General Letter (Epistola generalis)

The letter introduces two volumes of readings from the fathers for the night office, which the Lombard scholar Paul the Deacon had compiled at the king’s order. In explaining the commission the king describes his wider aim: to repair “the knowledge of letters”, nearly lost through the neglect of earlier generations, to correct the biblical books corrupted by careless copyists, and to follow his father Pepin, who had brought the Roman chant into the churches of Gaul.

Its editor placed it between 786 and 800: the royal title is that used before the imperial coronation, and Paul had already gone back to Monte Cassino when it was written.