Abstract
Charles may or may not have been Great but he has long had a great reputation, and we should try not to let this confuse us. The question asked here is simply why this king’s legend began so early and flourished with so few impediments. The conditions at the birth of Charles’s legend were more than just right, they were perfect: a satisfying number of surviving sources that treat him with admiration and awe, few dissenting written records, and a turn of history that typed him against the beleaguered kings and troubled times that followed. My intention here is to briefly reconsider the formation of the Charlemagne legend and suggest another perspective on how it manifested itself.
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Notes
For a useful introduction to the theoretical issues surrounding reputations, see Gary Alan Fine, Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 1–31.
Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH PLAC 1 (Berlin, 1881), p. 367.
See Paul Edward Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 69–92, 221–34.
For an overview of the relationship, see Maristella Lorch, “Petrarch, Cicero, and the Classical Pagan Tradition,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr., vol. 1 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), pp. 71–94.
See Roger Collins, “The ‘Reviser’ Revisited: Another Look at the Alternative Version of the Annales Regni Francorum,” in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 191–213.
For example, see Robin Seager, Pompey the Great, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
Alan Wilshere, “Sermo vulgaris or Sermo urbanus,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 9 (1973): 204.
Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. G. Waitz, 6th ed., MGH SRG (Hanover, 1911), pp. 25–6.
Astronomer, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, MGH SS 2: 618–19; Capitulare de disciplina palatii Aquisgranensis, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Capitularia regum Francorum 1 (Hanover, 1883), p. 298.
Ermold, In honorem Hludowici, in Ermold le Noir, Poème sur Louis le Pieux et épîtres au roi Pépin, ed. E. Faral (Paris: Champion, 1932), p. 66.
Heito, Visio Wettini 11, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH PLAC 2 (Berlin, 1884), p. 271. English trans. Paul Edward Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 63–4.
Vita Karoli Magni, preface, ed. Waitz, p. 1. English trans. Paul Edward Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1998), p. 15.
See now the comprehensive study by Matthias M. Tischler, Einharts “Vita Karoli:” Studien zur Enstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 2001), pp. 8–44.
See David Ganz, “Einhard’s Charlemagne: The Characterisation of Greatness,” in Charlemagne: Empire and Society, ed. Joanna Story (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 38–51.
For example, Julia M. H. Smith, “‘Emending Evil Ways and Praising God’s Omnipotence’: Einhard and the Uses of Roman Martyrs,” in Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2003), pp. 189–223.
Hubert Houben, “Visio cuiusdam pauperculae mulieris: Überlieferung und Herkunft eines frühmittelalterlichen Visionstextes,” Zeitschrift für die Geshcichte des Oberrheins 124 (1976): 41–2. English trans. Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, 2nd ed. (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2004), pp. 203–4.
On the events of Louis the Pious’s reign, see Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. Peter Godman and Roger Collins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990);
Egon Boshof, Ludwig der Fromme (Darmstadt: Primus, 1996);
and Theo Kolzer, Kaiser Ludwig der Fromme (814–840) im Spiegel seiner Urkunden (Paderborn: Schoningh, 2005); among others.
Audradus, Liber reuelationum, ed. Ludwig Traube, in O Roma nobilis. Philologische Untersuchungen aus dem Mittelalter (Münich: Verlag der könglische Akademie in Commission bei G. Franz, 1891), pp. 383–5. English trans. Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 354–7.
Visio Karoli Magni, ed. P. Jaffé, Bibliotheca rerum germanicarum 4 (Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1868), pp. 701–4. English trans. Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 456–7. On the vision, see Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming, 201–10; Patrick Geary, “Germanic Tradition and Royal Ideology in the Ninth Century,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 21 (1987): 274–94.
Nithard, Historiae 1.1, in Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, ed. P. Lauer (Paris: Champion, 1964), p. 4. English trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers, in Carolingian Civilization, ed. Dutton, 298.
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© 2008 Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey
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Dutton, P.E. (2008). Karolvs Magnvs or Karolvs Felix: The Making of Charlemagne’s Reputation and Legend. In: Gabriele, M., Stuckey, J. (eds) The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230615441_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230615441_2
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