Life of Charlemagne (Vita Karoli Magni)
A short biography of Charlemagne by a scholar who lived at his court and served his son. It is the main source for the emperor’s person and habits, and it gives the well-known report that he had not wanted the imperial crown.
Read the text at sourcebooks.fordham.edu ↗Latin text, edited by O. Holder-Egger (Monumenta Germaniae Historica) ↗
Einhard says in his preface that King Charles had cared for him from boyhood and that he lived at court in friendship with the king and his children, so that no one could write more accurately of things he had seen with his own eyes. He wrote after Charlemagne’s death in 814; the exact year is not known. The book follows the pattern of Suetonius’s lives of the Caesars, taking up wars, then private life and habits, then administration and death.
He is a witness close to his subject and openly devoted to him: he calls Charles his lord and foster-father. On the coronation of 800 he writes at least fourteen years after the event, when the dispute with Constantinople over the title, which he mentions in the same chapter, was already past. That may colour what he says of the king’s reluctance.
Cited in
- AD 789, firm date
- 25 December AD 800, firm date