Charlemagne's Courtier: The Complete Einhard

Description:

"This is the first really complete Einhard. Necessary for beginners and helpful for scholars." - Johannes Fried, University of Frankfurt

Brief description:

Paul Edward Dutton, Professor of Humanities at Simon Fraser University, is the author of a number of articles and books about the Middle Ages including The Poetry and Paintings of the First Bible of Charles the Bald with Herbert L. Kessler (University of Michigan Press, 1997) and Charlemagne's Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age (Palgrave, 2004). He is Series Editor of UTP's Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures.

Review Quotes:

Dutton has carefully gathered and translated every extant work of this famous biographer of Charlemagne.... [He] provides readers with a rare treat.

Einhard has long been known exclusively as Charlemagne's biographer, but as Paul Dutton's title suggests, he must be seen rather as Charlemagne's courtier-a complex and ambitious actor in the great drama that was the Carolingian Renaissance. By providing fresh and sensitive translations, not only of the famous biography, but also of his hagiography, letters, and charters, Charlemagne's Courtier provides a wide audience with unique opportunity to study the complete oeuvre of a ninth-century aristocrat and intellectual.

This is the first really complete Einhard. The intriguing personality of the biographer of Charlemagne, the small man of far-ranging activities, emerges in all its complexity-as statesman and manager, as relic-thief and loving husband, as a peace-maker struggling for his own faith. Paul Dutton assembles all his works and letters and all contemporary references in a new and sensitive translation. The circumspect introduction is attentive also to all the issues of this crucial time of the Carolingian Empire with its complete reversal of political alliances and sulteral stances after Charlemagne's death. Necessary for beginners and helpful for scholars.

What Einhard meant to do for Charlemagne, Paul Dutton has done for Einhard, and more, Charlemagne's Courtier brings together a magnificent stock of images, allusions, and texts-virtually every early witness by or about Einhard-and invites us to reflect upon the greatness of Charlemagne's diminutive biographer. To the extent that it is possible after 1200 years to flesh out this eminent Carolingian artist, statesman, and myth-maker, every student now has excellent tools to hand. In translating and commenting, Dutton has unveiled a scattered treasure with care and circumspection. He and Einhard give us much to learn, ponder, and marvel.