SOURCE: “Epilogue. The Heritage of Charlemagne: Legend and Reality” in The Age of Charlemagne, Elek Books Limited, 1965, pp. 201-07.

In the following excerpt, Bullough discusses how Charlemagne’s legendary status has, at times, threatened to overshadow the reality of his accomplishments.

Sometime during the reign of the Emperor Louis—known to posterity as ‘the Pious’—a monk of Bobbio, where Irish traditions died hard, wrote a Lament for the dead Charles. A solis ortu usque ad occidua Littora maris planctus pulsat pectora; Heu mihi misero ‘From the rising of the sun to the shores of the sea where the sun sets breasts are beaten in lamentation; Woe is me’, he began. ‘Franks, Romans and all Christian folk are plunged into mourning and overwhelmed with sorrow’; ‘he was the common father of all orphans, pilgrims, widows and virgins’; ‘Francia which has suffered such dread misfortunes, has never borne a...