Two Lives of Charlemagne

by Einhard, Notker the Stammerer, David Ganz (Translator), David Ganz (Editor), David Ganz (Introduction), David Ganz (Noted by)

Overview

Since I have taken upon myself to narrate the public and private life, and no small part of the deeds, of my lord and foster-father, the most lent and most justly renowned King Charles, I have condensed the matter into as brief a form as possible. I have been careful not to omit any facts that could come to my knowledge, but at the same time not to offend by a prolix style those minds that despise everything modern, if one can possibly avoid offending by a new work men who seem to despise also the masterpieces of antiquity, the works of most learned and luminous writers. Very many of them, l have no doubt, are men devoted to a life of literary leisure, who feel that the affairs of the present generation ought not to be passed by, and who do not consider everything done today as unworthy of mention and deserving to be given over to silence and oblivion , but are nevertheless seduced by lust of immortality to celebrate the glorious deeds of other times by some sort of composition rather than to deprive posterity of the mention of their own names by not writing at all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140455052
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/30/2008
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	151,858
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Einhard was born of noble parents in the Main valley around A.D. 770. He became a friend of Charlemagne and his family, and was chosen to invite Charlemagne to crown his son as his successor in 813. After Charlemagne’s death he was a loyal servant of Louis the Pious, and he died in 840.

Notker the Stammerer (A.D. 840-912), also called Notker I, Notker the Poet or Notker of Saint Gall, was a musician, author, poet, and Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall in modern Switzerland.