Published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 148, German Writers and Works of the Early Middle Ages: 800-1170, edited by James Hardin and Will Hasty, 1994, pp. 27-31.

Einhard (circa 775-840)

MAJOR WORK:

Vita Karoli Magni Imperatoris (circa 830)

Manuscripts:

More than 80 manuscripts survive, of which five copies of the ninth to tenth centuries, representing the three classes of manuscripts that have survived, form the basis for the standard edition. Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna 510 is the oldest (not later than 850) and least corrupt, although the first leaf containing the Vita Karoli Magni Imperatoris is damaged, and folio 37 is missing.

First publication:

Vita et gesta Karoli cognom. M., Francorum regis fortissimi, et Germaniae suae illustratoris authorisque optime meriti, per Eginhartum illius quandoque alumnum atque seriebam adiuratum, Germanum, Annales regum Francorum Pipini, Karoli, Ludovice ab a. p. Chr. n. 741 usque ad 828, Ed. Hermannus a Nuenare, Apud inclytam Germaniae Coloniam Jo. Soter imprimebat 1521.

Standard Editions:

Einhardi vita karoli magni, edited by O. Holder-Egger, ed. (after G.H. Pertz and G. Waitz), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hanover 1911; reprint 1965); Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, edited and translated by H.W. Garrod and R.B. Mowat, Oxford, 1915; Eginhard, Vie de Charlemagne, edited and translated by Louis Halphen, Paris, 1923; John F. Collins, Vita Karoli Magni, Bryn Mawr, 1984.

Editions in English:

E.S. Firchow and E.H. Zeydel, The Life of Charlemagne, with a facing English translation, Coral Gables, 1972.

Two Lives of Charlemagne, translated by Lewis Thorpe, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1979.

MINOR WORKS

Translatio et Miracula SS. Marcellini et Petri (830)

Manuscripts: Metz E99, 10th century; Vaticanus reginae Christianae 318, ninth century.

First publication: Acta Sanctorum June 2, pp. 181-206.

Standard editions: Alexander Teulet, Einhardi omnia quae extant opera, 1840- 1843, II, pp. 176-377. Migne, PL 104.537-594.

G. Waitz, MGH SS XV 1887, 238-264.

Passio Martyrum Martcellini et Petri. (circa 830)

Manuscripts: three surviving mss.: BN fl 14143, ninth century; Metz E99, tenth century; Vatican Christianiae reginae 711, tenth century.

First publication: Suriana, 1579, De probatis sanctorum historiis III, 555-561, VII, 488-494.

Standard editions:

Passio Martyrum Marcellini et Petri, Ernst Dummler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Poetae Aevi Carolini II, Berlin, Weidmann, 1864, pp. 126-135; Migne PL 104.593-600.

Edition in English: Translated by Barrett Wendell, The history of the translation of the blessed martyrs of Christ, Marcellinus and Peter, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1926.

Questio de adoranda cruce (836)

Manuscript: Vindob. 956, 10th century.

First publication: Dümmler, Neues Archiv 11, 235-238.

Standard editions:

Questio de adoranda cruce, K. Hampe, MGH Ep. V 146-149.

Collection of Psalms (late 830's)

Manuscript:

Vercelli CXLIX 146-155.

First publication:

A selection has been published by M. Vatasso, Bessarione 31 (1915) 92-104.

Letters (823-836)

Manuscripts:

BN ff 11379, ninth century, f. 3-15, contains 71 items, of which 66-71 are by Einhart (37-38 by Einhart's wife Imma).

First publication:

Jacob Sirmond published several in Caroli Calvi Capitula, 1623; nine letters in Duchesne, in Historiae Francorum Scriptoribus II, 695-711; Teulet (2.2-174) published the first complete edition.

Standard editions:

K. Hampe, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Epistolarum, V, Karolini Aevi III, Berlin, Weidmann, pp. 105-145, 641.

Editions in English:

Translated by Henry Preble, The Letters of Einhard, annotated by J.C. Ager, New York and London, 1913 (American Society of Church History, second series, I, pp. 107-158).

Lay abbot, politician (perhaps in spite of himself), occasional theologian, hagiographer, poet, historian, perhaps an artist and an architect, Einhard certainly earned his epitaph, the seven elegiac couplets in which Hrabanus Maurus described him as wise, eloquent, and possessed of many skills. His renown was such (the ninth-century historian know as the Astronomer would call him, sui temporis prudentissimus virorum, "the wisest of the men of his time") that other works were attributed to him, including major parts of the Annales regni Francorum (also called, Annales d'Einhard), the Annales de Fulda, the Annales de Sithiu, of which only a fragment has survived, and the first secular Latin epic of the early middle ages, Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa. A treatise on the Saxons, De adventu, moribus et superstitione Saxonum, is attributed to him by Adam of Bremen, but it has not survived. In addition, he may have contributed to the continuation of the Annals of Lorsch. His letters, hagiographic texts, and poems, some of less certain attribution than others, are clearly the work of a highly competent Carolingian man of letters, but his best known accomplishment is his biography of his patron, king and emperor, Charlemagne.

Born around 770 in Maingau, the son of an East Frankish aristocratic family, Einhard received his education in the monastery at Fulda, a bastion of Christianity among the otherwise resistant Saxons, which would also produce Hrabanus Maurus and Walafrid Strabo; among his other tasks at Fulda, Einhard copied manuscripts (788-791), as six surviving charters, each of which ends with Ego Einhart scripsi, demonstrate.

I n 794 or shortly thereafter Abbot Baugul sent him to court for further education, where, as a student of Alcuin, he rose rapidly. By 796-797 he belonged to the inner circle of Charlemagne's court, where his small stature earned him the nickname Nardulus, while his knowledge of architecture, and perhaps his ability as a craftsman and painter earned him the name of Bezaleel (the builder of the tabernacle, Exodus 31.2-11; 35.30; 38:22).

His knowledge of architecture is generally inferred from the fact that Charles put him in charge of building palatial residences in Aachen. On the basis of some of his letters and on passages in poems by several Carolingian poets, Einhard is reputed to have been among the most trusted of Charles' political advisers. He brought the plan for partitioning Charles' kingdom to Rome in 806, and, according to Ermoldus Nigellus, in 813, as the emperor's spokesman, he managed to negotiate the arrangements by means of which Charles' son Louis, whom Einhart had tutored, was elevated to the position of co-emperor.

When Louis began his reign in 814, Einhard retained his place at court, received benefices, and became the adviser of Louis' son and co-emperor Lothar in 817. In 827 he had brought back from Rome the relics of Saints Marcellinus and Peter to his abbey at Michelstadt, and then transferred to Maingau, later known as Seligenstadt. These transactions and the resultant miracles are described in Translatio SS. Marcellini et Petri, of which Books I and II were composed in 830, and III and IV shortly afterward. This text provides some useful historical and geographical material, as well as an account of the conversation with Hilduin in the course of which Einhard discovered that he had not received all of the ashes that had been sent from Rome. The rhythmic composition, Passio Martyrum Martcellini et Petri, was composed at the same time.

After 830 he remained far from court, although a dependent of Lothar. When the empress Judith asked him to come to Compiègne to aid in the battle between Louis and his son Lothar, he made the attempt, but, according to one of his surviving apologetic letters to Judith, his spleen and kidney prevented him geting further than Valenciennes. In 836 his wife Imma, whom legend would eventually convert into a daughter of Charlemagne, died. At about this time, in response to a request from Lupus of Ferrières, he composed the work on worshipping the cross; he died in 840 in Seligenstadt.

His literary career probably began in the shadow of Alkuin, in his early years at court, but none of the poetry he apparently composed has survived. All of his surviving literary works were produced after he had reached the age of 50. His biography of Charles is his earliest surviving composition. In it he drew upon the Annales Royales, as well as other writings, narrative, diplomatic, and juridical, although he never mentions any of them, at least partially because, as he testifies in his prologue, he was an eye-witness, and therefore, in medieval terms, the most reliable kind of historian. To give effective, convincing shape to his experience, however, he used as a rhetorical, although again unacknowledged, model, Suetonius, provoking one modern reader to call Einhard's book, "The life of the 13th Caesar" (Halphen). Others have condemned the work as a piece of rhetoric rather than of history, but since history was a branch of rhetoric during the middle ages, Einhard might not have been unhappy with such a judgment, particularly had he known that his work would become the model for later royal biographies, like those of William the Conqueror and Frederick Barbarossa.

Reworking the Annales royales, other documents, and his own observed experience, clearly required suppressing parts of historical reality that modern historians sorely regret losing. In addition, fabricating a Suetonian, magisterial posture produced occasional passages difficult to understand. Nevertheless, Einhard's Vita Karoli, the first secular biography of the middle ages, was praised by his contemporaries, Walafrid Strabo and Lupus of Ferrières, was copied frequently throughout the middle ages, and finally reworked and sewn into the Grandes Chroniques, the version of French history current in the fourteenth century, and traditional until well into the Renaissance, when the printing press made it the historical coin of the realm. In addition, it is the earliest text to provide evidence of an historical Roland (Hruodlandus Britannici limitis praefectus)

The Charlemagne of the Song of Roland, however, is a later, more hagiographical figure than the one to be found in this early ninth-century text, although Einhard, in the preface to his life of Charles, was not above adapting passages from Sulpicius Severus' Vita S. Martini. Royal biography and hagiography clearly shared a thesaurus of panegyric in the middle ages, and Einhart sees to it that Charles, like Augustus as described by Suetonius, observed his religious duties fastidiously, but the Vita Karoli characteristically concentrates on idealizing Charles for his magnanimitas and constantia rather than for his piety, although the emperor's biographer does reveal that Charles had a short, thick neck, and three (four in one family of manuscripts) concubines.

Although Augustus is the major paradigm, Tiberius and Caligula also provide material for the portrait of Charles. Using Suetonius' lives of the emperors as a model, of course, would seem to support Charles' claim to being Holy Roman Emperor, but Einhard always refers to Charles as king, not emperor, presumably in deference to the anti-imperial position of Charles' son Louis, in whose reign the Vita was composed. Moreover, Einhard's borrowings from Suetonius make as often for contrasts as for similarities. In addition, he does not offer Suetonius' anecdotal detail, he offers little on the administration of the kingdom -- an area to which Suetonius had paid significant attention -- and is reticent on the topic of Charles' youth, perhaps at least partially because Pepin III and Bertha were not married at the time of the birth of the future first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

He does, however, strive to imitate Suetonius' Latin prose style, even when Suetonius deviates from the Ciceronian decorum for which Einhard professes admiration in his prologue. On the other hand, in his letters and in the Translatio, Einhard adjusts his diction and syntax to everyday Carolingian

standards.

The Vita begins with the famous description of the last of the long-haired Merovingians, sitting ineffectually on the throne, while the task of governing shifted to the mayors of the palace, Charles' ancestors. A brief description of the reigns of Charles Martel and Pepin the Short follows, and the death of his brother Carloman gives the Frankish kingdom exclusively to Charles. Einhard passes over Charles' youth as a subject with which everyone alive is excessively familiar, and proceeds to his actus et mores. Chapters 5-17 list his military accomplishments, at home and abroad, 18-20 deal with Charles' family, 21 with his hospitality to foreigners, 22 with his physical characteristics and habits, 23 with his preference for traditional Frankish dress, 24 with his moderation in eating and drinking, and his reading Augustine and especially City of God at meals. Chapter 25 tells of his support for the liberal arts, and of his respect for Peter of Pisa and Alcuin, his teachers, 26 of his religious devotion, his concern for constructing a new church at Aachen, and of his reforming the singing of the Psalms. Chapter 27 tells of his charity towards the poor, and of his particular concern for the church of the Apostle Peter in Rome. Chapter 28 gives an account of Charles' coronation, and of his support for Leo III. Chapter 29 describes his attempt to reconcile two different law codes applied to the Franks and his seeing to it that laws and deeds were written down. Chapters 30-33 describe his death and the political results. Politics also provide much of the material in the 58 letters, the earliest of which is dated 823, that have survived, although they also show him involved with everyday problems, now dealing with a request for sanctuary by a husband who has married without his master's permission, now with a functionary who has delivered fewer than the stipulated number of pigs, and they not of the best quality. A composition in a minor genre, the Translatio et Miracula SS. Marcellini et Petri  became the model for justifying the theft of saints' relics, and the rhythmic version of this text, the Passio Martyrum Martcellini et Petri, may also have been written by Einhard.

References

Eric Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, New York 1965.

H. Beumann, "Topos und Gedankenf~ge bein Einhard," Archiv f~r Kulturgeschichte 33 (1951) 337 ff.

Marguerite Bondois, La translation des saints Marcellin et Pierre: Etude sur Einhard et sa vie politique de 827 à 834, Paris, 1907.

Donald Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne, London, 1965.

Karl Brunner, Oppositionelle Gruppen in Karolingerreich, Vienna, 1979.

François Louis Ganshof, "Eginhard, biographe de Charlemagne," Biblioth<que d'Humanisme et Renaissance 13 (1951), 217-230.

Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra, Princeton, 1978, especialy pp. 143 ff..

L. Halphen, Etudes critiques sur l'histoire de Charlemagne, Paris, 1921, pp. 73-74.

K. Hauck (ed.), Das Einhardkreuz, Vortr. u. Stud. d. Munsteraner Diskussion zum arcus Einhardi, hg. v. K. Hauck (Abh. d. Ak. d. Wiss. in Gottingen, phil.-hist., Kl. 3 Folge Nr. 87), 1974.

Sigmund Hellman, "Einhards literarische Stellung," Historische Vierteljahrschrift 27 (1932), 40-110, reprinted in Ausgew&hlte Abhandlungen zur Historiographie und Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Helmut Beumann, Darmstadt, 1961, pp. 159-230.

A. Kleinclausz, Eginhard, Paris, 1942.

H. Löwe, "Religio Christiana, Rom und das Kaisertum in Einhards Vita Karoli," Storiographia e storia: Studi in onore di Eugenio Dupr>-Theseider, i., Rome, 1974, pp. 1-20.

Max Manitius, Neues Archiv 7, 517-568.

B. de Montesquiou-Fezensac, "L'arc de triomphe d'Einhardus," Cahiers arch>ologiques IV, 1949, pp. 79-103. BN ff. 10440 fol. 45

Lawrence Nees, A Tainted Mantle, Philadelphia, 1991.