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 couplets in which Hrabanus Maurus described him as wise, eloquent, and possessed of many skills. The ninth-century historian known as the Astronomer called him "sui temporis prudentissimus virorum" (the wisest of the men of his time). His renown was such that such works were attributed to him as major parts of the Annales regni Francorum (Annals of the Reigns of the Franks, also called Annales d'Einhard), the Annales de Fulda, the fragmentary Annales de Sithiu, and the first secular Latin epic of the early Middle Ages, Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa (Charlemagne and Pope Leo). A treatise, 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...