Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne

Here is King Charles of the Franks, Charlemagne, the Father of Europe, Holy Roman Emperor (748-814 CE). His biography is from one of his closest advisors and confidantes, the scholar Einhard (775-840 CE), with an introduction by the medieval scholar abbot Walafridus Strabo (808-849 CE). Both Strabo and Einhard make efforts to convince their readers and listeners that this account is absolutely historically perfect because Einhard was there. As such, we are supposed to receive it as uncritically as we would a sermon from the Bible. Such ideas of objective impartiality were well-accepted in this age. But finding Einhard’s oblique opinions hidden in the reportage makes for fascinating research. For example, Queen Fastrada seems to represent all that was ever wrong about the reign of Charles to Einhard, and the concubine who followed her is so little loved that he omits her name from the historical record entirely, pretending that he doesn’t recall the name of the mother of one of the children of the King