended into the place of burial with two bishops and Otto, Count of Lomello; the Emperor himself completed the party of four. Now, the Count gave his version of what happened much as follows:—‘We came then to Charles. He was not lying down, as is usual with the bodies of the dead, but sat on a sort of seat, as though he were alive. He was crowned with a golden crown; he held his sceptre in his hands, and his hands were covered with gloves, through which his nails had forced a passage. Round him there was a sort of vault built, strongly made of mortar and marble. When we came to the grave we broke a hole into it and entered, and entering, were aware of a very strong odour. At once we fell upon our knees and worshipped him, and the Emperor Otto clothed him with white garments, cut his nails, and restored whatever was lacking in him. But corruption had not yet taken anything away from his limbs; only a little was lacking to the very tip of his nose. Otto had this restored in gold; he then took a single tooth from his mouth, and so built up the vault, and departed.’”

The reference is to the Book of Daniel ii. 33.

The pilgrimage is, of course, life.

The visit of Albinus (or Alcuin) of York to the court of King Charles is alluded to in Eginhard’s Life of Charles, Ch. xxv. His arrival in Frankland occurred in 781, and was of the utmost importance in stimulating and guiding the intellectual renascence of Charles’s reign.

“Lord, if I am still useful to thy people I will willingly take on myself this labour on their behalf. Thy will be done” is the full versicle, which comes on the 11th November (St Martin’s Day). The story in the text is made intelligible when we find that more than one of the responses that follow end with the words “Thy will be done.” The poor clerk knew that, and started off, therefore, on the Lord’s Prayer, which he knew would bring him to the right ending.

Grimald was Abbot of St Gall from 841 to 872. It will be noticed all through the piece that the narrative becomes more full and definite, though not necessarily more truthful, when it touches on the writer’s own monastery.

The whole of this statement is a tissue of absurdities, which are, however, worth a moment’s attention, as giving some indication of the value that is to be attached to the Monk of St Gall’s testimony. The Pope Stephen here alluded to must be Stephen II., who occupied the Papal throne from 752 to 757. He it was who crowned Pippin King of the Franks in 754. He can have had nothing to do with Charlemagne, who did not reign until 768; but the words of the text (se ad gubernacula regni perunxit) can only refer to Charles. It must have been Pope Stephen III. (768–772) to whom Charlemagne appealed if there is any truth in the story at all; and Pope Stephen III. can, of course, have had nothing to do with Hilderich.

Pope Leo III. did not succeed Pope Stephen until after an interval of twenty-three years. Pope Leo III.’s date is 795–816.

For Drogo see Eginhard’s Life, Ch. xv. But again the unhistorical character of the narrative is shown by the fact that Drogo was made Bishop of Metz, after the death of Charles, and against his own will.

A curious display of trivial learning! But it is interesting to note the mention of Greek as of a language not wholly unknown to a monk of the ninth century.

See Eginhard’s Life, Ch. xxiv., for the difficulties found by Charles in observing the fasts of Lent.

Here is another notorious error. Hildigard died in 783. Fastrada was queen when, in 791, Charles advanced to the war against the Avars.

The next six chapters are omitted, because in them the Monk of St Gall is led away, by his desire to tell a good and edifying story, into matter that has no connection of any kind with Charlemagne, and is sometimes offensive to modern taste. The stories are for the most part to the discredit of the Episcopal order. A single phrase in Chapter xxv. may be noted, as indicating the theocratic view of Charles which the writer takes throughout: “the most religious Charles” is called episcopus episcoporum, “the bishop of bishops.”

Our author here again handles events of the most general notoriety in a spirit completely independent of historical accuracy. Leo III. was, it is true, the Pope to whose assistance Charlemagne came; but no Michael was ruling at that time in Constantinople. Michael II. reigned from 820–829, and Michael III. from 842–867. Thus the name was associated, in the mind of the Monk of St Gall, with the imperial throne of the east—and that was more than enough. The sentiment attributed to the Emperor is as impossible as his name is inaccurate.

St Pancras is one of the saints given by the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian to the calendar of the Church. He is said to have been executed in his fourteenth year in the year 295. The following extract from the Golden Legend will explain the reference in the text:—“Of him said Gregory of Tours, Doctor: That if there be a man that will make a false oath in the place of his sepulchre, tofore or he came to the chancel of the quire he shall be travailed with an evil spirit and out of mind, or he shall fall on the pavement all dead. It happed on a time that there was a great altercation between two men, and the judge wist not who had wrong. And, for the jealousy of justice that he had, he brought them both unto the altar of Saint Peter for to swear, praying the apostle that he would declare who had right. And when he that had wrong had [pg 172] sworn and had none harm the judge who knew the malice of him said all on high: This old Peter here is either over-merciful, or he is propitious to this young man, but let us go to Pancrace and demand we of him the truth; and when they came to the sepulchre, he that was culpable swore and stretched forth his hand, but he might not withdraw his hand again to him, and anon after he died there, and therefore unto this day, of much people it is used that for great and notable causes men make their oaths upon the relics of S. Pancrace.”

This celebrated coronation took place on Christmas Day of the year 800, and marks the foundation of the MediÆval Empire. Charles is known to have expressed regret either at the fact or the manner of the presentation of the imperial crown; and the Monk of St Gall is not so wide of the point as usual in the account he gives of the causes of his hesitation.

Giants figure largely in the stories which are told of St Antony’s temptation. The Golden Legend says: “S. Anthony recordeth of himself that he had seen a man so great and so high that he vaunted himself to be the virtue and the providence of God and said to me: ‘Demand of me what thou wilt, and I shall give it to thee.’ And I spit in the midst of his visage, and anon I armed me with the sign of the cross, and ran upon him, and anon he vanished away. And after this the devil appeared to him in so great stature that he touched the heaven, etc.” Gigantic appearances figure, too, elsewhere in the story of St Antony’s trials.

Two motives are to be detected in most of these stories beyond the general purpose of moral and religious edification. There is the jealousy of the bishops, so usually felt by the monks, and there is the scorn felt by the northern peoples for the refinements of the Italian population.

I have inserted the passage in brackets, which seems necessary to give meaning to the following instances.

This King of the Franks is, of course, not Charlemagne, but Charles the Third, called the Fat, who in 883 spent three days in the Monastery of St Gall.

Julian’s death took place in 367. It need scarcely be pointed out that the Monk’s historical narrative is here of the very wildest description.

It is unnecessary to disentangle the Monk’s strange perversion of history; but it may be noted that he identifies the Avars, whom Charlemagne subdued, with the Huns who followed Attila. But the Huns and the Avars, though allied in race, were two quite distinct nationalities.

It would be an interesting inquiry whether archÆological or historical research corroborates in any way this interesting account which Adalbert gives of the Hunnish fortifications.

These three sons are—Charles, who died in 811; Pippin, who died in 810; and Lewis, who succeeded to the undivided dominions of Charlemagne, and is usually known as Lewis the Pious.

The Persians of the ninth century are by the Monk identified with the Persians of the period of Marathon and Salamis.

It must be remembered that the whole of the Monk’s narrative is nominally addressed to Charles the Fat, great-grandson of Charlemagne.

This is the famous Haroun al Raschid already mentioned in Eginhard’s Life of Charlemagne.

There is really no doubt about the identification of the Arar. It is the SaÔne, the most important of the tributaries of the Rhone.

This is Lewis of Bavaria, who was King of Germany from 843–876, the son of Lewis the Pious, and the father of Charles the Fat.

The Monk’s method here is not difficult to understand. The words of St Ambrose and the parallel between the Saint and Charles are clearly introduced to give evidence of the writer’s wide learning.

Charles the Fat had no children; but he had a brother, Carloman, King of Bavaria, and another, Lewis, King of Saxony.

St Hemmeramm (or Emmeran, as the name is [pg 174] now usually written) was first a bishop in some Frankish see (possibly Poitiers) who about 649 went as a missionary to the idolaters of Bavaria. He was assassinated in 652 near Munich, on his road to Rome. A church in Regensburg is still called by his name.

This conspiracy is given in Eginhard’s Life, Chap, xx., but without the Monk’s picturesque details, and with the substitution of Prumia (in the Moselle country) for the Monastery of St Gall. Eginhard’s authority must, of course, be preferred, and we have, therefore, a striking instance of the monkish chronicler’s desire to turn everything to the honour of his own cloister.

This story has a long history. It is first told of Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus; it was then adapted by Livy (1–54) to Tarquin, King of Rome, with slight alterations. The same story, which is here told somewhat clumsily, and applied to Charlemagne, is given by Ekkehard as belonging to the reign of Charles III.

The reference is to the Monastery of Prumia, which was destroyed by the Northmen in 882.

Thurgau is in Switzerland.

“Eis,” meaning terrible; and “here” an army.

No Northman made any permanent settlement on the Moselle either in the reign of Charles or at any other time. At most this can refer only to the boast, or design, of some such chief as Gotefrid.

The allusion to the Nordostrani fixes this reference to the year 882, when the Northmen were a terrible and increasing danger to all Frankland. The Arnulf here mentioned was the son of Charles the Fat, and, later, Emperor.

This story of King Pippin’s visit to Rome is entirely legendary. It is repeated by later chroniclers, but is certainly without basis of any kind.

I confess myself unable to make anything out of the jester’s references to Atto.